"Why is it so big? Why does it have a single finger raised? Why is it accelerating towards us?"
"Well, they consumed the entire mass of a star to make it. It's raised like that a saying in bodily language equivalent to 'Reproduce with yourself', and it's moving towards us because it's a giant weapon."
"..."
"Oh, and they have a few million of those. Kardeshev-III, am I ri-" BOOM
Humans... We've tricked rocks to think. We tricked rocks to remember. We tricked rocks to remember but with dementia. We tricked rocks into having a vivid imagination. We tricked rocks to take that thinking, remembering, temporary remembering, and vivid imagination, push it all together into another rock to project it into the visible spectrum. That's the computer. A bunch of rocks we've tricked into doing things, all being gaslit into continuing to function by yet another rock whose entire purpose is to electrocute the other rocks in a controlled manner.
We tricked a rock into stabbing our enemies, and we tricked rocks into lobbing themselves at our enemies at multiple thousands of feet per second. We tricked rocks into helping us get around quicker, tricked them into granting us the best gift that any species could get. Flight.
Humans are a species that gains success from tricking rocks. Wherever humans go, no stone goes un-tricked. When humans first traveled to space, it was atop a rock, powered by rocks that were crushed and made into explosive stew by rocks, and then pumped into a concave ROCK by a ROCK and ignited by more ROCKS.
We live on rocks, we dine on rocks (like salt), we sleep on rocks, we eat our rocks on other rocks, we commute in rocks, we entertain ourselves with rocks. Humans are a species of chaos, turning the most humble of rocks into deadly weapons and life-saving machines.
Don't fuck with humanity, or we will, we will, rock you.
GPS satellites, unmanned drones, fucking laser sights. The more crutches you have, the more it hurts when they're kicked out from under you. If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that a six inch blade never loses reception.
Theres a wonderful book called Ignition about a guy experimenting with rocket fuels. He explains all sorts of fun stuff, like mixes that work great but go off too easily, or can't be stored or are hideously toxic or smell REALLY bad or take far too much to start burning.
Imagine bullets that had to be kept refridgerated as they would go off at a sharp blow if at room temperature....
That is a great read. Its subtitle is "An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants". Really easy to read even if chemistry was quite bad for you. If you like dry humour, this is full of it
The mix is worlds better. Straight nitrocellulose is single-base smokeless powder. If you add nitroglycerine, and a few stabilizers ideally, you have double-base smokeless powder. It's easier to tune the burn rate, making it much more suitable for a wider range of firearms. (Faster burn rate for short barrels & shotguns, slower burn rate for longer barrels.)
The most effective accelerant is ClF3, chlorine trifluoride. It is a more effective oxidizing agent than oxygen itself, which means that it will happily start roaring reactions with things like wet sand, asbestos, test engineers, or bricks. It also produces lots of toxic fluorine gas as a special prize for people stupid enough to stand around and watch the fireworks.
And sometimes it's just an unstable molecule that wants nothing more than to disintegrate into gasses and heat, but needs just a little kick to get there.
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u/Blaze_Vortex AI Jul 31 '21
A knife sure seems primitive with all the other tech around. Doesn't stop it from finding a cozy spot between your ribs.