TL;DR version: A duplicate Saturn from an alternate universe get's ISOT'd to 1968. More details at the end.
All about the Muon Collider Control Bridge technicians drifted with each step as they half-walked, half-floated to their stations. Almost entirely composed of ice, Zisutra's gravity was more a suggestion than a hard fact, and while his team was well adapted to micro-g life, Aham had grown up in the heavy embrace of Mother Utu. He longed for the day when he could drink his coffee out of something other than a plastic bulb.
"Doctor, magnetic collars are locked. Beam lines are calibrated. Reactors Three through Thirteen are online."
Dr. Aham nodded thoughtfully. He couldn't fail to note the swell beneath his assistant's calm words, but she certainly had the right to be excited. Lifetimes of calculations , decades of labor, trillions of dollars spent--all fused now for this one moment. Today, they made history.
"Well, let's get this over with," Aham said. "Engage!"
Kilometers beneath their habitat, the hum of particle accelerators sprouted fissures among the surrounding ice, setting the whole moon to a faint hum. Even as he took another squeeze of his coffee, the doctor knew untold quadrillions of muons were being raced ever closer to c. No mean feat, seeing as muons had a half-life measured in the millionths of a second. Transmitted numbers ran through his hardtac lenses. He smiled at the results.
The Muon Collider Ring was by an order of magnitude the largest structure ever built off Utu. Over a thousand kilometers in diameter, it ran the circumferenceof Zisutra, and in theory could accelerate subatomic particles to 99.99999% the speed of light. Or even past that, if this experiment bore fruit. Faster-than-light travel. The dream of a millennium.
The assistant smiled and turned to Aham. Her orange eyes sparkled with display readings, her ears flexed. Such a pretty girl, though much too young for him. "It's working," she said, telling him what he already knew. "Timmuz's magnetosphere is aiding in the acceleration."
Aham nodded. He himself had worked on that part of the equation, and the math doesn't lie. He knew the gas giant would do its part, give the muons the extra needed push. Why else would they build the accelerator out here in outskirts of colonized space?
"Impact in three, two, one--" the assistant said.
The humming stopped. That was unexpected. Dr. Aham was about to ask what happened when suddenly he fell into his cushioned seat and an invisible giant pressed down on his chest and his arms and his legs and he tried to cry out but his ribcage had shattered and his hardtacs pressed into his eyes which popped like grapes into the backs of his sockets.
Pain. Darkness. Before sound died as well he heard the metallic groan as the Muon Collider Control Center collapsed like a tin can around him, followed by the hiss of escaping atmosphere.
***
A projected image of her deputy, Dagrim appeared in corner of her vision. "Ma'am, check your tacks. We're getting reports . . ." He trailed off, his leaf-green pupils shimmering as his own hardtacs fed him additional information. "Oh, sweet Sedu," he said.
Biluda repressed a sigh. "This is my day off. What is it?" she said as she, with a few practiced thoughts, brought up the police-feed on own HUD. Twenty or so messages flashed along the bottom of her vision. She sped read through the report summaries, but her mind locked on the suspended image from a freighter floating in front of her: a million chunks of ice, spinning and tumbling in a compact yet rapidly expanding debris cloud.
"Sweet Sedu is right," she said. "That's Zisutra?"
Dagrim nodded quickly. The points of his ears jiggled nervously. "The moon ripped itself apart. But that's . . . there's more."
"Shit," she said, stepping out of the autocart into the eerily empty market square. Her gut sank. Poor Dr. Aham. Hell, poor hundred or so scientists who just had their lives snuffed out. But she knew the doctor. Nice guy. Doggedly, she walked across the square's well-manicured lawn into the village tavern. "How did this happen?"
The deputy seemed not to hear her. "The net's down," he said. "The system-wide net, I mean. We're not getting any data-streams from Utu or Ramman or Kingu or anywhere outside the Timmuz moon system."
"Interference?" Biluda asked. Inside the tavern, she saw a crowd around on the game tables. Along the walls, a few of the holoscreens displayed: No Signal. A few of the patrons nodded at her, raising their pipes in salute. Nothing was amiss for them.
"I don't think so, ma'am," Dagrim said, but already she was reading the high-priority message that had flashed across her tacs. The message was accompanied by a short video feed from a telescope on Namuzu Station. She saw the same familiar ringed sphere that she saw every day. The planet was small, though, and looked very far away.
"You're watching the video," Dagrim said. It wasn't a question.
"That's Timmuz," she said. Her gut sank farther. A mistake. Sensor errors. It has to be. She sat at a bar stool and held up a finger to the barkeep.
"It appears to be Timmuz," Dagrim said, "but that planet is nearly three billion kilometers away. On the far side of Timmuz's orbit, I might add." His tone grew giddy. His face was being captured by a camera in his hand terminal, and it shook back and forth as he looked around as if searching for eavesdroppers.
The barkeep, a rather portly man of Penzer ethnicity, passed her her usual cold cider. He seemed to catch that something was wrong, but she simply accepted the mug and stepped outside. On the far side of Mashda's central drum, a great rectangular window a score of meters across showed the same old gas giant in all her ringed, cloud-banded glory. Biluda compared it with the nearly identical image of in the telescope video. Another Timmuz. The Solar System now had two Timmuzes.
"What about Utu?" she heard herself say. Her head seemed to float, and her legs felt unsteady. Timmuz slid slowly to the side as Mashda's made it's gradual spin. "Is there nothing from home?" she asked.
The deputy hesitated. He grinned slightly, as if simple befuddlement had won out over fear. "We've got something," he said. "Lots of things, actually. But the formats are weird, alien. Primitive. I'm forwarding you one of the transmissions. It's audio, we think. One of the stronger signals right now. Can't make heads or tales of the language, though."
A static-ripped sound accompanied with alien speech filled her ears:
***
Biluda and Dagrim belong to an alternate humanity, a species of hominid that, due to a point of divergence millions of years ago, evolved into a species similar to homo sapiens but not quite. On average, they are slightly shorter and more slender of build. Due to a genetic quirk, they have ears that appear somewhat pointed, and they have inhumanly tilted eyes. They look a bit like Skyrim elves, with of course variations on skin tone and facial features.
In a "broad-stroke" sense, their history is similar to our own. They've had bloody wars and ages of invention and revolution. They've had awe-inspiring leaders, holy men, genocidal maniacs. Pick anyone in history, you'll find a parallel in the elves.
On this Earth/Utu, they first landed on the moon four centuries ago and they are currently in the midst of colonizing the solar system. And now, to them, the planet Saturn/Timmuz and all her moons simply vanished.
Which leads to this ISOT scenario.
The date is December 24th, 1968. A few hours earlier, Apollo 8 has just orbited the moon and broadcast its famous "Genesis reading." Suddenly a "second Saturn" appears in the orbit opposite of where it should be. Among the planet's moons, 24,365 human "elves" live in various colonies and space habitats. Their technology is very advanced but "hard" -- no FTL drives or communication, no artificial gravity, no physics defying super-weapons. They don't even have "hard" artificial intelligence (though they do have experimental bio-computers which, if advanced enough, could be sentient). Advanced medicine has eliminated old age and virtually all diseases. Cybernetic/biotech augmentation is commonplace. Their economy and politics could best be described as 'almost post-scarcity democratic socialism.' They are generally peaceful, but while they are theoretically self-sufficient, the sudden loss of trade with Utu is going to hurt.
They have no warships, but a few vessels are equipped with rail-guns and missiles for noncombat purposes. And of course, if it came to a war, the elves could always drop rocks. Though they'd be loath to do so.
The elves can get to earth in a little over two weeks.
How will this effect Earth politics? What about space exploration? The cold war? What a headache. I bet President Johnson is glad he'll be out of office in a few weeks. Have fun, Nixon!
Also, the "new" Saturn's orbit is unstable, though it'll be 932 years before the two Saturns collide. Hopefully that'll be enough time to think of something. Anyone with the necessary math skills know what would happen here?
Now what?
BTW: Zisustra was Tethys, and is now and addendum to Elf-Saturn's rings.
TL;DR: The planet Saturn from an advanced elf-race timeline is ISOT'd to 1968. The Solar System now has two Saturns on opposite ends of the orbit, one of which has 24,000 elves in colonies and space stations. What hilarities ensue?
