Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III
- Thread starter Peabody-Martini
- Start date
The direct descendants of Aki are probably going to known to other Akitia owners as The Emperor's Line and be highly valued by other dog owners.
I can see Manfred von Richthofen moving out of the main house in to one of the cottages on the estate and his housekeeper is someone who has been vetted by Kat and reports directly to Helene.
I can see Manfred von Richthofen moving out of the main house in to one of the cottages on the estate and his housekeeper is someone who has been vetted by Kat and reports directly to Helene.
I would also suspect that Opa Manfred would be teaching the children the finer points of card games, with an incentive to compete and excel by playing for a pile of pfennigs. Teaching them counting, patience, strategy and how to read people - all valuable life skills.
Once it goes quiet...find what your children are doing and stop them
Unfortunately, by the time you realize it’s gone quiet it’s already too late. Don’t ask me how I know. Suffice to say it involves two small children, a gallon tin of bright green high gloss enamel and a now decidedly green golden retriever.
Part 109, Chapter 1776
Chapter One Thousand Seven Hundred Seventy-Six
6th January 1967
Moscow, Russia
The television series that had aired over the previous weeks hit a nerve, that much was clear.
Set in the years following the end of the Soviet War, it followed the lives of a half-dozen boys left orphaned by the conflict and the murderous rampage that the dying State had engaged in during the last months of Stalin’s reign. The show’s protagonist, Vitaly, was the oldest and the leader of the group. At thirteen was being forced to make choices that no one should have to make and his wandering through the countryside is in search of a family that he is certain he still has. Aside from a brief happy interlude where they can pretend that everything is normal while living for a few weeks during the summertime in an abandoned village on the Belorussian frontier, the rest of the series was pretty bleak. It showed the dangers of starvation, disease, and even other groups of orphans as the bounds of civilization had broken down even as the hazards that existed in the Russian countryside were still very present. When Vitaly finds one of the members of his family, an older sister, he gets rejected because he is no longer a part of the society that he had come from. The group dwindled one by one until it was just him walking further down a road for lack of a better idea. Eventually finding the burnt-out ruins of his former home, the show depicted Vitaly trying to sift through the ashes to find some evidence of his existence.
The story concluded there, sort of fading out. Gia understood that it wasn’t really an ending. The symbolism was obvious, the boy had become a ghost though he was still very much alive. It was the story of what had been dubbed the Lost Generation and one didn’t get much more lost than to be rejected and forgotten. For those like Anya, it was her story. She had been robbed of her identity by the very events depicted in the series. Gia knew that she might have been older, but she could relate having been hidden in the family of a distant relative’s friend after her death had been faked. Her very name had been something that she had not dared to say aloud for years because of the danger she had been in.
Turning off the television, Gia thought about what was expected of her. Tomorrow would be Christmas and she would be expected to make a public appearance. Fyodor had gone off at the direction of Georgy, it didn’t take a genius to know where considering that the Greeks and Turks were killing each other again. Many here in Russia felt that conflict was righting a historical wrong. Gia was of a different opinion, but she kept it to herself which was something that she was used to doing. How could premeditated murder on a mass scale make anything right?
Fort Drum, New York
It was the middle of winter in Upstate New York and the weather reports were saying that it wasn’t supposed to snow. Instead, it was just mind numbingly cold which meant that anyone who didn’t have to go outside stayed in. There was absolutely nothing on TV in the Barracks Recreation Room, just an absurd “Wholesome” Western that Kravitz and Huck were watching. Ritchie was trying to read a science fiction novel that was purported to be pretty blue, instead his was getting a nose full of the author’s opinions about American consumerism dressed up as parody and put on a spaceship. Sure, there was some sex going on, but hardly enough to give the book its reputation and it was about as hot as reading radio instructions. The blurb about the author on the book’s dust jacket said that the author; Jerome Garcia, was a San Francisco native. For Ritchie, that was enough said.
He was trying to concentrate on reading as the others were making lewd suggestions about the actress who was this week’s co-star and laughing about it. Ritchie might have pointed out that a television show set in an Old Western town that was supposedly in Arizona, it was too clean for starters. Anyone with an inkling of history knew that prior to the invention of air conditioning many of the people who lived in a place like that would have been Mexican. None were seen on the TV show, considering how they depicted Indians that was probably a good thing. There was also a joke that flew around about the question; Could you imagine being Black in a place like that? It was the sort of dark comedy that someone was going to delve into sooner or later. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if that killed the entire Western Television Genre.
Watching Huck and Kravitz, Ritchie knew how likely he was to see a version of that play out over the coming months. Their Team had an open slot in it because Ritchie was going to be moved out of the Specialist track. Not only was he going to be a Sergeant, but he was getting the rocker as well. That would probably piss off Mullins and Kravitz because he will have leapfrogged them, something that would make them inclined to use whoever came in to fill that slot as a chew toy.
6th January 1967
Moscow, Russia
The television series that had aired over the previous weeks hit a nerve, that much was clear.
Set in the years following the end of the Soviet War, it followed the lives of a half-dozen boys left orphaned by the conflict and the murderous rampage that the dying State had engaged in during the last months of Stalin’s reign. The show’s protagonist, Vitaly, was the oldest and the leader of the group. At thirteen was being forced to make choices that no one should have to make and his wandering through the countryside is in search of a family that he is certain he still has. Aside from a brief happy interlude where they can pretend that everything is normal while living for a few weeks during the summertime in an abandoned village on the Belorussian frontier, the rest of the series was pretty bleak. It showed the dangers of starvation, disease, and even other groups of orphans as the bounds of civilization had broken down even as the hazards that existed in the Russian countryside were still very present. When Vitaly finds one of the members of his family, an older sister, he gets rejected because he is no longer a part of the society that he had come from. The group dwindled one by one until it was just him walking further down a road for lack of a better idea. Eventually finding the burnt-out ruins of his former home, the show depicted Vitaly trying to sift through the ashes to find some evidence of his existence.
The story concluded there, sort of fading out. Gia understood that it wasn’t really an ending. The symbolism was obvious, the boy had become a ghost though he was still very much alive. It was the story of what had been dubbed the Lost Generation and one didn’t get much more lost than to be rejected and forgotten. For those like Anya, it was her story. She had been robbed of her identity by the very events depicted in the series. Gia knew that she might have been older, but she could relate having been hidden in the family of a distant relative’s friend after her death had been faked. Her very name had been something that she had not dared to say aloud for years because of the danger she had been in.
Turning off the television, Gia thought about what was expected of her. Tomorrow would be Christmas and she would be expected to make a public appearance. Fyodor had gone off at the direction of Georgy, it didn’t take a genius to know where considering that the Greeks and Turks were killing each other again. Many here in Russia felt that conflict was righting a historical wrong. Gia was of a different opinion, but she kept it to herself which was something that she was used to doing. How could premeditated murder on a mass scale make anything right?
Fort Drum, New York
It was the middle of winter in Upstate New York and the weather reports were saying that it wasn’t supposed to snow. Instead, it was just mind numbingly cold which meant that anyone who didn’t have to go outside stayed in. There was absolutely nothing on TV in the Barracks Recreation Room, just an absurd “Wholesome” Western that Kravitz and Huck were watching. Ritchie was trying to read a science fiction novel that was purported to be pretty blue, instead his was getting a nose full of the author’s opinions about American consumerism dressed up as parody and put on a spaceship. Sure, there was some sex going on, but hardly enough to give the book its reputation and it was about as hot as reading radio instructions. The blurb about the author on the book’s dust jacket said that the author; Jerome Garcia, was a San Francisco native. For Ritchie, that was enough said.
He was trying to concentrate on reading as the others were making lewd suggestions about the actress who was this week’s co-star and laughing about it. Ritchie might have pointed out that a television show set in an Old Western town that was supposedly in Arizona, it was too clean for starters. Anyone with an inkling of history knew that prior to the invention of air conditioning many of the people who lived in a place like that would have been Mexican. None were seen on the TV show, considering how they depicted Indians that was probably a good thing. There was also a joke that flew around about the question; Could you imagine being Black in a place like that? It was the sort of dark comedy that someone was going to delve into sooner or later. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if that killed the entire Western Television Genre.
Watching Huck and Kravitz, Ritchie knew how likely he was to see a version of that play out over the coming months. Their Team had an open slot in it because Ritchie was going to be moved out of the Specialist track. Not only was he going to be a Sergeant, but he was getting the rocker as well. That would probably piss off Mullins and Kravitz because he will have leapfrogged them, something that would make them inclined to use whoever came in to fill that slot as a chew toy.
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If he hadn't become become a guitarist, who knows? What is known is that he was a voracious reader of sci-fi and attempted to adapt several of Kurt Vonnegut's novels into movies IOTL.
The cultural butterflies in the United States is enormous, there is no Baby Boom but a more steady increase in the population, that means there is no "Youth Culture" in the Sixties, no Beatlemania which means no British Invasion.
Without the OTL Vietnam War there is no Counter-Culture movement no Hippies, no "Psychedelic Rock ".
I can see the Beach Movies of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello still being made and they might go a couple years longer ITTL.
IOTL Republican Edward Brooke became the first African-American United States Senator directly elected in 1966 and supported Nelson Rockefeller for President in 1968.
Without the OTL Vietnam War there is no Counter-Culture movement no Hippies, no "Psychedelic Rock ".
I can see the Beach Movies of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello still being made and they might go a couple years longer ITTL.
IOTL Republican Edward Brooke became the first African-American United States Senator directly elected in 1966 and supported Nelson Rockefeller for President in 1968.
It could still be made, the basic premise of a devastating nuclear war is still valid. It might not be a Hollywood film though, it could be a Babelsburg or Pinewood production with German or British protagonists.
There isn't going to be that same pervasive fear of global armageddon that existed OTL though. TTLs Great Powers aren't ideologically opposed and are actually being constrained in their actions by the realisation that thermonuclear war is too costly.
Part 109, Chapter 1777
Chapter One Thousand Seven Hundred Seventy-Seven
20th January 1967
Plitra, Greece
George Bush’s contact in the German Government had not appreciated him pointing out the history of this region when it had been controlled by the Spartans when they had visited. Hell, the ruins of Ancient Sparta itself was just an hour or so drive north. He had gotten an earful about eugenics and a culture of brutality. Who knew that someone with a position like that was such a goddamned bleeding heart? It was a reminder to Bush that this faction of the German Government saw him as a necessary evil, he just wasn’t sure about to what end though. There was also the reality that they saw him as an upstart peasant and not just because Germany itself wasn’t as far from Feudalism as they pretended to be.
After the fiasco on Santorini the Germans had ended up with egg on their face. He had needled them over the matter, only to be reminded that a longer game was being played. The leadership of the KSK and Officers involved in the Operation could easily survive a temporary setback. Could he? It was a reminder that George was playing a dangerous game himself with big players, one mistake and he would be lucky to end up at the bottom of a pit of quicklime with a bullet in his head. His German contact had implied that any betrayal on his part would involve a great deal of pain and screaming. He would beg them to kill him before the end came. The Greeks and the Turks had both said the same thing, none of them seemed like the type to bluff over such matters.
Bush knew that he would need to hang on for only a few more months for the sides of the current war to exhaust themselves. Then he could take the proceeds and vanish once no one was looking. The war was filling his coffers and he was moving the money out of Greece through several cutouts into Swiss accounts. That was why he had needed the German contact. As much as the Swiss proclaimed their neutrality in international affairs, Bush was all too aware of how the thrice cursed German BND and the League of Nations had an annoying habit of interfering with his business inside Switzerland. Finding someone above reproach who had the authority to tell the BND and the LON Investigators to piss off had been a challenge. He found it, but he still had no idea what their motivation was, which was hardly out of the ordinary in this business. It still bothered him though.
There was also the war itself, he had warned the Turks about what would happen when their Q-Ships ran against a real Navy when they had been trying to goad the Greeks into firing on merchant ships. Not that it had mattered in the end. The Serbs hadn’t cared about who fired the first shots in this conflict when they had invaded Albania and that had forced everyone’s hand. As that bloody mess was playing out, the Greeks and their Bulgarian allies along with a disturbing number of Russian volunteers, who were actually the Russian Army, had stopped the Turks cold in Anatolia. It was the war that everyone had been preparing for, some had just been better prepared than others. That was hardly Bush’s problem though, he made money regardless of who got to stand over the pile of rubble and stupidly proclaim that they had won.
New York City, New York
When Parker had been on his way into New York tonight he had been listening to news on the radio, they had been speculating about if there would be an early spring this year. It all seemed rather stupid to him. The Special Forces Teams that he oversaw had a more pessimistic view of the weather. If they had to be out in it, then it would either be bitterly cold or blistering hot, with nothing in between. The strange part was that the operational tempo that they had endured and the locations that they had been sent had seen to that being the reality. The odd exception had been Laupheim, where the weather might have been halfway decent most of the time as it had been autumn in Germany, but the company had left a lot to be desired… With one notable exception. Italy hadn’t been too bad except the operation had turned to shit.
This weekend he had left the troubles that had cropped up in Fort Drum since the member of one of the teams had been given a sideways “promotion” and had been made Assistant Team Leader. At the same time, a new member had been added to the team from an outfit that few had heard of that was based out of an Army Camp on the Oregon Coast that was unpronounceable. The shit had hit the fan a few days before Parker had gotten out of there. He had told them that unless they all wanted to be busted down to Private and spend the rest of their careers in Greenland, they would have it worked out before he got back. That hadn’t been a bluff.
The problem with spending the weekend in New York was the social aspect. His mother had thrown a dinner party and what a funny coincidence that most of the guests were available daughters of the women of her social circle. She had been hinting that it was long past time that Parker gave her a grandchild or two, this was her way of helping that along. The trouble was that he kept comparing them to Sigi and finding them wanting. He could only imagine the horror that his mother would express if she knew that he was doing that.
20th January 1967
Plitra, Greece
George Bush’s contact in the German Government had not appreciated him pointing out the history of this region when it had been controlled by the Spartans when they had visited. Hell, the ruins of Ancient Sparta itself was just an hour or so drive north. He had gotten an earful about eugenics and a culture of brutality. Who knew that someone with a position like that was such a goddamned bleeding heart? It was a reminder to Bush that this faction of the German Government saw him as a necessary evil, he just wasn’t sure about to what end though. There was also the reality that they saw him as an upstart peasant and not just because Germany itself wasn’t as far from Feudalism as they pretended to be.
After the fiasco on Santorini the Germans had ended up with egg on their face. He had needled them over the matter, only to be reminded that a longer game was being played. The leadership of the KSK and Officers involved in the Operation could easily survive a temporary setback. Could he? It was a reminder that George was playing a dangerous game himself with big players, one mistake and he would be lucky to end up at the bottom of a pit of quicklime with a bullet in his head. His German contact had implied that any betrayal on his part would involve a great deal of pain and screaming. He would beg them to kill him before the end came. The Greeks and the Turks had both said the same thing, none of them seemed like the type to bluff over such matters.
Bush knew that he would need to hang on for only a few more months for the sides of the current war to exhaust themselves. Then he could take the proceeds and vanish once no one was looking. The war was filling his coffers and he was moving the money out of Greece through several cutouts into Swiss accounts. That was why he had needed the German contact. As much as the Swiss proclaimed their neutrality in international affairs, Bush was all too aware of how the thrice cursed German BND and the League of Nations had an annoying habit of interfering with his business inside Switzerland. Finding someone above reproach who had the authority to tell the BND and the LON Investigators to piss off had been a challenge. He found it, but he still had no idea what their motivation was, which was hardly out of the ordinary in this business. It still bothered him though.
There was also the war itself, he had warned the Turks about what would happen when their Q-Ships ran against a real Navy when they had been trying to goad the Greeks into firing on merchant ships. Not that it had mattered in the end. The Serbs hadn’t cared about who fired the first shots in this conflict when they had invaded Albania and that had forced everyone’s hand. As that bloody mess was playing out, the Greeks and their Bulgarian allies along with a disturbing number of Russian volunteers, who were actually the Russian Army, had stopped the Turks cold in Anatolia. It was the war that everyone had been preparing for, some had just been better prepared than others. That was hardly Bush’s problem though, he made money regardless of who got to stand over the pile of rubble and stupidly proclaim that they had won.
New York City, New York
When Parker had been on his way into New York tonight he had been listening to news on the radio, they had been speculating about if there would be an early spring this year. It all seemed rather stupid to him. The Special Forces Teams that he oversaw had a more pessimistic view of the weather. If they had to be out in it, then it would either be bitterly cold or blistering hot, with nothing in between. The strange part was that the operational tempo that they had endured and the locations that they had been sent had seen to that being the reality. The odd exception had been Laupheim, where the weather might have been halfway decent most of the time as it had been autumn in Germany, but the company had left a lot to be desired… With one notable exception. Italy hadn’t been too bad except the operation had turned to shit.
This weekend he had left the troubles that had cropped up in Fort Drum since the member of one of the teams had been given a sideways “promotion” and had been made Assistant Team Leader. At the same time, a new member had been added to the team from an outfit that few had heard of that was based out of an Army Camp on the Oregon Coast that was unpronounceable. The shit had hit the fan a few days before Parker had gotten out of there. He had told them that unless they all wanted to be busted down to Private and spend the rest of their careers in Greenland, they would have it worked out before he got back. That hadn’t been a bluff.
The problem with spending the weekend in New York was the social aspect. His mother had thrown a dinner party and what a funny coincidence that most of the guests were available daughters of the women of her social circle. She had been hinting that it was long past time that Parker gave her a grandchild or two, this was her way of helping that along. The trouble was that he kept comparing them to Sigi and finding them wanting. He could only imagine the horror that his mother would express if she knew that he was doing that.
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*snort*
Oh man, Parker has it so bad. It actually hilarious. And a bit Ironic/hypocritical, depending on how you view Sigi in terms of Royalty. (or not quite being royal. )
So, there is a possibility he can literally becomes Kiki's uncle?
After the Chemical and Thermobaric attacks on Japan, swap Thermonuclear war for Chemical and Biological warfare and you could still do it.
Right up until he explains that Sigi is the Emperor's half sister. There's new money, there's old money, then there's OLD money...