Stone Poppas Arrive
Stone Poppas Arrive
I this dream I was monitoring the photos from several deep space aiming cameras. I was using SV's method of overlaying images to increase the contrast and resolution. I discovered a needle-like object which the parallax indicated was inside the orbit of Jupiter. When I made some rough calculations of its orbit, it indicated that it would be sweeping in to the align its aphelion with our perihelion. This would mean it would be in close proximity to the Earth for some time. Perhaps even long enough for us to get a good look at it. I contacted SV who contacted some amateur astronomers, and soon we had some images from some of the better telescopes.
The object was a three mile diameter stone needle about 150 miles long. Several of the photographs showed some smaller stone needles near it, those were sometimes there and sometimes not, so there was no corroboration. Eventually, the news was so insistent, that the Hubble took several dozen shots. There were obvious sequences where the smaller stone needles were docking with and leaving the larger asteroid. The smaller stone needles looked a bit phallic, and because of their coloration, slightly darker at the tip, they picked up some interesting nicknames.
Radar telemetry indicated that the vessel was indeed on a course to intercept the earth.
After the extended radar telemetry we began to receive radar signals regularly from the object. Our government with China quickly mounted a probe mission. Secretly, one or the other had included a little nuclear device as a "backup" plan. The probe sent back great photos of the ship and its launches working. In one series there was a flyby by a stone poppa of our probe craft. The images stopped coming for a time and several amateur astronomers reported that there had been a bright explosion. The governments of the US and China denied any involvement in the explosion for a couple of weeks, until we began to receive video and audio transmissions from the crafts cameras, and other devices using the same protocols. What had been a recon mission was now a demand to stand down. China launched about 50 large booster rockets into orbit over the course of the next 3 weeks. Not to be outdone, we managed to get about 30 nuclear missiles into orbit. It was for nothing. The stone poppas sent in small ships and destroyed them all, then the radar stations, then the Hubble re-entered in flames, then soon we were blind in space, even the international space station was broken up and sent tumbling. The crew were returned to an Island off the coast of Peru by a Stone Poppa. We tried to intercept his shuttle, but he managed to evade the missiles. Four days later, a hundred stone needles swept through the sky, ripping our air fleet to shreds over the course of about 36 hours of continuous operations. They did not attack anything but aircraft of the type that attacked them. Soon the US had almost no fighter craft. The only surviving aircraft are the ones that were safely hidden in hangers. The Stone Poppas suffered only a few casualties, though I think even those numbers were greatly inflated by our government. I personally watched a dogfight over Miramar in which two Stone Poppas shot down every plane sent to intercept them, and I could tell from the smoke, they had destroyed many planes on the ground. They landed, and when ground troops attacked, they returned the favor, destroying everything that was of a nature to have attacked them. Including men. A troop of several thousand marched across the planet. Killing anyone who resisted their movement, but leaving alone anyone who just let them pass. One group of about 100 was destroyed in a nuclear fireball, and then from that point on, the Stone Poppas needle ships swept across the planet, destroying anything with a radioactive signature, power plants, weapons, uranium mines. They systematically destroyed our capacity to hurt them by destroying any technology or peoples who had shown a capability to harm them. When it was all said and done, we managed to convince them that not all humans, despite having similar DNA to the ones who had shot at them, would in fact harm them. The damage was severe. Major cities like New York and Las Angeles were reduced in population by well over half. In many cities, there were no men or boys left alive, the Stone Poppas having determined, early on, that beings with a Y chromosome were dangerous, they had just started wiping them out, down even to the babies. This had gone on for a couple of months before they had figured out a finer method of winnowing out the dangerous ones (adults and teens) and then finally with the population so low, only attacking men and boys and now women, as many had taken up arms to avenge their fallen male comrades and children, who actually showed anger or hostility towards them. They had some sort of detector that allowed them to tell from quite a distance, it was as though they could read our minds. Eventually our population was reduced to the level where we posed no threat, and they did something really strange. They started to rebuild. They broadcast a single apology to the nations of this world, as near as we could interpret it, and began to put the trains back on the rails and to rebuild apartments and businesses. At this time they stopped killing people other than in self defense.
By this time the population of the cities was so small that the Stone Poppas moved in with some of the survivors and began teaching them their language, and protecting them from the roving street gangs, who now that they knew there was no armed police force, had begun to prey on their fellows.
The Stone Poppas had no trial by jury, somehow they apprehended, questioned, played back the crimes as though they could look back in time, then executed anyone who was found to have used lethal force, or even the threat of lethal force. Folks who just grabbed stuff and ran, they made them return the stuff, or if it was not possible, they made them make replacements. Meaning, they really worked in the auto factory, then the stereo factory, etc. The offenders slept in a 10 by 10 cube, with a Stone Poppa guard until they made reparations, or their victims indicated they were satisfied. Many of those so incarcerated initially tried to escape, but found themselves back in their 10 x 10 cube, this time with no exit and only a 3 x 9 inch hole to communicate and pass goods and services through. It could take a long time for someone to make up for a stolen and damaged car by selling leather wallets and keychains. If the criminal had used violence (non lethal) they would be incarcerated for life, the Stone Poppas sealing the cube's exit permanently. The cubes were left on street corners everywhere in public, some places they were stacked two and three deep. Crime seemed to take a rapid downturn in those areas. Any one could visit, any time. Trying to pass a criminal a hacksaw or a digging tool was a sure way to become a resident of a cube yourself, but anything else was allowed. Attempting to free a criminal made you an accessory. Soon gang members found themselves working on making restitution for the original crime, so sometimes a half dozen people would suddenly be working and the sentence would be seriously reduced. Many times, the gangs kept on working, as they then got to keep what they earned. It was a twisted system, but it seemed to work.
On the positive side, there didn't seem to be many cases of mistaken identity or errors, as they seemed to be able to play back memories, both witnesses and perpetrators. They were disappointed to learn that memories were fallible the longer the time from the incident, or the more interference from interrogators. The Stone Poppas found our minds to be, well, untidy.
I had managed to make my way into a rural area, and was working on keeping the technology infrastructure of our farming community intact. Still, we wanted desperately to be free of the Stone Poppas, but were having a difficult time of coming up with a violence free method of getting rid of them. The only thing we could see was that we had to get the wheels back on the bus, and begin to govern ourselves without resorting to guns to make people behave.
I this dream I was monitoring the photos from several deep space aiming cameras. I was using SV's method of overlaying images to increase the contrast and resolution. I discovered a needle-like object which the parallax indicated was inside the orbit of Jupiter. When I made some rough calculations of its orbit, it indicated that it would be sweeping in to the align its aphelion with our perihelion. This would mean it would be in close proximity to the Earth for some time. Perhaps even long enough for us to get a good look at it. I contacted SV who contacted some amateur astronomers, and soon we had some images from some of the better telescopes.
The object was a three mile diameter stone needle about 150 miles long. Several of the photographs showed some smaller stone needles near it, those were sometimes there and sometimes not, so there was no corroboration. Eventually, the news was so insistent, that the Hubble took several dozen shots. There were obvious sequences where the smaller stone needles were docking with and leaving the larger asteroid. The smaller stone needles looked a bit phallic, and because of their coloration, slightly darker at the tip, they picked up some interesting nicknames.
Radar telemetry indicated that the vessel was indeed on a course to intercept the earth.
After the extended radar telemetry we began to receive radar signals regularly from the object. Our government with China quickly mounted a probe mission. Secretly, one or the other had included a little nuclear device as a "backup" plan. The probe sent back great photos of the ship and its launches working. In one series there was a flyby by a stone poppa of our probe craft. The images stopped coming for a time and several amateur astronomers reported that there had been a bright explosion. The governments of the US and China denied any involvement in the explosion for a couple of weeks, until we began to receive video and audio transmissions from the crafts cameras, and other devices using the same protocols. What had been a recon mission was now a demand to stand down. China launched about 50 large booster rockets into orbit over the course of the next 3 weeks. Not to be outdone, we managed to get about 30 nuclear missiles into orbit. It was for nothing. The stone poppas sent in small ships and destroyed them all, then the radar stations, then the Hubble re-entered in flames, then soon we were blind in space, even the international space station was broken up and sent tumbling. The crew were returned to an Island off the coast of Peru by a Stone Poppa. We tried to intercept his shuttle, but he managed to evade the missiles. Four days later, a hundred stone needles swept through the sky, ripping our air fleet to shreds over the course of about 36 hours of continuous operations. They did not attack anything but aircraft of the type that attacked them. Soon the US had almost no fighter craft. The only surviving aircraft are the ones that were safely hidden in hangers. The Stone Poppas suffered only a few casualties, though I think even those numbers were greatly inflated by our government. I personally watched a dogfight over Miramar in which two Stone Poppas shot down every plane sent to intercept them, and I could tell from the smoke, they had destroyed many planes on the ground. They landed, and when ground troops attacked, they returned the favor, destroying everything that was of a nature to have attacked them. Including men. A troop of several thousand marched across the planet. Killing anyone who resisted their movement, but leaving alone anyone who just let them pass. One group of about 100 was destroyed in a nuclear fireball, and then from that point on, the Stone Poppas needle ships swept across the planet, destroying anything with a radioactive signature, power plants, weapons, uranium mines. They systematically destroyed our capacity to hurt them by destroying any technology or peoples who had shown a capability to harm them. When it was all said and done, we managed to convince them that not all humans, despite having similar DNA to the ones who had shot at them, would in fact harm them. The damage was severe. Major cities like New York and Las Angeles were reduced in population by well over half. In many cities, there were no men or boys left alive, the Stone Poppas having determined, early on, that beings with a Y chromosome were dangerous, they had just started wiping them out, down even to the babies. This had gone on for a couple of months before they had figured out a finer method of winnowing out the dangerous ones (adults and teens) and then finally with the population so low, only attacking men and boys and now women, as many had taken up arms to avenge their fallen male comrades and children, who actually showed anger or hostility towards them. They had some sort of detector that allowed them to tell from quite a distance, it was as though they could read our minds. Eventually our population was reduced to the level where we posed no threat, and they did something really strange. They started to rebuild. They broadcast a single apology to the nations of this world, as near as we could interpret it, and began to put the trains back on the rails and to rebuild apartments and businesses. At this time they stopped killing people other than in self defense.
By this time the population of the cities was so small that the Stone Poppas moved in with some of the survivors and began teaching them their language, and protecting them from the roving street gangs, who now that they knew there was no armed police force, had begun to prey on their fellows.
The Stone Poppas had no trial by jury, somehow they apprehended, questioned, played back the crimes as though they could look back in time, then executed anyone who was found to have used lethal force, or even the threat of lethal force. Folks who just grabbed stuff and ran, they made them return the stuff, or if it was not possible, they made them make replacements. Meaning, they really worked in the auto factory, then the stereo factory, etc. The offenders slept in a 10 by 10 cube, with a Stone Poppa guard until they made reparations, or their victims indicated they were satisfied. Many of those so incarcerated initially tried to escape, but found themselves back in their 10 x 10 cube, this time with no exit and only a 3 x 9 inch hole to communicate and pass goods and services through. It could take a long time for someone to make up for a stolen and damaged car by selling leather wallets and keychains. If the criminal had used violence (non lethal) they would be incarcerated for life, the Stone Poppas sealing the cube's exit permanently. The cubes were left on street corners everywhere in public, some places they were stacked two and three deep. Crime seemed to take a rapid downturn in those areas. Any one could visit, any time. Trying to pass a criminal a hacksaw or a digging tool was a sure way to become a resident of a cube yourself, but anything else was allowed. Attempting to free a criminal made you an accessory. Soon gang members found themselves working on making restitution for the original crime, so sometimes a half dozen people would suddenly be working and the sentence would be seriously reduced. Many times, the gangs kept on working, as they then got to keep what they earned. It was a twisted system, but it seemed to work.
On the positive side, there didn't seem to be many cases of mistaken identity or errors, as they seemed to be able to play back memories, both witnesses and perpetrators. They were disappointed to learn that memories were fallible the longer the time from the incident, or the more interference from interrogators. The Stone Poppas found our minds to be, well, untidy.
I had managed to make my way into a rural area, and was working on keeping the technology infrastructure of our farming community intact. Still, we wanted desperately to be free of the Stone Poppas, but were having a difficult time of coming up with a violence free method of getting rid of them. The only thing we could see was that we had to get the wheels back on the bus, and begin to govern ourselves without resorting to guns to make people behave.
posted by Fermius Firefly | 3:42 PM
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