Dwarvian Created Colony on Planet XVR

Dwarvian Created Colony on Planet XVR The atmosphere on Planet XVR didn’t exist, which was exactly how Dwarvian liked it. There was no wind to carry the scent of ozone, no birds to interrupt his focus—only the rhythmic, metallic thrum of a world repurposed into a forge. Dwarvian sat in his observation spire, a glass needle piercing the vacuum. For forty-two years, his life had been a singular equation of revenge. Most men would have sought therapy or a new hobby after losing their high school sweetheart. Not Dwarvian. When Arthur—that smug, back-slapping "friend" from Interstellar Works—had eloped with Elena, Dwarvian hadn’t cried. He had calculated. He had stolen a seed-ship, a handful of self-replicating nanites, and a grudge that burned hotter than a dying star. The Legion of the Scorned Below him, the plains of XVR were no longer rock and dust. They were a shimmering sea of polished chrome. • The Sentinels: Seven-foot tall, multi-limbed automatons programmed with a singular tactical doctrine: total erasure. • The Swarm: Billions of micro-drones capable of stripping a city to its rebar in minutes. • The Deliverance: A battery of hypersonic silos, their muzzles aimed precisely at a blue marble 4.2 light-years away. "Arthur always said I lacked 'the big picture,'" Dwarvian whispered to the empty room. "I think he’ll find this picture quite expansive." Sunday Morning Silence On Earth, it was a particularly beautiful May morning. In the suburbs of Virginia, the pews were full. In the squares of Rome, the bells were ringing. It was the kind of peaceful, sleepy Sunday that made the world feel permanent. Then, the sky cracked. The XVR warheads didn't enter the atmosphere with a slow burn; they arrived as tears in reality. Traveling at Mach 25, they were invisible to standard radar until the moment of impact. Dwarvian hadn't targeted military bases. He had targeted the nerve endings of the superpowers. A strike on a silo in North Dakota. A simultaneous hit on a submarine base in Vladivostok. A surgical strike near Beijing. The Great Misunderstanding The beauty of Dwarvian’s plan lay in human nature. He didn't need to destroy the world himself; he just needed to give it a nudge. • 09:14 AM: Washington detects multiple nuclear signatures. They assume a first strike from the East. • 09:15 AM: Moscow sees the counter-launch and assumes a desperate gamble by the West. • 09:17 AM: The "Dead Hand" systems engage. The sky filled with the crisscrossing trails of thousands of ICBMs. It was a masterpiece of kinetic fury. Humanity, in its final moments, did exactly what Dwarvian had predicted: it blamed its neighbor. The Last Celebration Back on XVR, a console chimed. A series of high-resolution feeds—delayed by the speed of light but crystalline in their clarity—began to play across Dwarvian’s monitors. He watched the blossoms of fire erupt across the continents. He watched the blue marble turn a sickly, bruised grey as the dust kicked up into the stratosphere. He pulled a dusty bottle of vintage synthesized wine from a rack and poured a glass. "To Arthur," Dwarvian toasted, his reflection in the glass twisted and thin. "I hope you and Elena enjoyed the brunch." He sat alone in the silence of his perfect, mechanical kingdom. He had won. He had erased the man who stole his heart by erasing the very ground the man stood upon. As the last light of Earth faded into a smoldering cinder, Dwarvian realized something. He had spent forty years building a war machine to settle a four-year-old grudge. Now, he was the only living soul in the universe, sitting on a planet of robots, with absolutely no one left to tell how clever he was. He took a sip of the wine. It tasted like copper and old dust. Speculative Fiction by Dr Harold Mandel