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JESUS INTRONISATION only hope (Nuking Them From Orbit May Not Help)
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Date Posted: 00:42:22 11/30/16 Wed
Summary
Roger Jourgensen, CIA analyst, has a tough assignment—to reduce complex intelligence to a digestible précis for the newly elected president (Reagan.) The Russians’ Project Koschei is “a sleeping giant pointed at NATO, more terrifying than any nuclear weapon.” Add in the Russians’ weaponized shoggoths, which have recently wiped out whole Afghan villages. By using them, Russia’s violated the Dresden Agreement of 1931, which even Hitler respected. That same agreement forbids mapping a certain central plateau of Antarctica, where the US has its own questionable projects underway. Jourgensen recalls his childhood dread of nuclear holocaust. Now he’d prefer he and his family perish in nuclear fire rather than face “what he suspects lurks out there, in the unexplored vastness beyond the gates.”
Jourgensen’s report goes well; he’s recruited by Colonel (Oliver) North to join his special team as CIA liaison. They work out of the Executive Office Building, with an executive order to use any means necessary to counter the use of, well, Outer weapons by US enemies.
One assignment takes him to Lake Vostok, deep beneath the Antarctic ice. America has appropriated a “gateway” shortcut between its bottom and ruins in Central Asia (Leng?). A minisubmarine transports high-grade Afghan heroin on this run, in which North takes an interest. The heroin, Jourgensen ascertains, came through fine. Not so the submariners, who show signs of extreme aging, probably due to a flare from the alien sun they’ve passed under. They later succumb to radiation poisoning, and missions through that gateway are suspended. North’s team does plant a radio telescope on the far side, in “XK Masada,” an ancient city on an alien world 600 light years closer to the galactic core than Earth. The air there’s too thin for humans, the sky’s indigo, the sun blood-red; symbols on the long-deserted buildings resemble those on the doors of a concrete bunker in the Ukraine, “behind which the subject of Project Koschei lies undead and sleeping: something evil, scraped from a nest in the drowned wreckage of a city on the Baltic floor.”
Professor (Stephen Jay) Gould visits North’s team to report on a creature he’s examined for them. It’s unmistakably Anomalocaris, an animal found among the rich Cambrian fossils of the Burgess Shale. Yet this specimen was recently dead, not even decomposed! More astonishingly, its tissues reveal it has no earthly relatives, not even in the archaeobacteria. In other words, it must be of alien origin. North concedes it was recovered through a gateway. Gould also opines that the so-called Predecessors—the barrel-bodied, star-headed beings uncovered by Miskatonic’s Antarctic expedition—were highly intelligent—indeed, he wonders whether humanity is worthy to inherit their technological crown.
Jourgensen remembers Nazi experiments on whether human brains could survive in proximity with the “Baltic Singularity,” now Russia’s Koschei. He supposes that Koschei’s “world-eating mind” dreams of feasting on fresh sapients, be they Predecessors or humans. Gould may be thrilled to confirm extraterrestrial life, but if he knew the whole truth, he wouldn’t be so happy.
Meeting with an Iranian informant, Jourgensen learns the Iraqis are stirring up cosmic trouble in Basra—the “unholy brotherhood of Takrit” sacrifice on the altar of “Yair-Suthot,” causing “fountains of blood” to spray in Tehran! Gates are opening everywhere! The situation is so desperate that Iran is willing to work even with Israel to develop nuclear defenses of its own against the “ancient abominations.”
Jourgensen ends up testifying before a Congressional committee about North’s activities. He admits that the “weakly godlike entity” at the heart of Project Koschei is “K-Thulu” and that the gateways connect to at least three other planets. At XK-Masada, the government’s prepared a retreat for selected members of humanity (you know, government people and their support staff)—it’s a city under a Buckminster Fuller-designed dome a mile high, defended by Patriot missiles and radar-invisible jets. The “bolt-hole” gate lies under the Executive Office Building, all ready for evacuation in event of war.
The committee’s interrupted by news of an attack. The military’s gone to Defcon One. Evacuation through the “bolt-hole” commences, and Jourgensen’s swept along. Later, at XK-Masada, North tells him how Saddam Hussein finally succeeded in stabilizing the gate into “Sothoth.” Mass destruction swept the Middle East. Iran panicked and went nuclear. Russia responded. Somehow the gates of the bunker in Ukraine opened, and Koschei was loosed. Now K-Thulu heads toward the Atlantic, and Jourgensen must help figure out what the US should do if it doesn’t stop there, because all their special weapon systems haven’t fazed it a bit.
Jourgensen complies, but horror and survivor’s guilt rack him. He often wanders outside Masada, surveying the dead landscape of a dying planet not even his own. He begins to converse with the void, which tells him in North’s voice that his family might still be alive. After all, there are fates worse than death. Within the “eater of souls” there’s eternal life. No one’s forgotten and allowed to rest in peace—instead they endlessly play out alternate endings to their lives in the soul-eater’s brain.
Roger considers suicide. But if his analysis of the situation is wrong, well, he’s still alive. If he’s right, death is no escape. Only why, he wonders, is hell so cold this time of year?
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