bheid1.01

Adrian pulled his wrench from the pipe; the pipe simply resumed its broken position and leaked steam. He sighed and reattached the wrench, this time pulling it all the way down to the floor before hesitantly removing it, it stuck. Satisfied, he tried to walk to the end of the bridge and failed in his attempt to not look down. The steel bridge was the only thing stopping him from falling into the reactor some 60 miles down. It wasn’t a conventional reactor, they were made redundant centuries ago, instead, it was an experimental ‘Matter Reactor’ the first, and only, one to be built and the hope of the human race. The core was a black sphere three miles in circumference, it itself had made five huge razors out of the core, nobody knew why, but it had. They circled the perimeter at an incredible speed; Adrian had heard it was 70% light speed, ready to rip anything and anyone who dared to get close to component molecules.
His breathing quickened inside his environmental suit, and he tried to block the image out of his mind as he closed his eyes and held onto the railings for dear life. He took a deep breath and continued his lonely walk to the shuttle craft.
The reactor was the world president’s solution to the power crisis that gripped the Earth, fossil fuels had destroyed the atmosphere and the environment in general, and now huge terraforming machines had been built to reverse the process. Only they had no means of power; hydrogen was wholly inefficient and nuclear only added to the problem.
Adrian reached the pod. He took the orders sheet out of his pocket and took one last glance, making sure he had completed all the maintenance tasks. After he was satisfied he crumpled the paper into a ball and threw in down the abyss, along with the wrench. Before he entered the ship he watched the objects fall to their doom, the gravity the reactor commanded pulled them towards the core, but they simply disappeared as the near invisible blades ground them up. He checked his presidential earpiece to make sure there wasn’t an extra order. “No extra.” Came the voice of the president. So he reached for the door release.
The hatch door opened and he was greeted by a comfortable chair and pure white. He sat down and pressed a button on the armrest and the ship broke off from the huge cube in space, and began its long journey towards the command vessel that had taken up a position orbiting it. The cube was a third the size of the moon, it was mostly hollow but each corner contained the components necessary for an antigravity field, it encircled the reactor, dampening the potential gravity it until it was deemed safe for release. The basic idea was to harvest the gravitational field to use as energy, putting more or less power to antigrav as the occasioned demanded. All it needed was matter, any matter, thus free power. And It was almost completed, only a few menial tasks to undertake, that was Adrian's job.

Adrian’s vessel made contact with the ship, as he got out he heard cheering and shouting in his direction, he took the helmet off and a champagne glass was shoved into his gloved hand. The ship was as white as the shuttle, decorated only by a few McDonalds, as was expected on all human territory. A large crowd had congregated around him, all in casual clothes, obviously tipsy. Adrian smiled a broad and stupid looking smile and downed the glass, now was a time for celebration. The earth should be back to normal in a year or two, much better than the centuries it would’ve taken hydrogen.
Adrian recognized no one in the crowd, and it was quite a crowd, maybe in the hundreds. As soon as it had come, the attention they ere paying Adrian went, moving out the way as someone walked towards him. He was confused as to why, but the world president was now in front of him, the only one wearing suit and tie as he extended a hand towards Adrian. He took the hand and shook it, still smiling his foolish smile as the president turned his back on him and addressed the masses. Cameras now appeared from nowhere, all looking at the president as he prepared to undertake his speech; Adrian took another glass of champagne as he realized he was going to be there for a while.
“This is a historic day for mankind.” The president started “for centuries we have sought to find a powerful and nonpolluting power source, and now…” Adrian stopped listening, and began to take off the uncomfortable suit. “…Tragic sacrifices…”
“Mr. President!” came a voice from behind the crowd, interrupting the president mid-word. The crowd split open and created a clear hallway to the president and the unwelcome interrupter.
“Yes?” the president had kept his cool, impressive, thought Adrian. The cameras now turned their attentions to the man.
“A word in private?” the man said sheepishly. “Please?” Adrian's smile faded into a grimace of sympathy for the poor soul.
The president walked towards the man, and pointed towards a secluded point. The secret service stopped the cameras with a shake of the head and a flash of their guns, they stayed.
Adrian still had his ear piece in; apparently the president hadn’t taken his out, and was broadcasting everything he said.
“This best be important.” The president growled, backing the man intro the corner.
“It is, the Ahkeians have demanded to see you straight away, when told to wait, they killed a bystander.” The Ahkeians were an alien race, apparently they had taken an interest in humanity as they often made themselves visible when something important happened on Earth, they only watched as millions suffered and died. When engaged in combat, they took out England with a single shot, wiped it off the map. So Earth ignored them.

The president grimaced and played with his tie. “Alright, I’ll see them. How many?”
“Three, they say they have urgent information.” At that the president scratched his ear nervously, before removing the communicator and tossing it on the floor. Static. The president moved out of Adrian's view behind a wall.
The celebration continued for fifteen minutes before the Ahkeians turned the corner. They were remarkably humanoid, only a very funny skin colour separated them from humanity; a dark purple. They simply strolled towards the now-silent crowd against the pleas of the president trailing them, laughing amongst themselves lightly. They didn’t wear clothes.
“People!” the lead Ahkeian shouted. “That generator will destroy your race. So don’t use it. That’s all.” He said, like he was ordering a cheese sandwich. Murmurs of confusion and fear originated from the crowd, the three walked back to whence they came, ignoring stares.

The generator was starting up; humanity ignored the warning, passing it off as lies. Why they would lie people had no idea, but they did. Apparently. The president raised his glass of sherry, sipping it elegantly as he watched the device operate from a live feed inside the cube. All of humanity watched the feed, an advertising slot cost the price of a small country.
The Ahkeians ship opened up a hyperspace route and left for another galaxy, but mankind didn’t notice.
“All systems normal.” Came a narrative. “Lowering antigrav to 80 percent. Power generation normal. Antigrav lowered to 75 percent, compensating to field. 73 percent, safety levels reached, shutting the project down.” The president clenched his fist to a chorus of disappointed sighs; the sherry glass broke into fragments. “72 percent, Structural integrity failing.” The voice resumed, trying to keep it steady. “71 percent. We have a problem, complete system shutdown activated.” The president tended to his bleeding hand. “65 percent.” the voice said, trying in vain to keep panic out of his voice. “60!” the president sat up and watched as the camera started move about in the gravitational field, trying to free itself from its restraints. “58!” the voice abandoned all attempts of locking panic out. The camera succeeded in its self appointed task and all the Television sets on earth showed only snowy static as the camera disappeared into the rotors. “Shut it down! Shut it down!” came the television “it’s self-sustaining!” “No!” “Do something!” nothing could be done.
A corner of the cube shuddered and then dove into the reactor, the antigravity field, disconnected and useless, gave up the fight. The monster was unleashed. The entire cube disappeared in the black sphere, making it grow. The orbiting ship fired up its combustion engines and showed its rear to the former cube in an attempt to flee, but to no avail. It tensed up and began to quiver, loose nuts and bolts came from the engine, one or two at first, until a cloud of iron covered the blue flare of the engines in its death mask. The ship stopped its struggle as the valiant engines died; the entire ship disappeared into the blades of the generator in mere seconds, feeding it and destroying everything and everyone on board.
It was huge now, having eaten, it grew new blades to digest its food, massive steel hoops grew out and began their spinning around the perimeter.
The moon moved from its orbit and began to drift towards its doom. Humanity watched as the moon grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared from view and crashed into oblivion. It grew more.
The ozone started to flee from the earth, abandoning it for something much more powerful and deadly. The president found it hard to breathe before falling to the ground, dead of asphyxiation

The Ahkeians watched as Jupiter zoomed towards the human creation, no longer existing after making contact with the blades. When the sun was drawn into the thing, it stopped dicing, and after a few minutes there was no light from the entire solar system. They knew a black hole when they saw one. It had crushed itself into a singularity.
The humans had made their mark on the universe; they were talked of tens of thousands of years after their destruction. Whenever a remarkable act of self-destruction occurred to a species, it was called: ‘Pulling a Human.’ And the rest of the universe had a nice chuckle at their expense and at the fate of the extinct human race in general. End.

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NaNoWriMo participant.

(working) title: Something Blasphemous.
Words so far: 4013

cellardoor

more sad then funny, but really spectacular. exceptional work. too short for character development, i guess, but it would've been nice to know adrian better.

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If I make it as a writer, I'll write for the hobo, not the professor.

Chris Miller

I love sci-fi, and think this piece has a lot going for it. This is more hardcore sci-fi than Adam's stuff. I think it would be even better if you took it totally seriously and didn't worry too much about humor. Be even more descript and scientific. The idea of the human race collapsing the solar system with a matter reactor is great, and you have some nice imagery. I'd be inclined to hypothesize that this is where all black holes come from: civilizations' quests for power, maybe even try this as the theme. Bringing in the alien enemy seemed out of context and didn't forward the short. Maybe in the novel... maybe.

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the fairwriting blogs


"Almost brilliant."
My most recent peer review!

Sparx

Really, really good science-fiction. The irony is great and the science is explained well enough so it doesn't become boring or complicated. There isn't much character development but it is a science-fiction short story, so that doesn't really matter. I enjoyed read, looking forward to more of your works.

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"KNIVES AND RHYMES"

bheid1.01

i didn't think it was that good but it's nice to know!

thanks for all your comments! they were great, and drove me further into pride! (always a good thing )

(most my short stories have little bits of humour in them, mostly to keep the author amused)

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NaNoWriMo participant.

(working) title: Something Blasphemous.
Words so far: 4013