The Galactic Pitchfork or Crimes Most Grievous

Here I sit in my sunflower seed of a space vessel, awaiting my launch into the unknown. In three minutes the electro-magnets on the World Launch Towers will start up and prepare to propel me at sublight speed away from the planet. I sit here, strapped into this monsterous creation and await what might be death.

The World Launch Towers was a dream of the United Nations to make Space Travel fast and cheap. The idea is that the three giant prong-like buildings would put out the same charge as the spacecraft, thus repeling it into space. They sit there like giants, a mile high, and tapered to the top. These titans will decide my fate. I theory, I should be repeled into an attatchment of the Mars Space Station that would bring me from a tenth of light speed to a dead stop. Looking back, I barely know why I'm here. I guess it all started when I left my country for New Canada.

New Canada was the dream of a large gang of rouges whose former residnce had been China. New Canada would be a place where they could escape the population limits and goverment control. New Canada was created in a place formerly known as Russia. After Russia divided for the third time, a large swell of Chinese imigrated to the southern border and established a new country. God knows why they called it New Canada.

That was 30 years ago. Russia rejoined, and called itself Rubainia, after the politician and ruler Borschtkof Rubani. I left because Rubainia had cut the funding to my research. I was a scientist studying magnetic weaponry. Killing had always fascinated me. Ironically that same feild of study later led to the development of the World Launch Towers, the place where I'm now trapped. God works in mysterious ways.

After I fled Rubainia for New Canada, I was taken in by their goverment for my expertise in weaponry, all types; explosive, projectile, antimatter, atomic, and so forth. War is big buisness. It was then that I learned of the New Canadian plan to attack Rubainia. I can't say that I was surprised. Free from population control the former Chinese had filled their country to the breaking point with people. Now they needed to invade Rubainia so that they could have breathing room. Everyone knew it would be World War IV. Population was just the thing to spark it.

Since it's inception, Rubainia had made some powerful freinds, namely China and Canada because of their mutual hatred of New Canada. New Canada would not be without it's allies though. Most of the free world thought that it was wonderful that the Chinese had been able to escape their oppressive country and transform the barren tundra into the industrial capital of the world.

One year after I fled my unsupporting mother country, New Canada declared war. the U.S. sided with as, as did most of Europe. Rubainia got the support of China and Canada. By this time I had perfected a weapon of mass desturction that had been in my head for years. It would cause a sphere of matter to simply vanish off the face of the earth. If it were ever detonated, it would evaporate two circular miles of country. Or mountain. Or city.

So it was decided that on September the 26th the bomb would destroy all but the outskirts of Moscow. The bomb was smuggled into the country, then into the city by a unwitting refridgerator delivery man. The bomb was in the freezer compartment. The bomb was placed in an apartment rented under an assumed name and set on a timer so that our operatives could get out. Witnesses would later say that it happened in the blink of an eye. One minute a man was driving towards the skyscrapers, the next he was driving towards a sheer cliff. A man woman was pushing her stroller, and then the next thing she new she was screaming at the loss of her hands and her baby.

They say the worst part was the sound that followed. It sounded as though a god was inhaling, getting ready to blow up a balloon. And then crunching. The main freeways going into the city were filled with cars that couldn't stop from plunging into the mile deep hole. People had been cut in half. Buildings too. Gas leaked, power went out, water poured into the hole the once contained city. It was an urban cross-section. 3.6 million people died that day. And it's all my fault.

Rather than winning us the war, it caused our allies to abandon us. Never before had a country stooped so low. We were hated, and easily conquered. I was branded a war criminal. I had been so caught up in revenge that I hadn't been able see the damage to innocents. My research was burned, and I was scentenced to be an expiriment of science. That is why I'm here, strapped inside a sunflower seed with no controls. A lot of people are hoping that I'm crushed to death by the G-force. Or destroyed by a pre-lauch catastrophy. Or that a ring won't hold and my ship will be torn apart. I do know why I'm here. I'm here because I pained people. I'm here because I was careless. I'm here because I put science ahead of people.

Launch in three . . .

two . . .

one . . .

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