The Global Monthly - JUN 2206
DOOMSDAY WEAPONS IN EARTH ORBIT!
The world at large watches in stunned silence as the both Ameripol and the Socioeconomic Republic of Australia place so-called "Rods from God" in Orbit. These satellites possess the ability to deliver a payload as large as any conventional explosive to any target on the planet in less than an hour. While the international community has had their attention locked on the moon and the outbreak of violence there, the reality that space age weaponry could be turned on the Earth has even those who don't care about extraterrestrial affairs concerned. A coalition of minor nations stretching from Normandy to Benelux to Hamburg have banded together to condemn these new weapons. Calling their new alliance De Sterrennacht, this group of nations largely incapable of wargames or space travel on their own are pooling their resources to make the skies free of weapons once more. While they are firm in their global neutrality and their strong condemnation of weapons in space, they have opened negotiations with Australia in an attempt to find a diplomatic solution to this new global crisis.
PSEUDOGAUSSIAN TRANSFORM PUT INTO FIRST USE!
Using alien messages that were previously captured as a test set along with their new tool with Toshiro Supercomputer and its Pseudo-Gaussian Transform, the IEC has claimed to have recombined the first pure alien signal. Xeno-linguist and data scientist Ito Akemi noted, "There are some who would try to undercut our success by saying that we still don't know what the aliens are saying and what the purpose of this signal really is - however, access to the pure signal gives us the capacity to compare it to other such signals and find commonalities and even broadcast those signals ourselves to see what response we get. While the process of deriving meaning from these signals is still underway and very important, this triumph puts us a huge step forward to learning what our extraterrestrial visitors' intentions are." From here, the program has branched into three divisions: investigating the pure signal and its meaning, treating it as a language or kind of code and decrypting it, and trying to find similarities between present and future signals.
ALLEGED ALIEN 'HYPER-NET' AROUND ASTEROID BELT THEORIZED!
Bifrost confirmed a leaked report from earlier last week about increased alien signaling in the outer solar system and the asteroid belt. Signe Nielsen, in front of a field of reporters and experts delivered Bifrost's conclusions on the matter, stating, "With our new scanning arrays and when compared to our previous signals, all other possibilities have been ruled out - dozens off new alien stations relaying messages to Earth and each other have been constructed across various points beyond the orbit of Mars, likely to keep in contact with the Earth during all parts of the year." Chief Diplomatic Correspondent of the Holy Roman Republic Government in Exile Lina Kohn responded quickly from the balcony of their Presidential Palace in Anchorage, "Despite Bifork's (sic) claim to certainty, it is impossible to believe that this alien force would have built up such a 'hyper-net' - it is uncharacteristic diplomatically and implausible technologically." Local grandmother Methyl Ethyl Johannson had this to say about societal fears of this new alien construction: "They are going to use the hyper-net to scoop up the planet Earth like a big old fish!" While Bifrost is distancing itself from the 'hyper-net' terminology, it's still anyone's guess what is actually going on in the deep reaches of our solar system, and what the aliens intend to do there.
ASTEROID MINING ROBOT RECOMMUNICATION ESTABLISHED!
After a long troubleshooting process, firmware updates, and precise resynchronization protocols, the Iron Belt program has been able to reconnect with roughly a third of their mining drones. "This is a good sign," says Dan Wilson, prospector in the Iron Platform. "If this project was a total loss, we would have to re-evaluate a lot of what we're doing up here - but this is proof that there's a lot of profit to be made in space… We're going to continue to try to contact the quiet drones, but honestly, it might be better to focus on a newer model or the ones we actually have working than try to squeeze any more water from that stone." He laughed, and our own Science correspondent Lisa Franklin later explained the joke to us. This news rocked the market for fissile materials, as many of the asteroids with functioning communicators contained an abundance of those.
It is now JUL 2206.
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Topic: Reach for the Skies, a nation game of diplomacy, research, and aliens (Read 3823 times)