Project: Armageddon By Razor Blizzard

  George Heineman was tall, about 6’8, with greasy blond hair and glasses on his narrow face, he didn’t look tall at this moment in time as he was hunched over the laptop sat on the desk in front of him, putting the final touches on his portfolio of work he was to hand in to the local observatory, who would then pass it on to NASA, after reading it themselves. George was an astronomer, and at 25 he sent his first designs to NASA, he specialised in MEL (mass extinction level) meteor avoidance technology, or rather, in designing it.

  He had designed about nine MEL avoidance devices so far, this was the tenth, and the most destructive, he called it, the Armageddon Device, it was a space borne device that would orbit the earth coupled to a scanning device, charging on solar power. At it’s heart would be a quartz crystal infront of an emitter that would focus positively charged ions through the quartz, and that quartz would split the beam of ions, sending the beams down a cylinder of mirrors that would create a spinning force that was refocused through some more quartz, so the device would emit a spinning beam of positively charged ions straight at the MEL meteor or asteroid, drilling to it’s core. When the onboard computer had figured that the beam had reached the core it would emit a pulse of negatively charged ions that would cause the positive ions to cancel out the negative ions and vice-versa with a massive release of energy that would split the largest MEL or destroy the smallest.

  George was a little concerned about what would happen if the portfolio fell into the wrong hands, something this destructive could be a deadly weapon in the wrong hands, buildings, cars, even people could be destroyed effortlessly, he shuddered, that must never be allowed to happen, he knew the power of the Armageddon Device, he had built a model, and used it on a rock in a vacuum chamber, he still hadn’t been able to get the fist size dents out of the walls of the chamber, he had recorded the whole experiment of course, that was in the portfolio, along with the information on the device, blueprints for both the model and the full sized devices, there were his notes on the principals on which he had based hid theory and wrapped his design around. ‘A nice little bedtime reading for the NASA boffins and techies’ thought George.

  The next day George drove up to the observatory in his second hand Skoda Octavia, contrary to popular belief, these things were great cars, he could fit all of his equipment into it, and the stuff wouldn’t get damaged because the Skoda was built like a tank, plus it wouldn’t get stolen, as it was a Skoda, the lowest of the low for a carjacker or joyrider’s record. George reached the observatory around 11am and went straight to the main office. Jack Terran was on duty today

 “Hey Jack, I got another portfolio for NASA for you to post” George told Jack as he sat down and handed over the portfolio

 “Not another laser gun George, what is this the tenth?” Jack joked, George’s first design had indeed used a laser to drive it, it would clamp on to the asteroid, burn it with a laser, the resulting energy would be channelled through, then ejected out the back of the device, pushing the MELM off course.

 “Yeah, kind of” George replied “but a bit more destructive”

 “A nuke?” Jack said, with raised eyebrows “they have those already you know”

 “No, it’s not a nuke, there’s a video of my experiment with a model version, or a DVD with some extras besides the experiment”

 “Mmmmm, well I always say yes to a late night video,” said Jack, reaching for the DVD “now there’s nothing dirty on any of these is there? NASA doesn’t like being sent porn you know”

  Jack Put the DVD into the player attached to the TV & video combi in the office and watched the extras then the experiment, and sat there open mouthed when it had ended

 “D…do you want m…m…me to send this to the military instead?” asked a pale, shocked and obviously scared Jack

  George said nothing and Jack told im he would post it right away

 “We don’t want just anybody getting his or her hands on this now do we/” he had said to George as he put in a big brown package envelope and wrote the address on.

Three years later George was watching TV when news of a big NASA launch came on, the newscaster said that they were sending up an anti hostile-asteroid device called; Project Armageddon. George just sat there stunned, he didn’t hear the newscaster saying that it was he who had designed it, he only noticed when his picture appeared on the screen and then a reporter appeared with the caption ‘House of Armageddon’ at the bottom of the screen, as the reporter knocked on the door of the ‘House of Armageddon’ there was a knock on his door. He got up, opened the door, and was confronted by several reporters and several cameras

 “Mr Heineman, what it your reaction to this launch?”

  “Well, a bit of a shock actually as I wasn’t actually informed that this was going to happen, which is probably my own fault, I probably accidentally threw away the letter” George told them

 “Would you mind telling us how project Armageddon works?”

  “No, I wouldn’t mind, it’s just a little complicated”

 “But could you still tell us how it works?”

  “OK, but you won’t understand,” said George, he then launched into a semi-lecture, dumbing it down a little for the average viewer, about how the Armageddon device, or project Armageddon, worked

 “Thank you Mr Heineman, back to you in the studio Steve”

Later that day the whole observatory gang come round, laden with drink and food

  “Dude, you were on TV” Nick Granton yelled

  “Congratulations, they finally used one of your designs” Craig Kiering said to George

   “Hey George, I brought a copy of the experiment DVD” Jack said

   “Late night movie huh?” George said to Jack, grabbing a Bacardi Breezer and opening it

Jack laughed at George’s reference to the meeting that got the portfolio sent to NASA quicker than a souped up Ferrari. They had a wild party that night, after watching the experiment DVD they got drunk enough for George to get out the model of the Armageddon device and set up the experiment. Everyone had a go at ‘shooting rocks with a ‘ray gun’’, as they called the activity.

  George woke with a monster of a hangover so took some painkillers to help the pain, and then he went to answer the door, it was a news crew

 “Ugh, you lot’ll have to come back tomorrow, I got a killer hangover and can’t talk to you, sorry public” George said, and then closed the door.