The sun

Begun just about a month ago, nothing short of the first interdimensional war had erupted between neighboring layers of the Multiverse. Human stupidity, or recklessness sent cascades of destructive particles across rifts killing billions in the Purple; a quantum neighbor. Unamused, the belligerent race retaliated.

Ironic how this massive backlash came from creatures smaller than a single atom. The creatures were able to alter the fabric of space in a warm patch and alter the inner dynamics of our fragile sun in a complete fiction of scales. But mankind was unable to understand dimensional physics. Only the best of particle physicists could understand what could move, how in the engine of the Solar System, fusion cross-sections were increased a million fold. To most, that meant nothing. Once again, that was part of the reason why the Cold might vanish in eighteen days, it’s obsession on non-science.

In the outer edges of the plasma of mankind’s little star, the rarest of fusion reactions became much more probable. One by one, protons fused and neutrons joined, forming heavier and heavier matter. Of course, this negligible effect in the cosmic scale was mostly invisible to the eye. Buried deep in the plasma, outer bands of Heliocorium slowly began to form highways of colder ionized gas. The same way a flock of birds moves incoherently in the wind, atoms formed aerosols and later droplets of heavy matter ready for agglomeration.

To make matters worse, the God Bias, now well above four percent, helped mankind at every fork in the road. Somehow the Multiverse wanted the formation of these heavier particles and guided each helium collision closer to fusion. Not everyone knows that under the rules of particular physics, most of the fusion fueling the heart of the star was primarily the result of gravity compressing hydrogen into helium. In very rare cases, two "heavier" elements met. Fusion is rare because each atom is so small. Forming helium from two hydrogen atoms is much like two marksmen in a gymnasium shoot at each other, and the two bullets had to slam into one-another halfway between them in mid-air to form the heavier bullet. Rarer yet in the sun is the merging and collisions between heavier elements like carbon, oxygen, or even neon.

The world called the Purple knew about scaling, self-similarity, and effective surfaces of atoms as defined by earth’s scientists. However, those of the Purple, who called themselves Metils, did not know about the Bias or the Sixth Attraction as they changed the fabric of space where the yellow ball of gas floated. The effort weakened the quantum tunnel at the surface of the opening, altering the natural arrangement of atoms. The larger effective surface created a larger flow of neutrinos, a massless particle. To the few fusion scientists, Mall-ik‘s piers had opened a spigot creating flows of these heavy elements, now being released into the current of plasma.

To others, payback was, indeed, a bitch. In a matter of weeks, sufficient Heliocorium was created to saturate the outer edges of the corona, the outermost layer of the sun. The star was given a sunburn as it turned slightly orange in color. Soon, it was ready to shed this new skin. In the silence of night, alone in the center of this tranquil system, Heliocorium began to form a large structure. Like cotton candy is pulled and twisted, a string of the black tar began to escape the sun's gravity.

The migration began during the pinch. The problem first appeared as a dark dot at the mid-region of the sun. This was no pimple or even a renegade comet. Molded carbons and other heavier elements formed and slowly began to create what appeared from earth like a dark horizontal line. The scale of this problem was impossible to fathom. At its longest, an hour after the flow began to escape, the dark train of death covered a quarter of the diameter of the sun. By the time the six hundred mile radius formation of heavy elements began to slip out of the protection of the heliosphere against the darkness of space, it had already traveled about one million miles. The two hundred thousand mile-long string escaped the gravity of the star at a speed of 300,000 miles an hour. Within the next hour, the filament had ejected from the fusion engine into the coldness of space and began to cast a shadow.

At this speed, the filament would cross earth’s orbit exactly on November 21, 2072, during the Sixth Attraction. This was no coincidence but part of the careful collusion of supreme forces planning to destroy mankind.

Once out of the corona, the black tube began to cool as its outer layer touched the vacuum of space. The back side of the column closer to the sun remained red in color, but from the other side facing the vulnerable planets orbiting close by, vapor began erupting around the periphery of the form. The same way a supersonic plane leaves a trail of water vapor behind it, a white line attached the massive tapeworm to the sun. In microgravity, like a comet, a tail began to form in a V between the black tip and the star. Hours later, the outgassing from the Heliocorium spike began to cast a small shadow cooling earth.

Men and women looked up in the sky, and it did not require anything but the capacity to feel fear and understand inevitability. The destruction inherent to this situation stretched beyond sad and undeniable. Time did not stop, but the definition of time itself shifted. A cosmic clock had begun — Earth’s existence was now to be counted in hours instead of years. Under any normal circumstances, earth had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Nothing or no one could even conceivably face this menace. Since the beginning of recorded history, humankind had theorized on how their homeworld might meet its end. Battleships and lasers often were imagined, not a medieval-like castle door ram. The stupidity of men was not always obvious.

But this was the Sixth Attraction. A computer goddess played with cosmic anomalies like The Dot and a young twelve-year-old girl could twist time itself in a knot. Today was by no means normal, and earth’s faith wasn’t graven in stone. Still, at least on earth itself, humanity was not completely powerless. There were two, the President and a virologist.

Primitive cultures would have baptized such a phenomenon with the name of an animal, like a worm or better, some snake or dragon of death. Theologians would have simply labeled the phenomenon a punishment of God. The Multiverse did not care about what creatures in the Cold would do. It was happening.

The Old Testament described Armageddon in the following terms:

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth." -Revelations 6:8.

The strength of these words suited to the problem. Marilyn, as the highest form of intelligence, was alone in her right to baptized this phenomenon. She called it simply "the Annoyance," a name she kept to herself. The column of death was about as massive as the earth, a fourth in surface area. The tube was 260 billion cubic miles. It had a six hundred mile radius stretched over two hundred thousand miles. Earth, with a puny four thousand mile radius, was no match. Any portion of this, even a brush from the tip would extinguish all life. The sheer forces from this gravitational juggernaut alone would vaporize all oceans and create total chaos.

Life was close to extinction, and humans had just played Pokémon?

To make matters worse, as the train of death left the upper corona, explosions began below the cooling surface. Pockets of hydrogen gas, pressured under the weight of the cooking filament exploded breaking the body and sending large parts of the column the size of buildings in every direction. From earth’s largest telescopes, red flares erupted and sent rocks flying in all directions. Rocks would fly in every direction creating a haze of deadly comets for eons. Not only was the cradle of humanity in the crosshairs of history's first and most vicious interdimensional sniper shot, but the solar system that had produced said cradle was about to become an active minefield.

At about a third of the distance between earth and the sun stood little mercury. Venus’ orbit also stood between earth and the menace but both defenders hid wisely at the moment. This was earth’s problem and it’s doom. The same way the plume of smoke left by a rising rocket appears to curve in the sky as earth rotates out from under its feet, the plume of gas between the tail of Electoral's "Annoyance" and the sun began to curve as the terminal physics of the Metils' strike took hold.

Mankind would end in a little less than five hundred hours.

One creature stood guardian, she was twelve years old.