Promontories of fire extrude and coalesce, violets, greens, blues, taint the orange, yellow, and brilliant white dominance. Gravitic forces pull the immense streamers back into the maelstrom that is the star Procyon, one and a half times larger than our own star. Energy of unimaginable magnitude swirls and eddies, some escaping the powerful pull of the star and bursting into the infinite depths of space.

One such energy packet crashed directly on the fourth planet in the Procyon system. The dominant species on that planet had great plans to conquer their closest neighbors on nearby Alpha Centauri and then on to the other stars in the neighborhood, one of which is good old Sol.

When the energy burst hit Procyon 4 with a super electromagnetic pulse it knocked out every electromagnetic device on the planet. Communications, data shipping and receiving, manufacturing, and transportation services, all dependent on electricity, immediately ground to a standstill.

In only three planetary revolutions the would be conquerors’ civilization began to break down. Without heat many froze to death in the winter climes. In the cities, storehouses, without replenishment, became empty caverns, littered with detritus from hysterical rioters, rioters who could not be stopped by the disorganized, read non-existent, forces of law and order.

Workers on the verge of restoring some power at the power generators were killed by mobs that appeared at the generating stations, irrationally angry that the power was off and wasn’t being restored quickly enough.

Seven days later they began to starve and that’s when the breakdown accelerated, sending the arrogant species back to the stone age, warlords and all. It would be interesting to see how they enjoy conquering themselves all over again.

Maybe we’ll pay them a call sometime, once we get off the planet we were born on. Let’s say . . . if . . . ?