Empowerment

In 2012, the author Stephen King awoke to find another threatening note had been pushed through the letter box of his home in Center Lovell, Maine. Some men don't know that they got the whole world and it's right in front of their nose Signed, Constant Reader.

Handmaiden

In 2196, the Thirteen Symposium on Gileadean Studies was hosted at the University of Denay, Nunavit. Professor of Caucasian Anthropology Pieixoto explained that sterility had caused the downfall of Gileadean. Almost all of the Commanders were sterile, due to an accidental release of a bioweapon designed for a war of aggression on the Soviet Union. Unable to accept this simple truth, Commanders had introduced the subjugation of women in an attempt to redirect the blame.

Handmaids were women modeled after Zilpah and Bilhah in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible, the slaves of the patriarch Jacob's wives Rachel and Leah. When the wives could not conceive, they had their handmaids lay with their husband to have children on their behalf. Like the biblical handmaids, Gileadean equivalents must have ritualized and completely unemotional sex with a man, with his wife holding her hands. Sexual satisfaction is forbidden and if a child is produced, it will be considered the offspring of the man and his wife. Handmaids spend a maximum of two years in a particular household before they are moved. Those who cannot conceive within three placements are deemed barren Unwomen and sent to the colonies — so that many genuinely fertile Handmaids seek to impregnate themselves using alternative methods.

MLK

In 2003, on this day the compendium “A Collection of Political Counterfactuals” was published. Simon Burns' masterful sequel "What if James Earl Ray had missed?" was a keynote contribution, considering the scenario where the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King had survived as NAACP Leader. In a chilling line, the novel explains King is not the same man who checked in to the hotel, and as a result adopted a harder stance with dramatically improved results for African Americans by the late 1970s.

In 1980, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu and other veterans of the Entebbe Raid arrive secretly in the United States. Whilst there, they will post mortem Operation Eagle Claw, the failed military operation to rescue the 53 hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran on April 24, 1980. And come up with a new, improved plan.

Yoni

Verwoerd

In 1965, South African Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd received a decidedly unpleasant telephone call from the White House. The Americans might have ignored internal security matters such as the Sharpeville massacre, the banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress, and the treason trial of Nelson Mandela. However any support for the white Rhodesian government was quite another matter. This President did not live in the nineteenth century and would not tolerate gun boat diplomacy in Zimbabwe. “Don't even think about it, Verwoerd” and hung up the telephone abruptly.

In 1965, in a broadcast to the nation British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan announced that “whilst he strongly disagreed with the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Zimbabwe, he accepted it”. Britain would not be taking any action, and he asked the nation to pray for the success of the black majority government and the white farmers. Shortly before the show, he had called off Operation Quartz , that mission had been planned on a needs to know basis. Nobody needed to know about Operation Quartz.

Macmillan

Mistakes

Handmaiden	In 2196, the Thirteen Symposium on Gileadean Studies was hosted at the University of Denay, Nunavit. Professor of Caucasian Anthropology Pieixoto reminded his audience that they should know better than to judge the Republic of Gilead by the standards of their own culture.
Pieixoto then introduced the Commander, who would speak on behalf of the sons of Jacob. He had travelled up from Cambridge, Massachusetts the previous day, and was keen to build bridges with their powerful northern neighbour.

In 2008, service agents at the head office of the restaurant chain Wanda's of Montreal performed data administration duties in preparation for fortieth year celebrations. The database flag ABUSIVE_COMMENT was set to Y to filter out negative comments which of course would not be showcased on the chain's web site.

Barbeau	In 1962, on this day the US publicly announced its discovery of the installation of Soviet nuclear weapons in Quebec. Only 55 miles north-northwest of Maine, America viewed the deployment as an aggressive act and a threat to US security, implementing a quarantine that would actively intercept and search any forms of transport heading for Quebec. Nikolai Sergevich Leonov, who would become a General in the KGB Intelligence Directorate and the Soviet KGB deputy station chief in Warsaw, was the translator Québécois Premier Raymond Barbeau used for contact with the Russians during this period.

In 1972, on this day in Saigon, Henry Kissinger and Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his younger brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu met to discuss a proposed cease-fire that had been worked out between Americans and North Vietnamese in Paris. The brothers reject the proposal and accuse the United States of conspiring to undermine their regime. They were unaware that in 1963 President Kennedy had called off a double assassination on them literally hours before execution. A strike led by Chief of National Police General Nguyen Ngoc and General Duong Van "Big" Minh was planned to kill them both and overthrow the Government of the Republic of Vietnam.	Nguyen Ngoc

Gandhi	In 2999, the mind cast for the next instalment of “Personality of the Triple Millennia” was re-run across the networks. POT3M drew an even larger audience because of its oddness. Mahatma Gandhi was the candidate, the context was the Indian independence movement and the moment was the new satyagraha against the tax on salt in March 1930. Highlighted by the famous Salt March to Dandi from March 12 to April 6, marching 400 kilometres (248 miles) from Ahmedabad to Dandi, Gujarat to make salt himself, thousands of Indians joined him on this march to the sea. This campaign was one of his most successful at upsetting the British rule who responded with the imprisonment of over 60,000 people.
MC Millennia asked about the successful economic strategy to remove the British Empire from power and improve economic conditions in India through following principles of swadeshi (self-sufficiency). Was this the strategy for India after independence?

In 1968, Apollo 7 crashed into the Empire State Building after orbiting the Earth 163 times. Three thousand New Yorkers were killed by the impact. Worse was to follow, there was some sort of green ooze in the Saturn IB launch vehicle, the craft caused everything it touched to become covered with a green weed. The incredible story of how the Atlantic Plague Centre quarantined the green weed to the island of Manhattan was recounted by the journalise Stephen King in his master piece The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verill.	Creepshow

Perceptions

Drakas

In 2196, the Thirteen Symposium on Gileadean Studies was hosted at the University of Arconia in the Domination of the Draka. Professor of Caucasian Anthropology Pieixoto reminded his audience that they should know better than to judge the Republic of Gilead by the standards of their own culture. Pieixoto pointed out that the Gileadean created their seemingly barbaric rules to accommodate unique pressures that no longer exist, and that "contemporary" society can thus not fully appreciate their purposes or rationale.

In 2008, restaurant chain Wanda's of Montreal planned to celebrate its fortieth year. Customers were invited to email in great dining moments. A selection of appropriate comments would be showcased on the chain's web site.

Truganini	In 1978/1833, Australian civilian pilot Frederick Valentich vanished in a Cessna 182 over the Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft. Some ufologists have speculated that the craft Valentich reported was an extra-terrestrial vehicle, and that Valentich was either abducted or destroyed by such a craft. Neither was the case. When the pilot finally touched down, he was rescued and taken to the Teen Toomle Mennenyer (Big River) to meet the Tasmanian aboriginal Truganini. During the parley, he was to discern his true role in saving the Trouwunna from genocide. Truganini had foreseen that cultural disruption and disease transmission would depopulate the lutrawita and only a man from the future could save it.

In 1967, on this day two cameraman Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin were discovered in a state of mutilation at Bluff Creek, California. Conspiracy theories have raged for forty years over the confiscation of their camera film by the authorities; most sensationally, speculation that they had filmed, and then been killed by a sasquatch.	Bigfoot

Jesse Jackson	In 2999, the mind cast for the next instalment of “Personality of the Triple Millennia” was re-run across the networks. POT3M drew an even larger audience because of its oddness. Jesse Jackson was the candidate, the context was the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in America and the moment bare minutes after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Some controversy surrounds the moments just after King was wounded and MC Millennia asked for an explanation. Jackson would later claim on national television that he was the last person to talk to King and that he had held the dying leader in his arms, getting blood all over his shirt.
The other men present unanimously agreed that this was not true, that Jackson had been in the parking lot facing King when he was shot and had neither climbed the steps to the balcony afterward nor gone to the hospital with King. Whatever the truth of the matter, Jackson's appearance on national television the next day with his bloodied turtleneck jersey vaulted him into national prominence. The image of Jackson and his bloody shirt brought the horror of the assassination into American homes. Jackson's ego, stirring oratory and charismatic presence caused the media to anoint him and not Ralph Abernathy, King's successor. Jackson takes the fifth amendment, MC Millennia ends the show early.

In 1600, on this day Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated the leaders of rival Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara. This significant event marked the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, who in effect rule Japan until the mid-twentieth century when the victorious Americans installed the General-san, Douglas MacArthur.	General-san