Alt.History 101 (Alt.Chronicles) Read online

  Alt.History

  101

  WINDRIFT BOOKS

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  ALT.HISTORY 101

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of the appropriate copyright holder listed below, unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal and international copyright law. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein.

  The stories in this book are fiction. Any resemblance to any place, event, or person – current, historical, or in the future – is entirely coincidental.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Alt.History 101 copyright © 2015 by Samuel Peralta and Windrift Books.

  Foreword copyright © 2015 by Samuel Peralta. Used by permission of the author.

  “Butterfly Effect” copyright © 2012 by Samuel Peralta. First published in How More Beautiful You Are by Samuel Peralta. Used by permission of the author.

  “Les Meduses” by Stacy Ericson, copyright © 2015 by Stacy Ericson. Used by permission of the author.

  “Unnatural” by Ann Christy, copyright © 2015 by Ann Christy. Used by permission of the author.

  “Old Ventures, New Partners” by Nicolas Wilson, copyright © 2015 by Nicolas Wilson. Used by permission of the author.

  “Concerns of the Second Sex” by Pavarti K. Tyler copyright © 2015 by Pavarti K. Tyler. Used by permission of the author.

  “Renegat” by Logan Thomas Snyder, copyright © 2015 by Logan Thomas Snyder. Used by permission of the author.

  “108 Stitches” by Tony Bertauski, copyright © 2015 by Tony Bertauski. Used by permission of the author.

  “Rengoku” by Sam Best, copyright © 2015 by Sam Best. Used by permission of the author.

  “The Sun Never Sets” by Anthea Sharp, copyright © 2015 by Anthea Sharp. Used by permission of the author.

  “The Factory” by Michelle Browne, copyright © 2015 by Michelle Browne. Used by permission of the author.

  “Natural” by Peter Cawdron, copyright © 2015 by Peter Cawdron. Used by permission of the author.

  “Eighth Amendment” by Thomas Robins, copyright © 2015 by Thomas Robins. Used by permission of the author.

  “A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel” by Ken Liu, copyright © 2013 by Ken Liu. First published in Fantasy & Science Fiction. Used by permission of the author.

  “Agents of Change” by Zig Zag Claybourne, copyright © 2015 by Zig Zag Claybourne. Used by permission of the author.

  All other text copyright © 2015 by Samuel Peralta.

  Edited by Nolie Wilson and Samuel Peralta

  Cover art and design by Adam Hall (www.atomcreative.com)

  Alt.History 101 is part of the Alt.Chronicles series and The Future Chronicles, produced by Samuel Peralta (www.samuelperalta.com)

  978-0-9939832-3-8

  ALT.HISTORY

  101

  STORY SYNOPSES

  Les Meduses (Stacy Ericson)

  What if the Ming Dynasty's armada turned their sights on invasion, instead of disbanding? Well cared for, but socially outcast, an executioner's daughter dreams of a quiet life, planning to run away on the eve of her father's triumph, Anne Boleyn's execution. Can we escape our fate? Or does it follow us even when the world shifts in it course?

  Unnatural (Ann Christy)

  What if Pope John Paul the First hadn't died after just a month as Pope? While the world waited for Papal opinion on the birth of the world's first test tube baby, this Pope stepped into office and then mysteriously died shortly afterward. What might his judgement have been and how might it have changed all that came afterward?

  Old Ventures, New Partners (Nicolas Wilson)

  What if the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a smokescreen for a Russian grab for technology? Hugh Howard's design for a man-portable spaceship could shape not only the space race, but the nature of the cold war as well. With the fate of his country and the world in the balance, what can one man with a steel suit do?

  Concerns of the Second Sex (Pavarti K. Tyler)

  What if the women's suffragist movement lost their battle for the right to vote? Women never entered the workforce during the World Wars, creating a class of immigrant workers lacking the rights insisted on by the unionizing and anti-child labor movements. Years later, civil rights are a luxury afforded only to the elite free white male ruling class.

  Renegat (Logan Thomas Snyder)

  A nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States at the height of the Cold War annihilates one superpower and leaves another struggling to piece itself back together. One year later, a Russo-American internment camp inmate and an American solider discover the best and worst of humanity in the world’s ashes—as well as each other.

  108 Stitches (Tony Bertauski)

  In the late 70s, an untimely accident turns Steve Wozniak’s focus on medical technology instead of personal computers. With the help of Drs. James Till and Ernset McCulloch, a synthetic stem cell becomes the perfect biological solution to genetic deficiencies and bodily harm. New arms and legs can be printed; brainsculpting can correct behavioral problems. With the power to control our bodies and minds, has utopia arrived?

  Rengoku (Sam Best)

  After winning the Battle of Midway in the second great world war, the Imperial Japanese Army pursue victory by beginning construction of an atom bomb. A sniper team, remnant of an American troop sent to prevent that from occurring, are cut off from their command for two years, but continues its mission. One day, they are finally able to repair their radio gear, and the signal they receive will send them through rengoku, the purgatory of the past two years of bloody war, and into a world changed forever.

  The Sun Never Sets (Anthea Sharp)

  What if a Victorian amateur astronomer discovers a new comet…that isn’t a comet at all? The course of the British Empire is changed forever one summer afternoon in 1850, when an alien craft lands on the lawns of Buckingham Palace.

  The Factory (Michelle Browne)

  What if slavery never died out? Martha and Juniper slave away as cogs in a cruel engine. But Juniper has a secret that could break the machine--for good.

  Natural (Peter Cawdron)

  What would the world look like if Edward Jenner died prematurely before developing a vaccine for smallpox? What if having a sniffle could signal the onset of a cold or crippling polio? What if the tables were turned and instead of anti-vaccine campaigners there were anti-naturalists—people advocating for medicine to extend the natural bounds of life beyond the age of forty? What if our world today seemed like a dream, a life too good to be true?

  Eighth Amendment (Thomas Robins)

  What if the death penalty was legal, but all methods of execution had been ruled inhumane? Lance Johnson knows, he’s been released from prison without any rights as a human being. There are those who can help, but Lance finds out the help comes with strings attached--strings he cannot cut loose.

  A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel (Ken Liu)

  At the height of the Great Depression, Emperor Hirohito of Japan proposed a breath-taking engineering project to be undertaken jointly by
Japan and the United States: an undersea tunnel to connect Asia with North America. Years later, as the last of the Formosan tunnel-diggers, Charlie, courts an American woman, Betty, certain long-buried memories of that grand project threaten to resurface.

  Agents of Change (Zig Zag Claybourne)

  When the clock itself is god, who keeps it running? Where alternate histories come from often depends on where one agent is going.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword (Samuel Peralta)

  Les Meduses (Stacy Ericson)

  Unnatural (Ann Christy)

  Old Ventures, New Partners (Nicolas Wilson)

  Concerns of the Second Sex (Pavarti K. Tyler)

  Renegat (Logan Thomas Snyder)

  108 Stitches (Tony Bertauski)

  Rengoku (Sam Best)

  The Sun Never Sets (Anthea Sharp)

  The Factory (Michelle Browne)

  Natural (Peter Cawdron)

  Eighth Amendment (Thomas Robins)

  A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel (Ken Liu)

  Agents of Change (Zig Zag Claybourne)

  A Note to Readers

  Foreword

  by Samuel Peralta

  “Can anyone alter fate? All of us combined... or one great figure... or someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident. And our lives, our world, hanging on it.”

  – Philip K. Dick

  Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?

  Butterfly Effect

  Because your father stopped in Strandja park

  to point out that whirligig of wings – blue

  argus, he said, Ultraaricia

  Anteros – you were dazzled forever.

  Those wings wafted you here, ten thousand six

  hundred kilometres away, to the

  University of California,

  Davis. Encyclopedia of Insects

  in arm, you haul yourself up the stairwell

  of Briggs Hall. Your frail sandal spindles on

  the threshold – and you trip, a beautiful,

  crippled Lycaenidaen specimen,

  into the butterfly net of my arms.

  Somewhere in Texas, a hurricane stirs.

  Besides the chaos theory reference, my free verse sonnet Butterfly Effect arose from many memories. Of my father writing a scientific monograph on moths and butterflies, and handing me a paper pamphlet of it, when I was young. Of my fondness for the blue argus butterfly, from the family Lycaenidae, a specimen restricted to the Balkans in Europe. Of seeing the Encyclopedia of Insects in a library, a bloody huge book. And memories of the three years, I lived in Davis, California, where I won my first-ever literary prize, and where I first thought I was in love.

  Ray Bradbury’s classic short story A Sound of Thunder is the most reprinted science fiction story of all time. Set in the year 2055, a company offers time travelling safaris to the past, to the Cretaceous Era, to hunt a Tyrannosaurus rex. The company takes great pains to choose targets that are about to die anyway, since the belief is that changes in the distant past could become an avalanche that changes everything. But despite all precautions, something goes utterly wrong –

  So here we are. Where we are now, what language we’re speaking, what foods we eat, what we believe in—all of these are based on a myriad of events happening in the past, just so. Accidents. Coincidences. Chance.

  We don’t live in the world of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle because the Allied forces were victorious over the Axis powers in the Second World War.

  We don’t live in a world where Franklin D. Roosevelt was defeated in his third run for President of the United States, to be replaced by Charles Lindbergh, as in Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America.

  But what if? Speculative fiction itself is based on asking that question.

  What if Pope John Paul the First hadn't died after just a month in his office? What if the women's suffragist movement lost their battle for the right to vote? What if Steve Wozniak’s focus had turned to medical technology instead of personal computers? What if the Japanese and United States of America had allied to combat an expected Great Depression? What if Edward Jenner had died prematurely before developing a vaccine for smallpox?

  The flap of such butterfly wings would surely have changed everything—lives, loves, the world as we know it.

  __________

  Samuel Peralta is a physicist and storyteller. As well as his own work, he is the creator and driving force behind the Chronicles short story anthologies, including the speculative fiction series The Future Chronicles.

  www.amazon.com/author/samuelperalta

  Les Meduses

  by Stacy Ericson

  THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND is waiting to die. If the horse had not thrown a shoe, we would be in London by now and I think the lady would be dead already. As it is, Papa and I had to walk all the way back to Wrotham Heath to find a smithy and everyone we met stared at Papa and at the sheathed great sword slung across his back. Rather than pass near to us, many crossed over to the other side of the road.

  I fear that the Queen must Suffer the more to be waiting for the Dreadful moment now we are twice delayed. For twice she must have prepared herself only to be told the time is not yet come. Papa says it profits nothing to imagine the thoughts of others, but then of course he would say this.

  All along the road from the coast, riding pillion behind him with my cheek pressed to the rough wool of his cloak, I could think of little else, though my own plans are surely more pressing than the fate of a lady so high who hath fallen now so low. Still, I cannot stop thinking of her pain. I saw her once on the street in Calais. She smiled at me and had such a pretty mouth. She was laughing then, holding the arm of her red-haired Lord at their feasting with the King of France. I saw the way he looked at her, watching as if she were the prettiest apple on the tree and the whole orchard his own for the taking.

  Though it is May, this is England and the fog rolls in along the road this morning, settling in seeping drops upon my sleeve as we ride between the hedgerows. If I close my eyes I see her there in the tower, weeping in a cold stone room, her pretty skirts fanned about her and that raven hair unloosed and her black eyes filled with pain. All she had is gone and she had everything. I write this with a broken pen sitting in the open yard at the smithy while the sun tries to find an edge to the cloud. I have a plan in my head and a woolen cloak and a pretty hat that looks like a black custard turned upside down. I have seven silver coins and some linens in a bundle and that is all, but I have more than she. Now all she had is taken and all she was has come to some small discarded bones and a pool of blood in a muddy yard. She is a woman and the man who looked at her once has looked away. He will plunder another orchard now that this one has been cut down.

  These words, written in regrettable penmanship and marred with blots—these are the last words I ever wrote in the little leather-bound book that was once my girlhood companion. They are relics of a lost world. My whole life I have longed to change my fate and on that day I had a plan to do it. With any luck, I thought that morning, I would reach London; I would escape the old life and nothing would ever be the same. That much at least was true enough.

  I write to you now, little one, that you might know what once was and is no longer, how I came to be here and how you came to this world. Sleeping here next to me, you do not look mine at all. I see no trace of my father or the Rimbaud lineage in your shining eyes and sweet-spun black hair as soft as butterfly wings. You lie there like a little jade figurine. I am rocking your cradle with my foot, a strange cradle of some red wood from forests where tigers walk, carved with strange beasts and blessings. The characters are still foreign to me after these many years, though I read and write both English and French as well as may be.

  I want to tell you this, while there is still time. Do not struggle little one. Be like the jellyfish that ride the currents and do not pull against a tide, but use it as if i
t were part of themselves. I was mistaken to struggle against my fate. I fought long and hard, thrashed like a fish in the net seeking the wide sea. If I now believed at all in guiding the Hand of God, I would say I struggled hard enough to exhaust even the patience of the Great Fisher of Souls. Though the world ends and begins again and though I slipped the net once, I am confounded, for here I am and my fate remains the same as it ever was.

  What kind of world is it, where to make an account of herself, a woman must first describe a man? I would it were not so, but to know me you must know my father, the Great Sword, Rimbaud, the Headsman of Calais.

  An executioner, be you a Chinaman or French or English, is a man paid to do the thing that must be done and which no one else will do. The Headsman in a city like St. Omer, where I was born, may take what he likes. It is the Havauge, a tax or a tithe that must be paid by every man, woman, or child who sells their wares within the city walls. Two eggs from every hundred, a bunch of onions from every cartload, a wedge of cheese from every ten great wheels stacked on a market table, a green pear or a bunch of violets from the apron of a street vendor. We walked together in the market or by the cathedral and even in the fine shops a merchant will offer a coin or a cake, or a scrap of lace as a “gift” to insure we do not touch and so defile his goods. They toss it to us if they can or hand the thing over with special care that our hands should not touch theirs nor even briefly graze their goods.