Crossover Earth '98

By Duke Barren

-- Revelations chapter 7, verse 17

Precisely one year ago, I claimed that Armageddon was coming. And as we approach the year 2000 we are surrounded by evermore telltale signs of doom and disaster, and a perennial concern for our future seems to grow geometrically. Humanity peers ahead in hopes to discover what will ensue tomorrow or next year or in the next century. Many of these interests are based on hype and/or expectations of a better and more promising world. But there are often predications of gloom, and great apprehension.

Indeed, we today find hundreds of millions of people who define the world primarily through a biblical reference and see their own end-of-the-world scenarios. The message that seers are preaching is one of a millennial apocalypse. They are truly convinced that we are living in "the last days," and they view earthquake tremors, wars, and rumors of war as signs of the impending prophetic disaster. This generation, many religious zealots claim, is the last generation, and this was all foretold in the Old and New Testaments.

But one doesn’t have to be religious to see the prophetic signs of doomsday. I mean, the secular populace surely can’t turn a blind eye to the whole fiasco surrounding the President of the United States. Regardless of the outcome of the vote in the House of Representatives, President Bill Clinton already stands impeached. He stands impeached by global poll for his unwarranted, fiendish assault on innocent civilians in Iraq. Brazenly disregarding international denunciation, American missiles continued to pound Iraqi cities causing untold misery to Baghdad's residents, apart from killing and maiming scores. Rising to its traditional post-War role as chief drummer boy, the British Government gleefully joined the US Administration to partake in the dubious honor of organizing the largest exchange in cross-border terrorism.

US muscle-flexing in today's unipolar world has reduced the United Nations to a bond servant. Blithely glossing over the mass murder placed in the UN's name, all that the Secretary-General of the world body could do was shake his head in apparent dismay to mutter, "It's a sad day for the world." Spellbound by its own megalomania, the White House now seems capable of conducting the most hideous operations so long as they help Mr Clinton serve out the remaining two years of his tenure. Meanwhile, Islamic terrorism, which poses one of the biggest dangers to peace in the world today, has been made to resemble a teddy bear's picnic as US military fruitlessly attempted to induce public amnesia about a semen-stained blue dress.

And if the warring tirades between the nations of America and Islam wasn’t enough, the genocidal terror-mongers of Apocalypse Now had hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers literally laughing to death in the face of all this hurly-burly. Events involving the AN terrorists highlight the idiocy of hinging upon metahuman protectors to defend society in the place of trained police officers. But when Laughing Death swathed Manhattan in a lethal shroud of noxious gas, where were our protectors to save us from the rampant rioters and super-powered villains? Now, New York is under a state of martial law where law-abiding citizens have to respond to curfews and give up their rights to civil liberties. All because our so-called metahuman "heroes" headed for the hills to let strife and villainy reign supreme.

Probably one of the most frightening prognostication right now is the continual wrath of the Native American revolutionary known as Totem. He claims to be chosen by the Creator, Na’pi, to revenge the wrongs that have been wrought in this world. Totem’s most recent escapade involved him seizing the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richmond, Washington. For years, the nuclear power industry buried radioactive wastes in shallow, unlined trenches, above an aquifer, in the midst of critical habitat for endangered species and on land considered sacred aboriginal territory for the tribes within the Yakama Reservation.

Even though scientists have proven that plutonium can seep through groundwater and migrate to other sites, potentially including water supplies, the Hanford nuclear power plant remained in operation. Experts studying the site found that plutonium had indeed hitch-hiked a ride on colloids, which are particles of debris in water. Minute amounts of the nuclear waste material were found downstream the Columbia River more than a mile away. Before, it had been believed that minute amounts of plutonium seepage would attach to rocks if any escaped from holding tanks, rather than moving through groundwater. But officials kept such speculations hush-hush, suppressing the news of seepage affecting the indigenous community’s water supplies.

Like an enraged disciple of Nature itself, Totem attacked the power plant, encasing the main building in a cocoon of solid rock. For twelve hours he held the technicians within the facility, barring Quartz stormtroopers from pacifying the area. As the highly-payed, fully-pensioned government employees looked on, the Blackfoot freedom fighter ravaged the building with tremors, firestorms, floods, and gales. He crushed and splintered the surrounding powerhouses, leaving but remnants of the structures to meld with the land in twisted small chunks of rocks and dust.

It reminds me of a time many years ago when the Robert Ginna plant near Rochester, New York was shutdown by a beaver. The beaver felled a tree which toppled across the plant’s output powerlines and broke them. With nowhere to send the power, the plant had to shutdown until the powerlines were repaired. However, in its guise as Totem, Nature’s wrath has grown even more vengeful.

Nuclear fears have engulfed large sectors of society since Hiroshima. Anything related to radiation has been considered diabolical, and greatest of all is the fear of a thermonuclear holocaust. We are admonished on all sides that death stares us in the face and that some miscalculation will inevitably trigger a worldwide nuclear war. Yet we live in such hypocrisy that it takes something along the lines of Totem’s preternatural wrath to show us how close we truly stagger along the apocalyptic tightrope. Perhaps in some small way he could put a stop at least this corporate carnage, but then again, perhaps not. At any rate, Richmond and the surrounding towns have been out of adequate power since this attack. Ecologists call Totem’s actions poetic justice, but I call it a just another sign of doom.

And yet, if you still doubt the ever-impending threat Armageddon, there’s yet more to consider, -- the sword of Damocles that now hangs above us all -- the return of Armature.

He possesses attributes far greater than the garish demigods that roam our streets. He can fly. He has raw physical strength that rivals Mastiff and Mark Battle combined. He’s impervious to injury. And he carries the destructive force of a bomb. Armatures is the Four Horseman of Apocalypse all rolled into one. If he lands in your town, be prepared for nothing less than doom and dread and ultimate demise.

Do these examples mark the way for Armageddon? Do we stare into the looking glass and see our apocalyptic fate? And is the end of the world looming over us? As a journalist I only chronicle what I see, and what I see is a future with no promise at all.

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