This is the main background story for "New Chicago. It is also an alternative History of both the D.C. and Marvel Universes.
"Life as we know it" Part I of III
by Luther Stone.
[Note from the Editors. While we do not endorse Mr. Stone's story, or agree with it, we feel his Pulitzer award winning status merits an open mind.]
Most people who call themselves adults feel they have a pretty good handle on Life. Oh sure they know there are all sorts of things they do not really understand, but the big things, those they have down.
They are wrong, you are wrong, we are all wrong.
Life as you and I know it is not the whole story, it is barely half the story. You are not going to believe what I am going to tell you but I have to write it down. I have to tell you, and just hope that someday something happens to you that will convince you.
These days few people accept that there are these MetaHumans, people with powers, superpowers. They have been around for a while but have always kept to the shadows. Tons of blurry pictures, rumors of mind control, magic and some really terrible things have been swirling around for decades.
Bigfoot, UFOs, Loch Ness Monster, MetaHumans, all the same thing to most people.
MetaHumans do not belong in that list. I have met a few of them and they have a long history of living in the shadows. In fact it dates back, like many things this past Century, to World War II.
The accepted story is that Hitler was just an aggressive conquerer who took advantage of obvious weaknesses. Some brilliant war weapons, a few other pluses, but all within the realm of the explainable.
Wrong.
Hitler created his war machine with black magics and technology that simply was not of this Earth. They opened portals to places other men had only imagined. They made deals, terrible pacts. Power was granted, and it was used. The steamroller of the Third Reich was fueled by powers I simply do not understand.
The reason the world was so slow to respond to the danger that Hitler represented is because they simply could not believe what seemed to be happening. Spies made report after report, all gained through significant risk to life and limb. None of them were believed.
Portals? Bah!
Magic? Beneath consideration, obvious mis-information.
Other Worlds? You really put that in your report?
We did not believe, and we almost took too long to learn.
The United States finally lead the way. We learned how to open a Portal, and we stole much of what the Germans had learned. The US found it's own allies, and in typical US fashion they were direct and succinct in their requests.
"We want to make a super soldier, and we want a weapon with which we can end this war quickly"
They got both in the form of a serum, a small radiation projector, and the information needed to construct a nuclear bomb. Our new allies also had an additional gift. "For the first one" they had said. Something about the way they said it bothered most of the US delegation, but questions were not answered.
The US had begun work on the bomb of course, but all the realistic estimates said 10 years, minimum. But with the sudden new knowledge they were able to put together working models in a year.
A young man was selected for the serum. He was injected, the radiation projector was employed, and a painful transformation took place. His physical form developed, he gained muscle mass in some unknown fashion. When he was finally released he came off the table like a spring.
Testing would show that he had achieved the absolute peak of human perfection in the physical sense. His strength, speed, stamina, and recuperative abilities were all remarkable. He was like a half-dozen Olympic athletes in one body. And this was all just natural abilities when he began to train he became nothing short of amazing.
Plans were made for another trip through the portal for more serum. But due to the US's need for secrecy all of the information about this project was stored at one site. Everyone with real knowledge of the project was also at this location. The Germans learned of the project location and sent an attack team to destroy it.
They succeeded.
It was determined by the US government that the bomb would be enough to end the war once developed. Once the conflict was over they could reclaim the information and deal with the consequences of it.
The one super soldier that had been created would serve as a symbol. The Nazi's had a lot of very ugly tricks up their sleeves and someone would need to handle those. A crack team of commandos was formed to support him along with a highly unconventional air wing.
He was given an outfit made of the most resistant materials known to other secret parts of the US government, in red, white, and blue of course. And he was given the gift from our allies after it too was properly painted.
It was a shield.
They called him Captain America. Yes he really did exist, and if everything I have heard is to be believed, somehow he still does. But what I do know is that in WWII he made a difference. There were a lot of horrors we never knew about. We had great Generals, sturdy troops, but sometimes they were faced with horrible monsters. Other-worldly things, cybernetic Frankensteins, zombies and things that should not exist outside of a fairy tale or a horror movie, but do.
Our troops needed more and Captain America was there. He never wavered, he never faltered, no matter what the challenge, no matter how insurmountable the odds, he always went in, and men followed.
What he and his team did mattered to the war effort, and it mattered to a whole lot of GIs who lived to tell the tales that no one really believed. Then a few years after the war Captain America vanished.
But not before leaving behind another legacy. Before I write this let me just be clear. Captain America was, or is, a remarkable man, a loyal American, and by every single account a true blue hero. He is the model for every real hero in existence today, the standard.
But he did have one tiny psychological quirk. He ah, really liked the ladies and seemed to think that being Captain America, being the only super solider, meant he should make a lot of babies. In most cases the women did not know they were sleeping with Captain America. But because of the secrecy surrounding him none of them had any luck locating him once they discovered they were pregnant.
This behavior continued even after he was operating out of the United States again. In the five years during and after the war it is estimated he fathered a minimum of 20 children. What was eventually learned was that the serum Cap was given was a mutating agent. When combined with the radiation from the projector we were given it produces perfect humans.
Without the radiation it is a much more random mutating agent. Every child of our hero gained some sort of special ability. Some used them well, some did not.
This is all combined with the chaos the German efforts created. They unleashed things that should not exist here. Because they tapped power that can be used for a lot of different things, wizards once again walk the Earth. Humans, and others, who have learned to tap all sorts of unknown-to-modern-science powers.
Children were also born from the German experiments and projects. So we have an initial burst of heroes, monsters, and villains in the mid 1940s. They battle for the better part of a decade. The heroes pretty much win, mostly retire or pick a city to watch over.
10 years pass, the children from the beginning are reaching their twenties and we have a new wave of activity. New heroes emerge, monsters reawaken, chaos and battles that are no longer confined to Earth. Other realms are now involved. And it seems that of these 'other' places are not totally unconnected to Earth, to our past.
Some of those our ancestors called gods were in fact people from other Dimensions. Many of the mythological groups of deities do in fact have a literal truth behind them. As hard as this may be to accept, people who were once known as gods have been on this Planet again, this decade! And they really do have extraordinary powers. It is no wonder we saw them as deities.
From 1965 or so, and for the next 20 years, Earth is mostly kept calm and safe by people we never see. But in other places fierce battles raged, people died, planets died, the stories are simply epic.
Around 1985 things had settled down quite a bit. Major portions of the Earth are secretly under the control of these MetaHumans but as a result peace is more common than war for the first time in human history. In case you are wondering, most of the countries that we in the US consider the good guys are in fact under the control of people we would call heroes.
The third generation is just now starting to take their place as the leading forces in this shadow conflict. But many of the old hands remain as well. One thing that seems to be universal with everyone touched by any of this, they age very slowly. People who were fully adult in 1945 look like they are a couple of decades older at most. Some of them look remarkably the same. By all accounts Captain America did not age at all during the time he was missing and only looks a decade or so older than he did in 1945.
"Life as we know it" Part I of III
by Luther Stone.
[Note from the Editors. While we do not endorse Mr. Stone's story, or agree with it, we feel his Pulitzer award winning status merits an open mind.]
Most people who call themselves adults feel they have a pretty good handle on Life. Oh sure they know there are all sorts of things they do not really understand, but the big things, those they have down.
They are wrong, you are wrong, we are all wrong.
Life as you and I know it is not the whole story, it is barely half the story. You are not going to believe what I am going to tell you but I have to write it down. I have to tell you, and just hope that someday something happens to you that will convince you.
These days few people accept that there are these MetaHumans, people with powers, superpowers. They have been around for a while but have always kept to the shadows. Tons of blurry pictures, rumors of mind control, magic and some really terrible things have been swirling around for decades.
Bigfoot, UFOs, Loch Ness Monster, MetaHumans, all the same thing to most people.
MetaHumans do not belong in that list. I have met a few of them and they have a long history of living in the shadows. In fact it dates back, like many things this past Century, to World War II.
The accepted story is that Hitler was just an aggressive conquerer who took advantage of obvious weaknesses. Some brilliant war weapons, a few other pluses, but all within the realm of the explainable.
Wrong.
Hitler created his war machine with black magics and technology that simply was not of this Earth. They opened portals to places other men had only imagined. They made deals, terrible pacts. Power was granted, and it was used. The steamroller of the Third Reich was fueled by powers I simply do not understand.
The reason the world was so slow to respond to the danger that Hitler represented is because they simply could not believe what seemed to be happening. Spies made report after report, all gained through significant risk to life and limb. None of them were believed.
Portals? Bah!
Magic? Beneath consideration, obvious mis-information.
Other Worlds? You really put that in your report?
We did not believe, and we almost took too long to learn.
The United States finally lead the way. We learned how to open a Portal, and we stole much of what the Germans had learned. The US found it's own allies, and in typical US fashion they were direct and succinct in their requests.
"We want to make a super soldier, and we want a weapon with which we can end this war quickly"
They got both in the form of a serum, a small radiation projector, and the information needed to construct a nuclear bomb. Our new allies also had an additional gift. "For the first one" they had said. Something about the way they said it bothered most of the US delegation, but questions were not answered.
The US had begun work on the bomb of course, but all the realistic estimates said 10 years, minimum. But with the sudden new knowledge they were able to put together working models in a year.
A young man was selected for the serum. He was injected, the radiation projector was employed, and a painful transformation took place. His physical form developed, he gained muscle mass in some unknown fashion. When he was finally released he came off the table like a spring.
Testing would show that he had achieved the absolute peak of human perfection in the physical sense. His strength, speed, stamina, and recuperative abilities were all remarkable. He was like a half-dozen Olympic athletes in one body. And this was all just natural abilities when he began to train he became nothing short of amazing.
Plans were made for another trip through the portal for more serum. But due to the US's need for secrecy all of the information about this project was stored at one site. Everyone with real knowledge of the project was also at this location. The Germans learned of the project location and sent an attack team to destroy it.
They succeeded.
It was determined by the US government that the bomb would be enough to end the war once developed. Once the conflict was over they could reclaim the information and deal with the consequences of it.
The one super soldier that had been created would serve as a symbol. The Nazi's had a lot of very ugly tricks up their sleeves and someone would need to handle those. A crack team of commandos was formed to support him along with a highly unconventional air wing.
He was given an outfit made of the most resistant materials known to other secret parts of the US government, in red, white, and blue of course. And he was given the gift from our allies after it too was properly painted.
It was a shield.
They called him Captain America. Yes he really did exist, and if everything I have heard is to be believed, somehow he still does. But what I do know is that in WWII he made a difference. There were a lot of horrors we never knew about. We had great Generals, sturdy troops, but sometimes they were faced with horrible monsters. Other-worldly things, cybernetic Frankensteins, zombies and things that should not exist outside of a fairy tale or a horror movie, but do.
Our troops needed more and Captain America was there. He never wavered, he never faltered, no matter what the challenge, no matter how insurmountable the odds, he always went in, and men followed.
What he and his team did mattered to the war effort, and it mattered to a whole lot of GIs who lived to tell the tales that no one really believed. Then a few years after the war Captain America vanished.
But not before leaving behind another legacy. Before I write this let me just be clear. Captain America was, or is, a remarkable man, a loyal American, and by every single account a true blue hero. He is the model for every real hero in existence today, the standard.
But he did have one tiny psychological quirk. He ah, really liked the ladies and seemed to think that being Captain America, being the only super solider, meant he should make a lot of babies. In most cases the women did not know they were sleeping with Captain America. But because of the secrecy surrounding him none of them had any luck locating him once they discovered they were pregnant.
This behavior continued even after he was operating out of the United States again. In the five years during and after the war it is estimated he fathered a minimum of 20 children. What was eventually learned was that the serum Cap was given was a mutating agent. When combined with the radiation from the projector we were given it produces perfect humans.
Without the radiation it is a much more random mutating agent. Every child of our hero gained some sort of special ability. Some used them well, some did not.
This is all combined with the chaos the German efforts created. They unleashed things that should not exist here. Because they tapped power that can be used for a lot of different things, wizards once again walk the Earth. Humans, and others, who have learned to tap all sorts of unknown-to-modern-science powers.
Children were also born from the German experiments and projects. So we have an initial burst of heroes, monsters, and villains in the mid 1940s. They battle for the better part of a decade. The heroes pretty much win, mostly retire or pick a city to watch over.
10 years pass, the children from the beginning are reaching their twenties and we have a new wave of activity. New heroes emerge, monsters reawaken, chaos and battles that are no longer confined to Earth. Other realms are now involved. And it seems that of these 'other' places are not totally unconnected to Earth, to our past.
Some of those our ancestors called gods were in fact people from other Dimensions. Many of the mythological groups of deities do in fact have a literal truth behind them. As hard as this may be to accept, people who were once known as gods have been on this Planet again, this decade! And they really do have extraordinary powers. It is no wonder we saw them as deities.
From 1965 or so, and for the next 20 years, Earth is mostly kept calm and safe by people we never see. But in other places fierce battles raged, people died, planets died, the stories are simply epic.
Around 1985 things had settled down quite a bit. Major portions of the Earth are secretly under the control of these MetaHumans but as a result peace is more common than war for the first time in human history. In case you are wondering, most of the countries that we in the US consider the good guys are in fact under the control of people we would call heroes.
The third generation is just now starting to take their place as the leading forces in this shadow conflict. But many of the old hands remain as well. One thing that seems to be universal with everyone touched by any of this, they age very slowly. People who were fully adult in 1945 look like they are a couple of decades older at most. Some of them look remarkably the same. By all accounts Captain America did not age at all during the time he was missing and only looks a decade or so older than he did in 1945.
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