  The gravitational field of a laser pulse, although not detectable at the
moment, comes with a peculiar feature which continues to attract attention;
cause and effect propagate with the same speed, that of light. A particular
result of this feature is that the gravitational field of an emitted laser
pulse and the gravitational effect of the emitter's energy-momentum change are
intimately entangled. In this article, a specific example of an emission
process is considered - an atom, modeled as a point mass, emits two
counter-propagating pulses. The corresponding curvature and the effect on
massive and massless test particles is discussed. A comparison is made with the
metric corresponding to a spherically symmetric massive object that
isotropically emits radiation - the Vaidya metric.
