Tuesday Tale #1

Report of the Extraordinary Committee to Examine the Evidence
of the SETI Archeologists
In Their Studies of the Demise of Seven
Extra Solar Technological Socities

SUMMARY and CONCLUSION

To summarize, our teams have discovered and examined a total of seven planets within the 100 light year boundary established by the Extraordinary Committee in order to minimze costs associated with the study. The oldest of these TS's (Technological Societies) is deemed to have existed at least a billion and a half years ago and the youngest approximately five million years ago. Extrapolation would seem to support the notion that TS's usually exist singly, separated by perhaps millions of years in terms of time, if not distance. Again by extrapolation, there have been hundreds of thousands of these societies.

Of the TS's studied, all exhibit traces of nuclear capacity of one sort or another, up to and including weapons. All the studied planets have areas of high residual radiation which can only be the result of surface testing of nuclear devices. All planets also exhibit structures which were obviously used to generate nuclear power. All, apparently, were destroyed in the same manner. All of these planets were visited by high numbers of rocky and icy bodies in a very short period of time. The source of these destructive visitors was in all cases, the outer reaches of the star system in which the planets are located. This leads our investigators to one inescapable conclusion. The gamma ray emissions from surface testing are apparently the trigger for the destruction visited on these planets. There must be, there has to be, a system of machines whose function it is to watch for the gamma ray flashes from nuclear testing and, in the face of that testing, which can be for one purpose and one purpose only, destroy the planet which sourced the gamma rays. The 'Watchers', as our teams are refering to them, are assumed to be machines because it is felt that biological systems would not last long enough, in form or purpose, to accomplish this task over the billions of years that we have seen demonstrated by the planets we have examined.

None of the planets examined seem to have colonized any other worlds. It is beyond our capabilities, at this time, to determine whether or not these Societies had actually developed space travel, except in one case where we did find evidence of habitation on a nearby moon, which ceased to exist at about the same time that the planet died. The questions which we ask, which we must ask, in this our conclusion, in the face of all that we have seen, are: Where are the Watchers? Why have they not visited destruction on us before now? Is that destruction still on its way? Could we stop it if it is?

This report and its summary and conclusions are to be considered secret and not for publication. Dissemination is restricted on a need to know basis to secret clearance and above. Violation of these restrictions is punishable under the Official Secrets Act and the Domestic Terrorism Reduction and Control Memorandum issued by the President.



This little bit of fiction has been germinating in my mind for some time. It is, actually, the basis for a book I'd like to write. This is the first time I have put any of this down, anywhere. That said, it is also the first of what I hope will be many "Tuesday Tale" posts. Some will be fiction. Some will be autobiographical. Some may be speculative, others may be documented fact. Who knows what muse will strike? They may be my ideas or they may be the result of ideas contributed by a reader. And, of course, any idea contributed by a reader will be properly attributed and the idea will always belong to that reader. So we should have fun, I think. That is, of course, if the world isn't struck by the proverbial bus.