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The third planet of that otherwise tedious solar system was strange at first sight. The exploration flying saucer preferred to move away from the planetary plane to view it from the safety of clear space. Unnecessarily. The suspicious space object looks the same from all sides.
"A metal planet?" wondered the captain.
"It's not a ball of solid metal. It's just a shell," explained the science officer. He devoted several sleepless days and nights to the mysterious phenomenon.
"It is natural?"
"No. There's plenty of room between the sphere and the surface. Inhabited, at least at one time. We picked up a lot of artificial signals. Entertainment shows, communications, messages to space. News is our main interest. Fortunately, we were able to translate it quickly."
"Did you find out why they wrapped their planet in tin? Weren't they in danger of something we should be worried about too?"
"Certainly nothing that would require anything of the sort," the officer shook his head.
"Then why did they build it? I wouldn't have thought it possible."
The science officer yawned.
"Read it."
A photograph of some machine crystallized on the screen. Encircled by large letters.
The last batch of Starlink satellites had been launched. The satellite constellation, consisting of twelve thousand satellites, is complete.
"Why would..."
The scientist didn't let the captain finish.
"Next."
Project Kuiper successfully finished.
"Three thousand."
More translated messages appeared. More numbers.
"Let's see, twenty-four thousand satellites. Only eighty-two here. And this..."
The captain looked at the tired scientist. He acknowledged that this man and his team had done a tremendous amount of work. But something was still missing.
"Well, they sent up a bunch of probes. But there's a sphere around the planet."
"Of course, sir. Lots of satellites in orbit. Then all you need is a little..."
"How much?"
"Like the moment when a communications satellite meets a navigation satellite on the same
course, dodges a spy satellite that... I see, briefly. Are you familiar with the collocation
Multi-vehicle collision?"
© 2022
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"Things just happen. What the hell."
Didaktylos*
* Terry Pratchett. Hogfather
Welcome to my world.
For the longest time I couldn’t think of right name for this place, so I left it without one. Amongst things you can find here are attempts of science fiction and fantasy stories, my collection of gods, bogeymen and monsters and also articles about things that had me interested, be it for a while or for years.
(There is more of this, sadly not in English but in Czech, on www.fext.cz)
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