Post by redsycorax on Sept 5, 2018 1:00:20 GMT
On Earth 964, the "Silver Age" never really had the chance to dawn.
In September 1964, in a sudden assault, the Warsaw Pact encircled and invaded West Berlin. Frantic phone calls from President Lyndon Baines Johnson to the sepulchural Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev went unanswered. After two days of frustration, Johnson made the fateful decision to move into East German territory to relieve the trapped inhabitants of the former German capital. On 18 September, NATO used its first tactical nuclear weapons to blast through the Warsaw Pact defences. From then on, doomsday dawned.
At 11.00 AM GMT, the first nuclear airbursts arose over West Germany's cities. By 11.10 AM, mushroom clouds were arising over Amsterdam, Antwerp, Copenhagen, Oslo, Rome and London as the Pope gave an impassioned speech to stop the madness. Pope John XXIII never had the chance to finish. By then, ICBMs were arcing over the Atlantic and had already impacted on Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Belgrade, Warsaw and Moscow. At 11.20 AM, the Eastern Seaboard of the United States was incinerated. At 11.30 AM, it was the turn of Japanese and Chinese cities. By 11.40 AM, the final volley had brought mutually assured destruction to Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle and the cities of the midwest.
It took a little over two months for the clouds of radioactive debris and fallout to inexorably move toward the cities of the Southern Hemisphere. As they vomited and convulsed in their failing fallout shelters in the remains of North America and Western Europe, they asked themselves where their 'mystery men and women', their 'superheroes' were. Why had they abandoned them?
It wasn't true. Of the newborn Justice League, the following account can be made. Batman and Robin were in the Batcave when a twelve kiloton device detonated over Gotham City Police Headquarters, vaporising Commissioner James Gordon, Police Chief O'Hara and Gordon's wife Barbara Keane Gordon and her high school aged namesake and daughter Babs. The seismic jolt demolished Wayne Manor and caused the cave to collapse around the duo. Arkham Asylum was already aflame as most of his rogues gallery perished within it. The Atom tried to save Jean Loring, but to no avail, as Ivy Town was pulverised around him. The Flash did his best to prevent Central City's obliteration, but he was a fraction too slow. Even his superspeed could not outpace the deadly rain of radiation and heat as he fell to the Soviet hail of death. Coast City. Star City. Midway City. Metropolis. All of the cities that had once been protected by the Justice League perished with their heroes.
Most of them, that is. Superman and Jimmy Olsen were on a deep space mission when it happened. Adam Strange was on Rann. Fortunately, his father in law Sardath found a way to neutralise the residual zeta beam traces within his body and he lived out the rest of his life on Rann. Green Lantern was reassigned to another planet in his sector with humanoid inhabitants as he returned to see his dying world. There would never be another Green Lantern from Earth after Hal Jordan's tenure ended several decades later. Wonder Woman was lured to Paradise Island under false pretences as Queen Hippolyta's Amazon scientists took it into another dimension, never to return to the charnel house. In 2964, the Legion of Superheroes utopian, pacific future disintegrated into oblivion and non-existence as the circumstances that had led to it were aborted.
Adam Strange married Alanna Sardath and they had children. Jimmy Olsen went into suspended animation, awaiting a future when it would be safe to awaken, when human immortality would be possible, Earth's very last survivor. Kal-El of Krypton resettled on Daxam. Powerless under its red sun, and still mourning for the lost shade of Lois Lane, he never married or had offspring, although that was theoretically possible for him. Fifty years after the nuclear holocaust had claimed Earth, Kal-El died in a Daxamite geriatric hospital. With him died the Kryptonian species. However, all of this occurred light years away and some years after the events that we relate next.
There remained two months of solitude and dread as the remaining cities of the Southern Hemisphere fell silent, while radiation poisoning, contaminated food and water, starvation and hunger took their toll. In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, some sense of order and stability was maintained as the numbed citizens awaited the inevitable. In records found long afterward, it transpired that a nuclear submarine, the USS Swordfish, had survived the end of its world and surfaced in Australia, spending the next two months there until the radiation reached Melbourne. There was a shoretime romance between Commander Dwight Towers and Moira Coates, a native of Melbourne. Then, in November 1964, the fallout and radiation from the death of the Northern Hemisphere began to arrive in Melbourne. As they sickened, most of its people swallowed compound barbiturate suicide pills to avert their grisly fate otherwise. Deluded in his belief that he was going to be reunited with his dead wife and children, Towers and his remaining retinue set to sea in the Swordfish, watched by Moira from the local hills. She took her pills with a shot of whiskey shortly after it submerged. Her last thoughts were that she hoped Dwight would wait for her so that they could 'return' to his 'home' together. The Swordfish resurfaced in Dunedin harbour two days later in neighbouring New Zealand. It never put to sea again as its captain and remaining crew died there, followed by most of the city's inhabitants a fortnight later.
A week later, Tierra del Fuego's isolated settlements and the last remaining western Antarctic bases met their fate. There was no human left alive to celebrate Christmas 1964, nor other mammalian and reptile life. As the radiation levels heightened, even the insects and saphrophytic bacteria perished, leaving a sterile, dead planet.
If anyone had been left alive, perhaps this lonely refrain would have occurred to them:
In this last of meeting places / We grope together / And avoid speech / Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.
-T. S. Eliot: "The Hollow Men" (1925)
For forty years, all was silent. Then a silent blue portal opened and a group of heavily radiation suited figures appeared, looking around them. Their radios crackled instructions, questions and observations in French. Amidst the deserted Antarctic landscape, shielded construction vehicles constructed a base around the fledgeling settlement. At length, a tricolour French flag arose over the settlement as tentatively, life returned to dead Earth 964.
"$#!*." Kara said as she stepped out of the transmatter cube and her eyes took in the wasteland outside the translucent hermetically sealed dome. Kyle followed her, just grateful that Earth-46's universe harboured a Green Lantern Corps had power rings that only required charging each week, instead of a mere day.
"Bonjour...ah, hello. You must forgive me, English is a dead language on my Earth. You would know it as Earth-805, I believe."
Kyle nodded: "Yeah, our Multiverse Reader has Earth-805 as a world where the French won the Battle of Trafalgar, invaded and successfully occupied England in 1805 and then used its resources to mark a successful invasion of Tsarist Russia in 1810, before moving on to do so to the former United States in 1812. So...you must be their Kal-El analogue, Suprehomme?"
"Oui, I am. My starship landed near Paris and I was raised by a kindly couple of French peasants, the Lebruns, in 1938. In 1956, my existence became public knowledge when I helped to repell an invasion from Contreterre, or, as you would call it, Counter-Earth."
"Okay, we get that. Why did you summon us to this AU? From what my telescopic and x-ray vision scrutiny can see, it is utterly without life. I can't even see any saprophytic bacteria or viruses with my microscopic vision. And why even come here, other than for salvage reasons? Given its intense radioactivity, it's uninhabitable for anyone other than metahumans like ourselves, so AU colonisation is out of the question."
Suprehomme turned to a sensor array:
"We found a reason. Try your superhearing, Kara."
Interceptor turned to auditory scrutiny before she gasped:
"I...hear a human breathing out there."
"That's impossible. The levels of radioactivity out there are enough to kill anyone on the surface and it's probably finished off anyone left in fallout shelters long ago. The probability of a benign mutation emerging must have been mill-" Kyle didn't finish.
"Is he or she one of yours, Suprehomme?"
"Non. Non, we 'ave reason to believe that is the sole survivor of Earth 964. There is one insurmountable problem. They are resident near the ruins of Rochester, in Angleterre- England. Moreover, that being, whoever or whatever it is, 'as Kryptonian class metahuman abilities. Observe. This is what happened when we tried to obtain direct satellite scrutiny." From the surface of the planet below, a rock hurtled upward.
Kara frowned: "Wait a minute. Whoever or whatever that being is, it isn't Kryptonian. The physiological signs I'm getting are not those of either another Kryptonian or Daxamite. Why can't I see him or her or it with my telescopic vision?"
"Atomised atmospheric lead particles, they interfere with our long-distance visual abilities, Kara. Unfortunately, my activities here are limited to indirect and remote observation. Would you and Monsieur Rayner do us the profound honour of investigating this situation?"
Several thousand kilometres to the North, a dazed figure wandered across the desolate landscape as he had done for the last three decades. Looking around him, he saw only skeletons in rags and in some cases, leather-like skin stretched over their bones. Oddly though, he was immaculate. He briefly thought of the totems that gave him power- the tornado, the hare, Uncas of the Monhegan Native American tribe, nature itself, the hardness of diamond, an eagle in flight and the tenacity of a charging ram. He wondered what had happened to the old shaman who had presided over the awarding of his abilities, and he thought about Willie Fawcett, his alter ego. But no. He could never revert to the child who he had once been, because that would mean certain death. Looking at a tattered sixties horror movie advertisement, Captain Thunder howled his bewilderment.
Captain Thunder had fought the Monster League of Evil- Atropula, Victorstein, Lykaios and Akhenuton -across 1953 dimensions of time and space, until he successfully apprehended them and imprisoned them in a remote and desolate corner of the cosmos. Travelling back, he encountered an incarnation of Kal-El of Krypton/Superman on one alternate Earth, until he found his way back to his alternate Earth.
But it had changed, horrifically. While he had been away, the human race had perished from its own follies. In a distant area of his broken and ruined world, he read a brief account from confused and dazed elderly couple who were perishing from the consequences from an adjacent, detonated nuclear weapon. Betraying their innocence and naivetie, a cold and lethal fallout-laden wind had blown into their ruined home and cut their gentle lives short. Their story ended with a prayer, which turned into a phrase from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" before the hand holding the pencil became too shaky and weak to write properly.
He found the couple covered in dirty paper bags where they'd lain down, unaware they were dying. And wept for innocence lost.
As Kyle and Kara overflew the desolation and silence of Earth 964's post-apocalyptic landscape, the Green Lantern of Earth-46 swallowed as he took in the universal ruin and decay: "The ring doesn't even detect saphrophytic bacteria on this Earth, Kara. Not only humanity is extinct here, so are all animal and plant life and even micro-organisms."
She closed her eyes as the wind tousled her hair:
"It's worse than Krypton. At least when my world died, the entire planet was pulverised. But this is like a decaying corpse, Kyle. The wind, rain and storms have caused some dislocation, but there's nothing left alive here. Not on land, not in the sea, not even deep underground. Why did Earth-805 want to colonise this place?"
Kyle shrugged: "More to the point, who is this sole survivor? There isn't an analogue of you here, and 964's Kal-El died on Daxam where he'd resettled eight years ago. There isn't a Brainiac alternate either, so no Kryptonian cities ended up inadvertantly rescued, like Kandor, Kryptonopolis, Argo and Jerat in other alternate universes. Lar Gand never travelled to Earth but ended up back home on Daxam after his exploration period."
Below, the empty echoing wind blew dust across the craters and collapsed buildings as skeletons shone bonewhite amidst the wreckage of cars and the debris of ruined highways and skyscrapers. Nameless and charnel house cities passed by unremarked and shattered below, not even lost to history, for that had ended here when the last human being passed away here after ingesting a suicide pill on December 29, 1964, over half an unmeasured century ago.
From the sepulchural ruined landscape of post-extinction Kent, Captain Thunder looked up as he heard the sudden sound of rushing wind. He rose from the land, accelerating into the sky above the funereal silence. Still several hundred kilometres away, Kara caught sight of the newcomer and her telescopic vision located him:
"The lead particulate has cleared enough- Great Krypton! Kyle, it's an analogue of Captain Marvel/Shazam. But he looks..." Abruptly, she was cut off as Thunder accelerated toward her, wildness in his eyes. Instinctively, Kara moved to protect Kyle: "Captain! Stop!"
"To hell with you, alien. Leave this world. You don't belong here." Thunder was shockingly transformed from most of the Captain Marvels she knew. His eyes were bloodshot and his clothes dirty and tattered. She stayed his fist and grappled with him:
"It's all right. We're not here to take this world over. This is an exploratory mission only."
"Yeah, what Kara says. We didn't know anyone else was alive here."
"Then what is that airlocked alien base doing in Antarctica?"
"It's from an alternate Earth, Earth 805. They're here for resource mining and colonisation. Its colonists didn't know that you were here. How did you survive the nuclear holocaust here, Captain?"
"I...wasn't here. I was lost in space/time...for...eleven years. When I finally found the Earth, it...it wasn't there anymore. Everything. Everything was dead. I...I should have been here. I should have saved it. I...wasn't. I...don't deserve to survive. Neglected my duty."
Kyle initiated a telepathic link with Kara:
[He sounds suicidal.]
[If he speaks his totemic word and transforms back to whoever his mortal alter ego is, that alter ego will succumb to the radiation intensity here and die in minutes. He doesn't deserve that. The question is, can we dissuade him? Do we have the right?]
[We can't just leave him to die. He's the last surviving human being...hell, lifeform on this world. No. Kara, I actively fought against Overman when he tried to destroy Earth-14 and turn it into something like this wasteland. You did the same to Exemplar and USForces on Earth-28. That can't be allowed to happen here.
You know I'm right. You came here from Argo City and found new friends and a new life here. But he's grieving and half-mad.]
[What stopped him from abandoning this world? What's keeping him here, Kyle?]
But abruptly, they weren't alone. Several familiar figures had materialised above them, recognisable instantly as the Justice Alliance of America of Earth-500. Vathlo Island refugee Kalel/ Earth-500's Superman cleared his throat:
"No. You don't get to kill this poor bastard."
"We weren't intending to do that. We were called to investigate by an Earth-805 colonial outpost currently based in Antarctica. No-one knew he was here, Kalel. Can Earth-500 take him? You don't have a Captain Marvel or Thunder analogue yourselves, do you?"
"We'd be willing to do so. The problem is, we can't do that given his power-levels, and given his current trauma. And we can't mindwipe him."
Kyle scowled: "If someone doesn't do something, he may decide to act out and die here. Under these specific circumstances, what would be wrong with mindwiping? This whole planet is an abiotic hell. He's been driven mad by what he's been through over the last half-century."
"Look, we aren't moral absolutists to that extent. But he has Daxamite or Kryptonian class-" Supergirl of Earth-500 began, but then Kyle caught sight of what Captain Thunder was about to do, about to speak his totemic phrase and seek the oblivion of death.
"Kalel! Knock him out! Now!" And then there was a brief moment of thunder before funereal silence followed.
EPILOGUE 1: EARTH-500
"Thunder." Willie Fawcett opened his eyes and swallowed in bewilderment. He put down his pile of newspapers and smelt coffee and doughnuts in an adjacent diner. He grinned, realising that he had enough money to buy lunch for himself. Around him, Batson City was filled with sunlight and the diverse noises of a thriving, placid city. Abruptly, there was a telepathic hum:
"Sorry, Cap. It's duty time. Aquaman says he needs help from an ichthyosaur pack around Terra Incognito. They're large fellows and Kara and I are already on the way down there. We'd be grateful for the help."
Willie sighed to himself. The appetising smells and anticipated tastes would have to wait. Checking to see that there was no attention being paid to him, the diminutive paper boy ducked into an alleyway and spoke his totemic word: "Thunder!" Seconds later, a distinctive red and yellow hued figure accelerated into the skies above Batson City as its champion flew above the familiar and cherished landscape that he loved and protected. For a moment, there was an image of desolation and horror, but that faded from his mind as he focused his attention on the awaiting menace. His colleagues needed him.
EPILOGUE 2: EARTH-964.
And on a distant Earth, universes away, Earth-805's colonists set out from their Antarctic base and started the laborious task of bringing life and final peace to a deserted and devastated planet. Kyle and Kara held each others hands and kissed. This time, there had been a happy ending. A legend had been rescued from hell and was now living, at peace and doing what he loved best. Even better, that very fact signalled the ending of isolation and fear from Earth-500.
THE END
In September 1964, in a sudden assault, the Warsaw Pact encircled and invaded West Berlin. Frantic phone calls from President Lyndon Baines Johnson to the sepulchural Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev went unanswered. After two days of frustration, Johnson made the fateful decision to move into East German territory to relieve the trapped inhabitants of the former German capital. On 18 September, NATO used its first tactical nuclear weapons to blast through the Warsaw Pact defences. From then on, doomsday dawned.
At 11.00 AM GMT, the first nuclear airbursts arose over West Germany's cities. By 11.10 AM, mushroom clouds were arising over Amsterdam, Antwerp, Copenhagen, Oslo, Rome and London as the Pope gave an impassioned speech to stop the madness. Pope John XXIII never had the chance to finish. By then, ICBMs were arcing over the Atlantic and had already impacted on Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Belgrade, Warsaw and Moscow. At 11.20 AM, the Eastern Seaboard of the United States was incinerated. At 11.30 AM, it was the turn of Japanese and Chinese cities. By 11.40 AM, the final volley had brought mutually assured destruction to Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle and the cities of the midwest.
It took a little over two months for the clouds of radioactive debris and fallout to inexorably move toward the cities of the Southern Hemisphere. As they vomited and convulsed in their failing fallout shelters in the remains of North America and Western Europe, they asked themselves where their 'mystery men and women', their 'superheroes' were. Why had they abandoned them?
It wasn't true. Of the newborn Justice League, the following account can be made. Batman and Robin were in the Batcave when a twelve kiloton device detonated over Gotham City Police Headquarters, vaporising Commissioner James Gordon, Police Chief O'Hara and Gordon's wife Barbara Keane Gordon and her high school aged namesake and daughter Babs. The seismic jolt demolished Wayne Manor and caused the cave to collapse around the duo. Arkham Asylum was already aflame as most of his rogues gallery perished within it. The Atom tried to save Jean Loring, but to no avail, as Ivy Town was pulverised around him. The Flash did his best to prevent Central City's obliteration, but he was a fraction too slow. Even his superspeed could not outpace the deadly rain of radiation and heat as he fell to the Soviet hail of death. Coast City. Star City. Midway City. Metropolis. All of the cities that had once been protected by the Justice League perished with their heroes.
Most of them, that is. Superman and Jimmy Olsen were on a deep space mission when it happened. Adam Strange was on Rann. Fortunately, his father in law Sardath found a way to neutralise the residual zeta beam traces within his body and he lived out the rest of his life on Rann. Green Lantern was reassigned to another planet in his sector with humanoid inhabitants as he returned to see his dying world. There would never be another Green Lantern from Earth after Hal Jordan's tenure ended several decades later. Wonder Woman was lured to Paradise Island under false pretences as Queen Hippolyta's Amazon scientists took it into another dimension, never to return to the charnel house. In 2964, the Legion of Superheroes utopian, pacific future disintegrated into oblivion and non-existence as the circumstances that had led to it were aborted.
Adam Strange married Alanna Sardath and they had children. Jimmy Olsen went into suspended animation, awaiting a future when it would be safe to awaken, when human immortality would be possible, Earth's very last survivor. Kal-El of Krypton resettled on Daxam. Powerless under its red sun, and still mourning for the lost shade of Lois Lane, he never married or had offspring, although that was theoretically possible for him. Fifty years after the nuclear holocaust had claimed Earth, Kal-El died in a Daxamite geriatric hospital. With him died the Kryptonian species. However, all of this occurred light years away and some years after the events that we relate next.
There remained two months of solitude and dread as the remaining cities of the Southern Hemisphere fell silent, while radiation poisoning, contaminated food and water, starvation and hunger took their toll. In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, some sense of order and stability was maintained as the numbed citizens awaited the inevitable. In records found long afterward, it transpired that a nuclear submarine, the USS Swordfish, had survived the end of its world and surfaced in Australia, spending the next two months there until the radiation reached Melbourne. There was a shoretime romance between Commander Dwight Towers and Moira Coates, a native of Melbourne. Then, in November 1964, the fallout and radiation from the death of the Northern Hemisphere began to arrive in Melbourne. As they sickened, most of its people swallowed compound barbiturate suicide pills to avert their grisly fate otherwise. Deluded in his belief that he was going to be reunited with his dead wife and children, Towers and his remaining retinue set to sea in the Swordfish, watched by Moira from the local hills. She took her pills with a shot of whiskey shortly after it submerged. Her last thoughts were that she hoped Dwight would wait for her so that they could 'return' to his 'home' together. The Swordfish resurfaced in Dunedin harbour two days later in neighbouring New Zealand. It never put to sea again as its captain and remaining crew died there, followed by most of the city's inhabitants a fortnight later.
A week later, Tierra del Fuego's isolated settlements and the last remaining western Antarctic bases met their fate. There was no human left alive to celebrate Christmas 1964, nor other mammalian and reptile life. As the radiation levels heightened, even the insects and saphrophytic bacteria perished, leaving a sterile, dead planet.
If anyone had been left alive, perhaps this lonely refrain would have occurred to them:
In this last of meeting places / We grope together / And avoid speech / Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.
-T. S. Eliot: "The Hollow Men" (1925)
For forty years, all was silent. Then a silent blue portal opened and a group of heavily radiation suited figures appeared, looking around them. Their radios crackled instructions, questions and observations in French. Amidst the deserted Antarctic landscape, shielded construction vehicles constructed a base around the fledgeling settlement. At length, a tricolour French flag arose over the settlement as tentatively, life returned to dead Earth 964.
"$#!*." Kara said as she stepped out of the transmatter cube and her eyes took in the wasteland outside the translucent hermetically sealed dome. Kyle followed her, just grateful that Earth-46's universe harboured a Green Lantern Corps had power rings that only required charging each week, instead of a mere day.
"Bonjour...ah, hello. You must forgive me, English is a dead language on my Earth. You would know it as Earth-805, I believe."
Kyle nodded: "Yeah, our Multiverse Reader has Earth-805 as a world where the French won the Battle of Trafalgar, invaded and successfully occupied England in 1805 and then used its resources to mark a successful invasion of Tsarist Russia in 1810, before moving on to do so to the former United States in 1812. So...you must be their Kal-El analogue, Suprehomme?"
"Oui, I am. My starship landed near Paris and I was raised by a kindly couple of French peasants, the Lebruns, in 1938. In 1956, my existence became public knowledge when I helped to repell an invasion from Contreterre, or, as you would call it, Counter-Earth."
"Okay, we get that. Why did you summon us to this AU? From what my telescopic and x-ray vision scrutiny can see, it is utterly without life. I can't even see any saprophytic bacteria or viruses with my microscopic vision. And why even come here, other than for salvage reasons? Given its intense radioactivity, it's uninhabitable for anyone other than metahumans like ourselves, so AU colonisation is out of the question."
Suprehomme turned to a sensor array:
"We found a reason. Try your superhearing, Kara."
Interceptor turned to auditory scrutiny before she gasped:
"I...hear a human breathing out there."
"That's impossible. The levels of radioactivity out there are enough to kill anyone on the surface and it's probably finished off anyone left in fallout shelters long ago. The probability of a benign mutation emerging must have been mill-" Kyle didn't finish.
"Is he or she one of yours, Suprehomme?"
"Non. Non, we 'ave reason to believe that is the sole survivor of Earth 964. There is one insurmountable problem. They are resident near the ruins of Rochester, in Angleterre- England. Moreover, that being, whoever or whatever it is, 'as Kryptonian class metahuman abilities. Observe. This is what happened when we tried to obtain direct satellite scrutiny." From the surface of the planet below, a rock hurtled upward.
Kara frowned: "Wait a minute. Whoever or whatever that being is, it isn't Kryptonian. The physiological signs I'm getting are not those of either another Kryptonian or Daxamite. Why can't I see him or her or it with my telescopic vision?"
"Atomised atmospheric lead particles, they interfere with our long-distance visual abilities, Kara. Unfortunately, my activities here are limited to indirect and remote observation. Would you and Monsieur Rayner do us the profound honour of investigating this situation?"
Several thousand kilometres to the North, a dazed figure wandered across the desolate landscape as he had done for the last three decades. Looking around him, he saw only skeletons in rags and in some cases, leather-like skin stretched over their bones. Oddly though, he was immaculate. He briefly thought of the totems that gave him power- the tornado, the hare, Uncas of the Monhegan Native American tribe, nature itself, the hardness of diamond, an eagle in flight and the tenacity of a charging ram. He wondered what had happened to the old shaman who had presided over the awarding of his abilities, and he thought about Willie Fawcett, his alter ego. But no. He could never revert to the child who he had once been, because that would mean certain death. Looking at a tattered sixties horror movie advertisement, Captain Thunder howled his bewilderment.
Captain Thunder had fought the Monster League of Evil- Atropula, Victorstein, Lykaios and Akhenuton -across 1953 dimensions of time and space, until he successfully apprehended them and imprisoned them in a remote and desolate corner of the cosmos. Travelling back, he encountered an incarnation of Kal-El of Krypton/Superman on one alternate Earth, until he found his way back to his alternate Earth.
But it had changed, horrifically. While he had been away, the human race had perished from its own follies. In a distant area of his broken and ruined world, he read a brief account from confused and dazed elderly couple who were perishing from the consequences from an adjacent, detonated nuclear weapon. Betraying their innocence and naivetie, a cold and lethal fallout-laden wind had blown into their ruined home and cut their gentle lives short. Their story ended with a prayer, which turned into a phrase from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" before the hand holding the pencil became too shaky and weak to write properly.
He found the couple covered in dirty paper bags where they'd lain down, unaware they were dying. And wept for innocence lost.
As Kyle and Kara overflew the desolation and silence of Earth 964's post-apocalyptic landscape, the Green Lantern of Earth-46 swallowed as he took in the universal ruin and decay: "The ring doesn't even detect saphrophytic bacteria on this Earth, Kara. Not only humanity is extinct here, so are all animal and plant life and even micro-organisms."
She closed her eyes as the wind tousled her hair:
"It's worse than Krypton. At least when my world died, the entire planet was pulverised. But this is like a decaying corpse, Kyle. The wind, rain and storms have caused some dislocation, but there's nothing left alive here. Not on land, not in the sea, not even deep underground. Why did Earth-805 want to colonise this place?"
Kyle shrugged: "More to the point, who is this sole survivor? There isn't an analogue of you here, and 964's Kal-El died on Daxam where he'd resettled eight years ago. There isn't a Brainiac alternate either, so no Kryptonian cities ended up inadvertantly rescued, like Kandor, Kryptonopolis, Argo and Jerat in other alternate universes. Lar Gand never travelled to Earth but ended up back home on Daxam after his exploration period."
Below, the empty echoing wind blew dust across the craters and collapsed buildings as skeletons shone bonewhite amidst the wreckage of cars and the debris of ruined highways and skyscrapers. Nameless and charnel house cities passed by unremarked and shattered below, not even lost to history, for that had ended here when the last human being passed away here after ingesting a suicide pill on December 29, 1964, over half an unmeasured century ago.
From the sepulchural ruined landscape of post-extinction Kent, Captain Thunder looked up as he heard the sudden sound of rushing wind. He rose from the land, accelerating into the sky above the funereal silence. Still several hundred kilometres away, Kara caught sight of the newcomer and her telescopic vision located him:
"The lead particulate has cleared enough- Great Krypton! Kyle, it's an analogue of Captain Marvel/Shazam. But he looks..." Abruptly, she was cut off as Thunder accelerated toward her, wildness in his eyes. Instinctively, Kara moved to protect Kyle: "Captain! Stop!"
"To hell with you, alien. Leave this world. You don't belong here." Thunder was shockingly transformed from most of the Captain Marvels she knew. His eyes were bloodshot and his clothes dirty and tattered. She stayed his fist and grappled with him:
"It's all right. We're not here to take this world over. This is an exploratory mission only."
"Yeah, what Kara says. We didn't know anyone else was alive here."
"Then what is that airlocked alien base doing in Antarctica?"
"It's from an alternate Earth, Earth 805. They're here for resource mining and colonisation. Its colonists didn't know that you were here. How did you survive the nuclear holocaust here, Captain?"
"I...wasn't here. I was lost in space/time...for...eleven years. When I finally found the Earth, it...it wasn't there anymore. Everything. Everything was dead. I...I should have been here. I should have saved it. I...wasn't. I...don't deserve to survive. Neglected my duty."
Kyle initiated a telepathic link with Kara:
[He sounds suicidal.]
[If he speaks his totemic word and transforms back to whoever his mortal alter ego is, that alter ego will succumb to the radiation intensity here and die in minutes. He doesn't deserve that. The question is, can we dissuade him? Do we have the right?]
[We can't just leave him to die. He's the last surviving human being...hell, lifeform on this world. No. Kara, I actively fought against Overman when he tried to destroy Earth-14 and turn it into something like this wasteland. You did the same to Exemplar and USForces on Earth-28. That can't be allowed to happen here.
You know I'm right. You came here from Argo City and found new friends and a new life here. But he's grieving and half-mad.]
[What stopped him from abandoning this world? What's keeping him here, Kyle?]
But abruptly, they weren't alone. Several familiar figures had materialised above them, recognisable instantly as the Justice Alliance of America of Earth-500. Vathlo Island refugee Kalel/ Earth-500's Superman cleared his throat:
"No. You don't get to kill this poor bastard."
"We weren't intending to do that. We were called to investigate by an Earth-805 colonial outpost currently based in Antarctica. No-one knew he was here, Kalel. Can Earth-500 take him? You don't have a Captain Marvel or Thunder analogue yourselves, do you?"
"We'd be willing to do so. The problem is, we can't do that given his power-levels, and given his current trauma. And we can't mindwipe him."
Kyle scowled: "If someone doesn't do something, he may decide to act out and die here. Under these specific circumstances, what would be wrong with mindwiping? This whole planet is an abiotic hell. He's been driven mad by what he's been through over the last half-century."
"Look, we aren't moral absolutists to that extent. But he has Daxamite or Kryptonian class-" Supergirl of Earth-500 began, but then Kyle caught sight of what Captain Thunder was about to do, about to speak his totemic phrase and seek the oblivion of death.
"Kalel! Knock him out! Now!" And then there was a brief moment of thunder before funereal silence followed.
EPILOGUE 1: EARTH-500
"Thunder." Willie Fawcett opened his eyes and swallowed in bewilderment. He put down his pile of newspapers and smelt coffee and doughnuts in an adjacent diner. He grinned, realising that he had enough money to buy lunch for himself. Around him, Batson City was filled with sunlight and the diverse noises of a thriving, placid city. Abruptly, there was a telepathic hum:
"Sorry, Cap. It's duty time. Aquaman says he needs help from an ichthyosaur pack around Terra Incognito. They're large fellows and Kara and I are already on the way down there. We'd be grateful for the help."
Willie sighed to himself. The appetising smells and anticipated tastes would have to wait. Checking to see that there was no attention being paid to him, the diminutive paper boy ducked into an alleyway and spoke his totemic word: "Thunder!" Seconds later, a distinctive red and yellow hued figure accelerated into the skies above Batson City as its champion flew above the familiar and cherished landscape that he loved and protected. For a moment, there was an image of desolation and horror, but that faded from his mind as he focused his attention on the awaiting menace. His colleagues needed him.
EPILOGUE 2: EARTH-964.
And on a distant Earth, universes away, Earth-805's colonists set out from their Antarctic base and started the laborious task of bringing life and final peace to a deserted and devastated planet. Kyle and Kara held each others hands and kissed. This time, there had been a happy ending. A legend had been rescued from hell and was now living, at peace and doing what he loved best. Even better, that very fact signalled the ending of isolation and fear from Earth-500.
THE END
