Post by redsycorax on Jun 27, 2023 4:50:43 GMT
In the 28th Century, immortal Adeline Kane fell deeply in love with a man who she was fated to lose twice, two centuries apart. Why could she do nothing to save him from awaited him? And what were the costs of doing so?
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METROPOLIS: AUGUST 2775 CE:
Adeline Kane dipped her foot in a pool of receded lakewater from Metropolis Bay, pulling her NorAm army issue envirojacket around her as she looked into the sky above her. There was a lump in her throat. She should have been celebrating. World War VI was over and the Icelandic Alliance had won against its mortal opponents in Manila. Instead, she felt dead inside and numb. It wasn't as if she hadn't been through this grieving process before, with her children, with friends over the last eight centuries and sometimes, with lovers, like...
Michael. Michael Essad. Although she'd known from Superboy's record of events two centuries in the future what would happen, she was bound by temporal integrity not to interfere with it, even though it would mean his death as he sacrificed himself by throwing himself on a gamma grenade to protect his sisters and brothers in arms from an SA ambush. And so, she had done so, just as she had time and time before, like a warped groove on an antique twentieth century vinyl record. She wondered if Mike would know what she was thinking about. He'd been a factory worker before the current Filipino secessionists in the Supreme Alliance had declared war on the global capital in Reykjavik and its allies, supporters of the United Planets, cutting Earth off from interstellar civilisation. And not for the first time, she remembered other wars- Vietnam, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Brazil, Antarctica, Tycho and Clavius, Nix Olympica, Coprates, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Enceladus, Triton, Pluto, Eris, Sedna, and now back on Earth again. Why was it that on every world in the solar system that humanity had colonised, there was blood in the imprint of a human boot, even if it bubbled and boiled away in the near-vacuum or superchilled surface of planets, satellites and asteroids?
No. No, she was better than this. As with her other lost friends across the gulf of time, she'd get drunk and cry herself to sleep. And she'd have to do this again, next century, only this time it would be Kristin Wells, Jimmy Olsen's final descendant, because the induced technologically assisted metahuman powers that she would induce within herself to serve as a twentieth century "Superwoman" would kill her long before her time in an era where the average human lifespan was two centuries in duration. And after that, she would have to remember to avoid the remnants of Smallville two centuries from now, because of what would happen in 2975, when Lightning Lad's stray bolt would inadvertantly revive Mike and turn him into a barely conscious anti-energy revenant. And he would go on to immobilise Superboy with that anti-energy, beyond even the Kryptonian's abilities to withstand, and stab Phantom Girl with an immaterial anti-energy dagger. Although Chameleon Boy would save her, it would take Brainiac 5's intellect to work out the gamma grenade had inadvertently fused with Mike Essad's force screen to turn him into an anti-energy reservoir. And so, the die would be cast. Because Mike lacked cognitive acuity, he wouldn't be aware of the subterfuge that would be devised to thwart him. Mike would confront the grim spectacle of a burning, ruined Metropolis and architecture from his native twenty eighth century as well as a simulacrum of his corps sargeant, who congratulated him on a task well done, given that the Icelandic Alliance and its allies now controlled Metropolis and had taken it from the Supremos. And thus, for one final time, Private Michael Essad would stand at attention, believing his task completed. A single tear would trickle down his face and then, he would finally succumb to mortality. As she clicked off her personal mnemoniser, Adeline caught sight of Mike's grave.
And then, she could stand no more of her painful foreknowledge of the second death of a good man and collapsed on Mike Essad's grave, weeping.
EPILOGUE: AUGUST 2975 CE:
After Brainiac 5, Chameleon Boy, Phantom Girl, Superboy and Princess Projectra had left the scene, an aircar dropped from the skies above. Tenderly, Adeline Kane took the body of her dead lover in a radiation sheaf, which she didn't really need, but which would avoid difficult questions from onlookers. She placed him in an inertron casket and took him into the wilderness, and then laid him to rest in a tomb that had awaited him for several decades. He had deserved more than a cursory mound of dirt with his holographier 'dogtags' draped over the ephemeral marker and even if she could not restore him to full sentience and consciousness, or interfere with the sequence of events that were a fixed event in time, she could do this for him. And again, not for the first time, she stared balefully at the holographier image of the long-vanished Supreme Alliance Commander Slaad Wilsyan- the "Butcher of Madagascar", the man she hated more than anything else in the world right now, the one who had coldly and callously ordered the futile defense of Metropolis in 2775 CE, even though he knew the Supreme Alliance was losing the war and could not hold it. And probably also knew that there would be one man that she could not save, no matter how much her heart ached to do so.
Slade Wilson. Her fellow immortal. Her former husband.
Her mortal nemesis. One day, she swore to return here, having avenged Mike's initial sacrifice and his second and permanent demise two centuries later. Because before then, despite his life of centuries or millennia, Slade Wilson would be dead, at the hands of the immortal woman who had loved a "mayfly" mortal, insignificant to him. But not to her. Never to her, for as long as she lived.
THE END [4.45 PM , JUNE 27, 2023]
Source: Jim Shooter: "Soljer's Private War" Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes 210 (August 1975): legionofsuperbloggers.blogspot.com/2015/03/superboy-starring-legion-210.html
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METROPOLIS: AUGUST 2775 CE:
Adeline Kane dipped her foot in a pool of receded lakewater from Metropolis Bay, pulling her NorAm army issue envirojacket around her as she looked into the sky above her. There was a lump in her throat. She should have been celebrating. World War VI was over and the Icelandic Alliance had won against its mortal opponents in Manila. Instead, she felt dead inside and numb. It wasn't as if she hadn't been through this grieving process before, with her children, with friends over the last eight centuries and sometimes, with lovers, like...
Michael. Michael Essad. Although she'd known from Superboy's record of events two centuries in the future what would happen, she was bound by temporal integrity not to interfere with it, even though it would mean his death as he sacrificed himself by throwing himself on a gamma grenade to protect his sisters and brothers in arms from an SA ambush. And so, she had done so, just as she had time and time before, like a warped groove on an antique twentieth century vinyl record. She wondered if Mike would know what she was thinking about. He'd been a factory worker before the current Filipino secessionists in the Supreme Alliance had declared war on the global capital in Reykjavik and its allies, supporters of the United Planets, cutting Earth off from interstellar civilisation. And not for the first time, she remembered other wars- Vietnam, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Brazil, Antarctica, Tycho and Clavius, Nix Olympica, Coprates, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Enceladus, Triton, Pluto, Eris, Sedna, and now back on Earth again. Why was it that on every world in the solar system that humanity had colonised, there was blood in the imprint of a human boot, even if it bubbled and boiled away in the near-vacuum or superchilled surface of planets, satellites and asteroids?
No. No, she was better than this. As with her other lost friends across the gulf of time, she'd get drunk and cry herself to sleep. And she'd have to do this again, next century, only this time it would be Kristin Wells, Jimmy Olsen's final descendant, because the induced technologically assisted metahuman powers that she would induce within herself to serve as a twentieth century "Superwoman" would kill her long before her time in an era where the average human lifespan was two centuries in duration. And after that, she would have to remember to avoid the remnants of Smallville two centuries from now, because of what would happen in 2975, when Lightning Lad's stray bolt would inadvertantly revive Mike and turn him into a barely conscious anti-energy revenant. And he would go on to immobilise Superboy with that anti-energy, beyond even the Kryptonian's abilities to withstand, and stab Phantom Girl with an immaterial anti-energy dagger. Although Chameleon Boy would save her, it would take Brainiac 5's intellect to work out the gamma grenade had inadvertently fused with Mike Essad's force screen to turn him into an anti-energy reservoir. And so, the die would be cast. Because Mike lacked cognitive acuity, he wouldn't be aware of the subterfuge that would be devised to thwart him. Mike would confront the grim spectacle of a burning, ruined Metropolis and architecture from his native twenty eighth century as well as a simulacrum of his corps sargeant, who congratulated him on a task well done, given that the Icelandic Alliance and its allies now controlled Metropolis and had taken it from the Supremos. And thus, for one final time, Private Michael Essad would stand at attention, believing his task completed. A single tear would trickle down his face and then, he would finally succumb to mortality. As she clicked off her personal mnemoniser, Adeline caught sight of Mike's grave.
And then, she could stand no more of her painful foreknowledge of the second death of a good man and collapsed on Mike Essad's grave, weeping.
EPILOGUE: AUGUST 2975 CE:
After Brainiac 5, Chameleon Boy, Phantom Girl, Superboy and Princess Projectra had left the scene, an aircar dropped from the skies above. Tenderly, Adeline Kane took the body of her dead lover in a radiation sheaf, which she didn't really need, but which would avoid difficult questions from onlookers. She placed him in an inertron casket and took him into the wilderness, and then laid him to rest in a tomb that had awaited him for several decades. He had deserved more than a cursory mound of dirt with his holographier 'dogtags' draped over the ephemeral marker and even if she could not restore him to full sentience and consciousness, or interfere with the sequence of events that were a fixed event in time, she could do this for him. And again, not for the first time, she stared balefully at the holographier image of the long-vanished Supreme Alliance Commander Slaad Wilsyan- the "Butcher of Madagascar", the man she hated more than anything else in the world right now, the one who had coldly and callously ordered the futile defense of Metropolis in 2775 CE, even though he knew the Supreme Alliance was losing the war and could not hold it. And probably also knew that there would be one man that she could not save, no matter how much her heart ached to do so.
Slade Wilson. Her fellow immortal. Her former husband.
Her mortal nemesis. One day, she swore to return here, having avenged Mike's initial sacrifice and his second and permanent demise two centuries later. Because before then, despite his life of centuries or millennia, Slade Wilson would be dead, at the hands of the immortal woman who had loved a "mayfly" mortal, insignificant to him. But not to her. Never to her, for as long as she lived.
THE END [4.45 PM , JUNE 27, 2023]
Source: Jim Shooter: "Soljer's Private War" Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes 210 (August 1975): legionofsuperbloggers.blogspot.com/2015/03/superboy-starring-legion-210.html