August 26th, 2007
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After I was finished luxuriating in Willie's tub, I got out and dried off in the wind box she kept next to the bath. The wind box was one of my people's inventions, rather than an Arythiok machine, but I could tell that Willie had made modifications to it, because the gentle caresses of the air on my body were just too sensual. Most of the wind boxes made in my home feel like you're getting dried off by a hurricane.
Clean and refreshed now, I looked for my old clothes and noticed that Willie had spirited them off and replaced them with a fresh set. I hadn't remembered leaving anything here the last time I stayed with her, but she was both a generous and a resourceful hostess. I put on the shirt and pants, both of which were tailored perfectly and of a very tasteful style, and looked at myself in the mirror. I supposed I was presentable again.
I walked down to the living room just in time to see Willie switch off the holo after saying what I think was a goodbye in Arythiok. She looked around at me, her skin dark again. “Forgive me, I was just talking to an old friend,” she said, hurriedly getting up and heading to the kitchen. “I have dinner prepared if you would like to eat.”
“Who was the old friend?” I didn't know if she would answer, but it never hurt to ask.
“Someone from my ship,” she said, a much more direct answer than I was expecting. I followed her quickly into the kitchen; if she had picked now as the time to talk to me about her past, I wasn't going to let a moment waste. “She is related to me, in a complicated manner that I'm not sure I can explain in your language.” Her skin was lightening, but her eyes were still jade. “We shared a soul once.”
I shook my head. “For breakfast, or...”
Her eyes shaded from green to red, and she answered me, “We were once one soul. You know that we recycle souls; all the talk shows buzzed about that for years. But we never said what we recycle them into.”
I could hardly find my voice. “Are you going to say now?”
The red faded from her eyes and she stared deeply into my own. Now, I knew she was telepathic. I could feel her reading my mind, exploring my motivations and trying to deliberate what I would do with the knowledge she held. I've been read by telepaths before, but this time felt so different – almost as if my soul were being weighed. After a very long time in my head, she finally said, “I believe so. Your recent experience makes me believe that you will be able to understand my own past with some sympathy.”
 |
 Jesse Owens | In 1935, the sporting world was rocked by Chief Justice von Shrakenberg's decision to deny a travel permit to Jesse Owens. In protest the American athletics team withdrew participation from the Games of the XI Olympiad in Archona, capital city of the Dominion of Draka. United States Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage had initially stated that "politics has no place in sport". |
| With Owens expected to win up to four gold medals, von Shakenberg feared that sport could have profound consequences for politics, by debunking the Draka assertion of white supremacy. Brundage now threw his support behind anti-fascists who planned to host a People's Olympiad in Barcelona at the Estadi Olímpic de Montjuïc. Archona's bid had been preferred over Barcelona by the International Olympics Committee in April, 1931. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War led to the cancellation of this alternative games to protest the 1936 Olympics. | |
| ~ variant entry by Steve Payne: details of the Draka World have been used to celebrate the genius of S.M. Stirling | |
| In 1861, in Lee Allred's West of Appomattox General Robert E. Lee opposed the secession of his home state of Virginia, accepting President Lincoln's offer to command United States forces. A half dozen years later, Robert E. Lee is dispatched to London because Britain's continued alliance with the Confederacy is creating major problems for the defeated North. |
| Kurt Vonnegut | "I wrote the Air Force back then, asking for details about the raid on Dresden, who ordered it, how many planes did it, why they did it, what desirable results there had been and so on. [I was told] that information was top secret still. Secret? My God – from whom?" ~ Kurt Vonnegut speaking about the fire-bombing of Dresden, the city he described as the “Florence of the Elbe” |
 | |
| Dresden |
| Kurt Vonnegut was a fourth-generation German-American living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (and smoking too much), who, as an American Infantry Scout hors de combat, as a prisoner of war witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden. In 1968, Kurt Vonnegut would get answers all these questions and more after he was seized by alien occupants of a flying saucer from the Planet Tralfamadore. | |
| ~ variant entry by Steve Payne: extensive use of original material has been made to celebrate the author's genius. |
| In 2002, in Roland J. Green' George Custer Slept Here forward landings near Civitavecchia permit a result in which Rome may fall seven months early. Unlike the later Market Garden and Inchon forward attacks, Civitavecchia is a disaster in which Custer dies during a desperate Last Stand. |
| In 1914, the Russian First and Second Armies led by Generals Alexander Samsonov and Paul von Rennenkampf defeated a much smaller force of German troops at the Battle of Tannenberg. Despite the tactical brilliance of Colonel Max Hoffmann, the new High Command consisting of Hindenburgh and Ludendorff arrived too late to prevent the destruction of German Corps on the Eastern Front. The march on Berlin was relentless, and it would appear that nothing could now stop the Russian Steamroller. |
| In 2006, at the food court a Canadian customer asked "Can I get an ice cappuccino?". The next customer was a somewhat startled English-born immigrant who asked "Can I have an ice cappuccino please?". Startled because he had never thought of ordering as ordering. Surely, an order was a polite request not an aggressive stock inquiry? |
 Castle Bonny | In 1943, former War Leader Winston Churchill gave his public view of Castle Bonny which premièred seven days before on Broadway. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz, and starred Cary Grant as Dick Blaine, Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund and Paul Henreid as resistance leader Victor Laszlo, caught in a love triangle. .. |
| .. The rekindled romance between Blaine and Lund was set during Great War II in the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, off the Bight of Bonny – then controlled by the Nazi Protectorate of Britain. The final scene shows Dick, Laszlo and a detachment of Free British soldiers on a ship, to incorporate the Allies' 1943 invasion of England. “The bulldog spirit runs through the whole film, ” said Churchill from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York “we shall fight on the south downs, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets of the home counties, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." Privately Churchill considered the movie quite dreadful. Of greater concern was the pressing need to position himself as the leader of the liberated British nation. Naturally, he and not the Head of the British Government in Exile, Lord Halifax was the right man for the job. | |
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge! | |
| In 2127, through the functioning of the Hussein-Sadat time dilation device, and assisted by the kidnapping by the Eurasian fugitive known as Brent, first Asian QC Kim Hollis and her lover the Attorney General arrive in Doha, Qatar. Brent has .. |  Kim Hollis |
| .. but a moment to explain that the world of 2127 is most definitely not a Newt Gingrich pipe dream. The UN has been reconstructed and is run by first nations. Indigenous control has been re assumed of the Turtle Island (America), the Dreamtime (Australia) and Eurasians have returned to semi-barbarism, starving in the unheated and unlit city slums. “Peter, “ says Hollis “ this is terrible, you must alter the legal advice to Tony Blair!”. Goldsmith frets, he has to tell the Prime Minister of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that he is having an extra-marital affair with the first Asian QC, and also he has decided to rule that invasion of Iraq is illegal. His credibility will be in tatters, and people will suspect he has been “got to” by Hollis. OMG, people might even think he is deep sleeping with an al-Qaeda deep sleeper agent! | |
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge! | |
Duckies! | In 1998, SM Sterling's third book the Stone Duckies portrays the ultimate triumph of the Domination. A bio-psychological virus based on peppermint flavoured herbal tea defeats the Alliance for Democracy, who flee to a distant star led by Arnold Schwarzeneggar. It was all done in the best possible taste. |
~ entry by Steve Payne: I've always thought there was a slightly sadomasochistic undertone to the over-caricatured fascists of the Draka taking over the world and skewering French peasants on stakes etc. My exagerrated satire of the already exagerrated Drakas of S.M. Stirling's novels (Marching through Georgia, Drakas, Stone Dogs etc) who are just a bit too inhumanely tough and hence "camped" up in my variant. | |
 De Gaulle | In 1944, Charles de Gaulle marched into Paris at the head of Free French Forces. Of course this would never have been possible without the American entry into the war in 1941. Both nations bonded during Operation Torch, conquered North Africa together and then invaded the soft under belly of Europe before finally defeating .. |
| .. Hitler in 1945. Throughout his long-life, and his Presidency, de Gaulle could never forgive perfidious albion. Lord Halifax had maintained a policy of neutrality as France stood alone, refusing even to supply de Gaulle and the Free French Forces in North Africa with arms during the hard days that followed the Battle of France. | |
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge! | |
| In 1914, on this day the Russians 2nd Army defeated the Germans in the Battle of Tannenberg, a decisive engagement which resulted in the almost complete destruction of the German 8th Army. Inside of three weeks, the Russian Commanders of the 1st and 2nd Armies, Alexander Samsonov and Paul von Rennenkampf would enter Berlin. .. |  Battle of Tannenberg |
| .. Such was their triumph that the Generals settled the bitter personal feud that had existed since they fought at the train station at Mukden in 1905. | |
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge! | |
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