by Anthology
In Tokyo, the Imperial War Cabinet met to discuss their options. Japan had taken all of Southeast Asia, had effective control of China, and the warlords wanted more. But, with the disgrace of Admiral Kogetashi fresh in their minds, they had no suggestions as to how to expand the empire further.
June 8, 1944:
Washington, DC. 4 AM. The air raid sirens started their banshee wail as the fighter planes scrambled to find the enemy planes that had caused the alarm. None of the American fighter pilots had yet seen action, as the United States had not been attacked. It could only be the Canadians, but what were they thinking? Once the British surrendered, it would be a formality for Canada to do the same, and become a part of the U.S. Why would they attack, when the war was all but over? Their confusion wasn’t eased at all when the fighters found only two bombers, flying a little apart from each other, coming from the direction of Newfoundland. There were no enemy fighters visible, which did nothing to settle the nerves of the untested American pilots. Still, they had their orders, and they moved to engage the bombers.
The dogfight did not last long—perhaps thirty seconds from start to finish. One of the enemy bombers was hit in a wing-tank within a few seconds, and it exploded in a ball of fire that engulfed three of the attacking American fighter planes. The remaining fighters kept back from the other bomber, making it harder to target accurately, but ensuring they would not be caught in any fireball. It was still only a short time before one of the fighter pilots got lucky, and his bullets shredded the bomber cockpit canopy, the instruments, and the enemy pilots. As the invading bomber’s nose dipped, a single bomb fell from the bomb bay.
Less than a minute later, the bomb struck and a bright flash, brighter than the midday sun, lit up the night sky. Within seconds, the American fighter planes’ engines died and the pilots survived only a few seconds more as the shock wave from the blast picked up their planes as a child picks up a toy, and tossed them carelessly away, to fall out of control to the earth. The fighter pilots did not live long enough to see the mushroom cloud forming over what had been the American capital.
In New York, just before sunrise, the scene of devastation was worse. Two bombers managed to release their deadly cargoes before they fell out of control. The center of U.S. economic might was a smouldering ruin, with poisonous dust filling the air and fires burning unheeded across the rubble of the city.
Berlin, 10 AM. Two bombers flew over Berlin, unnoticed in the crowded skies. The British had seemingly put every aircraft they had up today, and the Luftwaffe was busy shooting them down as quickly as possible. But it was inevitable that some would get through, and the two special planes did. They dropped their bombs and turned for home, one of them with flames licking at the tail. The bombs exploded in the air above Berlin, and hell on earth followed. Cars, trucks, trams, all came to a shuddering halt. In the skies, the planes closest to the explosions were vaporized, while farther away the engines simply stopped and would not start again. Then came the shock wave, which hurled man and machine alike in all directions.
June 9, 1944:
What was left of the German and American high commands scrambled to surrender to the British, lest any more of the hell bombs be used against them.
In New York, those who survived—and who up until yesterday had been the rich and powerful—quietly packed up their most treasured belongings and headed for Mexico and South America.
On the Russian front, the German troops stopped wondering what was going on, as their Russian opponents had their orders rapidly changed from invading German territory to accepting the surrender of the German army.
In Tokyo, the Imperial War Cabinet abandoned the plans to invade Australia. It was still a part of the British Commonwealth, and whatever weapon the British had developed was not one the War Cabinet wanted to face.
November 11, 1944:
In London, Prime Minister Churchill greeted his guests and showed them to comfortable, overstuffed armchairs. An exquisite Oriental tea service was laid out on a sideboard, with a Japanese woman hovering over it. She served a cup to Emperor Hirohito before retiring to the background. At the other end of the sideboard, a glass and silver tea service was set out, a wisp of steam drifting lazily from the spout of the teapot. Josef Stalin served himself a cup of the jet black brew—not for him the trappings of servants. Churchill poured himself a cup of tea from a Wedgwood teapot into a matching cup, added some milk and sugar, and sat to face his visitors.
“Gentlemen, it seems the world has changed quite a bit these past few months. Though it’s a clichéd term, I venture to suggest things will never be the same again, and we three must decide where we go from here.”
It took several days and much talking among the functionaries each of the leaders had brought to the meeting. But the three leaders eventually hammered out an agreement.
Eastern Europe would be ruled by Moscow.
The Africa nations would remain as they were—governed by various Western European capitals or in a few cases ruling themselves.
Western Europe was now free of Hitler’s yoke and would be allowed to recover and choose its own destiny.
Asia would be governed from Tokyo.
Britain would reclaim her recalcitrant North American “colony.”
South America would be left to its own devices, as none of the victorious leaders wanted to contend with mother nature in the jungles down there.
There would be combined efforts to find a way to clean up the mess that had been Berlin, as well as Washington and New York.
And a few visionaries among the delegations suggested that the technology which had helped end the war might be useful in sending a rocket to the moon.
Present day:
The claw reached out and turned the dial to the right again, slowing it down in the early 1990s.
The figure saw that in the fashion houses of Paris, the latest designs were being shown to an appreciative audience. The financial capital of Western Europe had grown stronger in the past forty-five years. French was now the official language of Europe, and the franc its official currency. Many of the other Romance languages were still spoken, but the Germanic languages were forbidden.
In the center of what had been Germany, the figure noted that a sheet of black glass absorbed the sun’s rays. Underneath the glass were the remains of old Berlin, but only twenty kilometers away (Europe was definitely a metric society) another city had been built. New Berlin was a hive of industry, and the hub of the aeronautical industry in Europe.
In the northeast of what had been the United States—and what was now known as New Britain—a two-hundred-square mile (the British Empire refused to adopt metric measurements) nature park sprawled where once New York reached for the sky. Two hundred miles to the south, the governor of New Britain built a grand city on the ruins of an old one. He’d had to wait twenty years for the environmental engineers to figure out how to clean up the mess, and then do it, but it had been worth the wait.
In Tokyo, the Emperor was getting very old and frail, but his son stood ready to take over the reins. Japan had found ways of making their expanded empire very productive, and had taken the lead in developing an electronics industry that continued to amaze the rest of the world with their “what will they think of next” ideas.
In Eastern Europe, much of the land was being used for farming. Advances in fertilizers and growing methods had led to a threefold increase in output. Famine was a thing of the past. In the cold wastes of Siberia, people who had been forgotten by all but their closest families dug mineral ores from the earth using electric jackhammers and loaded the ore into mine carts that were hauled to the surface by remote-controled electric locomotives.
Everywhere in the world, people drove to work in their cars, rode pushbikes, walked, took the train, or rode in buses. All motor vehicles were hydrogen or electric-powered; the air in even the largest cities was clean and crisp. Even aircraft used hydrogen fuel cells to get them off the ground, and solar cells
covered their wings to power the plane in flight.
In the deserts of Africa, locals and Europeans worked at reclaiming the land from the sands. Progress had been slow to begin with, but at last the results were beginning to show. As more and more land was reclaimed and put to use growing crops, or the ever-important trees, the climate was beginning to shift away from the harsh extremes to a more temperate one.
In the heart of Australia, a concrete tarmac led to a gantry system. In the low buildings all around, workers made ready for the next launch of the Aerospatiale-Boeing orbital vehicle. It was the only vehicle on the planet that still used hydrocarbon fuel, and the scientists were working on a more efficient fuel cell to replace the polluting technology. They just hadn’t got it right yet.
On the moon, the scientific research station housed two hundred and thirty-six people from all the nations of Earth. They studied the moon’s structure and tested the soil and the very thin atmosphere. Terraforming the moon was still a pipe dream, but it might not always be so.
In the jungles of South America, the children and grandchildren of those once-powerful Americans conducted research of their own, into the properties of the juices of the many plants they had to choose from all around them. The answers might not come in their lifetime, or in their children’s, but one day their descendants would use the biological agents they were developing. They would strike at the descendants of those who had murdered their parents and grandparents, and they would claim their rightful place as leaders of the modern world.
In the darkness, the clawed hand withdrew from the dial. “Must keep an eye on the South Americans, and not let them get too far too quickly.”
A few feet away, another clawed hand reached toward a similar screen and twisted a dial hard to the left. “Now, about this Genghis Khan . . .”
THREE SUNDAYS IN A WEEK
Edgar Allen Poe
“You hard-headed, dunder-headed, obstinate, rusty, crusty, musty, fusty, old savage!” said I, in fancy, one afternoon, to my grand uncle Rumgudgeon—shaking my fist at him in imagination.
Only in imagination. The fact is, some trivial discrepancy did exist, just then, between what I said and what I had not the courage to say—between what I did and what I had half a mind to do.
The old porpoise, as I opened the drawing-room door, was sitting with his feet upon the mantel-piece, and a bumper of port in his paw, making strenuous efforts to accomplish the ditty.
Remplis ton verre vide!
Vide ton verre plein!
“My dear uncle,” said I, closing the door gently, and approaching him with the blandest of smiles, “you are always so very kind and considerate, and have evinced your benevolence in so many—so very many—ways that—that I feel I have only to suggest this little point to you once more to make sure of your full acquiescence.”
“Hem!” said he, “good boy! go on!”
“I am sure, my dearest uncle, (you confounded old rascal!), that you have no design really, seriously, to oppose my union with Kate. This is merely a joke of yours, I know—ha! ha! ha!—how very pleasant you are at times.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” said he, “curse you! yes!”
“To be sure—of course! I knew you were jesting. Now, uncle, all that Kate and myself wish at present, is that you would oblige us with your advice as—as regards the time—you know, uncle—in short, when will it be most convenient for yourself, that the wedding shall—shall come off, you know?”
“Come off, you scoundrel!—what do you mean by that?—Better wait till it goes on.”
“Ha! ha! ha!—he! he! he!—hi! hi! hi!—ho! ho! ho!—hu! hu! hu!—that’s good!—oh that’s capital—such a wit! But all we want just now, you know, uncle, is that you would indicate the time precisely.”
“Ah!—Precisely?”
“Yes, uncle—that is, if it would be quite agreeable to yourself.”
“Wouldn’t it answer, Bobby, if I were to leave it at random—some time within a year or so, for example?—must I say precisely?”
“If you please, uncle—precisely.”
“Well, then, Bobby, my boy—you’re a fine fellow, aren’t you?—since you will have the exact time I’ll—why I’ll oblige you for once.”
“Dear uncle!”
“Hush, sir!” [drowning my voice]—“I’ll oblige you for once. You shall have my consent—and the plum, we mustn’t forget the plum—let me see! when shall it be? Today’s Sunday isn’t it? Well, then, you shall be married precisely—precisely, now mind!—when three Sundays come together in a week! Do you hear me, sir! What are you gaping at? I say, you shall have Kate and her plum when three Sundays come together in a week—but not till then—you young scapegrace—not till then, if I die for it. You know me—I’m a man of my word—now be off!” Here he swallowed his bumper of port, while I rushed from the room in despair.
A very “fine old English gentleman,” was my grand-uncle Rum-gudgeon, but unlike him of the song, he had his weak points. He was a little, pursy, pompous, passionate semicircular somebody, with a red nose, a thick skull, a long purse, and a strong sense of his own consequence. With the best heart in the world, he contrived, through a predominant whim of contradiction, to earn for himself, among those who only knew him superficially, the character of a curmudgeon. Like many excellent people, he seemed possessed with a spirit of tantalization, which might easily, at a casual glance, have been mistaken for malevolence. To every request, a positive “No!” was his immediate answer, but in the end—in the long, long end—there were exceedingly few requests which he refused. Against all attacks upon his purse he made the most sturdy defense; but the amount extorted from him, at last, was generally in direct ratio with the length of the siege and the stubbornness of the resistance. In charity no one gave more liberally or with a worse grace.
For the fine arts, and especially for the belles-lettres, he entertained a profound contempt. With this he had been inspired by Casimir Perier, whose pert little query “A quoi un poete est il boni’ he was in the habit of quoting, with a very droll pronunciation, as the ne plus ultra of logical wit. Thus my own inkling for the Muses had excited his entire displeasure. He assured me one day, when I asked him for a new copy of Horace, that the translation of “Poeta nascitur non fit” was “a nasty poet for nothing fit”—a remark which I took in high dudgeon. His repugnance to “the humanities” had, also, much increased of late, by an accidental bias in favor of what he supposed to be natural science. Somebody had accosted him in the street, mistaking him for no less a personage than Doctor Dubble L. Dee, the lecturer upon quack physics. This set him off at a tangent; and just at the epoch of this story—for story it is getting to be after all—my grand-uncle Rumgudgeon was accessible and pacific only upon points which happened to chime in with the caprioles of the hobby he was riding. For the rest, he laughed with his arms and legs, and his politics were stubborn and easily understood. He thought, with Horsley, that “the people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them.”
I had lived with the old gentleman all my life. My parents, in dying, had bequeathed me to him as a rich legacy. I believe the old villain loved me as his own child—nearly if not quite as well as he loved Kate—but it was a dog’s existence that he led me, after all. From my first year until my fifth, he obliged me with very regular floggings. From five to fifteen, he threatened me, hourly, with the House of Correction. From fifteen to twenty, not a day passed in which he did not promise to cut me off with a shilling. I was a sad dog, it is true—but then it was a part of my nature—a point of my faith. In Kate, however, I had a firm friend, and I knew it. She was a good girl, and told me very sweetly that I might have her (plum and all) whenever I could badger my grand-uncle Rumgudgeon, into the necessary consent. Poor girl!—she was barely fifteen, and without this consent, her little amount in the funds was not come-at-able until five immeasurable summers had “dragged their slow length along.” What, then, to do? At fifteen, or even at twenty-one, (for I had now passed my fi
fth olympiad), five years in prospect are very much the same as five hundred. In vain we besieged the old gentleman with importunities. Here was a piece de resistance, (as Messieurs Ude and Careme would say), which suited his perverse fancy to a T. It would have stiffed the indignation of Job himself, to see how much like an old mouser he behaved to us two poor wretched little mice. In his heart he wished for nothing more ardently than our union. He had made up his mind to this all along. In fact, he would have given ten thousand pounds from his own pocket, (Kate’s plum was her own), if he could have invented any thing like an excuse for complying with our very natural wishes. But then we had been so imprudent as to broach the subject ourselves. Not to oppose it under such circumstances, I sincerely believe, was not in his power.
I have said already that he had his weak points; but in speaking of these, I must not be understood as referring to his obstinacy: which was one of his strong points—“ assurement ce n etait pas sa foible.” When I mention his weakness I have allusion to a bizarre old-womanish superstition which beset him. He was great in dreams, portents, et id genus omne of rigmarole. He was excessively punctilious, too, upon small points of honor, and, after his own fashion, was a man of his word, beyond doubt. This was, in fact, one of his hobbies. The spirit of his vows he made no scruple of setting at naught, but the letter was a bond inviolable. Now it was this latter peculiarity in his disposition, of which Kate’s ingenuity enabled us one fine day, not long after our interview in the dining-room, to take a very unexpected advantage, and, having thus, in the fashion of all modern bards and orators, exhausted in prolegomena, all the time at my command, and nearly all the room at my disposal, I will sum up in a few words what constitutes the whole pith of the story.
