The end of a nuclear era

I woke up from a very disturbing dream this morning. My eyes still can't focus properly, and I feel like I've just barely escaped something with my life.

The dream was about an hour long, and went something like this:

After a time spent in the media, I somehow ended up drifting jobs until I ended up with a private investigation firm that dealt specifically with industrial espionage and uncovering illicit arms trades. After working with this firm for around five years, they finally handed me an assignment that was a bit heavier and a lot more worrying than foreign spies stealing plans for farm machinery.


Somebody had been lifting plans for a military satillite, and it was up to me to find out who did it, what they took, where they took it, and why they took it.

As with any dream, the continuity kind of lapses a bit before I recall the next thing.

We're looking at a schematic of a very large satillite. It looks like something right out of a science fiction movie. Instead of being small, with giant solar panels, it looks something like a shuttle with a huge drum-like apparatus attached to the roof, and two (undersized) solar panels mounted on the belly to run parallel to the line of the shuttle.

The schematic is a computer image, showing relative density and integrity of the materials used to make the thing. The drum on top seems typical space fare, aluminum, steel, reinforced thermal tiles. The shuttle section though... it wasn't typical. The density was way too high to be something that would nomally be risked in space.

A number came my way. A contact. A very important contact, regarding what it was that was stolen, and why - at this time - the US Army has become involved in my investigation. I jot down his name and number.

I wouldn't get a chance to call though. Somebody shouts "it's doing... something!"

And the next thing I know, we're all blinded by stinging white light that's pouring in from windows on one side of the building. A dull roar reverberates through the ground and I think "My God, this is what Hiroshima must have been like."

I attempted to leave the building. But knowing I'd never make it, I exited the door and huddled up against the brick wall. White light, almost fluid in appearance, poured from around the alleyways and out the door I had just exited. I could hear screams, intermingled with the roar of whatever it was being shot down on us. My guess is, their eyes melted out.
"This is it," I thought. "This is the end of the nuclear era."

The dream was an extension of a thought I sometimes have, how the next logical step in weapon superiority involves having a superweapon in space, on standby at all times. In this case, the weapon was an immence kind of light fission engine, with the waste energy accumulated from splitting photons being projected down a fine ray path onto a specific spot on the Earth.

Depending on how its utilized, such a weapon could be used to eradicate people, cities, or entire countries without fear of reprisal.

Fearsome. I still have little spots in my vision from the light in the windows.