Alternate Routes

The state of TIAH

January 14th, 2007

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Alternate Historian's Note: I'm almost fully recovered, so everything should be back to normal after today. We have a side-project that was announced yesterday – a collection of several timelines with more-or-less complete stories inside them – The Fall, the Tolman timeline, the Mormon War and more – that will be up for sale on Lulu, as soon as we have it edited together. If you would be interested in this, or would like to suggest something for inclusion in the collection, please email me and let me know. Meanwhile, enjoy Guest Historian Stephen Payne's entry for today, followed by the continuation of our NaNoWriMo novel.

Halifax	In 1947 Lord Halifax cables Fuehrerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) to accept in principle the peace offer of the Nazi Government. Halifax and Princess Elizabeth I invite the Fuehrer Adolf Hitler to a January 28th meeting on neutral territory in Reykjavík, Iceland where the British ..
.. Government in Exile will handover to the Nazis both the renegade Churchill and also the keys to the Royal Navy. ~ Authors Note: 'The translation of Adolf is noble wolf and indeed the nickname for Hitler was wolf.'
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge!

In 1942 an irresistible force is about to collide with an immovable object in French North Africa. The British Eighth Army led by Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery faces the Desert Fox known as Brigadier General Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle and his La Grande Armée Afrique ..	Monty
.. for a fight to the death. Both Commanders have a cautious nature, essentially because they are concerned about their places in the history books. A phony war therefore develops in the desert of North Africa. De Gaulle knows that reinforcements are heading through Spain and therefore is considering whether or not a pre-emptive strike is the glory-bound option.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

George W Bush	In 2011 at Camp David US President George Walker Bush prepares to write his auto-biography marking his retirement maturity age 65. In 'A Charge Kept' Bush's ghost writers describe the consequences of mid-term defeat in 2006 that ultimately forced a softening of the line on the Axis of Evil. ..
.. By then both Iran and Korea were members of the nuclear club, and an exchange of thermonuclear strikes in mid 2008 led to the extirpation of life above ground. In the closing chapter 'And now begins the long, long winter' W talks about the unexpected third term Presidency forced upon America by the collapse of civilian government in the continental United States. More than anything, he misses the jogging although on balance it has to be said that his second marriage to Condoleeza Rice marked an improvement in his personal happiness. He had stopped drinking again.
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge!

In 1941 British Prime Minister David Lloyd George instructs his Minister of War Winston Churchill to reinforce the land-side approach to Singapore. It would after all be a damn fool mistake to just prepare for a naval assault by the Japanese. It is his grasp of the minutiae that give the ..	Lloyd George
.. Welsh Wizard a cutting edge as a proven wartime leader and ultimately why the nation turned to him again in 1940. Winnie was great on rhetoric, most definitely up for the fight - but he just wanted to do everything. Seeing the blind spots was required, mused Lloyd George, particularly when your forces are spread throughout the World, and your enemies are focused on their own theatres.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

After(cont.)
There was surprisingly little trouble for them. They had hit a checkpoint leaving Bryan, but their story of lottery millions easily fooled the young man checking them through. They had followed Highway 21 out of town and were now on the far side of San Antonio. Curfew would hit them before they could reach the border with New Mexico, so the plan was to get as far as they could by the afternoon, and then check into a nice hotel.
Steph looked down the road and saw a lot of nothing. She felt a little pang for the trees and hills of Austin. Mike was saying something while she mused, so she stopped daydreaming and paid attention. “Once we hit 277, we'll turn north and we should be able to make it San Angelo; that's a big enough town to where we can spend the night someplace OK. In the morning, we follow 87 out west, and it's almost a straight shot to the border.”
Joan piped up from behind them. “What if there's fighting at the border? I mean, you guys said that New Mexico was resisting the martial law and everything, so what if there's a war goin' on when we get there?”
Mike and Steph met eyes for a second. “Well, we'll just have to try to avoid that,” Steph said. “This thing can go off-road. We can probably skirt around any fighting on the highway.”
“OK.”
Joan had been worried for the last hundred miles or so, so Steph asked, “Baby, is there something bothering you?”
She shook her head. “I know it sounds like a movie and all, but I expected us to have to go through like a checkpoint in every town. We haven't hardly seen a soldier since Bryan. Where are they all?”
“Most of Texas lives behind us,” Mike said. “They need those guys to pacify the big cities.”
“Or to guard the border,” Joan said.
That brought a little pause to Steph and Mike. “Good point,” Mike muttered. “The lottery story should still work. I mean, what harm can it be to let Texas' newest millionaire leave the state?”
“None, I guess,” Joan said, looking out the window. “Unless you don't want anybody to leave the state.”
Steph looked over at Mike. “If we get turned back at the border, we find a way to get across without using the roads, that's all. Illegals do it every day; we can, too.”
“I think I have a map saved on my laptop that shows a few non-traditional routes away from Texas. We'll look through it tonight at the hotel.”
They returned to driving in silence, except for the sounds of the cartoon playing on the small screen TV in the back that George was watching happily. Joan leaned back and tried to nap, and Steph turned the radio on quietly. It was more of the Emergency Lady, so she only half-listened.
After a couple of hours, though, something that the woman on the radio said caught her attention. “... repulsing the invaders. With this in mind, it is the request of the State of Texas that all able-bodied citizens living within 100 miles of a border arm themselves and be prepared to assist the Texas Guard in fighting off these terrorist sleeper cells. Details are being worked out to integrate these citizens into the nearest Guard units, and will be broadcast as soon as possible.”
Steph looked back at Joan's sleeping face, then turned to Mike. He was wearing a worried look, now. “Looks like we'll be needing that non-traditional route pretty bad, Mike.”

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Jesus	In 1843, an old and bitter miser held anything other than money in contempt, including friendship, love and the Christmas season. Ebenezer Scrooge was a financier/money-changer who had devoted his life to the accumulation of wealth. Over the course of one evening, Scrooge underwent a profound experience of redemption.
Is Love

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In 1972, Apollo 17 became the sixth mission to land on the Moon. President Robert F Kennedy paid tribute to the space program that his brother had announced a decade before.

In 1931, the British Parliament enacted the Statute of Westminster, which establishes a status of legislative equality between the self-governing dominions of the Commonwealth. India was given equal rank amongst the North American Union, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. Problem was events were going at their own pace. On December 31, 1929, the flag of India was unfurled in Lahore. January 26, 1930 was celebrated by the Indian National Congress, meeting in Lahore, as India's Independence Day. This day was commemorated by almost every other Indian organization.

John Pilger	In 1959, John Pilger mysteriously disappeared. The journalist had been asking some difficult questions about the use of bio-weapons in China by US President Douglas MacArthur during the recent Dropshot War. Foul-play was suspected but never proven.

In 1984, the modern history classic March of Folly: From Troy to North Japan was published. Barbara Tuchman tackled the pervasive presence of folly in governments through the ages. Defining folly as the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives, Tuchman details four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly in government: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance Popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain's George III, and the United States' persistent folly in Japan following Operation Downfall and the Soviet seizure of the northern island.

March of Folly

Lloyd George

In 1282, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd or Gruffudd the last native Prince of Wales, was killed at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, south Wales. He was the last prince of an independent Wales before its conquest by King Edward I of England. Some would say he was the penultimate, but in effect he was the last ruler. In Welsh, he is remembered by the alliterative soubriquet Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf (Llywelyn, Our Last Leader). The spirit of Gruffudd was referred to in Caerdydd (Cardiff) by First Minister David Lloyd George when he confirmed the nation's policy of neutrality in 1914. The Welsh Free State had no strategic interest in a European conflict said the Welsh Wizard. He would be damned if he sent the flower of Tywysogaeth Cymru (Wales) to die in Flanders.

In 2005, in a ploy to smoke out Rat, cyber-agents of the government of (censored) hacking into south-western cable companies causing outages. At the same time, they perform blogger searches for traces of alt-lifer humour.	Rat

In 1972, Apollo 17 becomes the sixth mission to land on the Moon and the first to return to Earth with a highly contagious space bug.

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In 1977, rich with North Sea Oil revenue Scotland gains its independence exactly one hundred and seventy years after the Act of Union 1707 united the two countries as the Kingdom of Great Britain. The declaration of independence from Holyrood House, Edinburgh was also seventeen years after British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told a stunned Parliament of South Africa -

The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

Whilst 'Supermac' could just about accept the End of Empire he could not accept the dissolution of the United Kingdom, which he denounced and moved to South Africa himself. Three years later at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 the 28-year old athlete Allan Wells took the first Olympic Gold Medallist for the new country. Running as fast as the wind he finished first in the 100m sprint race, ushering in a new decade of hope for the great nation of Scotland.

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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 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.

Abandoned

	A household in New Texas City after the exodus of the human population of Mars ~ though the residents had left, the automated house which took care of the family still functions. Breakfast is automatically made, clothes are laid out, voice reminders of daily activities are called out, but no one is there. Robotic mice vacuum the home and tidy up. As the day progresses, the rain quits, and the house prepares lunch and opens like a flower to the warm weather. That night, a storm crashes a tree into the home, starting a fire that the house cannot combat, as the municipal water supply has dried up and failed. ~ Abridged Version of There Will Come Soft Rains (December 2007).
Planet Mars

In 2008, astronomers watched a football pitch-sized lump of rock hurtle through space at a speed of 45000 km/h. The fragment, which had been christened WD-5, was on a collision course with Mars. The impact on 30th January would subsequently be known as the Martian Armageddon. During the period December 2001-November 2005 humans from Earth had colonized the deserted planet, occasionally having contact with the few surviving Martians, but for the most part preoccupied with making Mars a second Earth. WD-5 changed all that, and most humans departed in haste during the December 2007 exodus.

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In 1732, the turncoat George Washington was born. The measure of Washington's treachery was made worse by the fact that he was considered by many to be the best general and most accomplished leader in the Continental Army. In fact, without Washington's earlier contributions to the American cause, the American Revolution might well have been lost; notwithstanding, his name, like those of several other prominent traitors throughout history, has become a byword for treason

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Hari Seldon	By 310 Foundation Era, the Seldon Plan was in ruins. While his vassals prosecute the war, the Mule travelled under the guise of a refugee clown named "Magnifico Giganticus," with Foundation citizens Toran and Bayta Darell to different worlds of the Foundation. The Mule used his super-human abilities to undermine the Foundation's war effort by spreading despair and destroying morale. In the end, the Foundation falls without much of a fight at all.
Psychohistorian

As the Mule was advancing, the Foundation leadership complacently assumed that Seldon predicted his attack, and that even though the Mule was inexorably winning, the scheduled hologram crisis message appearance of Hari Seldon would tell them how to win (just as Bel Riose had seemed impossible to defeat, yet was "defeated" by Seldon's predictions). However, when Seldon's crisis tape plays they are shocked to discover that the crisis Seldon predicted was a civil war between the Foundation and the Independent Traders, making no mention of the Mule whatsoever. The Mule promised that he would find the Second Foundation, while Bayta asserted that he would not have enough time before the Second Foundation reacts. Bayta was correct. Not only were the Second Foundation able to defeat the Mule using their superior mental powers, they also put the Seldon Plan back on track. The Second Foundation were fully aware of the eight Seldon Crisis that would occur during the interregnum. The final three, of which the political/military forces of the First Foundation knew nothing, were well known to the psychohistorians on the Planet Trantor, being cerebral challenges. The ninth crisis was temporal, and known to neither. That was why Seldon had placed his panic button in the plan, the Third Foundation very shortly before his death in 12,069 GE.

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In 1980, gold prices plummeted when the Ethiopian Motherlode was discovered. The formerly-precious metal had been trading at $300 US an ounce, and was the monetary standard of many countries, when the doubling of the world’s supply by the discovery in Ethiopia brought the price crashing down to $50 US an ounce. The African nation, which is now the world’s largest supplier of the metal, has achieved a standard of living rivaling many European nations.

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In 1941, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George instructs his Minister of War Winston Churchill to reinforce the land-side approach to Singapore. It would after all be a damn fool mistake to just prepare for a naval assault by the Japanese. It is his grasp of the minutiae that give the Welsh Wizard a cutting edge as a proven wartime leader and ultimately why the nation turned to him again in 1940. Winnie was great on rhetoric, most definitely up for the fight - but he just wanted to do everything. Seeing the blind spots was required, mused Lloyd George, particularly when your forces are spread throughout the World, and your enemies are focused on their own theatres.

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In 3,561,299,401 BCE, several amino acids failed to form into life-promoting proteins on the 3rd planet from a small sun in the western galactic arm. The planet was ripe for kregaforming when the Kregalians of Sorga 4 found it in 1307 CE, though.

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	In 1937, encouraged by the success of 'The Hobbit', Tolkien submitted an incomplete but more fully developed version of The Silmarillion to his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, but they rejected the work as being obscure. Far from obscure, and deeply relevant to the tortured author, Tolkien had described the epic struggle of his inner world. The author had turned to escapist fantasy writing to explore the dissapation of his own life force. Whether he knew it or not, the epic struggle of the little people was an expression of his own disempowerment from World War I.

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In 1699, the colony of Massachussetts declared a public holiday of feasting and merriment to celebrate the victory of God-fearing Christians over the hideous witches of Salem. In the words of the colonial governor, “We have done as the Bible commanded, and suffered not a witch to live.”

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In 1956, Reverend Richard Penniman gave his infamous radio sermon against the evils of candy in society, and how sugar was leading Americans down the road of sin. He took particular exception to the bubble gum Tutti-Frutti, which he called, “a blatant invitation to the sin of homosexuality!”

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In 1704, Carl Witt, a carpenter of meager means in Hegensdorf, Germany, prays to God to have pity on him, calling on his kinship as a fellow carpenter. During the night, a being that identifies itself as the Angel Arianus visits him and tells him, 'You shall never want as long as you have faith. Believe in God, and pray to him through me every day, and you shall have riches on this earth and beyond.' Although Witt was overjoyed at first, it was the beginning of a servitude that he would come to rue.

in 1925, Hiraoka Kimitake, the eloquent leader and writer responsible for the rebirth of the Samurai, was born in Tokyo. Although he was so ashamed of his writing that he used the name Yukio Mishima to disguise his work from his father, Hiraoka forged a new path in Japanese thought that revived the ancient concept of Bushido, the warrior’s way. In 1970, he successfully restored the Emperor to his former place of honor and power in Japanese society, and became Emperor Hirohito’s Prime Minister.

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In 1971, through frustration a quarrel erupted on-board Apollo 13. Beset by mechanical failures, the Marie Celeste was adrift in space. Commander Bert Smith was about to say "gentlemen, we're not going to bounce off these walls, because when it's over we're going to be right back here". Actually the British spaceflight to the moon ll-fated had been too much trouble, it really had. Smith said simply "it's a bl- nightmare". A great leadership moment it wasn't.

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In 1784, at the request of the British Parliament, the American Continental Congress formally breaks all ties with the Canadian nationalists. The American militias had been assisting British troops in fighting the nationalists for a couple of years, but the Congress had never made a formal break. A flood of former rebels surges northward from America to Canada, swelling the ranks of the nationalists.