Von Neumann’s War

Thanks, Bret. We go now to the Oval Office and the President of the United States…

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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Americans and to our friends and allies around the world. Tonight I must speak with you about a matter of utmost importance and the most historic event in the history of humanity. Tonight I am here to tell you that humanity is not alone in this universe.

Approximately two years ago NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Russian Space Agency began to lose contact with probes that had been sent to the planet Mars. Fourteen months ago scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute and at NASA discovered that the color of the planet Mars was changing. At that time they brought this to my attention and also told me then that they had no idea as to why this would happen. I then asked the National Reconnaissance Office to conduct a rapid mission to our neighboring planet and send a spy satellite there to determine the cause of this phenomenon. This was not a “Mars Probe” in the traditional sense. It was a spy satellite sent to Mars.

The space reconnaissance community under the leadership of the NRO successfully built a spacecraft, then launched it just five months later, a remarkable achievement and proof that our space community is capable of responding as true Americans and problem solvers. Since Mars is so far away, it took the probe about five more months to reach the planet. Once there, the little spacecraft gathered intelligence data for a short period before it was destroyed — and I use that term carefully — by the phenomenon at Mars.

The data the NRO gathered did show us that the surface of Mars has been completely developed into a planet-covering grid of giant, citylike structures. In a period of less than two years, the entire planet has been hyperindustrialized.

Recent studies of other planets in our solar system suggest that the outer planets or their moons, Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter, have undergone similar transformations.