Doomsday bomb

Uhh, this was originally from a piece of school work from three years ago, there are still paragraphs kept intact. Because of my writer's block, I decided to expand on it and treat it as a writing exercise of sorts. Didn't really intend for it to be this long, but… Well. C&C appreciated.

Note: This is NOT srs bsns and I know that my chemistry sucks. And yes I know nothing about bombs.

I had wanted to insert more philosophy in the ending paragraphs, but I didn't want it to become too wordy and boring. If anyone thinks that it'll make it better though, I'll put it in.

Warning: LONG.

It was the year 2133. Darkness engulfed the war-torn lands. The buildings were a shadow of their more magnificent predecessors, from the renaissance of technology. And now, it was the age of chaos, and only one country had managed to stand on its own. Singapore. The smallest, yet, ironically the strongest.

Doctor Jonathon Ong was a licensed scientist. He, too, like other scientists, pursued the old scientific dreams: immortality. The theory of everything (more accurately, almost everything in light of Kurt Godel’s work). Outer space colonization. But the most important endeavor of all was the pursuit of certain immortality, just to keep the society alive.

To do this required the sacrifice of human subjects for open experimentation. The government has made sure that there was always a supply for the scientists. The greater good was more important.

However, never once did Doctor Jonathon personally perform the experiment on his human subjects. He had witnessed the cruelty of this method, done unto his sister, the only family he has ever had. He did not intend to witness it again.

Lightning flashed, the first hint to imminent rain. All was silent in the Ong research facility, isolated from the city. A colossal lightning tower, the trademark of the facility, seemed to draw the lightning towards it, engulfing it entirely in what seemed to be an instant. The energy would be used to power the facility, alongside the energy captured from nature by the other generators.

Sitting in a dimly lit room with a window facing a dizzyingly vast storehouse with four, under-construction rocket shaped bombs- which took up most of its hold-, Dr. Jonathon Ong was doing the final corrections of the ‘Firecracker’ blueprints. Everything had to be absolutely precise, calculations down to twelve digits. He had toiled through the night, and the fruits of his labor were shown in more than a dozen corrections-albeit very slight- to the drawings. Perhaps one less educated would dismiss them as unnecessary and too trivial, but in physics, even the slightest miscalculation could end catastrophically. The doctor ran his eyes over the blueprints and the calculations once more to be doubly sure, before, finally satisfied, he lay back in his arm chair and stretched out his cramped limbs, feeling rather pleased with himself.

He looked back out at the bombs, and a smile emerged on his face. The climb has been arduous and will continue to be, but it'll all be worth it when we reach the top.

Jonathon Ong was a rather peaceful looking man, with a kindly glint to his eyes and firmly etched laugh lines around his mouth. His dark grey hair was naturally windswept, and his face, although having seen 42 years, looked youthful and was wrinkle-free. He looked just like any ordinary man-on-the-streets, but of course, looks are ever deceiving.

After loosening his protesting joints, Jonathon produced a phone from his jacket and put it to his ear – the sensor would pick up on and decode his brainwaves to automatically dial his person of choice.

“Hello?” The man on the other line said crisply.

“Good day, Doctor Tenn. I trust you are doing well?”

“Oh! Yes, yes, certainly,” Doctor Tenn replied, voice audibly relaxing. “The final adjustments are finished, then?”

“Why else would I call?”

“Good, very good. So you’re going to send it over now?”

“Yes,” Jonathon said, leaning back over his desk computer, pressing the appropriate icons to send the file to Doctor Tenn. Over the phone, a “bleep” could be heard.

“And that is probably your file arriving over here….Can’t wait to reset the world, huh?’ Sounds of shuffling, fingers on glass. A moment of silence. ‘Hey, I don’t see any chemistry over here…”

But at the word “reset”, Dr Jonathon’s mind had drifted off someplace faraway. He dreamt of the day. The day the world would be reset. The day…his sister would be avenged. He closed his eyes as he remembered that fateful night, so many years ago.

That night had the same atmosphere as this. The same flash of lightning, the same cry of thunder. No sympathy was reflected in that scientist’s eyes as he cornered the screaming girl. The younger Doctor Jonathon Ong was present; hiding behind a box, watching with tear filled eyes. He was a training scientist then, gifted with genius in science- a master of physics and chemistry at the tender age of 13. He had skipped Middle and High school entirely and went straight on to college. Life had seemed absolutely perfect, the possibilities endless, and he had been sure that his genius could take him through anything, overcome anything.

But here, he could do… nothing. Nothing, only to watch.

His mouth opened, wanting to cry out in protest, tell him to stop, a torrent of insults, just to draw his attention… But nothing came out. He was afraid. Afraid of the consequences for such a transgression. Afraid for his own life. Tears fell down his cheeks as the scientist easily overpowered his sister, forcing the mixture down her throat, and in that moment, Jonathon had felt something altogether… Different. Was it helplessness? Grief? Regret…?

Agonizing coughs followed, and Jonathon turned away, all thoughts abandoned- awareness had felt like a torture, then, and he remembered pressing his head against the ground, seeking to drive away consciousness, to no avail. A heavy thud, and then, silence…

“…Dr Jon!” The voice in his earpiece yelled, stinging Jonathan’s ears. Reality snapped back, and he felt the tears brimming in his eyes. Angry at his own weakness, he rubbed them dry with his sleeve rather furiously. He had to focus.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Yes, the mechanisms and heating systems are done, but I’ll need to conduct some final tests on Fr-unobtanium, thus the lack of chemical calculations,” he said, still rubbing at his eyes.

The scientist on the other line laughed, the edge disappearing from his voice. “Well, get your results quick. We can’t wait to finally get this firecracker lit up.”

“A light show for the world that nobody’s going to remember.”

“I despise this world enough not to miss anyone in it.”

And they exchanged a laugh.

To the casual listener, it sounded like a joke. But to someone who had been listening in on the conversations in the Ong facility for close to two years, they sounded dead serious.

A woman, about 20 kilometres away from the research facility, started coughing. Rachel had just choked on her drink, after hearing Dr Ong’s words thundering into her ears. Fr-Unobtainium… Francium. Unobtanium. They have found a way to harvest large quantities of francium and unobtanium. She suddenly thought back to the bombs which ended World War Two, many centuries ago. Those bombs have since been among the final versions of the most destructive bombs on earth, never really upgraded save for slight changes here and there. But this Doctor Jonathan Ong has suddenly done his own research and created… A better bomb. The level of destruction inflicted after its launch would be beyond estimation.

She didn’t need to know more. “He…he….he’s going to blow up the world…” She whispered without conscious thought. For a moment Rachel contemplated the implications in silence, and then she leapt into action. Rachel retracted the virus she had installed into the Ong research facility’s network, just in case, and saved the recording to use as evidence against Doctor Jonathon's activities, amongst hundreds of others.

This was the first time that Doctor Jonathon revealed the scope of his plans. The entire bloody world, dammit! The man has gone mad! Fingers expertly navigating the interface of her desk-computer, Rachel submitted her findings directly to her superiors in the world-police Intelligence faction via the secure police network without consulting her overseer -reasoning that it was far too much of an emergency to waste time on paperwork- and it was only after the screen had flashed green to notify her of its success that she finally made to let out a huge breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. All was well and good.

Rachel finished her drink in one last gulp and sat back in her chair, staring blankly at the holographic screen before her, dark for the first time in two years as the data pouring in from the Ong facility was finally cut off.

“The sun will come out tomorrow,” she started singing. An unnamed song, from the renaissance of the technological age. She only wished that the old days still existed.

The news that someone was creating a doomsday weapon was met with immense skepticism. The conversation was interpreted as casual and unserious, since “Unobtainium” was somewhat of a chemist’s joke, there has been no known cases of anybody being able to obtain more than 50g of francium at any given time -50g being a most valiant effort by a prodigy, no less-, and most importantly, there was nothing in the conversation to imply a weapon of mass destruction.

The recorded conversations which the police’s Intelligence department claimed to outright mention a “bomb” had, in their own words, “suddenly disappeared”. Nobody actually believed them, but most were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Nevertheless, questions were raised. If such unprecedented plans which required sheer genius to execute were real, why was it completely unheard of in any peer reviewed science journal? And with Jonathan’s immense amount of employees -a quarter of whom were licensed scientists themselves-, why was this never leaked? More importantly, why would anyone want to destroy the society everyone worked so hard to keep alive? Nobody could keep such a huge project a secret. No one.

And so, no action was taken because the plan was reasoned away as, quoting Dr. Grass Tyson, “a crackpot idea”, though the incident still covered headline news.

In his facility, Dr. Jonathan, disbelieving at his luck, ordered for the entire operation to be sped up. Of course, doomsday fanatics one and all, his employees obliged.

A week had passed.

Flashing red and blue lights lit up the darkness, as the police started up their vehicles. The headlights were turned on, and the hovercrafts hastily took off. It had been a hard decision to make, but these valiant men and women made it. A week had passed, and the debate revolving around Dr Jonathan had died down, with the good doctor himself coming out to define, once and for all, the nature of his experiments, which had something to do with teleportation research or the like.

But they knew better. Rachel was not a careless woman prone to hasty remarks and they did not doubt her veracity. And so they, on their own authority, broke protocol and assembled a few platoons of military men to break into the building.

And they sincerely believed they would succeed, because the alternative is too terrible.

Doctor Jonathon laughed at his own foolishness. He was perfectly aware of the fact that that no one could possibly stand to gain from the ‘Firecracker’. There weren’t even any funds coming from the government for it. He would be killed, along with the entire known world. Singapore was situated at, literally, the centre of the world’s remaining civilizations. The rest of the world was gone, through –in hindsight- pointless wars, unnaturally regular occurrences of natural disasters, overpopulation, genocide… Money… The past century’s page in history had been a blood spattered one. And perhaps, also the final one.

Perhaps it is better for every other living thing in this world that we are dead and gone. The current humanity.

No, it is. It has to be.

Oh, dear sister. Witness.

A strange silence had fallen upon the facility. Not one of fear, but a feeling altogether… Foreign. Everyone knew that the bomb was armed. Everyone knew that the bomb would work. They had imagined that they would make merry on this last day, but everyone felt strangely sombre.

A hint of regret whispered through the hallways, in the eyes of the employees, who were allowed full access to all rooms of the facility for the first time. But nobody actually did anything out of the ordinary, as there was only indifference. Nobody actually fully comprehended the magnitude of that which they were about to witness.

The police had arrived, to find that the doors were open, and that nobody stopped them. At first, they advanced slowly and cautiously, and took out anybody they saw with tranquilizer darts. But after they were spotted numerous times and found that no action was taken, they realized that the only reason for that apathy to their presence would be that-

The operation was complete.

This had seemed to catch on to all the members of the police force present, as they fell into numbed silence.

…The alternative is too terrible…

All of a sudden, their earpieces crackled into life.

‘Critical message follows. We’ve found the master control room, repeat! We’ve found the master control room! Get your asses here pronto, you bunch of swaggering fools!!’

Raised voices, just beyond the metal door. And then, it swung open to reveal half a dozen armed men, clad in black, with the government’s insignia across their chests. Dr Jonathon cocked his head in mild curiosity.

One platoon had managed to locate the master control room, and after a few rounds of struggling with the highly complex retinal scan, gained access to the room.

Seated right at the end of the hallway filled with all sorts of screens, wiring, holograms, and control panels, was Dr Jonathon.

“Don’t move!” The first policeman commanded, and all the policemen raised their guns, aiming at the scientist.

Jonathon only found himself able to laugh. “Why, it’s a little too late, don’t you think?”

“Don’t bullsh** with me, Jonny,” the leader of the platoon snapped. “Disarm the bomb. Now.”

At that, Jonathon laughed again.

“You mean… That bomb?” He said, pushing a button.

Immediately, the wall to their left turned transparent… Revealing gigantic pod shaped objects, four in all. The size of spaceships.

All the policemen gazed at it in certain awe.

“The beauty of the Firecracker is,” he said, “You don’t need to launch them. You just need a spark…”

“DISARM THEM!!” The leading officer screamed, breaking the silence, firing a warning shot at Jonathon.

The scientist seemed to panic, curling up into himself. “Wait! Wait! Please! I’ll…”

The policemen lowered their guns and slowly closed in on him.

Approaching footsteps, and then, two dozen men appeared at the door, looking rather flustered and, at the sight of the bombs and Dr Jonathon, shocked.

“I’ll…’ The doctor said, seeming to waver. ‘I’ll want to say…”

And that was when the tremor in the doctor’s voice vanished, giving way to a whisper. “Goodbye.”

The leading officer, immediately regretting their hesitation in killing him, shot at Doctor Jonathon. The other policemen started shooting as well, until the doctor's bullet ridden body slumped down, motionless except for his death twitches.

And then, they realized that they were too late. The bomb had already been counting down. They never had a chance.

The timer, which had previously been covered from view by Doctor Jonathon's body, displayed the number "0.01" briefly before "0.00" took its place.

'Ignition,' a computerized voice sounded through the speakers.

The alternative is too terrible….

Stunned silence. For a moment, it felt as if nothing would happen.

Then, a blinding flash of light, and a thunderous sound on a scale to deafen the gods.

They were the first to die, just as millions of others did. A painless, fiery oblivion.

In a remote continent on the other side of the world, a farmer girl looked up as an impossibly immense cloud covered the distant horizon as far as the eye could see. She paused briefly to contemplate what it was, before finally calling her mother, fearful that the cloud was an omen.

The elderly woman emerged from a nearby straw hut, limping to the edge of the crop field, looking up into the skies.

‘Not to worry, it’s probably a rain cloud,’ she reassured the girl with a smile. The girl returned it, relieved, trusting her mother’s judgment. She then bent over to continue harvesting the grain with renewed vigour.

The woman turned to the ground in contemplation. She knew in her heart that that was no rain cloud. Thinking to observe it once more, she looked up again to discover that the cloud was slowly receding. She blinked in mild surprise, before shaking her head and limping back into the hut.

Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with them; life shall go on. After all, nobody lived on the other side of the world, did they?

Edit: Sorry I keep changing the words… I am very nitpicky, especially of my own writing. ._.