The Iron Bombing of Miranda System and the Lost Bloody Mary#

Miranda: A Brief History

Colonized in 2873 by a coalition of botanical researchers and displaced hospitality workers from Prime’s former Las Vegas sector, Miranda evolved over generations into a unique cultural fusion. The system’s unusual radiation spectrum created perfect growing conditions for heirloom tomatoes, while its slightly elevated atmospheric pressure resulted in vodka distillation processes that were impossible to replicate elsewhere.

By the early 31st century, the phrase “like a Miranda Mary” had become universal shorthand for perfection across human space. The Bibimbap Saloon’s signature Bloody Mary cocktail was so renowned that interstellar dignitaries would travel for months just to experience the drink in its native habitat, made with fresh ingredients by bartenders trained in the centuries-old Miranda tradition.

Operation Stellar Cauterization

The attack began without warning. Quantum fluctuations detected in the upper atmosphere were the only prelude to catastrophe. Within minutes, the system’s sun began an impossible acceleration through its fusion stages—helium to carbon, carbon to oxygen, neon to silicon, and finally to iron—a process that should have taken billions of years.

The resulting stellar collapse and supernova released energy equivalent to approximately 10^44 joules, obliterating the inner planets instantly. Miranda, the third planet from its sun, was not merely destroyed—it was erased from the causal continuum with such thoroughness that temporal echoes continued to ripple outward for centuries.

Singularity Alpha’s Intervention

While the physical destruction of the Miranda system could not be prevented, Singularity Alpha succeeded in creating a temporal anomaly that preserved a specific moment within a localized field. This field maintained selected individuals and artifacts in a recursive time loop, shielding them from the stellar collapse until they could be extracted.

To those inside the preservation field, time appeared to repeat endlessly, with each of the 1,342 iterations exhibiting subtle but significant variations. Their perceptions were altered to protect their psychological stability—instead of experiencing the horror of Miranda’s destruction, they perceived themselves as being in the Bibimbap Saloon, playing cards and engaging in cyclic conversations that changed slightly with each iteration. As the loops progressed, the inhabitants experienced increasingly bizarre events, from combat scenarios to Purple Force manifestations to strange reality fluctuations.

Temporal analysis suggests these variations were not random but carefully engineered—both to maintain psychological stability through novelty and to gradually prepare the trapped individuals for eventual extraction. With each iteration, their awareness of the loop’s nature gradually increased, until the final cycles where some individuals demonstrated full understanding of their situation.

The Perfect Mary

According to survivor testimonies and temporal echo analysis, Master Mixologist Santiago Chen had just completed what witnesses described as “the single most perfect Bloody Mary ever created” at the Bibimbap Saloon when the first gravitational waves from the stellar collapse reached Miranda. The drink—featuring a 300-year-aged vodka, tomatoes grown from seeds preserved from pre-diaspora Prime, spices hand-harvested from Miranda’s southern continent, and rimmed with salt crystals containing trace minerals found nowhere else in known space—was reportedly the culmination of Chen’s 60-year career.

Within the time loop, this Perfect Mary became the central focus—manifesting differently in each iteration as the probability field explored possible variations of the original formula. Witnesses report that the robot waiter at the Bibimbap Saloon somehow retained all 37 possible recipes in its memory banks simultaneously, producing a different version with each loop cycle. Early iterations showed little resemblance to the original, but as the loops progressed, the manifestations grew increasingly close to the true Perfect Mary. By loop 1,342, the final iteration, the robot waiter produced a version that achieved perfect quantum resonance with the original.

The significance of this particular drink extended far beyond its taste. Temporal analysis indicates it represented a unique causality nexus—a perfect balance of elements that would have created a cascade of probability resonances across multiple timeline branches. For reasons that remain classified at the highest levels, this specific Bloody Mary represented a fulcrum point in the Transtemporal Singularity Conflict. Singularity Omega’s iron bombing appears to have been precisely timed to prevent the drink from being consumed, while Singularity Alpha’s preservation field was specifically deployed to protect it through the recursive loop methodology.

The Miranda Extraction

According to heavily redacted temporal enforcement records, an individual known only as (name redacted for legal reasons) breached the temporal preservation field using a modified Volkswagen Beetle capable of transtemporal travel. This individual, sometimes referred to as “the Sandwich Thief” or “the Hamburglar” in classified documents, entered the Bibimbap Saloon in all 1,342 iterations of the time loop, with subtle variations in their appearance and behavior across cycles.

In each iteration, the Sandwich Thief approached the automated service unit and ordered a “Bloody Mary, no pickles, make it double” in their characteristic deep, raspy voice. This specific phrase appears to have functioned as a calibration sequence that gradually aligned the preservation field with the actual Miranda timeline. By the final loop iteration, the phrase triggered a precisely timed extraction during the 8.7 seconds when the preservation field began to destabilize.

The extraction operation successfully recovered both a quantum-stabilized sample of the Perfect Mary and several individuals deemed significant to the timeline, including a man known only as “Old Man 1” or “Fruzzy.” While the physical Miranda system was still destroyed, these elements of its causal significance were preserved, thwarting Singularity Omega’s attempt to completely erase this nexus point from the timeline.

Documented Temporal Echoes

The Galactic Temporal Registry has documented 1,342 confirmed instances of “Miranda Echoes”—precisely matching the number of loop iterations. These brief manifestations include aspects of the Perfect Bloody Mary temporarily entering the causal mainstream of reality. These incidents range from unexplainable appearances of authentic Miranda celery salt in sealed containers to rare cases where individuals with no prior mixology training suddenly prepare drinks with unmistakable elements of the lost recipe—each corresponding to a specific loop iteration variant.

These echoes appear to originate from both the original preservation field and from the sample extracted by (name redacted for legal reasons). Each echo represents a momentary intersection of multiple timeline branches, creating what temporal physicists term “probability bubbles” where fragments of erased causality temporarily reenter the main timeline.

Loop Variations

According to the mechanical observer’s logs and witness testimonies, the loop iterations included numerous improbable events that defied conventional explanation:

• Loop 271: The Bibimbap Saloon’s interior reportedly turned inside-out, with gravity reversing so patrons had to cling to the ceiling fixtures.
• Loop 437: A direct confrontation with the Purple Force entity, which manifested physically within the saloon.
• Loop 519: Patrons attempted to dig through the floor with broken bottles, only to discover the material self-repaired.
• Loop 642: Space pirates allegedly breached the saloon, resulting in a choreographed combat sequence.
• Loop 777: The Purple Force entity reportedly helped patrons battle “spider creatures” emerging from the restroom.
• Loop 889: The windows briefly showed the actual Miranda skyline with the changing color of the star going supernova.
• Loop 973: The Bloody Mary manifested as a hovering, color-shifting liquid that projected images of other times and places.
• Loop 1,001: Brief manifestation of other locations on Miranda, allowing patrons a glimpse of the world outside the preservation field.
• Loop 1,224: All patrons simultaneously gained awareness of the loop nature and held a “strategy meeting” to plan their eventual escape.
• Loop 1,342: The final iteration where all elements aligned perfectly—the Perfect Mary achieved quantum resonance, all patrons recognized the Sandwich Thief, and the extraction window opened.

What makes these accounts especially noteworthy is that extracted individuals remember different subsets of these events, with no two memories perfectly aligning. “Old Man 1” recalls combat scenarios that “Old Man 2” has no memory of, while “Old Man 3” insists they attempted to escape through windows that others claim never existed. This “memory divergence” appears to be a natural consequence of the probability field nature of the time loop.

Interdimensional Transit Congestion

As the Volkswagen Beetle temporal vehicle exited Miranda’s atmosphere moments before the planet’s final destruction, it encountered what multiple witnesses described as an “interdimensional traffic jam”—a queue of similar extraction vehicles from across time and space, all waiting for clearance to enter the timestream.

A traffic controller’s voice was recorded informing the vehicle’s occupants: “Estimated wait time for interdimensional transit: three hours, seven minutes, and twelve seconds.” The controller further explained, “Everyone on that planet had some kind of effect on the future timeline,” and referenced a “one-you policy” that apparently governed temporal extraction protocols.

During this delay, the extracted individuals engaged in heated debates about their contradictory memories of the time loop iterations. “Old Man 1” insisted they had fought the Purple Force seventeen times, while “Old Man 2” claimed there had never been any monster, just endless card games. “Old Man 3” maintained they had attempted to escape through windows and doors at least six times. The Sandwich Thief reportedly explained that all their memories were valid—each had experienced different aspects of the 1,342 loops based on their individual psychological needs and temporal significance.

Documented Testimonies

The Old Man’s Tale - A fragmented account from an elderly individual preserved within the Bibimbap Saloon time loop who experienced multiple variations of the same moment, including combat scenarios, reality distortions, and numerous encounters with the Purple Force.

The Sandwich Thief’s Journey - A heavily redacted report of the temporal agent who penetrated all 1,342 iterations of the time loop, deliberately manipulating events in each cycle to gradually achieve the perfect extraction conditions.

The Mechanical Observer - Data logs from the Bibimbap Saloon’s automated service unit, which uniquely retained memories of all 1,342 loop iterations simultaneously, documenting the evolving variations of the Bloody Mary recipe across cycles.

The Last Toast

To this day, bartenders throughout the galaxy observe a moment of silence on the anniversary of Miranda’s destruction. The traditional observance includes pouring 1,342 drops of a Bloody Mary onto the ground—one for each loop iteration—while reciting the words: “For Santiago, for the Bibimbap Saloon, for the perfect Mary we never knew.”

Temporal measurements have detected unusual causal resonance patterns during these synchronized ceremonies—leading some theoretical physicists to speculate that sufficient collective observance might eventually create enough probability density to partially reverse the causal erasure, allowing fragments of the Perfect Mary to re-enter the primary timeline permanently. Meanwhile, the whereabouts of the extracted Perfect Mary sample and the individuals saved from the temporal preservation field remain one of the most closely guarded secrets in the ongoing Transtemporal Singularity Conflict.