October, 1938
Sep. 22nd, 2008 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cmdr_zoomNo one would have believed in the first quarter of the twentieth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
The first cylinder landed in a farmer's field in Kansas. Within hours, most of the nearby town of Smallville had turned out to gape at the strange object that lay at the bottom of the still-smoking furrow it had carved as it came to rest. It was perhaps twenty feet in length and six or seven in diameter, dull bronze in color beneath the ash and cinders that encrusted it. The first hint of activity came when some of the latter material began to flake away, accompanied by a grinding noise. Soon it was apparent to all that the upper end of the cylinder was being unscrewed from the inside. This was cause for much alarm and concern; some of the crowd drew back, while others brandished what weapons and tools they had been able to come by. None of them was prepared for what eventually emerged.
It was, to all appearances, a man: tall, well-built, and apparently as human as any of the onlookers. He wore a simple yet colorful uniform: dark blue tunic and trousers, brick red shorts and boots. Upon his broad chest was a design like a shield or blazon. His hair was dark and his eyes an unearthly blue. He surveyed the crowd once with those eyes, his sculpted features impassive; then, quite without warning, they raved forth destruction.
Thin beams of red ghost-light flickered out from those inhuman eyes, sweeping across the assembled townsfolk, and where they touched men burst into flame. The crowd screamed and tried to flee, but were cut down like wheat before a scythe. The sole surviving witness to these events was the daughter of the police chief, who fell into a culvert and was spared from the fiery holocaust. It would be days before her story was told, however; and within the hour, the murderer of Smallville had left that place behind and was headed eastward in great distance-devouring leaps, like a strange and awesomely destructive grasshopper.
He laid waste to all in his path, killing indiscriminately wherever he alighted. Towns and fields were burned, railways torn up, bridges collapsed. The few survivors would later recount that he showed neither mercy nor passion as he went about his deadly business. Nothing could touch him or turn him from his course. He seemed as unbound by the mores and laws of man as he was by the gravity of our planet. Perhaps it was inevitable, in light of this and his incredible physical prowess, that he would come to be known as "the superman."
He smashed through the forces and obstacles thrown up against him with similar ease, tearing soldiers limb from limb or turning them into living torches with a glance, shrugging off machine-gun fire and even artillery shells, swatting planes from the sky, and sinking an improvised armada at his crossing of the Mississippi. Even when he could have avoided engagement, he chose to utterly destroy those who dared to challenge him before moving on.
St. Louis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh - one after another, inevitably as dominos, they fell to him. He took no prisoners and offered no terms but annihilation. Those that were able fled before him; those who could not died. Choking black smoke hung over the pyres that had been the proud and historic cities of the east.
Then, even as the armies of men gathered outside Washington and New York for a grim final stand and the authorities raced against time to evacuate Philadelphia of both its citizens and a nation's treasures, word of a new calamity - a second cylinder! Whether by previous plan or some uncanny instinct, the superman's easterly course had led him directly to the spot where another conqueror from the stars had landed mere hours before, in the otherwise undistinguished township of Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Spotters reported that the newcomer was shorter and slighter of build, with golden hair - possibly a woman.
It was the last detail that threw many, especially the clergy, into full panic. It seemed obvious now that this "superior" man and woman intended nothing less than the extermination of all humanity, so that they could rule over the scorched earth as a new Adam and Eve. If that was indeed their design, there seemed to be little that could stop them.
But as the pair reached and tore into the lines around New York, their previously implacable advance began to falter. The man seemed weak and confused, and had developed a wracking cough; on several occasions, he was pinned down or thrown back by massed fire, forcing his companion to halt her own slaughter to go to his aid. After an hour of this, the invaders withdrew, one visibly supporting the other. The bloodied and battered defenders - mere hundreds that were once thousands - briefly cheered their victory, then dug in against a second assault. It would never come.
They were found amidst the ruin of a collapsed house, the timbers and part of the roof having come down around them when they crashed into it. Her body was sprawled across his, perhaps in a final effort to protect him. Though it was some time before anyone dared to approach the house, upon discovery their bodies were still warm to the touch from the terrible fevers that raged through them in their final hours. The signs of pestilence were plain on their faces, and a hastily-conducted autopsy in an army field hospital revealed that their blood and tissues swarmed with a dozen plagues... all common, ordinary bacteria to which their alien and unprepared systems had no resistance.
Thus was the brief war of the supermen upon this world ended, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.
The first cylinder landed in a farmer's field in Kansas. Within hours, most of the nearby town of Smallville had turned out to gape at the strange object that lay at the bottom of the still-smoking furrow it had carved as it came to rest. It was perhaps twenty feet in length and six or seven in diameter, dull bronze in color beneath the ash and cinders that encrusted it. The first hint of activity came when some of the latter material began to flake away, accompanied by a grinding noise. Soon it was apparent to all that the upper end of the cylinder was being unscrewed from the inside. This was cause for much alarm and concern; some of the crowd drew back, while others brandished what weapons and tools they had been able to come by. None of them was prepared for what eventually emerged.
It was, to all appearances, a man: tall, well-built, and apparently as human as any of the onlookers. He wore a simple yet colorful uniform: dark blue tunic and trousers, brick red shorts and boots. Upon his broad chest was a design like a shield or blazon. His hair was dark and his eyes an unearthly blue. He surveyed the crowd once with those eyes, his sculpted features impassive; then, quite without warning, they raved forth destruction.
Thin beams of red ghost-light flickered out from those inhuman eyes, sweeping across the assembled townsfolk, and where they touched men burst into flame. The crowd screamed and tried to flee, but were cut down like wheat before a scythe. The sole surviving witness to these events was the daughter of the police chief, who fell into a culvert and was spared from the fiery holocaust. It would be days before her story was told, however; and within the hour, the murderer of Smallville had left that place behind and was headed eastward in great distance-devouring leaps, like a strange and awesomely destructive grasshopper.
He laid waste to all in his path, killing indiscriminately wherever he alighted. Towns and fields were burned, railways torn up, bridges collapsed. The few survivors would later recount that he showed neither mercy nor passion as he went about his deadly business. Nothing could touch him or turn him from his course. He seemed as unbound by the mores and laws of man as he was by the gravity of our planet. Perhaps it was inevitable, in light of this and his incredible physical prowess, that he would come to be known as "the superman."
He smashed through the forces and obstacles thrown up against him with similar ease, tearing soldiers limb from limb or turning them into living torches with a glance, shrugging off machine-gun fire and even artillery shells, swatting planes from the sky, and sinking an improvised armada at his crossing of the Mississippi. Even when he could have avoided engagement, he chose to utterly destroy those who dared to challenge him before moving on.
St. Louis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh - one after another, inevitably as dominos, they fell to him. He took no prisoners and offered no terms but annihilation. Those that were able fled before him; those who could not died. Choking black smoke hung over the pyres that had been the proud and historic cities of the east.
Then, even as the armies of men gathered outside Washington and New York for a grim final stand and the authorities raced against time to evacuate Philadelphia of both its citizens and a nation's treasures, word of a new calamity - a second cylinder! Whether by previous plan or some uncanny instinct, the superman's easterly course had led him directly to the spot where another conqueror from the stars had landed mere hours before, in the otherwise undistinguished township of Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Spotters reported that the newcomer was shorter and slighter of build, with golden hair - possibly a woman.
It was the last detail that threw many, especially the clergy, into full panic. It seemed obvious now that this "superior" man and woman intended nothing less than the extermination of all humanity, so that they could rule over the scorched earth as a new Adam and Eve. If that was indeed their design, there seemed to be little that could stop them.
But as the pair reached and tore into the lines around New York, their previously implacable advance began to falter. The man seemed weak and confused, and had developed a wracking cough; on several occasions, he was pinned down or thrown back by massed fire, forcing his companion to halt her own slaughter to go to his aid. After an hour of this, the invaders withdrew, one visibly supporting the other. The bloodied and battered defenders - mere hundreds that were once thousands - briefly cheered their victory, then dug in against a second assault. It would never come.
They were found amidst the ruin of a collapsed house, the timbers and part of the roof having come down around them when they crashed into it. Her body was sprawled across his, perhaps in a final effort to protect him. Though it was some time before anyone dared to approach the house, upon discovery their bodies were still warm to the touch from the terrible fevers that raged through them in their final hours. The signs of pestilence were plain on their faces, and a hastily-conducted autopsy in an army field hospital revealed that their blood and tissues swarmed with a dozen plagues... all common, ordinary bacteria to which their alien and unprepared systems had no resistance.
Thus was the brief war of the supermen upon this world ended, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-23 01:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-23 03:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-24 12:53 am (UTC)A coincidence of dates gave me the inspiration, and after that, I could no more be turned from my path than the superman from his.