By Harry Kane
“We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can’t bomb it into peace.”
—Michael Franti
The President stared outside the oval office’s window, and whispered to himself, “A bomb big enough to blow up the world.”
He shuddered. He didn’t like the sound of that at all. This was not the part of his job that he enjoyed.
At that moment his personal secretary showed in two visiting scientists, along with the Secretary of Defense. This was not a public meeting. In fact, it was a closely guarded secret that the President was meeting the two men.
“This had better be important, Trenton.” He said to the Secretary of Defense. “I’m missing a golf game for this. And as you can see it’s perfect weather.”
“We won’t keep you long, Mr. President,” The Secretary said.
They sat down in a group of chairs that had been set up for the meeting. The president looked out at the two scientists. One of them looked ridiculously young. Healthy, too, as if he could have been a tennis player. He was a rising star in the physics community. The other looked older and crotchety—he was now the dean of a famous university.
“Well, it’s been a while gentleman. Welcome to the Oval Office. What is it you have on your minds?”
The younger scientist cleared his throat, he glanced at the older scientist for approval, and then started, “Well, Mr. President, as you are probably aware of, the deeper we dig into the cosmos, the more fundamental particles we find. First there was the atom, then there were the particles that made up the atom, and then even more fundamental particles. In the last year alone we’ve made brilliant strides in understanding gravity, and even the particles responsible for it. We have a much clearer picture of how gravity operates. In fact, we’ve just recently discovered a means of separating out some pretty fundamental particles into gravitons. Once we realized we could do this, we also realized the reaction would be unstoppable and for all practical purposes virtually simultaneous. If would defy our own notions of time.”
The president took in a deep breath and exhaled, “I’m afraid I can’t quite follow you. What does this boil down to? Speak to me as if I were a child.”
The older scientist saw this as his cue, and he said, “What he’s trying to say is we’ve got the ability to make a really big bomb. This bomb would be much more powerful than a nuclear bomb.”
The president’s eyes widened, and a bit sarcastically he asked, “Are you going to tell me you’ve discovered a means of making a bomb that would destroy the entire world?”
The younger scientists blushed, then spouted, “the entire universe, actually, Mr. President.”
The President blinked. The blood rushed to his head. He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. His second in just as many minutes. Finally, he sighed. He stood up, went to his desk, and picked up his phone. He called his personal secretary. “We need a meeting of the National Security Counsel right away. Arrange it.”
Momentarily he ignored the two men. He looked out the Oval Office window and whispered to himself, “a bomb big enough to blow up the universe.”
Over the next few days, the President held several meetings with many of his top advisors. When the National Security Counsel met for the second time, the president had invited some of the nations top generals to join the meeting as advisors.
The President started the meeting with the following question, “So gentlemen, it appears we now have the technology to build a big bomb, a really big bomb. In fact, a bomb big enough to blow up the entire universe. The question is, what should we do?”
One of the top generals immediately stated, “We’re going to have to build the bomb.”
No one said anything. The head of the CIA shifted his eyes left and right. The head of the NSA tapped his fingers nervously on the table.
“Go on,” said the president.
“If we don’t, they will,” said the general. “It’s really that simple.”
“Who is this they?” asked the vice-president, who also was in attendence.
“Well, building the bomb is merely a matter of know-how, isn’t it? Essentially, the knowledge is already available. It’s just a matter of putting two and two together,” said the general. “Surely it won’t be long before Russia or China or even one of our allies realizes how to build the bomb, and then does so. We should do it first.”
“Conceivably, even if they were to build the bomb, they couldn’t use it,” the President said. “They’d destroy themselves in the process. What’s its strategic value?”
The general blinked at that, “Obviously, self-defense. No one would dare ever attack a country that had such a bomb. I admit beyond that it would be difficult to threaten anyone with such a bomb.”
The President looked at the general incredulously, “Wouldn’t it be irresponsible to threaten the use of a bomb that could blow up the entire universe. Heck, you’d not only blow up mankind, but any little green men that are out there.”
“There probably aren’t any,” said the head of the NSA. His voice dripped with cynicism.
The President looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“It follows, doesn’t it? We’re in a fairly young part of the universe. If there were sentient life out there, it’s had plenty of time to evolve and make this same discovery.”
“Yes, so they’d build the big bomb,” The president said. “But it doesn’t necessarily follow that they’d use it.”
The head of the NSA scoffed at this. “We’ll use it. Humans are idiots. This will be the end of us all, surely. The best thing we could do now is to attempt a world takeover—only a world government can put the lid on this type of thing. This is a game changer.”
The vice-president gave the head of the NSA a bitter look, “You can’t be serious, Roger.” He added with as much sarcasm as he could muster, “Hey, I have a better idea, let’s just nuke the whole world right now. At least then we’ll save the universe.”
The vice-president was going to laugh at this, but when he looked out he saw they were all thinking about it. Then the President shook his head, “No, I don’t think our own self-extinction is the answer. We’ll have to build the bomb, and in the meantime do what we can to prevent anyone else from building it. As long as we are careful and mature, the bomb will never be used.”
So in the end they built the bomb, the really big bomb, and as many safeguards as you can imagine were put into place. There were checks and double-checks, and cross-checks as well. Only the President could authorize its use. Yet, the bomb required maintenance. It was a really big bomb, after all.
And so one day, as a top government gravitonic engineer was checking the wires of the launch mechanism, he happened to sneeze. And it was really just as simple as that. He sneezed, and his hands snapped back and pulled at two wires. The two wires became exposed, and then crossed, and then the bomb exploded.
And really, that’s all there is to tell, because after that, there was simply nothing left. The universe had exploded.
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