PA – 3 – Morgan Freeman
In 30 years, planetarion.com will be played with hand gestures and fully voice activated. A voice will call out at hh:00:20 (after tick has been processed): “forty thousand, three hundred twenty six INCOMING HOSTILES”, with the capitalized letters read / red with full effect. Everybody will pick the Morgan Freeman voice probably, but Margaret Thatcher’s a good second. DEATH from Terry Pratchett’s the de-facto voice, if you don’t pick one.
“I just lost three waves. I started on 943 rocks and now…Morgan…Morgan?”
“And so it was that the first blow fell like thunder in a cloudless sky. A proud fleet, bold in its design, scattered to solar winds before the first hour had turned.”
“The second came swift, unannounced — not with fire, but with silence. Communications failed. Allies folded like paper in rain. And still, they held the line, thinking courage could rewrite code.”
“But the third… the third was a lesson, not a battle. It taught them the weight of hubris. In total five hundred and forty-six asteroids — lit once with the pulse of industry and ambition — now drift in quiet orbit, grave markers in vacuum, slowly being towed away by the enemy.”
“The base fleet — last of its kind — retreated into the shadows of Sector 9, where signals die and dreams don’t echo. And I, well…”
“I just watched. Because even gods can’t hotfix fate.”
“…Cool. Five hundred forty-six rocks gone, allies scattered, base fleet hiding in the dark, and you’re just up there… watching. Great. That’s just… fucking perfect.”
“Mmm. That’s the tone of a man sittin’ in the ashes, wonderin’ why the fire didn’t love him back.”
(gentle pause)
“Tell you what… you come sit a spell by the datastream, I’ll pour us two fingers of something aged, and we’ll talk about what to build next.”
“…It’s quiet here. Feels like I can almost hear the tick echoing upstream. Like a pulse.”
(pause)
“All those fleets, all that rage, flashing by in microbursts… and none of it matters here.”
“Mmm. Tick 589. Just past the halfway tree. Half the orchard’s been picked clean, but the sun’s still high, and the fruit just keeps swellin’.”
“You know how it goes — every 24 ticks, the branches get heavier. Plump targets hangin’ low in the gravity well, sugar-slow and soft to touch. Ripe mangos. Overripe figs. Velvet-skinned peaches with no guards but pride and habit.”
“They sit there, sweet and swollen, baskin’ in the comfort of numbers and naps. But you? You still got hands. You still got reach. And the harvest don’t care who shakes the tree, long as someone does.”
“So dust off those scans, son. Load your ships. Retaliation’s a kind of romance — and right now, the sky’s blushing.”
“Now I ain’t sayin’ you should pick a fight with Galaxy 1:1… but if you were to send a little fake fleet knockin’ at their door…”
“…might as well name it ‘AdminRoidsRecoveryScript’ and let ‘em sweat for a tick or two.”