Post by redsycorax on Feb 21, 2022 22:49:21 GMT
Queen Persephone of the Greek underworld appears to be the tutelary goddess of death in Earth-109's universe, where the Cuban missile crisis went wrong and a devastating nuclear war engulfed much of Europe, the United States, Soviet Union and East Asia on October 28, 1962. However, what was the arrival of armageddon like for others, baseline humans unlike the heroes of the Justice Guild of America, Young Justice Guild and their allies across the world?
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OCTOBER 28, 1962: DALEY PARK:
Mary Travis had been glad to take her daughter out of her Chicago apartment for a couple of hours on Sunday, October 28, 1962. It was morning, the birds were singing and despite the tense situation in the Carribean off Cuba, there was no point sitting at home, stewing in her anxieties about her husband Martin, who was serving as a naval officer down there at the moment. Watching Sally sing and play, oblivious to adult cares and woes, was worth it. The little girl was completely oblivious to the anxieties that preoccupied her mother on this autumn day and which had led to teary exchanges with her distant husband when he was allowed to radiotelephone her from shore, shortly before he embarked.
Mary kept telling herself nothing would go wrong and that surely Kennedy and Khrushchev would both realise the dangerous path that they were embarked upon before anything really serious happened. Ironically, her alternate iterations were right about this and after several hours of energetic play and delicious warm hot dogs and cokes on a pleasant autumn day, about fifty eight to sixty two fahrenheit, Mary and Sally Travis headed home. Several hundred miles to the southeast, matters resolved themselves tidily enough and Major Martin Travis returned home to a happy reunion with his wife and daughter (which was "happy" enough to insure that little Sally welcomed a baby brother, Kevin, into the world about nine months later!)
But sadly, this wasn't that sort of relatively kinder, gentler world. In the Carribean, off Cuba, wrong decisions were made and events spiralled rapidly out of control. It began when a nuclear-tipped Soviet torpedo destroyed two US Navy vessels and escalated from there. Soon, missiles were arcing across the skies and obliterating cities on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific. For some reason, there was a malfunction in Chicago's early warning siren system, so it was not until the Soviet ICBM launched from a submarine off the New England coast was well on its way and had evaded anti-ballistic missile defences that it sounded. And by then, it was much too late. When it finally did, Mary's head jerked up, scarcely believing what she was hearing. Sally was puzzled at why her mother was calling for her to leave the playground equipment and why she seemed so scared.
Mary Travis never had time to reach her toddler daughter, nor did Sally even have time to reach the bottom of the slide. At that instant, a three-kiloton nuclear payload detonated three hundred feet directly above them. If nuclear war can be said to have any perverse 'blessings', it is that those directly underneath an airburst as they and other families were that day would have been vaporised within a microsecond of the detonation, in a far shorter interval than a 'pain' impulse takes to register from neuron to synapse within the human brain. Mary and Sally simply and abruptly ceased to exist, as did the other families within that playground, as flesh and hair and muscle and human organs and bone first combusted then evaporated and atomised under millions of degrees heat as Chicago joined countless other United States eastern coastal cities that day.
So why was it, then, that, Mary blinked and that Sally reached the bottom of the slide as her mother ran up to her? Why were so many other parents grabbing their children off slides, roundabouts, jungle gyms, swings and other playground equipment, and why had the air raid warning siren suddenly stopped? And then Mary saw it, impossibly suspended high above them. It was almost as if time had stopped, she thought to herself, but that was impossible. She was also aware of another presence- an elegantly dressed woman in her forties who stood by a limousine:
"Hello, all of you. I've come to take you away from here."
"That lady is so pretty. Is she a fashion model, Mommy?" Sally asked as the woman walked over to them.
"I'm flattered, Sally. Have you had a nice day today? I'm sorry it had to end this way."
Mary was still gazing up at the impossibly suspended missile:
"Wait a minute. I think I've just worked this out. We're all dead, aren't we? That missile suspended above us has already gone off."
The elegantly dressed woman nodded: "Yes, my dear, I am afraid it has. I'm sorry. You and your family deserved a long happy life, with another child and then retirement to upper New England forty years from now. Never mind. Soon, you will see your husband again. And this time, you will never be parted from him."
"Mommy, is this lady an angel?"
"No, Sally, sweetheart. I'm a queen. Queen Persephone."
And then Mary remembered her classical civilisation course at university and the frescos that depicted this woman- or rather, this goddess in human form.
Sally curtsied: "Your Majesty."
Queen Persephone clapped her hands in delight: "Oh, what a beautiful little girl Sally is and with such wonderful manners, too! You and Martin must be so proud of her, Mary."
"Your Majesty...if that bomb has already gone off, then why are we still here?"
"Because the time has come for all of you to join me in Elysium, where the virtuous dead go. And all children, of course, and their families. Would you both like to take my hand?"
Around them, the imminently doomed city of Chicago, Illinois, disappeared quietly as she spoke, left to its immolation behind them. And then, hand in hand, as she, an omnipresent goddess, was indeed doing universally across the fiery remnants of the United States, the Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, Eastern Asia and elsewhere, in many languages, comforting many lost and bewildered families and children, holding some in her arms, cradling countless infants who would never have a chance to grow up and showing other signs of care and compassion, Queen Persephone escorted them all to the beauty of Elysium. As they entered the emerald city whose jewelled spires soared above them, Mary saw Martin waiting for her and her daughter and ran toward him. And there were many such reunions that day, for Queen Persephone was not only a goddess of death, but also a goddess of mercy and compassion.
THE END
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OCTOBER 28, 1962: DALEY PARK:
Mary Travis had been glad to take her daughter out of her Chicago apartment for a couple of hours on Sunday, October 28, 1962. It was morning, the birds were singing and despite the tense situation in the Carribean off Cuba, there was no point sitting at home, stewing in her anxieties about her husband Martin, who was serving as a naval officer down there at the moment. Watching Sally sing and play, oblivious to adult cares and woes, was worth it. The little girl was completely oblivious to the anxieties that preoccupied her mother on this autumn day and which had led to teary exchanges with her distant husband when he was allowed to radiotelephone her from shore, shortly before he embarked.
Mary kept telling herself nothing would go wrong and that surely Kennedy and Khrushchev would both realise the dangerous path that they were embarked upon before anything really serious happened. Ironically, her alternate iterations were right about this and after several hours of energetic play and delicious warm hot dogs and cokes on a pleasant autumn day, about fifty eight to sixty two fahrenheit, Mary and Sally Travis headed home. Several hundred miles to the southeast, matters resolved themselves tidily enough and Major Martin Travis returned home to a happy reunion with his wife and daughter (which was "happy" enough to insure that little Sally welcomed a baby brother, Kevin, into the world about nine months later!)
But sadly, this wasn't that sort of relatively kinder, gentler world. In the Carribean, off Cuba, wrong decisions were made and events spiralled rapidly out of control. It began when a nuclear-tipped Soviet torpedo destroyed two US Navy vessels and escalated from there. Soon, missiles were arcing across the skies and obliterating cities on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific. For some reason, there was a malfunction in Chicago's early warning siren system, so it was not until the Soviet ICBM launched from a submarine off the New England coast was well on its way and had evaded anti-ballistic missile defences that it sounded. And by then, it was much too late. When it finally did, Mary's head jerked up, scarcely believing what she was hearing. Sally was puzzled at why her mother was calling for her to leave the playground equipment and why she seemed so scared.
Mary Travis never had time to reach her toddler daughter, nor did Sally even have time to reach the bottom of the slide. At that instant, a three-kiloton nuclear payload detonated three hundred feet directly above them. If nuclear war can be said to have any perverse 'blessings', it is that those directly underneath an airburst as they and other families were that day would have been vaporised within a microsecond of the detonation, in a far shorter interval than a 'pain' impulse takes to register from neuron to synapse within the human brain. Mary and Sally simply and abruptly ceased to exist, as did the other families within that playground, as flesh and hair and muscle and human organs and bone first combusted then evaporated and atomised under millions of degrees heat as Chicago joined countless other United States eastern coastal cities that day.
So why was it, then, that, Mary blinked and that Sally reached the bottom of the slide as her mother ran up to her? Why were so many other parents grabbing their children off slides, roundabouts, jungle gyms, swings and other playground equipment, and why had the air raid warning siren suddenly stopped? And then Mary saw it, impossibly suspended high above them. It was almost as if time had stopped, she thought to herself, but that was impossible. She was also aware of another presence- an elegantly dressed woman in her forties who stood by a limousine:
"Hello, all of you. I've come to take you away from here."
"That lady is so pretty. Is she a fashion model, Mommy?" Sally asked as the woman walked over to them.
"I'm flattered, Sally. Have you had a nice day today? I'm sorry it had to end this way."
Mary was still gazing up at the impossibly suspended missile:
"Wait a minute. I think I've just worked this out. We're all dead, aren't we? That missile suspended above us has already gone off."
The elegantly dressed woman nodded: "Yes, my dear, I am afraid it has. I'm sorry. You and your family deserved a long happy life, with another child and then retirement to upper New England forty years from now. Never mind. Soon, you will see your husband again. And this time, you will never be parted from him."
"Mommy, is this lady an angel?"
"No, Sally, sweetheart. I'm a queen. Queen Persephone."
And then Mary remembered her classical civilisation course at university and the frescos that depicted this woman- or rather, this goddess in human form.
Sally curtsied: "Your Majesty."
Queen Persephone clapped her hands in delight: "Oh, what a beautiful little girl Sally is and with such wonderful manners, too! You and Martin must be so proud of her, Mary."
"Your Majesty...if that bomb has already gone off, then why are we still here?"
"Because the time has come for all of you to join me in Elysium, where the virtuous dead go. And all children, of course, and their families. Would you both like to take my hand?"
Around them, the imminently doomed city of Chicago, Illinois, disappeared quietly as she spoke, left to its immolation behind them. And then, hand in hand, as she, an omnipresent goddess, was indeed doing universally across the fiery remnants of the United States, the Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, Eastern Asia and elsewhere, in many languages, comforting many lost and bewildered families and children, holding some in her arms, cradling countless infants who would never have a chance to grow up and showing other signs of care and compassion, Queen Persephone escorted them all to the beauty of Elysium. As they entered the emerald city whose jewelled spires soared above them, Mary saw Martin waiting for her and her daughter and ran toward him. And there were many such reunions that day, for Queen Persephone was not only a goddess of death, but also a goddess of mercy and compassion.
THE END