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Displacement Cannon
The Reason for Diplomacy ::
Image from Chris Shaeffer
The Reason for Diplomacy, a Negentropist craft apparently equipped with Displacement Cannon technology

Also known as a displacement missile, displacement torpedo, or more generally a displacement weapon, the displacement cannon combines boostbomb and void bubble technology to create a weapon capable of delivering energies ranging from the kiloton to the multi-gigaton range at velocities approaching the speed of light and with almost unlimited maneuverability.

The earliest displacement weapons were provided to Sephirotic military forces at the height of the war against the Efficiency Maximization Paradigm but were limited to line-of-sight operations, leading to their being referred to as "displacement cannon". Whether this limitation was real and later overcome by advances in transapient technology or was deliberately imposed by the archai and then removed remains unclear to this day. Regardless, by the time the current version of the displacement weapon was introduced the original terminology had become widely embedded in the general consciousness.

The core component of each displacement cannon is a specially designed void bubble containing a supply of hydrogen and a conversion reactor. When the cannon is deployed, it initially operates like any other void bubble and uses manipulation of space-time metric to transport itself to the target. During the transport phase, the bubble may change direction and speed virtually instantaneously and with no regard to issues of acceleration or inertia. Due to its small size and tremendous speed, the bubble is extremely hard to detect and may enter into proximity with, or even the interior of, its target (on occasion even flying between individual cells or molecular structures) with near impunity. Due to its larger interior fuel volume and advanced power source and control systems, the bubble has a range sometimes measured in centuries and hundreds of light-years.

When the displacement cannon reaches its target, the void bubble deactivates in a manner that causes its interior volume to violently implode. As the hydrogen within the bubble is compressed by the implosion, it achieves fusion temperatures and pressures which are then further enhanced by the presence of large numbers of magnetic monopoles from the remnants of the interior conversion reactor. What would otherwise be "merely" a thermonuclear detonation is converted into something considerably more energetic and destructive. As the void bubble dissipates a fraction of a second after its initial implosion, this energy is released in all directions, both vaporizing the target and propelling the interior monopoles outward in all directions to interact with any surrounding matter outside of the immediate blast zone. The resulting cascade reaction can, under the right circumstances, result in a level of destruction far beyond that suggested by the explosive rating of the displacement weapon itself. In effect, the mass-energy of the target is turned against itself and contributes to its destruction. At the extreme, if the metric collapse of the void bubble is sufficiently violent, the associated space-time disruption results in the spontaneous creation of yet more monopoles which are then propelled outward by the gravitational shock-wave.

More rarely, displacement weapons may operate as "shaped" explosives, channeling their energies into narrowly directed bursts of or powerful electromagnetic pulses. It is generally agreed that these effects are achieved by somehow controlling the properties of the void bubble just before or even as it destroys itself, but exactly how such a feat could be achieved remains the province of transapient minds.

Displacement cannon appear to initially become available at the Fourth Singularity, although they are apparently employed, to one degree or another, by Fifth and Sixth Singularity minds as well, often within the halo arrays of black angels or similar devices. They are also one of the few examples of godtech level weapons that are occasionally made available to modosophont military forces, most notably during the war against the Amalgamation. More recently (10,114 A.T.) the Negentropic embassy vessel Reason for Diplomacy employed displacement cannon to eliminate a rogue autowar attack fleet when the autowars attempted to destroy the unaligned Hinterregions system of Jast'ie. Total time to destroy all 10,000 units of the autowar swarm: 3.7 seconds (not counting light speed travel time).

Note: The preceding was based on a combination of direct observation, comments from interviews with amenable high toposophic entities, and multiple points of consensus among various intelligence, scientific, and godwatcher agencies. As is usual in discussions of high godtech devices, it should be understood to represent at most a strong theoretical treatise, not a definitive description of operations and technology.

 
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Appears in Topics
Metric EngineeringMetric WeaponsSpace-Time Engineering
Transapientech / Godtech / Clarketech
 
Development Notes
Text by Adam Getchell and Todd Drashner
Initially published on 17 January 2010.

 
 
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