Post by redsycorax on Aug 4, 2021 2:25:29 GMT
There are many alternate Earths where specific subcultures unexpectedly became dominant social matrices. The less said about the racist skinhead "Earth-White" the better. Earth-Rasta is dominated by post-apocalyptic Rastafarians, Earth-Punk is an anarchist haven where everything fell to pieces at the end of the seventies and Earth-Goth...
+++
GOTHTROPOLIS:
"Wow. It's really violent weather outside there, Chief." Elastiwoman said, teetering on her outsize high heels.
Niles Caulder nodded: "Perhaps if our world had had some challenge to breakneck industrialism and there had been an environmental movement earlier than the eighties...instead of which, Josef Stalin was assassinated early in 1941, the USSR fell apart and Britain and the United States have held our world in a vice grip ever since."
Roboman made a derisory chuckle at that: "Ah, come on Niles, ya can't blame everything on the way history turned out."
"Can't I, Clifford? While nuclear weapons were dismantled after Britain used them against Stuttgart and Hamburg in 1944, and there wasn't an atomic weapon arms race, climate change has been accelerated by the lack of challenge to intensive technological development."
"Sheesh. I know our handle is the "Gloom Patrol", but ya don't see me acting in tune with that."
Rita (Elastiwoman) Starr turned to Larry Turner (Negativity):
"You've been quiet, Larry. Any reason?"
"Something you said, Chief. Why are we the only metahumans on our particular world?"
Caulder sighed: "I've identified several adverse events that might have led to their emergence. One is that alien spacecraft with the dead baby inside it that destroyed the Kansas village of Smallville. The other is the killing of almost the entire Wayne Family in Gotham City by petty criminal Joseph Chill. Or the plague that wiped out the Scythian "Amazon" community of Themiscyra in the ninth century BCE. Or the chemical accident that killed police scientist Barry Allen in Central City. Or the ruins and corpses of the extinct Martian race that Viking III found. Take your choice."
"So we're left to carry the can because the dice fell the wrong way here?"
The Chief said nothing.
Elastiwoman looked out the window. She was also silent, but Larry could tell that she was thinking about her dead fiancee Steve Daystrom (Mentor) and MacKinley Logan (Changer), the boy who they'd planned to adopt, had it not been for the depravity of the Alliance of Evil. Only the sacrifice of Fraulein Rosse, who was conflicted by her love for Niles had managed to end the Alliance's attempt to assassinate the Gloom Patrol. In the process, Herr Mallet, the sapient gorilla, and Globebrain had perished as well.
Since that event, the world had become noticeably darker. Only the last year, the Patrol had intervened to stop their old foe Mr 103, a transelemental metamorph, from detonating a cobalt bomb in Warsaw, the capital of the Eastern European Confederation. If it had detonated, its 50,000 megaton payload would have wiped out the entirety of life on Earth from slow radioactive poisoning. The alien Zarox 13 had then tried to unleash its thanatovirus on humanity, but had been foiled before a zombie apocalypse could descend. All in all, their rogues gallery were becoming deadlier and steadily more ruthless as time went on. Roboman was similarly silent, but Larry could tell he carried his own ghosts- namely Katherine Challis, the multiple personality woman whose prodigious but uncontrollable powers had meant that the Chief had to imprison her in the Survival Zone for her own good. He missed her so much- her perfume, all of her varied selves, her disparately coloured blue and green eyes, her touch. He knew she was near them, somewhere, and yearned to be with her again.
And in the distant Wayne Enterprises skyscraper, an angry figure hit a punching bag repeatedly. Why? Why had all of his attempts to destroy those infernal freaks, all of the metahuman entities whose development and training he had overseen, founder and fall at the last minute? And how long would his elaborately hacked and sanitised personal biography fool the intellect of the Chief? Finally, panting and sweating, Thomas Wayne II left off his physical exertion and crossed to the iSlate on his desk. What good was being the richest man in the world if he could be brought down in the event of disclosure of his aims and objectives?
His personal phone rang: "About time," Wayne growled into the headpiece, "where the hell have you been?"
As he spoke, a small mote accelerated out of the voicepiece and steadily grew into a small humanoid. The scarred face of Professor Raymond Palmer, otherwise known as the spy Fission looked up at him:
"Not so loud."
"This is reckless, even by your standards, Palmer. Are you sure you weren't traced here?"
Palmer shook his head: "The only one able to do that would be Negativity and his abilities have been disrupted by the freak weather events going on around the world."
"True, and you're an intellectual match for that wretched Caulder, at least. Are the other members of our little...entourage... on the way?"
"Bloodeagle's already there and Blur said he was en route to the IS teleporter. What is this, Wayne? It'd better be good to reassemble us after all this time."
"The Injustice Syndicate could take it all, Palmer. Even if we did lose the Silver Cyclone android thanks to Clifford Steele in our last encounter, the freak weather conditions are no accident."
Palmer nodded: "They're anthropogenic, I know. Unfortunately, we've had Republicans in the White House and Congress for the last five decades, which has been good for you, but not for the biosphere. I estimate that we have only a decade or so before we face irreversible and catastrophic change- a rise of three degrees in the global average temperature. The Amazon will become so tinder dry the slightest spark will combust it, the oceans will become increasingly acidic, superstorms will become routine events and the polar icecaps will totally disappear."
"Well, we've already lost Florida, the Netherlands and the Indian state of Greater Bengal. Wait here while I get suited."
Several years ago, scowling at his detested enemies on television, Thomas Wayne had mused: "So they're freaks. I need to become something that strikes fear into cowards and the superstitious , but what...?" And then he saw the vampire bat, seizing on a cardinal and draining it dry as he watched. That was it. He would become a rabid, uncontrollable... Bat. And of course, that had meant adjustments. He had a voice modifier so oscilloscopes and recording devices couldn't deduce his identity from his vocal traces, perfected a holographic overlay that altered his facial features and modified his apparent size. When the time came, his fearsome form wrought havoc in Gotham City, until he came face to face with the Gloom Patrol.
The Bat stalked from his suiting wardrobe and joined Fission in the Injustice Syndicate teleporter several blocks away and several minutes later.
When they reappeared, the Bat smiled at the others, in a cold and calculated matter:
"The climate apocalypse is almost upon us. The consequences will be profound. It will mean an end to half of our adversaries in the Gloom Patrol, namely Steele and Turner. And while I do not underestimate Caulder's voracious intellect, he and Starr alone will be no match for us."
"What about the world around us, Wayne?"
"What about it? You're free to join me in the Wayne Enterprises cryoship that I'm building on the lunar farside. Of course, it will then be thousands of years before we are revived when we reach some habitable and compatible exoplanet, but then the Gloom Patrol freaks will be so much ash and fossilised sludge. Turner and Steele won't even be that."
"Generous of you," Hal (Bloodeagle) Carter taciturnly commented. The Blur looked away. Of the members of the Injustice Syndicate of Amerika, he was the weakest and most vacillating. It was unfortunate that when the ISA had tried to loot the submerged remnants of Venice, that the ruthless killer android Silver Cyclone had been destroyed by Larry Turner in his coherent emission identity as Negativity, rather than the worthless and craven Blur. While Carter and Palmer foolishly trusted Bart Allen, the ever-paranoid Thomas Wayne did not. He promised himself that one day, soon, the speedster would be removed permanently from his calculations.
In fact, that was a correct assessment. As Niles Caulder looked up, an oscillating form appeared in front of him:
"Good evening, Bartholemew."
"Professor Caulder. The Bat has calculated that a catastrophic environmental event will occur soon and that it will take down Negativity and Roboman. He has Blood Eagle and Fission with him. They plan to attack the Gloom Patrol en route to disaster relief operations. Also, the Bat has constructed a covert lunar facility and generation ship on the Moon's far side."
"Thank you, Bartholemew. The anti-apoptosis vaccine is on the table next to you."
"I don't know if they suspect me of being a double agent, Professor. But thank you, once again. I'll try and sabotage their plans if I can."
"Bartholemew, there are other questions that I must pose. Is the Bat aware that I am cognisant of his Thomas Wayne identity?"
"I don't think so, Professor. I've noticed his blood pressure. facial expression and body language change whenever he talks to me, though."
"You may be in serious danger. Please, reconsider my offer. You can leave the Injustice Syndicate now and join us."
The Blur shook his head: "It's too late for me, Professor. You said it yourself when I came to you. The anti-apoptosis vaccine only delays the consequences of my contact with the Speedforce, it doesn't reduce its terminal status. Sooner or later, I will die from this. Better that that occurs when I'm in the midst of the ISA so I can inflict the maximum possible damage." And with that, the speedster blurred away into afterimages as he left the brownstone headquarters of the GP. Rita walked out from the shadows:
"You heard everything, my dear?"
"I suppose the reason why Larry and Cliff will be knocked out has to do with the electromagnetic changes that will short out Roboman's circuitry and Negativity's coherent energy configuration?"
"Why is why they need to be away from Earth when this happens."
"I've loaded them into our cryoship, Professor."
"Please, Rita, my dear, reconsider. You need not join me in this final mission. It will surely kill us both."
Rita shook her head: "Part of me died when the Alliance of Evil murdered Steven and Mack. I have nothing left to live for."
"I was afraid you'd say that, Rita." From his pocket, Caulder produced a stunner pistol and fired it at her. He nodded to the robot alongside him and it took her in its arms, injecting her with cryogen so that she would join her colleagues in cold sleep. Minutes later, the Gloom Patrol shot into the sky in suspended animation, away from the impending shipwreck of the Earth.
When the end came for him, it was sudden and decisive, but not in the way that the Bat had calculated. Blood Eagle and Fission launched themselves at him, but to his horror, the avian warrior found his wings inoperative. He fell to the ground and broke his neck. Palmer snarled his desire for vengeance, intending to enter Caulder's body and trigger a cardiac infarction or aneurysm. But then his neutronium contractor belt shorted and Palmer realised he could not stop shrinking. And at a certain point, he could not sustain the bodily functions of a fully sized human being and expired. The Bat nodded:
"Very well, Caulder. Just us."
"You show no remorse about the death of your colleagues."
"They were expendable. We are an intellectual match."
Caulder shook his head: "No, Mr Wayne, I am afraid not. I will alllow that you are a brilliant psychopath, but psychopathic reasoning processes result in some anomalies and cognitive shortcuts. Incidentally, I take it you killed the Blur earlier?"
The Bat laughed: "Of course I did. It's too late for that."
"Indeed, Thomas. It is too late for anything."
"What do you mean, you crippled fool?"
And at that point, in the distant Siberian permafrost, formerly compressed methane clathrates desublimated, releasing tonnes of the greenhouse gas accelerant into the atmosphere. In the Antarctic, the resultant seismic shock caused the disintegration of the remains of the West Antarctic ice sheet and ignited volcanic activity across the whole of the Pacific. The Bat looked up, to witness a kilometres high tsunami wave towering above them both. Maliciously, he stalked toward Niles Caulder, intent on killing him in the time left:
"Why?" Caulder asked.
"You knew this would happen and you did nothing to prevent it?"
"One could make the same observation of you, Thomas."
"No, I mean, respected scientist blah blah blah."
"This was set in motion decades ago. Expertise and forewarning can only do so much. And yet, your wealth could have made an inroad into what is happening now."
"I may die, but at least I'll have the satisfaction of breaking your neck before I do." And the Bat reached and did as threatened. And then, silhouetted against the impending spectacle of humanity's doom, he laughed. It was too late to run or hide from what came next. There were hints of hysteria, panic and paranoia as his laughter shrilled higher, but then the incoming, deafening roar of the tsunami slammed into the brownstone and it threw him against its debris as it disintegrated around him. Millions died on that day and in the ensuing weeks, months and years as civilisation fell amidst the malignant weather around them and this was only an infinitesimal episode.
In the cryoship, accelerating past the orbit of Mars to an embrace with Jupiter and then to be flung out into interstellar space, Clifford Steele, Rita Starr and Larry Turner- once known as the Gloom Patrol- slept the sleep of the virtuous. When they finally awakened, things would be radically different and the universe around them would have altered considerably. In the Survival Zone, Kay Challis wept immaterial tears before she drifted toward the cryoship, following it into the darkness, in memory of the man whose sharpness of mind had exceeded the fragility of his body.
THE END
+++
GOTHTROPOLIS:
"Wow. It's really violent weather outside there, Chief." Elastiwoman said, teetering on her outsize high heels.
Niles Caulder nodded: "Perhaps if our world had had some challenge to breakneck industrialism and there had been an environmental movement earlier than the eighties...instead of which, Josef Stalin was assassinated early in 1941, the USSR fell apart and Britain and the United States have held our world in a vice grip ever since."
Roboman made a derisory chuckle at that: "Ah, come on Niles, ya can't blame everything on the way history turned out."
"Can't I, Clifford? While nuclear weapons were dismantled after Britain used them against Stuttgart and Hamburg in 1944, and there wasn't an atomic weapon arms race, climate change has been accelerated by the lack of challenge to intensive technological development."
"Sheesh. I know our handle is the "Gloom Patrol", but ya don't see me acting in tune with that."
Rita (Elastiwoman) Starr turned to Larry Turner (Negativity):
"You've been quiet, Larry. Any reason?"
"Something you said, Chief. Why are we the only metahumans on our particular world?"
Caulder sighed: "I've identified several adverse events that might have led to their emergence. One is that alien spacecraft with the dead baby inside it that destroyed the Kansas village of Smallville. The other is the killing of almost the entire Wayne Family in Gotham City by petty criminal Joseph Chill. Or the plague that wiped out the Scythian "Amazon" community of Themiscyra in the ninth century BCE. Or the chemical accident that killed police scientist Barry Allen in Central City. Or the ruins and corpses of the extinct Martian race that Viking III found. Take your choice."
"So we're left to carry the can because the dice fell the wrong way here?"
The Chief said nothing.
Elastiwoman looked out the window. She was also silent, but Larry could tell that she was thinking about her dead fiancee Steve Daystrom (Mentor) and MacKinley Logan (Changer), the boy who they'd planned to adopt, had it not been for the depravity of the Alliance of Evil. Only the sacrifice of Fraulein Rosse, who was conflicted by her love for Niles had managed to end the Alliance's attempt to assassinate the Gloom Patrol. In the process, Herr Mallet, the sapient gorilla, and Globebrain had perished as well.
Since that event, the world had become noticeably darker. Only the last year, the Patrol had intervened to stop their old foe Mr 103, a transelemental metamorph, from detonating a cobalt bomb in Warsaw, the capital of the Eastern European Confederation. If it had detonated, its 50,000 megaton payload would have wiped out the entirety of life on Earth from slow radioactive poisoning. The alien Zarox 13 had then tried to unleash its thanatovirus on humanity, but had been foiled before a zombie apocalypse could descend. All in all, their rogues gallery were becoming deadlier and steadily more ruthless as time went on. Roboman was similarly silent, but Larry could tell he carried his own ghosts- namely Katherine Challis, the multiple personality woman whose prodigious but uncontrollable powers had meant that the Chief had to imprison her in the Survival Zone for her own good. He missed her so much- her perfume, all of her varied selves, her disparately coloured blue and green eyes, her touch. He knew she was near them, somewhere, and yearned to be with her again.
And in the distant Wayne Enterprises skyscraper, an angry figure hit a punching bag repeatedly. Why? Why had all of his attempts to destroy those infernal freaks, all of the metahuman entities whose development and training he had overseen, founder and fall at the last minute? And how long would his elaborately hacked and sanitised personal biography fool the intellect of the Chief? Finally, panting and sweating, Thomas Wayne II left off his physical exertion and crossed to the iSlate on his desk. What good was being the richest man in the world if he could be brought down in the event of disclosure of his aims and objectives?
His personal phone rang: "About time," Wayne growled into the headpiece, "where the hell have you been?"
As he spoke, a small mote accelerated out of the voicepiece and steadily grew into a small humanoid. The scarred face of Professor Raymond Palmer, otherwise known as the spy Fission looked up at him:
"Not so loud."
"This is reckless, even by your standards, Palmer. Are you sure you weren't traced here?"
Palmer shook his head: "The only one able to do that would be Negativity and his abilities have been disrupted by the freak weather events going on around the world."
"True, and you're an intellectual match for that wretched Caulder, at least. Are the other members of our little...entourage... on the way?"
"Bloodeagle's already there and Blur said he was en route to the IS teleporter. What is this, Wayne? It'd better be good to reassemble us after all this time."
"The Injustice Syndicate could take it all, Palmer. Even if we did lose the Silver Cyclone android thanks to Clifford Steele in our last encounter, the freak weather conditions are no accident."
Palmer nodded: "They're anthropogenic, I know. Unfortunately, we've had Republicans in the White House and Congress for the last five decades, which has been good for you, but not for the biosphere. I estimate that we have only a decade or so before we face irreversible and catastrophic change- a rise of three degrees in the global average temperature. The Amazon will become so tinder dry the slightest spark will combust it, the oceans will become increasingly acidic, superstorms will become routine events and the polar icecaps will totally disappear."
"Well, we've already lost Florida, the Netherlands and the Indian state of Greater Bengal. Wait here while I get suited."
Several years ago, scowling at his detested enemies on television, Thomas Wayne had mused: "So they're freaks. I need to become something that strikes fear into cowards and the superstitious , but what...?" And then he saw the vampire bat, seizing on a cardinal and draining it dry as he watched. That was it. He would become a rabid, uncontrollable... Bat. And of course, that had meant adjustments. He had a voice modifier so oscilloscopes and recording devices couldn't deduce his identity from his vocal traces, perfected a holographic overlay that altered his facial features and modified his apparent size. When the time came, his fearsome form wrought havoc in Gotham City, until he came face to face with the Gloom Patrol.
The Bat stalked from his suiting wardrobe and joined Fission in the Injustice Syndicate teleporter several blocks away and several minutes later.
When they reappeared, the Bat smiled at the others, in a cold and calculated matter:
"The climate apocalypse is almost upon us. The consequences will be profound. It will mean an end to half of our adversaries in the Gloom Patrol, namely Steele and Turner. And while I do not underestimate Caulder's voracious intellect, he and Starr alone will be no match for us."
"What about the world around us, Wayne?"
"What about it? You're free to join me in the Wayne Enterprises cryoship that I'm building on the lunar farside. Of course, it will then be thousands of years before we are revived when we reach some habitable and compatible exoplanet, but then the Gloom Patrol freaks will be so much ash and fossilised sludge. Turner and Steele won't even be that."
"Generous of you," Hal (Bloodeagle) Carter taciturnly commented. The Blur looked away. Of the members of the Injustice Syndicate of Amerika, he was the weakest and most vacillating. It was unfortunate that when the ISA had tried to loot the submerged remnants of Venice, that the ruthless killer android Silver Cyclone had been destroyed by Larry Turner in his coherent emission identity as Negativity, rather than the worthless and craven Blur. While Carter and Palmer foolishly trusted Bart Allen, the ever-paranoid Thomas Wayne did not. He promised himself that one day, soon, the speedster would be removed permanently from his calculations.
In fact, that was a correct assessment. As Niles Caulder looked up, an oscillating form appeared in front of him:
"Good evening, Bartholemew."
"Professor Caulder. The Bat has calculated that a catastrophic environmental event will occur soon and that it will take down Negativity and Roboman. He has Blood Eagle and Fission with him. They plan to attack the Gloom Patrol en route to disaster relief operations. Also, the Bat has constructed a covert lunar facility and generation ship on the Moon's far side."
"Thank you, Bartholemew. The anti-apoptosis vaccine is on the table next to you."
"I don't know if they suspect me of being a double agent, Professor. But thank you, once again. I'll try and sabotage their plans if I can."
"Bartholemew, there are other questions that I must pose. Is the Bat aware that I am cognisant of his Thomas Wayne identity?"
"I don't think so, Professor. I've noticed his blood pressure. facial expression and body language change whenever he talks to me, though."
"You may be in serious danger. Please, reconsider my offer. You can leave the Injustice Syndicate now and join us."
The Blur shook his head: "It's too late for me, Professor. You said it yourself when I came to you. The anti-apoptosis vaccine only delays the consequences of my contact with the Speedforce, it doesn't reduce its terminal status. Sooner or later, I will die from this. Better that that occurs when I'm in the midst of the ISA so I can inflict the maximum possible damage." And with that, the speedster blurred away into afterimages as he left the brownstone headquarters of the GP. Rita walked out from the shadows:
"You heard everything, my dear?"
"I suppose the reason why Larry and Cliff will be knocked out has to do with the electromagnetic changes that will short out Roboman's circuitry and Negativity's coherent energy configuration?"
"Why is why they need to be away from Earth when this happens."
"I've loaded them into our cryoship, Professor."
"Please, Rita, my dear, reconsider. You need not join me in this final mission. It will surely kill us both."
Rita shook her head: "Part of me died when the Alliance of Evil murdered Steven and Mack. I have nothing left to live for."
"I was afraid you'd say that, Rita." From his pocket, Caulder produced a stunner pistol and fired it at her. He nodded to the robot alongside him and it took her in its arms, injecting her with cryogen so that she would join her colleagues in cold sleep. Minutes later, the Gloom Patrol shot into the sky in suspended animation, away from the impending shipwreck of the Earth.
When the end came for him, it was sudden and decisive, but not in the way that the Bat had calculated. Blood Eagle and Fission launched themselves at him, but to his horror, the avian warrior found his wings inoperative. He fell to the ground and broke his neck. Palmer snarled his desire for vengeance, intending to enter Caulder's body and trigger a cardiac infarction or aneurysm. But then his neutronium contractor belt shorted and Palmer realised he could not stop shrinking. And at a certain point, he could not sustain the bodily functions of a fully sized human being and expired. The Bat nodded:
"Very well, Caulder. Just us."
"You show no remorse about the death of your colleagues."
"They were expendable. We are an intellectual match."
Caulder shook his head: "No, Mr Wayne, I am afraid not. I will alllow that you are a brilliant psychopath, but psychopathic reasoning processes result in some anomalies and cognitive shortcuts. Incidentally, I take it you killed the Blur earlier?"
The Bat laughed: "Of course I did. It's too late for that."
"Indeed, Thomas. It is too late for anything."
"What do you mean, you crippled fool?"
And at that point, in the distant Siberian permafrost, formerly compressed methane clathrates desublimated, releasing tonnes of the greenhouse gas accelerant into the atmosphere. In the Antarctic, the resultant seismic shock caused the disintegration of the remains of the West Antarctic ice sheet and ignited volcanic activity across the whole of the Pacific. The Bat looked up, to witness a kilometres high tsunami wave towering above them both. Maliciously, he stalked toward Niles Caulder, intent on killing him in the time left:
"Why?" Caulder asked.
"You knew this would happen and you did nothing to prevent it?"
"One could make the same observation of you, Thomas."
"No, I mean, respected scientist blah blah blah."
"This was set in motion decades ago. Expertise and forewarning can only do so much. And yet, your wealth could have made an inroad into what is happening now."
"I may die, but at least I'll have the satisfaction of breaking your neck before I do." And the Bat reached and did as threatened. And then, silhouetted against the impending spectacle of humanity's doom, he laughed. It was too late to run or hide from what came next. There were hints of hysteria, panic and paranoia as his laughter shrilled higher, but then the incoming, deafening roar of the tsunami slammed into the brownstone and it threw him against its debris as it disintegrated around him. Millions died on that day and in the ensuing weeks, months and years as civilisation fell amidst the malignant weather around them and this was only an infinitesimal episode.
In the cryoship, accelerating past the orbit of Mars to an embrace with Jupiter and then to be flung out into interstellar space, Clifford Steele, Rita Starr and Larry Turner- once known as the Gloom Patrol- slept the sleep of the virtuous. When they finally awakened, things would be radically different and the universe around them would have altered considerably. In the Survival Zone, Kay Challis wept immaterial tears before she drifted toward the cryoship, following it into the darkness, in memory of the man whose sharpness of mind had exceeded the fragility of his body.
THE END
