ASH/HCC: CSS #34 - Mappa Mundi

[Andrew Perron]

On Thu, 6 Mar 2014 00:07:37 +0000 (UTC), Dave Van Domelen wrote:

>      [The cover is split down the middle with a figure dominating the center
> and divided into two identities.  On the left, the man wears the garb of
> Devastator, one of the most feared supervillains of the 20th Century.  On the
> right, he looks like a graying college professor in a short-sleeved button-
> down shirt and tie.  While the details vary, both backgrounds have the world
> falling apart behind him.]

Oooooooh.

>      "Whatever.  Your 'purely theoretical' work is about to become
> terrifyingly practical.  I was told to tell you, 'there are more than two
> crashing branes, there's an infinity of them, and they're not all friendly.'" 

Oooooooooh.

>      "It's real, Eric.  I've know about this for a few years, and it's been a
> carefully guarded secret for nearly fifty years now.  Other realities exist,
> and powerful entities from those realities have been fighting an insanely
> subtle proxy war on our world.  A Cold War of the gods, if you will."

Oooooooooh!

>      Joe shrugged.  "The gods themselves are doing their best to keep it
> secret, which has helped.  Best theory we have on that is it's because the
> rules of our reality are just enough different that they have a hard time
> acting overtly.  So they prefer keeping things secret and working through
> coincidence and apparent dumb luck whenever possible.  But you're right about
> the inevitability of this blowing wide open.  Maybe not this year, or next
> year, but the secret is teetering on the edge of...well, not being secret
> anymore."

Oooooooooh. o.ovvv

> I'll be
> honest here, we don't really think you're that good a risk, but you're the
> best option we have, and none of us think we can afford to wait another
> generation and see if the next crop of students produces anything better."
> 
>      That was when everything went to hell.

I guess he was right!

>      "We are Annihilator Squadron Upsilon.  Eric Harris, answer truthfully:
> does humanity deserve to live?"
>      Eric exchanged a significant glance with Joe.  Was this the first step
> in his divine Cold War going hot?  Ask some random mortal to justify the
> existence of humanity before deciding whether to just wipe everyone out?
>      "Well," Eric started to answer.

Fantastic. o.ov

>      "Moving between realities, Al.  And it got stuck.  Either the
> Annihilators couldn't keep working without a command station purely inside
> our reality, or they needed different physical laws to work and something cut
> off their ability to play by those rules."

Ooooooh.

>      Trapped between worlds, Eric Harris A.K.A. Devastator looked on in
> silent, impotent fury as two Earths full of living humans turned below him.
> The wall that someone had slammed down around his native reality five years
> ago had pinned him like an insect in a display case.  And most of his forces
> had been trapped in the new reality, the bolthole he'd hoped to ride out the
> worst of the godly wars in, a bolthole where the physical laws would brook
> far less interference.  He could neither move from his prison nor affect
> either of the worlds he circled.

Ahhhhhhhhh. <3

>      Written for High Concept Challenge #43, "The Eruption of the Fantastic
> into the Mundane."  It was Ash Wednesday, I didn't have any pressing
> work-related writing to do (as spring break was the next two weeks, so no
> need to work on lecture notes yet), so after deciding I wasn't going to get
> ASH #121 written in one day, I went for another CSS.  This story shows what
> happened in another side reality when the Barrier went up.

I love seeing these, getting new perspectives on them and a fuller
understanding of the cosmology.

>      In case you hadn't figured it out, when Devastator finds his "alt" on a
> new world, he puts them to the question and kills any that aren't dedicated
> to his mission of eradicating humanity.  Actually, they all get killed, but
> Devastator is curious as to how common his own stance is among the various
> Eric Harrises, so he always tries to check first.

Oh, well that's nice.

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, how sweet.