Unofficial Handbook of the History of Earth-Amalgam (v. 3)
By Carycomic
Chapter 1.
Nov. 1, 1950: President Harry S. Truman is assassinated by Puerto Rican separatists outside Blair House, Washington, DC (during renovations to the White House proper). Vice-President Alben Barkley is sworn in, almost immediately afterward.
Nov. 4, 1952: President Barkley is overwhelmingly defeated for re-election by Eisenhower and Nixon.
Jan. 25, 1956: Nixon's disagreement with Eisenhower (over repealing the HUAC Ban on Superheroics*), leads to the former's resignation as the latter's Vice-President. He is subsequently replaced by a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy!
"Heretofore, I'd been periodically catapulted forward in time," explained the silvery-haired man in the verdant unitard with yellow lightning bolt insignia: "But, this time, I found myself on a parallel-Earth where the United States evidently never came to exist. Instead, there was just a geopolitically fragmented central region of the entire North American continent from West Coast to East Coast. That, in turn, led to a relatively easy conquest by invaders from outer space. More specifically; a reptilian race called the Vardax!"
"Oh, there were pockets of resistance, here and there. The Native American tribes of California, for instance, had teamed up with refugees from Canada and Mexico to form what they called the United Nations! And it was at one of their Grand Council meetings that I materialized. . .in the body of an Apache warrior called Proud Star."
"According to his half-Sarcee daughter, Jacali Who-Runs-With-The-Speed-of-Two-Young Men, I had been brought there by the power of the Blue Flame and the Living Lightning (which this outfit is supposed to symbolize the union of) in order to rescue the one being who could help drive the Vardax off their Earth. The sole survivor of another invaded planet. Someone who called himself 'Commando D!' Only, it was necessary for me to do it in the body of her father as something about their world ultimately drives extra-dimensional visitors mad. In any event, this Commando D was hiding out somewhere in the Boston Republic. And it was only a matter of time before his pursuers caught up to him, there!"
"As it turns out, he was being sheltered by a white wizard called Dr. Druid. And, according to him, the only safe place for Commando D was yet another parallel Earth! One that could only be accessed through an interdimensional nexus point somewhere in the Florida Everglades. So, I ran them there as fast as I could without suffocating them or burning them up with friction. But, the Vardax were always hot on our heels!
"The doctor and I managed to stall our first wave of pursuers long enough for Commando D to vanish through the teleportal Druid had opened up with his magic. Yet, when the second wave showed up, I was unexpectedly shoved through it, myself, by a sudden gust of wind that Druid mystically whipped up at the last second."
"And when I regained consciousness, this time, I was back in my original body. But, still wearing this outfit and- -more importantly- -stranded on a far-off planet called Galador!"
Artur Zarrko and Booster Gold looked at each other in unabashed puzzlement.
"Galador?!" echoed the latter: "The only planet I've ever heard of, by that name, is supposed to have disappeared around the time of the American Bicentennial! Converted by its super-powered prince into a stream of tachyons in order to escape from one of the Vegan Spider Guild's weaponized black holes."
"How very odd," replied Zarrko: "The only Galador I ever heard of is supposed to have been destroyed in a war with a Skrull subspecies called the Dire Wraiths (which is their equivalent of the Earth term, 'vampires')! "
The man who had been born Harry Kane shook his head.
"The Galador I reappeared on exists in the 24th century of a parallel universe where three coalitions are at war with each other. The United Federation of Planets and the Green Lantern Corps versus the Borg Collective! And, when I left Galador, the Borg's elite Manhunters were trying to steal something from there called. . . an 'Infinity Gate.' "
June 1961: Smallville Police Chief Douglas-Parker is called to the scene of a tragic-yet-highly unusual traffic accident. Jonathan and Martha Kent died on impact when their truck (returning from a friend's wedding) collided with an alien spaceship! The spaceship is confiscated by the military and sent to the Ferris Aircraft Company in Coast City, California, for reverse-engineering. But as for the infant that was found inside it? He is adopted and raised by Mr. and Mrs. Dudley Batson. A once-famous pair of Depression-era stage magicians. Now, the recently-retired hosts of a local children's TV show; "Uncle Dudley's Magic Playhouse!"
December 1967: Richard Douglas-Parker meets Donna Billings (younger sister of ex-Girl Commando Ellen Billings) at a New Year's Eve ball at the American embassy in West Berlin. With Donna revealing that she works at a nearby university as a teacher of English-as-a-Second Language.
January 1968: The First Tet Offensive begins in South Vietnam. With Ben Douglas-Parker leading his ranger team in a house-by-house counter-offensive in Saigon. Consequently, when the floor of a hastily abandoned opium den, in the Chinese-dominated Cholon District, collapses beneath their feet, Ben finds himself lying face-down in the basement. When he regains his second wind, he looks up. . .and beholds a truncated pyramid seemingly made of solid gold!
March 1968: subsequent investigation, by U.S. Army Intelligence, reveals that the opium den belonged to the Green Dragon Tong. That the pyramid matches the description of a similar object that the Pentagon lost much earlier in the Cold War. And that it is referred to, in Cantonese, as "The Gate of Infinity." G-2 ultimately decides to have the object shipped, via the Cunningham Aircraft Company, to a Stark Industries aerospace lab facility near Timely, Illinois.
May 1968: The Douglas-Parker brothers visit their parents in Smallville for Mother's Day. With Richard announcing his engagement to Donna. . .and Ben introducing May as his fiancé.
June 1969: Richard and Ben marry in a double-wedding. But, though the error is never discovered, the clerk who issued the marriage licenses accidentally omitted the hypen from the surnames of the grooms. Making it seem like "Douglas" is a middle name!
March 1970: Peter Parker is born to Richard and Donna. And William Dudley Batson turns age sixteen.
SOMEWHERE WITHIN THE PENTAGON (FEBRUARY 2, 1971)
"In exchange for agreeing to assume full responsibility," Reed Richards told his interrogator: ". . .Ben Grimm, Sue Storm, and her brother were allowed to go free with completely expunged records. While I was sentenced to ten years probation on the pled-down charge of criminal trespass on Federal property. I then spent the first four years of that probation trying to help Ferris Aircraft with their various attempts to reverse-engineer what one of their test pilots unofficially nicknamed 'the Rock-a-bye Rocket.' Unfortunately, we had no success until mid-1965."
Amanda Waller smiled: "The nation-wide power failure known as the Big Blackout."
Richards nodded: "Following the restoration of power, there was a brief electromagnetic surge. One that somehow activated the spacecraft's flight computer system! Complete with a holographic projection containing alphanumeric characters that I can only describe as mathematically sequential. And I found that math sequence to be somewhat familiar. "
"In what way? asked Waller.
"When I was in grad school, I did my master's thesis on the radioastronomy recordings of Dr. Saul Erdel. Up to and including the ones he'd compiled on the day of his tragic death in 1955! So, I dug up the original draft of my thesis; double-checked the notes I'd made concerning certain patterns of repetition among those sounds; and then cross-checked them against Ferris' videotape recordings of the holographic hieroglyphs. Sure enough; there were identically matching patterns among the latter!"
Waller smiled again: "Signifying what, precisely?"
"That the Erdel signals and the Smallville spacecraft come from the same region of space. Specifically; somewhere near the red giant Epsilon Corvi. But, even more importantly? I was able to decipher the signals, using those holographic hieroglyphs as a kind of Rosetta Stone! What Dr. Erdel spent all that time recording. . .was a warning."
Waller almost hesitated before asking the next question: "About what and/or whom? "
There was absolutely no hesitancy in Richards' reply: "The warning said (and I quote): 'Beware the zelaphod.' "
tbc
*GLOSSARY OF OBSCURE CROSS-REFERENCES.
* ". . . repealing the HUAC Ban on Superheroics" (see UHHEA volume 1).
Galador: exactly four years before it became the homeworld of Rom, Spaceknight, this planet was created by Jim Shooter for a one-shot Superman story in ACTION COMICS (v.1) #451.
". . .radioastronomy recordings. . ." (see UHHEA volume 2).