In the mountains of Austria, a radio observatory doing a normal sweep of the northern hemisphere sky logged a strange anomaly. In the VHF range, it was a pinprick of a burst 70 seconds long. It was really only by chance their sweep saw it. It was posted on group chat by a bot.
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Elsewhere, amateur astronomers saw two shocking developments. A new star shockingly close to Earth. Not quite the same distance as Vega, but notable. No one was sure what to make of this. They would have seen the spark of a newly burning star years ago. Then Vega disappeared.
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There was no way this was related to the Gusmão shakedown run, it would have taken around 30 years for the light and VHF burst to reach Earth from these distances. Then another astrological body disappeared. The next on UNN Gusmão's chain. Another star like it appeared nearby.
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The curious new star had same mass, but was earlier in sequence on expanding to become a red giant star. Several thousand light years away, it would have taken that time for the information to reach Earth. It was late in Professor Loya's day when she heard the news. "Oh my god"
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There is a bug in the code of the universe. UNN Gusmão prepared for jump back to Sol. As a precautionary measure, it would first make visit beyond the heliosphere. Transiting such a large mass, the ROWHAMMER pistons had become doped to a heavier radionuclide of tungsten.
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On Earth, Professor Loya explained her case to the hastily-organized conference. "Yes, we did this," exasperated, "the ship isn't just transferring to a new substrate bucket." "The bucket transit envelope has enlarged, hit the existing mass in the destination, and shunted it."
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"Shunted where? You don't have edit or injection control. The destination is always sweeped to make sure the mass is below threshold" "But you're looking at the nominal bucket size. What if the ROWHAMMER drive started to drag additional buckets? With un-cleared additional mass?"
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"Again, professor, shunted it where?" "The only place it can go. The future hasn't happened yet. The present can't hold these buckets. We're sending these star systems back in time."
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The sound of simulated static on the conference call increased a thousand fold. "And they're jumping back to us." "When?" "The plan says after two failed jumps." "But that would mean..." ~~~~~ An extinct bird sang. The end.
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Thank you for reading my story, The Immediate Sound of Distant Hammers. I'd been meaning to expand it from concept sheet for the last two years, but decided to push it into a Twitter-size story the last three days. I'm sorry about some inconsistencies, I hope you enjoyed it.
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Le chargement semble prendre du temps.
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