The Co-Popes; American Gothic

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February 13th, 2006

in 1123 Post-Creation, Lucifer arrives in Heaven and begs for an audience with the Creator. Instead, he is shown to Achazia. “I wish to speak to the Creator,” he says, angry at the delay. She smiles upon him and says, “Then you may speak to me.” Lucifer flees from her, and searches Heaven, but cannot find the Creator.

in 1689, the Holy British Empire was under the rule of 2 popes again, but this time without warfare. The married Holy Couple, William and Mary, were made co-popes because William's close ties with the Protestant movement made him suspect in the minds of many bishops, and Mary was seen as an ineffectual administrator; together, though, they were quite successful. “Out of two incomplete persons, God has made a Glorious One,” the College of Cardinals declared.

in 1882, the Social-Democratic Union, a labor organization inspired by and partially funded by the Communist and Socialist parties in America, is organized in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The reactionaries in that monarchy quickly attack the fledgling labor movement, hoping to keep their immoral grasp on power a little longer.

in 1892, surrealist Grant Wood was born in Anamosa, Iowa. Although his early work was fairly conventional, he entered the company of the surrealists when he moved to New York in 1928, and his mishmash of midwestern America with strange shapes and creations sprung from his imagination captured the attention of the world. His most famous piece, American Gothic, depicting a devil, complete with pitchfork, alongside a frumpy Iowa farmwoman, has been parodied so many times that people who have never seen the original recognize the tableau instantly.

in 1904, Q’B’Ton’ra is driven from the earth’s solar system by a defensive force he clearly did not expect to be more advanced than his own. The Congress of Nations embassy ship, in a daring maneuver by pilot Lieutenant Michael Smith, manages to break through the back of his line and reach the sanctuary of Pluto. Although the earth’s people are cheered by the return of the ship, they are saddened at the loss of Ambassador Li’Kanto’Mk, and he is memorialized with full honors.

in 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt of the U.S. delivered his most influential speech, decrying the “race problem” in America. He announced that his Justice Department would immediately begin prosecuting lynchings, and pushed for law which guaranteed the rights of minorities in the country. The flabbergasted elite of the New York Republican Club, where he delivered the speech, denounced Roosevelt as a “dangerous radical” for the speech, but later generations saw him as a visionary.

in 1918, Mikhail von Heflin and Velma Porter find Milo Cranston when he attacks them in their cabin. They see, to their horror, that the gem holding the being they just imprisoned is fused to Cranston's forehead, and its power is feeding Cranston. With a mixture of cunning and luck, they are able to trick Cranston and the being into jumping overboard, leaving them stranded in the middle of the Atlantic.

in 1940, Dresden, a Greater Zionist Resistance stronghold in Germany, is destroyed by a nuclear blast. Although the German Underground seeks to blame the G.Z.R., the whole world knows that it was one of their weapons, and sanctions are briefly enacted against the rogue regime.

in 1955, Israel acquired half of the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the one purportedly written by Jesus himself, which began, “In the name of the most holy, we renounce all the faiths of man, because the one true God cannot be contained within the pages of a book.” Representatives of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths met secretly in Jerusalem to destroy this tract in particular.

in 1984, Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, recovering from the poison that rival Konstantin Chernenko had slipped him, orders a purge of all the Brezhnevians within the Kremlin, beginning with Chernenko. Although the power struggle results in a brief revolt against his authority, Andropov is ultimately successful, and his reform policies help the Soviet Union integrate its economy more effectively into the growing global marketplace. Andropov is often hailed as the man who saved the Soviet Union from a financial apocalypse.

Timelines in today's post: the Fall, the Holy British Empire, the Mlosh, von Heflin, the GZR and Communist America

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