One of the things that a lot of Californians underestimated is how far and fast their influence spread ahead of them without any real effort on their part. Just being there and having that knowledge of the future was often a frequent catalyst for accelerating the social changes and upheavals underway.
Jewel of the Pacific: A People's History of California by Naomi Matsushita — UC Minato Press
Brown Homestead - North Elba, New York - July 15th, 1851
John Brown looked over at the pile of letters he had been receiving from California. The sheer volume of correspondence from people thanking him for things he hadn't yet done had been overwhelming. The history books given to him by Californians had painted a dark picture of the union.
He could see now that ending slavery wasn't enough, Jim Crow had been proof of that. Even if slavery was abolished tomorrow, the same slavers would find new ways to maintain that oppression through schemes like sharecropping and tenant farming.
Even the vaunted compromises that people kept throwing out to appease the slave bloc weren't enough. If anything, they only served to make the problem worse by making those pushing their abominable institution more emboldened.
"More letters from California?" Asked his wife, Mary Ann.
"As always, even some new books with them as well." Replied John, pulling a little red book out of the stack sent to him, its title reading
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. The book seemed to be a treatise on asymmetrical warfare of the peasants against landowners, something that could easily come in handy in the south. The other books included the autobiography of somebody named "Malcolm X,"
Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook,
War Against The Panthers: A Study of Repression in America, and
Revolutionary Suicide, the last two of which were by somebody named "Huey P. Newton."
Leafing through the stack of letters, he came across one that seemed to intrigue him.
An invitation to the "West Coast Anti-Slavery Conference" in Los Angeles, along with a voucher for air tickets for him and his family. Perhaps this was a sign that California was the place he could make a difference, and when he returned, he would be able to accomplish what he had failed to do in the Lost History.
New Medford, Oregon Territory - July 18th, 1851
New Medford was a hive of activity lately. Far from the Williamette Valley where downtime Americans were settling at the time, New Medford was a town almost exclusively populated by uptime Californians to serve a central managing area for the construction projects in southern Oregon to reconnect its links to California.
New Medford had become the planning headquarters for the I-5 corridor reconstruction, which was planning on connecting the scattered settlers in the Williamette Valley with California, and pulling the Oregon Territory closer to California. Already, the small city had growing enough in population to form a significant demographic bloc in the sparsely populated territory, which had only counted 13,290 settlers in the last census.
For Reuben Paige though, it was an opportunity for work. He had sold most of his possessions in order to afford passage aboard a clipper bound for California. When the ship arrived in San Diego, he had been herded into this enormous building along the harbor, and put through "arrival processing," which seemed to consist of being stuck with needles and injected with cures for diseases he would have been amazed to have back home, before being herded off a large dark room where they showed a "video" on an enormous screen that told them about what to expect in California. It had been a culture shock for the first few days, but like all new arrivals, Reuben had adapted to it soon enough.
The downside though, was that there were no gold fields to dig anymore. Oh, California had plenty of gold and lots of gold mines, but there was no land that he could travel out to and stake a claim on, only corporate mines that consisted of big pits with large vehicles dragging tons of ore out. No, there wasn't a place for somebody just trying to find placer gold in the riverbeds.
"Okay everyone listen up!" Shouted the man at the front of the crowd as he held up a yellow helmet. "This is a hard hat! This protects your head from and debris or falling objects! It is mandatory that you wear one at all times! If I see you taking it off at any time, you will be sent home!"
Reuben held back a snort, considering some of the factories back on the east coast, he would have killed to have one of those, but the stingy bosses would never consider that.
"This, is a high visibility vest!" He continued. "This is so that can see you if there's a lot of dust around. Again, if you take it off I will send you home."
"It's 8:15 AM now, you all should have clocked in when you arrived, otherwise please see Vicky to get that straightened out. We will break for lunch at 12:00 and have one hour for lunch. There will be an In-N-Out truck here if you want to buy lunch. At one o'clock we'll start back up and work until five. Everybody got that?" Said the foreman.
Reuben followed the crowd to the table where the jobs were being assigned.
"Name?" Asked the guy at the table.
"Reuben Paige." He replied.
"Any construction experience?" He asked again.
"I worked on the New York and Erie Railroad. I was a spiker."
"Go see Zabel over there. He's the foreman on the railroad construction."
Reuben slumped slightly. Spiking track was demanding work. You had to swing the hammer just right to get it driven in. He had come to California to get away from work like that, and now he was back in it.
Pacific Ocean, 0° N, 122° W - LP Ocean Odyssey - 0600 Hrs, June 22nd, 1851
The Falcon 9 sat upright on the platform of the
Ocean Odyssey, downrange was the landing platform
Just Read the Instructions. Three miles away floated the
Sea Launch Commander, where the Launch Control teams stood by, watching every bit of telemetry from the launch vehicle.
Today was the moment of truth for everyone here. After The Event, the remnants of the US Air Force's Space Command had creatively persuaded the remaining aerospace industry in California to follow its plan for the reflight of important satellites. Which meant that the Air Force and Navy had commandeered the fleet of ships from the defunct Sea Launch company and retrofitted them to launch the only available launch vehicles.
"T minus 1 minute, flight computers have started up, pad deluge has started." Came the voice of the PAO. Elon Musk stood in the viewing gallery on the commander ship.
On the
Ocean Odyssey, thousands of gallons of seawater were pumped through the ship to cool the launch pad and dampen the shockwaves of the rocket engines.
"T minus 55 seconds, Second Stage has reached flight pressure." Said the PAO.
On board the
Sea Launch Commander, the director of the newly reorganized California Telecommunications looked over his own telemetry feed. Without any of the gravitas that Sputnik 1 had, CalSat 1 was about to be the first artificial object to orbit the earth. Not a small basketball sized radio transmitter like Sputnik, but a communications satellite based on the Boeing 702SP satellite bus. However, California has 62 years of experience in launching object into space that the downtime world lacked.
"T minus 20 seconds, all tanks at flight pressure." Repeated the PAO.
The news reporters watched on the monitors, their own digital recorders recording the video feeds from the cameras installed on the floating launch platform.
"T minus Ten."
"Nine."
"Eight."
"Seven."
"Six."
"Five."
"Four."
"Three." The engines on the rocket roared to life.
"Two."
"One."
"And Liftoff of the Falcon Nine carrying CalSat 1, restoring satellite communications for California."
The rocket rose off the pad and began climbing into the eastern sky.
The crowd on the ship watched the monitors showing the various camera feeds from the launch vehicle.
One minute and eighteen seconds into the flight and the flight dynamics officer had called out Max Q, the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure. This was the moment of truth for the Falcon 9, the point where the stresses on the airframe were at their greatest, as the rocket passed through this area of aerodynamic stress, the control center erupted into applause.
The rocket continued to climb into the sky, it was now 16 km up and travelling over 2000 kph. Jessie Benton Fremont could only watch in awe as the sheer speed of this thing sunk in, and that it had showed no signs of slowing.
Two minutes into the flight, the second stage engine had started its own chill procedure to get it ready to ignite as the rocket reached 4600 kph and still climbing rapidly.
45 seconds later, the main engines shut off, the lower stage separated and the second stage ignited and continued its flight.
The guests in the visitors gallery watched on the two monitors as one feed showed the first stage booster flip itself around and deploy its fins to stabilize its descent, while the other monitor showed the second stage continuing onwards into space.
Three and a half minutes into the flight, the aerodynamic fairings that had been protecting the satellite separated and began to be remotely flown down to a soft splashdown in the Pacific.
Six minutes and twenty one seconds into the flight, the first stage engines had reignited and began slowing the first stage down as it flew towards the drone ship "Just Read the Instructions." The second stage was continuing to fly into a geostationary transfer orbit.
By eight and a half minutes the video signal had grown more unstable as the first stage began to pass behind the horizon relative to the control ship, but the telemetry and blocky images from the drone barge showed a successful landing of the first stage.
About a minute later, the second stage engine shut off, and the second stage along with CalSat 1 had successfully reached a geostationary transfer orbit.
National Credit Union of California - San Francisco
John Chiang rubbed the new banknotes in his hands. The new money had been a bit of departure from the uptime bills, but the opportunity afforded to them by The Event, and the attitudes towards Washington in California had necessitated a clean break.
The new bill designs had been a surprise to californians, with the color scheme leading to it being called "rainbow money."
- The one dollar bill had featured Franklin Roosevelt in front of the Golden Gate bridge on the front and the Los Angeles skyline on back, behind a statue of Athena.
- The five was a darker orange and had Cesar Chavez in front of one of the many crop fields of the central valley on the front and Harris Ranch behind a statue of Athena on the back.
- The ten was blue and had Walt Disney in front of the Hollywood sign on the front and Grauman's Chinese Theater on the back.
- The twenty was green and featured Barack Obama in front of half down on the front and a statue of Athena next to a humpback whale on the back.
- The fifty was a darker blue and featured Sally Ride in front of the Space Shuttle Endeavour on the front, and a statue of Athena in front of a Martian landscape on the back.
- The highest denomination, the hundred, had Hiram Johnson in front of the modern San Francisco skyline in front, and a statue of Athena in front of Mount Shasta on the back.
Each denomination had been sized slightly differently, with each progressively higher denomination being slightly longer than the previous one, making it easier to find in a wallet.
The San Francisco Mint had been given the task of making new coins that would be close enough to the downtime coinage to still work in old vending machines.
Of course, Wells Fargo had decided to jump the gun slightly and began stamping 1 oz. gold and silver coins for the purpose of international trade. It wasn't against any laws, technically, since they didn't list a dollar amount, only a weight, but it still forced the National Credit Union of California to get serious about international trade, and had taken Wells Fargo's gold and silver coins and run with them, and now they were issuing gold coins featuring Athena on the front and a Welsh Dragon on the back for trading with Europe, and silver coins featuring Athena on the front and a Chinese Dragon design on the back for trading in Asia.
It was those silver coins that had been sent on the Liyun to China to try and open up trade with either the Qing Dynasty or the Taiping Government within the cvil war that had been raging at the time.
AOR Pantariste - Unalaska Island
In a previous life, just like how the Kanrin Maru had been an unremarkable luxury yacht moored in Marina Del Rey, the Pantariste had been a supertanker that would carry oil between ports on the west coast. Technically, her home port was Valletta in Malta and she had flown under the Maltese flag, but when The Event happened, she had been stranded in the Port of Long Beach.
Without any other ports to go to, The Pantariste and her crew had been stranded in Long Beach with no other ports that they could visit besides Richmond in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Which is why they had decided to refurbish the ship as an underway replenishment tanker. In order to facilitate Trans-Oceanic traffic across the Pacific for uptime ships, they needed to be able to refuel en route.
Which brought them to remote island in the Aleutians, a midpoint on a great circle route between Ezochi (Hokkaido) and San Francisco.
Anchored offshore from Unalaska Island, the Pantariste was refueling the Kanrin Maru, along with the rest of what had come to be known as the "Asian Flotilla," such ships included the M/V Liyun (利運) which was bound for Shanghai, the M/Y Geobukseon (거북선) which was bound for Ganghwado. These former Luxury Yachts had been converted into floating embassies, with the consulate for their former home countries having essentially become Ambassadors for both California and the future.
The Geobukseon's ambassadors had put together a plan for dealing with downtime Korea. With the General Sherman incident still 15 years away, and the first official contact between the United States and the Joseon Dynasty, the staffs of the San Francisco and Los Angeles Consulates had realized that they had a blank slate in terms of foreign relations.
Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton
"Mister Secretary I must object to this proposed course of action!" Shouted Brevet Brigadier General Archibald Henderson.
"Oo-rah!" Shouted some nearby Marines.
"As far as I'm concerned," Said Secretary of the Navy William Alexander Graham. "This… this bloated institution has far outgrown the role it was intended for! In what sane world would these United States need a second, entirely redundant army for?"
To the Marines in Camp Pendleton, this statement was tantamount to heresy. The Marines had proven themselves over the years, and had a unique role to fill in combat that the Army couldn't do on the battlefield.
For Graham, the sheer amount of military might concentrated in California terrified him. The state was on the verge of open rebellion, and the Navy and Marine Corps here had seemed disciplined and professional in a way that the United States Navy of 1850 couldn't hope to match without even accounting for the different technology.
As far as he was concerned, the United States Navy he had been used to was a pointless thing, the Somers affair nine years ago had been a national embarrassment, for years officers had bought their way up the ranks through patronage, and the war with Mexico hadn't done enough to dislodge them.
After seeing the Californian Navy, nothing would have made Secretary Graham happier than to have these new ships form the new unstoppable US Navy.
But the realities of the purse had put a stop to that, even if he had wanted to, there was no way the congress would budget the money to pay for this massive armada even if they wanted to.
But the other reason he was wary of this "uptime" military was that he would never be certain of their loyalties. The United States of 1851 was very different to the United States of 2018, and if it came down to sending an order against the state government or that illegitimate "uptime" government? He didn't know if they'd follow those orders, and that made them a liability. Sending troops to enforce order in this rebellious backwater state was a must, but he wanted fresh soldiers he could trust.
Approaching a podium in front of the assembled soldiers, Secretary Graham stepped in front of the strange black things that had been attached to it.
"Marines of the First Marine Expeditionary Unit. Per orders from President Fillmore, this unit to stand down and be dissolved. I thank you men for your service, but your purpose has been filled.
To a raucous din of boos and jeers from the thousands of now-civilian Marines, Secretary Graham had ducked his way out of the assembled area.
As the downtime navy officials had left the building, a new figure approached the stage.
"Marines of the former First Marine Expeditionary Unit," Said the speaker, Adjutant General of California David Baldwin. "I have been requested by the governor of the state of California and ordered by the acting uptime President to organize the California Marine National Guard. To any former members of the United States Marine Corps, upon enlistment, you will be inducted into the California Marine National Guard at the same rank as you had in the Marines. Can I count on you Marines?!"
"Oo-rah!" Came the reply from the crowd.
