Post by redsycorax on Apr 19, 2023 4:22:27 GMT
On many alternate Earths where undersea humanoid civilisations exist, there are usually traditions of peaceful co-existence between themselves and surface dwellers. But on Earth-519, its Alliance of Mystery and Science Heroes are forced by circumstance to combat an enemy that they didn't want to fight in the first place...
+++
EARTH-519: On this alternate Earth, history diverged from the datum when President Harry Truman was assassinated by two Puerto Rican separatists in November 1950. The Korean War had begun, at the same time as anti-communist anxieties gripped the West after the emergence of Communist China in 1949 and North Korea's aggression against its southern counterpart as well as insurgencies in Vietnam and Malaysia and concerns about Indonesian President Suharto. On this Earth, Truman's assassination caused events to deviate from what they might have otherwise been; this meant that there was an uprising in East Germany following the execution of several dissidents; that US nuclear weapons were deployed in South Korea as a contingency should North Korea and China threaten to defeat the anti-communist international alliance there; the Peoples Liberation Army decided not to pause its campaign against South Korea as it might have done had Truman still been alive; the Democrat Party did better than expected in Congressional elections, resulting in the defeat of Californian Republican Richard Nixon by incumbent Democrat Senator Helen Gahagan Douglas; and James Roosevelt became Californian Governor; the third nuclear detonation over a city occurred when a USAF B-50 Superfortress jettisoned an armed nuclear device over the Quebec town of Saint-Andre, and two hundred and fifty people were vaporised in instants; a police raid forestalled the formation of what would have become the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights advocacy groups on other Earths; the inexperienced President Alben Barkley was railroaded into a British plan to end the Korean War early through major territorial concessions to the North and its Chinese ally; lacking confidence in the resolve of the United States after the premature end of the First Korean War, France's National Assembly voted to stay in Indochina; and thus, the die was cast for the conclusion of the Second Korean War after only a matter of weeks when North Korea overran the rest of the peninsula. From then on, events spiralled out of control rapidly. The USSR failed to suppress the East German Revolution and Barkley authorised General Douglas MacArthur to use nuclear weapons to blunt the fall of South Korea. Appalled at what had happened, Britain cut off diplomatic relations with the United States in early December 1950. Eastern European unrest spread to Czechoslovakia. Later that month, Barkley declared martial law
For the last seventy three years, then, the Democratic Republic of America has been ruled by a series of authoritarian leaders- Douglas MacArthur, Joseph McCarthy, J.Edgar Hoover, Spiro Agnew, George H. Bush, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump and now Michael Pence. NATO has disintegrated. The USSR couldn't benefit, because it disintegrated after Stalin's death in 1953. The Holy Patriarchal Empire of Russia is just as aggressive, even if restricted to its earlier territory before the end of the Second World War. Shell-shocked by the nuclear immolation of its North Korean ally, China retreated behind a Bamboo Curtain. With no "communist threat", the DRA turned to other 'enemies within.' Its metahumans were the result of a covert genetic engineering programme, resulting in the emergence of the Alliance of Mystery and Science Heroes- crime fighter Brad Hendricks, secretly the two-fisted Ghost; Miracle Man, the sorceror; Spirit Man, the savant and technocore of the AMSH; and Venus, the current member of the Greek Pantheon assigned to safeguard Earth at this troubled time.
And then, in late April 2023, the DRA Navy discovered the existence of the lost continent of Atlantis...
++++
AMSH HEADQUARTERS, ROCKY MOUNTAINS:
"No!"
"Come on Brad, be reasonable."
"Isn't it bad enough that the Chancellor has us acting like his lapdogs? Honestly, we discover a hitherto new species of humanity and our initial reaction is one of fear and suspicion. So we launch an unprovoked attack on them, do we? Venus, talk some sense into these guys, because I don't think I can anymore!" As the Ghost stalked out, Miracle Man and Spirit Man looked after him:
"Damn it. We need to present a united front so we can do something to mitigate this."
"Do you really think that can be done, Zon?" Spirit Man asked his colleague.
"I'd rather not respond to that." Miracle Man said, thankful that his technosavant colleague didn't possess his telepathic abilities.
"Or do you think I'm only interested in the technological and industrial possibilities too?" Spirit Man sighed, looking away.
"No, Mal, I don't. I've known you for fifteen years. But I do wish you and Brad would resolve your rivalries."
"Don't you think I do? He was never like this before his wife died. Since then, he's become cold, distant, a lone wolf. And he's skating near the edge when it comes to his crimefighting ethics. He's hospitalised at least three of his old adversaries. How long is it before he goes too far and kills someone? Before we have to bring him in?"
"I wish I still had the ability to tell our futures, but there's a grey pall whenever I try to use long-term precognition now. Venus?"
The ancient Greek deity of love looked up from her vortex:
"I'm afraid I have some additional bad news. It's about the Atlanteans. They're under the protection of Posiedon and he won't respond kindly to any infringement of their traditional rights and responsibilities."
"But the Gods never interfere in human affairs, apart from Centurion assignments like yours at the moment, Vee."
"I fear that our friend Bradley is right. This time, our Alliance must stand against our government, for it bodes ill and ominous. I remember only too well the Trojan War and its consequences, millennia past. This conflict would be on a scale that dwarfs that."
ATLANTIS:
In Poseidonis, the capital of the Atlantean monarchy, King Arturys sat on his throne, looking pensively at the display on his viewscreen. He didn't want war, but the question, would the surface world let Atlantis exist in peace and solitude? Already, there was talk of a "Perry Doctrine" of DRA hegemony over the oceans and seas, which his own radical element would find intolerable. No one could win such a war. It would end with poisoned seas and an apocalyptic environmental cascade that would wreck the Earth's biosphere. But his hands were tied. As much as he was respected within his domain, Atlantis was still a constitutional monarchy and bound by a legislature and judiciary. Perhaps that explained why he got on better with the European heads of state- their nations were very much like a land dweller version of his own. And then, a ball of viridian and emerald energies formed in the midst of his throneroom. He thought about calling in the guards, but then realised whom this must be- one of the Alliance of Mystery and Science Heroes. These people didn't seem as hostile to the Atlantean cause as the current DRA Chancellor and their cronies, sycophants and adherents amongst the general population:
"I believe your name is Miracle Man, is it not?"
"I am relieved to hear that you are acquainted with our organisation. We stand for justice and morality. We do not support the current warmongering of our nation's leadership. Unfortunately, unlike Atlantis, the Democratic Republic is a dictatorship, governed by a tyrant and his secret police and armies."
"And I am gratified to learn that your nation is not unequivocally and unilaterally on side with the bellicose rhetoric emanating from the White Palace."
"It used to be the White House, just as Potomac used to be known as Washington. The DRA is a brutal regime which is determined to erase and reiterate the past in its own image. It seethes with unrest at its corruption and tyranny."
"If you believe that, then why do you still serve it?"
"To mitigate its worst effects and to protect the weak and innocent. We are not passive instruments of the regime's foreign policy adventurism. We have never participated in overseas assaults or attempted invasions, nor will we ever do so."
"And overthrow it?"
"We are not unanimous in that. In any case, the regime has its own super-humans."
"And yet it has been implicated in killing several of your number beforehand..."
AMSH HEADQUARTERS:
There is a time and place for everything, observed a wise person once. And thus it was the case that Earth-519 abruptly ran out of time, despite the efforts of the Alliance of Mystery and Science Heroes to broker a peace between the Democratic Republic of America and Atlantis. In an instant, Chancellor Pence succumbed to fear and panic and initiated a full thermonuclear strike on the submerged continent. It would have devastated it if it had not been for the advanced civilisation's forcescreen technology and its own aggressive instincts. Instead, the fury destroyed its oceanic surroundings and then, the backwash hit the Democratic Republic of America itself. It scorched Potomac and a bewildered Chancellor Pence from existence, and then the valiant members of the Alliance of Mystery and Science Heroes before they could do anything to forestall or prevent it. And the face of Lucifer curled above the firestorm that swept the Democratic Republic of America and was seen to laugh.
The Ghost, Miracle Man and Spirit Man were obliterated instantaneously. Venus was spared because of her divinity, but looked sadly down at the lifeless expanse below her. She wiped a tear in memory of her dead colleagues, closed her eyes and ascended back to Olympus' dimensional redoubt. She had not been able to tell them what would ensue, for on Earth-519, the laws of destiny and causality are cast iron and rigidly determinist. Although the rest of the world was spared immediate destruction, the electromagnetic pulse and atmospheric damage meant that it was only a matter of time until they also succumbed to the ominous grey basalt clouds of nuclear winter that now threatened. Atlantis held fast and due to its mastery of advanced technology, it shifted between alternate universes, leaving its natal Earth to its screams, mortal tragedy and then, eternal silence.
King Arturys would never be called "Aquaman" on his world of origin. That would imply a commonality and unity of purpose and reason that was no longer possible on Earth-519. And in the end, that impossibility of resolution ultimately destroyed it.
THE END [3.55 PM, APRIL 28, 2023]
+++
EARTH-519: On this alternate Earth, history diverged from the datum when President Harry Truman was assassinated by two Puerto Rican separatists in November 1950. The Korean War had begun, at the same time as anti-communist anxieties gripped the West after the emergence of Communist China in 1949 and North Korea's aggression against its southern counterpart as well as insurgencies in Vietnam and Malaysia and concerns about Indonesian President Suharto. On this Earth, Truman's assassination caused events to deviate from what they might have otherwise been; this meant that there was an uprising in East Germany following the execution of several dissidents; that US nuclear weapons were deployed in South Korea as a contingency should North Korea and China threaten to defeat the anti-communist international alliance there; the Peoples Liberation Army decided not to pause its campaign against South Korea as it might have done had Truman still been alive; the Democrat Party did better than expected in Congressional elections, resulting in the defeat of Californian Republican Richard Nixon by incumbent Democrat Senator Helen Gahagan Douglas; and James Roosevelt became Californian Governor; the third nuclear detonation over a city occurred when a USAF B-50 Superfortress jettisoned an armed nuclear device over the Quebec town of Saint-Andre, and two hundred and fifty people were vaporised in instants; a police raid forestalled the formation of what would have become the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights advocacy groups on other Earths; the inexperienced President Alben Barkley was railroaded into a British plan to end the Korean War early through major territorial concessions to the North and its Chinese ally; lacking confidence in the resolve of the United States after the premature end of the First Korean War, France's National Assembly voted to stay in Indochina; and thus, the die was cast for the conclusion of the Second Korean War after only a matter of weeks when North Korea overran the rest of the peninsula. From then on, events spiralled out of control rapidly. The USSR failed to suppress the East German Revolution and Barkley authorised General Douglas MacArthur to use nuclear weapons to blunt the fall of South Korea. Appalled at what had happened, Britain cut off diplomatic relations with the United States in early December 1950. Eastern European unrest spread to Czechoslovakia. Later that month, Barkley declared martial law
For the last seventy three years, then, the Democratic Republic of America has been ruled by a series of authoritarian leaders- Douglas MacArthur, Joseph McCarthy, J.Edgar Hoover, Spiro Agnew, George H. Bush, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump and now Michael Pence. NATO has disintegrated. The USSR couldn't benefit, because it disintegrated after Stalin's death in 1953. The Holy Patriarchal Empire of Russia is just as aggressive, even if restricted to its earlier territory before the end of the Second World War. Shell-shocked by the nuclear immolation of its North Korean ally, China retreated behind a Bamboo Curtain. With no "communist threat", the DRA turned to other 'enemies within.' Its metahumans were the result of a covert genetic engineering programme, resulting in the emergence of the Alliance of Mystery and Science Heroes- crime fighter Brad Hendricks, secretly the two-fisted Ghost; Miracle Man, the sorceror; Spirit Man, the savant and technocore of the AMSH; and Venus, the current member of the Greek Pantheon assigned to safeguard Earth at this troubled time.
And then, in late April 2023, the DRA Navy discovered the existence of the lost continent of Atlantis...
++++
AMSH HEADQUARTERS, ROCKY MOUNTAINS:
"No!"
"Come on Brad, be reasonable."
"Isn't it bad enough that the Chancellor has us acting like his lapdogs? Honestly, we discover a hitherto new species of humanity and our initial reaction is one of fear and suspicion. So we launch an unprovoked attack on them, do we? Venus, talk some sense into these guys, because I don't think I can anymore!" As the Ghost stalked out, Miracle Man and Spirit Man looked after him:
"Damn it. We need to present a united front so we can do something to mitigate this."
"Do you really think that can be done, Zon?" Spirit Man asked his colleague.
"I'd rather not respond to that." Miracle Man said, thankful that his technosavant colleague didn't possess his telepathic abilities.
"Or do you think I'm only interested in the technological and industrial possibilities too?" Spirit Man sighed, looking away.
"No, Mal, I don't. I've known you for fifteen years. But I do wish you and Brad would resolve your rivalries."
"Don't you think I do? He was never like this before his wife died. Since then, he's become cold, distant, a lone wolf. And he's skating near the edge when it comes to his crimefighting ethics. He's hospitalised at least three of his old adversaries. How long is it before he goes too far and kills someone? Before we have to bring him in?"
"I wish I still had the ability to tell our futures, but there's a grey pall whenever I try to use long-term precognition now. Venus?"
The ancient Greek deity of love looked up from her vortex:
"I'm afraid I have some additional bad news. It's about the Atlanteans. They're under the protection of Posiedon and he won't respond kindly to any infringement of their traditional rights and responsibilities."
"But the Gods never interfere in human affairs, apart from Centurion assignments like yours at the moment, Vee."
"I fear that our friend Bradley is right. This time, our Alliance must stand against our government, for it bodes ill and ominous. I remember only too well the Trojan War and its consequences, millennia past. This conflict would be on a scale that dwarfs that."
ATLANTIS:
In Poseidonis, the capital of the Atlantean monarchy, King Arturys sat on his throne, looking pensively at the display on his viewscreen. He didn't want war, but the question, would the surface world let Atlantis exist in peace and solitude? Already, there was talk of a "Perry Doctrine" of DRA hegemony over the oceans and seas, which his own radical element would find intolerable. No one could win such a war. It would end with poisoned seas and an apocalyptic environmental cascade that would wreck the Earth's biosphere. But his hands were tied. As much as he was respected within his domain, Atlantis was still a constitutional monarchy and bound by a legislature and judiciary. Perhaps that explained why he got on better with the European heads of state- their nations were very much like a land dweller version of his own. And then, a ball of viridian and emerald energies formed in the midst of his throneroom. He thought about calling in the guards, but then realised whom this must be- one of the Alliance of Mystery and Science Heroes. These people didn't seem as hostile to the Atlantean cause as the current DRA Chancellor and their cronies, sycophants and adherents amongst the general population:
"I believe your name is Miracle Man, is it not?"
"I am relieved to hear that you are acquainted with our organisation. We stand for justice and morality. We do not support the current warmongering of our nation's leadership. Unfortunately, unlike Atlantis, the Democratic Republic is a dictatorship, governed by a tyrant and his secret police and armies."
"And I am gratified to learn that your nation is not unequivocally and unilaterally on side with the bellicose rhetoric emanating from the White Palace."
"It used to be the White House, just as Potomac used to be known as Washington. The DRA is a brutal regime which is determined to erase and reiterate the past in its own image. It seethes with unrest at its corruption and tyranny."
"If you believe that, then why do you still serve it?"
"To mitigate its worst effects and to protect the weak and innocent. We are not passive instruments of the regime's foreign policy adventurism. We have never participated in overseas assaults or attempted invasions, nor will we ever do so."
"And overthrow it?"
"We are not unanimous in that. In any case, the regime has its own super-humans."
"And yet it has been implicated in killing several of your number beforehand..."
AMSH HEADQUARTERS:
There is a time and place for everything, observed a wise person once. And thus it was the case that Earth-519 abruptly ran out of time, despite the efforts of the Alliance of Mystery and Science Heroes to broker a peace between the Democratic Republic of America and Atlantis. In an instant, Chancellor Pence succumbed to fear and panic and initiated a full thermonuclear strike on the submerged continent. It would have devastated it if it had not been for the advanced civilisation's forcescreen technology and its own aggressive instincts. Instead, the fury destroyed its oceanic surroundings and then, the backwash hit the Democratic Republic of America itself. It scorched Potomac and a bewildered Chancellor Pence from existence, and then the valiant members of the Alliance of Mystery and Science Heroes before they could do anything to forestall or prevent it. And the face of Lucifer curled above the firestorm that swept the Democratic Republic of America and was seen to laugh.
The Ghost, Miracle Man and Spirit Man were obliterated instantaneously. Venus was spared because of her divinity, but looked sadly down at the lifeless expanse below her. She wiped a tear in memory of her dead colleagues, closed her eyes and ascended back to Olympus' dimensional redoubt. She had not been able to tell them what would ensue, for on Earth-519, the laws of destiny and causality are cast iron and rigidly determinist. Although the rest of the world was spared immediate destruction, the electromagnetic pulse and atmospheric damage meant that it was only a matter of time until they also succumbed to the ominous grey basalt clouds of nuclear winter that now threatened. Atlantis held fast and due to its mastery of advanced technology, it shifted between alternate universes, leaving its natal Earth to its screams, mortal tragedy and then, eternal silence.
King Arturys would never be called "Aquaman" on his world of origin. That would imply a commonality and unity of purpose and reason that was no longer possible on Earth-519. And in the end, that impossibility of resolution ultimately destroyed it.
THE END [3.55 PM, APRIL 28, 2023]