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Literature / Godforsaken Future

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Godforsaken Future by Dan Reilly the Great is an Alternate History Web Original story series of AlternateHistory.com.

Starting in the spring of 1986, a Horde of Alien Locusts made landfall in southern Afghanistan in the midst of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. The conflict escalates following humanity's first "victory" against the invaders when a second alien race from a different dimension, dubbed the "Enigmas", also invade. While the world plunge into turmoil, a mysterious group that falsely presents itself as working for the U.S. government has been conducting an excavation of a city in Antarctica, a city which predates recorded human history.

Read it here and here on StarDestroyer.net.


Provides Examples Of:

  • Alternate History: The point of divergence from our world occurred prior to the arrival of the bozorg, such as the existence of the Philadelphia Experiment and the Convenants.
  • Ancient Conspiracy: Earth had already been visited by extraterrestrials thousands of years ago. The first of these (malevolent) entities give rise to a twisted and very Lovecraftian civilization after mutating many living organisms, which ultimately lead to the creation of modern humans. Some of these humans maintained their old traditions and attempted to resstablish their civilizaion and the return of their entities known as the Convenants, and were responsible for wiping out known and unknown civilizations throughout human history, such as the Black Death being among them. The Vatican knew about their existence and an never ending war has been waged between the Catholic Church and the Convenants in which the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the exterminations of whole Native American civilizations were extreme attempts to eliminating the Convenants.
  • Anyone Can Die: Several POV characters are killed throughout the story to demonstrate the horrors and deadliness of the bozorg and later the Enigmas.
  • Asshole Victim:
    • Osama Bin Laden becomes assimilated by the bozorg.
    • Some Oklahoman Posse, who are tinged with a nativism bent, decided to personally take out some Enigmas that crash landed in a farmer's barn. They are promptly massacred.
  • Better to Die than Be Killed: Some people have chosen to kill themselves than being devoured by the bozorg.
  • Big Damn Heroes: When the Soviets start helping NATO in Germany.
    Murkowski: Damn sir, I dunno about having our bacon saved by the damn Russians!
    Mark: Don't feel so bad Murkowski, it could be worse! They could have been French!
  • Breaking Speech: Nora Silmar, one of many recipients who dreamed about the bozorg's previous conquests, tells Roger Jourgensen that humanity doesn't has a chance against the bozorg when they have devoured the most advanced civilizations that makes Earth so insignificant.
    Nora Silmar: You dismiss what I say now, but mark my words Mr. Jourgensen, the seeds of our own destruction have already been sown. They will not stop, they will not rest, it matters not how many you kill or how hard or stubbornly you fight. They will keep coming long after you have run out of bullets and bombs, long after you burn the last drop of oil, and the last scrap of steel has been used to build tanks and planes. The human race is doomed, Mr. Jourgensen, and we have been warned to make our preparations for it.
  • Bystander Syndrome: Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq refuses to lend his country to directly help the Soviets and the Americans against the bozorg in Afghanistan as he is focus on defending his country first and blaming the alien incursion as an American and Soviet problem. He points out he has enough with the Americans and Soviets continuously lying to him and interfering in Afghanistan without caring for the consequences they had made for the region. Zia's views are not shared by his military advisors, who later overthrow him and allowing Pakistan to intervene in Afghanistan.
  • Church of Happyology: The Church of Serenology. Which implies to be a front for the Convenants.
  • Counting Bullets: The human militaries makes an important issue regarding to "ammunition rationing" given to the bozorg's seemingly endless numbers. The U.S. has consumed far more munitions than they ever thought necessary, even in the worst case scenarios, despite reopening currently existing munitions factories and running them at full capacity. In contrast to the U.S., the Warsaw Pact had a far higher desire for stockpiling ammunition and are doing somewhat better in Europe.
  • The Coup: The American government reluctantly aided in the overthrow of Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in exchange for Pakistan, now under General Akhtar Rahman, throwing in its involvement to help the Soviets against the bozorg.
  • Disconnected by Death: The American government first became aware of the bozorg was from a SAD (Special Activities Division) team that was making a desperate transmission shortly before being overrun by the creatures.
  • Enemy Mine: The Mujahideen are first forced into a temporary truce with the Soviets to fight together against the bozorg after how badly they were being overrun by the aliens. Not every Afghani fighter are happy with the alliance, including a young Osama Bin Laden who defied the truce and tried to restart their war against the Soviets.
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: Textbook example of CIA Agent Adam Melborne's first encounter with the bozorg.
    Adam Melborne: ...the only other man in my team who was still alive had a growth on his leg, there was hardly any there the day before, but in only twenty four hours it had taken over a third of his body... (sigh) I put a bullet in his brain. There were eight of us when we started, in less than four days I was the only one left. From what I can gather these things have wiped out at least a dozen villages in the area, and nothing has stopped them. If you want my advice, pull as many people as you can out now, before those things can get here and nuke the whole fucking province down to the bedrock.
  • Evil, Inc.: Trident Corp implies to be one. Another front for the Convenants.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Any living humans or animals that are captured and experience assimilation by the bozorg.
  • From Bad to Worse: The Soviets attempting to nuke the bozorg for the first time only had the hivemind teleporting the nuclear explosion to Madrid, and in turn provoking them to teleport their forces in the Canadian-Minnesota border, the Black Forest of West Germany, and Brazil. Much later, attempting to 'jam' the bozorg's teleportation abilities only bring another hostile alien race into the war.
  • Ghost Ship: The Tregurtha comes with a Distress Call and a bloody scrawl of 'GOD HELP US', and is where the Death Walkers first appear.
  • Government Conspiracy: The United States government had been conducting studies on teleportation since 1943 under Project Rainbow (aka the Philadelphia Experiment). This research branched out to two main programs: the Blackbird Research Facility in Nevada dubbed OBSIDIAN WINDOW, and the other in Maine called QUIVER.
  • The Great Wall: The Varennikov Line. Like the Maginot Line, it doesn't withstand the bozorg. To put it fairly though it doesn't withstand Kaiju-sized Behemoth bozorgs.
  • Historical Domain Character: Various figures of this era including Ronald Reagan and Hamid Gul.
    • The CIA's PROJECT BLACKBOX which include Carl Sagan, Edward J. McShane, Stephen Smale, James Randi and Poul Anderson.
  • Hive Caste System: The bozorg hive mind create vast numbers of 'constructs' with each serving a different purpose. For the most part all observed varieties seem to fill a different variation of some kind of defensive or offensive purpose.
  • Hope Spot: The Blackbird Facility manage to 'jam' the bozorg teleportation capabilities, but it only serves to annoy a highly technological alien race from another dimension to invade Earth and proving to be every bit of a major threat as the bozorg.
  • Horde of Alien Locusts / Planet Looters: The bozorg, short for tāziyāne-ye bozorg, which is Pashtun for "great scourge". They are also known as "The Creeping Dread" by an extinct alien race. They were originally a small organism created by an alien race possibly in the Canis Major Dwarf galaxy in which the original hive mind turned on and devoured their creators. Once it was aware of other organisms across space, it sent out multiple copies of hive minds to star systems, consuming entire planets and even stars (in order to absorb their massive energy to teleport across space), becoming even more stronger and intelligent as a result, and incorporating new genetics and attributes from those they devoured. After they consumed their entire galaxy, they turned their attention to the neighboring Milky Way galaxy and picking Earth as the transitioning point of their first invasion in the new galaxy.
  • It's Quiet… Too Quiet: Comes often when facing no bozorg on the battlefield, and which is how the stealth variety of bozorg first appeared.
  • Just Following Orders: How Colonel Marchenko tries to explain to General Boris Gromov for abandoning Ghazni to the bozorg, in which it doesn't help as Boris grilled him for not only he let the city fall but allowed the bozorg to assimilate the city's 40,000 people and strengthening their numbers, and properly de-rank him to Private.
  • Meat Moss: The bozorg assimilate anything of biological material including plants and dead bodies that the landscape they occupy becomes a Polluted Wasteland mixed with Body Horror that produce the constructs and extend and possibly augment the psychic abilities of a hive mind.
  • Mêlée à Trois: Humanity vs. the bozorg vs. the Enigmas vs. the Convenants.
  • Mysterious Antarctica: The Antarctic city (R'larxstx) exhibits signs of extensive usage of non-euclidean geometry, as well as evidence of very grisly cultural customs from torture to incredibly painful forms of human sacrifice.
  • Nuke 'em: The nuclear option was strongly suggested earlier against the bozorg in which the Soviet Union eventually did against the Afghanistan infestation which only results in the bozorg hivemind redirecting the nuclear energy from the explosion and use it in the formation of a teleportation portal (see Weaponized Teleportation) which instantly transports the explosion itself to a distant location. In this case, they redirect it to Madrid, Spain. Therefore, the nuclear option is rendered nil or risk the bozorg having send another nuclear explosion to somewhere else.
    • The Soviets avoid the same mistake by detonating eighty one nuclear warheads at ground level to temporarily stop the numerous breaches by the bozorg on the Soviet Army lines in Operation Harvest Drizzle.
  • Outside-Context Problem: The bozorg themselves that interfere in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and then the Enigmas.
  • Psychic Dreams for Everyone: Some selected humans experienced dreams of the bozorg attacking and destroying/assimilating other alien races in the past. Initially it was believed that the dreams start to occur after the bozorg came, but one person, Nathan Moore, stated that he had those dreams before the bozorg ever came.
  • Salt the Earth: The humans once realize the bozorg assimilation process that scorch earth is in order.
  • Secret War: The Forever War between the Catholic Church and the Convenants.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The Blackbird Research Facility in Nevada is administered by Dr. Gordon Frohman that deals with researching in teleportation and opening portals to different dimensions.
    • Several references to The Mist: A group of shoppers, including a father and his son, are butchered by the bozorg in a grocery store. There is a Mrs. Carmody who believes the bozorg to be demons sent from hell to punish and kill humanity for their sins. The Blackbird Research Facility's sister branch in Maine is called Project QUIVERnote .
    • A U.S. Coast Guard team found an abandoned ship in response to a distress call, finding no one is left alive, soon realize the bozorg had infected the crew, and are left stranded when their transport is gone which is promptly followed by a panicked Guardsman exclaiming "Oh, game over man, game over!"
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Particularly over the Iranians, Iraqis, and Israelis fighting on the same side. An Iraqi Sergeant point out that they may don't like each other, but experiences had shown him that antagonism doesn't mean a thing when politics is involved no matter what faith they have.
  • Teleportation: The bozorg hivemind possesses the ability to access an alternate dimension which it can use as a means of communicating with other hive minds across both interstellar and intergalactic distances. This allows it to increase its own cognitive abilities as well as request additional logistical support from more well established infestations. They also can redirect fission or fusion based weapon which instantly transports the explosion itself to a distant location.
  • The Unmasqued World: The American and Soviet governments have been initially trying to suppress knowledge on the tāziyāne-ye bozorg from the public until the fall of Gardeyz and Ghazni makes it no longer possible. The Americans were the first to go public on the bozorg as part of their deal with Pakistan to help in fighting the aliens.
  • Weaponized Teleportation: The bozorg wind up absorbing the initial Soviet nuclear strike and sending some portions of the explosion randomly on Madrid.
  • We ARE Struggling Together: Justifiably given that the story sets in the late years of the Cold War and the Warsaw Pact is already in a precarious state. Regardless, humanity is working together to deal with the invasions.
  • Wham Line:
    Nathan Moore: The thing is doctor, I started having these dreams almost a month and a half ago. I started seeing these things [the bozorg] in my dreams almost three weeks before they started showing up in the news. How am I supposed to be having dreams about something before I'm even supposed to know they exist?
    • On learning on how bad the Soviet 40th Army were beaten at Gardeyz.
    Roger Jourgensen: What was that Mike? Ten thousand casualties?
    Mike Hamilton: No, ten thousand survivors.
    • When Roger Jourgensen learned too late that the bozorg infestation have already went through three exit portals after the failed Soviet nuclear attack on the hivemind a week ago.
    Dr. Griggs: Um, well, the resolution of the Arrowhead network leaves something to be desired, we can only determine the location of an incursion to within a two hundred kilometer radius, so it’s hard to nail down an exact loca-
    Roger Jourgensen: Where?
    Dr. Griggs: We’ve picked up incursions over Western Europe, near the Canadian border, and South America.
    • The PROJECT BLACKBOX group learning that the bozorg had consume an entire galaxy of stars.
    James Randi: You're saying that these things aren't just wiping out whole species, but they're killing stars too?
  • You Are in Command Now: Private Nikolai Antonov winds up becoming junior sergeant after the death of his officer and how almost every high ranking officials are getting killed off by the bozorg. Nikolai is not happy with his promotion and all the responsibilities that comes with it.
  • Zerg Rush: The bozorg rush and swarm their human enemies by their massive numbers.

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