Apelagic Generator

Apelagic Generators (commonly referred to as "Ocean Busters", "My-God-No Machines" or simply "Ungenerators") are a type of Specific Anti-matter Device ("SAD") developed by Harrican Syldanade in 1697 during a brief anthropological study of mercenary ecosystem-rustlers.

History
During the late 1690's, the ecosystem-rustlers of Second Io were under contract by the Tyrant Gourmands of Angusheim-5 to "Bring us back fish this time. Lots of fish. Lovely fish. Mmmm.". Harrican Syldanade was engaged at the time in a study of the rustlers, and became convinced that their work would go much faster (and his study would be completed sooner) if they had access to technology more efficient than fishing poles.

Harrican subsequently developed the first Apelagic Generator in the repair shop of Second Io's only spaceyard. The first test of the device on the planet Wet Ebba was considered a success (by Harrican, if not the former inhabitants of Wet Ebba), and three more Apelagic Generators were contructed in 1698. There is no clear record of why the hell Syldanade felt the need to build three more Apelagic Generators when one is perfectly enough to destroy all the water on a single planet within minutes.

Two of the four devices are currently unaccounted for (although rumors surface on a regular basis), a fact which causes a great deal of stress to many planetary governments. The planet of New Ebba went so far as to create a whole military/spy caste devoted to tracking down the remaining devices and destroying them.

Description and Technical Specifications
When deployed, the Apelagic Generator creates an invisible beam that, upon contact with water, causes the water to not exist. According to Harrican Syldanade's autobiographical magic lantern show, the effect is caused by a massive concentrated release of "anti-water", that is, a form of anti-matter specific only to water (see Controversy below). Attempts to actually study the inner workings of the device have been hampered by catastrophic life-failures and researcher panic attacks associated with opening the pump-tank.

My-God-No Machines invariably appear as a series of uneven pipes, which have been welded in a semi-circle around a central pump-tank full of anti-water. Archaeo-musicologist Ebo Orrinde has described the device as looking "a bit like a now-extinct species of pipe organ which once foraged in the churches of Ancient Terra. Not that this description will mean anything to you, mind, because you are young and stupid." The Apelagic Generator's effect has a range of anywhere between 15 meters and several thousand kilometers. Historically the device is deployed from space, due to the extreme danger of standing anywhere near the focal point of the invisible beam (Note: "on the same planetary hemisphere" counts as near in this regard).

The technical procedure for firing the device, and indeed the entire contents of the owner's manual, is as follows: Step 1: Point at water and press the button. Step 2: Pray. Step 3: Assuming operator is still living, press the button again to turn machine off.

Step 4: If machine fails to turn off, repeat steps 2 and 3.

Robots, clockwork men, and other automata (who are otherwise unaffected) can become addicted to the effects of the invisible beam, and will often leave assigned duties to stand at Ground Zero during a firing. Robot owners are cautioned to turn off their robots before evacuating a targeted planet.

Controversy
The controversy surrounding the development and use of these devices rates at "EPIC" on the Intergalactic Controversy Scale. The invention of the device itself is regarded as one of the most egregious breaches of anthropological ethics in the history of the known universe. "Yes," asserts Pellman Yurl, former department chair of Anthropological Mistakes at Ordroom University, "Worse than the time that other guy selectively bred murder-bees for greater sentience and opposable thumbs. I don't know what the hell Harrican was thinking."

The technical claims of the machine's creator were not without critics. Astrophysicist and famed author Pauline Giacomo declared it her "life task" to "prove that bastard wrong about the so-called Apelagic Generators". In her best-selling nonfiction crime-thriller "Anti-Water Is Bullshit", Giacomo asserts that a more likely theory for the effects of the Ungenerators is that of teleportation: the water is broken down into a quantum state, and while no one is looking at the water, it moves elsewhere in spacetime. There is no mention of where exactly these several planets-worth of water ended up. Also, in her acclaimed romance-drama novelette ("You're a Lying Sack, Harrican Syldanade"), Giacomo proposes that Harrican could not himself have invented the device due to his lack of previously apparent quantum engineering skills. Giacomo also stated that even with quantum engineering skills, Harrican was further hampered by a "lack of a working frontal cortex". She fails to cite evidence for this last claim however, and the rest of the novelette is given over to a tender (but unrelated) description of two young women exploring their sexuality together.

The loudest critics of the Apelagic Generators are, of course, people who live (or used to live) on the planets that have been pointed-at by the machines.

Known Firings and Sightings
1697, Planet Wet Ebba (subsequently referred to as "Helldesert Ebba"): This was the test firing of the first Apelagic Generator. The resultant yield of exposed fish was so large that a new measurement of weight had to be invented to express it in concrete physical terms (a "Harri-Ton"). Not only was the Gourmandocracy actually satiated for once, but there was so much fishy biomass left over that the Brexton-Rax Cat Food Consortium maintains a military blockade around Ebba even to the present day, lest their entire industry collapse.

1701, Planet Eborax: Two Ungenerators were used by Syldanade to settle a bet with a rival explorer. The resulting discovery of sentient (and delicious) algae living near Eborax's previously-undersea volcanic vents was a brief sensation in the scientific community and a coup for Syldanade, although the Farthingside Gentleman's Club was forced to deal with two decades of inter-planetary political fallout. This firing also resulted in Eboraxian Whales being given emergency political asylum in Terra's oceans, which caused a good deal of social strife within the native cetacean hive-cities of Terra.

1702, Planet Nelleb: Harrican accidentally activated the Apelagic Generator onboard his ship while drunk. Much of Nelleb is still burning.

1709, Planet Kullbradth: In 1708, Harrican loaned one of the Apelagic Generators to his ocassional traveling companion: performance artist and rogue bio-magician Naombe M'x. M'x subsequently used the device to collect specimens from Planet Kullbradth for use in a large-scale artistic work. This firing is of note due to the total lack of resulting interplanetary tension or upheval; Kullbradth had long been known as a oceanic shithole of a world, filled with dangerous megafauna. However: M'x's resulting artistic work, the planet-wide sculpture "Brachiating Land-Kraken: An Adaptive Study In Green" on Eden Prime, was the subject of a great deal of angst (although to be fair, reviews were mixed. Noted art biologist Quentin Quelfin described the resulting planetscape as "breathtaking in scope, worth every scream from the doomed populace, and almost worth the crippling nightmares I now struggle with").

1751, Planet Nortoriz: After a relatively long period of water-safety (three Ungenerators were stolen in 1711, and Harrican sold the fourth at a flea-market in 1712), one of the Apelagic Generators resurfaced in the hands of Ibezzian Pirates. The pirates used the device to hold the entire planet hostage, demanding half a Harri-Ton of goods a day in exchange for continued ecological stability. Their piratical reign over Nortoriz was cut short by New Ebban commandos, who boarded the ship a week after the planetary siege began, and subsequently destroyed both the Apelagic Generator and the pirates.

1767, Planet Loamweave: Another My-God-No Machine resurfaces. The Un-Priests of Loamweave used the device to "destroy the heathen lake, which is an insult to our Non-God". Several planetary militias converged on Loamweave, attempting to retrieve or destroy the device, but it was lost in the resulting chaos.

1831, Planet Squalpeter: The Lesser Spugbeasts of Planet Squalpeter reportedly gained one of the Apelagic Generators in a high-stakes Hating Match, and subsequently attempted to adapt the pump-tank to accept "anti-gin" as an alternate fuel source. If the martini in my hand is any indication, they failed.

(To my esteemed fellow researchers, I am sure this section is woefully incomplete. Please, if you come across any mention of the use of Apelagic Generators in your own research, do not hesitate to contact me and I will update this section.)

Andronicus Paulicus 14:30, June 26, 2010 (UTC)