New Reality Seeds

[Micah Davis]

Icarus (Q7, 2026, TL9) diverged in 1969, with the death of the Apollo astronauts on the first manned mission to the moon. And then, as the Patrolmen who discovered it described it, "America rolled snake eyes for the next fifty years." The political violence of 1970s was even worse, there was no recovery in the eighties, the two party system hemorrhaged domestically while the Soviet Union fell to pieces abroad but the crime wave of the '90s actually managed to get worse. The election of 2000 went to the house thanks to a Mexican stand off among four different parties. The crises of the early aughts led to more radical parties, but this didn't solve any of the actual problems while making parties even more intractable, leading to a series of hanging elections delivering unstable, unpopular coalition governments that inevitably got dragged out of office in disgrace at the midterms. The Decade of Seven Presidents ended with a failed coup and then the start of the Nullification Crises of the early twenties.

Now, the United States is a shattered wreck, united mostly in theory, states certainly in practice. Radical parties supervise vast patronage networks and extreme social experiments, while loose confederations try to scheme for control of the decaying federal government. Criminal elements form de-facto second governments in many states, while both companies and the military are largely reduced to appendages of either legal or illegal structures. International intervention has produced only an ever more confused domestic landscape. For their part, the residents of Icarus' United States who couldn't escape work off their anxiety through high-end drugs, conspiracy theories, and religious revivals. Unsurprisingly, the local environment is falling to pieces as well as the local United States has not spent much effort preserving it.

Icarus is a cyberpunk timeline where Homeline and Centrum tend to end up on the same side of most disputes. Centrum is incredibly worried about the dangerous situation on Icarus, a nearby timeline with tech advanced enough to produce parachronics. It wants to keep the Secret, avoid a Last War or environmental collapse, and find a way to stitch the United States back together (more or less in that order) - An alignment that it shares with Homeline's U.S. and the Infinity Patrol. Homeline defectors to the various political experiments in Icarus' U.S. are, unfortunately, quite common - If there is some ideology that is the pet project of some Homeline extremist, there is almost certainly some state that has embraced it - From Leninism to Theocracy and everything in between could be tried somewhere in the broad range of Icarus' petri dishes of democracy.

[David Johnston2]

What happened to the rest of the world?

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Several times in Earth's history caldera eruptions have massively disrupted Earth's climate. The eruption of mount Tambora being a well known example. Predictions and scare stories about the Yellowstone Caldera are genre unto themselves. .....

This sits right across the time period during which European explorers were working out that there was a big land mass south of the Indonesian archipelago. However, historically a couple of years after the First Fleet first arrived in Port Jackson (aka Sydney), British and American seal hunters were already fighting over access to the seal colonies of SE Australia.

It's possible that American mercantile interests could set up in the Antipodes. Mind you, the Maori might be a bit of a handful for the new republic...

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip

This sits right across the time period during which European explorers were working out that there was a big land mass south of the Indonesian archipelago. However, historically a couple of years after the First Fleet first arrived in Port Jackson (aka Sydney), British and American seal hunters were already fighting over access to the seal colonies of SE Australia.

It's possible that American mercantile interests could set up in the Antipodes. Mind you, the Maori might be a bit of a handful for the new republic...

Did you ever read the Maura series by Poul Anderson? American whalers might contact the Maurai and start those folks on a new path of technological development. If nothing else, introducing a group of Euro-America corps and domesticated animals to the Maurai could radically transform their society. Try the idea of the Maurai achieving on this parallel what Japan did on Homeline.

[Micah Davis]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

What happened to the rest of the world?

Alright, I'll try this broader bit. Let's say my aim is to make the rest of the world also a mess. China and the U.S. never thawed out, Nixon could not go to China and this is a major contributing factor in the U.S. longterm downturn - But China also doesn't do great. There's enough of a reconciliation between the Sino-Soviets, but ultimately it still fractures. The Soviet Union crumbles more or less on time, plunging Russia into the same terrible post-soviet depression. It's Icarus present is a kleptocratic oligarchy. China's catch-up phase lags and then falters under the burden of the one-child policy and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and now China is facing environmental devastation and an aging population while being governed by an increasingly desperate and authoritarian Communist Party.

The European Union is knit very closely together as a shield against the dark fates of much of the rest of the world, including militarily, but the central countries continue to impose austerity onto its periphery, causing frustrating. On the other hand, it still functions. Latin America was not a beneficiary of erratic American foreign policy after the sixties and is a patchwork of authoritarian and democratic states. Africa remains underdeveloped. Southeast Asia, particularly India, was a beneficiary of the more chilly relationship between the U.S. and China, but it achieved lift substantially later than Homeline's China did.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Did you ever read the Maura series by Poul Anderson?

Not as yet. Will be added ASAP to The Pile of Shame. Ta muchly for the recommendation.

Originally Posted by Astromancer

American whalers might contact the Maurai and start those folks on a new path of technological development. If nothing else, introducing a group of Euro-America corps and domesticated animals to the Maurai could radically transform their society. Try the idea of the Maurai achieving on this parallel what Japan did on Homeline.

Woah. Add shades of Late Roman Gothic Foederati, and I can see the nascent US Navy's Marine Corp being, shall we say, an institution of greater force and reputation that in Homeline.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Meanwhile, Britain is a repressive dictatorship under the rule of King Ernest Augustus.

I've often thought of a sort of 'reverse Britannica-6' where, instead of Princess Charlotte surviving childbirth as the divergence, it's Queen Victoria dying during her first childbirth in 1840 - leading to Ernest Augustus as king.

Instead of the hopeful and wild Great Britain or Britannica-6, or the at least robust and industrious Victorian Great Britain, Britain is reeling from the deaths of two beloved female monarchs in childbirth, and under the reactionary conservative rule of King August.

It's 1848, just eight years since the divergence, and the 'Springtime of Nations' has hit August's England. Things could go two ways: a crackdown that leads to a more conservative and aristocratic authoritarian Britain & Europe (think Kaiser's Germany), or a relaxation (even abdication by August and the crown taken up by his blind son George) perhaps becoming a model on the Continent.

Q6, and obviously Infinity is working for the latter, Centrum for the former.


What's more, there are signals in Interworld and even The Pile that this world is unstable, could still be an echo wobbling post-change - and could still move quantum!

This then begs the question of how it shifted in the first place. Was it natural, like parallels, or induced, like altered echoes? Both Infinity and Centrum only recently found this world, but the change is recent enough that it could have been a renegade from either, swagman who hated Victoria, etc.


The world is named August-1. August-2 is a close world in 1968 where the only difference is that February never lost its two days to July & August, so the calendar is different, but everything else is the same (except some dates - America celebrates its independence on The Second of July, while Texas Independence Day is February 30th...).

[David Johnston2]

Cleopatra-1 is a world where Cleopatra won her Roman civil war. As a result there was an early eastward shift of the Roman government to Alexandria. Christianity still happened and and still became the state religion, but became rather influenced by Egyptian paganism and adopted the ankh as its symbol. The current year is 1438 (1434 in local reckoning) and the Eastern Roman Empire, which is Egyptian in all but name is struggling as it fights a war on two fronts as the Jewish Khazars attack from the north east seeking to capture Jerusalem while in the northwest the Keltoi (independent since the 60s), having defeated the German tribes who were allowed to take over Gaul/Francia are moving on to Spain and Italy.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Cleopatra-1 is a world where Cleopatra won her Roman civil war. As a result there was an early eastward shift of the Roman government to Alexandria. Christianity still happened and and still became the state religion, but became rather influenced by Egyptian paganism and adopted the ankh as its symbol. The current year is 1438 (1434 in local reckoning) and the Eastern Roman Empire, which is Egyptian in all but name is struggling as it fights a war on two fronts as the Jewish Khazars attack from the north east seeking to capture Jerusalem while in the northwest the Keltoi (independent since the 60s), having defeated the German tribes who were allowed to take over Gaul/Francia are moving on to Spain and Italy.

Did Islam develop?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Did Islam develop?

The Cleopatran Romans earlier shift eastward means they ended up extending their empire further eastward, and nipped Islam in the bud. However the Khazar flavour of Judaism which has drifted a fair bit from historical Judaism is is occupying the same niche.