Bryan Racine | Independent Video Production & Consulting
The Problem with Jupiter
8/8/2025
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Quantifiable proof. Peer reviewed. The scientific community in total agreement. The seemingly impossible had led to one unfortunate yet irrefutable conclusion.
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It’s Jupiter’s fault.
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And it always had been. Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Literally. The massive gas giant had been polluting the emotional health of humanity for, well, since forever! Radiological pulses. Ionized atmospheric feedback. Something about gravitational echo-chambers. Some data was still fuzzy, but the conclusion was sharp enough to cut history in half.
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The scientific community was left with one terrible, world-altering question, “What do we do now?”
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The discussion began in earnest, at least within the scientific community in the late 2080s. A researcher was studying parallels within their own life, the lives of her neighbors, the news programming, and of all things - horoscopes. Dr. Mayberry would later say that her interest did not spark to life, but grew in the quiet place within her mind, year after year, with every seemingly cyclical change of social chemistry. "How many times," she famously asked, "do we have to wonder, ‘Is it happening again?’ before we start pondering the preposterous, even the absurd!”
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Dr. Mayberry spent the remaining years of her life accumulating data from the entire field of physics, chemistry, radiology, sociology, and history. She arranged her findings in a way that anyone could understand, and in doing so, the work walked her to her own death bed. There she lay for the world to see, flanked by a strange and beautiful, three-dimensional diorama, akin to that of an eighth grader’s presentation at the county science fair, but infused with years of sheer willpower, sweat, and a bankroll that had ironically come from her supportive husband, J.D. Barron Sanchez, a pioneer in speed rail travel for extraterrestrial shipping and receiving. Well the message was received as Dr. Mayberry laid out the pieces, a terrifying model of Jupiter swirling just above her bed, ominous as if it were about to, if not already crushing the frail woman to death.
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After several months of mourning, military officials who had felt restricted as of late due to the systematic dismantling of conflicts across the globe, began dreaming of a new war, one that would carve their names into the very fabric of creation.
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We must destroy Jupiter!
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The world’s comedians ran with that insane idea for months. The world laughed with them. Depictions of an anthropomorphic Jupiter running away from men wearing nuclear missiles around their pelvises were shared more than 10 billion times in the first week alone. But the laughter slowly turned uncomfortable. What was the Transcontinental Military Establishment (TME) working on? They were working on something, but it couldn’t actually be to destroy the largest planet in our solar system, could it? The laughter melted into concern overnight. The phones stopped being answered by anyone remotely close to the TME.
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What were they thinking?
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A scrappy, but well-intentioned effort was launched by Christians first, and then in a remarkable and never-before-seen effort, joined by astrologists, mystics, other religious institutions, and even pseudo-scientists - with open arms! Each of the gathered entities shared the same central message, “Pain is a part of life.” The first argument was simple and to the point. The second message would have unintended consequences. “The loss of Jupiter itself could be worse than our own sad feelings, almost assuredly. Couldn't it?” More arguments and thought experiments poured forth from the hole that This question had formed in what was once a sound truth. Each idea that came next was more confused than the last.
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What had God intended? What had he hid in the universe for us to discover? To destroy?
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Panic set in, like the feeling of eating too strong of a marijuana edible in your back garden, the feeling of impending doom all while sitting more comfortably than any human had ever sat in recorded history. The tension drove people up the wall.
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Soon a rebellious, guerrilla-style military group formed out of people from every walk of life and from every corner of the planet. A raid on the Transcontinental Military Establishment was planned. Flags, banners, t-shirts and graffiti filled the streets “The Devil We Know!” On the morning of the off-the-books raid, the men and women who were armed to the teeth were met by the brightest light to have ever been made by man. Like staring into a small star, “the payload” was sent hurtling into space, using the technology from J.D. Barron Sanchez’s own rail system - of course. In the moments that followed, the world grew quiet, and for the rebel forces gathered outside of the TME base the air took on an antagonizing quality.
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Blood would be shed for the loss of our stellar sibling.
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Before the images of the raid were completely scrubbed from every electronic database in existence, the world saw old men with joy in their eyes using every weapon man had ever assembled on the would-be rebels. It was a massacre, wrapped in patriotism. The greatest military minds alive had found their war and then some...
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Then silence.
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The twisted carnage forced the world into a state of shock and numbness. Every few days someone’s uncle would say “They don’t deserve to take our joy! We have to laugh again!” And even though everyone knew this to be true, only time would clear the air. One thing, or two, had become clear. Contrary concepts, yet both true.
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It had everything, and yet nothing, to do with Jupiter.
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A generation later, and the air is lighter, but there are still bad days. Hard days that seem to be shared by one neighbor to the other without any real connection. I think most people will say that they are glad the gas giant is gone, a sentiment that becomes more true every year as the “before times” become increasingly mythicized. The TME still exists, but a shell of what it had been, like a predator with a decreasing food supply. This brought the world some sense of hope and measurement.
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Until they began to build again…