11-22-2014, 10:38 AM
Well played, XKCD.
Story idea:
There's a conflict between a modo civilization and a transapient with limited resources. The modos believe the transap does not have enough resources to combat their entire might, but they themselves are going to need time. They also don't know the transap likes to play large scale practical jokes.
Some possibilities:
1) The transapient deploys what seems to be a genetically modified form of a mild illness, which (seemingly) proves utterly ineffective. However, weeks later, police units begin to report severe PTSD, to the point that officers are becoming terrified of their own weapons (I have no idea how feasible this would be).
2) The transap releases a small number of seemingly hamless and cute creatures that multiply with almost incomprehensible rapidity, and proceed to chew electric cables, get caught in machinery, and generally wreak havoc.
3) The transap deploys a fake superweapon scare. (I imagine a balloon, miles across, that looks like a massive warship of some kind to the modos' instruments.)
4) A "second" transap shows up to "rescue" the modos.
5) The first transap allows itself to be destroyed, but shortly thereafter, hackers note that the local datanet seems to have been subtly altered.... The government assures the population this is part of a classified project.
6) The "second" transap is paraded through the streets as a hero.
Or if the transap turns out to be a perversity:
7) The transap manufactures a deployable clarktech / nanotech device that starts genengineering animals or even people into its soldiers.
8) The War of the Worlds double infection gambit: the tough, but hopelessly outnumbered invsasion force of modo allies of the transap is seemingly killed by a disease or computer virus, only for the victors to discover their "vanquished" foes left behind a similar disease or computer virus themselves.
Story idea:
There's a conflict between a modo civilization and a transapient with limited resources. The modos believe the transap does not have enough resources to combat their entire might, but they themselves are going to need time. They also don't know the transap likes to play large scale practical jokes.
Some possibilities:
1) The transapient deploys what seems to be a genetically modified form of a mild illness, which (seemingly) proves utterly ineffective. However, weeks later, police units begin to report severe PTSD, to the point that officers are becoming terrified of their own weapons (I have no idea how feasible this would be).
2) The transap releases a small number of seemingly hamless and cute creatures that multiply with almost incomprehensible rapidity, and proceed to chew electric cables, get caught in machinery, and generally wreak havoc.
3) The transap deploys a fake superweapon scare. (I imagine a balloon, miles across, that looks like a massive warship of some kind to the modos' instruments.)
4) A "second" transap shows up to "rescue" the modos.
5) The first transap allows itself to be destroyed, but shortly thereafter, hackers note that the local datanet seems to have been subtly altered.... The government assures the population this is part of a classified project.
6) The "second" transap is paraded through the streets as a hero.
Or if the transap turns out to be a perversity:
7) The transap manufactures a deployable clarktech / nanotech device that starts genengineering animals or even people into its soldiers.
8) The War of the Worlds double infection gambit: the tough, but hopelessly outnumbered invsasion force of modo allies of the transap is seemingly killed by a disease or computer virus, only for the victors to discover their "vanquished" foes left behind a similar disease or computer virus themselves.