Post by redsycorax on Jun 15, 2021 0:36:46 GMT
On Earth-1984, every word written by forties political author George Orwell in his classical novel 1984 was historical truth. In its fifties, US President MacArthur precipitated a devastating nuclear war that destroyed much of the United States, Western Europe, Eastern Asia and Soviet Union, although the paranoia of the dying Stalin in the fastness of the Kremlin was also a contributing factor. Half of that Earth's population died and venerable social institutions were destroyed. Amidst the horror, carnage, anarchy and starvation, ruthless totalitarian regimes arose. The Communist parties of the former Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China still survived to a considerable extent, but with so much else destroyed there, the people of the former United States and British Commonwealth adopted its own version of Stalinist communism, Ingsoc ("English Socialism"). The three superstates were ruled by charismatic, brutal totalitarian leaders who frustrated science and critical inquiry and kept the world in a state of stasis, centred on the pursuit of a 'permanent war' in Eastern Africa and Western Asia and bewildering realignments with one another against a third adversary. History and memory were constantly re-edited to fit with the rapid changes of policy, especially within the mass media.
This is not the story of Airstrip One's Winston Smith and his quixotic, individualist personal revolt against the Ingsoc regime told by Orwell. Shortly after the conclusion of its Third World War, an alien spacecraft landed in Division Southcentral, the former state of Kansas. The Kents, a rural couple, kept the Kryptonian infant that they found swaddled in invulnerable clothing within the starship, which had traversed nearly twenty light years to its destination. At that stage of the regime's development, there were none of the pervasive CCTV cameras that later pervaded and disciplined life within Oceania and Clark Kent managed to develop an early awareness of the dangers that would ensue if his actual alien heritage were ever disclosed. However, given its all=pervading nature, the Ingsoc regime did become aware. It was also aware of the "People's Heroine" Stakhanova of Eurasia, which had overthrown the ancient Greek themed constitutional monarchy of Hippolyta and replaced it with a sororal communist state. Eastasia also had its own "people's heroine", Guangming Shizhe, a superscientist capable of controlling light itself. Of course, there were rumours that either Oceania or Eurasia (or both) had shared hard light technology with Eastasia to help enable the emergence of Guangming Shizhe and that it had also disclosed the secret location of fabled Themiscyra to Eurasia, enabling it to invade and subdue the island, raise and indoctrinate Stakhanova to serve as a match for the exploits of Steelman, in defence of the Ingsoc Way ("truth' and 'justice' were concepts in transition).
+++
METROPOLIS No. 38:
The clocks struck thirteen and Clark Kent ID 38SV9 did a quiet telescopic vision sweep of the surrounding cityscape of Metropolis No. 38. It was easier having Big Brother knowledgeable about his secret identity, he reflected, and probably safer for him. The Eternal Stalemate continued on- Stakhanova's weaponry was magical in origin and could harm him, and Guangming Shizhe could produce red sun radiation, so either Eurasia or Eastasia could match him. There was no chance of deploying any of them in battle, and the hierarchies of Ingsoc, Neo-Bolshevism and Obliteration of the Self in the three superstates didn't want to challenge each others dominance, as the Perpetual War suited all of them. Thus, Steelman was restricted largely to dealing with natural disasters and industrial accidents, and was acclaimed for that purpose. He turned a blind eye to the regime's other activities, primarily because the existence of kryptonite had been monopolised by Ingsoc's ruling party for the last twenty five years, since his arrival on Earth. In return, the Ingsoc Party did not harm his foster mother, Martha Kent 18SV9, and had even enabled Jonathon Kent 16SV9 to receive life-prolonging medical treatment, before radiation-induced cancer had claimed him five years ago. And then there were the others- Lois Lane 40MT7, Jimmy Olsen 55MT7 -who were kept safe at the People's Planet for as long as he complied with the directives of Big Brother. The cost of defiance was well demonstrated by the fate of Perry White 25MT6, the former editor of the people's metropolitan newspaper, associated with the secret Emmanuel Goldstein Society dissident group before he disappeared. His bullet-riddled body was found several days later. If it had been intended as a kryptonite shot across Steelman's bow, it had worked. If he ever showed signs of defying the regime in Cheyenne, it would probably end with his death and the masses would be case into further misery and despair. At least his existence gave the masses hope for the future, however elusive and fragmentary it might seem sometimes. Sure enough, he saw a criminal draw a pistol on a threatened worker's family and quietly left his partition for a scheduled food break, making a quick diversion to a familiar storeroom where he adopted the grey and black outfits of Steelman and accelerated away from an open window, ideally too fast for one of Metropolis No. 38's ever-present surveillance technology to detect.
Ideally, because the regime had ways of policing Steelman's behaviour. In a less disciplined world with more individual freedom and personal autonomy, Alexander Luthor 39SV8 would have either been an ally or adversary of Steelman. However, on this world, there was never any Steelboy active in Smallville in the harsh and difficult days following the Third World War and the People's Revolutions across what had become Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Alexander Luthor saw how the future would unfold and put his prodigious technological talents to work increasing surveillance and military capabilities for the Ingsoc Party regime and was rewarded well for it. He had been the one who had discovered the existence of Steelman and who had passed on the information to Big Brother, leading to the current modus vivendi in which the alien's capabilities were harnessed productively, preventing natural disasters and industrial accidents and serving the people. At some point, Steelman might become an active threat to Ingsoc and Oceania's current political stability, but Luthor was prepared for that, when and if it happened. His mentor, O'Brien, currently reassigned as State Security Director back in Airstrip One would have approved.
PEOPLE'S PLANET OFFICES:
As is ever the case in all her iterations, Lois Lane had other ideas. She knew quite well who Steelman was, but kept her counsel to herself. And she opposed the Ingsoc regime, due to the fact that during the Ingsoc coup against the remnants of the MacArthur regime, her parents had died in front of a firing squad. It wasn't her intent to defend the previous, last elected government of the former United States, nor did she have any idea about what would happen if her objective was ever achieved. She didn't record her objections in written format because the ever-present surveillance telescreen would ne able to interpret it. She hated Big Brother and wanted to kill him, or the interior party ranks if he proved to be nothing more than an abstract figurehead, a frozen image. If she didn't act, this stygian world would remain in place for the rest of the human species existence...or might even deteriorate further. It might be a lynchpin with which she could disengage Steelman from the regime- although she wasn't sure what could be done about Stakhanova or Guangming Shizhe. Perhaps there were dissidents that could be utilised for the shared purpose there.
"Steelman?"
"Ms. Lane. What is it?"
"A message from the Ministry of Anomalies. It seems as if some form of temporal distortion is threatening Earth."
"And Big Brother wants me to intervene, according to my pager. Very well. Would you like to accompany me?"
"And write up what I see for the Ingsoc Party? It would be my pleasure, Steelman, if the Party authorises it."
And because the internal censorship of the Ingsoc regime held scientific progress to a glacial or inertial level, what happened next was a cause of alarm. The anti-Ingsoc resistance had mostly been crushed over the last three decades of Earth-1984's history, with some strategically important exceptions. One of them was Professor Phineas Potter MT34SC, a trusted scientist within the regime despite his historical connection to the dissident Lang family, who 'disappeared' from Smallville in 1956. Steelboy could have done something to deal with that, except in his case, indoctrination ran deep. Jonathon and Martha Kent were loyal servants of the regime and received privileges for helping to bring up the young man in question until they had outgrown their usefulness and went voluntarily to the suicide ward at the local Ministry of Wellness Centre (which performed euthanasias when the regime judged that they had aged 'too far.'
And so, Steelman, and a spacesuited Lois Lane, accelerated toward the spiralling timestorm. Steelman deposited Lois on an adjacent asteroid as he began to rapidly circle counterclockwise, to remove the timestorm from the vicinity of Terran space. And then, it happened. The timestorm suddenly flashed, and both Steelman and Lois were drawn into its maw...
AFTER 1984:
"Steelman?"
"Uhhh...Ms Lane? What...happened?"
"Could that timestorm have formed near one of your weaknesses, like a red sun?"
"Which would explain how it could affect me. Are you all right?"
"Yes. But we seem to have been flung into the future. My personal monitor's time readings are blinking on and off."
Steelman's telescopic vision swept the stellar environs and then fixed their surroundings: "It looks like we're in 2133, by Terran time..."
His voice trailed off: "Steelman, what is it?"
"Something's seriously wrong, Ms Lane."
She gave the best impersonation of surprise that she could:
"Why? What's happened?"
"It's...it's the Earth. It's...uninhabited, a desolate wasteland."
"How? You're there to protect us, you always have been..."
"Evidently...not. We need to find out more about this."
"Absolutely. I can't believe that Eurasia and Eastasia would be so insane as to start an Apocalypse War."
Enshrouding her in his cape, Steelman accelerated toward the reassuring configuration of his adopted solar system. As they neared Earth, however, something was badly wrong. While there had been some grey and black patches from the Third World War's nuclear strikes, nevertheless much of the Earth was still green, brown and blue, even in 1984. However, this grey marble was roiled in black and ominous clouds of stark white. Lois gulped:
"They...destroyed everything."
EARTH-1984: CE 2133
Fortunately, Lois' spacesuit had been designed to protect her from the intense radioactivity on the Earth's surface:
"Goldstein!"
"What is it, Steelman?"
"This...wasn't the result of some decisive military advantage that precipitated an Apocalypse War, Ms. Lane. It was...it was the lack of technological progress. It...it led to a situation that precipitated the vulnerability of Oceania to such a point that it felt compelled to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Nothing could have stopped them- not Stakhanova, not Guangming Shizhe, not me. Either Eurasia or Eastasia used kryptonite weapons to get me out of the way and conventional nuclear armaments destroyed the others."
"But if we go back to the present and reveal this, it may destroy the Ingsoc Party."
"According to the party documents, they...knew about this. They...realised it would happen. They...let it happen."
"Steelman, you're frightening me."
"Why? I've...never been into the future. Never...seen this before. Ingsoc...Ingsoc...will destroy this planet because it can't face the fact that eventually, its repressive social order will lead to international instability and the destruction of humanity."
Lois seemed to relent: "I'm glad you realised it, Steelman. Even if this was a chance event. Look, I'm with the AIR, the anti-Ingsoc resistance. We always suspected something like this would be the end result of Ingsoc's domination of Oceania. In order for this alternate future to be overthrown, Ingsoc must be brought down."
"But that will mean its people will be vulnerable to invasion and occupation by Eurasia and Eastasia."
"Not if something is done to neutralise Stakhanova and Guangming Shizhe beforehand. And there are ways. I'm not the only one who's involved with this. Just say yes."
Steelman looked at Lois and brought his head close to hers:"Yes. All right, Lois. I trust you."
EARTH-1984: PRESENT:
On many, more optimistic Earths where free will and personal choice were held in higher regard, that would have resolved the situation. Steelman would have returned to his Earth's present with Lois Lane and begun the revolution against Earth-1984's three tyrannical superstates. However, Earth-1984 wasn't one of those worlds and this wouldn't end well. Having tracked the Kryptonian and his journalist inamorata to the future, Luthor was waiting for both of them with a kryptonite-sourced laser. He blasted Steelman from the skies. Lois Lane fell alongside him, her hand gripping his, as they fell from the heavens like shooting stars. He grinned. Of course, he knew that Ingsoc's future reign would abruptly truncate in nuclear war and the obliteration of humanity. But at the end, due to a reverse engineered Kryptonian starship from several decades before, Luthor would be able to escape this world's fiery, grisly final immolation. If he couldn't rule this world, then he was quite prepared to see it destroyed altogether. When he had a Victory Gin with his old friend O'Brian on Airstrip One several months later, Luthor had fixed it with the dominant party faction so that the man who destroyed Winston Smith's soul and independence would fall victim to poison within his glass. It was sudden, it was clean and the Ingsoc faction that ordered it reasoned that given O'Brien's past service to Ingsoc, he was entitled to this relative beneficence. Luthor's ulterior motive was evident to himself. O'Brien's deductive skills would have enabled him to eventually uncover his role in Steelman's downfall, so he had to be disposed of. Shortly after, a joint Oceanian/Eastasian espionage team assassinated Stakhanova through use of an ancient Amazon poison technique. In Eastasia, realising that Guangming Shizhe could avail them nothing and might even lead to a durable Oceanian/Eurasian crusade against their coeval superstate, the lightwielder was quietly liquidated.
And thus, one crisp day in 1990 when the air raid sirens sounded and nuclear bombers darked the skies over the three superstates. In Airstrip One, Winston Smith glanced up from his dusty table at the Victory Gin Lane Pub and then saw Julia Prentice across the courtyard as the air raid siren sounded above them. Finally breaking the remnants of O'Brien's torture and brainwashing, Winston and Julia ran across the plaza to embrace one another one final time. But instants before they could do so, London was obliterated by a fifty megaton Stalin class hydrogen bomb and the bodies of the two lovers evaporated in microseconds. Amidst the escalating chaos and thermonuclear mass murder, nobody noticed as a solitary vessel accelerated upward, past the blossoming mushroom clouds and turmoil within Earth's atmosphere, past the surveillance satellites of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia and their besieged lunar bases, into the iron curtain of night. And below Lex Luthor, Earth-1984 perished. Six months from the Apocalypse War's inception, the last surviving human, a Polynesian woman in the ruins of Airstrip Two (New Zealand) breathed her last and apart from the solitary vessel in the embrace of interstellar night, humanity was extinct. Luthor slept onward, his conscience clear even if his mind was warped and distorted. His cryogenic dreams were untroubled. When he was eventually discovered adrift in space and revived, his secret would be safe- it had gone to his world's grave and no-one else was left alive to contradict him.
THE END
This is not the story of Airstrip One's Winston Smith and his quixotic, individualist personal revolt against the Ingsoc regime told by Orwell. Shortly after the conclusion of its Third World War, an alien spacecraft landed in Division Southcentral, the former state of Kansas. The Kents, a rural couple, kept the Kryptonian infant that they found swaddled in invulnerable clothing within the starship, which had traversed nearly twenty light years to its destination. At that stage of the regime's development, there were none of the pervasive CCTV cameras that later pervaded and disciplined life within Oceania and Clark Kent managed to develop an early awareness of the dangers that would ensue if his actual alien heritage were ever disclosed. However, given its all=pervading nature, the Ingsoc regime did become aware. It was also aware of the "People's Heroine" Stakhanova of Eurasia, which had overthrown the ancient Greek themed constitutional monarchy of Hippolyta and replaced it with a sororal communist state. Eastasia also had its own "people's heroine", Guangming Shizhe, a superscientist capable of controlling light itself. Of course, there were rumours that either Oceania or Eurasia (or both) had shared hard light technology with Eastasia to help enable the emergence of Guangming Shizhe and that it had also disclosed the secret location of fabled Themiscyra to Eurasia, enabling it to invade and subdue the island, raise and indoctrinate Stakhanova to serve as a match for the exploits of Steelman, in defence of the Ingsoc Way ("truth' and 'justice' were concepts in transition).
+++
METROPOLIS No. 38:
The clocks struck thirteen and Clark Kent ID 38SV9 did a quiet telescopic vision sweep of the surrounding cityscape of Metropolis No. 38. It was easier having Big Brother knowledgeable about his secret identity, he reflected, and probably safer for him. The Eternal Stalemate continued on- Stakhanova's weaponry was magical in origin and could harm him, and Guangming Shizhe could produce red sun radiation, so either Eurasia or Eastasia could match him. There was no chance of deploying any of them in battle, and the hierarchies of Ingsoc, Neo-Bolshevism and Obliteration of the Self in the three superstates didn't want to challenge each others dominance, as the Perpetual War suited all of them. Thus, Steelman was restricted largely to dealing with natural disasters and industrial accidents, and was acclaimed for that purpose. He turned a blind eye to the regime's other activities, primarily because the existence of kryptonite had been monopolised by Ingsoc's ruling party for the last twenty five years, since his arrival on Earth. In return, the Ingsoc Party did not harm his foster mother, Martha Kent 18SV9, and had even enabled Jonathon Kent 16SV9 to receive life-prolonging medical treatment, before radiation-induced cancer had claimed him five years ago. And then there were the others- Lois Lane 40MT7, Jimmy Olsen 55MT7 -who were kept safe at the People's Planet for as long as he complied with the directives of Big Brother. The cost of defiance was well demonstrated by the fate of Perry White 25MT6, the former editor of the people's metropolitan newspaper, associated with the secret Emmanuel Goldstein Society dissident group before he disappeared. His bullet-riddled body was found several days later. If it had been intended as a kryptonite shot across Steelman's bow, it had worked. If he ever showed signs of defying the regime in Cheyenne, it would probably end with his death and the masses would be case into further misery and despair. At least his existence gave the masses hope for the future, however elusive and fragmentary it might seem sometimes. Sure enough, he saw a criminal draw a pistol on a threatened worker's family and quietly left his partition for a scheduled food break, making a quick diversion to a familiar storeroom where he adopted the grey and black outfits of Steelman and accelerated away from an open window, ideally too fast for one of Metropolis No. 38's ever-present surveillance technology to detect.
Ideally, because the regime had ways of policing Steelman's behaviour. In a less disciplined world with more individual freedom and personal autonomy, Alexander Luthor 39SV8 would have either been an ally or adversary of Steelman. However, on this world, there was never any Steelboy active in Smallville in the harsh and difficult days following the Third World War and the People's Revolutions across what had become Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Alexander Luthor saw how the future would unfold and put his prodigious technological talents to work increasing surveillance and military capabilities for the Ingsoc Party regime and was rewarded well for it. He had been the one who had discovered the existence of Steelman and who had passed on the information to Big Brother, leading to the current modus vivendi in which the alien's capabilities were harnessed productively, preventing natural disasters and industrial accidents and serving the people. At some point, Steelman might become an active threat to Ingsoc and Oceania's current political stability, but Luthor was prepared for that, when and if it happened. His mentor, O'Brien, currently reassigned as State Security Director back in Airstrip One would have approved.
PEOPLE'S PLANET OFFICES:
As is ever the case in all her iterations, Lois Lane had other ideas. She knew quite well who Steelman was, but kept her counsel to herself. And she opposed the Ingsoc regime, due to the fact that during the Ingsoc coup against the remnants of the MacArthur regime, her parents had died in front of a firing squad. It wasn't her intent to defend the previous, last elected government of the former United States, nor did she have any idea about what would happen if her objective was ever achieved. She didn't record her objections in written format because the ever-present surveillance telescreen would ne able to interpret it. She hated Big Brother and wanted to kill him, or the interior party ranks if he proved to be nothing more than an abstract figurehead, a frozen image. If she didn't act, this stygian world would remain in place for the rest of the human species existence...or might even deteriorate further. It might be a lynchpin with which she could disengage Steelman from the regime- although she wasn't sure what could be done about Stakhanova or Guangming Shizhe. Perhaps there were dissidents that could be utilised for the shared purpose there.
"Steelman?"
"Ms. Lane. What is it?"
"A message from the Ministry of Anomalies. It seems as if some form of temporal distortion is threatening Earth."
"And Big Brother wants me to intervene, according to my pager. Very well. Would you like to accompany me?"
"And write up what I see for the Ingsoc Party? It would be my pleasure, Steelman, if the Party authorises it."
And because the internal censorship of the Ingsoc regime held scientific progress to a glacial or inertial level, what happened next was a cause of alarm. The anti-Ingsoc resistance had mostly been crushed over the last three decades of Earth-1984's history, with some strategically important exceptions. One of them was Professor Phineas Potter MT34SC, a trusted scientist within the regime despite his historical connection to the dissident Lang family, who 'disappeared' from Smallville in 1956. Steelboy could have done something to deal with that, except in his case, indoctrination ran deep. Jonathon and Martha Kent were loyal servants of the regime and received privileges for helping to bring up the young man in question until they had outgrown their usefulness and went voluntarily to the suicide ward at the local Ministry of Wellness Centre (which performed euthanasias when the regime judged that they had aged 'too far.'
And so, Steelman, and a spacesuited Lois Lane, accelerated toward the spiralling timestorm. Steelman deposited Lois on an adjacent asteroid as he began to rapidly circle counterclockwise, to remove the timestorm from the vicinity of Terran space. And then, it happened. The timestorm suddenly flashed, and both Steelman and Lois were drawn into its maw...
AFTER 1984:
"Steelman?"
"Uhhh...Ms Lane? What...happened?"
"Could that timestorm have formed near one of your weaknesses, like a red sun?"
"Which would explain how it could affect me. Are you all right?"
"Yes. But we seem to have been flung into the future. My personal monitor's time readings are blinking on and off."
Steelman's telescopic vision swept the stellar environs and then fixed their surroundings: "It looks like we're in 2133, by Terran time..."
His voice trailed off: "Steelman, what is it?"
"Something's seriously wrong, Ms Lane."
She gave the best impersonation of surprise that she could:
"Why? What's happened?"
"It's...it's the Earth. It's...uninhabited, a desolate wasteland."
"How? You're there to protect us, you always have been..."
"Evidently...not. We need to find out more about this."
"Absolutely. I can't believe that Eurasia and Eastasia would be so insane as to start an Apocalypse War."
Enshrouding her in his cape, Steelman accelerated toward the reassuring configuration of his adopted solar system. As they neared Earth, however, something was badly wrong. While there had been some grey and black patches from the Third World War's nuclear strikes, nevertheless much of the Earth was still green, brown and blue, even in 1984. However, this grey marble was roiled in black and ominous clouds of stark white. Lois gulped:
"They...destroyed everything."
EARTH-1984: CE 2133
Fortunately, Lois' spacesuit had been designed to protect her from the intense radioactivity on the Earth's surface:
"Goldstein!"
"What is it, Steelman?"
"This...wasn't the result of some decisive military advantage that precipitated an Apocalypse War, Ms. Lane. It was...it was the lack of technological progress. It...it led to a situation that precipitated the vulnerability of Oceania to such a point that it felt compelled to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Nothing could have stopped them- not Stakhanova, not Guangming Shizhe, not me. Either Eurasia or Eastasia used kryptonite weapons to get me out of the way and conventional nuclear armaments destroyed the others."
"But if we go back to the present and reveal this, it may destroy the Ingsoc Party."
"According to the party documents, they...knew about this. They...realised it would happen. They...let it happen."
"Steelman, you're frightening me."
"Why? I've...never been into the future. Never...seen this before. Ingsoc...Ingsoc...will destroy this planet because it can't face the fact that eventually, its repressive social order will lead to international instability and the destruction of humanity."
Lois seemed to relent: "I'm glad you realised it, Steelman. Even if this was a chance event. Look, I'm with the AIR, the anti-Ingsoc resistance. We always suspected something like this would be the end result of Ingsoc's domination of Oceania. In order for this alternate future to be overthrown, Ingsoc must be brought down."
"But that will mean its people will be vulnerable to invasion and occupation by Eurasia and Eastasia."
"Not if something is done to neutralise Stakhanova and Guangming Shizhe beforehand. And there are ways. I'm not the only one who's involved with this. Just say yes."
Steelman looked at Lois and brought his head close to hers:"Yes. All right, Lois. I trust you."
EARTH-1984: PRESENT:
On many, more optimistic Earths where free will and personal choice were held in higher regard, that would have resolved the situation. Steelman would have returned to his Earth's present with Lois Lane and begun the revolution against Earth-1984's three tyrannical superstates. However, Earth-1984 wasn't one of those worlds and this wouldn't end well. Having tracked the Kryptonian and his journalist inamorata to the future, Luthor was waiting for both of them with a kryptonite-sourced laser. He blasted Steelman from the skies. Lois Lane fell alongside him, her hand gripping his, as they fell from the heavens like shooting stars. He grinned. Of course, he knew that Ingsoc's future reign would abruptly truncate in nuclear war and the obliteration of humanity. But at the end, due to a reverse engineered Kryptonian starship from several decades before, Luthor would be able to escape this world's fiery, grisly final immolation. If he couldn't rule this world, then he was quite prepared to see it destroyed altogether. When he had a Victory Gin with his old friend O'Brian on Airstrip One several months later, Luthor had fixed it with the dominant party faction so that the man who destroyed Winston Smith's soul and independence would fall victim to poison within his glass. It was sudden, it was clean and the Ingsoc faction that ordered it reasoned that given O'Brien's past service to Ingsoc, he was entitled to this relative beneficence. Luthor's ulterior motive was evident to himself. O'Brien's deductive skills would have enabled him to eventually uncover his role in Steelman's downfall, so he had to be disposed of. Shortly after, a joint Oceanian/Eastasian espionage team assassinated Stakhanova through use of an ancient Amazon poison technique. In Eastasia, realising that Guangming Shizhe could avail them nothing and might even lead to a durable Oceanian/Eurasian crusade against their coeval superstate, the lightwielder was quietly liquidated.
And thus, one crisp day in 1990 when the air raid sirens sounded and nuclear bombers darked the skies over the three superstates. In Airstrip One, Winston Smith glanced up from his dusty table at the Victory Gin Lane Pub and then saw Julia Prentice across the courtyard as the air raid siren sounded above them. Finally breaking the remnants of O'Brien's torture and brainwashing, Winston and Julia ran across the plaza to embrace one another one final time. But instants before they could do so, London was obliterated by a fifty megaton Stalin class hydrogen bomb and the bodies of the two lovers evaporated in microseconds. Amidst the escalating chaos and thermonuclear mass murder, nobody noticed as a solitary vessel accelerated upward, past the blossoming mushroom clouds and turmoil within Earth's atmosphere, past the surveillance satellites of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia and their besieged lunar bases, into the iron curtain of night. And below Lex Luthor, Earth-1984 perished. Six months from the Apocalypse War's inception, the last surviving human, a Polynesian woman in the ruins of Airstrip Two (New Zealand) breathed her last and apart from the solitary vessel in the embrace of interstellar night, humanity was extinct. Luthor slept onward, his conscience clear even if his mind was warped and distorted. His cryogenic dreams were untroubled. When he was eventually discovered adrift in space and revived, his secret would be safe- it had gone to his world's grave and no-one else was left alive to contradict him.
THE END