Benzschwagel
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2014
- Messages
- 4
A long while back, around 1998-1999, a roommate of mine told me a bit about this short story that he had read a while before this, and I want to read it too, but he didn't remember what the title was back then. If I remember correctly, he said that the story was scifi, that at some point in the dark ages (or somewhere around there, 1100 to 1700's) some guy had stumbled across the secret to interstellar space travel while doing some sort of math calculations (it was some simple little device with something hanging over something else, maybe a triangle involved?), but apparently thought nothing of it (or he died), and so it got crumpled up and thrown away. Fast forward to the present day, no one has stumbled across it since. Then a wooden spacecraft (saucer?) lands at Washington, D.C. A group of marines are dispatched as a type of welcome display. A few human-looking soldiers in colonial-style uniforms roll a cannon out of the wooden spacecraft, point it at the marines, and fire it off killing a few of them. The remaining marines then kill off the colonial soldiers. Upon a search of their ship, they discover the device that allowed for interstellar space flight. After a short while, mankind is building massive warships and is conquering everyone else out there, since there were all locked in some sort of war. But we were so far advanced beyond everyone else that we were something like a storm against flies, they had no hope of overcoming us. I guess they had all been locked in a conflict that was keeping them from really progressing (and they were apparently all from around the same era, colonial times), and since we hadn't been part of it, we were able to advance quite far before we got drawn in. And when we did get drawn in, we were the sleeping giant.
If anyone knows what story this is, please let me know, I've kept thinking about this story every so often over the years. I'm not sure if this information is very accurate, it has been a while, but it sounded like a good read when he told me the overview of it.
If anyone knows what story this is, please let me know, I've kept thinking about this story every so often over the years. I'm not sure if this information is very accurate, it has been a while, but it sounded like a good read when he told me the overview of it.
