Chapter Forty-Five - If You're Unhappy and You Know It, Flap Your Wings!

"So, Chips as Subscription didn't work out. So I was thinking... how about we continue our previous Product Size Adjustment?

Introducing... Bag of Chip! Now available in all 725 flavours currently available! Low in calories, and each bag is large enough to have room for plenty of tangential advertising too!"

--Layers Potato Chip Company, CFO Memo, 2038

***

We got a full HD view of space and Phobos in the distance, but it didn't help explain anything.

Which was why I was kind of thankful when a corner of the screen was suddenly taken up by a familiar face. Doctor Radikal adjusted his glasses, then ran a hand over his face. He had a thick five-o'-clock shadow. I didn't know much about facial hair, but it looked like he might not have shaved in a day or three. Actually, the bags under his eyes suggested that maybe he just hadn't slept in that time.

"Ah, yes, greetings friends and compatriots," he said. "I see that we have listeners from both the Keiretsu and the Big Gun Project. Greetings, greetings."

The image on the rest of the screen shifted, then zoomed out. It turned into a sort of map, an empty grid with Phobos on one end, lines pointing out which direction the moon was moving in, along with its relative velocity. More dots appeared, Keiretsu drones flying in formation with their own velocities plotted out and an ETA to impact.

"As you can see, our partners' drone flights are going to hit Phobos approximately nine hours from now. This first wave contains mostly high-yield thermonuclear deterrents. Ah, but before that, our Weltraumgewittermeister Teslakollisionsgenerator will be going online for the first time to hopefully rip the wandering moon asunder."

The grid map zoomed out and out and out, then a new icon appeared, this one around a small green-blue marble that had to be Earth. The icon looked like a metal coil with some stylized lightning bolts around it.

"The Weltraumgewittermeisterteslakollisionsgenerator will be coming online in t-minus... one minute. Oh my, one moment, I may be needed here."

Doctor Radikal's image disappeared.

I shifted in my weird seat and glanced at the others. They were mostly relaxing. Tankette had stood up at some point and come back with more food. It was mostly mini carrots and some dipping sauce, and like, chips and popcorn, but the healthy kind which tasted alright but didn't hold up against the artificial crap I'd grown up on. Still, I grabbed a bowl and stuffed my face full because I wasn't raised to say no to free food.

"So, I'm guessing we're not actually going to get to see anything," I said. "Too far, right?"

"You'd usually be quite correct," Grasshopper said. "But I suspect that there are enough sensor apparatus pointed at Phobos that we will actually be able to see something visually. Otherwise we'll have to rely on real-time simulations."

"Eh, good enough," I said.

I was on the fence a little. I really wanted to see the Weltra... the storm tesla collider thing work. If it took out the moon in one hit, then that'd be that. Another part of me really wanted an excuse to use the Big Gun. We'd just built the world's biggest hammer, it would be a shame if we couldn't find anything vaguely nail-shaped to test it on.

"Ah, I have returned!" Doctor Radikal said as his image reappeared. He tugged his tie loose and smiled. "The Weltraumgewittermeisterteslakollisionsgenerator is about to fire. Please observe the efforts of our work!"

The screen flickered to a live feed of a space station. There was a long white boom arm extending away from a... thing. There was nothing to give anything a sense of scale, so I didn't know if what I was looking at was the size of a building or something tiny. The stars in the back were shifting though, and soon things rotated enough that I saw Earth in the background.

Then a small item detached itself from the satellite and flew closer, and I realized that it was an astronaut in a suit with some sort of jetpack on. They flew around the machine, giving me a sense of its scale compared to a person.

And it was fucking massive.

Well, no, I'd seen massive things before, skyscrapers and the like. This wasn't anywhere near that scale. Even our Big Gun was larger by an order of magnitude. But the Storm Collider looked like it was as tall as a pair of semi-trailers parked end to end, maybe fifteen metres in diameter along the middle.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Mostly it was a white hexagonal pillar with some panels pushed open to reveal complex wiring and shit within. I didn't have the multiple doctorates I'd need to make an educated guess at how it worked.

The astronaut flew around, then hovered along the length of the boom arm holding the camera. They waved on the way by and disappeared out of frame.

"Final checks complete," Doctor Radikal said. He wasn't talking to us anymore. "How are the capacitors looking? Mhm? Okay, good good. Is Honey Tea giving us the all-clear? Yes, just make sure... good."

The Doctor blinked, then refocused on the camera that I imagined was floating ahead of him. He had to have some greenscreen shit going on because even when it was clear he was in a room with others, the only thing that appeared in his corner was his body from the shoulders up.

"We have green across the board. The device is ready. Firing at ten percent in... ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one... firing."

I glanced from Radikal to the Storm Collider and... nothing happened? I was expecting a big lighting bolt, or some electrical currents, or something. Maybe a few lights along the side of the machine flashed? I wasn't sure. Eventually a panel did open up and what looked like a massive heatsink unfolded itself. It might have been warm? It was hard to tell. The heatsink was dropped, and a drone flew out to pluck it out of space to bring it back to something offscreen.

The screen switched to that zoomed-in view of Phobos, and I found myself sitting up straighter.

The moon was being crushed.

It wasn't super obvious at first glance, but there was movement on the surface. Large areas of the moon were cracking. What was obvious were the wings. The massive almost butterfly-like wings spreading out from the sides of Phobos were being squeezed into the moon's sides. Arcs of electrical energy were coursing along their surface, leaving long burning scars where they passed.

"No immediate reaction from the moon," Doctor Radikal said. "Can I have the... yes, thank you." He brought something up, a tablet that he read over then nodded as if to himself. "Looks like the collider is working. We have signs that there have been several minor shifts on Phobos' exterior structure. The moon's temperature has risen by two degrees!"

That didn't sound like much at all, but maybe I was wrong. The shifts were probably a lot more impactful. I could imagine Phobos being filled with antithesis tunnels and hives within the moon's surface. The equivalent of a small earthquake would mess those up.

"Pushing to one hundred percent," Radikal said.

This time there were definitely more lights on the Storm Collider flickering on and off. Each side of the collider opened, ejecting six heatsinks that were glowing red. Some even looked like they'd been slagged by the heat.

"Hmm, minor damage alerts on the main collider's cooling system," Radikal said. "Drachenschöpfer was right."

The screen flicked back to a view of Phobos. This time there was no hiding that the Storm Collider had an effect. The moon looked like... like someone had grabbed a few pieces of paper, scrunched them into a ball, only now that same paper ball had been crushed by a giant's hand. The massive wings were splattered against the moon's sides and there were canyon-sized cracks running along across the surface.

The far side of the moon exploded. Chunks of rock that the on-screen hud quickly measured as being half a kilometre long were tumbling away from the backside of the moon and spreading out.

"Regrouping," Doctor Radikal said.

There was a sort of pulse. I wasn't sure how to describe it, but the reaction was plain to see. The bits of the moon scattering away paused, then came crashing back down against Phobos' surface.

"Nice!" I cheered.

And then, because I had awful timing, the antithesis decided that this would be a good time to react.

Massive tentacles burst out of the moon's side, a thousand openings on their slimy surface disgorging tiny black forms that quickly hid against the black of space. More things came pouring out of the moon. Some huge, whale-like creatures that I'd never seen before, enormous ropey worms, and the moon looked like it was forcing itself apart once more, only this time the sections were linked together by long strands of living matter.

Phobos had come alive, as if it was a single living thing host to a million little monsters, and it didn't look happy about it.

***