Post by redsycorax on Jan 16, 2023 1:11:51 GMT
In an alternate universe, an alien time-traveler known only as the Doctor traverses the time vortex, standing in solidarity with the oppressed and weak and fighting individuals and species that thrive on such injustice. But what would happen if they were displaced into the familiar DC universe that we all know?
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PROLOGUE: THE TARDIS:
Groggily, the Doctor picked himself up off the floor, replacing his hat and scarf, and gathering his scattered jellybabies into a battered but still serviceable paper bag. Around him, his TARDIS self-repair circuits were still repairing his timeship. He frowned as he looked closely at the readings and sighed to himself. No wonder the old ship had taken such a bang- they'd been violently shifted sidewise into an alternate universe. He pored over his starcharts, and was gratified to log into an analogous setting. He was about to steer his vessel toward a singularity and back to his own universe, when the emergency sensors registered. He shook his head and then frowned as he read the details that his craft had been able to surmise.
Around an adjacent red dwarf sun, a superterrestroid planet orbited. However, that state of affairs would not prevail for long- the planet had a uranium core and it was a dangerously reactive one. Seismic and volcanic disturbances now regularly shook the planet's surface and according to the planet's communication networks, its ruling technocratic Science Council had censored xenogeological data about the escalating crisis, exacerbated by the destruction of one of the planet's larger moons and its own eccentric orbit near the star. Only one scientist had deduced the true nature of the planet's plight and now sought to save his family. No, the Doctor told himself, he could not let this happen. There was one element that could blunt the reaction in time- zeelium. And so, the TARDIS took itself to a concentration of small zeelium asteroids and proceeded to transport them inside the planet itself. It took several days, but at the end of it, his gamble had paid off. Satisfied at what he had done, the Doctor took himself and the TARDIS away, unaware that the consequences of what he had done would reverberate through the history of that universe.
It is often said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
TWENTY YEARS LATER:
Looking at the Earth now, Jor-El wondered why he had ever considered it as a contingency bolthole for Lara and Kal-El if the worst had ever come to pass for Krypton. But no- his planet's core had stabilised and the volcanic and seismic tensions which had threatened to tear the planet apart had diminished. And without regret, Jor-El had retracted his earlier pessimistic observation. Moreover, the news had been met with acclaim as the Science Council was forced to retract his earlier blithe dismissal of Krypton's endangerment and acknowledged that yes, Krypton had indeed faced imminent destruction from the very real threat a its core. At the next selection event, Jor-El was voted onto the Science Council to prevent any recurrence of the expertise gap that had initially led to planetary endangerment. And yet, there remained a mystery. Would there ever be a satisfactory explanation for the sudden concentration of zeelium at the planet's core that had literally saved the lives of millions? And why had there been a mysterious dimensional anomaly there at the time? But those were side-issues. As Jor-El and Lara watched Kal-El grow to manhood, marry and start a family of his own, they were grateful for the years of family life and peace that had prevailed after the fraught months at the millennium's turn.
And unfortunately, on Earth, there had been ample reason to regret there never having been a strange visitor from another planet. In Crime Alley, a would-be robber claimed the lives of the Gotham Wayne family, killing Dr Thomas Wayne, his wife Martha and their young son Bruce. A chemical accident in Central City had ended the life of young police scientist Barry Allen. In Ivy Town, a gravimetric disaster had claimed much of the formerly placid East Coast university town, blamed on a young physicist, Professor Raymond Palmer. Pursuing an alien criminal, Green Lantern Abin Sur bypassed Earth and test pilot Hal Jordan of Ferris Aircraft never encountered him. He ended up marrying the company's chief executive, Carol Ferris, eventually anyway. In Star City, Oliver Queen became a leading US sporting archer and competed in the Olympics for his country several times. Katar and Shayera Hol never visited Earth, and Professor Saul Erdel's teleport device malfunctioned, never claiming Green Martian J'Onn J'Onnz as an unintentional target. Zatanna Zatara remained in other dimensional realms, eternally searching for her lost father with no allies amongst the non-magic user majority of Earth. On distant Themiscyra, a dead US Army officer ended up on Reformation Island's beach. His name had been Steve Trevor and he never met Princess Diana from the reclusive Amazon nation. Ulimately, as Earth's political climate worsened, the Amazon nation decided to leave Earth's solar system and seek refuge on a virgin planet of their own, and abandoned Patriarch's World to its own fate. With no metahuman heroes, Earth fell victim to a Khundian invasion force and within fifty years, homo sapiens was extinct as a species, apart from the distant Amazon homeworld, Femynye. After being ransacked for its elemental abundance, stripmined, and with a heavily polluted atmosphere and oceans, any surviving non-hominid planet was snuffed out as Earth entered a runaway greenhouse effect and its average temperature surged to several hundred degrees. Its surface became barren, desolate and broken and open to the chill vacuum of space and bombardment from solar radiation. And this time, unlike other great extinctions in its planetary history, there would be no reprieve. Earth hung in space, forgotten and alone, a dead planet. It would do so for the next several billion years until its sun swelled to a red giant and consumed its innermost retinue of worlds.
Several light years away, oblivious to that tragedy, a placid and fulfilled Krypton continued to orbit Rao as it had done for millions of years.
And in a distant alternate universe, an oblivious Time Lord underwent successive regnerations and never realised what his actions had precipitated in that arena of the multiverse that was not his own. In saving Krypton, he had sentenced that universe's Earth to damnation.
THE END [3.08 PM, JANUARY 25, 2023]
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PROLOGUE: THE TARDIS:
Groggily, the Doctor picked himself up off the floor, replacing his hat and scarf, and gathering his scattered jellybabies into a battered but still serviceable paper bag. Around him, his TARDIS self-repair circuits were still repairing his timeship. He frowned as he looked closely at the readings and sighed to himself. No wonder the old ship had taken such a bang- they'd been violently shifted sidewise into an alternate universe. He pored over his starcharts, and was gratified to log into an analogous setting. He was about to steer his vessel toward a singularity and back to his own universe, when the emergency sensors registered. He shook his head and then frowned as he read the details that his craft had been able to surmise.
Around an adjacent red dwarf sun, a superterrestroid planet orbited. However, that state of affairs would not prevail for long- the planet had a uranium core and it was a dangerously reactive one. Seismic and volcanic disturbances now regularly shook the planet's surface and according to the planet's communication networks, its ruling technocratic Science Council had censored xenogeological data about the escalating crisis, exacerbated by the destruction of one of the planet's larger moons and its own eccentric orbit near the star. Only one scientist had deduced the true nature of the planet's plight and now sought to save his family. No, the Doctor told himself, he could not let this happen. There was one element that could blunt the reaction in time- zeelium. And so, the TARDIS took itself to a concentration of small zeelium asteroids and proceeded to transport them inside the planet itself. It took several days, but at the end of it, his gamble had paid off. Satisfied at what he had done, the Doctor took himself and the TARDIS away, unaware that the consequences of what he had done would reverberate through the history of that universe.
It is often said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
TWENTY YEARS LATER:
Looking at the Earth now, Jor-El wondered why he had ever considered it as a contingency bolthole for Lara and Kal-El if the worst had ever come to pass for Krypton. But no- his planet's core had stabilised and the volcanic and seismic tensions which had threatened to tear the planet apart had diminished. And without regret, Jor-El had retracted his earlier pessimistic observation. Moreover, the news had been met with acclaim as the Science Council was forced to retract his earlier blithe dismissal of Krypton's endangerment and acknowledged that yes, Krypton had indeed faced imminent destruction from the very real threat a its core. At the next selection event, Jor-El was voted onto the Science Council to prevent any recurrence of the expertise gap that had initially led to planetary endangerment. And yet, there remained a mystery. Would there ever be a satisfactory explanation for the sudden concentration of zeelium at the planet's core that had literally saved the lives of millions? And why had there been a mysterious dimensional anomaly there at the time? But those were side-issues. As Jor-El and Lara watched Kal-El grow to manhood, marry and start a family of his own, they were grateful for the years of family life and peace that had prevailed after the fraught months at the millennium's turn.
And unfortunately, on Earth, there had been ample reason to regret there never having been a strange visitor from another planet. In Crime Alley, a would-be robber claimed the lives of the Gotham Wayne family, killing Dr Thomas Wayne, his wife Martha and their young son Bruce. A chemical accident in Central City had ended the life of young police scientist Barry Allen. In Ivy Town, a gravimetric disaster had claimed much of the formerly placid East Coast university town, blamed on a young physicist, Professor Raymond Palmer. Pursuing an alien criminal, Green Lantern Abin Sur bypassed Earth and test pilot Hal Jordan of Ferris Aircraft never encountered him. He ended up marrying the company's chief executive, Carol Ferris, eventually anyway. In Star City, Oliver Queen became a leading US sporting archer and competed in the Olympics for his country several times. Katar and Shayera Hol never visited Earth, and Professor Saul Erdel's teleport device malfunctioned, never claiming Green Martian J'Onn J'Onnz as an unintentional target. Zatanna Zatara remained in other dimensional realms, eternally searching for her lost father with no allies amongst the non-magic user majority of Earth. On distant Themiscyra, a dead US Army officer ended up on Reformation Island's beach. His name had been Steve Trevor and he never met Princess Diana from the reclusive Amazon nation. Ulimately, as Earth's political climate worsened, the Amazon nation decided to leave Earth's solar system and seek refuge on a virgin planet of their own, and abandoned Patriarch's World to its own fate. With no metahuman heroes, Earth fell victim to a Khundian invasion force and within fifty years, homo sapiens was extinct as a species, apart from the distant Amazon homeworld, Femynye. After being ransacked for its elemental abundance, stripmined, and with a heavily polluted atmosphere and oceans, any surviving non-hominid planet was snuffed out as Earth entered a runaway greenhouse effect and its average temperature surged to several hundred degrees. Its surface became barren, desolate and broken and open to the chill vacuum of space and bombardment from solar radiation. And this time, unlike other great extinctions in its planetary history, there would be no reprieve. Earth hung in space, forgotten and alone, a dead planet. It would do so for the next several billion years until its sun swelled to a red giant and consumed its innermost retinue of worlds.
Several light years away, oblivious to that tragedy, a placid and fulfilled Krypton continued to orbit Rao as it had done for millions of years.
And in a distant alternate universe, an oblivious Time Lord underwent successive regnerations and never realised what his actions had precipitated in that arena of the multiverse that was not his own. In saving Krypton, he had sentenced that universe's Earth to damnation.
THE END [3.08 PM, JANUARY 25, 2023]
