EPILOGUE “ICE MAN”
EPILOGUE only, not the story ICE MAN it is an epiloguue to, published by WINGLESS DREAMER in India, in their anthology Paranormal Whispers, 2023
You know what happened. They changed the past. Larina is a sprite. A sprite is a
sprit that isn’t or never became corporeal, and she can give you the specifics.
“There came a point when, of royal embarrassment, the king had Y’s sarcophagus transferred to a province that today is North Korea. Out of sight out of mind with him and his family tribe. Millenia later, in 1950, after the Korean War began, in the chaos of that, a mummy thought not to be of much relevance was carelessly left unattended in a heated room and Y thawed. Y found his way to South Korea, turned himself in as a defector with no documents, and eventually found refuge in the U.S.
In the states, he read and studied, and worked in construction, with such skill he soon became an uncertified engineer for a large firm that built bridges, tunnels, bombs and other weapons, but especially improvements on the Big One.
The Korean War had been fought twice. The first time, North Korea pushed the South and the Americans to the outskirts of Pusan, at the end of the peninsula, but MacArthur cut the North army off by an amphibious landing at Inchon, defeated the troops to the south, and drove the rest back through North Korea, up to the Chinese border at the Yalu River. Chinese soldiers were now in the war. In 1951 MacArthur wanted to keep going, invade China. He also wanted to bomb North Korea. So did Y. He again embraced his former creed of forgiveness after retaliation as the only practical way. Unconditional forgiveness only invited more transgression, allowed that the offense was OK. Sure, God was going to judge and punish or forgive, but man had to too.
MacArthur publicly defied Harry Truman, and Truman fired him. Act Two of
the Korean War had begun, and the Chinese and North Koreans drove the U.S.
back, but then the Americans recouped and pushed forward again. Seoul had
been bombed, shelled and occupied four times and was demolished. In 1952,
Eisenhower was running for President. From the accounts Y had received from X
of modern times, he knew what Ike would do. He’d get to the 38th Parallel, and
there would be a cease fire, but no treaty. Korea would be divided again, north
and south. And Y knew what popular MacArthur would do as President. He’d
take all Korea and unify it as a western ally.
Ike had to go. Y assassinated him. MacArthur ran in 1952 and became President.
In 1953, he didn’t stop at the 38th Parallel. He nuclear bombed North Korea and
China. Maybe North Korea would have begged forgiveness, but China had nuclear
weapons already, and an unholy alliance with Russia. They unleashed what they
had, while the U.S. let go with all of theirs. What followed was the nuclear winter.
New York had existed, just not after 1953. Larina, Dell and Kate were never born. Cardinal Corcoran was a street kid in the Bronx with the inkling of a religious calling, on a break from delivering groceries, listening to The Hilltoppers and Johnny Ray in a luncheonette juke joint when he burned to bone and ash.
So, I’m Larina, a sprite, and a spirit knows. I know what happened unless…UNLESS somebody before 1953 finds a way to go back and set it askew again. But who knows what would happen then in new other places?
It would have been better when I went to Ice with X if we had just looked at the world and the way it was and left bad enough alone.
I mean, if I’d gone to Ice from modernity. I didn’t because I wasn’t born. I had been, but then I wasn’t. That can change too. I’m just not in a plane now.
I’m not sure I want to be in one.
What about you?
You like where are you?
You want to be there?
You sure?
Yeah, maybe best to just stay put.”