Radioactive mutants vs. Nazi Communists

[Lord O' Bones]

I don't doubt that it looked odd for a while.

But imagine if a bunch of Aussie Peaceniks thought you also had nuclear weapons on board.

It took us literally an hour to ignore Green Peace to make them go away. And an hour later for the women on the pier to call up asking for a Yank with "x" hair and a "x' accent and "x" any other bullshit. Skin color, region, height, musculature, whatever.

Australia. Love that place; kinda want to smack the shit out of it though.

[Antonius Pius]

Yes, I suppose nuclear weapons can alter the equation somewhat.

Peaceniks sound like hippies. Couldn't you turn the watercannon on them, or was that frowned upon?

[Lord O' Bones]

Yes, I suppose nuclear weapons can alter the equation somewhat.

Peaceniks sound like hippies. Couldn't you turn the watercannon on them, or was that frowned upon?

We could have, but that would have been antithetical to the purpose of the port visit. Green Peace aside, everywhere I went in Australia they loved us, and we loved them back. Especially in Darwin. In the 90's it was a mutual lovefest.

I imagine we've fucked that up by now.

[Seventh Pup]

Min has traveled across this country multiple times; even as recently as a month ago.

Personally, if I had to ask for directions and were only given those two choices, I know who I'd ask.

Rock right? At the very least Mr. Stacy? If you answer differently I may have to call into quesiton your supposed Americaness.

[Antonius Pius]

I imagine we've fucked that up by now.

I'm sure no-one holds you personally responsible.

Rock right? At the very least Mr. Stacy? If you answer differently I may have to call into quesiton your supposed Americaness.

Is that a female Captain America?

[MinDonner]

Chapter Ten, and Stacy finally remembers that there are supposed to be some Nazis in the story. So yay! Another one of those "day in the life" chapters, this time featuring the hapless Ralph 66.

He is a slave labourer in southern Colorado, where hundreds of German planes have just landed, after they took off from Munich, Stuttgart and Berlin a mere 6 hours ago. Obviously Commie inefficiency has not hampered the development of superfast transatlantic travel!

The German invasion force was arriving in America. The second time in history that foreign troops had set foot on American soil.

Invasion force? Second time in history?? Bah. If I start picking nits here, we'll be here all day.

The jet engines roar out a symphony of impending doom, and all the slaves look up in fear. All men, cos the women have been sent off to "breeding farms" in Russia. The Nazi invasion is gathering to wreak the destruction of Century City!

Ralph 66 stumbles about, muttering to himself about how worthless he is - he's been up for 80 hours with no sleep but knows if he falls he'll get bayonetted, etc etc. And the Commies took away his one treasured possession, a "cracked glass with a decal of President Kennedy on it"! He looks up at the jets like angels of doom in the green radioactive sky - and is spotted by a passing Nazi stereotype!

"Vat haf ve here?" a Nazi officer asked him, noticing that Ralph had been looking up instead of down at the ground as was the law for all slaves. "Do you zee something interesting?" the German asked, his thin lips grinning like stretched steel.

"Nothing, nothing, I'm sorry," Ralph 66 muttered, bowing his head low and trying to move on. The Nazi major slapped Ralph 66 on the side of the face with his swagger stick.

"You like troop planes, do you?"

"No no, I only want to work, only work."

"That is good." The steel-gray eyes bore into him. "Hmmm, let me see your profile." He pressed the end of the leather-bound stick against the stubbly face. "I see upon looking at your upraised face that you are partly of Aryan stock. I have a different chore for you, mongrel. Come with me."

Ralph 66 has been promoted to "boot servant", ie. he has to put on and take off the general's boots without twisting the guy's foot (else, execution!!). For such an apparently hazardous task he is given about half a day's training, but feels pretty confident by the time the evening comes around.

A bit of backstory now about the Nazi High Command. In charge of it all is Herr Ubenfuhrer Marshal Von Reisling (is he the same guy with the Eva Braun fetish? I can't even remember), who is pleased that the thirty thousand American slaves have been able to build Nazi HQ City in such a short time. Said short time = just over a week, if we are going by the timescale of Rockson's simultaneous adventures, so he's right to be impressed. He has an eyepatch and sips daintily from a china teacup.

Ralph 66 manages to put Von Reisling's boots on without incident, and now we get to meet Gunter and Helmut, commanders of the 201st Wolfpack. Gunter's icy blue eyes seem to ooze death; he should probably get that seen to.

Gunter and Helmut get medals for no reason at all, then Von Reisling returns to sit on his "military throne" to have his boots removed. But Ralph 66 is nervous and twists his foot! But, they have lost too many slaves to bother executing this one, so he's just sent back to his menial slave work. But to Ralph, having tasted the good life of a boot servant, this demotion is unbearable! He secretly smashes a glass ashtray and hides one of the shards in his pocket.

Von Reisling now has a phonecall from Vassily, who is apparently "nearly twelve thousand miles away". I wonder where he is? Certainly not Moscow, which is less than half that distance from Denver. Wherever it is, it should be as far away from Colorado as it's possible to get without leaving the planet - somewhere in the South Pacific, is my guess, though if anyone has a globe handy it'd be good to get that confirmed. Maybe Vassily has taken a tropical beach holiday?

Anyway, they both cackle about how easy and how awesome it will be to finally capture Rockson... but meanwhile, Ralph 66 sneaks in through the back door! It is his one chance to kill the Nazi commander - maybe his name will go down in legend like Rockson's!

Von Reisling turns around and shoots him through the forehead. Apparently his eyepatch conceals a "sophisticated radar device with a 360-degree field of scan". Ha!

And now a quick digression to see what Gunter and his Wolfpack are up to. They are, in fact, jumping from a plane in their parakites, aiming to land on Pike's Peak. The fact that there is a raging blizzard up there right now does not seem to have factored into their preparations. But it's an excuse for some Science!

It was the kind of storm that didn't even exist before the nuke war. The all-out atomic holocaust had set the earth wobbling on its axis, reversing the magnetic poles and beginning a "nuclear winter" which lasted for years over much of the Northern hemisphere. Nearly eighty percent of the earth's population was dead in three years. Then a miraculous cleansing action began to take place- the cosmic rays, the unfiltered solar rays, began to change the radioactive molecules, reducing their half-lives - the time it took for the deadly rads to become half as virulent. Slowly, ever so slowly. the forces of nature began to reassert themselves.

:rofl: So. Much. Fail.

It goes on a bit longer, about eg. how all non-mutant men have to don oxygen masks at all but the lowest elevations, despite having shown us over and over again that this is not the case. And also that there are OMG EXTRA DEADLY SNOWSTORMS. Like the one they are in now!

A gust of "super-wind" whips a deadly snowflake under Gunter's glove and cuts his wrist. Loads of other Nazis are getting snowflaked to death also. Gunter heroically presses on towards the Murchison Pass*, reassuring himself with thoughts of the Fatherland. The beautiful embryo-tank where he was created, the loving beatings he received from his adopted father whenever he cried. Emotions are for weaklings!

Eventually, storm dies down, and we get the inevitable reminder that various scavenging beasties are now emerging to feast on the dead Nazis. Ah, the circle of life!

*this doesn't appear to be a real place, but (according to Google) features in at least one book by prolific writer of Westerns, Max Brand. I wonder if this was an intentional tribute, or just Stacy confusing fact with fiction yet again?

[MinDonner]

Regarding Vassily's location, I was entirely wrong about the South Pacific. There's this cool Map Tunnelling programme I found which shows you what lies on the opposite side of the globe from any given point, and the nearest place opposite Denver would be Ile Amsterdam, in the Indian Ocean. However, I can console my geography FAIL with the thought that it's nowhere near as bad as Stacy's.

[Lord O' Bones]

Apparently his eyepatch conceals a "sophisticated radar device with a 360-degree field of scan". Ha!

What. The. FUCK?!

Regarding Vassily's location, I was entirely wrong about the South Pacific. There's this cool Map Tunnelling programme I found which shows you what lies on the opposite side of the globe from any given point, and the nearest place opposite Denver would be Ile Amsterdam, in the Indian Ocean. However, I can console my geography FAIL with the thought that it's nowhere near as bad as Stacy's.

This was cool. All my life I've heard versions of the old saw that if you dig straight down far enough you'll end up in China. Which sounded fishy to me, but I never remembered to check. Turns out, no matter where you are in the United States the UK, (don't know why I didn't check Canada,*) you end up in the ocean. Except for the northern most tip of Alaska which might get you on an Antarctic ice sheet. Where can you get to China? Chile or Argentina. Or The Western border of Uruguay if you don't mind swimming to shore near Shanghai.

*I'll do this now. ETA: As expected Canada will not get you to China, but it can also get you to Antarctica. Also, I forgot to mention Hawaii will get you to Botswana.

[KAH]

A gust of "super-wind" whips a deadly snowflake under Gunter's glove and cuts his wrist. Loads of other Nazis are getting snowflaked to death also. Gunter heroically presses on towards the Murchison Pass*, reassuring himself with thoughts of the Fatherland. The beautiful embryo-tank where he was created, the loving beatings he received from his adopted father whenever he cried. Emotions are for weaklings!

Embryo-tank? Perhaps they decided that both emotions and women are for weaklings, and so have banned both!

[MinDonner]

Embryo-tank? Perhaps they decided that both emotions and women are for weaklings, and so have banned both!

I went back to look into this, and it appears that yes, all baby Nazis are created in embryo tanks from pure Aryan stock - however, for some reason they are then inefficiently given to a surrogate mother and father (both properly Teutonically cold and emotionless) to be raised. I'm sure there is an amazingly good bit of Scientific! reasoning behind this. :thumbsup:

The quick read-back also revealed something that I'd missed first time - Von Reisling apparently sleeps in a tiger-skin bed. If he ever reappears in this story, I suggest we mentally picture him looking like this (only, you know, with a radar-enabled eyepatch :lol: )

[Lummel]

Yeah Von Reisling was the guy in the other book.

If they are all nurtured in embryo tanks from the purest aryan stock then why are they exporting the degenerate american women? (No insult intended American women, I'm sure y'all are very nice, just a bit on the degenerate side ;) ).

[MinDonner]

Chapter Eleven, but we're still not back with Rockson, as now (for some reason) it's apparently imperative that we find out what the Glowers are up to. It's so poetic! And Sciencey! They are all basically glowing blue and dancing "to the rhythm of the energy spectrums", shooting purple rays out of their fingers and whatnot. They also sense the various forces of the universe:

With their star-blue eyes they could see the waves of gravity of the earth rising up to grab all things, the mega pulses of the quasars shot a billion light years through black space. Through their phantom flesh they could feel the roaring, sucking multidimensional forces of the black holes strewn throughout the galaxies like endless black pits - from which nothing returned. They saw the stars, each distinct, different from the next - blue, yellow, white, gold, brown, green - burning with the atomic fires that fuelled existence. They touched the meteors with their minds, flashing through the purple skies above, felt the comets winging their vast migration routes through the universe, cold balls of fire, in a never-ending trek through infinity.

They felt the magnetic waves of Mother Earth beneath their glowing feet, reaching up with her billion billion arms of electro-magnetism, pulling everything to her bosom.

:lmao:

Now I can't help but picture Mother Earth as some kind of giant magnetic Cthulhu with boobs.

This goes on for another page or two, in which we are reminded that these Glowers have all their organs on the outside and were created by some astronauts getting irradiated, or whatthefuckever, and they are telepathic and instantly deadly blah blah.

Not mentioned at any point is exactly why these ultra-cosmic megabeings give the slightest shit about Rockson or commies or America or anything, but shits they give and then some.

"The battle is here. The test of the Armageddon has arrived." They spoke as one - putting forth their thoughts into the single mind. "The Rockson has returned. He has survived his ordeal in Moscow and now he is back. The warrior yet lives. But even his strength is not equal to the evil that is about to descend. He is but a man. We must act."

The

is upon them! It's time to stop living in harmony and take some action! But first, a bit more living in harmony. They dance about glowing blue for another page ("like a circle of nightmarish Christs" - ?!) then head off on their magnetic landspeeders to alter time/space and save America!

But, the chapter is not yet over. And now we skip a few hundred miles southeast, for an extra special treat - the Technicians are coming! Oh yes, given Stacy's evident huge respect for all Scientists and appreciation of their work, I'm certain that this race of uber-Scientists will be portrayed sensitively and accurately.

Small bald men, thin as rails and hardly bigger than children, coaxed the 'brids on.

"Stubbornness equals will power times the desire to avoid work," Ullman the Equator said, whipping at the backside of the hybrid in front of him. Nearly thirty of the humanoid creatures, not one over three feet high, worked and yelled at the pack animals. These were the Technicians (SEE BOOK No. 1) - a race of super scientists , the descendants of the original missile crew that had manned the complex of silos in the Far West where the radiation had evolved their children into their present spindly form.

A-ha. So while Rockson's super-mutantness makes him even MORE of a man, these guys are merely "humanoid creatures". They all have names like "Qatar the Algebraic" and "Stryx the Quantum" and talk in what Stacy obviously thinks is Science-speak - ie. about as accurate as the French spoken by the panther women.

"It is progressively linear," Ullman replied in the strange mathematical jargon that all the Techs spoke. "According to calculations we should reach your habitation within five or six time intervals."

"You mean days," Lang said, grinning as he always did when he spoke with the race of mini-scientists.

"Time periods of twenty-four hour gestation, affirmative," Ullman answered, licking his dry lips. "But this physicality needs more liquid sustenance as do all the beings."

Ullman and his fellows, with their super black-beam weaponry, are being escorted to Century City by Erickson and Lang, who are proper manly mutants in the Rockson mould. There's a bit more excruciating faux-techy crap about the state of the water rations ("Water necessity equals weight of being times metabolism times the square root of temperature times .122981", etc etc), a bit of Rockson-aggrandising backstory (OMG he showed the Techs how to kill and survive and now they think he is teh awesomest!)

But then one of the black-beam weapons starts to fall off its wooden cart! They must catch it or its molecular structure will implode! What kind of shitty self-destructing weapons are these anyway? Erickson catches it, but then, "like a shark pursuing its prey into the murky waters of the ocean", the cart falls over and cuts him in half. WTF?

Anyway, Lang permits himself a single manly tear at the death of his companion, and even removes his jungle hat which for some reason he needs to keep off the sweltering sun (in the depths of winter). Even the Technicians spare a few words of mourning ("he has been subtracted from the reality equation but his formula lives on"..... AAAAAGGH shoot me now!) then the team go on their way.

And yes, as ever, the last paragraph of the chapter is about Erickson's body being consumed by flesh-eating blood worms. Stacy never misses a trick. :bang:

[Sophelia]

:lol: :rolleyes: I would never survive reading this but for your commentary ;)

[Lummel]

"he has been subtracted from the reality equation but his formula lives on".....

This made me laugh so hard that it's loosened the flem off my chest. Thanks Stacey!

Weren't the astronauts americans so now that they are inside out they can appreciate the awesomeness of being a mutant american all the more (or something like that)?

Presumably they can love the constitution and freedom in extra dimensions...and stuff...

[Maithanet]

The German invasion force was arriving in America. The second time in history that foreign troops had set foot on American soil.

Yeah....huh. So, I have to assume that Stacey doesn't consider the the Confederacy "foriegn" troops, which is debateable, but acceptable. And I suppose that the incursions in the two World Wars can be ignored, because Alaska wasn't a state at that time, and while a few submariners/pilots/spies did certainly arrive in America, I think you could argue that they weren't exactly "troops".

We have to assume that Stacey can remember that the Soviets invaded America, seeing as how they have seemingly limitless troops spread all across the country for Rock to kill.

But then that leaves the War of 1812...Maybe those British troops that burned down the Capitol were just joking? I have trouble arguing that Washington DC wasn't part of American soil at that point, and they went through Maryland anyway.

Perhaps England has become the 51st state of America in these books? We should enlist their help; if Churchill is representative of all British people (and why wouldn't he be!) then they all hate both Commies and Nazis.

Maybe in the next book, instead of the crappy Glowers saving Rock, it'll be some Churchill worshipping cult of Brits. Think of the stereotypes! Tea! Aristocracy! Accents!

[MinDonner]

Good lord. :o Given that Stacy apparently doesn't even consider Californians to be Real Americans (just "humanoid creatures"), I fear the Brits have no chance. We make better villains anyway. I bet that somewhere there is some tea-and-cannibalism cult just waiting to politely imprison our hero before he seduces/kills them and escapes.

[Rakka]

Pure Aryan stock, coming to supermarket close to you! 100% organically grown Aryans! Accept no substitute!

[MinDonner]

At last, Chapter Twelve brings us back to the further adventures of Rockson, who (after five days' drive - eh??) has arrived back at Century City. Just how slow were they driving? Though perhaps there is a hint in the fact that CC is described as being in "the northern Rockies". All this time and Rockson turns out to be a Canadian!

(I'm actually a little perturbed by this. Colorado isn't even in the northern Rockies by American standards, much less global ones. Did those nukes shift Denver several hundred miles to the north, or the mountains a long way south?)

Anyway, he and Archer exchange "shit-eating grins" and a big (though manly) hug, before returning home to their subterranean city of fifty thousand people. Given that it only contained two thousand people a hundred years ago, and that all the weaker children get turfed out into the snow, I can only surmise that every woman in the place has been obliged to bear about 20 kids each ever since the apocalypse. Kim's in for a shock, if she's still alive!

The guards are shocked to see the return of Our Heroes, and the word spreads fast. I fear that this chapter may become little more than author fanwank over the OMG AWESOMENESS of Ted. For example:

Everywhere, the workers of the city, in the Liberator factories, the hydroponics facilities, even Dr Shecter's science labs, came rushing from their jobs to see the returning hero. For Rockson was more than just a man to them. He was a symbol to the freefighters of the city - and to all America.

This goes on for some time. Crowds gather, shrieking his name! Cameras flash as reporters take his photograph! Eventually the crowds lift him and Archer on their shoulders and carry them along in a triumphal procession!

Rock's companions react in proper racially-stereotyped fashion. "Get tired of all them Russian girls?" asks Detroit. Chen gives an Orientally inscrutable nod. McCaughlin has a big Irish smile, despite the fact he was Scottish last time we met him. And Rona leaps upon him and crushes her big breasts against his chest. Rockson admits to himself that he enjoys this, even though he's in love with Kim, and accepts her room key (with not-very-subtly implied offer of a fuck) without a second thought. Then he resumes soaking up the adulation of the city.

And again the backstory of Century City, though this time the geography is marginally more sensible - in the meantime since Book 2, it appears to have migrated to the west of Denver, still on I-70, but in the direction of Utah rather than mid-Kansas this time. Blah, bombs, blah, tunnel conveniently full of supplies and scientists, blah, built their own air-filters and hydroponics labs, etc etc. Back to the heroic procession.

Rock is carried to "the soapbox", ie the platform in Lincoln Square where every true American can stand and shout out whatever crap is on his mind right there and then. Free speech damnit! It's an American thing. Shannon, the busty blonde Security officer looks on with awe as Rock begins his speech.

The audience listened with hypnotized eyes. They knew every time they came in contact with the Doomsday Warrior that he was history - a living legend whose name would go down in the schoolbooks of the future as one of America's greatest heroes, alongside such men as Nathan Hale, Paul Revere, and John Paul Jones. This made him almost unreal to them in a way, a man more than mortal whose eyes were fixed on the destiny of the entire planet - not just his own human concerns. To them he was like a living god in their midst, a solid but intangible presence that gave the entire city a feeling of pride and specialness.

:ack: Holy god, this is worse than I anticipated!!

Security Chief Rath interrupts Rock before he can go into details about what went down in Moscow, though most of the crowd seem to have heard about it anyway. He dispatches them all back to do their various jobs and they slope off, grumbling to themselves.

Before Rock can be debriefed, he has to be "decontaminated", which naturally involves some stripping. Shannon tries to get an eyeful but he catches her "blushing like a lovestruck teenager" and sends her on her way.

Once decontamination is complete, Rock finally remembers to ask someone where Kim is. Apparently she and her dad are off on a diplomatic mission to Omicron City and she's quite safe, yet conveniently out of the story. Phew!

Now to get everyone caught up on what's going on. There are three hundred thousand Nazis out there and they are all looking for Rock! Century City is outnumbered and outgunned! And now it's up to Rock to find a way to defeat them!

Note: Rock is, apparently, the "top military officer" of Century City. And yet Rath accidentally calls him "sir" and is all embarrassed at his mistake. I have no idea what that's even about.

[Maithanet]

Once decontamination is complete, Rock finally remembers to ask someone where Kim is. Apparently she and her dad are off on a diplomatic mission to Omicron City and she's quite safe, yet conveniently out of the story. Phew!

Here I was worried he might just forget about her for this book. No wait, that could never happen. :rolleyes:

Now to get everyone caught up on what's going on. There are three hundred thousand Nazis out there and they are all looking for Rock! Century City is outnumbered and outgunned! And now it's up to Rock to find a way to defeat them!

Or failing that, it's up to Rock to pull off some ridiculously improbably tactical victory, only to have the Glowers or the Swamp Monsters or the Britons arrive and actually save the day. Rock will, of course, take the credit.

[Antonius Pius]

And Rona leaps upon him and crushes her big breasts against his chest. Rockson admits to himself that he enjoys this, even though he's in love with Kim, and accepts her room key (with not-very-subtly implied offer of a fuck) without a second thought.

Are these the ones with the red nipples of the Eva Braun lookalike?

Now to get everyone caught up on what's going on. There are three hundred thousand Nazis out there and they are all looking for Rock! Century City is outnumbered and outgunned! And now it's up to Rock to find a way to defeat them!

OMG! Will Rockson be able to save the day?