Dimensional Incursion Event

The Dimensional Incursion Event (D.I.E.), also known as the 11/2 Psychic Shockwave or the Interspatial Toxic Event (I.T.E.), is an event that occurred on November 2, 1985, in New York City in which Adrian Veidt unleashed a genetically engineered squid monster, referred to as an extra-dimensional biological entity (E.D.B.E.), in the middle of Manhattan resulting in the deaths of three million people.

Background

The monster was the final act of a complex plan devised by Adrian Veidt. The plot came to fruition in 1966, after Edward Blake aka the Comedian pointed out to Veidt the inevitability of mankind destroying itself with nuclear war. Determined to avert extinction—and to deny Blake the pleasure of being right—Veidt began meticulously plotting to stage a cataclysmic event, one that could terrify the world into forgetting its petty international squabbles.

Veidt started by perfecting the technologies for teleportation and genetic engineering. In 1970, he purchased a remote island, where he stashed a collective of scientists and artists whom he tasked with creating “a monstrous new life form” that could finally scare the entire world into submission. Meanwhile, he cleverly stoked humanity’s fears of an alien invasion by screening retro science-fiction movies at his repertory movie theater, Utopia right across the street from the Institute for Extraspatial Studies, and by planting subliminal messages inside ads for his company’s products.

Veidt’s monster was outfitted with a powerfully augmented brain cloned from that of Robert Deschaines, a medium who’d died of stroke at a young age, and whose decapitated head was stolen from a mortuary. Veidt acquired Deschaines’ brain and had his geneticists transform it into a “psychic resonator” capable of broadcasting grotesque images and sounds. Most of these images were created by Max Shea, writer of the pirate comic Tales of the Black Freighter and the critically acclaimed Fogdancing who concocted grisly images like baby squids chewing their way out of their mother’s womb. The squid unleashed this awful mental payload on impact, flooding the minds of everyone in the vicinity.

When Blake stumbled upon Veidt’s secret island, Veidt killed him in order to cover it up, resulting in Rorschach's investigation. To ensure the secrecy of his own involvement, he faked his owned assassination attempt on his life and had Rorschach framed for the murder of Edgar Jacobi. He also blew up the ship that was ferrying his monster’s creators back to the mainland.

The Dimensional Incursion Event, as it came to be known, was immediately successful in pulling the world back from the brink of war. As the world witnessed the devastation in New York City, the United States and Soviet Union declared it would cease all Cold War hostilities until the new external threat could be assessed and dealt with. Veidt was triumphant, and the utopia he dreamed of would soon finally become a reality.

The former members of the Crimebusters, having uncovered Veidt’s plot in Karnak, and are shocked by its severity and cost of innocent life, but agree that it is necessary to keep the truth of the monster a secret to continue to prevent the nuclear holocaust that so nearly endangered humanity before. Rorschach, however, moved by his sentimentality of absolute justice, refuses to compromise and attempts to return to civilization and spread the word of Veidt’s doings. He is confronted by Doctor Manhattan, who tells him that he cannot allow the truth to get out. Manhattan attempts to reason with Rorschach a final time, but he insists that there is only one way to ensure his silence, and so Manhattan kills him.

To continue the looming fear of alien invasion Veidt arranged periodical squid drops to rain from the atmosphere around the world using teleportation technology from Karnak. This allowed the general populace to assume that they are still invaders from the same dimension as the monster.

Event

Just before midnight on November 2, 1985, an enormous tentacled monster appeared suddenly in the heart of New York City. Most of its body materialized inside the Institute for Extraspatial Studies, a research hub for possible extra-dimensional energy sources. The creature’s massive tentacles exploded upon impact, killing it instantly and destroying large portions of the city. Those who weren’t crushed to death by crumbling buildings or falling cephalopod chunks mysteriously collapsed, blood pouring from their ears and eyes due to the massive psychic shockwave generated from within the brain of the squid. The shockwave reached for miles across the Hudson River killing a large population of New Jersey that night. The Squid dissolved into a watery substance before it could be properly studied. Approximately three million people died beneath the squid that night.

Aftermath and Effects

International Response

The monster's appearance and devastation in New York City terrified the governments of the world - believing the monster to be an alien from another dimension or planet, and viewed it as a sign of a possible future invasion from outer space. Most notably the United States and the Soviet Union decided to work together against the new threat, thus ending the Cold War, thereby removing the threat of mankind’s destruction by nuclear war.

Cultural Impact

As the world rebuilt itself, fashions and mentalities adapt to the new era with new interest towards space, which is mirrored in fashion and commercial trends, still fueled anew by Veidt Enterprises, which continued with propaganda to perpetuate all this: One popular show is The Outer Limits, and the Cold War-themed candies "Mmeltdowns" are renamed "Sunbursts". The perfume "Nostalgia" is renamed "Millennium," mirroring a new era of hope. The Gunga Diner is replaced by Burgers 'N' Borscht. The cinema "Utopia" is renamed "New Utopia"; one of the theater's first movies is Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice (about an upcoming holocaust and peoples' reactions to it). Also, graffitis with mottos such as "Watch the skies" (in place of the popular slogan "Who Watches the Watchmen?") and "Quantum Jump" can be seen in the streets. In 1993 director Stephen Spielberg released Pale Horse, a film dramatizing the events of Nov. 2, 1985. The film was critically successful and won several Academy Awards.

Technology

Because the alien monster materialized from a CX-924 teleportation window inside the Institute for Extraspatial Studies, society became massively technophobic, as new emerging technology at the time was viewed as the likely cause for bringing the transdimensional alien to Earth. This looming fear of technology came around the same time as the recall of all lithium powered products after Doctor Manhattan was outed by the Nova Express when allegations of him being linked to the cancer diagnosis of Janey Slater, Wally Weaver, and Edgar Jacobi emerged. As a result, many of the innovations that would have been common place in 21st century society (such as smartphones, laptops, GPS, modern video games, touch screens, social media, email, and even the Internet itself) were either never invented in this reality or are now just being developed.

In the years following the attack, President Robert Redford laid out a thirty year, five-stage plan to reintroduce technologies once deemed unsafe or illegal back into the public space known as the Tech Recall and Reintroduction Act of 1993. Trieu Industries CEO Lady Trieu became a key figure in the reintroduction of old technology by funding a commission to prove that the Doctor Manhattan Cancer Panic perpetrated by the Nova Express in 1985 was a hoax and mass-produced synthetic lithium that reintroduced the lithium powered technologies such as the electric car.

Health Effects

Hundreds of thousands of survivors suffered from extra-dimensional anxiety and trauma due to being within the radius of the psychic shockwave blast emitted from the monster's brain. The trauma caused by the attack was so severe that it was locked into the DNA of the survivors. Those who were born after the attack inherited their parent(s) genetic trauma. EDA has also been known to be caused by encounters with exotic cephalopodian entities (ECEs) that appear through random showers across the Earth. Others that survived the attack were driven insane and the impact that the attack had would ultimately cause people worldwide to have nightmares for several years.

Squidfalls

The fear of another giant squid appearance remained a strong cultural undercurrent as random downpours of fetal exotic cephalopodian entities (conducted by Adrien Veidt in order to keep humanity fearful of the non-existent alien threat) through various locations throughout the world. Squid showers occur 25.4 times a year on average and just like the giant alien that materialized in New York City, they also dissolve into water preventing any further studies on their origins. Since 2001 a disproportionate number of squid showers have occurred in both Russia and China.