Future War in Space: “War in Heaven”
Editor’s note: The following story was written by hipbonegamer. This piece is a finalist from the Atlantic Council Art of Future Warfare project’s space-themed war-art challenge that explored space and interstellar conflict during the last decade of the 21st Century. Tune in to watch or attend the project’s May 18 event at the Council with David Brin discussing the stories and the future of conflict in space.
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
— Revelation 12:7
The humans who nano-uploaded their minds — more accurately brains — were aware, as their uploads were not, that whatever their uploads “felt” was not also felt by them, nor was this awareness available to their uploads, once launched into space. The uploads, meanwhile, nano-burrowed deep into their designated asteroid, and continued to experience the unpleasant symptoms of phantom limbs and recursive Beatles songs, which drove them into a state known to their human progenitors, roughly speaking, as madness. Nano-small as they indeed were, they felt themselves masters of their own destiny and thus infinite in significance, and after some made futile attempts to maim others using legs, feet, fists and teeth they did not possess, the time came when, pretty much en masse, they committed Off.
If at first you don’t succeed…
**
Typo, our Art of Future War theoretician mused as she read the Atlantic Council’s latest Challenge, Space and Interstellar Conflict — they must mean Spice Wars. Sun of Future Tzu is what they’ve asked for, Sun of Future War they’ll get.
She trans-historicized and began to channel…
