Today, on “Futureshock”, we take the time to highlight that lovely ol’ floating city you all know and love. The city that served not only as the setting for the largest corporate hoax to date (Yes, larger than those heaping bags of lies they broadcast on a daily basis across the cybernets and through the world satellite feeds) but also as the vehicle that the ever forward-thinking Doom used to take over corporate America!

That’s right! Today we jibber-jabber on about VALHALLA (otherwise known as Libera Cielo)!

So sit back, and let your anxious, beady little eyes absorb every detail of this digital article, pulled straight from the Cynex Archive. Cynex Incorporated, America’s first, last and greatest source for all free media!

Enjoy!

~Jason McDonald, Staff Writer and General Headcase

From the eArticle: “Why Giant Floating Cities Are Just a Bad Shockin’ Idea” --published by Cynex Incorporated.

Copyright Timestamp: [December 2, 2099 1706hrs.17778kb/ps] All rights reserved by CYNEX.

Valhalla/Libera Cielo

Hailed as a forward-thinking venture by the corporation Alchemax led under the strict supervision of the late CEO Avatarr, this whole project had the surface purpose of being a city-wide construct capable of prolonged levitation. At least, that’s the semi-legit reason for construction the biz-suits vomited to the press.

Okay, it was in fact a city that could effectively float above the planet. That much is true. Let’s get that straight from the get-go. But the corporate reasons behind its construction were far from altruistic.

Now, the Thorite workers contracted and indentured for the project nicknamed the structure “Valhalla”, aka Viking Heaven. The corps pinned the floating city as one of the biggest corporate ventures to date, promising to be one of the leading industrial and enterprising centers for some time to come. Endless ePromos, digital billboards, cross-corp advertising campaigns, the works. Publicity for this son of a glitch was maxxed out.

Shock, even the dimmest bulbs knew that the corps had an ulterior motive.

Playing on the religious beliefs of the Thorite religion, Alchemax Incorporated created their own “gods” to replace the growing number of super-humans coming out of the woodwork in 2099. Using advanced nanotechnology, these false gods sported augmented super-human abilities, and declared super-heroes like the Spider-Man, Punisher, Ravage and Doom as pretenders, in an attempt by corporations to ruin their credibility. Talk about forward-thinking!

And so, in a media spectacle that was suspiciously quite well-covered by the contracted press, the nano-tech gods claimed Valhalla as their new home. They showered the gibbering masses in a bit-stream of promises that not only were they the true heroes of 2099, but that they and they alone would save the common from mega-corp rule. For an op planned by the corporations, this seems to be counter-productive, no?

Mucho Negativo. See, the development of Valhalla itself was rushed to coincide with the recent appearances of the heroes, leaving the experimental anti-gravitational technology unfinished and unstable. Spelled out, Valhalla was a massive floating city running on fumes. Course, once the floating Valhalla, now ruled solely by the fake gods, fell on the unsuspecting populace of New York City, it would erode any credibility that ANY super-human might ever have with the masses. Not to mention the profound loss of life. Recognizing this biz, Doom, Spider-Man, Ravage, Punisher and the X-Men leveled up to the floating city to save New York. There, just like in the movies, the heroes uncovered the farce of the corporate-produced gods and saved the city from its own engineered suicide. Good guys score, bad guys warm the bench.

Still, this was one Hollywood happy-ending with a twist: Once the rest of the heroes had vacated Valhalla, future-prez Doc Doom, utilizing the very same safe anti-grav technology he’d used to keep the city afloat, stole Valhalla and declared it a province of his native country Latveria.

Renaming the floating city “Libera Cielo” ( cliffnote: Latverian for “clear sky”), Doom used the technologies of the floating city to construct devices to clean up the polluted skies. These hovering “clean air” devices, known as Environmental Maintenance Platforms (EMPs for short), were deployed across Latveria. Their purpose was to buffer the local ozone layer and purify the air. Latveria gets a slash on the figures for loss of life, and Doom gets a honkin’ huge calling card. Always a good deal.

Libera Cielo remained a staple in Doom’s uber-sexy lifestyle as an alternative base of operations until he regained most of his lost memories from the twencen and fingered the American megacorporations as an encroaching danger to the world at large, specifically to his own native homeland in Latveria. Entrusting Latveria to his associate Fortune (Were they lovers? Hop over to eArticle #24 “Gettin’ Down with your Doomed Self”), Doom then proceeded to save America from itself - - by taking it over.

The armored Machiavelli loaded up Libera Cielo with new armaments and defensive systems and caught the US with its pants down. Doom and his Cabinet nuked the Senate, which was run by a sad sack of corrupt megacorp flunkies no one’d ever miss, and took over the White House. Doom 2099 became ruling president of America, with Libera Cielo as his formal base of operations. And that’s just about when the going got as good as it was going to get.

The floating city remained poised over the White House like a taunt to the world to try and shock with the new prez. And then the ball dropped. Somebody actually came out of the cogs and gears of the corporate machine to take the armored revolutionary on.

The Coalition of Megacorporations (the CEOs comprising this alliance were overlooked by Doom, who’d assumed they’d been defeated) called upon the aide of the keeper of the Chicago Reserve, John Anthony Herod, to save them from Doom’s altruistic presidency.

Herod then used the forbidden technologies of the Chicago Reserve to undermine the defensive systems of Libera Cielo, destroying it with a flock of cruise missiles just minutes after Doom and his ministry of signal vacated the floating structure.

Libera Cielo fell atop the White House, the remants of both being finally leveled by a flotilla of Wave Spiders. As a result, the EMPs Doom deployed over America, whose technology was derived from Libera Cielo and whose operating systems were keyed directly into the floating city, suddenly became inert. They fell from the skies and crashed into hundreds of cities below. Very, very bad biz.

The remains of Libera Cielo and the White House were absorbed into the new Red House of Herod’s presidential administration.

So what did we learn from this, boys and girls?

It’s simple:

Giant Floating Cities are a BAD SHOCKING IDEA.