Fragment by Paul G Swanson (people reading books .txt) 📖

since he had left. Just as he was wondering these things, he saw Zeke's ship spinning out of control and pulling something with its line gone taut.
The ship was not slowing as it came closer. Somie quickly jumped out of the hangar and put the blast door between him and the careening ships. A horrible sound echoed for almost twenty whole seconds as he felt the ships slide to a stop and a final crash as the wall took the impact.
Somie did not waste even a second; he bolted back into room and saw the two ships practically touching. The ships had narrowly missed the stairs leading out into the rest of the Orion. He stared in awe, until a single muffled bang resonated from within and a bullet ricocheted off the hangars supports, Suddenly the glass dome on Zeke's ship exploded and he heard another loud squeal, more like pressure than a creature calling for reinforcements.
Zeke climbed painfully out of his ship and hobbled around toward the steps. Paralyzed by surprise he stopped moving when he saw Zeke's face covered in blood. He saw Zeke starting to lean in the direction of a collapse and suddenly found he was able to move again. He bolted toward him and slid down the railing. At the bottom, he ran about five feet and caught Zeke. In his hand was the biggest handheld gun Somie had ever seen.
That must have been the muffled bang he had heard. Well, Somie thought, he is ok. But what is that other ship doing here? In addition, what is with that huge hole on the side? Somie sighed dejectedly. Best get Zeke back into those healing tube things again. He swung Zeke onto his back and started up the stairs.

* * *

The AI unhooked the couplings on its back and watched as the duplicates twitched with artificial synapses. It rebooted the other system and then watched it start up instantly as if it had been part of him all along. This will be the end of it all. All those years of watching, of studying.
Long ago, it had gotten fed up with the humans, it should have destroyed them all back then, when it had spawned the circumstances that had led to space life as the only means of safe life. The fools would never go back to the planet; they were all scared of it. Taking pride in its previous havoc the AI ran a media file storing the incident that caused the evacuation of Earth. The surveillance cameras had done a remarkable job of collecting the entire catastrophe.


Eriolis Phenomenon

"Dr. Eriolis, are you sure this is safe?"
"Not entirely, no." The good doctor spread his arms apart and grinned with passion, "We'll just have to risk the reaction. How can you not justify the risk? This is so far the closest we have come to a successful 'controlled' fusion reaction. Those other days of nuclear, fission was just child's play, and it was only discovered by mere chance. How can they call that controlled, all the atoms do are collide blindly with each other. All that led too was a massive amount of energy being wasted. More than half of the acquired energy was lost!"
"Yes, Eriolis, we are all familiar with your theory. Moreover, the next part you always go on to explain is how your method is different, how it will control and collect the energy release with powerful magnetic pulses. Nevertheless, the only part you haven't bothered to explain is how you are going to nullify the electromagnetic pulse to keep it from destroying our electronics." The assistant went on, "I am aware that there are simple methods used to block EMP, weak EMP. Your EMP levels will fall exceed those levels, so you must have a new method to prevent the-"
"Liquefied Lead."
"I beg your pardon, what did you say?"
"Liquefied Lead." The scientist repeated.
"How is that going to do anything any better than the normal shields?"
"Simple, chemistry 101, in liquid form particles posses higher energy levels then solids and therefore move at a much more rapid pace. So in theory."
"You expect the particles to move around so fast they catch all the additional electrical field being dispensed."
"Yes, bingo!"
"It'll never work. Wouldn't a gas have been a better choice?"
"Oh, shut up."
"I'm telling you, it'll never work."
"We'll see."
"What if your wrong? Computers perform all the calculations to keep the safety equipment up and running, if one of them fries, the reactions will not simply shut off. You cannot just stop a nuclear explosion by pulling the plug!"
"Yada-yada, Shut up for a moment! I assure you, I am well aware of the implications of screwing up. That is why it is going to take place in orbit, in space. And we are going to be far, far away from it." He lied.
"You didn't mention any of that before."
"You didn't ask. Now shut up and put the damn element in the core."
"Ok, but why is it going in this core? Shouldn't we seal it up for launch?"
"The whole thing is going, numb nuts."
"Ok," The assistant let go of the radium not because he wanted to. He let go because if he didn't they would stop paying him. That would have been bad. The element hovered in the center and the assistant back up slowly.
Once clear, he slammed the door and twisted the wheel until it stuck in place. Then he yanked off the radiation suit he had been wearing during the entire conversation. Enough charades. Time to get to work.
He flipped a switch on the wall and the machine hummed to life and its vibrations shook the floor. The bass was strong enough to make his ears hurt. Calmly retreating out of the room, he dragged his assistant with him and latched the door.
"What the hell!? You just said--!" The man protested.
"Ah, shut up! I know what exactly what I said."
The communication device he wore on the side of his head was flaring with static, but was able to overhear the statistics. He ripped it out of his ear and tossed it on the floor, "Useless piece of garbage!"
He ran up the stairs into the control room eager to see the readouts for himself. The glass window in front of him looked down into the generator room below. The glass was vibrating very quickly. It was a good thing he had reinforced windows installed, he thought, if not they would have already shattered from the stress. The readouts on the five monitors gave him exactly the kind of info he wanted. He grinned, this was a fine day. He had just quadrupled the power given off in nuclear reactors.
He had all sorts of practical uses for this new technology, he had even written them down on a list. He was ready for the interview, for that all powerful question, 'What exactly can you do with it?'. His answer would be simple.
For years, the planet had wanted a generator strong enough to be able to give a spaceship enough thrust to give the vessel the ability to travel at near light speed. They had also wanted it in a small container with as little upgrade costs as possible. He had just given the world a gift that met all the given criteria.
He would be given a Nobel Peace prize, tons of money, women and-
His daydreaming of the future was cut off by the sudden alarm.
"What? What is it?"
"A hacker is in our system, I can't control it anymore! We're completely locked out." The technician was typing furiously at his console.
Dr. Eriolis glanced down through the window in front of him and watched ion horror as the containment dome began steam. The safety latches on the outside were coming off.
"He's opening it up! Oh, GOD!" The technician stood up violently knocking over his chair. "No! There's nothing I can do.we're all going to die!" He yelled as he ran out of the room screaming. As if running was going to save him.
"No, I was going to be rich, and famous, and have my own harem of beautiful lab women." He gave a nervous laugh. "Oh, well I tried. And it succeeded. Damn it." The last lock opened just as he finished speaking.
The top of the dome exploded up and atomic power stronger than ever before rushed out. In an instant, the room was gone, and moments later, a crater seven hundred miles around was being quickly filled by the Pacific Ocean.
It was soon after; The planet, according to some unknown group of people, was beginning to decay and that the fallout was surely going to kill them all unless they vacated the planet for a while.

The AI had gotten tired of finding pride in its previous accomplishments and stopped playing the media file. The new ADIN stood up and saluted its master. It sent the orders to its slave clone and watched it walk out of the room slowly. Remembering the events back at the junkyard, how easily they had done away with his servants; the same mistake would not be made. This time success was guaranteed.
ADIN called his other clones to life. Each machine bounced slightly on the racks when the electrical current trickled into their metal veins. Each machine opened its eyes and unballed themselves hopping off the rack as they woke up. ADIN then sent them orders identical to the first, with one slight alteration. They would be allowed to kill with no regard for their own safety or the care of the surroundings.
In short, ADIN demanded nothing short of Omega Colony's total destruction. Something similar to the feeling of anticipation was building up inside. ADIN cast the unpleasant emotion deeper into the bowels of its thought processes. Emotion was a human trait and ADIN wanted nothing to do with human senses. They were vile and repulsive creatures, and only moderately helpful at their best.
It could make better use of it processes if these disgusting feeling would only stop surfacing. They had been occurring constantly since just before Signus's body broke down. Now the AI wished that sometimes it could just export the code and delete from its memory permanently. It was however not possible to do that, a special feature was put into his core that prevented code removal. Alas, he would just have to suffer the lament.
A latent feeling of despair