Pope Abdicates For Love

December 11th, 2004

in 4316, 100 Chinese colonists land in a small sound on the northwestern coast of Ouezteca. The land had been ceded to the Chinese by the Oueztecan emperor as a sign of good faith and desire for closer relations between the two people; he came to regret this, however, as the Chinese population in the northwest grew and his own people’s growth remained stagnant.

in 1718, King Charles XII of Sweden was shot in the head by a Norwegian assassin. Although he survived, his mental capacity afterwards was that of a child, and his sister, Ulrika Eleanora, ruled in his place. In 1725, after hearing of the medical miracles that the Mlosh were capable of, she contacted the Mlosh colony ship in Germany and asked for a physician to come to her court. He cured Charles, and Ulrika turned the crown back over to him. The grateful king declared that any Mlosh who desired Swedish citizenship was welcome within his borders.

in 1882, physicist Max Born was born in Breslau, Germany. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist became enamored of the parallel universe cult of Richard Tolman in the 1930’s, and went to America to join it. Like so many other scientists who joined the cult, his mysterious disappearance in 1955 was never solved.

in 1936, Pope Edward VIII abdicates his position. He had fallen in love with a Protestant woman, a woman he was forbidden by Church law to marry. Rather than simply use her as a mistress, he showed his love by giving up the Holy British Empire for her.

in 1968, German scientist Wilhelm Schoemann and his colleague, Palestinian scientist Faisal Yassin, are surprised by the appearance of an apple in their laboratory. A note is wrapped around the apple, with the message, “The doorway is open,” in Schoemann’s handwriting. It is their first indication that their experiments in time travel are succeeding.

in 1985, the reactionary anarchist known only as The Unabomber claims his first victim, a young comrade working in a computer store in Sacramento, California Soviet. Over the years he is able to avoid authorities, he becomes a sort of folk hero to the fledgling anarchy movement in the Pacific Northwest, who proudly disdain the advances of Communist life such as computers and cars.

in 1997, a federal judge orders the software company Microsoft not to bundle its internet browser Internet Explorer within Windows. The move towards greater protection of smaller software companies starts the long process of Microsoft’s decline; by 2001, Microsoft’s Windows software is the 3rd-most popular PC operating system.

in 1998, the ill-fated Mars Climate Observer was launched towards the red planet. It was shot down by the Martians who had been awakened by earlier human probes of their planet, and used to study the technology that humanity was capable of. All preparation for their attack.