Post by redsycorax on Jul 14, 2019 22:32:04 GMT
Earth-63: On this alternate Earth, an asteroid struck Earth in 1942. It went undetected until it was much too late , and despite the valiant efforts of its Justice Society of America, 1567 Wertheim wiped out two and a half billion people. On distant Mars, J'onn J'onnz witnessed the tragedy and shook his head, holding his wife M'yrhya close. They turned and walked toward their shelter. For the next hundred thousand years, the battered surface would host no life.
Earth-64: Here, history radically diverged from the datum. It never developed any technology past subsistence level agriculture, sailing ships, crossbows and flintlock pistols. It is sparsely populated, with a population of five hundred million people and medieval political institutions. Although Krypton-64 existed and ceased to exist in 1956 here, Jor-El sent his son to Epsilon Eridani's third planet, La'akshme, where he became Apexman. King Edward IX rules England here, while France, Germany, Spain and Russia are all balkanised and the Ottoman and Chinese Empires still exist and the Shogunate still keeps Japan isolated from the outside world. It is uncertain when, if ever, Earth-64 will undergo the kind of scientific and industrial revolutions that occurred on more datum Earths from the seventeenth century onward.
Earth-65: On this Earth, the Aztec Empire had stronger leadership, threw the Spanish out of Central America and went on to conquer the rest of the Americas, then Europe, Asia and Africa by the nineteenth century. It was a dark world, cursed with religious fanaticism and human sacrifice despite its technological advance. Its inhabitants were obliterated in a multiversal war with an earlier iteration of Earth-25, home to Sliding Albion, an all-powerful alien-human hybrid British Empire.
Earth-66: Walt Walters served during the "Golden Age" as Black Owl, accompanying the Buddhist metahuman Enlightenment to combat Adam Frankenstein. On this world, a stalemated First Great War meant that the Second Great War was waged against Kaiser Louis Ferdinand and Imperial Germany, and never extended beyond Eastern Europe. A Third Great War then ensued in the 1950s against the Holy Patriarchate of Russia, but since then, there has been global peace. After his sons Yank and Doodle were killed in the latter conflict, Black Owl retired. Since the sixties, however, Enlightenment has trained a Global Legion of Boddhisatvas for disaster relief and humanitarian purposes. This world lacks nuclear energy and jet aircraft, as well as a functional space programme.
Earth-67: This world is closer to the datum than many of its neighbours. Here, the Quarrymen never became the Beatles, Richard Nixon was assassinated in 1963 when he visited Dallas as US President, and the Vietnam War never escalated into a destructive and divisive conflict. UK playwright Joe Orton was never killed by his lover Kenneth Halliwell in 1967. It has no metahumans.
Earth-68: A Singularity has occurred here, leading to the transcendence of this Earth and its inhabitants. From the fragmentary data available, it seems as if France's May 1968 libertarian socialist revolution succeeded here, triggering similar peaceful uprisings and rapid technological development. The Singularity seems to have occurred in 2018. No further data exists.
Earth-69: Robert Kennedy became president here in 1968 and withdrew from Vietnam. Consequently, the space programme had far greater impetus here than many other worlds. By 1975, there was a functional moonbase. By 1979, humanity had landed on Mars. By 1989, it was exploring the Gallilean moons of Jupiter. By 1999, it stood on Pluto. In 2019, the first NAFAL starship set off for Alpha Centauri and its planetary system. Here, Superman I married Lois Lane in the seventies and had a son, Superman II. Robin became Batman II after Bruce Wayne retired in the nineties, while Wonder Woman's daughter Fury carries on her mother's activities and mission. The trio are the core of the Justice Nexus of America, the latest metahuman organisation to protect this world. Crimefighting technology is highly sophisticated here.
Earth-70: While Earths 68 and 69 are relatively peaceful and harmonious, the same cannot be said for their nearest neighbour, Earth-70. On this world, the Czechoslovak War escalated and brought down the Warsaw Pact and USSR in 1968. A crazed Richard Nixon also escalated the Vietnam War, which metastatised and consumed the remainder of South-East Asia. By 1975, Australia had also lapsed into civil war, and was also subject to a US invasion and 'pacification." A dirty nuclear device obliterated London in 1975, which decapitated the United Kingdom, while France and Germany kept their heads down, but by 1980, were similarly consumed by fratricidal conflicts of their own. In an ill-advised mission, Superman visited Vietnam on a military mission as embedded Daily Planet journalist Clark Kent, leading to a cataclysmic schism within HELM (the High Echelon League of Metahumans). Batman was compromised by Wayne Enterprises involvement in war industries, and his refusal to apologise for it. Sickened, Diana Prince left Patriarch's World for Themiscyra in disgust. Green Arrow, Black Canary, Black Lightning, Cyborg and Nightwing are members of the Real Justice Underground, 'freedom fighters' against an increasingly authoritarian United States. Hawkman and Superman are members of the Law and Order Sentinels, with no-one else in agreement.
Earth-249's Wonder Woman and her companion, Lois (Nightfire) Lane have tracked the fugitive metahuman villain Wrath to this world.
+++
"Great Hera. This is Great Britain. How could it have become like this?"
"It's been convulsed in civil war for the last forty years, according to the Heisenberg Alternate Probability Index. This planet is a nightmare, Diana, and all the more reason for Wrath to want to conceal himself here."
"They were our allies in the Second World War, Lois. It's heartbreaking to see it pitted and scarred with trenches, starving children and malnutrition like this."
"It's probably worse in London, though. Nuclear strike, high radioactivity...Diana? Look."
"Is that...Superman? Sappho... it is. But why is he wearing that black outfit? Oh, no. No."
Lois closed her eyes: "He's been perverted and corrupted here. That isn't our Clark. It's a grotesque parody of his core values."
"Hey! Over here!" Lois and Wonder Woman ran for cover as a strafing run began over the ruin of a once green and pleasant land. Once inside the shelter, they gasped:
"Dick Grayson? Nightwing? Is Bruce here too?"
"He gave up, Diana. It's good to see you back. Lane? I thought you were in prison for 'contempt of court' after one too many investigative reports on the Nixon regime."
"Nightwing- we're alternate universe versions of your Lois and Diana. We're tracking a villainous Batman mirror image called Wrath from our own Earth. But this...I cannot let this stand. It is monstrous, murderous and wrong."
Dick smiled wearily and indicated a tunnel, laced with shards of a familiar shining alien mineral:
"We found a lode of Gold Kryptonite on the Moon. J'onn J'onnz gave his life to locate it and send it down here."
"So Superman doesn't dare come anywhere near here. Does he have any allies left?"
"Birdbrain. I knew Katar was an uptight button down police officer, but I didn't realise he'd side with Clark when he lost it."
"Hi, Ollie, Dinah. Surely Shayera wouldn't be a party to this?" Diana asked.
"She's not. Shayera's back on Thanagar, they're divorced. Same with our Lois and Clark. She broke up with him after that mission to Vietnam."
"That seems to be the crux of this, doesn't it? It's almost as if something happened to Clark during his period in Vietnam."
A familiar figure stepped out of the shadows: "Astute as ever, Ms.Lane. Some things appear to be a constant."
Lois gasped: "Lex Luthor?! Superman did that to you?"
"If it hadn't been for Victor Stone, I would have lost my life. As it is, I didn't walk away unscathed from my last confrontation with the Kryptonian." Luthor came into the light. Body armour and a prosthetic arm covered his upper chest and a lens within his prosthetic left eye shone, and the armour covered the whole lefthand side of his form.
"Luthor? You know something about this and by the looks of it, you almost paid for it with your life."
"It appears to have been two forms of hitherto unknown Kryptonite- orange, which sent him insane, and violet, which warped his perceptions altogether. So, yes, I'm working with the RJU here, as their weaponer. We could do with your assistance."
Without hesitation, Diana said: "You have it."
"And mine. Lex. I'm sorry that had to happen to you."
Luthor only nodded: "Events have come full circle, it seems. Superman has turned into a tool of a ruthless governing regime and I am the principal agent of his downfall. I am acclaimed as a hero."
"But at what a terrible cost." Lois said, as she followed the rest of the RJU deeper into their underground bunker.
High above them, Superman-70 scowled and snarled, before heading away to other areas of combat which had metastasised across this world at war. England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Algeria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Uganda, Congo, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua-New Guinea, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Venezuala, Columbia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, even Antarctica... this world roiled with insurrection, occupation, rancor and hatred. Who cared what the so-called RJU fulminated about? He wasn't sure who the new intruders were, but they would fall eventually. He would have asked Bruce Wayne about whether or not his tech head at Wayne Enterprises, Lucius Shepherd, could devise something to immunise him to the Gold K that prevented the RJU's apprehension. Unfortunately, he couldn't leave this to Katar. He had no doubt at all about his companion as an asset in hand to hand combat roles. Still, at least there were some advantages to this situation. The adjacent alternate Earths had no way to access this world and interfere with its sovereign development.
"Exactly. Earth-71's an interesting place. Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist philosophy is universal over there and as a result, the old polarities between 'good and evil' have been wholly transformed. I was startled to see that my own counterpart had been influenced by it and thus abandoned his former animosity against the Kryptonian. Earth-72 is nothing but an asteroid belt. A rogue gas giant planet, Scathach, collided with that Earth in 1973, obliterating it wholly. No Krypton or Daxam in that universe and thus no metahuman protector who could have deflected Scathach from its path of obliteration. Earth-73 was subjected to genocide from invading aliens- no-one is even sure what they look like. They invaded that world in its eighteenth century and humanity was extinct by 1820. Earth-74 underwent a nuclear war in 1956 over Egypt and Hungary when President Nixon provoked inexperienced new Soviet Premier Krushchev past the point of prudence. Fortunately, it was comparatively limited compared to others that suffered similar carnage in 1962, 1964, 1968, 1979, 1983 or 1990, from what we have been told. However, their technological standard is approximately equivalent to that of the nineteenth century as a result. Most of the metahumans on both sides were metropolitan and died when their cities of origin died in the nuclear exchange. Earth-75 speaks Old English as a lingua franca- the Saxons won the Battle of Hastings in its 1066 and as a result, Angleland became isolationist and heavily armed, but also highly involved in exploration and overseas trade as a result of its abortive Norman invasion. It has quite a diverse range of metahumans but that world is also an armed camp and prone to fractious nationalism- Britain, France, Germany and Russia aren't coherent nation-states there. On Earth-76, the Persians won at Thermopylae and Salamis and it's a primitive, stagnant feudal backwater that hasn't even reached the stage of heliocentric cosmology there and where feudal lords prevented the development of coherent nation states as well, let alone develop anything like metahumans. Earth-77 is a world dominated by evolved hymenopterids, which has proven resistant to communication with more mammalian-dominated Earths elsewhere in the multiverse."
As they left Luthor's briefing, Lois shivered as she saw the destruction and havoc around her:
"Diana, we'll have to kill this world's Superman. He's responsible for this chaos we see around us. Did you see that thirteen year old boy being brought in on the stretcher? If this doesn't stop, the nations of this world will exhaust all their resources on prolonged conflict against the American Empire here and when they're exhausted, humanity will slump back into a subsistence economy. What?"
"I just wonder what happened to your own alternate self here, Lois. Surely she would have been able to deflect this world's Clark from this course of action?"
"I asked the RJU that, Diana. Lois Lane here uncovered what Nixon tried to do to suppress Watergate. He had her killed. With his mind perverted, this Clark accepted that Watergate was an anti-Nixon conspiracy to frame the President and that its perpetrators killed the woman he loved. But Nixon died in 1994 in most of the Earths cited in the Heisenberg Alternate Probability Index that have him as a US President or significant political figure. Here?"
"He was succeeded by Spiro Agnew, who was never jailed for his part in the Watergate conspiracy here. He only lasted two years before his own death, and Henry Kissinger has been Supreme Authority since then. However, Kissinger is in his nineties and is widely expected to concede power to James Baker, the next candidate in succession. Effectively, the real 'supreme authority' has devolved to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, given that they're prosecuting warfare against global insurgency. So the United States has degenerated into a military dictatorship."" Diana said, consulting her handheld Heisenberg Alternate Probability Index.
"Diana, this is going to break my heart."
"I know. Mine too. But given what Superman has become on this world, and given the permanence of the effects of Orange K, he has become a serious threat to the survival of this planet. If he isn't stopped, his constant intervention against global insurgent movements will end up plunging this planet into a vortex of self-destruction and decline that it may never get out of."
Superman alighted on a torn and grassy knoll:
"Diana? This is a rare surprise. I thought you never left Paradise Island these days."
"Come off it, Clark. You know that I'm from an alternate universe. One question. Why haven't you killed either of us yet?"
He frowned: "I'm not sure. My heat vision failed some time ago. And I can't fly in space anymore."
"Do you have any doubts about your actions?"
He shook his head: "I'm defending liberty and freedom, Diana."
"You aren't, Clark. You've aided and abetted in the conquest and subjugation of this Earth. This isn't you."
"There was a time when you would have made a different call."
"World War II was not Vietnam, Clark. You're implicated in the deaths of millions."
"I'm sorry you feel that way." He moved forward, and then, tears streaming from her face, Lois Lane stepped forward and brought up a gun:
"Is that all? Do you really think you can fire that bullet before I break your neck?"
Lois saw the violence and madness in Clark's eyes, swallowed, and squeezed the trigger: "Yes, I can." Whatever Superman was expected, it wasn't the gold kryptonite bullet that surged after him. Given the momentum assistance of the weapon, volatilised by Lex Luthor, it matched Superman's speed, which had declined as a consequence of erosion from orange K in any case. It was over quickly as it reached him, bored through his body and into his heart. He fell to the ground, still in death.
"Wrath escaped again." Diana said as she and Lois stood and watched the victory parade as a suddenly liberated alternate Earth's insurgencies ended abruptly with the news of Superman's death. The regime had been too dependent on him and without him, it did not have the capability to continue to prosecute a global anti-insurgency war. It was still trying to fight in Canada and Mexico, but their own metahumans were turning the tide.
"Do you think they'll make it?" Lois asked.
"Now that they're back from the precipice, yet. But given what this United States has done, it has a long,hard road ahead of it."
"Let's get out of here, Diana and leave this place to its ghosts."
A portal opened as the two women stepped through. Then there was only the sound of a keening, desolate wind.
THE END
Earth-64: Here, history radically diverged from the datum. It never developed any technology past subsistence level agriculture, sailing ships, crossbows and flintlock pistols. It is sparsely populated, with a population of five hundred million people and medieval political institutions. Although Krypton-64 existed and ceased to exist in 1956 here, Jor-El sent his son to Epsilon Eridani's third planet, La'akshme, where he became Apexman. King Edward IX rules England here, while France, Germany, Spain and Russia are all balkanised and the Ottoman and Chinese Empires still exist and the Shogunate still keeps Japan isolated from the outside world. It is uncertain when, if ever, Earth-64 will undergo the kind of scientific and industrial revolutions that occurred on more datum Earths from the seventeenth century onward.
Earth-65: On this Earth, the Aztec Empire had stronger leadership, threw the Spanish out of Central America and went on to conquer the rest of the Americas, then Europe, Asia and Africa by the nineteenth century. It was a dark world, cursed with religious fanaticism and human sacrifice despite its technological advance. Its inhabitants were obliterated in a multiversal war with an earlier iteration of Earth-25, home to Sliding Albion, an all-powerful alien-human hybrid British Empire.
Earth-66: Walt Walters served during the "Golden Age" as Black Owl, accompanying the Buddhist metahuman Enlightenment to combat Adam Frankenstein. On this world, a stalemated First Great War meant that the Second Great War was waged against Kaiser Louis Ferdinand and Imperial Germany, and never extended beyond Eastern Europe. A Third Great War then ensued in the 1950s against the Holy Patriarchate of Russia, but since then, there has been global peace. After his sons Yank and Doodle were killed in the latter conflict, Black Owl retired. Since the sixties, however, Enlightenment has trained a Global Legion of Boddhisatvas for disaster relief and humanitarian purposes. This world lacks nuclear energy and jet aircraft, as well as a functional space programme.
Earth-67: This world is closer to the datum than many of its neighbours. Here, the Quarrymen never became the Beatles, Richard Nixon was assassinated in 1963 when he visited Dallas as US President, and the Vietnam War never escalated into a destructive and divisive conflict. UK playwright Joe Orton was never killed by his lover Kenneth Halliwell in 1967. It has no metahumans.
Earth-68: A Singularity has occurred here, leading to the transcendence of this Earth and its inhabitants. From the fragmentary data available, it seems as if France's May 1968 libertarian socialist revolution succeeded here, triggering similar peaceful uprisings and rapid technological development. The Singularity seems to have occurred in 2018. No further data exists.
Earth-69: Robert Kennedy became president here in 1968 and withdrew from Vietnam. Consequently, the space programme had far greater impetus here than many other worlds. By 1975, there was a functional moonbase. By 1979, humanity had landed on Mars. By 1989, it was exploring the Gallilean moons of Jupiter. By 1999, it stood on Pluto. In 2019, the first NAFAL starship set off for Alpha Centauri and its planetary system. Here, Superman I married Lois Lane in the seventies and had a son, Superman II. Robin became Batman II after Bruce Wayne retired in the nineties, while Wonder Woman's daughter Fury carries on her mother's activities and mission. The trio are the core of the Justice Nexus of America, the latest metahuman organisation to protect this world. Crimefighting technology is highly sophisticated here.
Earth-70: While Earths 68 and 69 are relatively peaceful and harmonious, the same cannot be said for their nearest neighbour, Earth-70. On this world, the Czechoslovak War escalated and brought down the Warsaw Pact and USSR in 1968. A crazed Richard Nixon also escalated the Vietnam War, which metastatised and consumed the remainder of South-East Asia. By 1975, Australia had also lapsed into civil war, and was also subject to a US invasion and 'pacification." A dirty nuclear device obliterated London in 1975, which decapitated the United Kingdom, while France and Germany kept their heads down, but by 1980, were similarly consumed by fratricidal conflicts of their own. In an ill-advised mission, Superman visited Vietnam on a military mission as embedded Daily Planet journalist Clark Kent, leading to a cataclysmic schism within HELM (the High Echelon League of Metahumans). Batman was compromised by Wayne Enterprises involvement in war industries, and his refusal to apologise for it. Sickened, Diana Prince left Patriarch's World for Themiscyra in disgust. Green Arrow, Black Canary, Black Lightning, Cyborg and Nightwing are members of the Real Justice Underground, 'freedom fighters' against an increasingly authoritarian United States. Hawkman and Superman are members of the Law and Order Sentinels, with no-one else in agreement.
Earth-249's Wonder Woman and her companion, Lois (Nightfire) Lane have tracked the fugitive metahuman villain Wrath to this world.
+++
"Great Hera. This is Great Britain. How could it have become like this?"
"It's been convulsed in civil war for the last forty years, according to the Heisenberg Alternate Probability Index. This planet is a nightmare, Diana, and all the more reason for Wrath to want to conceal himself here."
"They were our allies in the Second World War, Lois. It's heartbreaking to see it pitted and scarred with trenches, starving children and malnutrition like this."
"It's probably worse in London, though. Nuclear strike, high radioactivity...Diana? Look."
"Is that...Superman? Sappho... it is. But why is he wearing that black outfit? Oh, no. No."
Lois closed her eyes: "He's been perverted and corrupted here. That isn't our Clark. It's a grotesque parody of his core values."
"Hey! Over here!" Lois and Wonder Woman ran for cover as a strafing run began over the ruin of a once green and pleasant land. Once inside the shelter, they gasped:
"Dick Grayson? Nightwing? Is Bruce here too?"
"He gave up, Diana. It's good to see you back. Lane? I thought you were in prison for 'contempt of court' after one too many investigative reports on the Nixon regime."
"Nightwing- we're alternate universe versions of your Lois and Diana. We're tracking a villainous Batman mirror image called Wrath from our own Earth. But this...I cannot let this stand. It is monstrous, murderous and wrong."
Dick smiled wearily and indicated a tunnel, laced with shards of a familiar shining alien mineral:
"We found a lode of Gold Kryptonite on the Moon. J'onn J'onnz gave his life to locate it and send it down here."
"So Superman doesn't dare come anywhere near here. Does he have any allies left?"
"Birdbrain. I knew Katar was an uptight button down police officer, but I didn't realise he'd side with Clark when he lost it."
"Hi, Ollie, Dinah. Surely Shayera wouldn't be a party to this?" Diana asked.
"She's not. Shayera's back on Thanagar, they're divorced. Same with our Lois and Clark. She broke up with him after that mission to Vietnam."
"That seems to be the crux of this, doesn't it? It's almost as if something happened to Clark during his period in Vietnam."
A familiar figure stepped out of the shadows: "Astute as ever, Ms.Lane. Some things appear to be a constant."
Lois gasped: "Lex Luthor?! Superman did that to you?"
"If it hadn't been for Victor Stone, I would have lost my life. As it is, I didn't walk away unscathed from my last confrontation with the Kryptonian." Luthor came into the light. Body armour and a prosthetic arm covered his upper chest and a lens within his prosthetic left eye shone, and the armour covered the whole lefthand side of his form.
"Luthor? You know something about this and by the looks of it, you almost paid for it with your life."
"It appears to have been two forms of hitherto unknown Kryptonite- orange, which sent him insane, and violet, which warped his perceptions altogether. So, yes, I'm working with the RJU here, as their weaponer. We could do with your assistance."
Without hesitation, Diana said: "You have it."
"And mine. Lex. I'm sorry that had to happen to you."
Luthor only nodded: "Events have come full circle, it seems. Superman has turned into a tool of a ruthless governing regime and I am the principal agent of his downfall. I am acclaimed as a hero."
"But at what a terrible cost." Lois said, as she followed the rest of the RJU deeper into their underground bunker.
High above them, Superman-70 scowled and snarled, before heading away to other areas of combat which had metastasised across this world at war. England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Algeria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Uganda, Congo, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua-New Guinea, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Venezuala, Columbia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, even Antarctica... this world roiled with insurrection, occupation, rancor and hatred. Who cared what the so-called RJU fulminated about? He wasn't sure who the new intruders were, but they would fall eventually. He would have asked Bruce Wayne about whether or not his tech head at Wayne Enterprises, Lucius Shepherd, could devise something to immunise him to the Gold K that prevented the RJU's apprehension. Unfortunately, he couldn't leave this to Katar. He had no doubt at all about his companion as an asset in hand to hand combat roles. Still, at least there were some advantages to this situation. The adjacent alternate Earths had no way to access this world and interfere with its sovereign development.
"Exactly. Earth-71's an interesting place. Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist philosophy is universal over there and as a result, the old polarities between 'good and evil' have been wholly transformed. I was startled to see that my own counterpart had been influenced by it and thus abandoned his former animosity against the Kryptonian. Earth-72 is nothing but an asteroid belt. A rogue gas giant planet, Scathach, collided with that Earth in 1973, obliterating it wholly. No Krypton or Daxam in that universe and thus no metahuman protector who could have deflected Scathach from its path of obliteration. Earth-73 was subjected to genocide from invading aliens- no-one is even sure what they look like. They invaded that world in its eighteenth century and humanity was extinct by 1820. Earth-74 underwent a nuclear war in 1956 over Egypt and Hungary when President Nixon provoked inexperienced new Soviet Premier Krushchev past the point of prudence. Fortunately, it was comparatively limited compared to others that suffered similar carnage in 1962, 1964, 1968, 1979, 1983 or 1990, from what we have been told. However, their technological standard is approximately equivalent to that of the nineteenth century as a result. Most of the metahumans on both sides were metropolitan and died when their cities of origin died in the nuclear exchange. Earth-75 speaks Old English as a lingua franca- the Saxons won the Battle of Hastings in its 1066 and as a result, Angleland became isolationist and heavily armed, but also highly involved in exploration and overseas trade as a result of its abortive Norman invasion. It has quite a diverse range of metahumans but that world is also an armed camp and prone to fractious nationalism- Britain, France, Germany and Russia aren't coherent nation-states there. On Earth-76, the Persians won at Thermopylae and Salamis and it's a primitive, stagnant feudal backwater that hasn't even reached the stage of heliocentric cosmology there and where feudal lords prevented the development of coherent nation states as well, let alone develop anything like metahumans. Earth-77 is a world dominated by evolved hymenopterids, which has proven resistant to communication with more mammalian-dominated Earths elsewhere in the multiverse."
As they left Luthor's briefing, Lois shivered as she saw the destruction and havoc around her:
"Diana, we'll have to kill this world's Superman. He's responsible for this chaos we see around us. Did you see that thirteen year old boy being brought in on the stretcher? If this doesn't stop, the nations of this world will exhaust all their resources on prolonged conflict against the American Empire here and when they're exhausted, humanity will slump back into a subsistence economy. What?"
"I just wonder what happened to your own alternate self here, Lois. Surely she would have been able to deflect this world's Clark from this course of action?"
"I asked the RJU that, Diana. Lois Lane here uncovered what Nixon tried to do to suppress Watergate. He had her killed. With his mind perverted, this Clark accepted that Watergate was an anti-Nixon conspiracy to frame the President and that its perpetrators killed the woman he loved. But Nixon died in 1994 in most of the Earths cited in the Heisenberg Alternate Probability Index that have him as a US President or significant political figure. Here?"
"He was succeeded by Spiro Agnew, who was never jailed for his part in the Watergate conspiracy here. He only lasted two years before his own death, and Henry Kissinger has been Supreme Authority since then. However, Kissinger is in his nineties and is widely expected to concede power to James Baker, the next candidate in succession. Effectively, the real 'supreme authority' has devolved to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, given that they're prosecuting warfare against global insurgency. So the United States has degenerated into a military dictatorship."" Diana said, consulting her handheld Heisenberg Alternate Probability Index.
"Diana, this is going to break my heart."
"I know. Mine too. But given what Superman has become on this world, and given the permanence of the effects of Orange K, he has become a serious threat to the survival of this planet. If he isn't stopped, his constant intervention against global insurgent movements will end up plunging this planet into a vortex of self-destruction and decline that it may never get out of."
Superman alighted on a torn and grassy knoll:
"Diana? This is a rare surprise. I thought you never left Paradise Island these days."
"Come off it, Clark. You know that I'm from an alternate universe. One question. Why haven't you killed either of us yet?"
He frowned: "I'm not sure. My heat vision failed some time ago. And I can't fly in space anymore."
"Do you have any doubts about your actions?"
He shook his head: "I'm defending liberty and freedom, Diana."
"You aren't, Clark. You've aided and abetted in the conquest and subjugation of this Earth. This isn't you."
"There was a time when you would have made a different call."
"World War II was not Vietnam, Clark. You're implicated in the deaths of millions."
"I'm sorry you feel that way." He moved forward, and then, tears streaming from her face, Lois Lane stepped forward and brought up a gun:
"Is that all? Do you really think you can fire that bullet before I break your neck?"
Lois saw the violence and madness in Clark's eyes, swallowed, and squeezed the trigger: "Yes, I can." Whatever Superman was expected, it wasn't the gold kryptonite bullet that surged after him. Given the momentum assistance of the weapon, volatilised by Lex Luthor, it matched Superman's speed, which had declined as a consequence of erosion from orange K in any case. It was over quickly as it reached him, bored through his body and into his heart. He fell to the ground, still in death.
"Wrath escaped again." Diana said as she and Lois stood and watched the victory parade as a suddenly liberated alternate Earth's insurgencies ended abruptly with the news of Superman's death. The regime had been too dependent on him and without him, it did not have the capability to continue to prosecute a global anti-insurgency war. It was still trying to fight in Canada and Mexico, but their own metahumans were turning the tide.
"Do you think they'll make it?" Lois asked.
"Now that they're back from the precipice, yet. But given what this United States has done, it has a long,hard road ahead of it."
"Let's get out of here, Diana and leave this place to its ghosts."
A portal opened as the two women stepped through. Then there was only the sound of a keening, desolate wind.
THE END