New Reality Seeds

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Kale

The problem is it isn't so much developing a vaccine as it is testing it to a satisfactory level. So even if Infinity dropped the vaccine in the laps of some prominent researchers somehow, the researchers would still need to verify it which would require human trials. Even assuming they completely took Infinity at its word that it would work, a production method and scaling would be required to produce the vaccine in the necessary quantities. Otherwise you would need Infinity to ship huge quantities of vaccine from outworld which would definitely reveal the Secret. Given that things are starting to get under control and many vaccine candidates are already being tested, Infinity would probably take a 'do nothing' approach. At best they might nudge the research towards the 'best' out of all the current candidate vaccines.

Good points. Even with a vaccine, it's the creation & distribution that is most important.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Well Homeliners showing up with a vaccine fully developed in some other world ready to be tested would at least knock a few months off the process. Of course when things get interesting is the combination of a vaccine with slightly murky antecedents with the significant proportion of the population who insist on looking for someone to blame things get dangerous.

Yeah, an Infinity vaccine would be catnip for conspiracy theorists - since there is an actual conspiracy (in this fictional case).

But there still might be those on Homeline who would want to shave those few months off the process, which would save a lot of lives. Our world is very similar to Homeline, including a lot of the same people.

Infinity would likely want to keep this world secret, as I suspect it wants to for all close non-parachronic timelines, to prevent Homeline meddling, abductions, etc. But if it leaks, keeping this world secret could look like Infinity was deliberately letting people on this close world die, when Infinity had the cure.

Originally Posted by ronwit

What would Infinity do? Probably nothing. To us this is a Global Pandemic like nothing seen in living memory. To Infinity this is next Tuesday. Homeline is in contact with worldlines that are experiencing plagues and other disasters of Biblical proportions, many of which only Homeline could develop a cure.

On the other hand, if they were already here having a vested interest in our timeline they would have seen the virus from the beginning and might have the connections to slip us the vaccine.

Depending on how close a parallel we are they might already have the vaccine.

Yeah, our crisis is nothing compared to what Infinity encounters - but that's on the top I-Cops & ISWAT, not your run-of-the-mill Infinity agent.

And to Infinity/Homeline, our world isn't as alien as other worlds. Homeliners might not be too moved by the Black Plague on a medieval parallel, or the choking pollution of a Lenin world, but a pandemic hitting a close, modern parallel, with Homeline counterparts, is another matter.


Infinity would be quite interested in seeing how our world handles a viral outbreak, because it could provide valuable lessons for Homeline. Even with vaunted Infinity panimmunity, a pandemic could appear on Homeline (especially with all of those parallel world diseases), and both Infinity & Homeline governments would want to see what to do - and what not to do.

That 'field testing' opportunity might enable Infinity to win over Homeline governments that otherwise would want to help their counterparts in our worlds. Because even as close as we are to Homeline, we're not Homeline, and Homeline always puts Homeline first.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Yeah, an Infinity vaccine would be catnip for conspiracy theorists - since there is an actual conspiracy (in this fictional case).

But there still might be those on Homeline who would want to shave those few months off the process, which would save a lot of lives. Our world is very similar to Homeline, including a lot of the same people..

Saving lives while making money. I don't regard Infinity as quite as admirable as I've been accused of but they love an opportunity to do well by doing good. Of course there's another approach which is to go into business selling an outworld antiviral to treat the ill.

[Kale]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Saving lives while making money. I don't regard Infinity as quite as admirable as I've been accused of but they love an opportunity to do well by doing good. Of course there's another approach which is to go into business selling an outworld antiviral to treat the ill.

An effective antiviral would save many lives in the initial stages, but getting enough doses out would be problematic. Infinity could start shipping it in through various front companies but it would be difficult to avoid raising suspicion about the source of this wonder drug. If the death rate of a given plague was bad enough, Infinity might be tempted to risk it given the human cost.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

In normal comic books, the fantastic inventions of the heroes and villains have no effect on the world around them. Not so on this Q4 world. A Nazi supervillain developed a Vertigo gun that projected a field of sensory distortion several miles in front of it. This field effect rendered whole armies unable to stand or even defend themselves. Hitler's armies were in Moscow by August. But then countermeasures designed by Soviet, British, and American heroes (and a patriotic villain or two) made the gun more of a threat to users than targets.

Hitler, who never had the resources to pacify and control Russia, still is bleeding men and material in the East, but not as badly.

In America Carter Hall ( Hawkman) and Ted Knight ( Starman) pool their talents and inventions to create flying saucers. Meanwhile, Nazi scientists find means to reanimate the dead and use them as shock troops.

Homeline would like to quarrantine this whole parallel accept for one Nazi scientist who proclaimed their was a plurality of universes. And some of these universes were ahead of our world in time. He would find a world where Germany had already won and get aid from them. This went over like a lead balloon with Hitler. Still, Homeline can't risk the Nazis of any world learning the secret or Reich-5 getting new allies with this kind of power. The scientist and his associates must be taken to Coventry or killed.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Kale

An effective antiviral would save many lives in the initial stages, but getting enough doses out would be problematic. Infinity could start shipping it in through various front companies but it would be difficult to avoid raising suspicion about the source of this wonder drug. If the death rate of a given plague was bad enough, Infinity might be tempted to risk it given the human cost.

Well right now a certain government has contracted with a certain company to spend 50 billion on them providing protective gear, even though the company in question has no manufacturing facilities (it's a murky private military contractor)...which now that I think about is just the sort of thing that would happen if Infinity was real. And selling protective gear would be another profitable sideline for them and one that wouldn't have to jump through FDA hoops.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

When Royal censorship collapsed during the English Civil War in Homeline history, books on Magic including spells and theory were freely printed. The Puritans are associated with Witch hunts, and Matthew Hopkins is associated with them, but reactionary royalists where more likely to convict and kill "witches." The last witch hangings in Europe were held by reactionary communities with nothing like links to Puritanism. The last witch trial in America was that of Grace Sherwood of Virginia, the least Puritan part of British America.

But all of that on Witchcraft is simply to say that the Puritans weren't hostile to magic per se. And in one Q6 world the collapse of Royal Censorship cause a secret magic tradition (Path/Book) to become known to the public. After trying and testing improvements are made. No less a person than Cromwell benefited from healing spells and is alive and well in 1665. Thus the Commonwealth is also alive and well.

The healing spells seem to have healed more than Cromwell's physical complaints. This world's Cromwell has become much more flexible and pragmatic. Example: Cromwell's Irish policies start to try to be fair the Irish!

Homeline's historians are fascinated by a 17th century England embarking on universal education and expanding human rights. Meanwhile, Homeline, the Cabal, and Centrum, all want the data on Magic from this relatively unsophisticated magic using society. Less risk of being caught and exposed.

[Micah Davis]

Windrip
Named for the dictator in It Can’t Happen Here, the Windrip timelines represent the domestic collapse of the United States into a dictatorship.

Windrip-1 (1952, TL7, Q3) diverged with the survival of McKinley and the death of Theodore Roosevelt in 1901. The attenuated progressive movement failed to achieve many of its ends, including women’s suffrage, preventing an early entry into the Great War in 1912, the enactment of Prohibition, and the trust busting of the early 20th century. A patchwork of parties far right and far left rose and fell in vain attempts to press for a change. When the Depression rolled around, Huey Long united the Democrats, finance, and labor to crush both the Republicans and the Socialists. He packed the courts to break Lochner, turning them into a rubber-stamp for his executive actions, used the sedition act to imprison political opponents, and lined his own pockets and those of his loyalists. By Pearl Harbor, Long was President-for-Life and joined the Allies while focusing his attention in the East. Chairman Trotsky rules a territory that stretches to Berlin and stokes the fires of revolution abroad while the newly ascended President Hoover pulls the strings in Beijing and Tokyo (for now, anyway). Neither nation has developed the bomb. Britain and France are losing control of their colonies while squished between two belligerent powers, unsure of who to side with.

Homeline was prepared to write off the whole world as an irredeemable quagmire until Reich-5 began poking its nose into the planet. Reich-5 is scrambling to prop up a resistance to Trotsky in Germany, forcing Homeline (particularly the Russian and German Governments) to insert themselves by trying to prevent a Third World War, foil the domestic nuclear programs, and put an end to Reich-5’s meddling. There will be no winners in the global conflict which is brewing, but at least the Nazis can lose.

Windrip-2 (2013, TL8, Q7) diverged with George Wallace winning the popular vote in the 1972 Democratic Primary. An alliance of other candidates’ electors put Humphrey back up for the Presidency, where he lost to Nixon. Only complications from an assassin’s bullet stopped Wallace from running against Ford in ’76, but after recovering and converting to evangelicalism and the liberal side of the race question, he beat Ford during the recession in ’80. The largest Democratic majorities in history wrote Wallace a blank check. Paleo-conservatism, law and order politics, nativism, fervent competition for evangelicals, and healthcare became the pillars of the Sixth Party System. This inward facing system was unable or unwilling to put the last bullet into the failing Russian Soviet, which was able to restructure and inspire a new wave of angry young leftists with no home in America’s everlasting right-authoritarian competition. President Abraham Tower (no analogue) seized dictatorial power after domestic terror cells launched a string of attacks in ’02 and lead the “National Union Party” in the “Second Civil War.”

Until recently, Infinity had abandoned Windrip-2’s America to Centrum’s infiltration, reasoning that Centrum would be a substantive improvement over the existing regime. However, a mass protest movement has sprung up and endured for nearly nine months now - Pressure is growing from Homeline governments to support the “Long Riot” while Centrum ramps up its attempts to seize control of the government. Both Centrum and Infinity are racing to avert a nuclear war as upper echelons National Unionites increasingly lay the blame on the Russian Soviet.

On Windrip-3 (1937, TL6, Q5), a Second Mexican American War prevented an exhausted America from joining in the Great War, which ended in a mutual collapse into exhaustion in 1920. By 1932, a decade long depression was coming to an end but a radicalized American left was rising to power. General MacArthur executed a coup after the election of socialist candidate Henry Wallace. At first acquiescent, the broader American left rose up when it became clear MacArthur had no intention of relinquishing power even after four years. After the burning of Washington, The Popular Front flies the Three Arrows but it struggles to hold together an ideologically diverse coalition of dissident state governments while MacArthur leads the “Republican” government. Battle lines crisscross America as the Second American Civil War heats up.

Infinity has been surprised and excited by the rise of the Popular Front but is acutely worried that the Front might fall apart from the division among its Progressives, Constitutionalists, Socialists, and Communists in a grievous rerun of the Spanish Civil War. It is urgently trying to stabilize the coalition and help them to expand their production and training for the new warfare tactics of the late ‘30s. Things in Europe are even crazier.

Windrip-4 (1861, TL5, Q6) diverged when Aaron Burr became the second President of the United States. A different series of American Presidents (and a more successful Bonaparte) created an ever more monarchial presidency which led to Andrew Jackson’s ascension to Emperor Andrew Jackson the First. His foster son, Daniel Smith Donalson, now rules as Emperor Daniel Jackson the First over a vastly expanded United States at the behest of the Jacksonian slave aristocracy. Radical abolitionists, socialists, and revanchist Republicans are rising in popular prominence as the coalition that elevated Jackson is decaying. The possibility of an American Civil War loom under Daniel’s less competent rule and Infinity knows that his clock is ticking. What emerges and who fights on which side and for what cause remains to be seen.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Saving lives while making money. I don't regard Infinity as quite as admirable as I've been accused of but they love an opportunity to do well by doing good. Of course there's another approach which is to go into business selling an outworld antiviral to treat the ill.

I think it would be too difficult to sell the vaccine. How could one demand even a fraction of its value without the kind of proof Infinity couldn't give without leaking The Secret? Oh, and the seller wants to be paid in gold - won't accept electronic money or even cash...

It would be much less of a risk to The Secret to leak it for free. Basically anonymously send the formula for the vaccine to various scientists working on it - someone will eventually try it.

Originally Posted by Kale

An effective antiviral would save many lives in the initial stages, but getting enough doses out would be problematic. Infinity could start shipping it in through various front companies but it would be difficult to avoid raising suspicion about the source of this wonder drug. If the death rate of a given plague was bad enough, Infinity might be tempted to risk it given the human cost.

I don't think Infinity could make the vaccine itself & send to our world. Even as Homeline is more advanced than our world, it doesn't have that kind of spare capacity. And sending it en mass really risks The Secret.



I think the only way Infinity could help our world, if they found it as it is right now, would be to leak the formula for the cure, and hope that it speeds up the research & implementation. How much help that would be is in doubt.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by fchase8

I think it would be too difficult to sell the vaccine. How could one demand even a fraction of its value without the kind of proof Infinity couldn't give without leaking The Secret? Oh, and the seller wants to be paid in gold - won't accept electronic money or even cash...

Homeline traders routinely accept local currency. They just spend it all again buying export goods. As for how to cover the vaccines or antivirals, the answer is simple. Buy a local lab to use as a front and give your employees NDAs.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Homeline traders routinely accept local currency. They just spend it all again buying export goods. As for how to cover the vaccines or antivirals, the answer is simple. Buy a local lab to use as a front and give your employees NDAs.

The problem is that government regulators won't respect your NDA. If you don't provide them with quite a lot of information and let them inspect your manufacturing facilities regularly, you can't sell a medical product.

Note that there are lots and lots of timelines with no significant medical regulation and lots of diseases for which Homeline has had effective treatments for a couple centuries. Which Infinity is not making any particular effort to ship in huge lots. There may be some charity efforts, but worlds like ours are *way* down on the list for money - they can worry about hard to treat viruses on lines with decent healthcare after they've bought enough tetracycline to treat the billions of people dying of bubonic plague.