"I would build a great black hole, and nobody builds holes better than me, and I'll build it very inexpensively. I'll build a great great hole along the orbit of the moon and I'll have the moon colony pay for it." - Donald Trump the Fourth of the American Monarchy

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This describes humans very nicely

This one should be atop the page when sorting by controversial. You have officially submitted a valid reason for which to start a war with aliens or otherwise ruin diplomatic relationships towards. I'll tale binary any day. But hey, good story

Technically we still do, it's that funny dimple in the star field.

This one is my favourite, Dale is a bad ass.

This makes humanity the kobolds of the galaxy.

Samuel L Jackson: surprised Pikachu face

We want a pt 4, and a pt 5,6,7....

[removed]

Well the black hole would also instantly disappear so there's that

Yeah, if I spent more than 5 minutes in the back of a truck coming up with this I would have tried to add more instead of relying on the secrecy. I don't think I'll revisit it just because it's already posted, but hey, I'm happy with it. Plus who knows what the other 5000+ races are lol

What’s Holden’s middle name?

Multiplying roman numerals is insane, it'd be easy to lose something: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1530406/how-to-multiply-roman-numerals#:~:text=Take%20the%20first%20number%20you,%2B%20V%20%2B%20V%2C%20etc.

programmers rejoicing at the 2^n base

roman numerals

angry programmers

How is it even possible to be off by 5 when you can just check the last digit and immediately know that it's wrong

plus base 8 roman numerals would probably look something like this:

A, AA, AB, B, BA, BAA, AC, C

where A=1, B=4 and C=8 with the rules of roman numerals that you know and love preserved

I’m surprised he hasn’t already died from this.

Yes please!!

"They're incredibly irresponsible" made me audibly laugh 👍

I enjoyed it, good story

Dale wasn't sure anymore how long they'd been holding him there, either hours or days. It felt like an interrogation but the questions made no sense. They were just grilling him about math problems, He knew there had to be a higher level to the line of questioning but he couldn't get past the silliness of their inquiries.

A new interrogator had just entered the room and seated himself across from Dale. He did not look happy with Dale. He looked like he wanted to kill him.

"How do we know you're not making it up," the angry man demanded. His jacket was weighed down with medals that just looked like small plastic buttons. They clicked and clacked together as he shook with anger. "What assurances can you give us that what you say is true? Do you expect us to follow you on faith alone?"

"I could show my work," Dale replied. "If I had something to count with. Like the buttons on your shirt. Do you mind?"

"These tokens represent the Dorgian squads I defeated on Dorga 7," the man was shouting and began to rise out of his seat. "And to take them off so you can play some silly math game-"

The angry man's bracelets gave a short electrical buzz that seemed to grab his attention. He looked over at the mirror wall and seated himself again.

"I just said something like the buttons. Something I can use to demonstrate."

The angry man looked over at the mirror again and raised his eyebrows.

On the other side of the glass, a group of researchers and engineers all turned their attention to a sharply dressed woman. She had only one button pinned to her jacket but it was a big one.

"Bring him a box of tokens from my office," she said to no one person in particular.

"At once, ma'am," two people in lab coats stammered simultaneously.

"Be quick about it," she added. "Commander Glabnok is growing impatient. He behaves erratically when he's like this."

She reached forward and gave a single knock on the glass with her knuckle.

Back in the interrogation room, Commander Glabnok smiled and nodded at the mirror. He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms.

"While we wait, let's ask some more questions. Sally has five apples. She gives two of them to Tony. How many apples does she have?"

"Three."

"How can you be so sure? Also, she could be lying. But you're answering too quickly. You must have already been asked that one."

"It's possible," Dale shrugged. "They kinda all sound the same."

"Then let's try one you don't already know the answer to," Commander Glabnok sat upright in his chair and folded his hands together on the table. "Sally has two apples. She gives Tina three apples. How ma-"

"She can't."

"What did you just say?"

"Sally can't give her three apples."

"She has to! Sally gives Tina three apples! How many-"

"She can't. She doesn't have th-"

"Tina demands it!" Commander Glabnok's chair fell back as he shot up from the table. "If Sally doesn't give Tina three apples I will-"

The door to the room opened and a small man wearing a lab coat came in carrying a box. It clicked and clacked like the Commander's jacket as the man in the lab coat set it down in front of Dale. The Commander's eyes widened at the sight of the box. Thousands of tokens piled haphazardly in a cardboard box made the number on his shirt seem tiny.

"For showing your work," the man in the lab coat gestured to Dale before scurrying from the room.

"Let's start with the first problem you gave me," Dale reached into the box of plastic buttons and pulled five of them. He placed them on the table individually. Click, click, click, click, click. He looked up at the Commander who seemed to be running his own calculation in his head, possibly about how much fighting would have to take place to earn these plastic tokens. "Shall we proceed?"

"Yes, go on," the Commander righted his chair and sat down across from Dale.

"Sally has five apples."

Dale waits for Glabnok to acknowledge.

"Yes, that's been established."

"She gives Tony two apples." He slides two buttons forward.

"Mm-hmm."

"So, she has three left," Dale taps each on the plastic buttons with his index finger. "One, two, three."

"No the other problem," Glabnok demands. "The you couldn't seem to get right."

"Well, it wasn't that I couldn't get it right. It's just that it's not p-"

"Show your work, Dale of Earth," Glabnok insists. "Isn't that what the sniveling little lab rat told you to do. Show your work."

"Alright," Dale slides three of the buttons behind the cardboard box and places the other two between them on the table. Click, click. "Sally has two buttons."

"Tokens."

"Well, actually they were supposed to be apples. So, Sally has two apples."

"Right, apples."

"And Tina wants three apples."

"Tina demands three!"

"But Sally doesn't have that many-"

"She's lying!"

"No she only has two. So, she can't give-"

"Sally is lying about the tokens! Just give Tina the damn tokens! She's earned them," Commander Glabnok shoves his hands into the cardboard box and pulls out two fistfuls of plastic tokens. "There's so much. And she's been hoarding it. Keeping it from the others. From everyone. What else has she lied about? What other secrets has she- ahhh-"

The bracelets on Commander Glabnok's wrists lit up and began to hum loudly. His palms opened upward as he froze in pain. Hundreds of plastic buttons scattered across the floor.

The door opened and a sharply dressed woman quickly closed the gap between the door and the frozen Commander. In one swift motion she produced a small stick from her pocket and pointed it at the Commander's chest. A beam of light shot into his chest and he collapsed on the floor with his eyes frozen open staring at the ceiling.

"Get in here and clean this mess up," she shouted. Two people in lab coats scurried into the room. "Tokens back in the box. Put him down the chute."

The two lab coats began dragging the stiff Commander over to a door along the far wall that looked just the right size and height for loading bodies into.

"And the tokens from his jacket," the sharply-dressed woman added. The two lab coats turned and looked at one another in disbelief. They didn't remove his plastic buttons right away. "You may each take one token."

They nodded, removed a button each from the Commander's chest and pinned it two their own. The sharply dressed woman introduced herself while the lab coats continued cleaning up.

"Hello, Dale of Earth," the sharply-dressed woman smiled. "I am the Director. I want to thank you, Dale. I think you'll be able to solve our little problem. Walk with me and I'll explain."

The Director led Dale through a series of corridors with doors, many of which had a screen next to them that read: Authorization Required. She explained that their ship had been hit with a solar upon entering the current solar system which caused a lot of the ships systems to reboot.

"And the old leaders of the ship, the Brainiacs I mentioned earlier, they made everything all secure and password protected," The Director explained. "But the wanted to make sure that it was a password the rest of us couldn't figure out. So, they used their special math language as a way to authorize certain systems."

They had arrived at a large door at the end of a hallway and she gestured to the panel next to it.

"I need your help accessing this room."

The screen was filled with complex math problems that Dale couldn't figure out. Calculus, maybe, but he wasn't sure.

"This is too difficult for me," Dale shrugged. "Sorry but I don't even understand it."

"Eh-hmm," the Director cleared her throat. "Did you catch that? Exam assistance requested."

A disembodied voice filled the hallway: EXAM ASSISTANCE ACTIVATED

The panel flickered and showed a picture of five apples.

SALLY HAS FIVE APPLES. SHE GIVE TWO APPLES TO TONY. HOW MANY APPLES DOES SHE HAVE?

"Three."

PLEASE SHOW YOUR WORK

Dale held up his hand with five fingers extended. He thing curled his thumb and pinky into his palm.

CORRECT. AUTHORIZATION CONFIRMED.

The door hissed as the large metal panels began to slide into the wall. Dale counted fourteen people rushing to the door as they entered.

"Oh, thank you," one cried out. "We're so hungry we thought we would die in here."

"The cafeteria is active for another hour," the Director said flatly. "Go eat."

"How'd you get the door open?" another person asked. "Must have taken some sort of Brainiac." He had his hand on a small stick identical to the one the Director used to kill Glabnok.

"This is Dale of Earth. He's helping us."

"Must be some sort of Brainiac-"

"Go eat."

They left Dale and the Director alone in what looked like a command center. Out the large window ahead of them was the pale blue dot Dale grew up on. And in the center of the room was what appeared to be a giant rifle pointed at the blue dot.

"I need you to unlock this," the Director gestured to the big gun.

Dale wandered forward staring at the blue dot.

"It's beautiful. I mean, pictures don't grasp the scale-"

"Dale, focus."

"You're going to destroy it."

"Have you ever seen a photon torpedo hit a rock that size? The spectacle is far greater and what some colored rock may look like."

"The human race is on that rock-"

"They're Brainiacs, Dale. They're bad and dangerous people. They have to go. Authorize the photon torpedo."

Dale scanned the room hoping to find another control panel as he approached the big gun. There, on a desk behind him was what he needed.

"Two minus one equals one," Dale shouted.

PLEASE SHOW YOUR WORK

"That's not what it's asking," the Director said. "Is it? It looks like four or five apples to me. One, two, three, four. Yeah, four. What are you doing?"

Dale held up two fingers in front of the Directors face.

"Two minus one."

He curled in his index finger.

"Fuck you."

CORRECT. SELF-DESTRUCT INITIATED

"Damn, Brainiac! Should have just killed you from the start."

Definitely want a part 4

Good god, that's horrific.

Pt 3.

Images began flooding my mind. At first, I couldn’t make sense of them. Just blurry masses of color. But quickly, they began to take shape. I began to see what looked like stars. Not how they look from earth. No, how they actually look. Giant balls of chaotic gas burning at thousands of degrees. Then, it was as if time sped up. The stars began aging and growing until they exploded, leaving only nebulae behind.

The nebulae began taking a different shape. Earth. I watched it go from molten rock to an endless ocean. Green lands began sprouting, separating the single sea into many. I watched as the earth was born and died, it’s people along with it. I seen the entire universe play out, start to finish, in a matter of seconds. Suddenly, I was back at the river with Adam, tears streaming down my face.

“Well, what did you see?” He asked curiously. He seemed anxious to know, maybe even excited.

“Stars. I watched them live and die. As well as the earth. It was as if the universe was a movie being fast forwarded.” I said, my voice shaky. All it did was leave me with more questions than answers. Am I the god of stars? Of earth? The universe maybe?

Adam’s face turned a sickly pale, as if he might vomit. “Are you sure that’s what you seen?” He asked, almost sounding demanding. I grew nervous.

“Yes. I’m positive. What does it mean?”

“Bad things. Very bad things.” He proclaimed. He began shaking as if he were scared. “I have to let father know immediately.” Just then, he grabbed my wrist with a grip like I’ve never felt before.

“Bad things? What kind of bad things? What does it mean!? Who is your father and what must you tell him!?” I screamed. I was becoming scared. Why would he grab me all of a sudden? What bad things was he talking about? I just wanted answers. A few hours ago I didn’t even know I was a god. And now I’m being held in place by one.

“It means you’re the god of space and time. My father is Zeus. You’re supposed to be dead. He killed you!” He screamed angrily. Killed me? What is he talking about? “I’m taking you to the high council. You’re far too dangerous to be left to roam as you please.”

“The high council? What are you talking about?! Let me go!” I screamed as I thrashed about in his grip. I could feel a great anger brewing inside me. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I WOULDN’T be going anywhere.

“Let. Me. Go!” I yelled, furious. I lifted my arms. They moved faster than I ever thought possible, lifting Adam, or should I say Ethdos, into the air. I brought by hands down with more force than I had used to snatch them up. I broke free of his grip, slamming him into the ground in the process. He let out a guttural scream that made me wince. I didn’t want this. I didn’t mean to hurt him, I just wanted to be left alone. Without wasting another second I turned and ran as fast as my legs could carry me. Whoever he was gonna take me to wouldn’t be very happy about the events that had just taken place. And I didn’t want to stick around for their reaction.

Let me know if y’all want a part 4!

I want a part 3

We want part 3