Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

ShadowPouncer t1_itzi78h wrote

"Oh, bother."

There was a long pause as the workers at the classified military base tried to figure out: Why had the ancient space craft which had been instructing them on how to repair it spoken to them, directly? Why had it said that? Why, oh why, did they have an abrupt craving for honey?

The people further from the space ship had somewhat different thoughts on the matter.

Near by, the military personally had a fairly similar set of questions, at least those who had been cleared for the full story on exactly what was being done at the military base in question did.

Add some questions about why it had spoken to those who were not even directly involved in the repairs or the research.

The curious tourists several miles from the inner parameter fence looked around puzzled, confused, "Who said that? Was that you James? I mean, you got the voice right, but why?"

Further still, and many people were even more puzzled, especially those not prone to auditory hallucinations, who were also not near people.

The Italian Astronaut doing a space walk outside the International Space Station was, however, undoubtedly responsible for people becoming much more aware of the speech in question though.

"Can anyone confirm the last radio transmission?"

"Last radio transmission was your confirmation of the instruction to proceed to the solar panel array truss."

"Negative. Request confirmation of possible outside transmission on this frequency."

"We are checking with flight engineering, please hold.... Confirmed, no outside transmissions received, and the encoding in use should prevent any outside transmissions from being received. Please confirm content of this transmission."

"Transmission consisted of two words, and I quote: Oh, bother."

"Please hold."

Unfortunately, this exchange took place live on NASA TV.

It was not the most heavily watched stream of all time, or even of NASA TV history of entirely uneventful and routine space walks.

But it was watched, well, enough.

And after all, every single person on the planet had heard that. And, apparently, every single person in orbit as well.

It took three days of religious riots before the next message was heard, "Bother. Would you all please stop that?"

Author's Note: I'm dead asleep on my keyboard, this may be continued, I'm not sure.

268

cylonfrakbbq t1_itzrbvc wrote

Very Douglas Adams-esque!

22

ShadowPouncer t1_itzxo2n wrote

I must give all the credit to /u/gacusana who wrote an even more Douglas Adams-esque story which clearly influenced where my brain went. :)

10

ShadowPouncer t1_iu6mtrc wrote

"Alright, there are quite a lot of you, and I have something else on my mind, but I'll try to answer your questions. Now, since most of you seem to be asking some variant of 'are you god?', I have to reply with a question: Can you please define god for me?'"

This did not do a great deal to calm the religious riots.

Nor did the next message, heard by everyone in or around Earth, "Well, bother. To answer your question about me being god, it's complicated. I did not create the universe, nor did I create your planet. However, since you can hear me, I do hold some responsibility for your species being your species."

As the violence rapidly escalated, more messages were heard, "No, no, stop that!", "Would you please stop doing those things to one another!?", "No, not those either!"

After half an hour of this, with the voice becoming more frustrated, there was another message, "Alright, STOP!"

With that, the vast majority of the people on the planet had a blinding flash of light fill their vision, and they collapsed, out cold.

Unfortunately, this was not, necessarily, a survivable experience for some people, nor for their passengers, or those otherwise impacted by others no longer being at the controls of various things.

Quite a few fewer people were capable of hearing the next, "Oh, bother."

10

stillnotelf t1_iu0uqbh wrote

Captain America knows what the honey connection is but can't Bear to guess why

6