[PART 74]
ANOTHER AFTERMATH
The Aftermath of the Second Martian War
We had won; rather Planet Earth had won. So now what do we do?
DEVASTATION
When the fighting ended and the sounds of that terrible war now only a dull ringing in our ears had subsided what was to be done? Utter devastation had once again become our lot. As before vast areas of our fragile planet lay in waste, yet somehow for those of us who had endured both of these interplanetary wars something seemed different. Yes, it had been terrible with much lost, but we had dug deeply into the Earth, and hidden much from the deadly Martians. Much had been saved, a good deal more than had been saved during the first Martian War. Indeed much more than I would have expected.
It is true that nothing can replace those millions who had fallen, but we could now realize that twice the bloody Martians had come with all they had to destroy our world and all who lived here and twice they had been defeated. We had proven that humans along with other forms of life on Earth were stronger than the Martians. Despite the horrible losses we had proven to the Martians that this planet will never go down without a fight and we will never surrender no matter the cost, and make no mistake the costs had been very high.
No caption needed!
In this new aftermath we could not dwell in the past; that was not an option if we wanted to survive. We would look once again to the future and mankind would rebuild a whole new world. But this time we would begin not from a burning pile of rubble alone even though much of Earth did indeed lie in ruin. We were much stronger and wiser now. We have a much deeper technology to build from and we had other worlds to see.
This time as we build towards a new tomorrow we also look at that red planet across the vastness of space and begin to see ways for the men of Earth to bring to the Martians the same type of devastation to their world that they have brought to ours – twice! We build now not just to defend our world but to eventually find the means to destroy theirs even as we cared for the remnants of a defeated enemy.
MARTIAN PRISONER OF WAR CAMPS – ANTARCTICA
What does one do with 432 Martian A and 140 Martian B prisoners of war? The only options which came to mind first were to kill them all, which at the time really did seem like the best option, or hold them as prisoners of war and possibly use them as a future bargaining chip with the Martians in exchange for the humans known to still be held on Mars. Upon further discussion we decided to hold them, but not in any standard prisoner of war camp. It was decided to follow through with the Martian Antarctica option without any input from the Martians themselves. After all they had not “consulted Earth” before invading our planet twice so why would we consult them for the disposition of their “people.”
The practical aspect of housing them in Antarctica was to show the Martians that we humans did not execute captured Martians and that we were still willing to craft a place on Earth for them to live, if and when they decided to take us up on the offer. In other words humans are beings of honor and we keep our word. This information was transmitted to Mars as was a re-transmission of the peace plan which had been radioed to them before the Second Martian War and of course ignored by them.
The two original surviving POs and the 24 new ones were to be delivered to the Martians in the Antarctic along with 1241 condemned murderers in chains (for Martian food). We would continue to deliver brutal human murderers and rapists to their deaths at the ‘hands’ of the Martians as well as others who had betrayed our planet to them. The Martians still ‘dined’ on human flesh. That was not likely to change so at least for a while this very controversial policy was a win-win. They got a ‘meal’ and humanity cleaned out some very nasty and brutal humans. In the long term of course we needed to find a much better method of feeding these creatures.
Messages to the Martians being tracked and still in orbit around the Earth were sent, instructing them to land and take possession of a designated section of Antarctica. Instead of answering, the remaining 118 Martian spacecraft being tracked by Earth radars simply left Earth orbit one at a time and headed back to Mars. It was clear the Martians had once again decided that it would be all or nothing for planet Earth. They were not interested in living peacefully on a planet which also held humans. They had not even asked for the Martian prisoners we held in Antarctica.
KILL ALL HYBRIDS
“The great fear today is that humans will in some short thousands of years become the Martians.”
Edited from news sheet
It would seem that once the terror of the invading Martians had abated to the point that Earth’s forces along with our insect and animal allies were beginning to overcome the Martians, humans began looking with disdain towards the hybrids that had caused such harm as well as such good on Earth. There was no distinction made between those who had fought for the Martians and those who had done so much to defend ‘our’ Earth.
Civilians in the outlying areas were the first to find and execute any and all Martians as well as any hybrids they could get their hands on. At times even “full humans” were killed by mobs that had mistaken them for hybrids for one reason or another. This was simply murder, but there was little in the way of local world governments to stop the slaughter in these areas – the Martians had seen to that. In the fog of war military authorities were late to discover such atrocities and the once again reconstituted national governments learned of such activities usually only after most, if not all hybrids in their devastated countries, had been killed. The few who remained were soon constantly on the move, hiding during the day and moving only at night, always looking for food and shelter – but it was a lost cause. It is estimated that by the end of October 1938 as the war was coming to an end the 2,000 hybrids thought to have arrived on Earth with the Martians after the First Martian War could count among themselves as few as 20 world-wide. It would not be long before they were extinct, at least on Earth.
Powerful men, both in and outside of the Committee, had in the past been pushing for something of a self-imposed and very selective human breeding program. Hybrid reports and other studies had spurred on this thinking. With the Martian war still very much on their minds they began to think more openly about the prospect of such a program. Men such as H. G. Wells and Dr. Nicola Tesla were very much in the forefront of this type of thinking. When interviewed in 1937 Tesla would say much on the subject.
“Man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct. Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.”
Dr. Tesla would report to the Magic Twelve after the war to plead for a whole new world order. “Out of this war a new world must be born, a world that would justify the sacrifices offered by humanity. This must be a world in which there shall be no exploration of the weak by the strong, of the good by the evil, where there will be no humiliation of poor by the violation of the rich; where the products of the intellect, science, and art will serve society for the betterment and beautification of life, and not the individuals for achieving wealth. This new world shall not be a world of the down trodden and humiliated, but of free men and free nations, equal in dignity and respect for man.”
There was still much that we had to learn.
NEW WORK TO BE DONE
As mankind looked once again at the problems which had been festering on Earth and looked away from Mars, re-constructed governments once again saw the possibilities of conflicts upon our Earth. Attempting to continue efforts, which had brought mankind together to defeat an interplanetary enemy, diplomats traveled to once again find common ground. At the end of 1938 one such trip found British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain traveling to Germany for a one-on-one with German Chancellor Hitler. He returned with a piece of paper and declared “peace in our time.” He later reported, “My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street [with] peace [and] with honor. And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.”
Earth now looked towards peace and not war even as martial law held much of the planet and would do so for many years to come. Another great Earth bound war seems to have been averted. Hopefully we have all learned the lesson that “we must all hang together or we shall surely all hang alone.” My old friend Winston was not so sure.
Yes, the Martians had been defeated. And as I have recalled those creatures had thrown everything they possibly could at planet Earth in a desperate struggle to survive as a species and we as a planet had stood the test and defeated their mighty interplanetary armada. Now the only enemies to be found on Earth, at least for a while, were ourselves! (Excluding of course the Martian prisoners of war in Antarctica.) At this point we had to ask ourselves, as we peered once again over the devastation brought on by war and the brutality that man’s history has shown a question. Does human biological, technical and cultural progress ensure that man will evolve into a more civilized species or is it possible that in the end we ourselves will become the Martians? No one had an answer. Only time and mankind’s future abilities could provide the world with a true answer.
A NEW AGE OF ICE
The Earth was now cold and dim even on the brightest of days as the volcanoes attacked during the war continued to spew their gasses and devastated rock particles into an atmosphere greatly damaged during the war. This was added to the gasses and debris still being sent into the air by the massive fires still burning. Snow was not melting in many areas as it had for much of man’s time on Earth. Needless to say, the growing seasons around the world had become shortened, some no longer existed. Many would die from starvation.
As we strive to solve this and many other questions, scientists have recently confirmed that even though the Martians had lost the war on Earth their efforts to cool the planet have indeed been completely successful. Planet Earth is now orbiting slightly further away from our Sun due to the massive movements of the Earth’s crust and oceans caused by the first massive Martian attacks of the war and it is continuing to slowly move away from our local life giving star. No one knows just how far the orbit will expand. We do not possess the technological capabilities to correct the expanding orbit of our planet.
Snow storm near the coast of Orland Florida!
Overall temperatures of Earth’s atmosphere world-wide have dropped a full 2.5 degrees F in one year; the world’s oceans by about 1.5 degrees F. This information will not be shared with most of humanity for the time being, even though it will become obvious within a few short years, if it isn’t already with the now always darkened skies. Only by vastly increasing the levels of greenhouse gasses (mostly water vapor) into our atmosphere and increasing the amount of ocean bearing vegetation will we be able to slow the advance of permanent winter upon the Earth, but in the end we will not defeat the cold of this new reality. We will not have a summer this year in the north or for that matter another summer over most of the planet as long as anyone on Earth is alive as we are now beginning a rapidly advancing ice age.
The Martians had lost their planet even before mankind created civilization on Earth and humans had now lost their warm home before they could even venture into space. Perhaps this is what it felt like to be a Martian those thousands of years ago as they watched their planet slowly fail. We can only wonder and do our best to endure. For the Martians however, at least when their planet began to fail they could look out into solar space and see the possibilities of a new world closer to the Sun. On Earth we have no such view. For you see, Venus is far too hot and we cannot fly there, and no one would ever to go to Mars and live for long.
We will soon need to build domes over selected cities to survive on the surface of our planet, as the Martians had done thousands of years ago on the world they called “Mars Prime.” Once again we will rebuild our shattered world, as well as continuing to build massive new facilities underground which could very well be the only survivable places on Earth in the near future as we now plan to build a massive new system of covered canals for transportation of people and supplies and yes even water to ensure that supply will not freeze.
So this is our lot today in the year 1938 as humanity now moves inexorably towards that long cold dark night wondering if we could have done anything better to prevent our present situation as we brave ourselves for a very cold and very uncertain future. We had won the war for Earth against the brutal Martians that was certain, yet in this very victory have lost our warm and comfortable planet. Could it not then be said that it was the Martians who had won by fully transforming our planet into an eventual icy world not unlike their own? And when it is all but ice and dusty rocky plains will they once again view our world with envious eyes?
Such is our fate. As far as our future and our way of life are concerned we must face the fact that in so many ways we have indeed become the Martians!
In December of 1939 The Executive Committee of Twelve issued
their internal Most Secret Magic CoT Directorate Report
DR 10-46 Committee Notes: The Martians and the Second Martian War
To what end?
A Final Word from Mr. Wells
As he had after the First Martian War, Herbert Wells would report on his thoughts after the Second Martian War from his partially wreaked London home. The 72-year-old writer and long time member of the Executive Committee of Twelve addressed a top-secret gathering of the Committee in a small repaired section of Lower-London. His thoughts were not on the possible coming storm on Earth, but once again firmly focused on the heavens.
“A question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of another attack from the Martians. I do not think that nearly enough attention is being given to this aspect of the matter. Whether we expect another invasion or not, our views of the human future must be greatly modified by these events. We have learned [once again] that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space. It may be that in the larger design of the universe this [latest] invasion from Mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are enormous, and it has done much to promote the conception of the commonwealth of mankind. It may be that across the immensity of space the Martians have watched the fate of these invaders of theirs and learned their lesson, and that on the planet Venus they have found a securer settlement. Be that as it may, for many years yet there will certainly be no relaxation of the eager scrutiny of the Martian disk, and those fiery darts of the sky, the shooting stars, will bring with them as they fall an unavoidable apprehension to all the sons of men.”
Mr. Wells’ final thoughts to the Committee were of worlds to come and the time in the dim future of Earth when men from planet Earth will find that they too must leave the planet for a new and better home among the stars.
“Now we see further. If the Martians can reach Venus, [as we now know that they have], there is no reason to suppose that the thing is impossible for men, and when the slow cooling of the Sun makes this Earth uninhabitable, as at last it must do, it may be that the thread of life that has begun here will have streamed out and caught our sister planet within its toils.”
Herbert G. Wells, 1938
Writing from the rubble of the Second Martian War
[END PART 74]
Copyright © R. Michael Gordon, 2020
[NEXT WEEK: PART 75: SOME FINAL THOUGHTS AND COMMITTEE REPORTS.]
