Mickey7

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence and death.

Mickey7 describes the discovery and uses of antimatter. Antimatter was discovered long ago on Old Earth, before any of the colonial expeditions. It exists alongside the matter that makes up the universe, but when it interacts with matter, unpredictable reactions can occur. 

Once humans discovered antimatter, they began to use it to wage war. Since antimatter bombs are difficult to create, as the antimatter core needs to remain isolated from normal matter until detonation, scientists invented the magnetic monopole bubble. Mickey7 describes it as “a kind of knot in space-time, with the interior and exterior essentially existing in separate universes” (255). Humans began using magnetic monopole bubbles to create bubble bombs that could create the destruction of a nuclear weapon without the devastating environmental consequences. 

The Bubble War lasted only three weeks, with only about six nations participating, but it left half of Old Earth’s population dead and exhausted their supply of antimatter. Old Earth already had massive environmental problems, with swaths of land becoming uninhabitable as the population became too large for the planet to handle. The Diaspora used antimatter to power the colonist spaceships that left Old Earth to escape the Bubble War.