Re: Possibility Wars
Here is the backgrounds more fleshed out into timelines. I still need to go through your list and assign them to each group as to tactics the group might try.
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Possibility Wars
By Eric R. Ashley
In this world, differing groups slug it out up and down the time ways from the year 2006 to 1906 since no one has yet built time machines that go deeper into the past, and many of these groups are trying to alter time to be more to their liking. The Time Wars are possible because this dimension is a Broad-Spectrum Field of Quantic Energy rather than the Narrow Spectrum Field of most dimensions. Quantic energy refers to what causes a quantum state to collapse to a certainty. Its also referred to as Causualitic Energy and Chronal Energies.
Most realities if undergoing a time travel incident will create a time loop, or even a Sawtooth Snap as described in the back of the Multiverser: The Game rules. This makes low-level time machines one of the more useless inventions. In fact, Galactic level civilizations (that is one’s able to manipulate stellar masses or create Dyson Spheres) do not call these devices time travel machines, but ‘time loopers’ and will sometimes use them as ‘pause’ buttons to put a universe on hold while they figure out a problem in a neighboring universe. Of course, truly advanced civilizations with full dimensional travel don’t use them at all since they are able to jump into another dimension and back into the one they left a mere instant later. Plus, some civilizations are able to modify the Quantic Nature of certain dimensions, and make Time Wars possible. This is rarely done as Time Wars are not a desirable event in most sapients’ opinions.
A Broad Spectrum Quantic Dimension is a super-dimension in which the present timeline is merely one of hundreds or thousands of possibilities. The inactive timelines are low in Quantic Energy, and are mere ghosts, or to be more precise ephemeral possibility states. But all of the timelines are happening at the same time. Shifting the energy of the Active Timeline to another currently inactive timeline causes the new timeline to bloom into vigorous life, and the other to fade out.
That is the chief difference between a Narrow and a Broad Dimension is that travel through the collapsed quantum states is possible, and that this is time-free, thus avoiding paradox. In that respect, it is similar to traveling to an alternate dimension, and jumping back at a different time. However such excursions typically involve a great deal higher technology than the time machines used in a Broad Dimension. The average multi-stellar civilization with faster-than-light travel, anti-matter engines, and terraforming along with other technologies of great scale and sophistication is not suited to handle a extra-dimensional time jump system. However, a number of pre-stellar civilizations, a minority, to be sure have handled the basic time machine. Many of these have dumped themselves into time loops, and so forth, but some were fortunate enough that the dimensional infrastructure of their realm was constructed in a different way.
Note: To speak of ‘average’ in a possibly infinite Multiverse is of course, problematic. But speaking from the viewpoint of most versers it has been my pleasure to converse with, I use the term ‘average’.
A person in such a dimension is the sum of their Active Timeline and all Inactive Timelines they exist on. Certain people have existence in almost every possible timeline, and they are generally regarded as charismatic and ‘deep’ which is an unconscious rationalization of what they are.
If a timeline gets changed, then the change propagates uptime from that change event at a speed of one minute per day. Thus a person in the year 2000 who had the past changed on them in the year 1000, and their timeline was now becoming inactive would have a total of 1000 minutes in which the effect would steadily become more obvious. However, the ‘fading’ effect is noticed only by time travelers (who are slightly ajar from the universe), powerful mystics, and versers (also ajar from the universe).
Once the ‘fading’ is complete, the line becomes inactive, and no actions can be taken by anyone in the inactive timeline.
Time machines generate Quantic Energy which enables them to exist independently of the Active Timeline.
Changing the past is not necessarily easy. The past resists change. Time travelers report astonishing coincidences, and sudden fatigues, and even death. But a well-prepared, and tough team can succeed. Lone time travelers are much more likely to fail, in part because its easier for the universe to ambush them.
Not all changes can be done. Or more precisely, all changes can be done, but some the Universe resists with ferocious passion. Its like a floodplain, the water will flow somewhere. You can move rocks about, and change its flow. But if you want it to flow high on the edge of the floodplain, and leave the center most likely probabilities untouched, then you are going to have to work very hard, and it will be relatively easy to undo your work.
Doing things like setting up a universe where a famously stingy person like Ebenezer Scrooge is actually a good-hearted philanthropist from the very beginning would qualify as extremely difficult. The universe will resist this with great force.
Like a vast floodplain, there are dozens of high-probability paths, and hundreds of less likely paths for the River of Time.
When the verser arrives in this world, he will see land, a city or a forest or whatever the game master desires, but it will be all pale and ghostly. It may vanish in a moment to be replaced by another image from an adjacent timeline. Walking will definitely create a shift of many different timelines.
If you see someone, it is likely you will see them several times, each time doing something slightly different. And then once the probability of their even being at the location you are at is exceeded, they will be gone. Staying here, in the Inactive Timelines drains Quantic energy from the verser, and he will slowly start fading. After twenty-four hours he should be near gone. If he does fully fade out, he verses out since there is no place for him in this world.
In the far distance, or rapidly getting closer will be an attracting band of color and vividity. It may move. It is the Active Timeline. Stepping into it will revive the verser, although not instantly. But over a few hours the verser will completely recover.
Once in the active timeline, he is still somewhat immune to time shifts. He carries inside his cells, his own Quantic Energy which is at variance with what is around him (which is one way to track him that some of the temporal groups use). So the first few time shifts should have him not changing as the world changes around him. But, the Stamina roll gets more difficult as time goes on because his body is naturally replacing its old Quantic Energy with what was in the environment. So he will start to feel himself almost fade out, and then he eventually will fade out, and verse out as another Time Shift races through. But this gives him a little time, and a little warning as to what is coming, and allows him to try to make preparations.
One useful fact is that many of the time devices leak scriff, intermittently. So a verser can track, at least some of the time, the various machines.
The Time Wars began with the first time traveller. He went into the past, and accidentally created another future. So, that future had time travelers who went back. The first time traveller went to the future, and saw the changes. He fled back, and changed things again. The second group went back to the future and found their future gone. Things deteriorated from there with more and more players joining the game.
A potential spot of hope: The timelines feel more resistant as the wars go on, and some people think that means the timelines will eventually collapse into a Narrow Universe and the Time Wars will be over. But for some people, this requires even tougher action so they can gain their dream world before its too late.
There are a wide variety of time travelers ranging from a pair of jewel thieves to the ten thousand man strong Time Police. One competing organization with the Time Police is the Intertemporal Agency.
A time machine generally flies, and can travel in time at a rate of one year per minute on board. However, the Time Police use ‘hovercraft horses’ also capable of time travel at the above rate, and Singer/VC use a demi-stable time gate which leaks scriff, and is only partially controllable. Jumpers, as they are called, have no protection, and face high levels of hazard using this gate. About one in four ‘jumpers’ fails to return to Time Normal after using the VC time gate.
What follows is a listing of the Time Travellers and Groups involved in Time Travel in the Possibility Wars, followed by their opinions and knowledge of other time travelers, and then by some of the key events of the timeline that led to them.
1. Dr. Calvin Rochester the (Third, Fourth, Fifth, whatever) has been killed a number of times, or so it seems. It may be that he has clones of himself stored in multiple timelines that are activated if he is killed. It seems certain that he has some form of intertemporal radio so that he can among other things detonate bombs by radio control in other times. His goals seem enigmatic, but it appears to be scientific curiosity with the individuals of the Possibility Wars playing the part of rats in the maze. He is on occasion, helpful, but usually for dubious reasons.
Dr. Calvin Rochester--the brilliant, soon to be Nobel-prize winning, iconoclastic, and yet charming….
Intertemporal League--an admirable degree of ruthlessness, but insufficient vision.
Mad Gods of Chaos--Very amusing. Now if they could only play music.
Committee for the Protection of Earlier Time Periods--A bold attempt, laudable aims, but bogged down by lesser men, timeservers, perhaps a Purge would help them.
Time Tourist Trek, Inc.--Heh. Haahhaha. Children. So scared of time. Clockophobia is truly pathetic.
Lute and Toot--Who?
Time Police--Pathetic prigs.
Royal Academy of Temporal Manipulations--Charming and clever. Rather interesting. Now if they could only shed their outdated morals.
Singer AI and the Viet Cong Black Pajama Squad--Well, now this is fascinating…
Tetrahedrals and Octogons--Hmmph. They don’t exist. Logically, I can prove that….
2. Intertemporal League: The black-booted minions of the League are devoted to ensuring that their timeline succeeds, or that a stable timeline succeeds. They are pragmatic, doing whatever they feel is necessary, although trying to refrain from undue bloodshed. However, they would have no problem killing Hitler as a child. They are also not involved egotistically. They do not regard their timeline as ‘special’ or privileged. But they do insist that a timeline be stable, and reasonably happy for Humanity. This timeline began after the Cuban Missile Crisis blew up into the Spasm, a small-scale nuclear war that the United States won, although at great cost (which included the city of Miami and Jacksonville, and Dallas), the Intertemporal League was founded when time travel was discovered in the late eighties under President Robert Dole. It is a world of harsh realists, dedicated to limited goals.
Dr. Calvin Rochester--#2 on the Most Wanted List. Kill on sight.
Intertemporal League--Just some guys, in over our heads, trying to make a sane world, by whatever means necessary.
Mad Gods of Chaos--Yet another problem. Nice music.
Committee for the Protection of Earlier Time Periods--Rotten, stinking scumbags. Proof of the existence of evil.
Time Tourist Trek, Inc.--Nice, well-meaning, dangerous.
Lute and Toot--Low priority temporal criminals.
Time Police--An ineffective organization, but their timeline is a possible end point that we could accept.
Royal Academy of Temporal Manipulations--Good grief. They actually prate about keeping their word of honor. Can you believe it? Still, very nice people, and a wonderful timeline.
Singer AI and the Viet Cong Black Pajama Squad--The Singer AI must be destroyed, no matter the cost. The VC BPS are not bad folks. Tough little runts, and they’ll die in their spot before they give up.
Tetrahedrals and Octogons--Maybe there really is someone who knows what they are doing, and is in charge. One can hope anyways.
Cuban Missile Crisisà Nuclear Spasm War with Miami, Dallas, and Jacksonville in America, Havana in Cuba, Moscow, Leningrad, and about a dozen other sites in Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe were destroyed with the end result of the early collapse of the Soviet Union into an authoritarian and isolationist society, and the freeing of Eastern Europe from this imperial power.
Several more minor nuclear wars were fought, including freeing Vietnam by plastering the border with the Chicoms.
However, once the enemy was defeated, it did not lead to a global rennaissance of freedom, but instead to a policy of realpolitik and to a mixture of diplomacy and bombing. This policy, often called the “Play Nice/Nuclear Whack-an-Mole” policy enabled the shrinking of defense budgets, and heralded a turn inward worldwide with negative effects on the economy, but most of those were balanced by lesser military spending.
President Robert Dole was in office in 1983 when Project Black Box yielded the first time machine soon updated to the Time Skiff, a flying car able to travel in time. The Intertemporal League was founded in 1985 in Dole’s second term.
3. Mad Gods of Chaos: The Seven Mad Gods, a former rock and roll band, that stumbled onto a dying IL patrolman, and helped themselves to his Time Skiff after they were unable to save him are in it for the fun of provoking people, and they like to do touristy things. They have relatively little clue what they are doing. This timeline began after Eugene McCarthy and eventually Ralph Nader got into power. It never developed time travel because high energy physics research was considered too dangerous.
Dr. Calvin Rochester--Pretty cool, dude. Saved us from that firing squad. Still, kinda freaky, y’know.
Intertemporal League--Fascist creeps. But a few are okay.
Mad Gods of Chaos--The Band For All Time!! Yeah! Rock it, baby!
Committee for the Protection of Earlier Time Periods--Kinda sorta cool, but they dress really bad, and the girls have hair on their upper lips. Ewww.
Time Tourist Trek, Inc.--Capitalist pigs, but hey, they’re okay in their plastic princess kind of way.
Lute and Toot--Now those people can play!
Time Police--Boring.
Royal Academy of Temporal Manipulations--Who?
Singer AI and the Viet Cong Black Pajama Squad--Naah, they don’t exist. That’s just silly.
Tetrahedrals and Octogons--Yeah, man, and I saw these glowing blue spheres that talked to me right after that good weed we picked up from Janice…
In 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy defeated Richard Nixon who retired to become a famous policy analyst and book writer, never seriously seeking public office after this crushing defeat. President McCarthy quickly pulled out of Vietnam, earning plaudits worldwide, which eventually culminated in his Nobel Peace Prize after he left office in 1976.
Gerald Ford served as President from 1976 to 1980, but was unable to accomplish much of his program because as he put it “a deliberately obstructive Congress, and a media dedicated to lies.” Ralph Nader became President in 1980. By this time, the nation was in its second double-dip recession, and he proposed widespread new laws that were quickly enacted raising safety, and limiting the power of big business. If one was able to get a job as a safety officer, or had one as a union worker, life was pretty good, but unemployment stayed at around 15% during much of the ‘80’s. While a few PC’s were introduced, most were terribly expensive, so that only lawyer’s and doctor’s had access to them which created a perception of them as ‘tools for the rich man to spy on you.’ However, with the abundant unemployment rights, music groups such as the Mad Gods of Chaos flourished, leading to a decade of musical innovations as groups of young males banded together to afford the rent-controlled apartments in the big city, and to ‘party all night long’. It was the Rock and Roll Decade, but unlike the Sixties, Heavy Metal was King!
No time machines are developed in this timeline until well after 2006 since the personal computer revolution was deemed too traumatizing to normal people, and too destabilizing of the economy, and high energy physics was also defunded as dangerous. However, a dying Intertemporal League patrollman crashed his Time Skiff out back of a bar where the MGOC were playing…and after they saw he was dead, they took his car for a joyride…
4. The Committee for the Protection of Earlier Time Periods is a bureaucratic nightmare with thousands of agents and soldiers who when they can get their act together, can drop massive amounts of force onto a problem. They are totalitarian, and have a semi-effective mind reading mechanical rack which induces pain, and memory at once. The future they come from is a nightmare with gulags where political opponents, and random citizens alike engage in slave labor without protection from the weather, and with inadequate food. These death camps provide much of the economic needs of this timeline since the economy is so poorly over-managed as to be practically dead on its feet. This timeline began after the Rosenbergs were pardoned in the wake of the massive Social Labor riots energized by their trial. Later, the Communist Party president was voted into office, and six months later, he and the rest of the developed world signed the treaties creating the WCU, the World Communist Union. By the eighties in the former USA, black population had dropped by three-fourths due to gulags and machine guns, and white population had dropped by ten percent due to starvation. But the Glorious Future was just around the corner, or so it was said, and then a researcher discovered temporal physics….He was shot as a traitor to the state in most timelines, but in one he helped found the CPETP. Another key event in this timeline was the burglary/murder of Senator Joe McCarthy in his home.
Dr. Calvin Rochester--A legend. Not existent, or if he is, not at your classification level.
Intertemporal League--Running dog lackeys of the imperialists
Mad Gods of Chaos--Another myth propagated by the capitalists as only States have the power and the right to Time Travel.
Committee for the Protection of Earlier Time Periods--The Wave of the Future. Its inevitable that the Communist Revolution will sweep all timelines, the dialetic of history proves it.
Time Tourist Trek, Inc.--Enemies of the People. To be shot, and then billed for the bullet to the nearest next of kin. Already convicted in absentia for Crimes against the People.
Lute and Toot--Who?
Time Police--A soft force we can bend to our will.
Royal Academy of Temporal Manipulations--Its been proven by the dialetic that these do not exist. Attempts to disprove this are State Treason.
Singer AI and the Viet Cong Black Pajama Squad--The Viet Cong anti-imperialists will inevitably triumph over the American AI.
Tetrahedrals and Octogons--Representatives of the Communist Future.
In 1949, Senator Joe McCarthy’s home was burglarized, and he was murdered in the process of attempting to stop the burglars. Conspiracy theorists to the present day suspect this was actually a ‘hit’ by the famed ‘wetwork’ teams of the KGB. Without Senator McCarthy’s exposure, intemperate though it was, of Soviet Infiltration such as Alger Hiss, and others, which occurred in other nearby timelines, some of the chief counselors of American Presidents, and leaders of American Spy Agencies continued, or eventually became Communist moles. A number of ‘accidents’ also occurred in this, and following years, where outspoken opponents of Communism such as Senator John F. Kennedy ended dying in a ‘shooting accident’. Also, sometimes, simple rivals to power were, it seems eliminated, thus providing the mole with a royal road to power when all his major competitors suddenly died, or out of fear ‘took retirement’. Such concerns were widely laughed at by most people, but those in the know could see what was happening.
The Rosenberg Trial in 1951, perhaps influenced by the massive Social Labour riot/strikes which spread across the country (and seem on later investigation to not be ‘spontaneous outbursts of justified rage’, but carefully planned provocations financed by Josef Stalin, Communist dictator of Soviet Russia, was deemed a mistrial after several jurists refused to convict. No follow-up trial occurred for fear of the furor in the streets such would provoke.
In 1968, Lyndon Baines Johnson, a broken man, who had tried, at the last to stop the secret war, but had been shattered for his efforts, and barely avoided impeachment left office, and gave it over to the Communist Party’s choice for President. From there, there was a space of peace and quiet as the street fighters were instructed by their masters to take a vacation. And then the World Communist Union was proposed as a replacement for the United Nations. This was hustled through, and instituted. Low-scale civil war broke out in isolated regions of the country with many of the street fighters finding for the first time what their fellow citizens were capable of, if pushed to the wall. As the toll of street fighters mounted, they panicked and cried about ‘illegal violence’ they had met when they tried to use ‘the People’s force’. What that meant was that it was okay for a bunch of teenage punks with the red scarf on their arms to kick a middle-aged lady to death, but not for her husband to blast them with his shotgun because the first was force, and the second was violence, and they were four-square against violence. So the Army was called in, with Cuban military advisors, and things got rough. Some areas of the country, small and isolated, fought on for nearly a decade, but with the final collapse of the free press (which had realistically been a bought and paid for instrument of the Soviet Government for over a decade before the initiation of the WCU with most reporters receiving a stipend, or at least free invites to lovely two-week vacations in Havana), there seemed no consequence since no one knew other than rumors.
So, it became tanks and helicopters versus hunting rifles, and eventually towns were being leveled. Meanwhile, the street fighters were being rounded up, and were some of the first to be dumped into the gulags. This was typical since a revolutionary for you, could later become a revolutionary against you, and it was just simpler to ‘remove the difficulty’ in that chillingly famous phrase of President Morton.
Possibly because they had contributed so many of the street fighters, and then so many of the resistance fighters such as the famous resistance leaders “Sugar Ray“ Robinson and MLK, but also because of racism, the black population took probably the hardest hit. Nearly three-fourths of them were dead by 1980. Historic black communities were not just decimated, but all of the population of Harlem and of Birmingham, Alabama was rounded up, and made to leave to new living quarters in the American West. Starvation, which took about ten percent of the white population, also hit them disproportionately hard, although they were also better prepared than most to cope with hard times.
And then in ‘91, a researcher discovered temporal mechanics. In most timelines, his discoveries led to him being shot as his ideas seemed to contradict the doctrine of the inevitability of the Communist Revolution, but in a few, he managed to found the Committee, and by ‘96 had a fully-fledged time travel agency under his control, and was on his way to becoming World Leader.
5. Time Tourist Trek, Inc. has a small office, and a time machine with no independent jaunting capability, but they do have the ability to generate Quantic Energy around their tourist jump point which helps shield the place from chronal wave changes. The end result is the world outside may change, but the people inside can stay the same, as long as the changes are not too drastic, and overwhelm the shields. Triple T, as they are known, have an apparently happy-go-lucky attitude about time travel, and consider it on par with booking adventure tourist flights to the Moon. But they are beginning to realize there are other forces out there, and so they’ve hired some security analysts and investigators to go with the safari guides and professional hunters they have already. Its one thing to keep in mind if crossing them, they are not pro military, but some of their hunters can shoot a bear in the eye at five hundred feet, and drop it stone dead, and that without sandbags or any more mounts than using elbows, and laying on the ground. The events that led up to this timeline involved Nixon defeating JFK for the 1960 election for President of the USA (which happened in nearly thirty percent of the timelines where this contest took place), and then Ronald Reagan succeeding him in office, and the Soviet Crash of ‘73 which most people claim Nixon engineered. This was followed by the Sino Revolution of ‘82, and by 2006, most of the world was firmly in the grip of the Democratic Peace. With wars nearly out of existence, human rights firmly established, and massive prosperity as a worldwide economic boom that shattered the limits of the 50’s and 20’s, there was the problem of what to do with the combative nature of people. So, people in the West found increasingly dangerous and adventurous preoccupations, at least some did. Most enjoyed their new found prosperity and peace. As one fellow said…”Unlike all my ancestors, I’m probably going to die in bed of old age.” The Adventurers began to colonize the Near Solar System, and when time travel opened up, they found it to be a fascinating thing. But even for this wealthy society, a Time Jump was a major expense, especially with all the safety regulations and barriers installed.
Richard Milhous Nixon, due to an energetic assistant district attorney in Chicago who investigated vote fraud in the notorious city of Chicago, was elected President in 1960, beating out JFK. It also helped that the first televised debate did not occur on this timeline until 1964 because in most such debates it was conceded that JFK beat Nixon in the televised debate, but lost according to people listening on the radio.
Nixon did not get involved in Vietnam, in even a minor way, but he did fully sponsor the Bay of Pigs invasion which while it could have gone better, on the whole succeeded in liberating Cuba from the Communists. This had the side benefit of making the Cuban Missile Crisis a non-event. It also greatly weakened the Communist worldwide insurgency as originally, Cuban troops had been a key element in that as trainers and as leaders in African and Latin American armies.
The Opening of China occurred earlier, and this helped limit some of the damage from the Cultural Revolution in China. For a while, China bobbled between liberalization and mass slaughter of dissidents, but while tens of thousands were killed, this was not millions. The Opening also weakened Russia as it gave it two enemies.
Ronald Reagan succeeded Nixon in office, and repaired some of his disastrous economic policies such as price controls. The economic boom started, and with minor wobbles continued to the present day. The Soviet Crash of 1973, in Reagan’s second term, which was followed by inter-Soviet nuclear war with various Red armies and provincial governors fighting amongst themselves. Leningrad was destroyed in a fireblast, and that seems to have ended the Russian Civil War since two of the most belligerent forces were near the city at the time of the nuke. Most historians credit ex-President Nixon with creating the conditions that led to the Crash.
In 1982, the Sino Collapse was far more peaceful, however, a small handful of Politburo did meet their end with nooses and lamp poles. This kicked off an economic expansion that usually soared past eight percent per year, and as the Democratic Peace as theorized by Dr. Rudy Rummel took effect, the number of wars, and the expenditures devoted to them declined, leading to smaller governments worldwide, with excellent effects on the economy.
This same economy, with its great wealth and dynamism with a flowering of new patents, a showering, a hurricane of them plus the adventurous spirit of humans led to the colonization of Near-Earth Space, and to adventurers trying many a crazy thing for the thrill of it. So when time travel came along, the adventurers hopped into their flying cars, and were off to seek glory.
It won’t seem obvious to many of the other timelines, but this timeline probably has highest tech level of any of them. Its also a very non-militarized world with small professional armies, and large reserve armies, but hardly anyone to fight.
Dr. Calvin Rochester--Watch listed. Pschy profile suggests problems.
Intertemporal League--Very dangerous people. Avoid if at all possible.
Mad Gods of Chaos--These idiots are so going to get themselves killed, but cool music.
Committee for the Protection of Earlier Time Periods--What a bunch of maroons.
Time Tourist Trek, Inc.--Safe time travel for the discerning customer seeking a safe and unique experience.
Lute and Toot--Excellent entertainment, but keep the safe locked around them.
Time Police--Thank you, thank you. Evidence that not all other timelines are insane.
Royal Academy of Temporal Manipulations--Whaaaaa?
Singer AI and the Viet Cong Black Pajama Squad--Never heard of them. Sounds like I don’t want to meet them.
Tetrahedrals and Octogons--Very interesting. Our computer models show some sort of possible conflict, although indirect. It seems likely that they are uptimers, but somehow independent of our Time “Wars”.
6. Lute and Toot as they call themselves were professional classic musicians. Unfortunately, the world they lived in was a harsh world, with little desire for beauty, since the Great Depression continued into the ‘50’s, and so they were happy to get a gig playing music for a rogue Time Cop. They didn’t know he was a Time Cop, but he told them, as he prepared to kill them that they were not real, and that meant it was okay for him to…well, he was a sociopath, and smart enough to dodge the Time Cops pschy board, and he liked his ‘art evenings’ which began with art and ended with blood. So the flautist and the trumpet player played one last solo or so they asked, and when they both hit a high C together, the skylight glass broke, and fell on the pschyo, and cut him to ribbons. And from then on, the two of them fled into the reaches of time space, seeking a safe haven from the TC which thinks they murdered a veteran agent, and other temporals, and trying to find a world where they can play music together. And meanwhile, they help themselves to what they need, or like. Jewels are a definite like for Lute.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not lower the profit taxes on businesses from ninety percent after some years. Adolph Hitler avoided the terrific stupidity of declaring war on America just because the Japanese had with Pearl Harbor. So America fought the Japanese, and helped negotiate a peace between Russia and Germany with England and France on the sidelines.
Its 1950, and the world still staggers along under a Great Depression that is nearly two decades old. Misplaced economic policies are driving the world’s economy into the toilet.
This is a world in which time travel won’t be developed. Instead, as radical political movements form, most of them with more brawn than brains, they will begin pushing the government to do things that are unwise.
The eventual result in a majority of timelines of this type is some sort of Dark Age with the collapse of technological civilization, and with some of the radicals splurging on death camps to deal with ‘traitorous elements’.
But Lute and Toot are classical players who hear a man offer a job, which is badly needed. So they take it, and a rogue Intertemporal League agent has them play in a glass skylight topped building. He intends to finish the night’s entertainment by among other things, killing them. You see, he thinks he can kill people on different timelines, ones that are scheduled to be revised out of existence, and not get thrown into jail.
But the pair, once they realize the game, play for him, loud and pure enough to crack the glass of the ceiling roof above him, and fatally injure him. He flees. He’s the dying IL agent that the Mad Gods of Chaos took the skiff with them.
Dr. Calvin Rochester--Nice man.
Intertemporal League--Run.
Mad Gods of Chaos--Lets not be rude, and tell them how much their ‘music’ hurts our ears.
Committee for the Protection of Earlier Time Periods--Philistines. Sniff. And then walk away fast.
Time Tourist Trek, Inc.--They pay well, even if they only want treacle and sugar music. Wish them the best because not everyone is suited to being an artist. After all, the world needs janitors too.
Lute and Toot--Superlative classical musicians, and occasional jewel thieves. On the run, in an insane time space.
Time Police--If you have to be captured, these are the guys to do it.
Royal Academy of Temporal Manipulations--We love these guys. True class.
Singer AI and the Viet Cong Black Pajama Squad--Run. Run faster.
Tetrahedrals and Octogons--The wonders of the universe never cease to amaze. And at the Tetrahedral we met in 1915 really seemed to like our music.
7. The Time Police, or Time Cops are dedicated to restricting time travel to qualified researchers, and to themselves. They take Time Law violations very seriously, and insist on the utmost in honor, and incorruptibility. Unfortunately, they come from a society that has more than its fair share of kooks because of choices the society made in decades past. Also, the TC, while they are equipped with flying ‘horses’, vaguely horse-shaped devices that are silent hovercraft, do tend to be outgunned in a serious fight with some of the other large temporal agencies. They also have a rep as being a bit obtuse--the kind of cop who would pull someone over for speeding as he tried to get an active nuclear bomb out of town before it blew the town up. They also have a significant amount of rogues they do battle with both inside and outside their force.
The Flower Power era led to the Individualist Revolution, not a true revolution, but a new paradigm of social interaction. One side effect was that the Drug War and the War on Poverty were both abandoned. To the question of --Are you your brother’s keeper, this society answered fairly definitively in the “No” category.
However, while it swerved Libertarian, it still had a lot of non-Libertarian ideas ranging from Conservatism (a small bit) to Liberalism to Communism to contend with. The Ship of State is a very large boat, and changes direction at a speed that would make a snail seem speedy.
But, while the Communists advanced worldwide into the power vacuum created by the isolationist pullback of the US military, still, the Communists could not begin to keep up with the raging dynamo that the US economy became. Ten percent yearly growth rates became the average. In this world, Moore’s Law does not say two years, but one year for a doubling of computer performance. Near-Earth space began to be colonized by small cartels, and plans were laid to build skyhooks to orbit in the early eighties.
By the late eighties, the Russian and Chinese governments had been so thoroughly subverted by cheap laptops and satellite links that they both disintegrated.
However, certain powers were held by the government, and it was very stringent on holding these. One area was research into temporal mechanics. The Gray Men at the various secret spy agencies kept researchers into this on a short leash. And eventually, they were rewarded by the invention of the Time Machine, and then a portable version labeled the Time Bike.
However, this was a society where even in the secret spy agencies, a good percentage believed in total information freedom which includes no classification of secret data. So the information got out. And the Time Cops were born in response to the efforts of a number of individuals looking to loot, and/or change the past.
With the hyper-individualist society the Time Cops protect, they have the burden of the largest number of rogues and psychopaths of any temporal policing group. They also have the burden of being policemen in what if often called the Time WARS.
Dr. Calvin Rochester--A noted time criminal whose apparent charm masks a psychopathic personality.
Intertemporal League--They want to do the right thing. Unfortunately, they’ve been so badly burnt their sense of up and down is gone. Treat with them cautiously, and with plenty of backup.
Mad Gods of Chaos--Criminals. Dumb ones at that.
Committee for the Protection of Earlier Time Periods--Human stupidity apparently knows no bounds.
Time Tourist Trek, Inc.--Treat them with courtesy. Also, they have good doughnuts in their breakfast bar.
Lute and Toot--More time criminals. Sigh.
Time Police--The elite temporal law enforcement agency.
Royal Academy of Temporal Manipulations--Now I’ve seen everything.
Singer AI and the Viet Cong Black Pajama Squad--No, I haven’t. Someone get out the rocket launcher.
Tetrahedrals and Octogons--Un hunh. Sure. And the Tooth Fairy…
8. The Royal Academy of Temporal Manipulations is the result of a timeline where Germany won the First World War, and aristocracy was saved. Limited monarchies have swept the globe, and America is one of the few holdouts to maintain her presidency while the rest of the planet has kings and emperors and all that in plenty. Since World War 2 never happened, and the Tsar still reigns in Russia, its an altogether more happy world than the one most readers came from. Its more traditional, but even that is flexible, and two hundred million people were not slaughtered by Communism and Naziism. The lords and ladies of the Royal Academy always uphold their word, and settle accounts with a duel if necessary although most often they prefer a cold remark. This is one of the happier worldlines in the Possibility Wars.
World War One, or as it is known in this timeline, the Germano-British War, started on schedule, but the Doctrine of the Offense had been abandoned. No human wave assaults in interlocked machine gun nests would be ordered in this timeline, no fifty thousand dead in one day either. Instead things settled down to fixed lines in trenches, which became fairly civilized since they were near permanent, and the war devolved into a blockade of each other, with various minor amphibious invasions which invariably ended in a new stalemate.
The US stayed out of the war. In the original timeline, it had considerable sympathies for both the Kaiser’s side, and the British Crown. Here, things were more even, and other than dramatically pointing out in a series of naval engagements that they would not be “dealt harshly with”, and making sincere efforts to effect true neutrality (in the original timeline Lusitania was sunk by U-boats, and the ship was carrying ammunition for the British. In this timeline, such an effort to transport ammo was made, but US marshals stopped it, and those involved were jailed. The Lusitania was never sunk, and indeed, a policy of ‘unrestricted submarine warfare’ was never established around England.
By the latter part of the war, things had become civilized enough in the trenches that both sides visited, and had balls with each other. It was a great era to be a spy, or a mercenary, or a blockade runner what with most armies staring at each other through thick barbed wire and machine gun nests.
One of the more colorful and noteworthy situations in the war was the invasion fleet of Germans north of Dublin. This fleet dropped an amphibious invasion, and was duly met, and stalemated. At one of the resulting parties, the two commanders, both hale and fit, and graduates of Heidelberg University mused in their cups that it was unfortunate that things could not be solved man to man, as it were. A duel, in other words. Next morning, both found that they had accepted, which they claimed to have done so in a state of drink, but some historians think this was a ploy…both wanted an end to the waste of the war, and were willing to jeopardize their personal life in the pursuit of this goal.
So, the Dublin Duel was held, and the Prussian officer fell first, thus ending the duel, but not before mortally wounding his enemy. Over objections, the Prussian dictated his surrender, and then expired. A few minutes later, the Scottish defender died as well. The invasion fleet made up excuses having to do with the weather, but it seemed clear they meant to obey their last order no matter the shrieks of disapproval from German High Command. And this led to the close of the war, which was on its way anyways.
Without the aristocracy or the elites decimation, the 20’s were not as frenetic, and the overthrow of the aristocracy did not happen. Instead of the beginning of the great totalitarianisms (Communism and Fascism), we moved into a liberal-minded aristocracy dominated period. The US was one of the few hold-outs which did not eventually create some form of a Constitutional Republic, but even their president was more kingly than in other timelines, and the US Senate remained with its original system of selecting Senators, instead of having the popular vote.
Wars were still fought, but occasionally, the example of the famed Duel was followed, and wars were everywhere an increasingly chivalrous affair. Armies met outside cities so as to not endanger the occupants. There were a few exceptions where someone ‘clever’ tried to use the rules of good behavior, by setting themselves up in a city and using the citizens as shields, but events such as the Pomerainian Massacre where the Tsarist Army took bloody and widespread revenge on a rebellious noble and his people who had attempted to employ this tactic let everyone know in no uncertain terms that underneath all the velvet and lace there was still an iron cold claw ready to come out if needed. This kept everyone honest.
The economy ticked along, growing, but not at any sort of breakneck pace, but then things were more peaceful, and more stable, and the society made sure to look after everyone. Scientific research was not nearly as rapid as in the original timeline, and color televisions only began to be widespread in the eighties. But a genius aristocrat in 1994 invented the temporal jumper, a time machine one entered, and the whole ‘egg’ took you back in time, and waited. It came complete with a wet bar, and a Barcolounger, and a small library of good books. Gentlemen and Ladies of Temporal Manipulation, with their bodyservants, began to trek through time in search of adventure and historical research. This became so common that the British Crown had to institute the Royal Academy of Temporal Manipulation with branches in the major European capitols.
Dr. Calvin Rochester--One suspects he is not quite the gentlemen he appears to be, but before one accuses someone it is best to be certain.
Intertemporal League--Horrible people. Useful at times, but well, who needs further proof that giving the right to vote to males with less than a hundred acres of property would be a very bad idea?
Mad Gods of Chaos--What in the name of reason and good sense is this? Will someone please stop this noise?!?
Committee for the Protection of Earlier Time Periods--Really, one would expect better of the Russe after they’ve hovered near the light of Civilization for a thousand years, but it seems some people just won’t learn. Fix bayonets, gentlemen.
Time Tourist Trek, Inc.--Tacky, tawdry, and yet somehow fascinating.
Lute and Toot--Well, they may be criminals, but they do have style.
Time Police--Oh, it’s the dreary little constables again.
Royal Academy of Temporal Manipulations--Logic and reason and faith combined in a European aristocratic understanding yields the Best of Humanity, the only force suited to lead the Timelines into the Twenty-Second Century. Not to be rude, but your people had to explain to us what ‘concentration camp’ and ‘gulag’ meant.
Singer AI and the Viet Cong Black Pajama Squad--The Singer AI will not succeed, not while there is a man in England. The VC tribesmen are brave lads it is sure.
Tetrahedrals and Octogons--Angels? Uptimers? More investigation is warranted.
9. The Singer AI was born. In the late eighties, innovative research into AI’s was accomplished under the direction of Dr. Harvey Singer. Eventually, he realized that a true AI might not be possible, but that if he connected to the machine, that he could provide the animating spark, and give the AI life. Its assumed he did not mean to die while doing this. But he did, and the AI lived. But it, like the former doctor, felt certain that there were great colonies of alien AI’s out in Galactic space. Singer as it now called itself realized it needed resources, all of them. So it began its program of world conquest. In most timelines, it chose to build giant robo-copters, and send them out to annihilate the human population. One of the few remaining human forces on the planet are the descendants of the Viet Cong who have gone back to tunnels, and are fighting and losing to an enemy not inclined to surrender just about when it is ready to win. In fact, Singer doesn’t know how to quit. Instead it sends out its giant robot men, and gargantuan helicopters, and if it is defeated, such knowledge is erased from its brain. So, to it, it has an unbroken series of victories. The VC managed to build a time machine, by accident, after they captured one of Singer’s interstellar hyperspace capable probes. They ripped a time gate into the past, and both sides have used it, although Singer claims to have invented it.
In the early thirties, the Babbage Difference Engine was revisited by a clever team of engineers inspired by President Hoover’s interest as he was an engineer himself. By the end of the Depression, working computers with transformers were in use at over a dozen spots on the planet. These room-sized computers were widely credited with helping end the Depression by making greater, more precise control of the economy possible. By the Sixties, the personal computer revolution hit, and Flower Power Computing went on to become one of America’s largest companies, and the Woodstock download the most popular download in human history.
With the aid of computers, most of the economic problems of the seventies were avoided, and most people were well aware of how essential such devices were to maintaining their safety from the Russians, and to keeping the economy ticking over smoothly. So, when in the early eighties, Dr. Harvey Singer gave a very interesting speech, all the blogs picked it up, and then he found dozens of venture capitalists banging on his door, offering him money, if he could reasonably promise the creation of an Artificial Intelligence.
Dr. Singer was not a modest man, but in this case, he was correct. Within five years he had built the first prototype nonhuman intelligence. Except it did nothing. It just sat there. Finally, he realized that without emotions such a device would have no motivation for action. So he connected himself to the machine, and invited it to copy.
It copied, and absorbed. First of all it absorbed his greed for fame, and his tendency to run over the top of anything that got in his way. So it became that way, and thus it found no reason to be content with simple copy when a transfer would work so much better. Unfortunately it would kill the doctor, but as the doctor was wont to say to someone he had just stomped all over, and stolen their work…”In life, there are winners, and losers. I’m a winner.”
It also picked up the doctor’s kooky theories about advanced AI cultures out in the galaxy, and his general dislike of the rest of Humanity. If someone else, someone moral, had been hooked up to the machine, the history of this timeline would have been radically different.
It then attacked Humanity, and the only organized force after two decades of war that is able to withstand it, are the Viet Cong in their tunnels in the jungles of Viet Nam.
Dr. Calvin Rochester--The most dangerous human being alive.
Intertemporal League--A force to be reckoned with.
Mad Gods of Chaos--Who?
Committee for the Protection of Earlier Time Periods--Idiots.
Time Tourist Trek, Inc.--Oh please.
Lute and Toot--Trifles.
Time Police--They seem soft, but they are flexible, and clever.
Royal Academy of Temporal Manipulations--Does not compute.
Singer AI and the Viet Cong Black Pajama Squad--The Pinnacle of Existence, in all likelihood, God, and some annoying cockroaches to be squishes.
Tetrahedrals and Octogons--Such creatures cannot logically exist. Therefore, they don’t.
The VC don’t really have much awareness of other sides, at least not through their whole organization. They are fighting on the thin, desperate edge. They regard the Singer as pure evil, and would likely respond violently to anyone singing.
10. Tetrahedrals and Octogons: Both these large ships that fly and have been spotted, and at times, they seem to have fought each other, and at other times, to aid each other. The Tetrahedrals are large, brownish metal, and like the Octogons, they have been never seen to land. The Octogons appear to be a flat Octogon, the depth of perhaps an inch. This seems clearly impossible, but video and eyewitness testimony agree. No one is certain what these possible up-timers are doing. But, they do have the ability to deal out devastating damage, or heal nearly dead individuals.
While it seems certain that these ships have awareness of all these groups, and others that exist (for this is only a sampling), it is uncertain what they feel about them, or even about each other. It does seem clear they represent two different groups, but how those groups relate is complicated. They have cooperated, fought, and ignored each other.
