Not a dull day.

Dr James Raymond Oppenheimer sat at his computer terminal, frantically tapping at the keys. The display before him flickered with statistics and charts. The lines of a seven dimensional graph constantly twitched this way and that in real-time as he sought to get the correct combination of formulae.

At this time, I was only a junior physicist, graduated from university only a few years ago and here at this secret site in the middle of the Old Mexican desert of our great country, the United States of Ulmerica.

My insectoid antennae twitched as I detected increased excitement from the doctor. His own antennae were flailing about his head, as though out of control. Usually they just twitched like any other insect’s do. But now, they were in full twitch mode. I guessed that he was on the verge of something momentous. For years we had been secretly working on the so-called Balhatten Project, and now all that work was about to pay dividends, it seemed. Our goal of creating the ultimate weapon was at hand.

The doctor shouted out, “Oreka!” He wasn’t an insect usually inclined to outbursts.

He beckoned me over. I looked at his computer screen, where the lines of his graph were perfectly targeted on one point.
“You’ve done in,” I said, a statement and a question.

He took a deep breath, his antennae still flailing. “Yes. We now have the atomic bomb.” The magnitude of it all stirred him. He stood, declaring. “I am now the destroyer of worlds.”

I made a mental note of his words. I had the feeling that insectkind would remember them for years to come.

He turned to me. “All we need now is something to test it on.”

“Speaking of destroying worlds,” I said, “there’s that planet Earth. It doesn’t seem to do much, we could blow that up.”

“Perfect. Prepare the bomb.”