Entry 25. The day of the I-bomb

 [EDITOR'S NOTE: To purchase a fictionalized account of the events told in this entry, click here.]

Earth’s moon, I’m told, just dissolved, quietly and without fanfare. It wasn’t the sudden burst of energy we have always associated with a bomb exploding; it just dismantled itself into dust. Then gravity and centrifugal force took over and Earth became the fifth planet in its solar system with rings.

We’ve often speculated what the official explanation would have been in the absence of the direct warning from the “terrorist” who set off the imaginary bomb. And we’ve often shuddered when we reflect on the original purpose the bomb was expected to serve.

We happened to be watching an ancient film on a feed from Earth that day when the stream was interrupted.

Instead of the conclusion to a 300-year-old movie, we saw an earnest-looking young man, later identified as Walter Ellis, walking down a corridor backwards and talking to us about, well, something unimaginable.

“We regret this interruption, but there is something the Earth must know,” he said, slowly but urgently. “Our governments, in cooperation with ImagCorp, have perfected the technology to create an imaginary bomb. This device is capable of more destruction than any weapon in our history. We who love peace have been unable to stop the development of this bomb by conventional means, so we’re forced to take desperate measures.

“Look to the moon, and let no one cover up the truth about what is about to happen,” he said. “Watch the moon, and when this is over, turn to peace from this day forward.”

And a short time later, the moon dissolved. We were told Ellis was a terrorist, killed in the process of setting off the imaginary bomb, and at least one of his accomplices had been arrested.

It came out sometime later that the original target was not the moon, that Ellis had stolen the ignition disk for the bomb from the government, and that the authorities intended to test the bomb on Sirius 5 as a warning to those of us who had declared independence.

The warning would be more terrifying than any terrorist could imagine: “We have the power to destroy your so-called independent world. Abandon your quixotic endeavor, or feel the power of the imaginary bomb.” Would the government and ImagCorp really take the next step of dissolving our home world, quietly and without fanfare? It seemed unthinkable.

But we had little time to think. Two days after the news of the Sirius 5 plot surfaced, the peacekeepers’ ships arrived.

I was walking with Buffalo on the same beach where I had formed the response to her challenge about my nonviolent creed, the same beach where we first kissed, the beach where the venerable old oxygen generator loomed in the distance. Until that moment it had always been a place of peaceful contemplation.

We noticed an odd and growing whine from the sky. Buffalo saw them first, and her face shaped itself into an expression that mingled surprise, anger, disgust and a few other emotions that weren’t immediately clear.

As if on cue, a huge space ship buzzed overhead, emblazoned with the insignia of the Earth government. And then another passed over, and another and another and another.

All we could do is stare grimly at the several dozen military interstellar transport vessels with their oddly inappropriate mosquito-like whines. As the last one passed overhead, I looked down and spat out the only word my mind could find.

“Bastards!”

Entry 26. The peacekeepers settle in