Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by malloyd

This one is pretty interesting, but I think the chronology may need a little tweaking. People coming from 1970 to 2020 echoes 50 years ago would be from local dates 1920 to 1970. The early end of that is probably too early for theme parks, and all of it is too early for TL *8* stuff at the park to have fit in. Of course you could tell everybody it was stuff from the future and still pretend to be time travelers, but the victims aren't going to be well equipped to use or maintain it.

Your reading of that section is different from mine: It seems likely to me that PTTG meant that 50 yeas ago, it was between 1970 and 2020 in those timelines, not that it's 1970 to 2020 in those timelines 'now.'

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by malloyd

This one is pretty interesting, but I think the chronology may need a little tweaking. People coming from 1970 to 2020 echoes 50 years ago would be from local dates 1920 to 1970.

Prince Charon summed it up -- it was 1970 to 2020 when the inhabitants left home. By now it must be 2020 to 2070 in their homeworlds.

As for the theme park, the time travel stuff was supposedly all smoke and mirrors. The dinosaurs were clones, and the landscape a carefully-manufactured zoo under a dome. It probably wouldn't have held up under close scrutiny, true, but the event was only weeks since the park opened -- right when the mystery of "how do they do all these special effects?" was at its peak.

Yes, the smartphones from the 2020 and 2011 worldlines bewildered those from earlier eras, but that was a small curiosity next to the actual living dinos. The power of suggestion and the gauze of movie magic really helped in the short term.

The real question I have is, what are the odds that a paleontologist lived in the L.A region from 1970 to 2020 and, at any point in that timeline, would definitely have gone to a dinosaur themed park in the opening weeks? Because there might be 12 copies of him or her from ages 10 to 60.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Prince Charon summed it up -- it was 1970 to 2020 when the inhabitants left home. By now it must be 2020 to 2070 in their homeworlds.

That's a bad option. Most of those worlds are now in advance of the 2027 date for Infinity. And don't think they are inaccessible, because at only 50 years on there are identifiable artifacts (and in fact *living people*) from them, and Infinity has at least world jumpers who can follow things back to their home timelines, if not technologies that can find origin coordinates.

As for the theme park, the time travel stuff was supposedly all smoke and mirrors. The dinosaurs were clones, and the landscape a carefully-manufactured zoo under a dome. It probably wouldn't have held up under close scrutiny, true, but the event was only weeks since the park opened -- right when the mystery of "how do they do all these special effects?" was at its peak.

To kill the possibly interesting implications you want to make the whole thing vastly less believable? For example, multiple versions of American regulators *let* you open a park like that without enough scrutiny the whole thing collapsed before the first visitors were allowed through the gate? Why?

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by malloyd

That's a bad option. Most of those worlds are now in advance of the 2027 date for Infinity. And don't think they are inaccessible, because at only 50 years on there are identifiable artifacts (and in fact *living people*) from them, and Infinity has at least world jumpers who can follow things back to their home timelines, if not technologies that can find origin coordinates.

That's easy enough to handwave: this is a weird parallel, and there are known weird parallels where time passes at different rates than it does on Homeline. Just because it's been five decades on this parallel doesn't mean it's been five decades - or five minutes - on any other parallel.

Originally Posted by malloyd

To kill the possibly interesting implications you want to make the whole thing vastly less believable? For example, multiple versions of American regulators *let* you open a park like that without enough scrutiny the whole thing collapsed before the first visitors were allowed through the gate? Why?

That one's more difficult to handwave, but I'll mention that safety regulations have changed over the years (usually becoming more stringent the closer you get to modern day).

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by malloyd

That's a bad option. Most of those worlds are now in advance of the 2027 date for Infinity. And don't think they are inaccessible, because at only 50 years on there are identifiable artifacts (and in fact *living people*) from them, and Infinity has at least world jumpers who can follow things back to their home timelines, if not technologies that can find origin coordinates.



To kill the possibly interesting implications you want to make the whole thing vastly less believable? For example, multiple versions of American regulators *let* you open a park like that without enough scrutiny the whole thing collapsed before the first visitors were allowed through the gate? Why?

Eh, generally I didn't want to create new crosstime powers. The motivation for the "park's" creators was apparently to create a stable human civilization before the extinction of the dinosaurs (and possibly persisting through the extinction of the dinosaurs), for whatever practical or theoretical ends appeal to someone with that sort of power.

Actually granting time-jumping or world-jumping tech to human civilizations (intentionally or not) that might interfere with the experiment violates the basic idea. I personally think that the funders or originators of the whole plan hired locals from 1998 or something and told them to figure out a method to get the people in place. Finding those people, the real middle-men, might be a good first step into figuring out the situation.

Also, my bad on the source dates. I thought Homeline was at 2077. All the people could easily come from 1965-1976 worldlines; I for one prefer the wider origin dates because they do add an entertaining level of weirdness for the inhabitants to figure out.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by malloyd

That's a bad option. Most of those worlds are now in advance of the 2027 date for Infinity. And don't think they are inaccessible, because at only 50 years on there are identifiable artifacts (and in fact *living people*) from them, and Infinity has at least world jumpers who can follow things back to their home timelines, if not technologies that can find origin coordinates.
...

That could add to the mystery. Nothing foreign to this world can be used as a beacon to its place of origin.
The mysterious park creators wiped the signatures of everything and everyone... somehow. It suggests they anticipated jumpers or technological use.

[PTTG]

I was going to put this in the reality seeds one, but then I realized there's no way it wasn't a weird one:

Italian victory in WWII.

Although the alien space bats should be as small as possible, I'd further posit that this Italian victory should result in an Italy-dominated world.

A Possibility: The USA is more proactive in the world stage before the war, and makes a secret deal with Italian military officers to support a coup. When Hitler declares war, Italy gets full access to the intel they are permitted as an Axis member, and participate in early actions, with the internal cadre preparing to put fascists into unsupported positions in the field and to surround Mussolini with their own loyalists.

When the time is right (and Germany has already occupied a great deal of land), the coup strikes, beheads the government, and attains control. The leadership is marginally better, but moreover has the support of the USA and the Allies. Italian and American troops drive into the soft underbelly of the Reich.

Around this time, Imperial Japan sees America as distracted in Europe and not in a position for naval war in the pacific. Only some aircraft carriers are in Pearl Harbor during the attack, and all are destroyed.

The US now must split its forces severely. As the war wears on, the USA grinds away in the pacific and eventually gets muddled in an incredibly chaotic four-way war on mainland China, with the USSR, both Chinas, Japan, And the USA holding territory in an ever-shifting mishmash of brief ceasfires and alliances.

In Europe, the USA is able to provide resources and some men, but it leaves administration to the French, British, and Italian governments. However, half of France is in ruins and Britain is at a remove from the continent, leaving Italy to take up the governing as the Axis crumbles.

By the end of the war, Italy has taken, been granted, or administers 70% of Central and Eastern Europe, including some of its most productive industry and cities, particularly almost all of Germany. People are speaking of a new Holy Roman Empire, and that doesn't even count Italy's inherited colonial empire.

The Soviet Union is collapsing in total chaos from the ceaseless meat grinder in China, and the USA is much better, but tumbling into an economic depression from the vast expenses of life and livelihood it took to win the war. Nukes not being invented, the Pacific war included an invasion of Japan, but that was an afterthought next to the military adventures into mainland China. Britain wasn't blitzed, and so is actually curiously outdated, though still exhausted by the effort which Italy mainly reaped the benefits of.

After the war, Italy has the raw materials, the political capital, and the centers of western civilization pretty much on lockdown, while every other country of import is bloodless and beaten. Plus, she's not outright fascist (but probably something close), so there's a path forward to something stable.

Holier than St. Peter's Swiss Cheese, I'm sure, but it gets us where we're going. Any better ideas?

[dcarson]

I read somewhere that part of Italy's problem in WW II was they actually were ahead of the other countries. They realized that the improved technology made the WW I weapons obsolete and rearmed. WW II did not break out as soon as they thought and everyone else rearmed later and they ended up a step behind on weapon tech instead of a step ahead. So either a later rearmament for Italy or a earlier start to the war and they are ahead equipment-wise.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by PTTG

When the time is right (and Germany has already occupied a great deal of land), the coup strikes, beheads the government, and attains control. The leadership is marginally better, but moreover has the support of the USA and the Allies. Italian and American troops drive into the soft underbelly of the Reich.

The biggest problem with this is the U-boats. It was necessary to win control of the North Atlantic before the US could project large amounts of power across it, and that didn't happen until the US, UK and Canada had been working together on it for nearly two years (spring 1943).

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I was going to put this in the reality seeds one, but then I realized there's no way it wasn't a weird one:

Italian victory in WWII.

Another possible approach is to have the UK (and the US) stay out of the European war entirely, or at least wait a while. If Italy picks up southern France and the French north Africa colonies, and Germany and Russia grind each other up to the point neither of them are up for ending the war as superpowers, Italy might end up the strongest power in Europe. The fundamental problem with altering World War II is that the world economy from the late 19th to the mid 20th century essentially consists of three more or less equal divisions, the British Empire, the United States and everybody else put together. If you want somebody other than the Empire or the US to win a war during that period you need to keep both of those out of the fight, or at least not heavily involved in your particular theater of it.