Tom Kalbfus
Banned
I think it would be interesting to speculate about what would happen if he opened up a gate to a world that did match ours. There are other ways his 2009 differs from ours as well, the book after all was written before 2009, so the author had to speculate a little bit about the future from his point of view. I think he erred a little bit by making it slightly too futuristic for what 2009 actually turned out to be, well that's a valid Alternate history as well. So the Rolfes open up a new gate to our world and find things not quite the same, but close enough for their purposes. Some of the characters on his side of the gate even have duplicates on our side, so close is this timeline to ours. This presents an interesting situation, in that people on our side of the gate can be replaced by "dopplegangers" from New Virginia, it would be interesting to watch them stumble around in a world that is not quite theirs, it would be something like one of those "Slider Worlds" from the television series Sliders, these sorts of worlds are for the most part identical to ours with a few important differences to drive the story.You bring up a valid point in that the timeline the Rolfes are from in Conquistador do not match ours. As I pointed out in my bulleted list post from page 1, their 2009 is different from ours.
I think New Virginia "dopplegangers" could gain control of the "original's" bank accounts and use the money to set up shell corporations just like in the old timeline the Rolfes came from. John Rolfe on the otherhand has no legal citizenship status in our timeline, he has no valid social security number, and officially he doesn't exist, his driver's license would register as invalid if he's ever stopped by the police while in our world. Something would have to be done with the residents of the house he opened his gate into, most likely kidnapped and taken to New Virginia against their will. I think who ever lives in that house would make an excellent point of view character through which to tell the story, as he will have to deal with his new unexpected situation, and perhaps plot his escape.