NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: "How the Cold War REALLY ended. A modern-day witch tries on three major occasions to end the Cold War. Edited and is a lot better now. Reviews, please! This story was written over the rather irritating period of 8 or so hours."

PROLOGUE

On October 5, 1957, the New York Times’ headline read, “SOVIET FIRES EARTH SATELLITE INTO SPACE; IT IS CIRCLING THE GLOBE AT 18,000 M.P.H.; SPHERE TRACKED IN 4 CROSSINGS OVER U.S.” Sputnik had turned the eyes and ears of the average American citizen with its trademark “beep, beep, beep” at the readily-accessible 20.005 and 40.002 MHz radio bands. The sound was relayed by radio and television for those who did not have the benefit of a receiver. The duration of each radio beep contained temperature and pressure data, and the signals themselves were analyzed for other information.

Following the launch of Sputnik, the United States of America went into a series of strange states. NASA was established within months of the event. Resource allocation for scientific research increased dramatically. Engineering courses were stacked with students taking on the threat of the Soviet Union, which was supposedly composed of superior mathematicians. US education was attacked for allowing Russian schools to steam ahead of them. Then, there was speculation about the capabilities of this Sputnik. Future president Lyndon Johnson spoke of a time when the Russians would be “dropping bombs on us from space like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses.” Collectively, these states and events were known as the “Sputnik Crisis.” It was a time of relative discord and, at the same time, exponential scientific advancement.

No one would have expected that it was these “beep, beep, beeps” of Sputnik, at the readily-accessible 20 and 40 MHz radio bands, that began the “crisis,” for they carried an idea, a concept of loss of superiority, an image of destruction, but most importantly, a spell of great power.

The woman who cast that spell was among the thousands, perhaps millions, who were looking at Sputnik – she was, however, looking not through a telescope, but through a crystal ball.

CAPITALIST B(W)ITCH

She was a young woman, couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years of age. Perhaps, if it was the work of excellent application of makeup, she could have been in her early thirties, her true age obfuscated by a well-constructed mask. Her long, dark hair was let out naturally, and she exuded an aura that was rather endearing. An entertainer for the KGB, it seemed, judging by her apparent bias towards the bearded men with good suits and various extrusions visible around their coat pockets.

The bar was a dark, shady place; as were most of its kind, it was frequented by all manner of Ivans and Ivanovas. This one in particular, however, was a favorite of the KGB, and as such the woman was a regular here too. She dressed properly, endowed with a tan, conservative dress and neatly arranged hair, but was sufficiently attractive not to need any further exposure to grab some high-up’s attention. Today, the high-up was none other than Secretary Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev; no one was higher at this point.

She took a seat next to him, extracted a long, stockinged leg from beneath her dress, and crossed it across the other. “Nikita,” she said in a familiar manner.

“Ah, Lyuda! Как дела?” How are you? he had asked.

“У меня всё хорошо.” I am quite fine, came the response. “I hear you are planning a…demonstration of Soviet superiority quite soon.” Lyuda, short for Lyudmila, spoke her Russian in a rather forced-sounding accent, but Khrushchev took it as a linguistic anomaly of some lower province.

“Indeed, my dear Lyuda. It shall be in the vein of Tsar Pushka (Emperor Cannon) and Tsar Kolokol (Emperor Bell). Have you heard of these devices?”

“Not quite, Nikita.”

“Tsar Pushka and Tsar Kolokol are the largest cannon and bell in existence, respectively. Made massive as feats of engineering and as displays of Russian power, these mighty things bear silent testimony to our technological superiority across the ages!”

“What is this new development that reflects the design principles of the Tsar items?”

“Why, Lyuda, it should be obvious. A glorious bomb! A thermonuclear device, the largest ever to be detonated…”

“Thermonuclear device, largest ever? My goodness, such a prospect! But where will you test this monstrosity, that fallout shall be minimized? Previous, much smaller forays into this field have seen radioactive dust scattered over hundreds, perchance thousands of miles.”

Khrushchev was surprised that a common entertainer would be concerned with such things as nuclear fallout, or even know about them. “The archipelago of Novaya Zemlya, a northern nuclear test site. Fallout, however? I do not believe we will have trouble with-”

“Aye, Nikita, there will be no end to your troubles should that fallout spread over Mother Russia…what sort of yield are we looking at?”

“Yield? My dear Lyuda, any more of such questions and I might have to flag you as a capitalist spy!” He laughed. She did too, rather uneasily.

“A claim that is silly to no end. ‘All for the Union!’ as it is always said. But what of the yield? I am quite curious.”

With a smile, Khrushchev said, “One hundred megatons.”

“Massive!” Lyuda chirped enthusiastically. “I can imagine no delivery system capable of deploying such a gargantuan bomb.”

“Indeed, that is why we are using a bomber. Tu-95 of Tupolev design, our best aircraft in its class. Now, enough of these questions! We are here for a good time, and such is what we will receive.”

“I understand, Nikita. Forgive me for my curiosity; it is only natural for me to take interest in projects that seek to establish the Motherland as the world’s greatest entity.” Lyuda stood up, went behind Khrushchev, and began slowly rubbing his shoulders, on occasion waving her hand above his head…the date was July 17, 1961, and both characters had a good night on this day.

***

The woman named Lyudmila did not look Russian to any outside visual observer; indeed, no one in Russia looked more American. Even the most hardcore of the Soviets, however, saw her as a perfectly normal Russian girl who served the motherland by “servicing” its leaders and specialists. They could never know that she was indeed an American – but contrary to Khrushchev’s analysis, she was no spy. Rather, she was a witch, 417 years old and counting. She had taken the name Lyudmila in honor of a similarly named woman with the surname Pavlichenko – the greatest woman sniper in the world, and one who reflected the witch’s mission in Russia – and that was stopping a war, in this case a Cold one. Nameless by principle, she was simply designated as the Iconoclast.

At Vnukovo Airport in Moscow, the Iconoclast gazed at the Aeroflot Tu-104 waiting to be boarded, on a flight back home to the United States. She had about three hours before boarding, and so she took out her backpack, and pulled out a large crystal ball. She held it, closed her eyes, and concentrated on a mental image of Novaya Zemlya being illuminated by a massive nuclear explosion. Suddenly, her ball came to life, and with it several readouts and concepts and predictions on the outcome of the bomb’s detonation. At 100 megatons, a “dirty” highly radioactive version of the bomb would release fallout sufficient to cause major problems for Mother Russia down the road. An appropriate action would be to downscale to 50 megatons via the introduction of a lead tamper in the bomb architecture; fallout would be highly reduced through this. Also, the bomb would shatter windows in Finland, as supplemental information. Finally, and most importantly, the ball notified the Iconoclast that the shockwave would circle the Earth three times – three! Just enough exposure needed for Benelypsis, a spell of great magnitude that could effect the collapse of belligerence and social destruction in this war of ideologies and technology. Benelypsis needed a powerful energy catalyst to work, and this weapon provided the right boost. The time was ripe for change!

And change it had. As she spent that night with Secretary Khrushchev, she altered his perception and ideas on the bomb that he was planning to detonate. All the things she had seen on her crystal ball were reruns; she’d seen them all before and upon “Dear Nikita’s” thoughts she had impressed what needed to be done. Of course, it came at the expense of her actually having to sleep with the man – a rather irritating experience, it turned out. And disregarding his appearance, his “package” wasn’t at all satisfactory – alas, this strays into the realm of over-description; perhaps a later narrative will cover this section of this history.

The date was July 25, 1961. The Iconoclast sighed and waited for her plane.

THE BOMB THAT TOUCHED THE WORLD THRICE

“Passport?” The woman behind the counter asked.

“Hang on,” the woman in front of the counter replied. “Here we go.” She surrendered the requested article.

“Let’s see. Everything appears to be in order. Okay, that’s one trip to Moscow on Aeroflot 034. Thank you, Miss…?”

The woman in front of the counter shook her head. “Unnecessary.”

“That’s odd, really; I can’t read this. Can you-”

“As I said, unnecessary.” She waved her hand to the side, and received her passport and ticket. “Thank you.” The woman behind the counter was left figuratively scratching her head, but for only a moment. O’Hare International Airport, in Chicago, shuffled its customers as it always had, and this skipping of the beat would represent little delay to the well-oiled processing machine.

Meanwhile, the Iconoclast idly took a seat, holding her ticket.
***

The officer stationed at Olyena airbase in the Kola Peninsula, out of where the massive bomb – now designated RDS-220 – was to be flown, took a look at the clipboard which held the original specification on top of some revisions on the bomb. Why these specifications had been modified on such short notice was a mystery to both Western and Russian analysts, but what Khrushchev said went back in those days. You never disregarded a statement from whoever was The Man at the time.

“Okay,” he read aloud to another man. “So, from the primary 100 megaton design, RDS-220 is now cut to 50 megatons by a lead tamper in the secondary and tertiary stages. Fallout reduction takes effect, resultant of no fast-fission occurrence. Deployment is via modified Tu-95 bomber, bottom section of fuselage removed to make space for RDS-220. Device weight is 27,000 kg, eight meter length, two meter diameter. Fall retardation parachute has surface area of 5400 square meters. Detonation altitude is 4000m, drop altitude is 10,500m, parachute allows drop plane to fly approximately fifty kilometers from site by calculations. Tu-95 is painted with white coating to reflect heat from explosion.”

“Correct on all counts. Add, however, a Tu-16 observer plane to the listings for aircraft involved in mission. We will need to take pictures of Big Ivan on the day itself.” Big Ivan was the internal nickname for RDS-220.

“Shall we not call it Tsar Bomba? Tsar Pushka and Kolokol are part of our tradition.”

“As the Western imperialists do? No. Besides, ‘Tsar’ is a royal statement; the glorious Soviet Union came to power via the destruction of the royalists.”

“Ah, I see. Big Ivan, perhaps, is more appropriate.”

“Indeed.”

***

“Time!” shouted Khrushchev from his desk. The Politburo offices were mostly quiet otherwise.

“7:43 am, comrade,” answered a young secretary nearby. And then, for good measure, he added, “Date is October 29, 1961.”

“It nears the end of Oktyabr,” Khrushchev said to himself. “The testing of Big Ivan draws equally near.”

Outside, civilian-type vehicles were rare on the streets. As a Communist nation, not everyone could own a car in Russia, and at the same time, who could afford them? One would wonder whether Stalin’s Five Year Plans were still in effect more than twenty years after their establishment. “For the betterment of the Union!” was the battle cry of the proletariat during the Depression; they had no shoes and food was lacking, but Russia got tractors and military vehicles, and prospered far, far above those countries who were suffering because of Black Tuesday at the New York Stock Exchange. The Motherland’s isolationism prevented them from being hit by the economic shockwave that expanded outward beginning on that other October 29, in 1929.

So it could be assumed that a private car stopping by this structure was a member of the Party. As fuel was also expensive, the trip to this place would probably represent the majority of their trips to anywhere. However, at this time of the day, Party members didn’t really stop by the offices; they’d come much later, it’d be supposed. That the car’s make and its plate did not match any official’s vehicle made it stranger still. Khrushchev was watching the car through the window and wondered who it was. He’d get his answer soon.

A tall, muscular man in uniform came into his office a few minutes after aforementioned car stopped by. The beard that covered his face gave him a Scary Ivan look; the decorations included a Hero of the Soviet Union, which was the highest award in the Red Army, and his markings suggested that he was a general now. All things considered, however, he did not look markedly Russian at all. And when he spoke, “Comrade Khrushchev” came out of his mouth in a fashion that bore some similarity to the stereotypical Russian accents in some James Bond flick. The Spy Who Loved Me’s Anya Amasova, played by Barbara Bach, comes to mind, but that movie wouldn’t be released for another 16 years. In other words, he seemed just mildly out of place, as did the Iconoclast – but no one appeared to care.

“Comrade Khrushchev,” he said, as previously mentioned.

“Hmm. Who are you?”

“General Aleksei Berezhnaya, comrade. I come to bring some suggestions regarding the RDS-220 test. Big Ivan, if I must be so colloquial about it.”

“I was not informed of your arrival, but do sit down, comrade General, and go on.

Berezhnaya complied. “A number of reports have arrived on my desk concerning the crew of the drop plane. Young conscripts, bad past, parents taken during the Purges – therefore candidates for defection. They may try to fly out to America or some NATO country and hand over our design.”

“They will not be able to fly to America, General. Big Ivan is so heavy that our drop plane will not make intercontinental flight. And while they may make it to the coastline, they will summarily be destroyed by the Americans, who will see a fifty megaton nuclear device heading for main population centers. As for European NATO, what shall they do with RDS-220? They are not interested in large weapons as this, but rather small clusters of nuclear weapons. I must admit, even, that Big Ivan is not feasible in wartime endeavors. Any bomber carrying it will be achingly slow, and will be an easy target; the bomb itself will be overkill, as our NATO friends have their urban regions so spread out that effectiveness will be reduced to inefficiency.”

“That is not all. We may have incoming fighters from the west, perchance to inconvenience us with their presence.”

“What is your point, Berezhnaya?”

“My plan is to scramble fighter craft in a broad perimeter surrounding the test site, including positions extending into the Atlantic and near the borders of-”

“Stop right there. You know what shall happen given this situation, right? An airpower scare, perchance. The imperialists do not like that, and as much as we don’t give a damn about what the imperialists do not like, we shall not start a conflict this time. Our missile count is below what it should be and that displeases me, but at the same time it worries me. This test is a deterrent to them, not a weapon to be used against them – not that it could be, on the matter. You will not use our aircraft for this job of yours.”

Berezhnaya frowned deeply, and then looked at Khrushchev straight in the eye, and slammed his palms down on the desk at which both now sat. Staring all the way, he said, “COMPLERE!”

Khrushchev blinked momentarily. “What do you mean, General?”

“You know exactly what I mean, Secretary.”

***

The Iconoclast spent the rest of her waiting time in the O’Hare terminal at a secluded seat in a corner. This place was chosen for good reason, as her crystal ball, while the images contained within were invisible to “typicals,” would attract unwanted attention to her. She gazed intently into the magical artifact, cycling through satellite-like views of Moscow; of the RDS-220 drop plane; of Mityushikha Bay, where Tsar Bomba itself was to be detonated; and of Nikita Khrushchev, who was at the time sitting at his office with a man named-

She screamed, and put her hands to her head, suffering the worst migraine she’d felt in years – for just a few seconds. She was left panting at the incredible pain, and looked back at the ball. It flashed red now, indicating a conceptual-level threat to whatever plans she had – as the ball’s functionality was inextricably linked to her consciousness, this was the nature of the ball’s output. She swept away the visual alarms and frantically swept through the source of the problem. Images of MiG-17 jet fighters taking off from airbases populated the scenes, the voice of Khrushchev approving the deployment of fighters…but at the same time, there flashed a face every few seconds that was fleeting, impossible to identify. She strained her mind’s eye to acquire a glimpse of the strange visual ghost – but she didn’t need to. The crystal ball flashed red again, and this time, completely outside of her will, a bearded face appeared there, sinister and leering. It was the man with Khrushchev, seen just minutes ago

“Иконоборец,” it greeted her. “Iconoclast.” As quickly as it had come, it disappeared.

The chime of the public announcement system rang out, and an amiable female voice spoke: “Aeroflot flight 034 has been cancelled due to deployment of Russian fighters over destination. All future flights into the Soviet Union are postponed until event subsides. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

There the Iconoclast shot up from her seat in rage. “Wha- What? Shit, no!” She panicked. It was now impossible to get to the USSR on time. All future flights…are postponed. Her broom was destroyed decades ago, in the process of stopping the Civil War, and she had never learned how to translocate without a material ansible. It was over.

She sat down on her seat, disappointed at the result, but no weeping over failure would be done today. If she’d just failed, then she’d waste no further time from establishing other opportunities. Looking into her ball, she saw more things to come – among which was something about missiles on the Turkish border…

The date was still October 29, 1961. There was more work to be done.

***

“RDS-220 release confirmed,” a loudspeaker rang at Belyusha, where the test was observed by state officials. “We have approximated detonation time to forty-five seconds, after reverse heading back to Olyena base. Belyusha, confirm.”

“Confirm reception. Godspeed, Major Durnovtsev.”

“Elapsed time is now thirty seconds. That bomb is moving fast. Distance from site is twenty-five kilometers…expecting detonation about now - Hооы на ны!” Durnovtsev, the mission commander for this test, swore loudly over the loudspeaker.

“What is it, Major?”

“Amazing…just at the instant of detonation, it must be four miles acro-” Static filled the room.

“Expected communications dropout.”

“Likely EMP or damaged radio. Continue gathering data and capturing the explosion. My God, it’s huge.”

On October 30, 1961, at 11:32am, RDS-220 detonated over Mityushikha Bay in the Novaya Zemlya. The shockwave of the bomb was detected by seismographs across the world on its third pass. Benelypsis was not included.

Somewhere in the Moscow Kremlin, another crystal ball was alive, showing its user an image of a dark-haired woman in an airport. General Berezhnaya sneered.

CUBAN WITCHCRAFT CRISIS

“That’s right, Major Dominguez; the blockade is now in effect.” The date was October 25, 1962, and the woman who spoke had a thick Southern accent and looked like she seriously meant business. While she was white, the tropical climate of Cuba did nothing to dissipate her stature or aura of authority. Women back then didn’t really convey a sense of Great Power, but here was an exception. The man named Dominguez was clearly bothered somewhat. “Any and all Soviet vessels entering Cuban waters will be blocked, and if they make attempts to circumvent this quarantine, they will be fired upon until suppressed – or destroyed. Y’all know what I mean.”

“Yes…of course, Miss MacLaine,” Dominguez answered in thickly accented English. “You would like to see the IRBMs, then.” The town of San Cristobal and its immediate vicinity looked like anything you’d expect from a standard Spanish-influenced Third World urban area. Except for the prominently-displayed missiles on launch platforms interspersed across the landscape, of course.

“That’s right. Let’s take a look.” MacLaine followed the man into a tent labeled MRBM LAUNCH SITE 2 – MISSILE READY TENT in Cyrillic.

The R-12 Двина missiles, Dvina in Latin and NATO-designated SS-4 Sandal, glimmered in their tents against the blazing sun. They looked menacing, always ready to escape their platforms to soar into the sky and engage an American target with a 2.3 megaton nuclear warhead. There were many of them, too. MacLaine imagined that an equal number of U.S. Jupiter, Atlas, and maybe Titan missiles were aimed at Soviet cities from the Turkish border.

“I’d like to take a look at these alone, Mr. Dominguez,” MacLaine said.

“I cannot allow that. I have specific instructions to-”

MacLaine looked at him, and said matter-of-factly: “You have specific instructions to leave me alone, and let me have a look at these missiles.”

Dominguez blinked, militarily turned about-face, and walked off. MacLaine shouted after him, “Thanks!”

MacLaine was, of course, the Iconoclast, working under yet another one of her fabricated identities. Kneeling and laying out her briefcase, the Iconoclast pulled out that faithful crystal ball of hers, and knocked it once against one of the Dvinas. Instantly, it displayed schematics and specifications, with important details highlighted in green text. The Iconoclast pulled out of the case another device – a long, wooden rod. Whatever doubts one would have about her magical nature would have been cast into the wind as she muttered something while grasping the rod, and as it fluidly transformed into a gas welder kit, complete with hose and supply feed. She began to work on one of the missiles, opening the nosecone rapidly and with ease. Upon piercing the metal shell, she kicked it off and laid hands upon the important nuclear warhead itself. She tapped the crystal ball once against it, to reference a text dated 1653, and pronounced the runic ideographs that appeared. Her hands glowed, and then became a blur as the warhead rippled with the effect of the spell. Quickly replacing the nosecone against the cut section, she re-welded the assembly together and cleaned up traces of work.

That didn’t take too long, now, did it? Of course not; it was a magical gas welder, which actually operated on carbon dioxide gas and had an electric current discharged through it – yes, it was no gas-combustion welding device, but a CO2 laser; an anachronism, given that the first CO2 laser came into existence in 1964, and only further proving the Iconoclast’s power over the ways of the world.

The spell she cast was a variant on Benelypsis called Fiat Pax, which used the same psychotropic principles behind the former spell but added a layer of physical shielding and the spreading of peaceful feelings across the world, along with the goodwill functionality of Benelypsis as well. Like Benelypsis, it needed an energy catalyst, but to a lesser degree, at the cost of more instances of the spell needed in order for it to become effective. She wouldn’t need to apply the spell to every single one of the Soviet missiles, as the included shielding would negate all of their effects, but Fiat Pax needed quite a comparative few. The energy released from the explosions would be contained in the spell and absorbed to be used for the dissemination process.

While we wait for this portion of the history to be accomplished, let us trace the Iconoclast’s path from the United States, after her failed attempt at Tsar Bomba.

***

Following the placement of U.S. missile bases along the Turkish-Soviet border, the USSR responded by deploying similar bases in recently-acquired ally Cuba, triggering a response from the U.S. government. Since the Cuban missiles were within range of major U.S. cities, the event goosed military officials to act. Several predictions were made concerning the outcome of a launch scenario. By October 19, 1962 President Kennedy had approved the naval blockade (presented to the press euphemistically as a “quarantine”) that would block incoming Soviet ships. Further missiles would not be delivered as a result of said blockade.

For the first time in U.S. history (and the only time, as later years would pass), Strategic Air Command entered DEFCON 2, indicating a defense readiness condition of just below maximum readiness, with nuclear arsenals on the verge of being authorized for free use. Tension was growing, and it seemed that someone was truly ready to launch. And so unfolded the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It so came to pass that on October 29, 1961, the Iconoclast saw the image of this crisis within the cloudy depths of her crystal ball, and resolved to activate a spell using the apparently inevitable launching of the missiles at the United States. Through the missiles’ powerful warheads the demands for a magical catalyst of energy would be met – but her ball advised the usage of Fiat Pax as the device, rather than Benelypsis. So she began preparations for the event that would take place in just under a year, making return trips to Moscow as Lyuda, taking on a new alias as a woman named MacLaine serving as an official detachment from POTUS (President of the United States) and visiting the missile emplacements along the Turkish border, and herself suggesting the naval blockade on October 16, 1962, when Kennedy had assembled the EXCOMM council for the purpose of dealing with the ensuing threat. Three suggestions were made at the meeting: A) Said naval blockade. B) Cuban invasion. C) Destruction of the missiles via coordinated air strikes. Invasion and air strikes were ruled out as having consequences that would actually aggravate the situation – they technically wouldn’t, really, but well, the Iconoclast made some key maneuvers to promulgate the idea – and the naval blockade was accepted on October 19. “MacLaine” came to Cuba via the ships implicated in the blockade, and began the execution of her plot to spread the spirit of peace and goodwill across the world – via a few nuclear missiles, no less.

***

Our heroine finished in just seventeen hours, having needed to do some hitchhiking on Soviet tanks to get to other missile locations. Between this and the long wait for missile launches, there was nothing to be done, in truth, so the Iconoclast took a motorboat to the nearest U.S. ship, and slept peacefully in a bunk for the rest of the day.

***

“Good afternoon, Colonel Fomin,” said John Scali, an ABC news reporter.

“Thank you for coming on my request, Mr. Scali,” replied Col. Aleksandr Feklisov, KGB Station Chief in the District of Columbia, under the identity of Aleksandr Fomin. “Please sit down, and let us discuss the matter of this crisis as we take our lunch.”

“I’d like that very much, thank you.”

The food was sumptuous and wide-ranging, a mix of Russian staples, Western Europe delicacies, and American…hmm, fried chicken. It was a good lunch, with jokes and amiable conversation injected between scoops of the dishes at the table. Nearing the end of it, though, the topic grew serious.

“It appears that war is on the verge of breaking out, Mr. Scali,” Fomin said.

“So it does.”

“I understand that you have…friends, within the U.S. Government.”

“I sure do. High-ups and all. I can possibly get an audience with POTUS if I work hard enough.”

“What I am about to ask of you is no longer within the jurisdiction or orders of Mother Russia. Can you keep this secret?”

“If it doesn’t mean letting millions die, sure, why not?”

“On the contrary, Mr. Scali, you can save millions by hearing me out. I want you to ask your friends, contacts, high-ups, whatever you may call them, if they are interested in a rather less militaristic solution to this problem. Think: the USSR will remove their weapons from Cuba, and the U.S. won’t invade. Castro will also not accept further equipment of the sort.”

“That sounds like a pretty reasonable outcome. The U.S. not invading is actually what we’d like, don’t you think? It seems suspiciously win-win.”

“Indeed, that’s how we’d all like it. Seems easy, doesn’t it?”

“It very well does. What’s the catch? There has to be one.”

“Nothing. The reason why this sort of solution has not yet surfaced is because neither nation has had the ability to swallow their pride. That is a problem in this Cold War, is it not? One is always trying to outdo the other, and when it comes to pointing guns at each other’s head, no one is budging until…well, you understand.”

“I get the picture. What do you want me to say?”

“Something along these lines: ‘We will declare that Soviet vessels en route to Cuba will not be carrying nuclear shipments or equipment for launching nuclear warheads. Your own announcement, to be made just as public, will be that the United States shall not invade Cuba, and will not support any other third-party invasion of Cuba. Corollary removal of our nuclear implements will thus occur, as we will no longer have reason to keep them there.’ This wording, or minimal variation on its structure, will form the resolution of the Caribbean Crisis – or as you Americans call it, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also mention the dismantling of U.S. nuclear bases along the Turkish-Soviet border, and tensions will clear out.”

Scali had all this time been scribbling furiously on a notepad – typical of reporters, it can be presupposed, given depictions in media. “This is all very good, Mr. Fomin…what’s in it for you?”

“That is of my own concern, Mr. Scali. And excuse me for a moment, I must wash this excellent sauce off of my lips; as much as I would like it to remain on them, propriety must be adhered to.”

Fomin stood from his chair and went to the comfort room, ridding his lips of the sauce, and looking in the mirror. Behold – no longer there was the face of Fomin-Feklisov, but of the one General Aleksei Berezhnaya. His facial modification spell, attached to the attributes of Fomin – who lay unconscious somewhere in the KGB station, later to wake up remembering what Berezhnaya had done under his guise, and wanting to continue it – deactivated for a moment, allowing Berezhnaya a moment’s reprieve from the pain that utilizing the spell caused, and then he quickly re-engaged it, returning to the likeness of the KGB colonel. He smiled briefly to himself, before returning to Scali.

***

“The world has breathed a collective sigh of relief after the superpowers reached an agreement ending the immediate threat of nuclear war. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev has agreed to dismantle all Russian missiles based in Cuba and ship them back to the Soviet Union-”

The Iconoclast switched off the radio. Her plans had been foiled again. On the bed behind her, the crystal ball glowed red, but she had already looked at it. The date was October 28, 1962.

OPPOSING FORCE, MEET YOUR INNARDS

“Yes, thank you, Loraine,” President Nixon said to the woman giving him a glass of water. “So, President Podgorny, it’s great to be here.”

“And it’s good to have you here, President Nixon.” The date was May 22, 1972, and Richard Nixon had just become the first U.S. President to visit Moscow. He found the place, while relatively spartan and militaristic in nature, to be comfortable enough for any state official.

The Iconoclast had not seen any further opportunities for stopping the war since the Cuban Missile Crisis almost a decade ago. There was nothing here, either; she’d just come tagging along as Loraine Russell of the White House to see firsthand what the status of the Cold War was. Now, she’d represented too many high-powered women over the past few years – women who’d mysteriously disappeared after making some rather high-profile actions – and since said high-powered women were still rare in 1972, she was planning to perform a more powerful identity-mod spell that could effectively make her into a male character, but she decided against it. The last time she did that was in World War II, when she tried to pose as a flight officer on an aircraft carrier. She had to cast a shipwide spell to avoid people thinking that she was a homosexual male; she’d never been good with the other gender’s body.

Russell-Iconoclast left the room for Podgorny and Nixon to have their little jam session, and she took a stroll into a large dining hall. It was empty, and the nearest anyone was three rooms away. She took the time to look at the various pieces of silverware, some left from the Czarist eras. She wondered if there were some blood stains left on them, perhaps carried over from the massacres or something. They looked pretty old. Also of note were Communist paintings; well made and all had some kind of hidden ideology to propagate. It was all quite fascinating.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the room was the part when all four doors into the other rooms slammed shut, and a man in military uniform, with a large Dragunov SVD sniper rifle in hand, came in. He was bearded and ruggedly handsome, muscular and tall like a stereotyped Russian war legend. He looked like he could have taken on the Krauts at Stalingrad singlehandedly. Hell, he looked like he did.

“Иконоборец,” he said calmly. “Iconoclast. What a pleasant surprise. Or was it a surprise? Expectations are often changed into knowledge and intel when you have a perfect surveillance device to back it up. Do you not agree?”

“Aleksei, when two magicking people form a rivalry, it is best to inform the other, so that they do not need to go through the long and irritating process of determining this rivalry through a scrying session in their crystal balls.”

“Ah, woman, this is no rivalry. You are simply in the way of my plans. But wait, here you are, unarmed, and here I am, with the pride and joy of the Motherland, condensed into a 7.62mm x 54 semi-automatic sniper rifle.”

The Iconoclast snapped, and gained a sort of silver aura. “What good is your gun against the pride and joy of kinetic shield spells?”

“You misunderstand, witch. I come prepared – always.” He raised the gun, took aim in under a second, and at that instant, the Iconoclast knew that the Dragunov that he carried was no ordinary rifle. She immediately rolled to the side, ducking behind the long dining table, as a bolt of lightning lashed out from the weapon’s barrel. This was the trail of a bullet modified with a piercer spell; it was immune to standard kinetic shields, and exerted extra pressure on the end point that could break through most armor. This spell gained popularity among the wizard soldiers of World War I, when attacking the occupants of tanks was necessary. “Guns ‘n’ spells” was a popular combo because of the high energy per bullet that could be used to cast high-energy spells repeatedly.

The Iconoclast broke off one of the legs of the dining table with a splinter spell, and converted it into a Thompson 1928 “Tommy” gun. She emerged from her cover and let loose a suppressive barrage against Berezhnaya’s position, but her bullets were wasted as he was no longer there. A cloak spell? Conceptual-level invisibility did not work in witch vs. wizard duels, so it must have been simple light-transparency or something. She shot her remaining rounds across the table, getting a new piece of wood, and changed it into a magazine for her gun. More bullets. “Tell me, Aleksei, why is no one coming for us? We’ve made such a loud mess of the room.”

“I cast a Silencer spell on each door. I thought you would have figured that out.” The voice seemed to be rigged not to convey an exact location. Another spell.

“Nice counter-acoustics, Aleksei, but I can see your body heat!” She fired again, this time into a seemingly empty sofa. There was a thud, and folds on the carpet indicated that he was moving away. But before she could fire, she felt a heavy blow to her stomach as she was pushed back against the wall. Damn, that hurt, she thought, as she struggled to get back to her feet. Casting an armor spell on a sofa, she took refuge behind it. “So what do you mean, I am in the way of your plans?”

“I feed off the chaos and discord brought about by this war, Iconoclast. You constantly trying to stop it does not help me at all, you know.”

“Why did you stop the Cuban crisis? That would have escalated this war, pouring more blood into your feed pile.”

“There is no point in killing all of those lovely minds. I shall not have any more farms.”

“Farms? My God, those are people! You’re insane!”

“Insane? Perhaps. But if so, then insanity feels very, very good.” Berezhnaya fired off a shot, but tucked a thermobaric spell in it. In effect he detonated a tiny fuel-air bomb at the Iconoclast’s position, causing a great fireball and pressure wave that defeated her armor magic. The sofa now useless as cover, Berezhnaya shot more rounds into the sofa, one of them coming home and eliciting a scream of pain that seemed satisfying on his part.

The Iconoclast grasped her left shoulder; it was bleeding profusely, and hurt like hell. She cast a spell on herself that rendered her invisible, just as Berezhnaya did, and very quietly crept across the floor to a table. This she kicked down, giving it another armor spell, and then from behind it unleashed a series of explosive bullets at Berezhnaya’s location. Magic was dependent on one’s stamina, and she was getting really tired here, being drained by all the power demands, and on top of that she was shot. But she needed to push on. She then mustered all the strength at hand, and charged it into a single bullet that would violently explode, and then fragment into hundreds of tiny diamond shards. She fired this off, but not straight at where she considered Berezhnaya to be, but rather at the wall behind him.

The explosion was enormous, shattering the windows all around and breaking some glass on the opposite wall. Hundreds of tiny fragments, diamond shrapnel, expanded from the explosion, slicing through everything except the Iconoclast at a speed of over 600 kilometers per hour. Ten of them served as her revenge against Berezhnaya, as they cut through his legs, arms, and parts of his abdomen. His cloaking spell failed, and he fell to the ground.

The Iconoclast fell to her knees in severe fatigue, and could only crawl to where Berezhnaya was. The wizard was bleeding heavily, and some of the blood came from his mouth. His rifle had been shattered, and the sequoia wood that formed its magical core was in splinters. He roused a bit, and looked at the Iconoclast. “I…could have taken you…” He coughed up some blood. “Alas, we all know who has always been the better soldier, Nadia…the Germans could never beat you, and neither could I.”

The Iconoclast scoffed. “I was only Nadia Kamarov for World War II, Alexei. My allegiance is to humanity, not some singular faction. I’ll take sides as efficiency necessitates.”

“Always the savior of man, Iconoclast…the Civil War, the two World Wars…and perhaps you will succeed in this arena of the Cold War also.”

“Why did you choose to feed on the war energies? When we signed up with the Allies, we knew what we were up against. We knew that war and conflict as power sources for magic was completely wrong.”

“Ah…I fell to addiction…when I first tried it…”

“Look where it got you.”

“Look where it got you….” Berezhnaya closed his eyes, and he was no more.

The Iconoclast put a palm on his forehead, and cast a final spell on his body; a doppelganger soul would replace General Aleksei Berezhnaya as a quiet military officer in the Red Army. Based on his memories, the doppelganger would serve a few years of the now-dead man’s life, before dying of a stroke itself. No suspicions, no trace.

She cleaned up the room of the damage, helped the doppelganger stand up, explained to him that there was an issue with Chechnya, and he left, and that was the end of that.

The Iconoclast went in the opposite direction, back towards Nixon and Podgorny (healing herself for a while, of course) and that was that. The date was still May 22, 1972.

RED LIGHT SHINE, RED ARMY FALL

his was it! No more delays, no more miscalculations, and no more Berezhnaya! The date was October 5, 1982, and the Iconoclast had just celebrated 25 years of trying to stop the Cold War. There was no doubt anymore; this was it!

What was it? Why, the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment, of course! When the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon in 1969, they left behind retroreflectors – mirrors specially designed so that no matter at what direction light is sent at them, it always gets sent back to the same spot. These retroreflectors were used since then to make several laser-based ranging experiments on the Moon – and, in fact, are still in use today. The lasers shot at the reflectors are very high in energy – not enough for another Benelypsis spell or Fiat Pax, but since the Iconoclast could modify the laser to work continuously – and not just in discrete pulses – she could cast an amalgam of both spells to work on a lower energy density, but with more precise spread. This was really it!

But first, something needed to be done. Casting a spell on the device itself would not work; akin to translating a single photon out of trillions into a magic power source, that would not serve the energy demands of her spell. Also, the properties of light would need to be modified en masse; the laser would need to hit the Soviet Union, not get reflected back at the laser source, as the retroreflectors would do. What could be done to fix light?

The Iconoclast knew the answer, and knew it was harsh. But she needed to serve humanity; that was her entire objective in this world. As she sat down alone in the Observatory that housed one of the laser devices for the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment, she looked at a table next to her, where her crystal ball lay shattered. The glass of the crystal ball was immensely powerful; it could self-sustain any spell cast upon it indefinitely. That’s how crystal balls worked in this world; a Premonitions spell would be cast on a sphere of the special glass, and from that point forward, the ball would display the future. The Iconoclast, however, cast all sorts of spells on this particular crystal ball; everything from standard Premonitions to data mining to Surveillance was on this baby. She had spent so much time tweaking the spells that it was a supreme waste to destroy it. And to recast similar spells on more special glass would take decades. But the purpose was good.

Going to the laser device, she removed the outermost lens, and held it with both hands. Closing her eyes, she took in the surface geometry, angles, and scaling of the lens via an analysis spell, and shoved all the data that she’d gathered into a “cache” spell, useful for remembering phone numbers. She then went to the shards of her crystal ball, and reassembled the glass into a lens that fit the specifications for that last laser lens. With a heavy heart, she dispelled every spell she had cast on the glass, one by one, remembering how each spell had served her and how she had generated them. The ball had taken a sort of sentience of its own, understanding her feelings and giving her only the information that she truly needed. It took a personality that never spoke or acted of its own accord without being given an environment within which to act, but it was still a personality. And the Iconoclast felt as though she was killing something.

The last of the spells left the glass, and she began adding modifiers to the properties of photons, and then added provisions for attaching a unified spell to each photon in the laser beam that would pass through the lens. Finally, she put in a controller that would allow her to change slightly the direction of the beam, that she may direct it towards the USSR.

The previous week, she scheduled a laser test for October 5, so nothing was surprising here. She charged up the laser device, and then cast a spell on the machinery that fed it energy a little more efficiently, so that it could keep the beam active continuously. Finally, she got her new magical lens, and laid it carefully into the outermost lens threshold.

The beam fired. Range of the moon was 385,000 kilometers, a computer display announced. She then put her hand near the lens, and closing her eyes again, reflected the beam towards the USSR. The beam spread at 385,000 kilometers for a laser was about one mile in diameter, so she quickly swept the beam across the country.

As soon as she was done, to her dismay, the magical lens shattered, overwhelmed by the hundreds of millions of people whose minds needed to be modified. Each changed psyche, each “adjusted” perception, went right back at the lens, and the magical stress broke it beyond repair.

The Iconoclast shed a tear; in sorrow, that her faithful crystal served its final purpose, but more in ultimate relief. She knew that what she had done was going to succeed – that had been the content of her final experience with the crystal ball. Without an interfering magical entity, the crystal ball showed perfect outcomes. It was over.

The Iconoclast sat down, took a sip of her Coke, and it was over.

EPILOGUE

The date was October 5, 2017.

“Good evening, Directress. I’m Agent Jeremiah Kalfus, serial 061-43.” The Langley offices were quite full and busy at 6:30pm. The Central Intelligence Agency didn’t get a lot of sleep.

Directress of Central Intelligence (DCI) Marissa Hamilton greeted Kalfus. “Nice to see you here, Kalfus. What do you have for me?” The Directress was an amiable entity, always pretty and preppy; quite unusual for the head of the CIA, but maybe it was all a façade for her cover.

“I’ll get straight to the point. I’ve been gathering some reconnaissance photos from the old Russian archives for a project of mine. You know, Penkovsky’s microfilms, the feeds from Moscow…”

“Yeah, yeah, I get the point. Go on.”

“I looked at two specific sets of photographs. One was the Tsar Bomba assembly and design process, and the other was stuff from the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, well, the images I got now are the originals.” He showed the envelope that carried the photographs.

“I have no idea where you got the clearance to view the originals, but okay.”

“The scans in the computer are old; they were photocopies or second-layer photographs made in the 1980s or so, I think. Anyway, I was comparing the originals to the ones in the computer, and…they’re inconsistent.”

Hamilton eyed Kalfus carefully. “Inconsistent…how?”

“In many of the originals, there is a silhouette of a woman. That’s not there in the computers. This is the same for both sets of photos. I haven’t gotten a clear picture of the woman’s face, though. But you know, it’s not like they had Photoshop or something back then, right? Also, who’d do this? I’m suspecting an on-site modification of the scans by someone with access to them-” He was rummaging through the photos as he spoke, when he saw something odd. One of the photos, which did not have the woman in it, began to change. “What the hell?”

“What is it, Kalfus?”

“It’s changing…like some kind of chemical bath effect or something…is it exposure to air? These are old photographs…”

“Let me see.”

In one reconnaissance photo of the Cuban Missile Crisis, there could clearly be seen a woman standing next to an SS-4 Sandal missile. The face was in the distance, but the photograph was clear enough that Kalfus, using a magnifying glass, could identify her. “Hmm, I don’t know her – but she…”

“Yes?”

“She looks…a whole lot like you, ma’am.” He shot between the photograph and Hamilton’s face. “Could it be-?” And then clearly confused by what he had just said, “Naah, of course not! I mean, this was 1962! How old are you, Directress?”

“Thirty-four.”

“You weren’t even born in 1962, I can think. But still, the similarity…”

“Mr. Kalfus, let’s take a walk about this, shall we?”

“Uh, what? Oh, okay, sure.”

The two walked just outside the door of Hamilton’s office. And from behind the curtains, one would have seen the shadow of Hamilton poking a finger at Kalfus’s forehead.

They came back in, laughing. Hamilton spoke. “Thank you for the pictures of your sister’s wedding, Jeremy. Send my regards!”

“Sure, Directress – I mean, Marissa. I’ll tell her you liked them.”

“I sure do. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? This’ll be off the record.”

“Really? Thanks, ma’am! I need this.” He left the office, and DCI Marissa Hamilton sat down at her computer, relieved, and looked at the latest intelligence reports. Apparently, China was building up a nuclear arsenal close to key U.S. positions. Maybe she needed to get back to doing some real work again…

***

Marissa Hamilton was at the volcanic crater of Kilauea in Hawaii. Hovering over the lava blasting out of the ground, she bent close to the molten rock and something glimmering emerging caught her eye. A new crystal ball came from the fiery sea. The Iconoclast smiled.

OOS: That's that! Eight or so hours of work. What do y'all think?