All Comments on 'Hartan Expanding Ch. 01'

A very interesting story. Please understand, I confuse easily. On page 2 it seems South Korea developed a mirror and took down one of these cubes. Why wasn't the mirror used on all the other alien machines?

Fascinating start -- looking forward to reading more!

@WantingToWriteGood: Yes, correct, it says South Korea developed a mirror. Several paragraphs down, it goes on: "Regardless, after that first ship, despite building many, many more mirrors, none of them ever worked again...." Hope this clears up confusion, sounds like you just missed a line. i guess I could have put a para break there to emphasize that damnit, it didn't work again, because that's definitely the emotional context!

@ja99: Thanks for taking time to explain the mirrors. I just missed that line even after reviewing the paragraph a couple of times before posting the question. A classic example of how the brain "fills in gaps" when we are not paying attention from the book "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.

Love a good science fiction story. Looking forward to how this one progresses.

About the mirrors. I would assume that the cubes, as automated ships, are in constant communication with each other, so that as soon as one was "taken down", that weakness was addressed and closed for all the others. The only way then for all ships to be taken down is have done it at the same time. Any future attempts to attack them would need to be coordinated to happen at the same time on all ships. Correct?

@Falstaff60, yes, there is a presumption that the downed ship communicated HOW it was taken down because that info was knowable. Not all means of taking down a ship would be obvious to the ship - if the ship didn't know what had caused its own demise, or didn't have an effective defense, it couldn't communicate prevention methods to the other ships.