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Solomon's Mercy - Avengers fanfic SPOILERS
May. 3rd, 2018 05:56 pmSolomon's Mercy
[This story is a hardcore spoiler for Marvel's movie _Infinity War_. If you have not seen it, stop reading.]
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# Here be spoilers!
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# You were warned.
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"King Solomon, asked to decide which of two women was the mother of a child, proposed cutting the infant in half. One woman immediately cried "She can have him!" She was awarded custody as the true mother.
"If only civilization had been so lucky."
-- Notes On Apocalpyse, #halfofus
Most people have lived through one atrocity or another. Where were you when Kennedy was shot? When _Challenger_ exploded? When the Towers fell?
Everyone knows where they were when #halfofus were murdered.
It was no Rapture, no uplifting into the delicate hands of a merciful God. People had time to know they were dying, to feel their dissolution, to say a few last words to a loved one ... to, as so many people do at the moment of their deaths, protest the utter unfairness of it all or beg for just a little more time, just another moment.
We don't know why. We don't know how. But we are wicked pissed. We know it has something to do with Wakanda. With the Avengers. With yet another invasion beyond our space and time.
"We may not able to save the Earth. But you can be damn sure we'll avenge it." - Tony Stark (missing)
###
"911, what is your emergency?"
These words are their own reality distorter for most people. They accompany the worst moments of our lives - being a victim of crime, witnessing someone's tragedy, finding a body.
In an emergency dispatch center they are merely a part of the job, another day's work.
That doesn't make it easier when half your co-workers start to dissolve, just in time for your call volume to go through the roof.
Protocols were rapidly worked out by the surviving dispatchers. Hidden in the haystack of people calling 911 because people were disintegrating were the emergencies that could be helped -- the crashed vehicles, the fires, the heart attacks, the suicides.
"911, we know about the disintegrations, are you safe? Are you OK? Do you need police, fire or an ambulance? OK, bye now."
Within minutes, a simple solution to the unit availability problem was found. Double all dispatches. Send two police cars, see which one keys up. Send two ambulances, ditto. Send four engines, two trucks and two battalion chiefs if the call type calls for two, one and one.
If only all the answers were so easy.
###
The hospital was a scene of frantic activity. Half the staff dissolved - so did half the patients. A scramble ensued to assure continuity of care, to re-sort the workload. Mistakes happened and people died, because we are human.
A surgeon disappeared just after taking a cut, but before taking the stitch. His scrub nurse desperately tried to save the patient, but failed.
The worst part was the switch to disaster operations. As the existing patients were taken care of, the ERs and ORs were cleared and the surviving staff assembled with gurneys and stretchers and mass casualty carts, scrubbed and gloved.
They waited. They waited. And then they waited some more.
They got their patients, but no more than a busy Friday night could generate.
This disaster was too big, too sudden, too complete. There were no injuries from disintegration, no near misses, no lost limbs or shrapnel.
You lived or you died. #halfofus
Over the hours, the staff went back to their suddenly expanded normal duties.
There would be no lives saved from disintegration today.
###
For the police and the paramedics it was different. Their subjects too often didn't make it to the ER. A handful were transported under restraint. But too many others reacted to sudden, inexplicable, unshakeable tragedy by choosing to escape our shared reality. For some it was as sudden and violent as the disintegrations themselves. For others, it was a seemly calm, reasoned decision - like a sleepwalk, to curl up in a warm bathtub with a kitchen knife, or take two bottles of pills and call the Doctor in the never, or take one last breath and jump from a tall place.
Many succeeded. Trying to stop the others was almost - but not quite - an exercise in futility.
###
"What hope is there? What dignity? God Himself is against us!"
The hotline operator took a deep breath, "We need to have faith."
"Any God that would let this happen to us is no God at all!"
CLICK
Not a hang up. A telephone handset is poorly equipped to handle gunshot acoustics.
Actually, more than #halfofus
###
In big cities, people wandered the streets, dazed. But they interacted with each other in ways they would not normally do. Stockbrokers hugged junkies. Shoe shine boys and housewives cried together in alleys.
In small towns, neighbors crowded around familiar places, landmarks.
People felt a sudden need to be with people. No one wanted to be alone.
Especially if the disintegrations started again. Half and half and half and half until perhaps one ...
###
Airborne Command & Control Aircraft _Looking Glass_.
"We have three confirmations, the President of the United States is dead. The Vice President is in motion and concurs. Codes are verified. There has been an attack on the United States, we are requesting unlimited nuclear release authority.
"We have authority. Reference TS/SCI Avengers Initiative. SAC do you concur?
"Copy. Release authority is to Captain Steve Rogers, United States Army, in Wakanda. Awaiting targeting information. Captain Rogers is fully authorized to call for fire, any targets, any packages, his discretion."
From fugitive to having more raw power than the new President. But atrocity will do that.
###
"Down periscope. Make your depth 50 meters. Pass the word for silent running."
The Captain turned to his XO. "Launch party, my wardroom. Now."
The men sitting around the table were veterans of their country's navy, the very best that their nations could produce.
The Captain passed around the orders he had taken from the safe.
"Sir, these are orders for ... madness! Atrocity!"
Indeed they were. The ballistic missile nuclear submarine carried a classified number of missiles and each missile carried a classified number of warheads.
They had been evenly divided among six continents. They were not exactly targeted on cities, except where those cities were in the way.
They were targeted on the works of Man. Dams, bridges, aqueducts. The California Aqueduct, which would doom 10 million people to die of thirst within weeks.
Well, half that actually.
"If they land to occupy, we will leave them nothing to take from us. Agreed?"
His officers nodded.
Multiply by a dozen nations, some with dozens of such submarines. Targets had been coordinated so that no submarine would have to launch on her own nation.
The Avengers were not the only such "Initiative."
###
Half of Wakanda survived.
This was a big, big mistake.
After three hundred years of "sitting this one out," Wakanda would pay back for all.
Not #halfofus
All of us.
[This story is a hardcore spoiler for Marvel's movie _Infinity War_. If you have not seen it, stop reading.]
#
#
#
#
#
# Here be spoilers!
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
# You were warned.
#
#
"King Solomon, asked to decide which of two women was the mother of a child, proposed cutting the infant in half. One woman immediately cried "She can have him!" She was awarded custody as the true mother.
"If only civilization had been so lucky."
-- Notes On Apocalpyse, #halfofus
Most people have lived through one atrocity or another. Where were you when Kennedy was shot? When _Challenger_ exploded? When the Towers fell?
Everyone knows where they were when #halfofus were murdered.
It was no Rapture, no uplifting into the delicate hands of a merciful God. People had time to know they were dying, to feel their dissolution, to say a few last words to a loved one ... to, as so many people do at the moment of their deaths, protest the utter unfairness of it all or beg for just a little more time, just another moment.
We don't know why. We don't know how. But we are wicked pissed. We know it has something to do with Wakanda. With the Avengers. With yet another invasion beyond our space and time.
"We may not able to save the Earth. But you can be damn sure we'll avenge it." - Tony Stark (missing)
###
"911, what is your emergency?"
These words are their own reality distorter for most people. They accompany the worst moments of our lives - being a victim of crime, witnessing someone's tragedy, finding a body.
In an emergency dispatch center they are merely a part of the job, another day's work.
That doesn't make it easier when half your co-workers start to dissolve, just in time for your call volume to go through the roof.
Protocols were rapidly worked out by the surviving dispatchers. Hidden in the haystack of people calling 911 because people were disintegrating were the emergencies that could be helped -- the crashed vehicles, the fires, the heart attacks, the suicides.
"911, we know about the disintegrations, are you safe? Are you OK? Do you need police, fire or an ambulance? OK, bye now."
Within minutes, a simple solution to the unit availability problem was found. Double all dispatches. Send two police cars, see which one keys up. Send two ambulances, ditto. Send four engines, two trucks and two battalion chiefs if the call type calls for two, one and one.
If only all the answers were so easy.
###
The hospital was a scene of frantic activity. Half the staff dissolved - so did half the patients. A scramble ensued to assure continuity of care, to re-sort the workload. Mistakes happened and people died, because we are human.
A surgeon disappeared just after taking a cut, but before taking the stitch. His scrub nurse desperately tried to save the patient, but failed.
The worst part was the switch to disaster operations. As the existing patients were taken care of, the ERs and ORs were cleared and the surviving staff assembled with gurneys and stretchers and mass casualty carts, scrubbed and gloved.
They waited. They waited. And then they waited some more.
They got their patients, but no more than a busy Friday night could generate.
This disaster was too big, too sudden, too complete. There were no injuries from disintegration, no near misses, no lost limbs or shrapnel.
You lived or you died. #halfofus
Over the hours, the staff went back to their suddenly expanded normal duties.
There would be no lives saved from disintegration today.
###
For the police and the paramedics it was different. Their subjects too often didn't make it to the ER. A handful were transported under restraint. But too many others reacted to sudden, inexplicable, unshakeable tragedy by choosing to escape our shared reality. For some it was as sudden and violent as the disintegrations themselves. For others, it was a seemly calm, reasoned decision - like a sleepwalk, to curl up in a warm bathtub with a kitchen knife, or take two bottles of pills and call the Doctor in the never, or take one last breath and jump from a tall place.
Many succeeded. Trying to stop the others was almost - but not quite - an exercise in futility.
###
"What hope is there? What dignity? God Himself is against us!"
The hotline operator took a deep breath, "We need to have faith."
"Any God that would let this happen to us is no God at all!"
CLICK
Not a hang up. A telephone handset is poorly equipped to handle gunshot acoustics.
Actually, more than #halfofus
###
In big cities, people wandered the streets, dazed. But they interacted with each other in ways they would not normally do. Stockbrokers hugged junkies. Shoe shine boys and housewives cried together in alleys.
In small towns, neighbors crowded around familiar places, landmarks.
People felt a sudden need to be with people. No one wanted to be alone.
Especially if the disintegrations started again. Half and half and half and half until perhaps one ...
###
Airborne Command & Control Aircraft _Looking Glass_.
"We have three confirmations, the President of the United States is dead. The Vice President is in motion and concurs. Codes are verified. There has been an attack on the United States, we are requesting unlimited nuclear release authority.
"We have authority. Reference TS/SCI Avengers Initiative. SAC do you concur?
"Copy. Release authority is to Captain Steve Rogers, United States Army, in Wakanda. Awaiting targeting information. Captain Rogers is fully authorized to call for fire, any targets, any packages, his discretion."
From fugitive to having more raw power than the new President. But atrocity will do that.
###
"Down periscope. Make your depth 50 meters. Pass the word for silent running."
The Captain turned to his XO. "Launch party, my wardroom. Now."
The men sitting around the table were veterans of their country's navy, the very best that their nations could produce.
The Captain passed around the orders he had taken from the safe.
"Sir, these are orders for ... madness! Atrocity!"
Indeed they were. The ballistic missile nuclear submarine carried a classified number of missiles and each missile carried a classified number of warheads.
They had been evenly divided among six continents. They were not exactly targeted on cities, except where those cities were in the way.
They were targeted on the works of Man. Dams, bridges, aqueducts. The California Aqueduct, which would doom 10 million people to die of thirst within weeks.
Well, half that actually.
"If they land to occupy, we will leave them nothing to take from us. Agreed?"
His officers nodded.
Multiply by a dozen nations, some with dozens of such submarines. Targets had been coordinated so that no submarine would have to launch on her own nation.
The Avengers were not the only such "Initiative."
###
Half of Wakanda survived.
This was a big, big mistake.
After three hundred years of "sitting this one out," Wakanda would pay back for all.
Not #halfofus
All of us.
