"The Fall of Oz"
by Jordan S. Bassior
(c) 2006
I warned you all. Oh, no, you said. The Gnome King just wants peaceful atomic power. Oh no, you said. Surely he must realize that Oz is an American ally, and what would happen to him if he used his arsenal.
So you didn't want to hit their reactors.
And now the Emerald City is a smoking ruin and Ozma's missing, possibly dead; American boys are dying on the Other Side of the Rainbow trying to winkle his troops out of their tunnels; and nobody knows when this war will end or how many will die before it's through.
And the images -- the pitifully half-melted Glass Cat; the few burnt rags that used to be the Patchwork Girl, still talking because the Potion of Life can work even if there is only a few bits left ...
The horror. The horror ...
END.
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Practically everything referenced in this short-short is the creation and property of L. Frank Baum and his heirs, save where copyrights may have lapsed. Atomic power, nuclear weapons, US military intervention, and foot-dragging on foreign policy are all too real, as is "the horror," though Joseph Conrad referenced it in The Heart of Darkness. :)
