A Second Sunrise: Taiwan of 2020 Sent Back to 1911

[ChrisProvidence]

MIB Secure Facility, Nanjing, National Capital Region, Republic of China, 17 October 1933

As far as lodging went, Zen seemed to be doing alright. There was the issue of constant surveillance, but she knew how to detect those sorts of things. Hidden cameras were the easiest, and she'd managed to find most of them.

To her relief, they had the decency to not put them in her bathroom, which had led to the odd circumstances where she'd ended up sleeping there, rather than the actual bedroom. Not that she minded, of course, when she'd been through worse in the field.

As for the world outside of it, well, it was interesting, to say the least. It was more-peaceful, more-optimistic, more-progressive, and simply more-rational than the world she'd left. If it weren't for her family, friends, and... "responsibilities" back at home, she wouldn't mind staying here.

At least the people here won't discriminate against my family. Or anyone who isn't a WASP, honestly.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind living here with Dad, or my mother. Even if I am sort of a celebrity.

I guess that comes with getting transported into another world. Never thought I would be grateful to be under house arrest.

After all, it wasn't as if she was going around giving interviews. Public interviews, anyways, since officially-released statements didn't count.

They were little things, like talking about her status and how she thought of the world. The answers were usually "Fine," and "You people are a surprisingly-optimistic bunch," respectively.

No, most of her interviews were with this "Military Intelligence Bureau," who were, for lack of a better term, this world's version of the Office of Strategic Actions she was a part of. Which meant that for all intents and purposes, this "Director Li" would be her father's counterpart if he was Chinese, didn't fake a case of alcoholism to convince people he was stupid, and wasn't planning to overthrow the Caesar of the Continental States of America.

She hadn't told them that last part. Or any of it, if she had her way. As polite and friendly as these people were, she still didn't trust them to know that she was working with her father to overthrow the government of the Continental States of America.

Baby steps, Zen. They don't even know that much about your world yet.

"To summarize it all," continued the professor. She was a Japanese-looking woman who, for some reason, spoke English with an accent that sounded halfway between South California and China. "Your world diverged greatly in the late eighteenth century, leading to a more-successful American Revolution and an earlier collapse of the British Empire due to the Gordon Riots spiraling out of control?"

"In short... yes. No islands teleporting out of nowhere, I'm afraid. Just the Continental States of America stretching from Sea to Shining Sea and Pole to Frozen Pole."

"Of course. And what exactly would you do if you were to travel back to your world?"

"That... I would need to speak to Director Li. Sorry, but this is confidential information."

"Of course."

It's a leap of faith, but we'll need all the allies we can get.

Federal Polytechnic School, Zurich, Switzerland, 1 November 1933


"Given the high concentration of tachyons,"said Dr. Einstein, "As well as the complete replacement of the island of Taiwan and its outlying islands with their Uptime counterparts, it is likely that the mass teleportation of the Uptime islands coincided with the mass teleportation of their Downtime counterparts, effectively switching one set of land for another."

"While this is all hypothetical, this seemingly-equivalent exchange of territories has led to the 'Portal Theory,' a theory that the large concentration of tachyons effectively created a portal to the other timeline, which could be corroborated by the recent events at the CPC. Any questions?"

He could see a hand in the back.

"Go ahead, Jean-Paul."

"Is it possible that we are undergoing a stable time loop, in which the island would be teleported back in time once we reach the year 2020?"

"Anything is possible, but it is unlikely. If we moved the clock forward to 2020, the Taiwan of that time would be so different from the one of the Lost History that even if it was sent back in time, it would not result in the same events. Ergo, a 'Stable Time Loop' would be unlikely, to say the least."

"Of course," said the student, "And what of the Lost History? Is that simply lost to time?"

"Perhaps," Einstein thought aloud. "While we may be unable to experience it ourselves, the Portal Theory argues that if we were to replicate the conditions needed for the Great Journey, we could travel back to that timeline."

Presumably without teleporting an entire island this time.

"Any other questions?" He saw another hand. "Yes, Jonas?"

"If the Portal Theory is correct, does that mean it is impossible to interact with the past to affect the future?" Einstein nodded. "How so?"

He began by drawing a line on the chalkboard, with two points marked "2020" and "1911."

"This," he said, pointing to the straight line, "Is the original timeline. When the 'future' Taiwan was sent to our time and 'our' Taiwan was sent to the future, that creates two separate points of divergence from the original timeline."

To this, Einstein drew two lines, each jutting away from the original line, before traveling to the right.

"In doing so," he continued, "two additional timelines were created: Ours, which starts in 1911 when the Taiwan of the future was teleported back here, and the timeline where, presumably, Taiwan of our time was teleported to the year 2020."

"Which means," Jonas interjected, "That it is impossible for us to affect the 'future' by interacting with the past because the very act of doing that effectively creates a new timeline?"

"Precisely."

New York City, New York, United States of America, 2 November 1933

"So, Stanley?" his father asked him as they walked out of the local Kennedy Theater. "Did you like the movie?"

"Are you asking me because you slept through half of it?" the adolescent answered, much to his father's amusement. "Then yes, I did."

"I knew you would," the elder Lieber chuckled, "It is 'your' movie, after all. Sort of."

"I guess..."

If Stanley was being honest, he didn't really know what to make of it. He enjoyed every minute of the entire series of films, but he didn't know if it was right to call them 'his.'

Especially when Endgame was made after I passed away.

That was a bit of a heavy subject to think about, so the boy tried to think about something, anything, that wasn't that.

And if it was the fact that Endgame had somehow managed to predict how time travel actually worked (at least, according to that article in his father's magazine, anyways), then he'd be fine with it.

"The Importance of the Revolution Being Green," by Jean Brodeur, l'Humanite, 28 November 1933

The rapid technological advancements of the last twenty years have been a boon to humanity as a whole. Food is more-plentiful, medicine is more-available, and millions, if not tens of millions, of people are alive because they didn't starve, didn't die of preventable diseases, didn't die in childbirth, or they didn't die in early childhood.

That is a remarkable accomplishment that is no doubt attributed to the spread of Radical-Socialist ideals throughout the world. While the Americans and the Chinese would not call it as such, the growth in a domestic welfare state as well as foreign aid is a validation of these ideals in practice.

Unfortunately, this has led us to two difficult issues that we need to address sooner, rather than later: Overpopulation and Carbon Emissions.

The first one is fairly simple. While overpopulation is a possibility, the remedy is continued production of basic needs, be they food, clothing, medicine, or shelter. All four of these are necessary for a human being to meet their basic needs, and we have the means to do so.

Food is perhaps the simplest, as the use of redistribution networks of various kinds, be they the Chinese Stockpile System, the American Agricultural Dietary Subsidy Supplement Act (ADSSA), or the governmental redistribution networks throughout France, West Africa, and Western Europe. These programs have led to a reduction in food waste that, combined with the Green Revolution of fertilizers, heartier crops, and agricultural mechanization fully underway, provides humanity with the food it needs and the logistical systems to get it to those who need it the most.

Clothing is simpler, given that "Fast Fashion" has not taken off despite massive increase in textile production. While modern clothing trends have reached Downtime society, the effective decapitation of the fashion industry in the wake of the Great Journey prevented this phenomenon from happening, in favor of the sale of cheaper, more-practical, proletarian clothing to much of Downtimer society. These circumstances, combined with the greater manufacture, have led to a greater supply of practical clothing, rather than the waste of the Lost History.

Medical distribution can be compared to food distribution in the sense, as while China and other nations may call it "Foreign Aid," rather than "Distribution to the Masses," the end result is largely-similar. The greater access to life-saving medications through mass-production, distribution, and administration have mitigated much of the worst of diseases. China and the rest of the Accord may be acting out of less-than-altruistic motivations, but the simple fact that they are producing medications en-masse and then distributing them around the world is a testament to Radical-Socialist ideals.

Even if they refuse to admit it.

Housing is fairly straightforward: The rise in obesity in the Lost History, as well as the higher-cost of suburban utilities, has provided a material and financial incentive to construct higher-density housing in lieu of suburbs. This, coupled with an expansion of public transportation and the mass affordability of bicycles, has led to a shift away from low density towards medium and high density construction in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Of course, the right of all people to a life of dignity where their needs are met requires that their needs are met, but meeting the needs of an ever-urbanizing humanity requires more industry, mechanization, and construction that emits more carbon into the atmosphere. However, the science of today has provided us with the means to lower carbon outputs to more-acceptable levels.

Be it carbon capture at factories and on cruise ships, the investments in public infrastructure, or the rapid growth of renewables and nuclear energy, carbon emissions have been on a slight downwards trajectory. In layman's terms, the sheer amount of resources and funds dedicated to this has led to less carbon entering the atmosphere overall.

By being able to provide enough resources so that people may live in dignity while also reducing carbon emissions, we are ensuring that humanity can prosper and live in dignity and prosperity now, and a thousand years into the future.

San Francisco, California, United States of America, 12 December 1933

It was a cold day, and Alex Zheng would rather be anywhere else. Preferably his dorm, back at Berkeley, if he was being honest.

But as an aspiring physics major, he had to be here, at the unveiling of the first MSR in America. Even if the wind chill made it feel like he was freezing his fingers off.

He'd seen nuclear reactors before. How couldn't he, when they were dotted all over China last time he visited his family?

But this? This was nothing like the picture he saw in Popular Science.



The "Small Modular Reactor," as it was called, generated approximately 500 Megawatts of energy at its peak, or over 4 Terawatt Hours of energy per year.

It was remarkable, to say the least. Not only that, but this high-technical invention was projected to cost thirty percent less than coal, give or take. Now, one could argue that physics was simply applied mathematics, as Alicia would joke between classes, but he didn't need a minor degree in Applied Mathematics to understand that this meant cheaper energy for everyone it reached.

That was why President Roosevelt was here, after all. The man was standing on-stage with Senator Johnson to unveil the fruits of the "Clean Energy Act" the latter had co-sponsored, and by God, were they going to take the credit for cheap, clean energy.

Even if the parts were assembled in China.

Sure, these reactors were assembled at a nearby factory in West Virginia and shipped throughout the country, but the fact remained that they were relying on a foreign company that built the facility in the United States solely to capitalize on all those Federal Subsidies for clean energy. Of course, that wouldn't be much of a problem, given the Trans-Pacific Development Agreement that'd been passed under the Cox administration, but the American reliance on China for their energy infrastructure was an issue Senator Taft had brought up.

But that was all in the past, and he could focus on President Roosevelt's speech.

"...We, the American people, are at the beginning of a bright future," Roosevelt continued, "A future that will be powered by clean, cheap, limitless energy that we have in abundance."

"It is this future that will be passed down to our children, and our children's children. One where their prosperity and their health are not opposed to one another. This device, as well as its hundreds of brothers and sisters that will be built all across America, will bring us closer to that future where all Americans may live long, healthy lives on a healthy planet."

Chinese Particle Collider, Beijing, Zhili Province, Republic of China, 30 December 1931

This was insane. At least it would have been, had Director Li not gone back in time with his island two decades ago. No, this was beyond that, because they were trying to make it happen again.

And that's before we get to the fact that apparently, our guest came from the Bad Timeline. I mean, how else do you call it when that timeline's America is a fascist dictatorship that controls the entire Western Hemisphere, Africa is basically run by Rhodesians of different European ethnicities, Asia was split between a Co-Prosperity Sphere on crack and a literal cult, and Europe was...

Yeah, I'm not even going into Europe.

Oh, and that's before we get to the fact that our guest is apparently trying to burn down the American government.

Honstly, send a damn nuke through there. We've got plenty, and it's not like we're using them for anything.

But no, he couldn't do that, and it wasn't just because he didn't like the idea of nuclear genocide.

Here was an entire alternate timeline that they could access, and they needed to know if this other world could reach them. That, and if they were a threat.

That was how they'd gotten here, with a bright light engulfing the center of the room like it had in the security footage.

"Is it stable?" Li asked one of the scientists, and the woman nodded. "Good. You ready, kid?"

"I'm 27," Zen told him, before getting up with her equipment. "But yes. The team's ready as they'll ever be."

"Yeah, well, I'm pushing 50," Li muttered, before turning to the engineers. "Release the probe, Fung."

"Releasing," Fung announced, before pressing forward on the controls. The wire-controlled drone lurched forward, with its feed connected to the terminal through the wire. "Entering rift now."

The drone continued forward, seemingly-unimpeded as it passed through the white light, with nothing left but the cord connecting it to the terminal.

"Connection is good, and we are..." As Fung spoke, the probe exited the light into the mountains. "...Here."

"Well, probe works at least," Li figured, before looking at the screen. "This seem familiar to you, Zen?"

"That looks like Cuba," the foreign commando agreed, "You don't believe me, do you?"

"Trust but verify," Li figured. "Looks like it's evening over there. Fung, can you get a clear view on some of the foliage?"

"Yes, sir," said the engineer, before the camera tilted up. "Moving... Moving... There. We should have a good view right here. Transmitting image to our analysts now."

"Plants check out," one of the scientists called from her station. "Plumeria Clusiodes. Endemic to Cuba, only."

"Well, looks like you're right, kid," Li told Zen, before motioning to the rift. "Ready to go?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," she figured, before picking up her equipment. "Plus, it's not the first time I've gone dark, so they probably didn't miss me."

"If you say so. Remember the plan?"

"Contact my father, inform him about this timeline, and tell him that you're offering to help us out."

"...And?"

"Get back by the 31st of January, at 12 PM, according to my watch."

"Well, you're a fast learner," he said, before offering a hand that Zen happily shook. "Nervous?"

"Usual. You'd think years of being trained like a... what was it you called them?"

"SPARTAN-III?"

"Yeah. Still doesn't prepare you for going in blind, does it?"

"Nope. You'll do good, Zen. And if you can't make it back... Good luck."

"Thanks, Li," Zen said, before walking off into the rift and onto the drone's screen on the terminal. "See you in a month."

Li could only nod, before ordering the drone pulled back through the rift.

"Let's see if we learned anything" he said, before opening the drone's rear compartment and pulling out a watch and comparing it to his own. "Huh."

"Something important, sir?" Fung asked him. "Did it work?"

"Well, at least we know that time passes at the same rate as it does here."

Office of Strategic Actions, Manhattan, Washington Capital District, Continental States of America, 30 December 1975

General William Conan Lawrence poured himself another drink as he stared at the fireplace.

Four months. Four fuckin' months she's been gone.

You know she can handle herself, Will. Hell, you trained her yourself once you broke her out of that black site.

It didn't reassure him much, though when it was his daughter who was MIA. Not one bit.

The phone on his desk rang, and he picked it up.

"What is it?,"

"Call for you, sir. Gave the correct passcode and everything, now she says she wants to talk to you."

"Really?" As if on cue, General Lawrence snapped out of his stupor. "Patch her through."

"Understood, sir. Hail Caesar!"

"Yes, yes, hail Caesar," he mumbled. It wasn't like he could get fired, what with being a war hero and everything. "Hello?"

"Hey Dad," a familiar voice said to him. "I'm back."

"Glad to hear it, Zen," he breathed, trying to hold back his emotions. "Do you need an extract?"

"Nah, I've got transport. I need to meet with you, ASAP."

 

[ChrisProvidence]

Rio De Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro State, Brazil, 11 January 1935

"It's Journey Day!" Gisele da Silva shouted to her parents, before tugging at her father's hand. "Mamãe! Papai! It's Journey Day!"

"Gisele... It's five in the morning," her father Henrique groaned. "You're going to wake the neighbors, if you're not quiet."

"But Papai..."

"You'll wake your mother, too, dear. Five more minutes."

"...Okay," the child decided, before jumping into bed with them. "Five more minutes."

For her part, his wife Ana had somehow managed to not wake up despite their daughter's antics. Truth be told, Henrique never found out her secret after five years together, even when she asked.

Instead, she somehow managed to lay there, seemingly-unaware of the little girl who'd jumped into bed with them.

Not that she would mind, of course. Ana's always doted on her and Joao. And unlike me, he was lucky enough to be born with his mother's ability to sleep through anything.

Henrique wasn't so lucky, and he lay there with his eyes shut, trying to think of just what they'd do for this special day.

Journey Day, or as the Vatican called it, "Day of the Journey," was a Holy Day of Obligation for the Catholic Church, and that meant one, they'd all have to dress up nicely for the service, and two, he'd have to go to Mass today and on Sunday.

On the other hand, it was a national holiday in Brazil, China, America, France, Russia, the Ottoman Empire... and pretty much everywhere else, now that he thought about it. It made sense to him when it wasn't every day that an entire island got sent back in time with a century's worth of technology.

There would be those who would disagree with such a holiday, like his father-in-law. Then again, said father-in-law was one, dead, and two, kind of an asshole, now that he thought about it.

So honestly, Henrique didn't give a shit. Well, that much of a shit, if he was being honest.

He was just happy to have the day off from the shipyard to spend with his family on... something. He didn't really know what to do today when there was just so many choices.

There was the parade, of course. Every year the Chinese embassy and the Chinese-Brazilian community would hold a parade and invite the entire community to join them. There'd be floats, marching, and members of the community coming together to celebrate progress.

Oh, and Chinese Cookies. Can't forget those.

Even if Ana kept pointing out they technically aren't Chinese.

It was one of those things they argued about. Not really out of any malice or anything, but because they'd been doing that since they were kids. Ana would say one thing, then Henrique would say something else, then the two stubborn-headed friends-turned-couple would go back and forth until they either got bored or one of them admitted defeat.

In this case, Ana would argue that these cookies were flat versions of Fortune Cookies, which were made in Downtime America made them American. Henrique would point out that they came back in time with Taiwan and were adopted by the Chinese culture as a whole, which made them Chinese.

Not that it mattered much when their kids loved eating the things. At least they would, once Joao and Ana finally woke up.

"Papai..." a little boy's voice murmured next to him, "Wake up."

"Joao?" Sure enough, his and Ana's son was standing next to them. "Five more minutes."

"It's been five minutes," Gisele happily told him. "Now wake up!"

Revolutionary Park, Nanjing, National Capital Region, Republic of China, 2 February 1935

"Retirement?" Martin's old friend chuckled, "Honestly, I never thought you'd retire, Marty."

"We're getting old, Mike," the former spymaster sighed. "Fifty's as good a year to retire as any, so I thought I'd finish on top. Still have my clearance, just in case they need me, but I'm out by July."

"What, in case they accidentally open a Rift to another timeline?" Mike joked, "What's going on with that, anyways? Thought you'd want me to rush in with an army and kick their asses, or something."

"I don't think we have the resources for that, Mike," Marty chuckled, "Short of us basically declaring war on an alternate earth, there isn't much we can do. Besides dumping a bunch of our old equipment through there, anyways."

"Yeah... Wait, were you guys doing what?"

"Hey, it's not like anyone's going to miss a bunch of old guns and ammo that were going to be scrapped. Besides, the paperwork's all there."

"If you say so," Mike figured. Normally, a person would be a bit concerned about dumping all sorts of surplus equipment somewhere, but the retired Marine had stopped asking questions decades ago. "You guys ever try using the Particle Collider to reach somewhere else?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like another timeline that isn't dominated by psychotic, nepotistic, American fascists."

"They tried, but it's not exactly like we can enter in coordinates. This isn't Stargate, Mike."

"Eh, figures. So you guys managed to unlock the secret of how our island got sent back in time..."

"Yup," Marty said with a curt nod.

"...Except when you tried to replicate the Rift that sent us back in time, the only Rift you can open is to a world that is basically Code Geass but more-American." Marty nodded again. "So the only thing we feasibly can do is dump a bunch of our obsolete equipment that were going to be scrapped."

"Basically. For what it's worth, Mike, our crappier equipment is still better than their best stuff."

"Well, not like we're using that stuff, anyways," the retired Marine figured. "So, what are you going to do now?"

"Honestly?" Marty told his brother in all but name, "I have no idea. Probably a long vacation, then maybe I'll take up Nanjing University's offer to teach Foreign Affairs."

"And the MIB? Whoever's replacing you is going to have their work cut out for them when it comes to... whatever the Hell it is you guys have been doing for two decades."

"Good thing Rachel's getting promoted," Marty chuckled, "She's the one who's done most of 'Whatever the Hell we've been doing' for two decades."

Anchorage, Alaska, United States of America, 29 March 1935

Out of all the things in the world, Darrell Stone never thought he'd see this happening. Anchorage had been hit by the global drop in oil demand, but it somehow managed to keep growing.

Then again, that probably had something to do with the "Bering Strait Crossing" that was being built.

It was a bold project when he read about it in the newspaper, but that was before he read about the details of just how they planned to build a massive tunnel from Alaska to Siberia. Apparently, they planned to use a "Plasma-Based Tunnel Boring System" to effectively dig under the Bering Strait and use it to tunnel all the way to Russia.

Which probably explains the new Modular Small Reactor they shipped over here. That damn thing is going to be a giant battery powering that giant drill... cutter... whatever it is.

Honestly, that was way above Darrell's pay grade, and he was happy enough to just have more business coming through town to his arcade and bar. Business had been slow these last few years, and he'd almost thought about closing shop if it weren't for all the surveyors coming to town and setting up their HQ here.

It made sense to him. Yes, Darrell was biased on account of living here, but Anchorage was the largest city in Alaska with the largest infrastructure when it came to... pretty much everything, if he was being completely honest. It didn't matter if it was roads, railroads, shipping, or people, Anchorage had the most of everything, and everything had to move through there if it wanted to get to Wales.

And if that meant more people, money, and resources flowing into his adopted hometown, then so be it. With oil on the decline, shipping and fishing could only do so much for the town, and he'd hate to see it decay. It'd be a new breed that'd be coming here, full of workers as well as professionals this time around, but he didn't mind too much.

Their money was still good, and he always liked meeting new people. That, and his religious beliefs that strangers were a Test from God, which meant he was religiously-compelled to be welcoming to them if it meant Jesus would come back sooner.

"San Francisco 49ers Defeat Los Angeles Rams 7-0 In Pacific Coast League Opener," by Petra McNair, ESPN.com, 20 April 1935

With new uniforms, new players, and a new year of baseball, the two teams began the season at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Starting pitcher Lin Hartman pitched a no-hitter to Casper Bergman, with a combined ten Rams players managing to even make contact with the ball.

Hartman's use of vaunted knuckleball has led to high expectations after the free agent was picked up during free agency. Bergman, his teammate who has been catching for him since their days at the Naval Academy, was also acquired for his rare talent at catching the new pitch.

On the offensive side, switch hitter Ferdie Ayers hit a two-run homer into left, while Gerald Eisner blasted an inside the park home run into deep center.

The 49ers have a tough act to follow after beating the Los Angeles Angels in 7 in the Pacific Series, the American League Champion Boston Red Sox in the American Series, then coming back from a 0-3 loss to beat the Haishenwai Hope in the World Series.

The Rams are looking for their first win since their rebuild last year, with newly-acquired rookie Dizzy Dean expected to pitch tomorrow in game 2 of a 3 game series between the inter-state rivals.

***

Interested in purchasing the authentic jerseys from the teams? Go to pclshop.com for all of your authentic PCL merchandise!




Tacna, Confederation of Peru and Bolivia, 29 May 1935

Jose Herrera looked at the blueprints, only to sigh again. Tacna was to be the new capital of the newly-formed Confederation due to its historical significance and neutrality.

The downside to not using Lima or Sucre as the new capital was that they'd effectively have to build a capital from scratch. Housing needed to be expanded, which meant utilities would have to be extended (assuming they even existed in the first place), and that was before they got to the part about literally having to build the institutions from the ground-up.

The formation of the Confederation had been nothing short of a miracle. Radicals and Socialists in Sucre and Lima had come to power in the "Pink Tide" of the last two decades, and the two formerly-separate governments had come together in the name of ideology, cooperation, and fighting the authoritarian regimes of Augusto Leguia and Hernando Siles.

That had been almost half a decade ago, and the task of reconstruction of the now-single country had fallen to the new Radical-Socialist alliance. With aid from the United States, France, and China (though mostly China), the dual nations had been seen several improvements.

Which is a fancy way of saying fewer people die young, starve to death, die in childbirth, or die young of starvation.

Well, we have that going for us.

Not to mention all the factories that were bringing people in with the promise of work. People were moving to the cities because that's where all the jobs were being created, while rural communities were where most of the jobs were being lost.

Now, Jose wasn't an economist, but he knew that not all of those jobs would leave the rural farms and mines. But at the same time, he also knew that it took fewer people to man a combine harvester or an mining excavator than it did when they used pickaxes and hoes.

Honestly, he was in favor of it. Having worked in the mines and fields before he'd entered the Jesuits' school, he knew full well that those jobs sucked. Sure, they were honest jobs, but most jobs that weren't spent enraging people on the internet were honest jobs.

The only problem for him was that those cities now needed to house all of these new people from the rurals. Ideally before they start building slums and shantytowns.

That was why the new government needed people like him. While he initially picked urban planning out of an off-hand suggestion from one of the Jesuit priests at CSCS in Sucre, it turned out that people like him were in high demand to help build housing as quickly as possible.

It was a daunting task that was no doubt complicated by the fact they couldn't just "Do what the Chinese did." After all, the Confederation didn't have the same kind of machinery or manufacturing facilities that the Chinese did, despite the the Chinese Embassy's offer ofsupport and advisors.

Of course, that had been years ago, during the big rush to the cities. These days, he was working on more-ambitious housing projects that would, quite literally, dwarf the quickly-build blocks he'd spent half a decade in.

It was an ambitious project undertaken by the government, but these new apartment complexes would incorporate Modernist utilities like Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and the "New Andean Architecture" of the Lost History's Freddy Mamani.



The reference images he'd seen were promising, to say the least. While the change in architecture would no doubt increase costs, Jose preferred these to the more-utilitarian design of the Blocks they'd built in a hurry.

Besides, all that lithium revenue has to go to something, right? Better that than the Swiss bank accounts of Leguia and Siles.

The Parthenon, Athens, Republic of Greece, 20 June 1935

"With the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece," Ottoman ambassador Nikos Tzortzis said to the crowd, "The Greek people of our two nations can finally stand united. Whether we be Muslim of Christian, a citizen of Athens or Constantinople, the return of these stolen artifacts is long overdue."

"These marbles will be reattached to the Parthenon as part of its restoration. While it would take years to restore this great work to its former glory, I am happy to announce that the archaeologists of our two nations will work hand and hand in this great endeavor."

There would be more to say, but Ambassador Tzortzis needed a moment to collect his thoughts. After all, the "Greek Question" had been an ongoing diplomatic issue in the wake of the war, as the Ottoman Greeks (particularly the Muslims) had a mixed opinion when it came to the new Greek Republic.

There were those who hailed the Greek Republic as their homeland, but they weren't much of a problem since most of them immigrated after the Great War. Yet there where many who had stayed, whether for economic opportunities, because they were Muslims who didn't want to live in a predominantly-Christian nation, or the simple fact that the Ottoman Empire was their home.

Nikos was all three. He was a Muslim Pontic Greek who worked for the Ottoman government as a diplomat, and his entire family wasn't about to uproot themselves after living there for centuries.

If he was being honest with himself, he didn't know if the Greek Question would ever be answered. He liked to think that Greeks like him could live their lives in peace, but he knew that the tensions between Athens and Constantinople were centuries-old.

Nevertheless, the long-awaited return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens had done much to improve relations between Constantinople and Athens. States were recognized, and relations were normalized because of this event.

Tzartzis knew that it would take more than this to heal old wounds (assuming they could ever be healed in the first place), but they had to start somewhere.

What better place to start than the return of stolen artifacts?

Tolkien Residence, Oxford, Republic of Britain, 1 July 1935

He knew that a parent should never have to bury their child, and he knew full well that antagonizing one's children ought to be avoided at all costs. It was times like these that he firmly practiced the latter as he looked intently at his three sons from beyond his screen.

"Your party encounters a traveling caravan from the East. Their escorts look hardly different from the people that you have been fighting, but they do not seem to be aware of your presence. What do you do?"

"Eldritch blast-" his son Christopher said, only for John and Michael to shake their heads. "Oh come on!"

"We're talking with them," his eldest son answered, and his middle brother agreed. "Not after what happened last time."

Christopher pouted. "Those were bad guys!"

"You didn't know that when you Eldritch Blasted them, Chris," Michael pointed out. "And our mission as emissaries the Blue Wizards is to not kill the people we were sent to help."

"...Fine. But if they start coming after us, then I'll start Eldritch Blasting them."

"We decide to talk with them," John says to his father. "I approach them without any weapons drawn."

'"Who are you?' says the leader of the caravan. His weapon is drawn, and he looks at you with a wary face. 'We are nothing more than travelers, so please, leave us be.'"

"As are we," John says in-character. "We are on a mission to assist those Easterlings who reject the teachings of Melkor and Sauron."

To this, Michael could only facepalm. Whatever cunning they had had gone out the window when his brother outright gave away their allegiance.

"I prepare to cast Teleport," says Christopher. "Just in case."

"Roll for Charisma," Tolkien says to his eldest. "DC of eighteen."

"I roll..." the eldest son said anxiously, "Sixteen. Add three more from my skills, and I have... nineteen."

Tolkien could hear his two younger boys breathe sighs of relief.

"The man says to you, 'Well met, traveler. We are refugees headed to the West to flee from those you claim to fight. You may join us on our journey."

"Can we convince them to join us?" Christopher asks out of character, "They could join us at the Citadel with the rest of our side."

"Best let John do the talking," says Michael. "If you want."

"Alright," says the eldest Tolkien son, "I would like to persuade him to travel towards the Citadel."

"Very well," Tolkien agreed. "Roll for Charisma. DC of... twenty."

"That seems a bit excessive, don't you think?" asks Michael. "Even for a diplomat like John."

"You're trying to convince a complete stranger you just met to travel towards your fortress. They don't trust you, and if I may be completely honest, I wouldn't trust three complete strangers I just met while I was fleeing for my lives, if I could help it."

"It's your call, John," Michael relented. "If you want to back out, we won't hold it against you."

"No, let's do it," John said with a newfound determination. "Rolling... now."

"Well," asked Christopher, "What is it?"

"...Nat 20."

 

[ChrisProvidence]

Script of "The Aftermath Episode 3: Code Duello"

NARRATOR: Intellectual property had nearly been turned on its head in the wake of the Great Journey. Some properties were suddenly without owners, while others saw regional heads become CEOs.

NARRATOR: Fa Zhi had been the head of Microsoft Taiwan for over a year at the time of the Great Journey. As the most-senior member of the company, she was quickly promoted to Acting CEO in late January of 1911.

FA: It was chaotic at first. We were cut off from basically everyone, with little more than a few offices to manage the corporate empire we inherited.

INTERVIEWER: And what were the first things you did in the aftermath?

FA: We had to stake our claims on all of our assets. Everything from Microsoft Office to Windows to XBOX. All of that needed to be filed ASAP if we didn't want it to fall into the public domain, so we had people working around the clock.

FA: My background is in computer science, but our legal team was so overstretched that we were practically pulling anyone who wasn't trying to keep everything running to file all of our paperwork with the Executive Yuan.

INTERVIEWER: Of course. Now how did your company react to the passage of the emergency anti-subscription legislation?

NARRATOR: The Anti-Rent-Seeking Act of 1911 was one of many emergency pieces of legislation passed and signed into law. Broadly speaking, it prevents companies such as Microsoft from charging subscription fees for software.

NARRATOR: Microsoft was one of the most-impacted companies, as the post-Journey government largely-operated on Windows operating systems and used Microsoft Office in their daily operations.

FA: That was possibly the closest I was to being ousted. While "Software as a Service" was still a new concept at the time, our legal team's focus on securing our IPs and patents meant we could not effectively fight the legislation in court.

FA: This angered some in the company, but the Board of Directors understood that it would be better to lose the subscription revenue and keep our IPs than it would be to lose our IPs and keep the subscription revenue.

INTERVIEWER: Did the legislation affect any of the company's decision-making in the post-Journey era?

FA: Yes. With subscription being a non-viable source of revenue, we had to reallocate resources to Software Assurance and other products to make up for losses. It was possibly the closest the company had gotten to outright collapse.

INTERVIEWER: Yet Microsoft has been profitable for over two decades, and it continues to have a near-monopoly on Operating Systems.

Delhi, Republic of India, 20 September 1935

"It looks smaller than I would have thought," Mohan Singh said to his father. "But it is a big deal for us?"

"It's the principle of it," Vikram Singh told him. "The Koh-I-Noor was taken from us by a war of colonialism, so it is only fitting that we took it back during our war of independence."

"So it was to make a point then," the younger Singh observed, before looking at them gem a second time. "That the government has righted a decades-old wrong done to the Indian people?"

"Yes."

There wasn't really any way around it. The average Indian who knew about the diamond thought the British stole it in a war, so it was no surprise that the Indian delegation to the peace treaties had demanded it be returned along with any other artifacts in the British museum.

And if anyone is stupid enough to claim that they won it fairly in a war, then we can say the same thing to them.

"So," his son asked him, "What happens with it now?"

"The same thing as Maharaja Ranjit Singh's throne or the Sword of Tipu Sultan. They will stay here in India, where they rightly belong. Here, they can be studied and appreciated by our people as artifacts of our storied past, rather than spoils of war and conquest."

"Of course," said Mohan, seemingly content with the answer. "But what happens now?"

"Come again? The artifacts have been returned to India, and they will stay in India, if I have anything to say with it."

Not that it matters much when I'm a Minister Without Portfolio, these days.

"No, not that," his son insisted. "What happens with the British Museum?"

"Them? Well, they're not getting them back. I can tell you that much."

"So what do they put in there, then? If they give back all the artifacts they stole, do the British have anything else they can display?"

"Ah." That, Vikram realized, was a harder question. He was an economist and a business owner, not a historian. "I'm sure the British have plenty of artifacts of their own that they can put in their museums. That, or they could do exchanges with other museums to share artifacts."

"I doubt they'd agree. The last time they did that, they didn't give them back. Why would anyone in their right mind lend them artifacts just because they asked nicely this time?"

"It's not as if they have any other options."

Besides, there's a first time for everything.

Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China, 30 October 1935

"Now that you two are getting older," Michael Chen told his children, "You need to have a plan for when you turn eighteen for your Mandatory Public Service. Now, seeing that we have, like, six hundred million people in China, things are different from when I was your age, so you don't have to join the-"

"Military service," Lin answered.

"Yeah, military service," Morgan agreed.

"…Goddammit. You know, there's other things you can do for Mandatory Service, right? Park rangers, construction, educational assistance, social work. You know… stuff that won't have you two getting shot at?"

"There are more than just combat roles, Baba," his daughter pointed out. "Logistics, maintenance, engineering. All of those are typically in the rear, right?"

"Plus, it's not like we're in any wars," Lin chimed in. "And it's not like there's anybody who could fight us besides those weirdo racists over in Africa, and they're gone."

"Yeah, well, that's what I thought before I got deployed into a war. Twice."

"Wait, what was the first time?" Asked Morgan. "The revolution?"

"Yup. I signed on to fix tanks, then it turned out that I was the only one who wasn't trying to get reassigned, so I also had to handle training, supply, and paperwork, too. And that was before I got sent back in time and had to fight the Qing."

"Hey, you turned out alright, Baba," Lin pointed out. "Plus, you were in a tank, and they couldn't even scratch those, right?"

"Yeah, well the the Qing didn't have RPGs, AT mines, and assault rifles. The Europeans and their colonial troops in Africa did."

"You're worried," Morgan said flatly, "You're coming up with all the hypotheticals again."

"Yeah, well, I don't like the idea of you two getting shot at when there's alternatives, alright? Look, I'm really proud of you for being engaged, active members of society." Especially when the alternative is being the most annoying people on the planet who made me wish I could punch people through the internet. "But at the same time, I'm your father. I don't like the idea of you two being in harm's way at all."

"Yeah, I know, Baba," Morgan relented, before pulling out two sets of papers. "For what it's worth, I've gone out of my way to research the best service for myself."

"You always do your research, don't you?" Michael asked, to which she happily nodded. "Interning at the MIB? You know your aunt won't pull any strings for you, right?"

"Don't need them with my grades, Baba. And because I know you forgot to do yours, I also made one for you, Lin."

"Thanks," her brother said, before looking at the single sheet of paper. "This just says, 'PLAY BASEBALL FOR THE NATIONAL TEAM.'"

"They could use a good two-way player," his sister pointed out. "Besides, that's Plan A. Plan B is on the other side."

"Oh, right. Let's see... 'Join the Marines as a tanker because they don't get deployed anywhere, so you're less likely to get shot at.'"

"Transmigrators of Time Releases Riftworld TTRPG," ign.com, 5 November 1935

We're no strangers to reviewing cheap cash-ins. It seems like every day, there's a new game or book or movie that's chasing trends for a quick buck, and they usually aren't that very good.

Thankfully, Riftworld, a Tabletop Role-Playing Game by Alice Ross and Tom Fitzroy, is neither of those things. Not only do Ross and Fitzroy bring the same care and attention to detail that they did for the tabletop tie-in for Shannon Wu's Twenty Years' Difference, but the game is just fun to play.

Riftworld takes place in the present, in the wake of humanity developing the technology to open portals, known as a "Rifts," to other timeline's Earths. Players, known as "Journeyers," can enter these Rifts and go on adventures in this alternate world.

The worldbuilding is where the game shines, as both Ross and Fitzroy have created an alternate earth so different from our own that one could practically spend hours at a time exploring. And I say this because that is exactly what happened when we tried it out here in the studio.

The starter world with the base game, known as "Angloterra," is a world that examines just what would happen if the British Empire was even stronger than it was at its peak. It doesn't matter if you're playing in the British Dominion of North America, the byzantine British Raj, or the territories of the British East China Company, because the lore is deep and lovingly-crafted.

While the mechanics definitely take cues from Dungeons and Dragons, the game uses the innovative "CODECS" system of skills with a D20 system that seeks to balance skill checks with competencies.

Moreover, the game's focus on a non-magical and technologically-grounded setting creates a distinguishable difference between itself and other TTPRPGs like Cyberpunk 1977 and Dungeons and Dragons.

The combat system does seem a bit unbalanced though. Rather than the balance between ranged attacks and melee found in D&D and Pathfinder, Riftworld's combat is largely-focused around firearms.

Which may seem unfair at first for a melee build, but it's your own fault if you die from trying to stab a guy with an assault rifle. It takes some getting used to, but cover is your friend, and it's a feature for a reason.

Now enough about combat. Let's talk player-generated content.

Players are more than welcome to create their own riftworlds to explore and discover in the setting. As the Rifts are canonically developed to open up to different worlds, players' adventures are limited only by their own imaginations.

No, seriously, this is something they've been actively encouraging.

Both Fitzroy and Ross coincided the launch with the announcement of the "Riftworld Player Partnership Program," where players are encouraged to submit their own riftworlds for review. Should they pass the process and agree to the Partnership, their content will be published in a Community Expansion that'll generate royalties for them.

And that is before we get to official expansions that have already been announced. Details are still few and far between, but the first two expansions will be "Pax Romana," set in a riftworld dominated by a Rome that never fell, and "Khaganate," which explores a world where steppe nomads continued to reign supreme into the modern day.

But that's all in the future.

Right now, Riftworld is a promising TTRPG that evokes a sense of curiosity and wonder that more than makes up for the overpowered firearms that let you shoot first and ask questions later.

"What Is The American Power Initiative?" energy.gov.us

Clean, cheap power has been the goal of every American over the last hundred years. From coal to oil to natural gas, our energy sector has progressed to cleaner fossil fuels that provide energy for everything from manufacturing to transportation.

However, many have asked if it was possible to have a cheap energy source that is clean. While natural gas is certainly cheap, it is a pollutant. And although solar energy is clean, it is neither cheap nor space-efficient.

The Small Modular Reactor (SMR) provides the best of both worlds. This Thorium-based nuclear reactor is both cost-efficient, and its power is cheaper and cleaner than its fossil fuel counterparts.

The first SMR was built in America and deployed in San Francisco, where it provides the entire Bay Area with a new, cleaner, source of energy. To this day, over a hundred SMRs have been deployed across the United States, and they are projected to generate about one-fifth of the nation's energy this year and rapidly-growing.

This success, as well as our cooperation with our partners in China and Latin America, has led to many people to think bigger and beyond the borders of the United States.

Thus the American Power Initiative (API) was founded. Signed by the United States, Mexico, Central America, Panama, Gran Colombia, Peru-Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guyana, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the Caribbean Confederation, this pan-American project will see SMRs built and then deployed all over the Americas to provide cheap, clean energy for all.

The plan involves the mass production of Small Modular reactors, which will be assembled the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina using parts assembled in the United States.

At the same time, local professionals will be trained at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the installation, maintenance, and operation of the SMRs.

Fuel will be sourced from Thorium deposits in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho, then refined in the United States.

These new programs are expected to create approximately twenty thousand good-paying new jobs, of which nineteen thousand will not require more than a college degree.

In doing so, the Americas will fully-achieve energy independence with clean, nearly-limitless, cheap energy that that will give the American taxpayer a lower energy bill.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Can SMRs be used to manufacture nuclear weapons?

The manufacture and proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials is of the utmost concern when it comes to the manufacture and use of MSRs.

However, it is difficult, if not impossible, to reliably manufacture nuclear weapons from Thorium due to its non-fissile nature, which means it will not explode when packed together.

Furthermore, the Uranium and Plutonium isotopes present create a mixture of isotopes that renders them unsuitable for weapon manufacturing.

Coalition of Nations inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will provide oversight to ensure the safe operation of the SMRs and the safe disposal of any and all waste materials.

Where does the waste go?

Any nuclear waste is transferred to a tamper-proof receptacle where it will remain until proper disposal can occur.

During the disposal process, the nuclear waste is bombarded with lasers to render it inert after half an hour, after which it can be handled safely and sent for further treatment.

Are SMRs and Thorium safe?

All Small Modular Reactors are designed with a fusible plug that will melt if power is cut or the reactor exceeds a set temperature.

If this occurs, the plug will melt and the fuel will drain into a tamper-proof receptacle, which will prevent a meltdown and prepare the SMR for decommissioning and replacement.

Thorium mining is done in an open pit, which limits the miners' exposure to radioactive materials to safe levels.

Moreover, the high natural concentrations of thorium will mitigate the environmental damage from open-pit mining by requiring fewer mines to be dug.

Transmigrators of Time Game Shop, City of Hong Kong, Republic of China, 24 December 1935

"Riftworld's sold out here, too," James Fitzroy happily announced to his husband and friend. "I'd say that's a job well done!"

"Wait, exactly how many copies did we sell?" his husband Tom asked him. "Thousands?"

"Tens of thousands," Alice Ross chimed in. "Once you factor in all the digital copies sold on Steam. They're about the same price, but the lack of overhead and logistics makes it worth the hassle."

"Tell me about it," James breathed. He'd been working at TOT's publishing house for over a decade at this point, and logistics were always a hassle. "Who would have thought that the hardest part of creating a tabletop RPG where you travel between worlds through Rifts would be the easy part?"

"Every single independent game developer who has ever existed," Tom dryly pointed out. "It's one thing to make a game. It's another thing to actually get people to buy it."

"And a whole other thing where we have to actively avoid a Satanic Panic," Alice chimed in. "Even if we don't have any magic or fantasy races. Just alternate realities and technology that definitely isn't magic."

"Right," James agreed. "As we all know, religious fanatics are fine with science and do not in any way act like weirdos about it."

"Leaked Script For Socialist Anti-Capitalist Film Is Just Footage of Uptime Tech Bros Talking" The Onion, January 1936

PARIS, FRANCE

Moviegoers and socialalists alike have been buzzing about the newest arthouse film from the heart of the Internationale, but recently-leaked scripts from the Parisian Film Collective have left many confused about some of their proposed scripts. While there is Chaplin's much-anticipated The Love of Humanity that is set to be released next month, a submitted script has caught the attention of many involved.

The script, titled, Diabolus Ex Homine, is a cautionary tale of the excesses of capitalism. While the Parisian Film Collective is no stranger to anti-capitalism themes, cinephiles were taken aback when the script solely consisted of things like uptimer CEO Elon Musk inexplicably callinge a diving expert a pedophile and a two hour supercut of the All In Podcast, which was hosted by uptimer venture capitalists.

While the concept was criticized as outlandish, writer Gerard Laurent defended his work, saying, "The intent of the film is to demonstrate the sheer intolerable nature of capitalism, with how it seems to elevate some of the most vapid, insufferable people in the world who believe that their financial acumen makes them an expert on everything."

In response to his statement, critics have given it a second chance, with much more-favorable responses.

"While it is unorthodox," said one anonymous critic, "It does find a new way to argue against the flaws and excesses of capitalism... by painting its self-purported champions as the most annoying people on the planet. I mean, have you listened to these people? Just five minutes of listening to these people makes me want to abolish money and bring forth Fully-Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism so that my grandchildren and I will never hear another word from them."

 

[ChrisProvidence]

Chinese Space Agency Headquarters, Wenchang, Hainan Province, Republic of China, 21 February 1936

Interviews were hardly a new thing for Amelia Earhart. She'd had her fair share when she'd circumnavigated the globe in a jet, and that was before she was the first American in space.

Which, if she was being honest with herself, she still couldn't believe despite having done it multiple times at this point.

But this time, the stakes were higher. Quite literally, in this case, when they were sending to the moon.

"Luna-1" they had called it, if for no other reason than political considerations. After all, they couldn't put it in Chinese or French or American English if meant the other two sides would be offended.

So mythology it was.

The same could be said of the crew.


(Amelia Earhart)

As far as American aviators went, it wasn't as if Washington would pick Charles Lindbergh. The Nazis may not exist, but Washington wasn't about to let the first American in space be an openly racist antisemite. That, coupled with Glenn Curtiss' continued recovery from his appendectomy last year left her as the frontrunner for Luna-1.

France was fairly-different. While they had several notable aviators of their own, that number was much lower when it factored in "Not supporting the OAS coup," and "Not collaborating with the Nazis in the Lost History." The latter had been an unwritten rule, but Earhart was hardly surprised when they picked Alfred Heurtaux, the first French astronaut and a survivor of Buchenwald in the Lost History.


(Alfred Heurtaux)

That just left China, the ones who would be footing the cost of this entire expedition. Now, Earhart wasn't much of an economist, but she had a feeling that "Being the ones who would pay for this" allowed them to select two pilots. And so Tom Gunn and Nadine Hwang had been selected to round off the crew.


(Commander Tom Gunn)

There were those that would argue that Hwang had been selected for her gender and sexual orientation, but Hwang had been the leader of Earhart's first spaceflight, and that was enough for Earhart to put her life in the Chinese woman's hands once again.


(Nadine Hwang)

Quite literally, in this case, as while Gunn was the Commander of this mission, Hwang would be the one piloting the lunar module.

This was a fancy way to say that it was her job to get them there and bring them back.

Edgefield, South Carolina, 15 March 1933



"We are surrounded on all sides," said the Grand Master of the Knights of the Golden Circle. "And we must fight on every front."

"To the West are the Asians," he began. The crowd knew full well he meant the Chinese, but the same could be said of the Japanese, the Korean, or even the Filipino. "These people are the Great Replacers," who use their wealth to corrupt our moral values and replace us as people with themselves and their ilk."

"There is the Negro and the Hispanic in the South," the Grandmaster spat, "Those who, if given an inch, would like nothing more than to seek revenge against the good white people like yourselves and I. Whether it be through violence or out-breeding us to extinction, the threat is all the same!"

"The socialists to the North are hardly better, what with their pernicious desire to send our society into turmoil and upheaval. They may say they are for the common man, but that is the excuse they use to burn down society and rebuild it in their own degenerate image!"

"And last but not least are the Papists in the East! Italian, Portuguese, Irish, French, it doesn't matter when they want nothing more than for Washington to take orders from the Pope in Rome!"

That, of all things, had gotten the most boos and jeers. While there were many who recoiled in disgust at the mention of race-mixing, socialism, and the "Great Replacers," as the Grand Master had so frequently called them, anti-Catholicism was an old habit that would die hard.

"But these," he shouted, once the crowd had finished booing, "These menaces pale in comparison to the Fifth Column that has grown in our own communities! Yes, I am talking about our own people, our brothers and sisters, who aid and abet these people in the destruction of the human race! Be they Testers, Unionists, Employers of non-whites, or those fools in the Tester churches, they are unknowingly contributing to the destruction and replacement of true, good Americans like you and I!"

"If we are to save our people," he crescendoed, "Then we must make our wayward brothers and sisters see the error of their ways. Our communities must be made to see the light of our cause and join us in our crusade against the surrounding darkness."

"So fight," he roared, "Fight, my brothers! Fight against the traitors and their masters who would do us harm! Fight for America! Fight for your communities!"

Anchorage, Alaska, United States of America, 20 May 1936

Michael Chen hated snow. It was wet, cold, and it got everywhere.

But this was part of his job as a member of the Board of Directors of SinoRail. Well, not exactly, but he'd always been more of a hands-on sort of guy, and they needed to send somebody over to Alaska to evaluate the American side of the Bering Sea Tunnel.

Plus, it's not like there's anyone else on the board who knows engineering, and this beats sitting in a board room all day.

Even if I'm freezing my balls off.

At least there isn't a Russian terrorist group around here.

"So," he said to the foreman, "Everything seems to be going along pretty well. You have your power source, and the plasma cutter is making good progress. What is your estimated time of arrival for those?"

"Give or take a month," the American foreman figured. "Assuming we meet the Russian team in the middle, of course."

"Well, all the metrics seem to show you're on the right path, so you have that going for you. It's like hitting a bullet with another bullet, but that's why they sent all this gear up here, right?"

"More or less. You worked on the Taiwan Strait Tunnel, right?"

"'Worked' is giving me too much credit," Michael admitted. "I'm basically the go-between for the Board and the workers. Board needs somebody who knows what the workers and engineers are talking about, while the workers and engineers need somebody to speak up for them. It's the best of both worlds and the ultimate job security."

"I'll take your word for it," the American chuckled. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Shoot. Not like I'm going anywhere."

"Your accent. Been meaning to ask about that, ya know? Most Chinese guys I've talked to speak Chinese with, well, a Chinese accent. Then suddenly, Nanjing sends a guy over who sounds like he's from Southern California! No offense of course."

"None taken. Glad to see I still have my accent from when I grew up there."

"Oh? Which part?"

"Irvine. Grew up there with my parents and my buddy Marty until Mom got a job in Taiwan."

"Sounds like it," the foreman figured. "I'm from Anaheim, myself. Or as they used to call it, 'Klan-aheim.'"

"Yeah... they still called it that back in the future. Some things never change, I guess."

"Eh, these days, they call themselves the 'Knights of the Golden Circle.' Same difference for the most part."

"Yeah? So what is the difference?"

"Not much. At least they stopped calling themselves wizards, so they don't sound like weirdo assholes."

Office of l'Humanite, Paris, France, 6 June 1936



"It's remarkable," Elise Brodeur told her uncle, "How often you fit into a pattern."

"Oh?"

"Almost everything you say boils down to, 'Do not act like off-putting freaks when you're trying to spread socialism.'"

"Huh..." Now that he thought about it, she did have a point. "I guess that's what happens when you're trying to convince people. Would you like a hypothetical scenario?"

"Sure," Elise agreed. It wasn't as if she had anything else to proofread right now. "So long as you don't say it hypothetically, solely for the sake of argument."

"Good. Okay, so let's say, hypothetically, solely for the sake of argument-"

"You said it that way on purpose, didn't you?" his niece groaned. Jean could only chuckle. "I hate you sometimes, Uncle."

"Love you too, Elise. But this isn't a hypothetical where I'll stack the deck in my favor so you can't win. It's an article I wrote, years ago when I was a little younger than you."

"What was the article?"

"I think it was something like, 'The Human Case for Socialism.' Or something like that - It's been over two decades. Anyways, I gave the case for socialism on the grounds of prosperity, stability, and practicality, rather than a call for mobs and guillotines. It was a choice, and I made that choice on purpose."

"Because you wanted to give a more-positive argument that would appeal to those you were trying to convince."

"Precisely! Which do you think would do a better job at convincing the average person who is not as socialist that he should become one: The promise of fair contracts and pay, or the promise that we will decapitate their boss?"

"I suppose it would depend on how much they hated their boss, uncle."

"Perhaps," Jean chuckled. "But generally speaking, most people were more concerned about a fair contract, rather than decapitating Charles Louis-Dreyfus."

"I see... Did it work?"

"I'd like to think so," he figured, "I doubt we'd have an entire computer network dedicated to managing our economy if it didn't."

Headquarters of the Federation of Workers' Cooperatives, Kyiv, Kyiv Governorate, Russian Empire, 14 July 1936

Nestor Makhno wasn't one for the cities.

No, he was a man who loved the countryside he had grown up in, and Kyiv was anything but that.

While yes, Makhno understood that said city was absolutely necessary due to having the industries that supplied the libertarian state-within-a-state he'd helped found, he found the place to be... constraining, to say the least.

The fact that he was in the office of the Federation of Workers' Cooperatives didn't particularly help things. Sure he knew that offices like these were directly-responsible for the day-to-day logistics and decision-making, as well as the fact that the organization was a workplace democracy from the bottom to the top, but it was still a corporate office building in all but name.

That, and he didn't like wearing a suit. Offices and boardrooms he could understand, as they were necessary to keep things running. But suits were "a bit much," as the Uptimers would say. Especially when "Business Casual" was the most people here were wearing.

"...In conclusion," the democratically-elected executive (for lack of a better term) continued, "Productivity has increased an additional five percent due to the upgrades in mechanization, and the Mondragon Cooperative in Spain has voted to join our network of cooperatives. I have been informed by our colleagues that several more cooperatives in Lisbon, Barcelona, and Madrid will be holding votes to join in the near future..."

It was times like this that he was happy with the concept of delegation. He wasn't an economist or a logistician by any means, and office politics were a foreign concept to him. But delegation meant that he could be elected to the office of President of the Federation of Workers' Cooperatives and not have to handle all of the day-to-day operations.

Makhno was a hands-on man, and this arrangement allowed him to take a hands-on approach to most things.

Unfortunately for him, this was not one of those things, and there were a few more hours left in the meeting.

University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States of America, 4 December 1936

(University of Texas at Austin)

With Roosevelt and Wallace re-elected last month, the National Youth Administration's Winter Convention would be the last event of the year. And given last month's success, it was no surprise that Secretary of State John Nance Garner was here to listen to Lyndon Johnson's speech.

All the more reason not to screw this speech up, then. God knows I've come too far to fuck it up now.

And if things went right, he wouldn't.

Sure, the speech would probably piss some of the far-right off, but if Johnson knew anything about his last few years in Congress, it was that Americans have been in a patriotic mood for the last two decades.

There was still prejudice, of course, but Johnson had become a master of saying what he wanted to say, in a way that other people who wanted to hear it.

Hell, with enough practice and preparation, he'd been able to convince people that they'd thought of whatever he'd been saying.

"You are the future of our nation," Lyndon Johnson said to the crowd of young Americans. "A future where all Americans can live up to their full potential, just as so many of you hard-working folks have shown over the last year."

Now, this was all retail politics for the people who would, God-willing, be his ticket to the national stage, but Johnson meant every word of it. He could

"And I mean it when I say all Americans. Not just Northerners or Southerners, Whites or Blacks, Catholics or Protestants. All Americans, for that is what we all are."

"This is a nation that history itself has shown to have so much potential. The greatest minds and the greatest goods can come out of our nation, so long as all of us roll up our sleeves and rise to the occasion."

"This potential is a testament to who we are as Americans. Because no matter your color, your race, or your religion, the fact that we are willing to roll up our sleeves and put in the work is what makes us Americans."

"There is a saying from the Lost History: 'You can go to Japan and live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or the Ottoman Empire, but you cannot become a German or an Ottoman. But anybody can come to America to live and become an American.'"

"You all are proof of that. I have met so many of you over this last year as Deputy Director of the NYA. Some of your families have been here for centuries, while others less than a decade. Yet the fact remains that all of you are here, united by that exceptionally-American spirit of hard work for the better life that brought so many of us to this country."

"And as your fellow American, and the Deputy Director of the National Youth Administration, it is my honor to open the 1936 National Youth Administration Convention-"

And then it hit him.

He didn't know what it was, but he heard it a second later.

And again.

And again.

And again.

"Down!" one of the Secret Service shouted, before pulling him to safety. Johnson could barely make out the trail of blood coming from the floor.

My blood?

It wasn't as if he could focus, though. Not with the cacophony of gunfire and rig

He perished that thought, though, when the sight of Secretary Garner's lifeless body lay behind the podium, with a blood-colored stain right around his chest.

"Sniper spotted at the clock tower," a voice said over the Secret Service's radio, "Requesting permission to engage."

"Granted. Plant the bastard."

A second later, an audible bang rang out.

"Target neutralized," a voice said over the radio, but Johnson couldn't hear the rest of it.

Everything was just too cold and dark for him to care.

The White House, Washington, District of Columbia, 5 December 1936

"Good evening, and welcome to the NBC nightly news," said the anchorman. "I am Ronald Reagan. Tonight, our top story is the Austin Massacre."

"We are sad to report that the death toll has climbed to twenty-seven individuals today, in what is the largest mass-shooting in American history."

"The Austin Police Department and the Texas Rangers have reported the capture of suspect William Dudley Pelley. Mr. Pelley is charged with the murder of Attorney General John Nance Garner and twenty-six other individuals, as well as the attempted murder of National Youth Administration Deputy Director Lyndon Baines Johnson and one hundred other individuals during the Deputy Director's speech at the University of Texas at Austin."

"Deputy Director Johnson has been flown to the Houston Methodist Hospital, where he is in stable condition."

"Federal and State authorities have opened an investigation into the shooting. If you have any information, please call the following number for the Federal Bureau of Investigation-"

The TV shut off, and President Roosevelt turned around to see Eleanor with the remote.

"I was watching that."

"You've been watching that for the last three hours. You will be addressing the nation this evening."

"Of course. It's a lot to take in, Eleanor. Jack is dead."

"And he will be missed," his wife told him, both softly and sternly. "But the nation needs to hear from its President. Now, more than ever."

Headquarters of the Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, Washington, District of Columbia, 1 January 1937


(Portrait of Director Eliot Ness, Director of the Bureau of Investigation)

Director Eliot Ness was not a happy man.

He'd made a name for himself in the early 1920s, back when the Bureau was going after every single Klansman they could get their hands on. It was hardly a surprise when one of their number had tried (and failed) to kill President Roosevelt in the previous decade.

"The Incorruptibles," as he and his men were called. The Klan had tried everything in the book to get to them, from bribes to blackmail to outright threatening their families, but he and his fellow agents held their ground as the Klan was dismantled, piece-by-piece.

These new men, these "Knights of the Golden Circle," were a different breed, though. Gone were the open-air meetings, replaced with compartmentalized cells meeting in back rooms and a system of vouching that'd made them much harder to infiltrate.

That said… they didn't have the same level of awareness when it came to technology. Far from the compartmentalization of their various cells in the "real world," various members recruited and talked openly on seemingly-private social media platforms.

Social media platforms that were owned by the Chinese, who had no equivalent of the Privacy Amendment, Not that it would have even qualified in this case, as the perps themselves had triggered the threat detection algorithm on the platform.

This in turn qualified as "Probable Cause" as per Doe v. United States, in which the Brandeis Court ruled that the former's Right to Privacy had not been violated by the Federal Government, as his social media posts and private messages calling for Senator Smedley Butler's assassination were in fact Probable Cause.

Given that precedent, the KGC's repeated tripping of the platforms' threat algorithms served as the Probable Cause that allowed him and his men to go after the Knights, once the intel had been forwarded from Nanjing.

It had started with low-level recruits. "Squires," as they were called. They were the key to identifying the rest of the organization from the ground up.

It wasn't much at first, but he and his men could work with that.

 

[ChrisProvidence]

Rio De Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro State, Brazil, 20 February 1937


(Rio De Janeiro, Brazil)

"Mail for you," Ana da Silva told her husband as he walked in. "Another flier from the Knights."

"I thought I told them to stop mailing them to us," Henrique sighed, before looking at the symbol. "Multiple times."

"I think they're mailing them to everyone. Maybe one day, they'll be smart enough to mail one to somebody who isn't Catholic."

"The day that Hell freezes over, Ana. Where the Hell do they get these, anyways? This is the third one this week!"

"Print shop?" Her husband shrugged. "These fliers are cheap to print, so I guess they just send it to everyone."

"I get that," he figured, before pulling out his lighter. "So, who's the rich idiot who's paying for this?"

Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan, United States of America, 1 March 1937


(Ford Dearborn Plant)

As far as business went… Well, it was still going?

Henry Ford knew that it would never compare to his alternate self's success, but he'd managed to maintain at least some market share for himself in the Americas.

Even if those Dodge bastards sold out to the Chinese.

He'd never forgive them for what they did. The Model T had been the quintessential American car until those damned traitors put an American emblem on a Chinese vehicle. How the Hell was he supposed to compete with a hundred years of technology?

The short answer was that he couldn't.

Dodge (and by extension, the Asiatics) had taken the American motor industry by storm. Sales for the Model T had practically dried up overnight, and he'd needed to scrape every dollar he could to get the Model F pickup truck onto the market and carve out a niche for himself.

And that was before the socialists started getting into government. Unleaded gas he could understand, but they were practically kneecapping car infrastructure in favor of bicycles, buses, and trains. He'd built his fair share of buses, but they paled in comparison to the Model T's former success.

That was how he ended up here, as just one of the manufacturers in an industry he'd once dominated. All because that fucking island had to get sent back through an act of God.

His phone rang, breaking his stupor.

"Call for you, Mr. Ford. It's from a… Mr. Welch? Says he only wants to talk to you."

"Send it through," he answered, before the line connected. "Robert. Good to hear from you."

"Likewise, Henry. My men will be dropping off the 'parts' for you in a few hours. How soon can they get to where they're needed?"

Ford knew what the candy magnate meant. "Parts" meant money, and 'get them to where they're needed' meant laundering them through his businesses so they could fund the Knights. It was a bold plan, but it was worth the risk.

"Within a few hours," Ford promised, "Now, this isn't just a social call, is it?"

"Hardly. Bilbo's asking for more money."

"Bilbo's always asking for more money. You tell that hick bastard that he's going to have to fundraise from other people. That's what Talmadge does, and you don't see him complaining!"

"Talmadge has Georgia under his thumb. Bilbo doesn't, and Harrison's been turning the planters against him, ever since he founded the True Patriots."

"No wonder he keeps asking me to cut him a check," Ford muttered. "Fine. But you tell him to start pressing his base for donations, or find some other way to keep him funded."

"Of course," said the chocolatier. "I have to go to a meeting. Take care, Henry."

"You too, Robert," Ford finished, before putting the phone down.

At least something's going right for once.

Counterintelligence Service Headquarters, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, 10 April 1937


(Headquarters of the Counterintelligence Service)

Looking back, they couldn't call it the Okhrana. Not after all that Diterikhs had done all those years ago.

Director Sergey Votsekhovsky knew that, and he was happy to have had minimal, if any, part in that madness. He'd been in the Army, but a post all the way in Chita kept him away from the machinations of Saint Petersburg and Moscow.

At least it had, until the Counterintelligence Service was formed. General Wrangel needed men he could trust, and he fit the bill. Of course, said bill was basically, "Competent and not a Diterikhs supporter," but Votsekhovsky managed to be both.

His career after that had been… interesting, to say the least. Spying on his fellow soldiers was a loathsome task, but something had to be done, lest DIterikhs and Denikin finish running the nation into the ground. Suspects were investigated, the guilty were purged, and he was promoted to Deputy Director under Bulak-Balachowicz for his accomplishments.

That was all years and a world war ago. These days, he had a single focus on his mind:

The Black Hundreds.

Votsekhovsky thought they'd been purged completely after Diterikhs' fall. It was a fair assessment, if he was being honest, seeing that he'd personally overseen the investigation and prosecutions. Last he'd heard about the originals, they were either dead in a ditch or rotting in a jail cell for treason during the Great War.

Which means they are likely a "copycat," a self-proclaimed successor. Though it is likely that they have the same ideology as the originals.

Names, though. I need names.

The reports he'd received were… troubling, to say the least. While the original Black Hundreds would march through Odessa, this new organization seemed to be more-secretive. Marches would still occur, but the members would wear masks and disperse behind closed doors.

There were sympathizers, though. Those who may or may not be members, but they would speak highly of the Black Hundreds that they might as well be.

They probably are members, though. I would be more surprised if they were not.

So Votsekhovsky looked through the files his men had given him, and eventually he'd settled on a name.

Boris Lvovich Brasov. The Tsar's former spokesman, he is currently a known media personality. A former Lieutenant during the Great War, he is a known antisemite and Diterikhs apologist.

His continued survival can be attributed to his civilian status when DIterikhs' supporters were purged from the military.

Votsekhovsky closed the file and breathed.

It wasn't much, but he had his man.

"Governor Eugene Talmadge Joins True Patriot Party," abc.com, 21 April 1937


(Governor Eugene Talmadge (TP-GA)

The Georgia governor is yet another defection to the newly-founded "True Patriot Party of the United States of America," or "True Patriots or short." The governor made this statement today in Atlanta, following the Brandeis Court's ruling in Hu v. Oregon that anti-miscegenation laws violated the Equal Protection, RIght to Privacy, and Due Process clauses of the Constitution.

Citing "Irreparable ideological agreements with Washington," the Governor of Georgia announced that he was "left with no other option but to join the True Patriots."

Talmadge is another in a line of conservative-leaning politicians who has left to join Senator Theodore G. Bilbo's new political party that he has founded this year. Other notable politicians include Senator Bilbo himself, as well as former Farmer-Labor Representative Ernest Lundeen of Minnesota, and Representative James Eastland of Mississippi

NBC Nightly News, 5 May 1937



REAGAN: Good evening and welcome to NBC Nightly News. I am your host, Ronald Reagan. Our top story tonight is the foiling of an "Operation Black Cat" by the Bureau of Investigation.

REAGAN: This afternoon, Bureau Director Eliot Ness announced an impromptu press conference at the Department of Justice.

(Screen cuts to a playback of Ness' press conference)

NESS: Today, I am pleased to announce that Bureau of Intelligence agents have foiled a plot by the Knights of the Golden Circle to seize several islands in the Caribbean Federation.This plan, referred to internally as "Operation Black Cat," involved the accumulation of funds, weapons, and manpower that would be transported from Miami to Guantanamo, after which the members of the KGC would be deployed to their staging areas throughout the Antilles.

NESS: While much information is still classified, we have apprehended several suspects involved in the process. As per Bureau policy, we will not be releasing names at this time.

(Camera cuts back to Reagan)

REAGAN: "Operation Black Cat" is just one of what are several suspected plots by the terrorist organization. The most prominent of which, as our viewers may recall, was the attempted kidnapping of Senator Smedley Butler in early 1935. In response to this development, Senator Butler, as Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a statement.

(Camera cuts to Butler at the Capitol Building)

BUTLER: It is no surprise that this organization would stoop so low as to attempt an outright coup to build a white supremacist Mecca in the Caribbean. These men are authoritarians, would-be dictators who would have been little better than petty kings without titles. And while my colleagues in the True Patriots of America might hold them up as heroes, make no mistake that these men would be no better than the very tyrants our nation rebelled against.

(Camera cuts back to Reagan)

REAGAN: So far, the KGC have not released a statement either confirming or denying their involvement in Operation Black Cat.

"The RISE of Technocratic Socialist Economics," by Kim Mun-Hee, Popular Science June 1925



It has been five years since France began using its Réseau International de Simulation Économique (Internationale Economic Simulation Network). What does it have to show for it?

Well, for starters, one could look at the average 4.1% GDP growth per quarter. One could argue that such metrics are irrelevant in a socialist economy, it is a good metric for comparing the amount of goods and services produced. Furthermore, this is a full percentage point above its economic growth before its implementation.

Then there is the issue of food waste. Since the implementation of RISE, food waste has dropped a staggering 25% across the board. Since RISE's implementation, economic planners have been able to implement a "Just-Enough-In-Time" inventory system while minimizing the risk of supply shocks and mitigating shortages through early detection functions.

In short, RISE allows producers and manufacturers to maximize logistical productivity while minimizing waste. Food that would otherwise be wasted is reallocated by RISE towards the National Stockpile Program, which prepares, preserves, stores, and later distributes the otherwise-wasted food products for the government's Baseline Nutritional Program and aid.

Then there is the issue of quality of life. While the French socialist is far from the fabled "Fully-Automated Luxury Gay Space Capitalism," as online leftist circles like to call it, the rise of automation in machinery and optimization in logistics has led to a higher job satisfaction and lower stress levels during work hours.

Given these advantages of RISE, it is no surprise that the system is being expanded throughout Western Europe, with the German, Italian, Iberian, Irish, and British governments taking steps towards integration. French advisors have noted that this will be a multi-year process, but have also expressed optimism at their fellow socialists' interest in the technocratic network.

Elysee has announced that RISE will also be expanding its network to Africa. As part of the French Republic, West Africa is the primary source for much of the Republic's raw materials, and the lack of optimization in Africa has been a major bottleneck in RISE's efficiency calculations.

Of course, this is all in the future. Right now, RISE is revolutionizing industry and logistics, and it might very well be the future of socialist economics. The human worker may not be fully-removed from the economic equations, but RISE has greatly eased their burdens over the last half-decade.

Cape Town, Republic of South Africa, 9 July 1937


(Cape Town, South Africa)

It had taken half a decade, putting down an insurrection of armed racists, and the actual construction process, but it was done.

Finally, Thembo Makola could sit back and enjoy the fruits of his labor. Of course, said fruits of his labor were spreadsheets, but he would take a bit of boredom over the constant worry that some Holdout would take potshots at the construction crews.

They didn't, for the most part, and the ones that did were quickly killed by counter-snipers and suicide drones, but the paranoia was always there.

It turns out work is slower when there's the constant fear of somebody shooting you with a sniper rifle.

That was all in the past, though. Even then, work had picked up as the Holdouts' resistance died down. Unsurprisingly, the fear of getting shot at by a racist with a sniper rifle died down when the racists with sniper rifles died out or were deported.

And now? Now, he could deal with more pressing matters, like making the trains run on time.

That wasn't a hyperbole. As an employee of the Ministry of Transportation, his literal job was making sure the trains ran on time, and he'd taken to it well.

It wasn't like we had much of a choice. Most people here can't afford their own car, so trains were our only option until the roads were paved.

Even then, I'll still take a train over a car. I mean, if I'm going to spend eight hours making them run on time, the least I can get is not having to drive myself home every night.

Nouakchott, Mauritania, French Republic, 12 August 1937


(Nouakchott, French Mauritania)

"When they said that we would fight to free people from their chains," Corporal Antoine Reval thought aloud, "I didn't think we would literally be freeing people from their chains."

"There's only so much that education, socialism, and having the Caliph discredit an interpretation that being a good slave will get you into Heaven," Sergeant Henri Alain muttered, before handing him a rifle. "Sometimes, you have to solve your problems with violence."

It made enough sense to Antoine. Sure, a socialist state meant that escaped slaves would have a life after slavery where their needs would be met. And yes, educating people showed them that a life outside of slavery was not only possible, but that slavery was not the natural order of things.

And it goes without saying that having a Caliph calling bullshit on them using Islam to justify it sure helped a lot.

But at the end of the day, most slaves stayed slaves because it was almost impossible to escape to safety when you, your slaver, and your enslaved family were in the middle of nowhere. In a desert.

That was where men like him and Henri came in.

If the anti-slavery laws would not be enforced out in the desert, then soldiers like them would go into the desert and free those slaves in person.

Via helicopter.

With guns.

Which was exactly what they intended to do, once they walked into the hangar.

"Ready to go?" Sergeant Ismail Babana asked the two men, "Helicopter's ready when you are."

"Team should be prepped and ready in thirty, Ismail," Alain promised, "Once they're loaded, Operation John Brown is a go."

Ishigaki Military Base, Ishigaki, Taiwan, Republic of China, 30 September 1937


(Ishigaki Harbor)

Basic training had been something. It wasn't necessarily hard, per se, but Chen Lin was a two-way player who trained to be the best hitter and pitcher he could be.

Still, it was different. More shooting and getting tear-gassed, and less pitching.

Similar amount of cardio, though.

That was all in the past two months, though. As of now, he was a Private First Class in the Republic of China Marine Corps.

Sure, that might be because he'd been a National Flower Class Scout when he was a kid, but he'd made it through basic training, and he was damned proud of it.

"So," Lin asked his family, "How do I look?"

"Like your father, when I met him," his mother recalled. "But taller."

"And not as handsome," the man himself added. "So no tank for you."

"Baba, I'm working in the motor pool," Lin promised, "Just like you used to."

"I thought you were a tanker," his sister Morgan recalled. "Or was it logistics?"

"All of the above," Lin's old man sighed, "And trainer, too, because we were that hard-up for manpower."

'Welcome to the future, old man."

"Nervous?"

"Yeah. No turning back, going to college, then serving as an officer, is there?" His father shook his head. "But yeah, I think I'm ready. You?"

"First time you two'll be away from home," Michael said, turning so he could see both of his uniformed children. "Plus, I don't like the idea of you two being in harm's way."

"Conscripts can't be deployed into warzones unless they volunteer," Morgan pointed out. "We'll be fine."

"Yeah, I know," the old man relented. "You two are my kids, so I know you'll be brave and damned good at whatever it is you do."

"You know I'm here too," the twins' mother chimed in. "Right?"

"...Right. Sorry, dear. Let me rephrase that: You two are our kids, so I know you'll be brave, damned good at whatever it is you do, and smart enough not to ram a barge into the coast because we ran out of landing craft."

Aleksandrovsk, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, 31 October 1937

(Outskirts of Aleksandrovsk)

Mykhailo Kurylenko was a simple administrator, whose main concern for the last decade or so had been maximizing crop yields. He'd gotten quite good at it, if the sharp rise in his metrics was anything to go by. Or to put it another way, "Crop yields going up" was good, and "Infant mortality going down," was even better.

Of course, "Our convoys keep getting shot up by bandits," had thrown a wrench into things, but that was hardly the most-pressing concern right now.

Because fifteen minutes ago, a group of armed men started opening fire on the local commune. They didn't even say anything; just drove up in a few trucks and started shooting everyone.

He didn't know who they were or what they wanted, and if he was being honest, he didn't fucking care. These were armed men who wanted nothing more than to kill him, his comrades, and the burn their commune to the ground.

Scratch that. They had killed his comrades, and he'd be damned if they did the same to him.

"Reloading!" he shouted, before replacing the magazine on his rifle. He still knew how to shoot from his Army days, but that had been over a decade ago. "Not as easy as shooting unarmed convoys, now is it, assholes?!"

From the way those men were hiding behind the pickup trucks, Mykhailo was fairly certain that the answer was a resounding "No."

"Get down!" Danylo shouted, before reloading his own rifle. "Who the fuck are these guys?"

"No idea! How many are left? A dozen?"

"Probably!" Danylo fired off a shot. "A dozen minus one! See that building over there?""

"The radio tower? You mean the one across a hundred meters of open ground with no cover in sight?"

"Do you have any better ideas?" Which, if Mykhailo was being honest, he probably didn't. Right now, the options were flanking or waiting for the mass of armed men to move in. "Well I do. See that fire extinguisher on that cart over there?"

"Yeah!" It was kind of hard not to, when it was a bright red canister next to a dead attacker. "What about it?"

"Think you can hit it?," Danylo asked him? One shot and a white explosion later answered for him. "Thanks."

"Hey, what about the rest of us?"

"Keep them distracted!"

Well, not like we can do anything else. This is not what I had planned for today.

I'm an accountant, for pity's sake! I joined this commune to get away from this shit!

Not that it mattered much. These men were firing at them, so he kept firing back with the other members of his makeshift militia. That was all he could do, when moving would almost-certainly get him killed.

At least until the shooting died down on the other side a few minutes later. A quick peek up, and it was clear that Danylo had managed to flank them.

"They're dead, right?!"

"Yeah!" he shouted to the men and women next to him, "Cease fire!"
All that was left was to collect the wounded, the dead, and the equally-large number of dead on the attackers' side. Some were busy searching the bodies of the latter to see if there was anything they could use.

"Got something," one of the militia shouted, before running over to him. "These guys seem to be carrying some sort of medallion, Mykhailo. You ever seen anything like this?"

"Can't say I have." But just to be sure, he took a closer look. "The fuck is a 'Black Hundred?'"

The Elder Scrolls: Beyond Launches on Steam, insidegaming.com, 11 November 1937


(Early Alpha Render of Imperial City)

Today, the Skyrim and Beyond modding project announced the full release of its ambitious project. Based on the lost history's Beyond Skyrim mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the project is based on an open-source version of the Skyrim base game, modified to include all the provinces of Tamriel.

This ambitious project originally started as a passion project following a renewed interest in the Elder Scrolls in the late 1920s. Fans of the fantasy genre, both Downtimer and Uptimer, first began the project as a worldbuilding project on a fan Discord server, but the rebirth of the fandom throughout the decade soon led to the formation of a game mod that quickly grew in scope.

"Being able to use the Creation Engine and the Creation Kit made this all possible," said Project Lead Fidel Arroyo, "That way, all of us new fans didn't have to build our own engine. That ease of use is something that has allowed us to quickly grow the modding scene until we decided to switch to a standalone release."

"The business of it all was the hardest part," he continued, "Going from a fan project to an official studio- Well, I guess we're a studio in all but name, was a headache. We're basically a co-op, so we had to find a way to work out who got paid and what for their efforts. I won't bore you with the details, but we have a whole charter written out that we have to agree to."

Despite a development structure that Arroyo half-jokingly admits is "held together with duct tape and chicken wire," the results speak for themselves. Beyond lets players travel through the entirety of Tamriel, from the mysterious Black Marshes to the deserts of Hammerfell in a way that makes you almost forget that it's based on a modified version of a decades-old game engine from the future.

When interviewed during the development process, team members would joke that they "wanted to do more than just releasing another Version of Skyrim." According to the Uptimer team members, it is an old joke referring to the number of platforms and re-releases of Skyrim on seemingly every platform imaginable to man.

The new locations, characters, voices, mechanics, and improved graphics made sure that Beyond is more than just an upgraded re-release. It is an ambitious experience by fans-turned-professionals who wanted it to be so much more.

"Who's Running in 1940," pbs.com, 20 December 1937


(The Capitol Building, Undergoing Renovations)

While it is too early to say what the national environment is (and some would say this is speculation), it is worth knowing who will succeed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the White House.

There is the elephant (or should we say, "Donkey") in the room, that is Vice President Henry Wallace. A noted progressive, the Iowan is almost-certainly the frontrunner for the Democratic ticket. However, Senator Huey Long (D-LA) has announced his interest in running, while the conservative wing has floated Governor William H. Murray (D-OK) as a candidate to "Rein in Washington."

In an interesting dynamic, both Wallace and Long are backed by the regional branches of the Progressive Democrats, while the Conservative Democrats have rallied around the Oklahoman governor. Given the rivalry between the two progressives and recent gains by the conservative wing, it is likely the 1940 Primary will be hotly-contested.

The Republican frontrunners are similarly from their progressive and conservative wings, with progressive Senator Smedley D. Butler (R-PA) on the left. Butler, a known ally of the Roosevelt Administration's more-progressive policies, was nearly kidnapped by the Knights of the Golden Circle terrorist group less than two years ago, and he has proposed a hardline stance against his would-be kidnappers.

In contrast is Representative Robert Taft (R-OH), the Chair of the House Conservative Caucus. Taft, the son of the former Vice President during President Theodore Roosevelt's first two terms, has been called by many as "Charles Curtis Without The Baggage," for his isolationist foreign policy platform.

The Socialist Party has announced a "Coalition Campaign" with the Farmer-Labor Party, after the two's surprising success in the 1936 election. The left-wing alliance has agreed on a shared alliance of candidates, with names such as Governor Floyd B. Olson (FL-MN), Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (S-NY), Representative Norman Thomas (S-NY), Senator Elmer Benson (FL-MN), and Governor Upton Sinclair (S-CA) being floated.

The Socialist-Farmer-Labor Coalition has agreed to cooperate on a joint platform that will champion "Workers' Rights in Urban America, Farmer's Rights in Rural America, and the Common Man in All of America."

The fourth potential candidacy is the newly-founded "True Patriots of the United States of America," or "TPUSA" for short. Despite jokes about their name, the party has gained several notable members across the nation, including Senator Theodore G. Bilbo (TP-MS), Representative Ernest Lundeen (TP-MN), Representative James Eastland (TP-MS), and Governor Eugene Talmadge (TP-GA). While Bilbo, Talmadge, and Eastland are all known for leaving the Democratic Party after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1932, Lundeen's membership added a firm anti-Asian foreign policy plank to the True Patriot platform.

In addition, other prominent members rumored to be interested in the 1940 ticket include the Christian leader Gerald L. K. Smith, and former President of the Chamber of Commerce Robert Welch Jr. Smith is noted for his vocal opposition to the Protestant "Tester" movement, while Welch has spent much of his newfound wealth on several political campaigns.

Of course, these are just the "Big Four" parties that are set to dominate the 1940 election. Smaller parties, such as the Union Nationale in Quebec and the African Return Party also intend to field candidates.

The Union Nationale is a Quebecois separatist party that has rejected the "Northern Realignment" under which Canadian parties allied themselves with their American counterparts, while the African Return Party advocates for the emigration of African Americans to West Africa.

The 1940 Presidential Election is three years away, but the big names have already thrown their hats in the ring, and they are expected to make their moves in the coming year before the Midterms.

 

[ChrisProvidence]

The Kremlin, Moscow, Moscow Governorate, Russian Empire, 9 February 1938


(The Kremlin)

"They're out there again, aren't they?" asked Prime Minister Milyukov. The aide nodded. "I swear, how many times are they going to march with pictures of Mikhail Diterikhs?"

"About once a week," Foreign Minister Chernov muttered, before swiping up on his tablet. "The same as they do every few months: Wave the black-yellow-and white banner while holding up portraits if Diterikhs, as if he was some martyr."

"For a vocal minority," Milyukov sighed, "They are certainly a loud one. Sometimes, I wonder if they truly are as unpopular as the numbers show."

"Popular enough to force us into another Grand Coalition," the S-R said to the Kadet. "But unpopular enough that nobody wants anything to do with them."

"Well then," Milyukov relented, before returning to his seat. "Now where were we? Director Votsekhovsky, please continue."

"Of course," said the loyalist general-turned-spymaster. "Given the recent uptick in violence in Mariupol, Aleksandrovsk, and Moscow, I have directed additional manpower and resources towards the Black Hundred threat."

"These were the same ones who attacked the communes last year, yes?" Votsekhovsky nodded to Milyukov. "I thought so. Libertarians have been arming themselves to the teeth over the last year."

It went without saying that said libertarians arming themselves to the teeth wasn't the ideal situation, but they were Chernov's allies, and they had been able to fight off the Black Hundreds' attacks on the communes.

The irony of anarchists working with law enforcement was not lost upon him. "All Cops Are Bastards," as the Uptimers would say, "But The Far-Right Are Bigger Bastards."

It was a lesson he and the other Kadets had learned well over the last two decades. Once again, they were allying with the Social Revolutionaries, Social Democrats, and Octobrists against the far-right, which meant yet another unity government.

I swear to God, other countries don't have to deal with this, do they?

Samvidhan Sadan, Delhi, Republic of India, 15 March 1938

"I wonder if other countries have to deal with this," Subhas Chandra Bose muttered to the Prime Minister, "It's as if we've been allied with Ghadar for all of history."

"I wouldn't say that much," Nehru pointed out. "Nor would the average Indian, given how much their life has improved in the decade we've cooperated."

"Of course," the former mayor of Calcutta admitted, "And with their help, we've managed to keep One Bharat out of power, the Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs from one another's throats, and India united. I would say that is better than either of our other selves could say for themselves."

Once again, Bose had to concede the point to Nehru. Bose himself wasn't allied with a genocidal regime, while Nehru was in charge of an entire subcontinent, rather than four-fifths of one. There were, of course, the issue of Hindutva and Islamists, but the inter-Congress Hindu-Muslim alliance and Ghadar's United Front had managed to keep the majority of the intelligentsia and the working class on their side.

The irony of Nehru and Jinnah being in an alliance was not lost on Bose. In all likelihood, it wasn't lost on Nehru or Jinnah, either, but Congress and Ghadar preferred to look forward, rather than backwards.

Transcript of a Speech by Attorney General Earl Warren, Sacramento, California, United States of America, 4 April 1938

WARREN: When I am Governor of California, I will continue on the accomplishments of Governor Sinclair by taking the fight to the corporations that try to nickel and dime us for the life-saving medication we need to survive.

WARREN: But make no mistake I am not a communist or a socialist. I believe that an honest American should be compensated for their work and be adequately rewarded for the risks they undertake. But at the same time, those successful ought to pay into the communities that helped them succeed.

WARREN: Through this, we all can share in the great bounty of the future. A future where all of California can become a beacon of technology, innovation, and progress for all of America.

WARREN: While some would argue that my support for this progress is, in and of itself, "socialism," I would say that I am only as much a socialist as the writers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If my opponents wish to label me a socialist, then I am as much as socialist as James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, or George Washington himself.

(Sound of audible laughing from the crowd)

WARREN: In truth, that is the difference for some people. Many people will say that when the government helps them, it's "progress," but when it helps others, it is "socialism."

WARREN: I reject this type of thinking outright.

WARREN: When the government helps everyone - Not just you, or me, but everyone - then that is not socialism. It is progress. And when I am your governor, California will be a beacon of progress and prosperity for all of us!

"Americans Achieve Record Zero Backed Military Dictatorships," The Onion, May 1938

Today, the State Department of the United States announced that it has achieved what many have thought impossible. As of today, the United States is backing zero military dictatorships in Latin America.

"It is a record," says Secretary of State Cordell Hull, "For the first time in over a century, the United States is backing zero military dictatorships to further our interests. While some in the Beltway media scoffed at the idea, it turns out people actually like us when we stand by our values and don't coup democratically-elected leaders."

This news has been met with a mix of jubilation and sighs of relief from the various left-leaning governments of Latin America who would have been couped or intervened in during the Lost History.

"It is a surprise," says President Augusto Sandino. "A surprise, but a welcome one. On behalf of the United States of Central America, we congratulate the United States for doing what many had thought impossible."

In response, United Fruit Company President Samuel Zemurray has issued a statement that consists of two full minutes of various expletives.

Imperial Palace, Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Empire, 6 June 1938


(Imperial Palace, Addis Ababa)

Life was good.

There wasn't any other way that Emperor Haile Selassie could describe it, when he had won. His predecessor, Empress Zewditu, had died of a heart attack, which made him Emperor.

Not that it mattered much, when he had been running the Empire in all but name for the last decade, and all of his opponents were neutralized.

There was Gugsa Welle, Zewditu's husband, who had been a pain in the now-Emperor's ass for years. He didn't know if Empress Zewditu married him for his conservative views, but at this point, he wouldn't have been surprised when the man raised an army in rebellion.

Which was how he was here, at the head of an army of men armed with modern equipment and trained with modern tactics. Now, he knew full well that rifles and machine guns were only as good as the men who wielded them, but he and the Reformists had made sure that the best equipment went to their men.

Then again, it wasn't as if the Conservatives were going to welcome Asian advisors into their court. "An erosion of our culture," they warned, as if simply bringing in foreign advisors would destroy Ethiopian culture.

Haile Selassie lacked any such pretensions. If his opponents would reject the offer of modern equipment and training, then he was more than happy to have all the modern weapons and training on his side.

He needed all the help he could get when Ethiopia was in a Civil War.

Sunken Diamond, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, 21 July 1938


(Sunken Diamond, Home of the Stanford Cardinals Baseball Team)

Baseball came naturally to Lin, but that didn't mean he could skip practice. He was a two-way player, and that meant practice for pitching and hitting.

School came first, of course. The last thing he wanted was his parents coming all the way to California to kick his ass. But twenty-four hours in a day meant he had to get creative with his time management skills.

"First Law!" his sister Morgan shouted out to him while they ran around the field, "What is it?!"

I can't believe that Coach actually agreed to this. Well, I guess he needed an equipment manager, and Morgan needed the money.

Wait… does that mean she gets paid, while I don't?

That's bullshit. Friggin' NCAA.

"An object," Lin breathed, before catching himself, "That is at rest stays at rest! An object that is in motion stays in motion!"

"And?"

"...Unless-acted-upon-by-an-outside-force!" he shouted back, before they powered around to the next corner. "C'mon, this is stuff we learned in high school!"

"Yeah, well you can't rest on your laurels forever, Lin," his sister chided, before they made their way back towards home plate, "What's with the guy in a suit?"

"Looks like a rich guy and his son," Lin figured, before turning back to his sister. "They doing tours already?"

"Lin!" the coach shouted to him, as he ran in, "Got somebody who wants to talk with you."

"Thought we had BP," he said as he followed Coach Paige. "Just got warmed up, and everything."

"Yeah, well, you'll be down in the order, kid," the African-American former-pro informed him, "Besides, our guests came all the way from Boston to meet you. Mr. Kennedy?"

No way…

"I won't take too much of your time, Mr. Chen. I'm sure you know who I am, right?"

"'Course I do." Not like Baba gave us much of a choice in becoming Red Sox fans. "You're the owner of the Boston Red Sox!"

Which means… The guy with you is your son. What was his name… Joseph… Robert… No, wait, it was Jack-

Holy shit, that's JFK.

Wait… what the Hell is JFK doing here?

Whatever it is, he better stay the fuck away from Morgan.

"That I am," the elder Kennedy chuckled, "And I've heard promising things about you. Not that many pitchers can hit home runs, so I had to see it for myself."

"Well, I'm honored, sir, but if you're asking me to sign right now, I'm going to have to say no. My parents would murder me if I dropped out of college to play baseball."

Okay, Lin, don't say anything stupid in front of the owner of your favorite team.

Even if Mom and Dad would absolutely murder me if I did drop out.

"Of course," said Mr. Kennedy, "But I was in the area for business, so I thought I'd drop by and get my foot in the door."

"Thanks." Lin would say more, but he was trying his best not to say anything stupid in front of a potential future boss. "Well, I've gotta get back to practice, but I'll keep you guys in mind when I graduate!"

Real smooth, Lin.

"Of course," said the elder Kennedy, before handing him a business card. "Boston could always use a pitcher who can hit."

And with that, Mr. Kennedy walked off, with his son close behind.

"Well then," Coach Paige chuckled, "I think you left a good impression, Lin."

"I was internally screaming the entire time, Coach. And I think I just said no to my shot at playing in Boston."

"Hey, you did better than most kids your age when they get even a whiff of going pro pro. Most of them come off as too-eager and end up betting it all on black for peanuts in the minor leagues. Most times, it doesn't work."

"Says the Hall-of-Famer," Morgan pointed out. "Sorry, had to say it. Most players aren't you, you know?"

"Oh, I'm well-aware most people aren't me," the old man chuckled, before tossing a baseball to Lin, "Then again, most pitchers can't hit worth a damn, so it's no surprise you're already getting attention."

"Yeah, I get that," Lin admitted. He seamlessly tossed the ball in the air as he spoke. "But since when do team owners show up with their eldest surviving son?"

"Probably the ones here for the All-Star Games," Morgan pointed out. "The Niners are hosting the All-Star Tournament in San Francisco, so all the owners are in town."

Now that Lin thought about it, that was probably why. Since the Red Sox won the World Series last year, that meant Babe Ruth was the manager for the American League team in the tournament.

"And his kid, Morgan?"

"Probably wants to show he means business," Morgan figured out loud. "And if Wikipedia's to be believed, he's interning there. In all likelihood, old man Kennedy is probably grooming Jack to succeed him someday. Which is a step down from his Lost History fate."

"He was President, right?" Coach Paige asked. The young woman nodded. "I guess owning a baseball team would be a step down from that. Hopefully he can keep it in his pants this time."

"Not your type?" His sister punched him in the side. "Hey!"

"You know I have no type, Lin. Besides, I'm not his type."

"Because we're Chinese and know his reputation?"

"Okay one, good one," Morgan admitted. Technically, her brother was right. "And two, no. It's because I'm not blonde."

Series / Brave New Worlds (1938), TV Tropes

Brave New Worlds is a Historical Science Fiction series that follows the adventures of the eccentric Dr. Arthur Watson (Charlie Chaplin) and his protege, the young prodigy Ada Franklin (Norma Jean Baker) as they and the rest of the California Institute of Technology's Journey Department travel through Rifts to alternate worlds.


(Charlie Chaplin as Dr. Arthur Watson)


(Norma Jean Baker as Ada Franklin)

The Rifts are a sort of scientific portal network that connects different timelines to one another through a concentration of tachyons. Of course, this comes with the slight complication that the Rifts cannot be calibrated for the location and time itself. Rifts are two-way doors, and one of the central subplots is calibrating the Rifts for greater precision and reliability.

As the Journey Department, the US Government, and later a growing cast of international characters begin to travel through the the ever-expanding Rift network to explore the new worlds on a per-season basis, the series utilizes the sheer-limitless possibilities of other worlds to serve as a mirror for social commentary. Does This Remind You of Anything? is in full-effect here.

Given that the protagonists are Americans with familiarity with the Lost History and the Great Journey itself, Brave New Worlds' cast rarely suffers from any Genre Blindness. The characters are familiar with the tropes and workings of Alternate History, and they (and by extension, the writers), are not afraid to show off their love for the genre.

Brave New Worlds is notable for its inclusion of several experts on the writing team, including (but not limited to) historians, physicists, and Uptimer advisors. The writers have clearly Shown Their Work, and the show does not shy from going into the details of how the science of RIfts and speculative history function.

Panama City, Panama, 8 August 1938


(Panama City, Panama)

The Panama Conference could be considered the Americas' answer to the Hanoi Conference from a few years ago. Of course, that would be an oversimplification, but the news media was hardly known for its nuance and attention to detail.

For starters, the Panama Conference wouldn't handle military affairs. That much was understandable, seeing that unlike the nations of the Nanjing Accord, the various nations of the Americas were not part of any military alliance.

Maybe in the future, but right now, the Latin American world was content to keep the Americans at least arms' length away. Turning over a new leaf or not, the other nations were wary of their northern neighbor's reputation.

No, this would be an issue of diplomacy and economics, and Ambassador Edward Stettinus Jr. had acted as such.

"Cooperation," was the word of the day, but just what that meant was up for debate.

Trade was good, but the free flow of capital, products, and people was a much harder sell when Central America still remembered the United Fruit Company, Chinese goods still dominated the market, and there were Americans who were worried about a surge of Latin Americans coming north.

Then there was the issue of diplomacy. America had gone out of their way to continue their "Good Neighbor Policy," but the fact remained that FDR's predecessor had nearly invaded Central America. Diplomatic relations between the United States of America and the United States of Central America were largely-normalized at this point, but treaties respecting the sovereignty of all the attendees were a must-have.

Sure, everyone wanted peace, prosperity, and industrialization. However, the exact means to achieve that were why they were having this conference in the first place.

It was to almost everyone's relief that the first order of business had been education. Building schools and allowing students to travel for their studies was perhaps the least-offensive topic, so the diplomats agreed to start with that.

Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Nanjing, National Capital Region, Republic of China, 11 September 1938

"Shit!"

Lyndon Johnson would say more, but he fell face-first on the mat.

It had been a long time coming, but this was his best chance at a full recovery. Hell, that fact that he was even walking right now was a damned miracle, seeing that he'd been paralyzed from getting shot in the spine.

"I've got it," he groaned, before brushing off one of the trainers assigned to him. As accommodating as they were, Johnson needed to rely on himself, if he wanted to walk again.

These doctors have done enough for me when they injected me with God-knows-what that helped fix my spine.

From what he recalled, it had something to do with "Bio-active signals." In layman's (or as he liked to call it, "Not-A-Doctor's") terms, the molecules regenerated the damaged parts of his nervous system, got rid of the scar tissue in the way, and reformed the nerve fibers needed to send signals back and forth.

Or to put it another way, the injection "tricked" his body into healing itself.

All he had to do was to re-train his body to walk again. It would be a hard process that would take weeks, if not months, to heal him, but Johnson wasn't about to say no to the best chance for his ambitions.

So he reached up to the bar, pulled himself up, and tried to walk again.

"How Halloween Spread Throughout The World," upsidedowntimer.com, 31 October 1938


("Halloween Jack-O'-Lantern," By Aleksander Stepanov)

Tonight is Halloween Night, so be sure to leave out candy for any young or old trick-or-treaters.

That is, of course, if you celebrate Halloween, which pretty much everyone does at this point. What started out as a Christian tradition is now a global phenomenon celebrated throughout the world in one form or another.

But the question always arises: How exactly did Halloween become a holiday that almost everyone (who isn't a religious fundamentalist) celebrates?

It all starts back in Christian tradition, with the vigil for All Hallow's Day (otherwise known as "All Saints' Day"). Since All Hallow's Day was held on the first of November, that meant All Hallow's Day would be celebrated on the last day of October.

The traditions of the holiday can also be attributed to various cultures throughout Europe. Trick-or-treating can trace its origins back to the practice of "Souling," where children and poor people would go door-to-door to offer prayers for the departed in exchange for soul cakes that were baked for All Hallow's Eve. These door-to-door visitors would also carry lanterns made of hollowed out turnips that represented souls; this is one possible origin of the jack-o'-lantern, though another is the practice of using jack-o'-lanterns to ward off evil spirits.

The wearing of costumes, which Halloween is most-known-for, have three possible origins.

The first is the belief that on All Hallows' Eve was the last chance for vengeful spirits to take revenge on those who wronged them before passing on. As a precaution, people would dress up in costumes to ward them off.

The second origin is the Danse Macabre, or the "Dance of Death." Christians in Europe believed that on All Hallows' Eve, the dead would rise from their graves in a hideous carnival. Christian villagers would then celebrate this by dressing up as corpses, which could be the origin for Halloween costume parties.

Finally, there is the formerly-pagan tradition in which churches that were too poor to display relics of saints would instead allow their parishioners to dress up as saints instead. This tradition is practiced to this day in some European Christian communities.

Of course, this does not explain how exactly Halloween became the national phenomenon that it is today. That answer can be summed up in a simple response.

China.

While the origins of Halloween come from European Christians, the holiday itself spread to the Americas by Irish and Scottish immigrants during the 19th century of the Lost History until it spread into mainstream American culture. The Americans' cultural influence throughout the world of the Lost History would spread the holiday across the world, including the island of Taiwan.

In its own time, Taiwan was seen as a "Western" country, given its alignment with the United States and the Western influence on Taiwanese culture. However, the phenomenon known as "Cosplay," in which participants dress up as fictional characters, is somewhat-separate from Halloween itself despite the overlap between participants.

When Taiwan was sent back in time during the Great Journey, Halloween as we know it came back with them. What had started as a holiday on the island quickly spread to the rest of China in the Post-Revolutionary Era of the 1910s. China's rapidly-growing economic and cultural influence would spread the holiday to their allies in the Eurasian Nanjing Accord as well as their trading partners in the Americas.

In doing so, China, who was introduced to Halloween by America, had now introduced Halloween and all its traditions to America.

Because that's not confusing at all.

These days, Halloween is practiced on both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific as a sort of secular holiday with candy, trick-or-treaters, and more costumes than you could ever think of.

No, seriously, if it exists, somebody has made a costume of it.

With that warning out of the way, we here at Upside Downtimer want to wish you a Happy Halloween. Have fun, enjoy your candy, and please remember that just because somebody is dressed as a cute nurse or doctor for Halloween does not mean that they are actually a nurse or a doctor.

The Daily Show With Groucho Marx, 16 November 1938


(Logo of The Daily Show)

GROUCHO MARX: Welcome to the Daily Show! I'm Groucho Marx, and I'll be here as long as Jon Stewart doesn't exist and I don't get fired. We have a great show tonight, with Amelia Earhart joining us to talk about the Luna-1 Mission! Because Space isn't only the final frontier… It's also the furthest one can get from Florida.

MARX: But before we get started with that, let's talk about our main story: The 1938 Elections. Results have come in, and… I'm just going to say it: We have no fucking idea what is going on right now.

(Audience laughs)

MARX: No, seriously, there's a free-for-all in American politics between at least four parties, and nobody has any idea what to make of last week's results when voters are basically all over the place.

MARX: This, of course, has not stopped our "brave and intrepid reporters" from coming up with what this means for 1940.

(Screen cuts to George Gallup being interviewed by Ronald Reagan)

GALLUP: At this point, the 1940 election is anyone's game, and it would be wise to temper our expectations when we are months out, let alone years.

REAGAN: Of course. But what does this mean for 1940?

(Screen cuts back to Marx)

MARX: We're going to be in for two more years of this, aren't we?

(Side-image shows a picture of five different Opinion pieces from the New York Times)

MARX: Fuck.

"Episode 140: Jean Brodeur," Red Alert Podcast, 20 December 1938


(Logo of the Red Alert Podcast)

HOST: And welcome back to the Red Alert Podcast. I'm back with Jean Brodeur, Editor of the French socialist magazine l'Humanite. Now, on to our main topic: French decolonization.

BRODEUR: When it comes to decolonization, it is important that we balance respect for the locals with standing by our Radical Socialist values.

HOST: And how hard is that, when so much of Africa has tribal and ethnic loyalties, as well as different cultural values.

BRODEUR: Honestly, it depends on the tribe, ethnic group, religion, and culture. For example, Tribe A may be from a culture that is very collectivist but patriarchal, so they are more open to socialism and less-open to feminism. Meanwhile, Tribe B comes from a culture that is known for its trade and matriarchal tendencies, so they're more-capitalistic but open to feminism.

HOST: So a mixed-approach is important?

BRODEUR: Yes. If we want socialism to thrive in West Africa, we need to meet them where they are at. This means appealing to certain aspects of their culture while discouraging other aspects. For example, the decolonization authorities have taken a hard-line stance against feminine genital mutilation.

HOST: Of course. However, some on the left have claimed that this is a form of colonialism, even calling it, "Red Colonialism."

BRODEUR: Perhaps. But I would argue that socialism and African cultures are not inherently opposed to one another. And when you look into these cultures and understand them, you can say the same thing about progressive ideas.

HOST: So they aren't incompatible, as long as we're willing to put in the work?

BRODEUR: That's the hard part. But yes.

Lunar Landing Module, Luna, 11 January 1939


("Earthrise," by Amelia Earhart)

It was beautiful.

There was no other way that Amelia Earhart could have ever described the sight as the landing module left the Command and Service Module (CSM), with Heurtaux remaining in orbit.

All that was left were herself and Commander Gunn, while Hwang flew the module towards the surface.

Of course, "flew," was being generous here. They were, for all intents and purposes, about to fall towards the lunar surface while Hwang made every minute adjustment to slow them down.

"Trajectory is green," Hwang announced, "Permission to begin descent?"

"Permission granted," said Gunn. "Bring us in."

"Beginning descent," Hwang acknowledged, "Cutting off engines now."

"Five hundred meters," Amelia read off, "Four hundred."

No turning back now.

"Three hundred meters."

No time to be afraid, either.

"Two hundred meters,"

That was when we took off.

"One hundred meters."

And then it happened.

"Haikou," Commander Gunn said in English to Mission Control, "Storm Base here. The Second Sunrise has come to the moon."

"Copy, Storm Base. The world is waiting for you."

"Acknowledged, Haikou. Second Sunrise out." Gunn turned to Earhart and Hwang. "Let's not keep them waiting."

Suiting up was the easy part. She'd done that hundreds of times during training and spaceflight.

But setting foot? That was something else entirely, even if she'd had just as much practice.

Amelia was the first down the hatch. Gunn's suit had a small puncture, and he needed to wait for the self-sealing gel to fill the hole and solidify.

So she would be the first, with Hwang right behind.

It was… harder than Amelia had remembered. Her training had kicked in, but that still meant she could barely see her feet in her bulky spacesuit.

"Beginning descent," she announced to the crew, before looking up at Hwang through the hatch. "Camera's on, right?"

A thumbs up came from the pilot. Good.

All that was left was climbing down the eight rungs of the ladder. It would be a simple task, were it not for the consequences if she fell.

No, she'd come too far to die now.

So she climbed. Slowly.

Nine rungs became eight, then seven, six, five, four, three, two, then one.

"Setting foot on the surface," Amelia announced. Not just to Hwang or Gunn or Heurtaux in the CSM, but Haikou and the rest of the world.

"Copy, Earhart," the Chinese-accented scientist spoke in English. "What do you see?"

"No borders. Just horizons. Only freedom."

 

[ChrisProvidence]

Anti-Crypto Aktion Coffee, Palo Alto, California, 20 February 1939

("University Avenue," by Selena Rossi, Class of 1942)​

"Hey, you're sorta Catholic, right?"

Okay, that was the last thing Lin Chen expected to hear.

It wasn't so much that he was a practicing Catholic (Though he'd probably call himself lapsed at this point), but the fact that most people just didn't give a damn.

That said, there were two kinds of people who wanted to know if you were Catholic: Other Catholics, and people who really, really, didn't like Catholics.

"Eh, just baptized I guess," Lin said truthfully. After all, if said voice was the latter, he was pretty sure he could take them. And if it was the other reason... "You're not a missionary, are you?"

"Do I look like a missionary?" the punk rocker-looking woman asked him. "Name's Lena. I'm your classmate over at Stanford. At least I think I am."

"How does that work out?"

Please tell me this isn't some "All Asians Look Alike" thing.

"Because you look like your sister."

Oh.

Wait, does that mean that mean she thinks Morgan looks like a boy, or that I look like a girl?

"Yeah, that's me. What's up?"

"Just need some help with the notes, is all," she figured, before sitting down at his table. "Think you could help?"

"Sure," Lin figured. Not like Adrian or Jon are going to be back anytime soon. "What's up?"

"I keep getting the Tester movement and the Catholics all mixed up. They're pretty similar."

"You mean besides the fact that one of them's Protestant and the other is the Catholic Church?"

"Okay, smart-ass. I get that. My problem is that I keep mixing them up. Y'know, because they still have a lot in common?"

"I guess so." Truth be told, Lin was mostly going off of what he could remember off the top of his head. "So besides how the Catholics take orders from the Pope and the Testers are... well, everywhere."

"Yeah. Besides that."

"Okay, let's see..." Lin thought aloud. "The whole "Being Protestant" thing is kinda the big difference between the two. The Catholics are, I mean, the Catholics, and their big thing is that you have to be a good person to go to Heaven."

Okay, there's more than that, but it's not like we're getting tested on the Catechism.

"And the Protestants?"

"Sola Fide." Lena gave him a blank look. "It means 'Faith Alone.' Protestants generally believe that faith alone is all they need to be saved and go to Heaven."

"Sound like a cop-out."

"Yeah, well, Protestantism is what happens when the Catholic Church basically emotionally blackmailed people into giving them money."

"Okay," Lena said impatiently, "What does that have to do with the Testers, though?"

"I'm getting there," Lin promised. "Basically, the Testers believe that to go to Heaven, they have to demonstrate their faith in God by actively making the world like Heaven."

"So Jesus comes back?" Lin nodded to her. "Because of the Lord's Prayer, right?"

"Yup. 'Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.' That's basically the crux of Tester belief: That if they truly believe in God, they should make Heaven on Earth."

"Makes sense. And that's why they're against racism and for helping the poor, right?"

"Yeah, basically. They think that their interactions with others are a test from God."

"Which is where they get the name from." Lin nodded, and Lena got up. "Thanks, Lin!"

"The Hell was that about?" Lin looked up to see his teammate Jon bringing back their coffee. "Got your drink, man."

"Thanks. Classmate needed help with her history homework."

"Didn't know you were into that."

"My Mom's a history teacher, remember? Plus, we all have to do something when it's not baseball season."

"Video games."

"I meant something I'm good at."

"Harlem Globetrotters join Basketball Association of America," by John F. Kennedy, Sports Illustrated, March 1939

(Manager Abe Saperstein with several Globetrotters)​

The Basketball Association of America announced the fourteenth team to join their ranks with the addition of the barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters to their ranks.

The Globetrotters will play at Madison Square Garden, and their inclusion will be the first time the color barrier is broken in the BAA. Team owner Abe Saperstein has commented that the Globetrotters' membership is a "Milestone for basketball," followed a prediction that the rest of the BAA will soon follow suit in the following years.

"By having an all-white league," said Saperstein, "They're missing out on a whole lot of talent. And we're going to prove it to them, next season."

The teams will continue to be split evenly between the East and the West Divisions, with the Harlem Globetrotters joining the East Division alongside the Philadelphia Warriors, Boston Celtics, New York Knicks, Toronto Huskies, Washington Capitols, and the Providence Steamrollers, while the Western Division will consist of the Chicago Bulls, St. Louis Bombers, Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Falcons, Pittsburgh Ironmen, Indianapolis Jets, and the newly-formed Minneapolis Lakers.

The BAA will continue to use its current playoff system in which the top two teams of each division play a best-of-seven series against one another. The winner of each semifinal series will compete in a best-of-seven series for the BAA Championship.

The BAA is the first professional basketball league in the United States, and its eleven-team roster that has expanded with the league's popularity.

"Supreme Court Rules State of Mississippi Mind Their Own Fucking Business," The Onion, April 1939

(Chief Justice Louis Brandeis)​

In a stunning 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that any and all laws against sodomy and homosexual acts are unconstitutional under the Right of Privacy Amendment.

"It is our belief," said Chief Justice Louis Brandeis, "That as long as laws that do not violate the privacy of Americans are otherwise being followed, laws that do not mind their own fucking business are an invasion of privacy and therefore unconstitutional.

Civil rights groups have hailed this as a victory not just for the LGBT+ community, but all Americans who are in favor of the state and federal government minding their own fucking business and leaving them the Hell alone.

Nouakchott International Airport, Nouakchott, French Mauritania, 4 May 1939

(Nouakchott International Airport Terminal)​

"Are you sure about this?" Corporal Antoine Reval asked over the radio as he got off the Blackhawk, "I get that we're partners in this, but are the Chinese going to be able to keep up with us?"

"We'll hold our own," the Chinese officer promised in accented French. One that Antoine didn't know he could speak. "Besides, we've worked with you guys before, back during the insurrection."

"No offense," Antoine apologized. The Chinese officer nodded politely. "And for what it's worth, it's good to have more manpower and resources out here to help out. We need all the help we can get in the desert, and Europe's still Priority One for manpower and resources compared to the sandbox."

It wasn't as if they were bad at their job. If anything, Antoine and the rest of his team could pride themselves on the number of slaves they've freed over the last few years.

The problem is that there were only so many of us, and the Sahara is a fucking large place to patrol.

All the legal reforms, cut red tape, and the Caliph outright condemning slavery wasn't enough when slavers could hide in plain sight because they lived in the ass-end of nowhere.

The Chinese officer... Antoine could've sworn his name was "Zhou," or something, looked at him oddly. "I thought it was mostly quiet, these days."

"I mean, yeah, it is. But the reason it's so calm is because most of the intel and manpower's focused on maintaining stability instead of down here, chasing down slavers."

"I see..." Zhou mused, while they walked past planes of Russians and Japanese unloading their gear. "Then it's a good thing we weren't the only ones who answered the call."

Ufa, Orenburg Governate, Russian Empire, 20 June 1939

(Ufa Skyline)​

"Approaching target," Lieutenant Kuznetsov told his commander over the radio. "Spotted two hostiles by the door. Armed with pistols."

"Moving to engage," Captain Dimitry Medvedev answered. Two audible puffs were followed by two audible thuds once the Black Hundreds fell to the ground. "Move around to the back of the warehouse, Nikolai Ivanovich."

"Alfa 2-1 copies. Moving to destination."

Was it unfair that he and his men had night vision goggles and had sabotaged the fuse box? Probably.

Was he going to complain? No.

Not when surveillance had shown that there were about two dozen Black Hundreds in the building.

"Room clear," he said over the mic, before moving to the door. "Form up on the door."

The rest of it... it was like clockwork. The Spetsnaz team he'd been a part of had been training for over a week on the warehouse, to the point that he and his squad could probably run through the place with their eyes closed.

Scratch that. They had gone through the mock-up with their eyes closed for shits and giggles one night, and it actually worked.

It helped that everyone was declared hostile. While this would normally be an issue, the reality was that this seemingly-abandoned warehouse had people coming in and out on a weekly basis who weren't homeless people.

So they went, clearing out office after office until all that remained was the warehouse itself.

"Alfa 4-1, in position."

"Alfa 2-1, at the position."

"Alfa 3-1, in position and ready."

"Alfa 1-1 copies all," Captain Medvedev spoke through the radio. "Looks like our tip was good. Move in and neutralize the targets. We have positive ID on General Sakharov."

"Orders for the HVI?" asked Kuznetsov. "Sakharov still has friends over in Saint Petersburg."

"Alive, if possible," the Captain instructed, "But I'm not trading men for traitors."

Stanford Cardinals Celebrate College World Series Win, The Stanford Daily, 6 July 1939

(Fenway Park, host of the 1939 College World Series)​

Palo Alto celebrates as the hometown Stanford Cardinals return from Boston to celebrate last month's victory in Boston.

While the season had gotten off to a rocky start, the addition of the hard-hitting left fielder Jon Dowd, quick-footed first-baseman Adrian Friese, and the two-way threat Lin Chen provided a one-two-three punch that sent Stanford back to Regionals in the 4th seed.

Although the Cardinals lost the Regional opener against UC Berkeley, they would get their payback with a walkoff homerun from Dowd during the Regional Final, followed by a sweep of the UC Davis Aggies in the Super Regionals.

The Cardinals would see continued success at the College World Series in Boston, where Chen, Friese, and Dowd combined for two homers and a triple in the 3-1 victory in Game 1, followed by a shutout and the game-winning RBI from the Chinese-American Freshman to cap off game two.

"It's a team effort," said Chen after their two-game victory. "We can talk about Great Men and all that [Redacted], but baseball's a team sport. And we have a pretty [Redacted] good team this year."

Coach Johnny Paige also made history this year as the first African-American coach to win the College World Series.

"I've always felt like I had to prove myself when I was playing," said Coach Paige, "And that's the same kind of thinking that got these young men to push themselves to the top."

Hardware Warehouse, Mexico City, United States of Mexico, 20 August 1939

(Stack of PVC pipes, Mexico City, c. 1940)​

"We're really replacing everything, aren't we?" Asked Alejandro Rojas. Then again, the fact they were ripping out every pipe they could get their hands on was all the proof he needed.

That, and the how they were currently buying them in bulk.

"Remind me, are we really going to tear out every single copper and lead pipe and replace them with PVC?"

"You're damned right we are," his father (who was also known as Alejandro Rojas), agreed. "You see this crap on the inside?"

"Yeah." Even if he wished he hadn't. "I get it. Lead and copper corrode. Plastic doesn't."

"Oil is also cheaper, these days," said the elder Alejandro Rojas, "Which means plastic is also cheaper."

That made enough sense for the apprentice plumber. Ever since everyone transitioned to EVs and public transportation, the demand for petroleum effectively cratered.

Alejandro wasn't an economist, but he didn't need to be one to know that something's going to be a Hell of a lot cheaper if half the world stopped using it because alternatives were cheaper.

He also didn't need to be an economist to know that just because people stopped using so much gasoline didn't mean they would stop pumping crude oil. Not when crude oil was needed to make all the PVC pipes he'd been installing.

Not that he minded. Cheaper PVC meant more jobs, and more jobs meant he and his brother (who thankfully wasn't also named Alejandro) would be able to continue the family business.

"The Metaverse of Things," by People Play Games, YouTube.com, 14 September 1939

(Thumbnail of video on YouTube)​

CHRIS QUINN: "What if I told you that there's a place where we could have Fully Automated Luxury Gay (Or straight or bi, if you're into that) Space Socialism right now?

QUINN: What it I told you that there is a metaverse that isn't run by weirdo techbros who seem to be obsessed with monetizing everything, ever since cryptocurrency never took off?

QUINN: And what if I told you that those two places were the exact same thing? Because it is.

QUINN: Welcome to the world of VR Chat Metaverse (or "VR Metaverse" for short), a world built on abandonware over the last two decades into a sort of Ship of Theseus that might not even have that much original code after all the improvements over those last twenty-something years.

QUINN: This? This is the real Metaverse, where you are truly free from all the capitalism and microtransactions that the techbros keep trying to shove into almost everything they make.

QUINN: So we here at PPG decided to go in-depth into the real Metaverse, where we interviewed developers, users, and recorded more footage than we honestly know what to do with. So, let's begin.

(Scene cuts to a woman in an Italian game development studio)

DANIELA CLEMENTI: My name is Daniela Clementi, and I used to be one of the software engineers who help keep the VR Metaverse running.

CLEMENTI: One of the things that drew me to VR Metaverse is how there really isn't any real sense of scarcity. In the Real World, there are finite amounts of… everything, if we're being honest: Food, Shelter, Products, and Resources.

CLEMENTI: That isn't really a thing in the Metaverse. Sure, you need to have servers to keep everything running, but partnerships with the French, German, and Italian governments helps keep the lights on and the Metaverse free.

QUINN: Could you tell us about that? How did that come to be?

CLEMENTI: Sure. The official reason is that this is funding for the arts. But if you ask me, a big reason why so many Socialist governments back this project is because it's the first society that can truly be free from capitalism and scarcity.

CLEMENTI: In the Metaverse, there really isn't a limit to resources or funds. It's a moneyless society because, well, there isn't really anything to spend money on when pretty much all content is free.

QUINN: Is that why several competitors to the VR Metaverse failed?

CLEMENTI: I think that's one of the reasons. When there is already something out there, the competitor needs to be better, and I don't really see how these alternatives accomplish that when VR Chat already exists.

QUINN: And the fact that it's free.

CLEMENTI: That too. VR headsets are much cheaper than they were two decades ago, but they aren't exactly cheap. And once you've bought your headset, your options are between VR Metaverse, where basically everything is free, and paid experiences like Cryptoland, where they seemingly try to nickel and dime you out of every last franc in your bank account.

(Concept art of Cryptoland)​

QUINN: I can see the appeal.

(Scene cuts back to Quinn in the studio)

QUINN: Ironically, these capitalist alternatives to the VR Metaverse make an argument against capitalism. While Metaverse content is largely free and open-source, the alternatives' inclusion of capitalism (in the form of microtransactions) creates a reality of artificial scarcity where it previously didn't exist.

QUINN: Or as some have begun to call it: Capitalism for the sake of Capitalism.

QUINN: Which begs the question: If there is a time and place where capitalism is unnecessary, then why have it in the first place?

"How Skateboarding Became Sidesurfing," The Birdman Magazine, October 1939

("Photo of People Sidesurfing," by Jan Kopriva)​

You all know what a sideboard is. Four wheels attached to a solid board is a simple design that's stood the test of time.

Literally.

No, seriously, the sideboard went back in time with the island of Taiwan, where it would first spread to China, then Asia, then the Americas.

Originally called the "skateboard" in the Lost History, it was first brought to the Americas in the mid-1910s. Its similarities to surfing saw its adoption by communities of surfers along the coasts.

Skateboarding, or the "Sidewalk Surfing," as it was called at first surfers, was originally an alternative for surfers when the waves were flat or the weather wasn't good. By the mid-1920s, the name would be shortened to "Sidesurfing," with the eponymous skateboard referred to as a "sideboard."

It was during this time that the sideboard, coupled with the re-discovery of the Punk genre of music, saw the two come together as symbols of the American counter-culture movement. If Punk music represented rebellion against the status quo, then the quick and maneuverable sideboard symbolized freedom from the status quo.

("Men Walking on Sidewalk," by RDNE)​

It was this intermarriage between Punk music and sidesurfing that led to the rapid rise in popularity not just among young white Americans (and we're talking about all the Americas here, not just the USA here), but minority groups as well. Then again, if white and black and brown kids and young adults hanging out together was the new counter-culture, then it was no surprise that those same folks started sidesurfing together.

Unfortunately, sidesurfing's role in the counter-culture quickly earned it some enemies from the more-conservative elements of American culture. Even if it's been over a decade, a lot of the older sidesurfers still remember Charles Coughlin's passionate sermon condemning the sport as a hotbed for sin, vice, and degeneracy.

If anything, this did more to propel sidesurfing into the mainstream than anything else. What had once been an "underground" kind of movement was quickly gaining popularity and entering the mainstream.

Because when old, conservative people say something is bad or immoral, it automatically becomes 100% cooler. Sidesurfing is no exception.

It was at this point, circa 1930, that sidesurfing had its first big split.

Now, this wasn't some big schism or anything, but there tend to be two kinda of sidesurfers these days: Casuals and Nomads.

As the name implies, Casual sidesurfers tend to use the sideboard as a means of transportation, though you'll see them do a few tricks. Odds are they'll probably listen to Punk music, too, but fans of Punk aren't necessarily sidesurfers and vice-versa.

Nomad sidesurfers are the kind that'll go "all-in" with the subculture. Sure, they'll use their boards to get around, and they can do more than a few tricks, but they see sidesurfing as a way of life.

We're talking people who tend to be laid-back, with absolute freedom from the status quo on their minds. Folks that'll exercise their freedoms in their daily lives and go against the grain.

And no, I'm not talking about those guys who use "freedom" as an excuse to be a dick. Nomads practice a concept of "absolute freedom," and that includes freedom from things like oppression, just as much as freedom to do things, like live one's life.

There's a reason why you'll probably see at least one sidesurfer at every Civil Rights protest.

For Nomads, sidesurfing is an exercise of freedom, and freedom is a way of life. Whether it's freedom to love, freedom to marry, freedom from discrimination, or just the freedom to their lives, your average practicing Nomad sidesurfer is probably going to support it.

Conversely, if you're going around trying to enforce your own rules on people, they're probably going to call you an asshole at best.

No, seriously, freedom is sacred to these guys. If you go around trying to use freedom as an excuse to abuse others, there's a nonzero chance you'll get your ass kicked.

The Knights of the Golden Circle down in Orange County learned this the hard way when they tried to join up with the local Nomads.

("Picture of a Nomad Encampment," by Egor Komarov)​

And as their name implies, the really hardcore Nomads tend not to stay in one place. For them, freedom also means not getting too tied down by anything, and that means never really setting up roots.

This can take the form of drifting from place to place, either solo, or with a community of fellow Nomad boarders. Nomads'll usually band together, but they're willing to take on new members if they earn the group's trust.

Though contrary to popular belief, most Nomads don't literally board everywhere they go. In my experience, they're not above using public transportation or using roads when they start migrating.

Now, just because Nomad sidesurfers tend to be more hardcore about the lifestyle doesn't mean they'll start hating on the Casuals for not doing things like living as a Nomad. Sure, they'd like it if everyone embraced their vision freedom, but it kinda goes against the whole concept itself if you force it.

Either way, sidesurfing is here to stay, and it's come a long way in the last two decades.

#general, Somewhat-Credible-Defense Discord Server, 30 November 1939

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:30 AM

You know, Ethiopia's Civil War kinda reminded me of the Chinese Revolution.

NanjingNan Today at 00:31 AM

I mean no disrespect, Freeb, but one question:

HOW.

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:32 AM

Think about it like this, Nan: A society that's been taken advantage of by the European powers throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries sees a revolution in which the reformists win.

NanjingNan Today at 00:33 AM

...

No.

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:34 AM

Aw, c'mon. You see it, right?

NanjingNan Today at 00:35 AM

If you paint with a broad enough brush, I guess?

But there's just as many things that are different between the Tongmenghui and Hailie Selassie's forces as there are things they have in common.

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:36 AM

You mean besides how one's a republic and the other's a monarchy.

ViveLeInternationale Today at 00:36 AM

That's a fairly large difference. While the Tongmenghui overthrew the Qing monarchy, Hailie Selassie holds himself up as the rightful successor to Empress Zewditu.

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:37 AM

Didn't the Tongmenghui also argue that the Qing were an illegitimate ruling class and that they were restoring the rightful rule?

IsekaiEnthusiast11 Today at 00:37 AM

I mean, basically everyone does that when they're fighting a civil war.

NanjingNan Today at 00:38 AM

He's not wrong.

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:37 AM

Yeah!

Wait, how did we on the same side on this one?

NanjingNan Today at 00:38 AM

In the sense that almost everyone declares themselves the "Rightful Ruler."

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:38 AM

Ah.

I'm talking more about the ideals, influences, and technologies though.

Both Hailie Selassie and Sun Yat-Sen were willing to embrace modern ideals, much to their benefit over their more-backwards-thinking (Can I call them that?) opponents.

NanjingNan Today at 00:39 AM

Then yes, there are similarities. Of course, we have to remember that while the Ethiopian Conservative Faction rejected outside ideals and training due to the potential threats of outside influence, the Qing were denied those ideals and training because Taiwan outright rejected them.

Also yeah, you should be fine.

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:40 AM

Cool. Thanks.

And yeah, I guess that's a factor. Actually, that probably makes the Ethiopian Conservatives look worse, now that I think about it.

At least the Qing got curbstomped because their modernists refused to help them. Meanwhile the Conservatives refused the modernists because they thought they were a threat.

ViveLeInternationale Today at 00:41 AM

I think I can see where they're coming from, Freeb.

In the post-war world, we've seen massive social progress and upheaval. In less than a decade, China, France, and friends trained entirely new bureaucracies from scratch to serve as a viable alternative to colonial rule or a return to traditional forms of government.

That last part is probably why the Conservatives Ethiopians were less-welcoming to foreign advisors and trainers than the Reformist like Hailie Selassie. When the people offering to help you are the biggest threat to your power, you'd want to keep them at arm's length.

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:40 AM

Their loss.

ViveLeInternationale Today at 00:41 AM

Literally, in this case.

I don't think I've ever seen a curbstomp that bad since my time in the Great War.

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:42 AM

Didn't know you served, Viv.

ViveLeInternationale Today at 00:43 AM

"Served" is being generous. I drove a truck.

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:44 AM

Hey, that counts as serving. God knows how I'd survive if we didn't have logistics.

NanjingNan Today at 00:45 AM

It's simple: You don't.

FreeabooButNotRacist Today at 00:45 AM

Yeah... that's kinda why Hailie Selassie's Emperor now and pushing reforms.

Well that, fighter jets, more tanks than they knew what to do with, and a literal mountain of 5.56 rounds.

"S10E1: Mormonism and Coming to America," Men, Myth, Misinfo: Starring Harry Houdini and HP Lovecraft

(Title Card of Men, Myth, Misinfo, showing hosts HP Lovecraft and Harry Houdini)​

HOUDINI: Alright, what do we have today?

LOVECRAFT: Mormonism.

HOUDINI: Ah. Exactly which part of it? The origins? The afterlife?

LOVECRAFT: It would be challenging to debunk the afterlife, now that you've driven most of the mediums out of business. No, today we will be discussing the Mormon claim that their prophet Lehi migrated to America in 600 BC.

HOUDINI: That... That is... certainly something.

LOVECRAFT: Indeed. According to the Mormons, Lehi and his family built a boat and sailed to the Americas under God's instructions, and they landed somewhere in Central America. In the Mormon theology, Lehi's son Laman rejected his father's teachings and persecuted his brothers Lehi and Samuel for their continued loyalty. Furthermore, the more-loyal Nephi would be chosen as Laman's successor.

HOUDINI: And as the eldest son, Laman would likely resent his brothers.

LOVECRAFT: Indeed. After Lehi's death and Nephi's rise, the colony in the Americas splits, with the righteous, at the time, followers of Nephi calling themselves "Nephites," and the followers of Laman and his brother Lemuel dubbed the "Lamanites." In response, God cursed the Lamanites for their rebellion by cutting them off from God's presence and, in their words, gave them a "Skin of Blackness," so as to not entice the Nephites.

HOUDINI: Which implies that the Lamanites are the ancestors of the Native Americans. And also implies some pretty terrible things about the Native Americans.

LOVECRAFT: Indeed. And the Lamanites would hate the Nephites, God's so-called chosen people, for centuries until the arrival of Jesus Christ to America.

HOUDINI: The what.

LOVECRAFT: Yes, it is as peculiar as it sounds. Jesus' time in America would coincide with the former Lamanites and Nephites reuniting into one people, until eighty-four years later when a second schism between Lamanites and Nephites occurred. This in turn would lead to another few centuries of internecine warfare between the two sides that had fallen into apostasy. The result of this conflict would be the outright annihilation of the Nephites by their once and former Lamanite kin while the latter would presumably go on to become the Native Americans of today.

HOUDINI: And that is it?

LOVECRAFT: Yes.

HOUDINI: Should this be found to be false, it would make for an interesting story. Now, how do you propose we analyze this?

LOVECRAFT: Seeing that the Mormons seem to believe that the Native Americans are the descendants of the Lamanites, we can analyze the genetics of Native Americans and compare them to Semitic peoples. Should the Book of Mormon be true, then the two peoples should be at least somewhat genetically similar.

HOUDINI: And the rest? Genetics is all well and good, but there should be some evidence of them in Central America... or any of the Americas.

LOVECRAFT: Indeed. Furthermore, we can compare what we do know about the stories' contemporaries to the stories themselves. Should the stories be true, then there should be few, if any inconsistencies with regard to the introduction of the horse, barley, wheat, the chariot, and true metallurgy.

HOUDINI: That is a tall order. And do you plan on us doing this all by ourselves, or do you have someone in mind to help us?

LOVECRAFT: That I do, Harry. This is John C. Ewers. Mr. Ewers is the Associate Curator of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution.

(Portrait of John C. Ewers)​

EWERS: Thank you for having me.

HOUDINI: The pleasure is all ours. Now, given your background in anthropology, what can you tell us about the Mormon historical claims?

EWERS: To put it bluntly... It's historically inaccurate in almost every sense. For starters, Native Americans have genetic markers in their DNA that indicate that their ancestors migrated to America. From Asia. Over the Bering Land Bridge.

HOUDINI: I see... And what about the introduction of the horses?

EWERS: The scientific consensus, which is based on almost every bit of credible archaeological and historical evidence we have, indicates that horses went extinct in the Americas thousands of years ago, only to be re-introduced thousands of years later in the 15th century by the Iberians.

LOVECRAFT: In short, the Book of Mormon's claims are not only debunked by genetic evidence, but the historical claims are also inconsistent with effectively everything else we currently know.

EWERS: Based on our current information, anyways. It is theoretically possible that the Mormons are actually correct, but there is not any credible evidence that supports their claims.

LOVECRAFT: At least not from archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians who don't already agree with them.

HOUDINI: That seems to be the case. So, would you say that this debunked?

LOVECRAFT: I would say so, yes.

HOUDINI: It seems that way. One more question, Dr. Ewers.

EWERS: Yes?

HOUDINI: You don't have any plans on going to Utah in the near-future, do you?

EWERS: No, I don't think so. Why?

HOUDINI: Because I don't think any of us are going to be welcome there, anytime soon.

 

[ChrisProvidence]

20 Km Outside Brookings, Oregon, United States of America, 11 January 1940

("Brookings Coast in Winter," by Joseph Hunkins)​

"Remind me," Selena Rossi breathed, before her boyfriend swung his axe once more. They'd been out here for half an hour, yet he'd barely made a dent in this tree. "Lin, why are you swinging your axe like a baseball bat?"

"Training. Plus, I need a new baseball bat, and you're the only person I know with woodworking skills."

"Sure looks like it," Lena answered with a smug grin. "Tell me something I don't know."

"My sister uses hairpins to put up her hair. Not chopsticks."

"Huh." Her word practically froze in the winter air. "I actually didn't know that."

"Yup," Lin grunted, before putting his axe down. "Your turn. Tell me something I don't know."

"For starters," his partner began, before picking up the axe, "You're supposed to swing down. Not at waist-level."

As if to add insult to injury, she even showed him the correct swing, before handing it back.

"Your turn, Lin."

"Axe or trivia?"

"Both."

"Alright then," he figured, before swinging the right way, this time. "My Dad rammed a barge into the beach during the Chinese Revolution."

"That's a new one," Lena figured, before getting a good eyeful of her partner. For critique on his form, obviously. "Which means it's my turn. Let's see... I grew up in a Mormon cult in Arizona."

"No shit?" Lin asked, though he kept pace with his swings. "You're not exactly the most religious type, you know?"

"I got out when I was ten. Feds raided the place once they got a tip that the Fundamentalist Mormons were working with the Klan. They found that, plus a whole cult full of people practicing child marriage."

"People practicing wh-"

"Next thing I know," the redhead continued, "my sperm donor's in Alcatraz for life, and I'm bouncing between foster homes around Phoenix while they tried to deprogram me."

"Jesus." No wonder you never told me that, Lena. "You seem to be doing better, though."

"Yeah, you could say that," Lena laughed, before leaning back against a tree. It wasn't so much a happy one when it sounded as cold as the winter air. "Even if Dad had to use his connections to get me in."

"Honestly," he huffed, before swinging his axe again, "I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything, Lin." Lena promised, and she even showed a tired smile to prove it. "I have a new family, and they're not a bunch of psychos who think that Black people are a representation of Satan."

"The fuck?"

"Cult, remember?"

"Yeah, I know, but still. They sound like assholes, and I kinda wish I could do something."

"Lin... They're in jail and I- I'm out here with you. That's enough for me."

"Thanks," he figured, before putting his axe down. He'd say more, but he didn't want to say anything stupid that'd ruin the moment. "So, there's really nothing you could want, is there?"

"Short of taking a detour to Alcatraz on our way back and telling the psycho cult leader I'm unfortunately related to I'm dating somebody who isn't white or Fundamentalist Mormon... Not much."

"You know..."

"Lin, no."

"But it would be funny!"

"Okay, maybe."

"Revenue From Environmental Tourism Surpasses Trophy Hunters," CapeTimes.com, 20 February 1940

It is that time of year again, and that means foreigners from all over the world have come to South Africa to view animals. What had started as a fledgling industry among foreign advisors and adventurers from Asia and the Americas has grown into one of the largest segments of the country's booming tourism sector over the last decade and a half.

This much is known to the locals of South Africa, who often make an outsized chunk of their revenue off of business with foreign tourists. Hotels, services, and entertainment all see an influx of tourist money come this time every year, and this summer is no exception.

What is less known, however, is that foreign tourism is expected to surpass that of trophy hunters for the first time in the nation's history.

While one can point to the new regulations on trophy hunters with regard to non-invasive and endangered species, the growth of the African tourism industry over the last ten to fifteen years has skyrocketed in comparison with the sale of hunting licenses and export tariffs on trophies. While licensed hunting is expected to serve a steadily-rising source of revenue and serve as a means of population control and combatting invasive species, the fact of the matter is that environmental tourism simply generates more revenue per year.

This phenomenon is part of a similar trend that has been happening throughout Southern and Central Africa, and South Africa is expected to be the first of many to come. Angola, Mozambique, and Zambia are expected to follow suit by the end of the decade, while the Congo, Kenya, the East African Union, and Uganda are likely to achieve a similar milestone by the end of the year.

Top 5 Travel Destinations You've NEVER HEARD OF", by The Wanderers, YouTube.com, 15 March 1940

NARRATOR: Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Manila, Seoul, Moscow, and Los Angeles are all beautiful, but here are five hidden gems you might not have thought of travelling to.

NARRATOR: Number Five - West Virginia

NARRATOR: Once coal country, this Appalachian state has re-invented itself as an inland tourist paradise. From the mountains retreats to the raging rapids of the Gauley River, this state offers all sorts of biomes for all of you nature-lovers, campers, and hikers. And for any of you history-lovers, be sure to check out the John Brown Museum in Harper's Ferry and the Grave Creek burial mounds to get a firsthand account of West Virginia's surprisingly-rich history.

NARRATOR: Number Four - Port-Au-Prince, Haiti

NARRATOR: What had once been what you'd see in the dictionary next to the word, "Failed State," is one of the Caribbean's fastest growing economies. And with that prosperity has come a national renaissance that tourists can see firsthand. Travel to one of Haiti's beautiful beaches, or get a firsthand look at Haiti's unique art scene that combines African roots with American, European, and Indegeneous aesthetics. And be sure to try one of the Haitian patties that've taken over the Caribbean by storm these last few years.

NARRATOR: Number Three - Ishigaki, Taiwan

NARRATOR: Everybody's heard of Hawaii and Hainan, but Ishigaki is its own little tropical paradise in between Okinawa and Taiwan. While military buffs may know it as the home of the legendary Chinese 6th Marine Division, the island's location and military base has set it apart as a melting pot of peoples from all over Asia. There's a reason so many soldiers from across Asia come back here to retire, and you'll see it firsthand when you get over here.

NARRATOR: Number Two - Ethiopia

NARRATOR: Some think Ethiopia was home to the Garden of Eden, and we can't blame them. This modernizing nation gives the best of both worlds, where modern technology meets thousands of years of history. The ancient ruins of Aksum to the unique stone-cut churches of Lalibela are just a day's drive away from the newly-built resorts on the Red Sea coast, giving you the best of both worlds that the Ethiopian people themselves enjoy.

NARRATOR: Number One - Goa, India

NARRATOR: Everyone's heard of Delhi and Mumbai and Kolkata and Hyderabad. But Goa is unique among India's settlements for its unique Portuguese heritage that is definitely seen in its architecture and culture. And that is before we get to Dudhsagar Falls, the beautiful beaches, and the Vasco nightlife that comes with this new tourism hotspot. Goa is the Subcontinent's hidden gem when it comes to tourism, and it is a must-visit for anyone going anywhere near the West Indian coast.

Alleged Black Hundreds Leader Self-Exiles to Switzerland, Russkiye Vedomosti, 20 April 1940

(Konstantin Vyacheslavovich Sakharov c. 1919)
​

Konstanting Vyacheslavovich Sakharov, former Russian general and known sympathizer of the Black Hundreds, has recently resurfaced in Bern alongside his son. The former general, whose service includes the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Intervention in Manchuria, and the Great War. While Sakharov was suspected of collaboration with the short-lived Diterikhs Junta, subsequent investigations found him innocent of crimes against the Russian people due to a lack of evidence.

General Sakharov had gained a notorious reputation in the post-war era as an avowed monarchist, whose openly-expressed opinions at the tail end of his career likely resulted in his retirement at the rank of Major General in 1928. In his retirement, Sakharov published his memoirs, Diary of a Soldier, during which he sought to absolve himself of any failures during the Russian Intervention of 1911 with blame towards the Jews, Social Revolutionaries, and Asiatic Fifth Columnists while also advocating for the merits of the Diterikhs Junta while decrying its flaws.

Recent investigations have implicated Sakharov and his writings as inspirations for several members of the Black Hundreds. In response, Sakharov has argued that while he does have sympathies for the terrorist organization's ideals, he has never had any interaction with the organization. Critics have argued that while Sakharov has never directly called for the actions, his rhetoric has directly influenced them, which is bolstered by the continued references towards him in several far-right circles, including multiple convicted members of the Black Hundreds.

Sakharov had left the Russian Empire for a medical operation in Switzerland to treat a stomach ulcer. Upon his successful recovery, both he and his son Igor Konstantinovich Sakharov announced that they would be applying for asylum in Switzerland as political refugees. Critics of the Sakharovs have noted that said application for asylum comes after the Ministry of Justice issued a warrant for the younger Sakharov's arrest in relation to a foiled Black Hundreds' attempt to assassinate Foreign Minister Viktor Chernov.

Several countries have called on Switzerland to extradite the elder Sakharov to Russia, including the Russian Empire, Poland, France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Ireland, Romania, China, Iberia, and the Ottoman Empire. So far, the Swiss government has not issued a statement on the matter, though the nation has gained a level of notoriety for its rejection of previous extradition attempts under its policy of neutrality.

"France Seeks to Expand RISE to Europe and West Africa," Popular Science, May 1940

(Cover of Popular Science, May 1940)​

Years after its introduction, we can safely say that RISE, France's technocratic economic network, is a success. Food waste in Europe is down, while logistical efficiency and industrial productivity have risen in supported territories.

It is this success that has led local government officials in Ireland, Britain, Iberia, Germany, and Italy to begin the process of integration into the French-designed network. The process is expected to take years, during which personnel are trained, computers and servers are acquired, and the necessary infrastructure is built, but Western Europe's leadership seems generally open to the prospect.

"If the socialist experiment is to survive," said PM Clement Attlee at a recent event in Birmingham, "We need to adapt with the times. RISE is the means of doing so."

Leaders in Western Africa are also considering full-integration into the system, rather than the de-facto integration by virtue of France and the rest of Western Europe being their largest export markets.

While Western African resource imports are factored into the network's metrics and its simulations, full-integration would likely see RISE play a direct role in the extraction of said resources. Given the lower development level in the region that will require participants to start from scratch, it is likely that this process will take longer than in Europe.

Critics have described the expansion as "Red Colonialism," with claims that Europe's socialist progress rests on the backs of colonialist exploitation in all but name. The argument, in short, is that RISE requires raw materials from West Africa to function, and those resources are gained through exploitation.

Proponents of RISE have noted that the system have noted that the implementation of socialist policies in West Africa have led to a higher standard of living and greater freedoms for the peoples of the region. To their credit, French occupation has often resulted in greater rights for women and minority groups.

Other proponents have argued that the proposed system is a mutually-beneficial arrangement that combines the resource-based strengths of Western Europe and Western Africa. These proponents are quick to point out that Western Europe is the largest supplier of grains and processed materials such as iron and steel to the less-arable and less-developed Western Africa.

The expansion of RISE into the rest of Western Europe is an ambitious proposal. Even moreso when it comes to Western Africa. While the benefits are apparent, it is clear that this will take time, talent, and treasure the likes of which haven't been seen in European history.

But if RISE's initial success is anything to go by, the Europeans are neither lacking when it comes to ambition nor unwilling to put the work in that needs to be done.

Da Lat, Lam Dong Province, Vietnam, Indochinese Federation, 26 June 1940

(Da Lat, Vietnam)​

Le Van Ninh was a soldier, not a farmer.

That was truer today than it was a decade ago. He was a soldier, and he still wasn't a farmer.

That said, he had been busy in his time since the war. There was the training of the Indochinese Armed Forces into something more than a band of rebels, but piracy and fighting the Holdouts in Africa had taken up most of the last decade.

And that was just his day job. His other job, which he hadn't been getting paid for, involved him being the biggest advocate for the Highlanders in the government.

He was a socialist at the end of the day, and not one of those LARPers he despised so much on Twitter when he was younger. Unlike those guys, he'd actually taken up arms and done more than post about a revolution.

Three times, at this point. Rojava, China, and Indochina.

That's three more than that asshole Christman could count.

Maybe it was the old habits from his days in the YPG, but he had the same sympathies for the Highlanders that he did the Kurds. And this time, he actually had the means to do something about it.

Sure, Vo Quong Nghiem was the Minister of Defense, but Le was his advisor. That gave him the perfect opportunity to influence policy and prevent the mistakes of the past.

It worked. Well, it mostly worked, anyways. His tenure at the Ministry of Defense had minimized the use of force against the Highlanders. There was just one problem.

The Ministry of Defense handled military affairs, but the Highlanders' problems were more than that. And as far as he knew, he couldn't shoot issues land reform, language, representation, education, and the availability of resources.

Well, he could, but he liked to think he was better than Ngo Dinh Diem.

No, he had to do this the hard way, and that meant using every bit of leverage, every favor, and every connection he had both inside and outside the government to get things done.

Working inside government was honestly the easiest part. There was Nguyen Sinh Cung, of course, and the man who would be Ho Chi Minh in another life had the most pull out of any single person he knew.

That said, Nguyen wasn't the only person in government Le could influence. Not when many of the men and women he'd led during the war were now in office. Getting them to agree to reforms was simple enough; all he had to do was bring up the "Good old days," when all they had to do was raid the French.

Nostalgia was a powerful weapon, and he's wielded it well enough to help push through representation and language rights for the Highlanders.

There was just one problem with that: Politics was all well and good, but political will wasn't enough to get resources to where they needed to be if there weren't any resources.

That was where his connections outside the government came in handy. People would often say they "Know a guy" who could get what they needed, and Le was no exception.

The only difference was that said "Know a guy" was the Director of the Military Intelligence Bureau of China, and Marty Li himself had a vested interest in helping Le out. The man was a student of history, and rumor had it that he had a thing for rectifying past injustices.

And if that meant making sure the right resources and pressure were available to help the Highlanders on the other side of the border, then so be it.

Exactly how his old acquaintance did it, Le didn't know. Honestly, it was probably better if he didn't, now that he thought about it.

Probably blackmail, favors, blackmail, off-the-book budgets, and blackmail.

But it worked.

A little bit of pressure on Hue was enough to get Hue to ease up on the language issue. A little bit of favors had ensured funding to set up schools and healthcare.

And a whole lot of aid money brought electrification, clean water, sanitation, utilities, and infrastructure to the otherwise-mountainous region he'd called home ever since he retired and started a family.

It was... unique. When he grew up in Little Saigon, his parents had tried to set him up with the daughter of a family friend. She was nice enough, but he was fairly certain that his parents wanted Vietnamese-American grandchildren who'd take on his name.

Instead, here he was in Vietnam, married to a Co Ho woman with three kids who'd take on her name.

Le wondered how his parents would feel about that. "Pissed off" would be a fair guess, and that was before he got to how racist his parents were. Sure, his wife wasn't Black or Mexican, but his parents weren't exactly the "most-tolerant" of people.

Well, maybe Mom and Dad'd like that she's a Christian-

Wait, what am I talking about this?

This is our life to live. Not theirs.

"Political Analysts Say 'Fuck It,' And Rate All Sixty States As Toss-Ups," The Onion, July 1940

​

With all four conventions finished and the candidates decided, we know who will be the "Big Four" candidates for the 1940 Election in William Murray (D-OK), Robert Taft (R-OH), Floyd Olson (FL-MN), and Theodore Bilbo (TP-MS).

In response to this, as well as the chaos of the Democratic and Republican conventions, political analysts have admitted that they have no idea how this is going to turn out.

"Honestly? At this point, who the Fuck knows how it's going to turn out" said Nate Wasserman of the New York Times, "Huey Long is saying the remaining Southern Democrats rigged it, Smedley Butler is pissed, the True Patriot Convention was basically a contest of who can out-racist the other guy, the Farmer-Labor-Socialist Alliance is somehow the most-sane ones because they just ran Fiorella La Guardia as their VP. You know what? Fuck it, let's just rate all of the states as Toss-Ups. At least that way, we can't be wrong!"

Noted pollster George Gallup has declined our request for a comment and asked us to "Stop bothering me and leave [him] the Hell alone!"

"The Viability of Using Livestock to Manage Kudzu," McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, United States of America, August 1940

(Kudzu smothering trees in Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America)​

SUMMARY: Kudzu (Pueraria montana, Pueraria edelis, and Pueraria phaseioloides) is a collective term for several invasive species of climbing, coiling, and trailing deciduous perennial vines native to East and Southeast Asia. Kudzu was first introduced to the United States at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and the 1883 New Orleans Exposition as an ornamental plant, though it would later be used as a feedstock and a means against soil erosion by the turn of the century. Although future knowledge from the Great Journey and environmental protections passed under the second Roosevelt Administration of 1913-1921 prevented its widespread infestation, expanded trade with East Asia and a phenomenon of Orientalism in the 1910s led to a surge in the plant's spread compared to Lost History trends.

This article analyzes the various methods used to cull and eliminate Kudzu from various regions in the Eastern United States in the 1920s and 1930s and analyze their effectiveness. Data was gathered from 1926 to 1935 in Alabama, Arkansas, Washington D.C., Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Jersey, Oregon, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Methods of Kudzu removal include mechanical removal, use of herbicides, soil solarization, the introduction of bacterial blights and insect herbivory, and continued livestock grazing.

The collected data was controlled for cost and both variable climate and weather conditions, while results included cost efficiency, rate of removal, and environmental impact, and risk to ecosystems. When factoring in this data, it was determined that repeated grazing by livestock (primarily goats) was the most-efficient means of removing Kudzu with regards to all metrics.

The preliminary data of this study was used to advise Federal, State, and Municipal governmental efforts to remove the invasive species with a minimal effect on the local ecosystems.

Manila Metropolitan Theater, Manila, Republic of the Philippines, 20 September 1940

(Exterior of the Manila Metropolitan Theater)​

"Nanay!" Maria Ramona Madden Tsu practically leapt into her mother's arms. "I got the part in the teledrama!"

"That's great, Ria!" Laura Madden knew the sting of rejection all too well, so to see her daughter get her first lead role on-screen was definitely something. "So, will you be doing the Spanish dub, too?"

"Of course!" After all, Ria (as her family called her) had gotten her start dubbing over teledramas for the Spanish audience. "Guess it helps to know Tagalog and Spanish, right?"

"Yup," her mother answered with the same cheerfulness. "Even if it means I have to choose between listening to you in Tagalog or Spanish. I guess I'll have to watch it twice, then!"

"Get in line behind most of South America, Nanay," her daughter teased back. "It's still hard to believe I'm going to be watched all actors South America."

"Hey, don't forget Central America and Spain," Laura pointed out, "They watch teledramas as much as we do."

"Right. I've been meaning to ask about that."

"What's up?"

"How'd teledramas get so popular?"

"Maybe the Uptimer Filipinos brought it with them? You should go ask your father when he's back from the store."

"I meant Latin America. It's not like they can speak Tagalog, you know."

"Probably all the similarities. Do you remember how your Tatay and his Mexican college friends would joke that Filipinos were the 'Mexicans of the Sea?'" Ria nodded. "It might be a joke, but there's they have a lot in common, like language, religion, culture, history, and appearance."

"You added that one because you thought Tatay was Mexican when you met him, didn't you?"

"Okay, that was one time, and he was hanging out with the Mexican club when I met him. How was I supposed to know he was the one Asian guy there?"

Military Intelligence Bureau Headquarters, Nanjing, National Capital Region, Republic of China, 23 October 1940

"You all are the best of the best," Director Fong said to the exploratory committee at the table. "Between all of us, we have over a century's worth of experience in espionage, operation, research, and intelligence. The fact that you are some of the best, most-qualified people I've ever worked with is why I've brought you all here."

"So let me get this straight." Her predecessor put his folder down and looked at her. "You want us to come up with Rift-based contingencies in case another Great Journey happens, or something like that. I may be retired now, but I'm pretty sure we already have those."

"This comes from the top, Marty," Rachel told him, "President Soong herself."

"This is about the new tachyon data, isn't it? About calibration?" asked Marty. Rachel nodded. "And she wants to know the viability of sending in survey teams into the Rifts to gather information and technology."

"Effectively yes. Hu, I want your opinion on this."

"Do you want the long answer, or the Dr. Malcolm quote from Jurassic Park, Fong?" asked Deputy Director of Operations Richard Hu. "Because there's nothing stopping us from opening a Rift and sending in agents that'd be going in blind. The question is if we should open an unknown Rift and send in agens that'd be going in blind."

"Not to mention the issue of contamination," Dr. Chen Akira added, before putting her own folder down. "Opening a Rift to a different timeline risks exposing us or them to unknown diseases and invasive species at best. For all we know, we could be opening a RIft to an unknown threat that could wipe us out faster than the IJN."

"Or zombies," Marty pointed out, and he got some weird looks from everyone else. "No, I'm serious. Just because we got sent to the past and the one Rift we can open sends us to a world that's like ours, but run by fascist American monarchists (not that there's any difference) does not mean that the next RIft's universe follows the same rules as ours. Or that it hasn't descended into some apocalyptic or dystopian hellscape."

"He's right," Aki agreed. "Theoretically speaking, a Rift could open to a world that is overrun by something that is, for all intents and purposes, a zombie apocalypse, though the possibilities are endless."

(Portrait of Soong Qingling, 5th President of the Republic of China)​

"Which is why I'm wondering why President Soong wanted us to look into this in the first place?" Deputy DIrector of Operations Richard Hu said outright. "With all due respect to her, it's highly unlikely that we run into a timeline we could actually benefit from. When the possibilities are infinite, the chances of running into either a benevolent society that'd share technology with us or one that we could steal technology from with minimal risk is almost-zero."

"Because the MIB is possibly the most-competent research institution on the planet that can also keep its mouth shut," Rachel sighed. "Besides, she thought it would backfire horribly, but she wanted a second opinion just to be sure."

"And she doesn't want the rest of the world to find out that we're considering re-creating the Great Journey on purpose to steal technology."

"That too, RIck. Which is why we get paid well enough to keep our mouths shut."

"Election Night in America," NBC, 6 November 1940

(Ronald Reagan, Host of NBC Nightly News)​

REAGAN: Welcome back to Election Night in America. I am your host, Ronald Reagan, and with ninety-five percent of the votes in on the West Coast, the election is still too close to call. With four parties splitting the vote all across the sixty states, the territories, and the District of Columbia, the electoral vote count cannot be projected.

REAGAN: The four candidates, Representative Robert Taft of Ohio of the Republicans, Governor William Murray of Oklahoma for the Democrats, Governor Olson for the Farmer-Labor-Socialist Alliance, and Senator Theodore Bilbo for the True Patriots, have split the vote to such an extent that recounts are almost a certainty across over a third of the nation.

REAGAN: For the those of you at home, the United States works on an electoral college system, under which the candidate with the most votes in a state receives all of the state's electoral votes. With turnout as high as it is, it is possible that a state can be won without the majority of the votes.

REAGAN: With several key states for each candidate headed to a recount, it is likely that there will not be a president-elect until the recounts are finished by the end of the month. As for us here at NBC, this will conclude our broadcast. Good morning to you America, and God bless you all.

Dowd Residence, Palo Alto, United States of America, 6 November 1940

"Well shit," said Jon Dowd to his two remaining friends in the living room. "The Hell do we do, now?"

His teammate Adrian Friese shrugged. So did their equipment manager Morgan Chen.

"I guess we wait?" Adrian figured. "Yeah, I'm not going back to Tennessee for Christmas."

"I do not blame you," Jon figured, before looking at Morgan. "You're smart, right?"

"I guess we wait? Not much we can do."

"Well shit," Jon reiterated. "I guess Lin and Selena had the right idea to get shitfaced and pass out."

"KEEP IT DOWN, WILL YOU?!" he heard a woman shout from the other side of the wall. "SOME OF US ARE TRYING TO SLEEP!"

"Not my fault you drank half my tequila!" Jon shouted back. Honestly, he wasn't so much pissed as he was impressed. "You two go... Get a room!"

"WE'RE IN A ROOM!" a second, more-masculine, voice shouted. "Hey, Morgan?"

"Yeah, Lin?!"

"Did anyone win yet?"

"Nope! Reagan said it's too close to call!"

"Thought so," Lin groaned. "Then yeah, go to sleep! It's 3 AM!"

Yangon, Republic of Burma, 24 December 1940

("Yangon Colonial Architecture," by Marcin Konsek)​

Beautiful.

Aung Kan looked over the city again, and he didn't have any better way to describe it. Yangon was as beautiful as when his parents fled when he was a child.

I was just a kid during the 8888 Uprising. But this? This is better than anything from the stories.

It was a low bar when he was comparing it to the Tatmadaw and Ne Win. Then again, they'd run Burma into the ground, tossed the bar in it, and then neglected to bury the bar because they spent all that funding on Naypyidaw instead.

But when a country wasn't being run by a corrupt, ultranationalist, military junta or an idiot who screwed the economy because he liked the number nine. This time, Burma had the chance to prosper, and they seemed to be on the right track.

Infrastructure had been built, the government wasn't practicing state-sponsored racism, and there were actually competent people running the country. Sure, it had taken over a decade of the Nanjing Accord basically training and educating a new class of bureaucrats and officials from scratch, but the Burma of today was more-developed than the Myanmar of 2020.

Of course, the bar for that was really, really low when Myanmar was one of the least-developed countries in the Lost History, but the point still stood. People were healthier, richer, more-educated, and living better lives than they would have back in 2020, and that was as much a testament to the Burmese people of today as it was the Tatmadaw of 2020.

That's why he'd moved here after the war, rather than staying in Little Burma.

Sure, he'd spent more time living in Taiwan than he'd ever done in Burma, but he'd wanted to be a part of this. Burma was his homeland, and he wanted to make it a better place than the one he had fled.

Then again, educated professionals were in high demand, and Yangon practically welcomed him and with open arms. Somebody had to modernize the infrastructure of the country, and it wasn't as if the British had been doing a good job of it before they left.

Capitol Building, Washington, District of Columbia, 20 January 1941

(Floyd B. Olson, 32nd President of the United States of America)​

It was a cold day in Washington, but a hopeful one at least. The chaos, lawsuits, and backroom deals were settled, and a coalition (if he could call it that) had been formed in compromise.

All that was left were the formalities.

"Please raise your right hand," Chief Justice Brandeis instructed, "and repeat after me: I Floyd Bjørnstjerne Olson do solemnly swear."

"I, Floyd Bjørnstjerne Olson do solemnly swear."

"That I will faithfully execute…"

"That I will faithfully execute," Olson repeated, just as he'd practiced a hundred times.

"The Office of the President of the United States," the Chief Justice said.

"The Office of the President of the United States," the President elect answered.

"And will, to the best of my ability."

"And will, to the best of my ability," Olson reiterated, knowing full well the new lease on life he'd been given.

Had it not been for the forewarning, I'd have died of stomach cancer, instead of catching it early.

"Preserve, protect, and defend…"

"Preserve protect, and defend," Olson promised.

"The Constitution of the United States."

"The Constitution of the United States," the man repeated, with all the reverence that was expected of him.

"So help you, God."

"So help me, God."

This was not part of the Oath of Office, but Olson needed all the help he could get. And if God was willing to help him, then he wasn't about to say no.

There were four parties in Congress, and a tenuous coalition of Farmer Laborers, Liberals, Progressives (of Republican and Democrat stripes), and Socialists that had agreed to certify his election by the slimmest of margins. Everyone from Smedley Butler and Huey Long, to Jack Reed and Norman Thomas were all on the same side, and even then it had taken some help from his predecessor to smooth things over.

Then there were the Knights of the Golden Circle. Weak enough to not have much sway outside of the True Patriot Party, but large enough to be the greatest domestic threat since the Klan. They were the reason the Secret Service had to be vetted and security had to be on high-alert across the entire parade length.

And a nation that hadn't had such a divided election since the days of Abraham Lincoln. Even if it was, thankfully, not as divided as the last time there was a four-way election that had been split this badly.

All of this was his responsibility. Not as a ruler, but as a leader of a fractured nation and the head of a coalition that was seemingly held together with chicken wire, duct tape, and the dream of an America that not only looked forward, but one that would bring everyone along with them.

Even the ones who would like nothing more than for me to die of stomach cancer.

America had elected him to lead, and he intended to lead America. Not just the Farmer-Labor-Socialists or them plus the Progressives from the Democrats and Republicans.

No, Floyd Olson was elected to lead all of these United States, and he intended to do just that.

 

[ChrisProvidence]

University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America, 28 February 1940

(Physics Hall, UC Berkeley)​

It was a ninety-minute train ride from Palo Alto to Berkeley.

No, that didn't sound right to Morgan.

She needed about fifteen minutes to get to the station, and there was another fifteen for the bus ride from the station to Ernest Lawrence Hall. That was over two hours of travel for what would be, in all likelihood, two to three hours of lectures before another two hours to get back home to Palo Alto.

That kind of travel was only for special occasions, and a lecture by the J. Robert Oppenheimer was definitely worth the time.

The man was a legend in his past life and a living legend in his current one. Morgan had read his papers on the physical implications of the Great Journey as well as the ethical implications of Rift research.

And now that I've been studying physics for two and a half years, I actually know what he's talking about.

"Is this the line for the lecture?" a New York-accented man asked her. Morgan turned around to see its source: a dark-haired man who looked about her age with a similarly-aged partner. "Our flight from New York was delayed, and I didn't want to get locked out."

​

"Yeah, this is the place," Morgan reassured him. "You here for Oppenheimer, too?"

Wait, why does he look familiar… Could've sworn I've seen him somewhere.

"'Course I am!" the New Yorker laughed, "The doctor's been trying to recruit me to work here once I finish my PhD. You?"

"I'm an undergrad at Stanford, but I wouldn't mind studying here," Morgan figured. "All that knowledge isn't going to discover itself, right?"

"Always good to meet another physicist," the New Yorker agreed, before stopping himself and offering a handshake. "I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? I'm Richard Feynman, and this is my wife Arline."

Oh. Yeah, now I know why he looked familiar.

Wait… Feynman?!

"It's nice to meet you, Arline," Morgan said politely before turning to Arline's husband. "And I know you probably get this a lot, but it's an honor to meet you."

"I do get that a lot," Feynman chuckled, "But please, call me Richard. I'm twenty-two years young, and I have enough pressure already."

"Sorry," Morgan apologized. Okay, don't say anything stupid in front of one the greatest physicists ever, Morgan. "Just kinda weird to be meeting somebody my Mama'd call a 'Person of Interest.' Actually, I think she tried to contact you for an article she was writing about physicists."

"Ah." Now it was Feynman's turn to apologize. "Sorry, I'm not the best at responding to emails."

"He's lying," Arline chimed in. "Richard never checks his inbox. If I hadn't reminded him, he would've forgotten our tickets."

"I could pick the door," her husband insisted, then turned back to Morgan. "But to make it up to your mother, I can think of one way that the Great Journey changed my life. You're talking to her."

"Your wife?" Feynman happily nodded. "Meeting, Medicine, or Maybe something else?"

"Medicine," Arline answered for Richard. "I caught Tuberculosis a year ago. In another life, it would have been a death sentence, rather than nine months of medication and a full recovery."

"And that alone has made me a very happy man," Richard added. "But enough about myself. Have you read Dr. Oppenheimer's most-recent article in Popular Science?"

"The one on nuclear proliferation?" Feynman nodded. "It's a good one. The ethical arguments are understandable. I mean, we probably don't want to develop weapons that could annihilate the entire human race."

"I meant the practical implications, Morgan. What do you think of those?"

"Honestly?" Morgan began, "I disagree with him about his argument about pragmatic motivations. China didn't develop nukes out of a concern about proliferation. They didn't develop nukes because they didn't need them to win."

Okay, it's more complicated than that, but I'm pretty sure he gets the idea.

Plus, it's not like I can tell him my aunt's the head of the MIB.

"At the same time," Morgan continued, "it's probably a good idea to have it all in writing. Practically speaking, non-proliferation treaties also allow us to reallocate resources that would otherwise go into developing, building, and maintaining nukes towards more-productive things."

"I see…" Richard mused. From the looks of him, he seemed to buy what Morgan came up with on the spot. "Now on to my second question: How much longer are we going to be in line?"

"Twenty minutes," Morgan figured, "Why?"

"Because I'm bored, I already talked Arline's ears off on the taxi ride here, and I left my lockpicks back at the hotel."

"Letter to Lou Gehrig," 15 March 1941

Lou,

I heard about the diagnosis.

We all knew that ALS was something that could happen again, but when you made it through '39, so many of us thought that you'd be luckier this time around. Modern medicine can work wonders, and I just want you to know that I'm happy that your prospects are better this time around. Another year or two in the American League isn't much, but a shot at another two decades of life is the least you deserve.

I'll be honest: In the fifteen years I've gone up against you, me on the Red Sox and you on the Yankees, you might well be one of the few men on this planet who've ever managed to out-slug me when I was on the field and out-slug my Red Sox when I started managing them.

I won't pretend to know what you're going through, but I know how you feel, leaving the game behind. Baseball isn't just a job for guys like us, but a way of life that few men get to live.

To have it taken away from us, be it old age, disease, or just bad luck, just doesn't seem right.

And if I'm being honest, I'd rather take another ten years of you homering off my pitchers if it meant you didn't develop ALS.

As your friend and former rival, I want you to know that if there's anything I can do, you need only ask.

Yours Truly,

George "Babe" Ruth
Manager of the Boston Red Sox

​

P.S. I took your advice about seeing the doctor at the Mayo Clinic. Doc caught the tumor early, so we're looking at a quick operation next month.

"Speech by Konstantin Vyacheslavovich Sakharov, Translated," Intercepted by the Counterintelligence Service of the Russian Empire, 20 April 1941

(K.V. Sakharov, c. 1919)​

K. V. Sakharov: The humiliations of our great Empire to its current position can be attributed to three groups - The Jew, The Asiatic, and The Socialist. All three are working, whether in concert or by themselves, to weaken Russia on every front.

Sakharov: One need only look at the Socialists, those traitors who set the ball in motion back in 1905 when their strikes riled up the masses against the Tsar himself. Honest men who returned home from the war against the Asiatics were corrupted by these demagogues and turned against their fellow Russians!

Sakharov: Then there are the Asiatics. They, for decades, have sought to make us weak, so that we may not reach our full potential and achieve our rightful place on the world's stage. The Japanese, vultures as they were, attacked us when we were at our most vulnerable. The Chinese, envious of our rising star, were only able to defeat our brave soldiers through their superior weapons and our so-called leaders' cowardice!

Sakharov: Then there are the Jews, the oldest enemy of the Russian people. They have worked to subvert us at every corner, be it the assassination of Tsar Aleksandr II, the support of degeneracy under the guise of "Progress," or the infiltration of our institutions that weakened them in time for the Asiatics to humiliate us thirty years ago at Vladivostok!

Sakharov: These three threats' very existence directly threaten the strength and security of Russia. For that, they must be eliminated. Whether it be through assimilation or elimination, the Russian people must act decisively if they are to secure the existence of their land, their culture, and their children.

Sakharov: Men like Diterikhs were right in their decisions, but they were wrong in its execution. Let no man who calls himself a patriot not honor what he and so many others died for and the so-called "Countrymen" who betrayed them.

Sakharov: My brothers, I call on you to not make the same mistakes and avenge him, and all the other Martyrs of Russia!

"The Train Station In The Middle Of Nowhere," The Bengalee, 1 May 1941

If you go far enough outside of Calcutta a decade ago, you'd find the most-peculiar sight: A train station in the middle of nowhere. The pictures would have you believe that it's a simple brick structure from the colonial era along one of the many railroads that crisscross India.

This station has captivated online image boards and forums, where people wonder just what is going on in India that the government would build a train station in the middle of nowhere. Even members of the One Bharat Party had taken notice and called the "Station in the Middle of Nowhere… An example of the incompetence and corruption of the Ghadar-Congress Alliance" on social media.

The answer is more-boring than you would think: It's long-term urban planning as part of the planned "New Town Calcutta" planned city as part of Delhi's urbanization efforts over the last decade and a half. New Town Calcutta (or "NTC" for short) is to be built with modernist urban planning in mind to meet the growth of India's largest city.

Upon further investigation by our journalists and open-source investigators, it was found that the brick structure in the above picture is actually a temporary structure used to deliver workers and materials to NTC. The structure itself was not meant for people, but to build the city around it, as well as its replacement.

These days, the Station in the Middle of Nowhere doesn't exist, having been torn down in 1936. In its place is New Town Calcutta Train Station, which provides high-speed rail travel to Calcutta Proper and the surrounding area.

The surrounding areas themselves are no rural fields but a growing city full of Indians moving in from the same type of rural areas NTC was built upon.

Yet the Train Station In The Middle Of Nowhere continues to live on in the annals of internet history.

For some, it is a fun story about urban planning, while others see it as an example of propaganda bending the truth to engineer a different reality.

But for many, it is an example of how far India has come in the last fifteen years.

Nouakchott, Mauritania, French West Africa, 7 June 1941

(Dolores Park, Nouakchott, French West Africa)​

As a journalist, Elise Brodeur had always gone above and beyond what was expected of her.

She had to.

It was the only way she could prove she hadn't gotten the job through nepotism from her uncle.

Sometimes this meant being embedded into units that fought against the monarchist Spanish Africanists. Other times it meant spending every waking hour of every day in the library, looking for every scrap of information she could find.

Interviews were somewhere in between that. Outright asking the people took less time than research, but it was safer than when she was embedded with the British Volunteers.

Even if I did get to meet Eric Blair and T.E. Lawrence.

"It's good to meet you, Messouda," she said to the woman sitting across from her. Messouda needed a second to listen to the translator connected to his earpiece, but he nodded. "So, where do you want to begin?"

"Where to start…" she began, before closing her eyes for a moment. "I was born in 1905 to the east of here, as a slave. My mother and father were slaves, and so were their mothers and fathers."

Elise nodded politely, before writing that down.

"Our owner was a Beidane family who owned an iron mine. Both my father and mother were to be their servants, and I was told that I would serve their son, who was about my age. He was actually my owner, believe it or not."

"Um, how exactly does that work?" Elise interrupted as politely as she could. "How does a child own a slave?"

"Saleh was officially my owner, but his father was the one who owned me. But despite having grown up under the same roof, he was my owner, and I was his slave. I was expected to serve him, just as my mother and father served him and his mother and father."

"Could you go into detail about how that worked? How was he as an owner?"

"To tell you the truth," Messouda coldly laughed, "For a slave owner, he was not particularly good at it. I remember one time, he had practically insisted on helping me and my mother with the cleaning. When his mother found out, she nearly lost her mind. Said it was 'Unbecoming' of a young man like him and forbade him from helping us out."

"And how old were you two at this time?"

"I was six and he was seven. We were just children at the time. He was just trying to be helpful, but his father smacked him across the face, demanded that Saleh 'Know his place,' and forbade him from ever helping us again."

"Did that change anything?"

"It did, but do you know how many children will try to find ways to get around their parents' rules?" Elise nodded. "Saleh was that kind of child. If his father wanted me to clean his room, it would be spotless by the time I arrived. If he told Saleh not to talk with me, we would talk when his parents wouldn't hear us."

"That's… odd, to say the least. Why would he do that?"

"Religion, mostly. Philosophy, too. I'm sure you've heard my colleague speak about Ameer Ali's arguments-"

"Is he the one who argued that slavery was a necessity at the time of Muhammad that isn't needed in modern Islam?"

Messouda nodded. "He is. That, and how almost every Muslim scholar these days will say that most slavery is against Islamic law, since the only slaves allowed are non-Muslims captured during a war. Which would mean that my enslavement and that of my family is anathema to Islamic law."

"Because you and your family are Muslims." Messouda nodded again. "Along with almost everyone else who is still enslaved in Mauritania."

"More or less, yes."

"So, when did you learn this?"

"Around my pre-teens, so that would be… 1917."

"That's the time you escaped, right?"

"Yes. The new government in Paris had changed their policy. Before, the burden of proof would be on the escaped slave, but that changed once the Radicals and Socialists came to power."

"I see… And I know you get asked this plenty of times, but could you go over your escape?"

"I don't think there's much to say," Messouda admitted. "Saleh and I were in Nouakchott with his father for business. He asks his father if he can tour the colonial office. The old man says yes, and the next thing I know, Saleh walks through the front door and says, 'My companion here is a slave, and she would like to apply for asylum.'"

"...Huh." Honestly, Elise thought it would be more than that. "You two just walked in and applied for protections?"

"Saleh didn't think this through, but there were workers who were willing to hear him out and take us in."

"I see…" Elise wrote another note down. "Please continue."

"The next thing we know, we're both wards of the state and shipped off to Paris. I, for being a former slave, and Saleh because he had nowhere else to go."

"And the rest, as they say," Messouda continued, "Is history. I was sent to remedial school, studied, worked a few odd jobs, then ended up in the Ministry of the Interior by the end of the War. France needed translators to help with the liberation and reconstruction, and I was sent back here as one."

"Of course. And this is where you met your brother again?"

"Saleh and I didn't know we were half-siblings yet, but yes. Paris needed as many educated Mauritanian Loyalists as they could, and Saleh was one of the few from our generation. I think there were about two hundred of us, total, who were tasked with rebuilding our old home. We were to be the first generation of leaders who would run Mauritania one day."

"It must have been hard. A hundred people tasked with rebuilding and running all of Mauritania?"

"There were advisors from Paris who helped fill in the gaps," Messouda reassured her. "But yes. Paris was recruiting and schooling people as they could, but we were tasked with reconstruction, peacekeeping, and cracking down on slavery. Twelve hour days were the norm, and people like Saleh and I had to do everything, everywhere, all at once."

"Could you go into that?"

"Truth be told, I still don't know how we managed to pull that off." Messouda breathed deeply. "But we managed to hold the line for years until we had enough people to truly get things done and wipe out slavery for good."

Wrigley Field, Los Angeles, California, United States of America, 24 June 1941

(Faux-Retro Postcard of Wrigley Field, Los Angeles)​

"Jesus," Lin's teammate grunted, before handing him back his heavy hickory bat. "The Hell are they feeding you and Jon? Steroid-flavored corn flakes?"

"Balanced breakfasts and a love of the game, Adrian," Lin chuckled. The honest answer was training. Lots of training. "So, how's LA treating you?"

"Hell of a lot better than Tennessee, man." Then again, one look at Adrian Friese was all his friends needed to know why he'd never gone back. "Not having to deal with the Klan, Knights, or whatever they're callin' themselves these days telling me to 'Know yer' place' is a nice change of pace, and I'm not about to give that up."

"You'd think things'd be better than they were in my Dad's timeline," Lin figured, before pulling out another stick of cobalt-flavored gum. "Want one?"

"I'm good, thanks." Adrian sighed. "I mean, it is better. Instead of living in the 1940s, it's like living in the 1970s. There's just one problem, Lin."

"1970s America was still pretty fuckin' racist?"

"Yup. You know what's the most fucked part about it?" Lin shook his head. "A whole lot of people are probably fine with civil rights. Plenty of folks who would've been racist as Hell in your Dad's time just... aren't. Either because of God or patriotism or the Klan shooting Teddy Roosevelt."

"How's that a bad thing?"

"The bad part is that the ones that don't are part of the Knights or openly support them. You know how we can mail in our ballots now?"

"Yeah. Helps with turnout, right?"

"Well, there's that. Also because it's a Hell of a lot harder to intimidate and disenfranchise voters when everyone gets mailed a ballot," Adrian chuckled. "And even harder when it turns out beating up the mailman is a felony."

"I'll take your word for it, man," Lin figured. "The voting thing. Not the part about beating up the mailman."

"Heh. Still can't believe that dumbass Knight got himself a felony for punching that mailman, Lin. Seriously, what was that guy thinking?"

"Hey, you're the one studying to be a lawyer, Adi. Even if there'll be two more major leagues by the time we graduate."

"Always good to have a backup plan if I don't make it into the AL, NL, or the PCL, Lin. Not like I'd ever join the Southern League."

"What, you don't wanna join the 'Racism League?'" The two-way player earned a friendly jab for that one. "You know, it'd be your best chance to stick it to all those guys who gave you shit as a kid."

"It's is tempting," Adrian admitted. If Lin was being honest, his roommate looked like he was warming up to the idea. "There's just one problem."

"You'd be a famous Black guy in the most racist part of America?"

"Okay, two problems, Lin. One: That."

"What's the second one?"

"Humidity."

"Sexual Inversion and John Radclyffe Hall," The Common Man Magazine, July 1941

(Portrait of John Radclyffe Hall, c. 1930)​

By Alice Ross

Two of the greatest differences between our society and that of the Lost History are the sheer amount of knowledge that came with it and the progress that came out of it.

That is to be expected, of course, when we have an entire century of research that we can use. It is a second chance for us to clear up misconceptions and mistakes of the Lost History and grow as people.

One of them is the issue of gender identity. A contentious subject, even in the more-progressive early 2010s, this information has led to a re-evaluation of gender roles and even gender itself among academia and the common public.

One of the most prominent examples is the author John Hall, the author of The Well of Loneliness, The Master of the House, and their newest work, Time to Try Again. The latter book has been praised by many as a sort of "Second Coming-Of-Age" story that encapsulates the changing views of the LGBT+ movement over the last few decades, including the debate over the concept of Sexual Inversion that Hall himself had popularized in The Well of Loneliness.

For those not familiar with the term, "Sexual Inversion" is the theory that "Inverts" are people who are born with the physical characteristics of one gender while expressing another gender's traits. For example, a female invert would be somebody that psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing would describe as "the masculine soul, heaving in a female bosom," and vice-versa for male inverts.

Of course, the knowledge of the future and our new history has largely-debunked this theory. While proponents of Sexual Inversion would argue that a homosexual man is attracted to men because they are "wired" like a woman, new information has argued that one's orientation is decoupled from their gender identity.

Or to put it another way, if you like men, it's because they are attracted to men. Not because you have the "soul" of a woman. And no, bisexuals are not actually intersex; that's a different thing.

Other phenomena attributed to Sexual Inversion (crossdressing, cross-sex identification, etc) have likewise been decoupled from attraction and placed under the umbrella of Gender Identity.

So, what does this mean?

For starters, I think it is fair to say that somebody like Hall would is a man. While we've all heard the tired old joke of "Assuming one's gender," Hall's reference to themselves by a masculine name, their dressing as a man, and their more-recent writings over the last two decades provides ample evidence that they are a man.

I know this gets brought up a lot, but gender, sexuality, and identity are complicated. It is, quite literally, not a binary black and white.

But as we gain more information from the future and the present, we learn more - both about ourselves and the human condition.

 

[ChrisProvidence]

National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China, 8 August 1941

National Taiwan University Library​

"The population seems to be rising exponentially, dear," Chen Akira's husband said to her. "People are having kids left and right."

"I'd assume so, given the decrease in maternal and infant mortality as well as the availability of housing-" she observed in her usual professorial tone, "Wait, are you thinking about grandchildren again?"

"You're not?" he asked her, with a smug smile that proved how right he was. "I mean, c'mon, Aki, we're a pair of Asian parents with children who are now young adults. It would be weirder if we weren't pestering our kids about when they'll give us grandkids."

"Of course I am, dear." As she spoke, she only slightly looked up from her papers. "I just have the tact to not be so obvious about it like you are."

"We're getting old, Aki. Sure, we might not look like it, but one of the perks is that we can just say stuff like that."

Aki looked at him intently.

"You keep bringing up grandkids to mess with our son, don't you?"

"Asian parent." Aki glared at him. "And yes - But only because he's fine with it."

"New topic, Michael," Aki decided for the two of them. "Like how neither of us believes in Destiny."

"Aki, I don't believe in it for philosophical and religious reasons. You don't believe in it because I got isekai'd with the island. We are not the same."

"You really like using that term, don't you?"

"Only because you're cute when you're annoyed, Aki." She just shook her head again at her husband's teasing. "But yeah, the whole Great Journey kinda screwed with everyone's belief of destiny, didn't it?"

"More or less. We may not believe in that sort of thing, Michael, but the Journey turned the concepts like Ming yun on their head."

"I don't follow."

"Take the Great Journey, for example: Does the sudden appearance of an island from the future a chance to repudiate the very concept of predetermined fate, or was it yet another step in our predetermined destiny?"

"Probably depends on who you ask," Michael figured, before pouring himself a cup of cocoa. "Want one?"

"I'm good, thanks."

"It's interesting, though: If we took your fate from my timeline and your fate in this timeline, they'd be different, right?" Aki nodded. "Then wouldn't you having two outcomes despite being the same person mean that predetermined fate does not exist?"

"Possibly," Aki closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. "But you could also argue that the existence of different timelines means that we are different people from our alternate selves who have different circumstances."

"Or that the fates are different in both timelines," he realized, before realizing his own contradiction. "You know what? I think I'll take a Socratic approach to this."

"How so?"

"Because honestly, I don't know the answer, and I'm not about to pretend that I do.

Abidjan, Ivory Coast, French West Africa, 31 August 1941

Abidjan, Ivory Coast​

The Abidjan Conference was the largest conference in African history.

At least that was what Saleh Ould Kerim had thought, even if conferences were part of his obligation as a diplomat. And there was nothing more-diplomatic than the conference that could decide the fate of Western Africa.

At least if it was in-session right now. Instead we're drinking tea while the GIGP clears the building after that bomb threat.

Again.

Fucking OAS Remnants.

"So what would you say is 'Real Socialism?'" Saleh asked the Frenchman he was drinking tea with. After all, it wasn't like he was going to get any work done today. "Ask a Russian and he will say it is Libertarianism. Ask a Frenchman and he will say it is pseudo-technocracy. Ask a Muslim and he will say Islamic Socialism, and the Christian will say the same thing about Liberation Theology."

"Indeed," the Frenchman agreed. "And in spite of all, they all fought side-by-side in the Great War. Which is why we're here in the first place."

Now, Saleh knew it was more-complicated than that. While fighting the OAS and the colonialists in the Great War had done much to forge a West African identity, the same could be said about ideology or idealism.

After all, almost everyone here is some kind of socialist who believes in this project of ours.

And about half of us had fought in the Resistance against the OAS.

"You know," the Frenchman observed, before taking another sip of his tea, "There are those who doubt you. Well, two types of people, anyways."

"Oh?"

"The first," he continued, with his eyes fixated on the ocean, "Are those who say that the people here are too different. Whether it's religion, ethnicity, or language, they would argue that the region would descend into ethnic violence within weeks."

"And in doing so, they would be arguing for the formation of ethnostates," Saleh pointedly observed. "They do realize that, don't they?"

"Including many who'd call themselves my comrades," the Frenchman sighed. "You wouldn't hear that from them, though: Many of them would argue that being a socialist meant that they couldn't be racist."

"The people of the Soviet Union in the Lost History would beg to differ."

"The people who thought the Soviet Union in the Lost History 'did nothing wrong' would beg to differ about your begging to differ."

"Mussolini will be Mussolini..."

"Indeed. And like Mussolini, that second group of doubters are those who would rather you all stay under 'Direct Rule from Paris,' as the saying goes."

"Even though we fought an entire war to not be ruled by colonialists and the only reason we have stayed French is that we all realized we needed to build an entire bureaucracy and nation from scratch for fifteen years."

"And by every metric, you all have done a fine job," the old French socialist agreed. "Even if our fair-weathered comrades would say otherwise."

"They do realize what that would happen if we did what they wanted, right?"

"That the Radical-Socialists would be little better than the OAS and we'd be the 'Red Colonialists' I've been warning about for over two decades?"

It was a rhetorical question. The Frenchman knew it, and so did he.

"You and I both know the answer to that one, Saleh."

"That it isn't a matter of them understanding. It's a matter of them not caring."

"Oh, I'm sure they care," the Frenchman chuckled. "They care about their reputations and their followings and their clout. What I do question, Saleh, is if these 'comrades' of ours care about the people they advocate for."

"Which is why this conference has to be an African affair. It has to be, otherwise we would have no legitimacy."

"That is the life of a freedom fighter, my friend. Though 'Freeing oneself from the outside world does not require you to reject it.'"

Why does that sound familiar...

Then Saleh remembered.

"That's Rabindranath Tagore's writing, isn't it?" The Frenchman nodded politely. "Are you a follower of his?"

"I dabble. Even if his writings are not meant for me."

Counterintelligence Service Headquarters, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, 12 September 1941

Logo of the Counterintelligence Service​

"Thank you for meeting on such short notice," the seemingly-ageless Chinese woman said to Director Votsekhovsky through the screen. They had agreed upon speaking English for this meeting; it was the lingua franca of diplomacy despite the French's best efforts. "I trust that you received the files that I've sent you."

"I have, Rachel," Votsekhovsky yawned, before looking at his laptop. "It seems that chatter has risen in the last few weeks, despite our successes against the Black Hundreds. While I cannot share all of our information-"

"Of course."

He knew that Fong meant it. You didn't last this long in intelligence if you didn't know how the "game" was played.

It went without saying that a good intelligence officer didn't leave all their cards on the table.

Even with allies.

"-I can inform you that additional resources and manpower have proven successful in... handling the Black Hundreds issue."

What I can't inform you is that we've foiled enough plots to coup the government five times over at this point.

"Of course, Sergei," the Chinese spymaster breathed, before leaning back in her chair. "But what is concerning is that we've seen an increase in interactions between the Golden Circle, Knights, and other extremist groups of similar leanings. Is it possible they are sharing resources?"

"It is possible, Rachel. We've seen data pointing to Russian nationals traveling to America for weapons training, while American funds are often sent through back-channels to Russian accounts. And these are just what happens in the shadows. You've seen what Sakharov and Ford have been saying, haven't you?"

"Do you mean besides the constant diatribes against Jews, Catholics, and minorities? It's not too surprising, when both 'thought-leaders' are noted antisemites with racist streaks against Asians and minorities. 'Birds of a feather,' and whatnot."

"Of course. But some of my men have been noting that there is a significant uptick in communication between members of both organizations. While it may be a stretch, we have reason to believe that they are coordinating efforts. To what extent, we do not know, but I will share what information I have."

"Thank you for that," Fong told him in all sincerity. "I would recommend you forward this to the Americans as well."

A small grin formed on Votsekhovsky's face.

After all, this might be the only time I'll get to say this...

"We're already ahead of you, Rachel. The files were sent an hour ago."

Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, United States of America, 29 September 1941

Martin Li had trained for almost any scenario. A good spy was prepared for everything, and being an Eagle Scout meant being double-prepared.

Which meant he probably was over-prepared for a career in academia. Sure, he was pretty damn good at teaching history, but the sheer amount of preparation for almost-every contingency was probably a bit overkill for a couple semesters as a guest lecturer teaching about the Lost History.

Who was he kidding? It was definitely overkill, and that was before he factored in the suppressed 1911 he still concealed carried.

Okay, that one was somewhat-justified. I mean, I'm in America.

At a school.

"So," a student's voice interrupted. Li looked up to see an African-American student standing at the door. "You're Lin's uncle?"

"Sorry, haven't gotten your name." Really, Marty? Thought you were good with names. Age really is catching up to you, old man. "What was it?"

"Adrian Friese, sir," the young man said politely. "I'm one of Lin's teammates."

"Ah, now I remember," Li half-lied while he stalled for time. Oh right, he's one of Lin's roommates. "And yes, I am. Not by blood, but his father and I grew up together."

"Ah. If you don't mind me asking, are the rumors true?"

Li looked at his student flatly. "Depends on the rumors, Adrian."

"Lin said you used to be the head of the Chinese version of the OSS."

"Really?" Li asked with feigned surprise. "Do you believe that?"

"Well, Wikipedia says it's true, so..."

"Kid, you and I both know that Wikipedia isn't a primary source."

"Oh. Must be a different one, then. Apologies, sir."

"Heh, just kidding," Li yawned, before doing a quick stretch. "Yes, I used to be the head of the Military Intelligence Bureau. Been retired for years now, though."

"This isn't another joke, is it?" The Chinese-American professor shook his head. "Alright. It's just that... No offense, but you don't really look like a spy."

"Hey, thanks!" It was more emotion than he used to show, but Li had stopped caring the moment he retired. "Means I've still got it!"

"Eh?"

"Okay, that probably sounds weird, doesn't it?" Adrian nodded confusedly. "Okay, so I should probably explain that: When you're a spy, the last thing you want to do is attract attention, right?"

"Because you would stick out and people might think you're up to something. Like being a spy."

Hm... Kid's a sharp one. I like him already.

"Exactly!" Li exclaimed in a very un-spylike manner. "Which is why it helped that I just look like a normal Chinese guy. Even more if I could convince people I'm stupid."

"I wouldn't go that far..."

"You haven't seen me play poker, kid. Never underestimate the power of people underestimating you."

Rio de Janeiro, Republic of Brazil, 15 October 1941

Os Confederados (The Confederados of Brazil)​

"Papai?" Gisele da Silva asked her father in her still-innocent voice, "What is a 'Confederado?'"

"Oh, those are white Americans from the Confederacy who immigrated here after they lost the Civil War. A lot of rich people didn't like not being able to own slaves or having to treat Black people better, al they moved here."

"Because Brazil still had slavery?" Gisele's father nodded. "They traveled all the way here… So they could continue to own people?"

"I never said these were good people," her father pointed out. "But Dom Pedro wanted to expand the cotton industry, and these people were good at growing cotton."

"I know that much!" his daughter said proudly, "They taught us that in school!"

Christ, they really want to link the Coffee Milk politicians to the slavers, don't they?

Can't say I blame them, though... Bunch of stuck-up rich assholes.

"Glad to see you're studying to be smarter than me," Gisele practically beamed at the compliment.

Huh. Turns out every kid wants to be told they're smarter than their parents.

"So, um... why are you asking me about the Confederados?"

"Because they're in the news again. They keep doing parades downtown and saying people like you are evil."

"Marches, Gisele," he corrected. "Those are marches."

Pretty sure I don't have to correct her about them saying I'm evil for being the local Union President.

"What's the difference?"

"Marches can be fun or not fun. Parades are fun and not full of racist, Catholic-hating assholes."

Good thing your mother's picking up your little brother from football practice. She'd have my head if she saw me swear in front of you.

"Okay!" his daughter said with the innoncence only a child could have. "Papai?"

"Do you have another question?" Gisele nodded. "Go ahead."

"What's an 'Asshole?'"

Lyrics to "Our Tricolour," Anthem of the Republic of Britain, Adapted from W.J. Linton's poem

Flag of the Republic of Britain​

Choose for hope the sky serene,
Freedom Albion's cliffs so white.

And eternal ocean's green,
Choose we for our nation's right.

Blue and white and green shall span,
Britain's flag, republican.

Fought with bows of burning gold,
Freed from dark Satanic Mills.

Workers break the chains of old,
From the sea to clouded hills.

Blue and white and green unite,
For a future ever bright.

British Museum, London, Republic of Britain, 1 November 1941

The British Museum​

Dr. Thomas Lawrence was a historian through and through. And with the British Museum being... Well, the British Museum, it wouldn't do to have entire halls of empty exhibits.

No, that simply wouldn't do. He knew that, and so did everyone else who even knew an iota of history.

Or the impracticality of having a half-empty museum. That simply wouldn't do, either.

That was why he was here now, as the new museum's curator. It was a daunting task, but he liked to think that he'd done a decent job with the new, plunder-free exhibits.

Truth be told, it wasn't actually that hard.

This was the British Museum, after all, and he knew there was more than enough to put on display.

In place of the Elgin Marbles were artifacts of the Danelaw. The same could be said of the Rosetta Stone being replaced with a full-on exhibit of Caesar's invasions and the Celts of the time.

And that was before the sheer amount of exhibits on the Medieval, Renaissance, and Industrial Revolution periods. Then there was the Lost History, which had enough material to fill the museum if he so wished.

And that was before he got to the literature. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Tolkien, and Blair would all have their own exhibits. The men were literary legends of Britain, and living legends in the case of the latter two.

Even if Eric could never meet a deadline if his life depended on it.

It would be enough. Honestly, it would be more than enough, if Tolkien's enthusiasm at his offer to collaborate was anything to go by.

Be it Crusaders, the Tudors, and everyone in-between, before, and after, there was more than enough British history to replace all that had been returned.

Ishigaki Harbor, Ishigaki, Taiwan, Republic of China, 31 December 1941

Ishigaki Island​

Michael Chen liked to think he was a good parent. Lin and Morgan were fit, intelligent, and most-importantly, they were just good human beings.

Yet there were moments of insecurity. These were times that he worried that he didn't do a good enough job at raising his and Aki's children. That if they had done things just a little bit differently, things would have been better.

"SHE SAID YES!" his daughter shouted as she ran across the beach, "MY LITTLE BROTHER IS GETTING MARRIED!"

Morgan, you're like, thirty seconds older than Lin.

"Do you think we should do something about this?" his wife Akira asked him, "It's a little weird to see one person running around and shouting like a maniac. Even if it is New Year's Eve."

"HE'S GETTING MARRIED?" Lin's friend Adrian shouted back, "HELL YEAH!"

"FUCK YEAH!" the kids' other friend Jon shouted, "MY BROTHER IS GETTING MARRIED!"

"Even better, Aki," Michael said with the biggest grin on his face. "Let them have their fun. Plus, I thought Selena already won you over?"

Not that it really matters. Sure, arranged marriages aren't really normal these days, but we were never much of a normal family in the first place. And with how much China's like America back in my time, it's not like interracial marriages are as frowned upon. Especially since the war ended.

Plus, it's not like we're going to have a problem with it. I mean, Aki's always thought future morals were superior, and I'm a guy who grew up in the part of California that is known as "Not-Huntington-Beach."

Seriously, fuck that place.

I guess America might have some problems if they decide to stay there after college. Interracial marriage didn't really get majority support until I was a kid, so there'll probably be people upset about them. Worst case scenario, the Knights and the TPUSA might go after them.

On the other hand, the Brandeis court had basically pulled a Loving v. Virginia a dew decades early, so we have that going for them. Plus, most people are either supportive or they don't really give a damn either way.

Can't underestimate the power of, "I do not approve of this, but it's none of my business."

Wait, why am I overthinking this? Our son's getting married, and I should be all smiles!

So he did. He smiled at the sight of his daughter and her friends shouting and running around at the good news, just like any good father would.

"Our little boy is all growing up, Aki."

"Mhm."

"I'm not that little, Dad," a familiar groaned said behind him. Michael looked up to see his son, a young man who was practically his spitting image, smiling sheepishly at him. "I'm almost 23, you know."

"When you have good parents, you'll always be their little kid," Selena teased. The mischievous look on her face turned to nervousness once she herself turned to him and Aki. "So, um... I guess this is the part where I ask your permission?"

"Lena, I'm from the future and my wife's more hands-off than me. You don't have to ask us for permission."

Also, isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Like, isn't the boy supposed to ask the girl's parents?

"Oh... Well, um... thanks?"

The two soon-to-be-family members just looked in awkward silence.

"For what it's worth, both my husband and I approve," Aki happily chimed in, breaking the silence. "Welcome to the family, Lena."

National Guard Armory, Boise, Idaho, United States of America, 12 January 1941

Downtown Boise, Idaho, during the Retro-Uptimer Car Festival​

The weapons and ammunition were easy enough for Grand Master Carlson hands on. "It fell off a truck" was how they'd say it in the Lost History, and it held as much water in this one.

God-willing, this'll be enough firepower to stop that future Hellscape from happening.

It would be harder than that, of course. His cell (or "Prior" as they were officially called) was just one of the hydra that was the Knights of the Golden Circle. And all of them had to do their part.

Even if he didn't know how many made up "all of them."

"Compartmentalization" was the word of the day, every day. Priors barely interacted with one another in person unless it was absolutely necessary, preferring to use dead drops. And even when they did, it would be between Knight Commanders such as himself.

Hell, the Order was so secretive that almost-nobody knew the Grand Master's identity.

Some thought it was Henry Ford, while others bet their money on men like Charles Lindbergh or Gerald L.K. Smith. Commander Carlson didn't know for sure, but he didn't give a damn as long as it kept the Feds in the dark.

Not that it had stopped them.

Knight Commander Thurmond over in Charleston had gotten nabbed in a sting operation by the Feds last year. Rumor had it that he'd turned traitor in exchange for Witness Protection.

Though it would explain the arrests over the last few months.

He just shook his head while the crates of M1916s were loaded.

Not much we can do, anyways.

We just need to do our part to save America from making the same mistakes. The last thing we need is mongrel being elected President again.

It would be dirty work, but he had enough faith in God to know that he'd be rewarded for his efforts in this life or the next. That was to be expected when one fought for a cause as just as his.

Not that he would be one, though. No, when the Grand Master gave the signal, this would be more than a one-man crusade.