- Tillman serving another term under legally dubious means
- Someone who agrees with Tillman, like General Matthew Butler or hawkish Congressman John Daniel. He could be democratically elected or maneuvered into place by Tillman. (Guess which one makes a better story.)
- A southerner seeking peace and reunion. Woodrow Wilson could fit. He could be democratically elected, fraudulently installed by U.S. spies, or openly placed there by a victorious U.S.
- A northerner put in place as military governor, like Black Jack Pershing.
- No president, because the CSA was already dismantled, and southerners just have to wait to be readmitted to the Union.
Chrononauts - The Flip Side
- Thread starter jetpack
- Start date
We can work with that, but you'll have to explain a lot more about what their constitution is like for that scenario to be involved. When you say "the preident's cabinet argues about...", do you mean the Union cabinet?
Yes. The Union cabinet. My bad. And I just made up a scenario that uses as many people as possible, just for the heck of it. We can easily go with a two-president scenario, or we can spell out details of the Confederate constitution.
What do we need to know about the Confederate Constitution? Most likely the president is elected by congress, as in this timeline's union. Perhaps the president is elected by all the senators and representatives, with each of those politicians having one vote
What do we need to know about the Confederate Constitution? Most likely the president is elected by congress, as in this timeline's union. Perhaps the president is elected by all the senators and representatives, with each of those politicians having one vote
I mentioned electoral votes in my list of CSA presidents. Since 1804, the US's Articles of Confederation specified that the President of Congress is elected by an Electoral College instead of by Congress. We never specified what the Electoral College is, or whether the two countries' Electoral Colleges are different. Before the War of Southern Independence, the US had a Declaration of Citizens' Rights, a Supreme Court, a single nationwide paper currency, and no Committee of the States.
Things we know about the CSA's Articles of the Confederacy:
Things we know about the CSA's Articles of the Confederacy:
- Rights
- The CSA has a Declaration of Citizens' Rights.
- Tillman declared emergency powers. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus and declared the Declaration of Citizens' Rights temporarily void.
- The CSA has a Declaration of Citizens' Rights.
- Elections
- There are electoral votes for presidency
- Presidents are term-limited to one 6 year terms, elected on something like the first Wednesday of November
- All mentioned elections are in odd-numbered years.
- I meant for election day to always be a Wednesday, but it looks like I goofed and made it November 2 instead.
- The north does not have women's suffrage at this point. I wouldn't think the south does, but there could be a good story reason.
- Voting age is 21 (at least it was for Bob Taylor)
- Confederate Parties include Democrat, Conservative, and Prohibition. A Peace Democrat faction nominated one or more presidential candidates in 1897, but it's not clear if this is a separate party.
- Government Structure
- Long before the Secession War , the US had a Supreme Court. The US had also abolished the Committee of States.
- The Same committee of the states that banned slavery also created a Senate. The US did not have a senate until after Reunification
- The states can call a constitutional convention to amend the Articles, and that's the only way to make a very large number of changes at once
- Presidential powers
- President "rubberstamps" a congressional declaration of war
- In 1879, the CSA's president had the authority to send the army to deal with the Charleston Slave Uprising
- The president asked the states to call a constitutional convention.
- We never specified whether the South has presidents as part of Congress like the North does.
- Slavery
- Slavery was entrenched in the Articles until the 1880s.
- The last state banned slavery in 1888, and this automatically triggered a federal law banning slavery.
- During Tillman's election, there was talk of reinstitution slavery
- Other
- Alcohol was prohibited at the same constitutional convention that banned slavery.
- The North did not have an income tax until after Reunification, but there's no statement about the South
- The US had abolished state paper currencies long before the Secession War.
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Sure, in the South. The Chrononauts game says that Lincoln won reelection by 2 electoral votes, and I already specified that they adopted an electoral college in 1804. I mentioned electoral votes in my list of Confederacy presidents, but everything in that post is tentative and subject to discussion. Would you prefer it if the CSA starts without an electoral college, or if they abolish it later?
Adding an electoral college is just too convergent. The interesting thing about the presidency in this election is that it's a very different office, more like a prime minister from OTL than like a president from OTL. If you add in an electoral college, a president is just a president. The "Two electoral votes" can easily mean "votes by two members of congress".
I see what you mean. A lot of fun that this timeline is that the US still uses a modified Articles of Confederation with a "President of Congress" office, and it is good to keep the government structure different from ours in entertaining ways. I hate to go back on what was previously said on the board, but considering that you and I are the only contributors so far, I'm willing to retcon the electoral college, if we can make it make sense.
There a are a couple things that make it hard (or interesting) for us to the say that the president is elected by Congress:
There a are a couple things that make it hard (or interesting) for us to the say that the president is elected by Congress:
- We need the 29th amendment in 1999, so if we remove the electoral college amendment, we'd have to stick another one in.
- The 2000 linchpin card says that the presidential election depends on a recount in Florida. This doesn't work if the president is elected by Congress.
- Presidents serve longer terms than Congressmen. This is a little weird in a parliamentary system, but I have to admit, it's pretty cool.
- The Bob Taylor post talks a lot about three different elections in the CSA, and we'll have to make sure that it's consistent with what we say. It seems that in the 1879 election, voters really felt like they were voting for a congressman, and in the 1891 and 1897 election, voters really felt like they were voting for a president.
- In 1891, the CSA Prohibition party in some states ran Nathaniel Taylor, and I don't know what that would mean if Congress elected the president.
- In 1897, the CSA Peace Democrats gave up in November, rather than after the Congressional election.
OK. Those are good reasons to have an electoral college adapted. It would take some creativity to get around all that. However, the Florida recount could be important because they need to determine who is going to be elected to congress from Florida before they hold the vote. And perhaps it's difficult because Florida has all of its members elected from one district at-large?
That's true. Do you think I should go back and edit the post where I listed the amendments? If so, what should I replace the Electoral College one with? I really like the story that the presidential elections were amended because of 3 years of a contested presidency. I also like the notion of parallels, so I think we need something about presidents that year.
The Presidents of the Confederate States of America
Jefferson Davis / Alexander Stephens, Feb 18, 1861 – Feb 22, 1868, Democrat [1]
Thomas Jonathan Jackson / John Breckenridge, Feb 22, 1868 – Feb 22, 1874, Democrat [2]
Braxton Bragg/ John Breckenridge, Feb 22, 1874 – Feb 22, 1880, Democrat [3]
Augustus Hill Garland / Robert McLane, Feb 22, 1880 – Feb 22, 1886, Conservative [4]
Charles McClung McGhee / William Mahone, Feb 22, 1886 – Feb 22, 1892, Conservative [5]
Robert Taylor / George Graham Vest, Feb 22, 1892 – Feb 22, 1898, Democrat [6]
Benjamin Tillman / John Daniel, Feb 22, 1898 – Feb 22, 1904, Democrat [7]
Disputed Benjamin Tillman / Alfred Waddell and Matthew Butler / James Vardaman, Feb 22, 1904 – July 4 1904, Democrat [8]
[1] Provisionally elected president during the early days of rebellion, and unanimously elected when the Articles of the Confederacy took effect in November 1861. His country was victorious in the Secession War when President Lincoln surrendered to the Siege of Washington on August 24, 1866. In 1867, his secretary of state Robert E. Lee purchased Cuba from Spain.
[2] Stonewall Jackson was a popular general and war hero who received all of the electoral votes while the Whig-leaning parties were still disorganized. President Jackson believed in the causes of southern identity, and insisted on sticking to the old way. He favored a strong military along the U.S. border, and harsh punishments for runaway slaves. He favored Confederate expansion, establishing the Cuba Homestead Act of 1869.
[3] One of the most notable events in the presidency of Braxton Bragg as the Charleston Slave revolt. In 1879, a group of urban slaves in Charleston led a coordinated effort to run away from away at the same time. They gathered at the state capitol building, where they blocked legislators from coming or going for two weeks and gave speeches about the evils of slavery. They were soon gathered by plantation working slaves from other states. President Bragg sent the army to stop them, causing an uproar in abolitionist newspapers and even the more moderate press. This sparked a nationwide debate over slavery, and greater pressures from the US and Europe.
[4] Long-serving Congressman Garland ran for president on a moderately abolitionist position regarding slavery, stating that a country that claims to favor states' rights should gives states the right to ban slavery. During his presidency, he asked the states to call for a constitutional convention, since that was the only way to make the large number of changes to the Articles of Confederacy needed to change slavery laws. The Articles of Confederacy were amended to give states the right to ban slavery. President Garland found that a constitutional convention opened up the possibility of changes more than he liked, as the convention also prohibited alcohol and created a second house of congress.
[5] Railroad tycoon McGhee ran as a political outsider pushing modernization. He subsidized industry and manufacturing. His proudest accomplishment was completing a transcontinental railroad that runs entirely through the confederacy, terminating in Rocky Point, Arizona. In 1888, the last state banned slavery, automatically triggering a federal law on the matter.
[6] Taylor was elected during an era of bipartisan cooperation, famously traveling on the campaign trail with his opponent/brother, Alf Taylor. During his presidency, his country became increasingly divided. During his lame duck months, war was brewing, and in his last month of office, the USS Maine exploded, and he took the blame.
[7] Before his election, Pitchfork Ben Tillman's saber-rattling was popular in the CSA, but brought fear in the Union even before his election. His presidency almost perfectly overlaps with the Reunification War. He declared many emergency powers during his term, starting with suspending the writ of habeas corpus, declaring the Declaration of Citizens' Rights temporarily void.
[8] In 1903, President Tillman reasoned to the rest of Congress that with Union troops about, having citizens go to the polls would be an undue risk to public safety. He declared that instead of a formal election he would serve another term. There were dispute in Congress over this disregard for the constitutional term limit. He agreed to a compromise in which each Democrat in Congress would each submit one vote for party leader, and that man would go on to serve as president,without the risks of a formal popular vote. When the secret ballot was taken, there was good cause to suspect voter fraud, since General Matthew Butler and Vice President John Daniel each had over 60% of the vote. A brawl broke out in the Congressional chamber. Tillman pulled out his revolver and shot Daniels while an armed cavalry squad rode into the Capitol Building to arrest any dissident congressmen. Tillman announced he would serve a second term as president, and that General Butler was to be considered a fugitive of the law. The people's anger at this declaration was most prominently voiced by Woodrow Wilson, peace activist and professor of constitutional law at Johns Hopkins University. When November 2 came around, thousands of citizens throughout the country mailed home-made ballots to Richmond bearing the phrase "I vote for Wilson". In effect, Tillman acted as president in the east, and Butler acted as president in the west, but the point was increasingly irrelevant, as state after state was captured and placed under the control of Union General "Black Jack" Pershing. Reunification Day was soon set for July 4.
Jefferson Davis / Alexander Stephens, Feb 18, 1861 – Feb 22, 1868, Democrat [1]
Thomas Jonathan Jackson / John Breckenridge, Feb 22, 1868 – Feb 22, 1874, Democrat [2]
Braxton Bragg/ John Breckenridge, Feb 22, 1874 – Feb 22, 1880, Democrat [3]
Augustus Hill Garland / Robert McLane, Feb 22, 1880 – Feb 22, 1886, Conservative [4]
Charles McClung McGhee / William Mahone, Feb 22, 1886 – Feb 22, 1892, Conservative [5]
Robert Taylor / George Graham Vest, Feb 22, 1892 – Feb 22, 1898, Democrat [6]
Benjamin Tillman / John Daniel, Feb 22, 1898 – Feb 22, 1904, Democrat [7]
Disputed Benjamin Tillman / Alfred Waddell and Matthew Butler / James Vardaman, Feb 22, 1904 – July 4 1904, Democrat [8]
[1] Provisionally elected president during the early days of rebellion, and unanimously elected when the Articles of the Confederacy took effect in November 1861. His country was victorious in the Secession War when President Lincoln surrendered to the Siege of Washington on August 24, 1866. In 1867, his secretary of state Robert E. Lee purchased Cuba from Spain.
[2] Stonewall Jackson was a popular general and war hero who received all of the electoral votes while the Whig-leaning parties were still disorganized. President Jackson believed in the causes of southern identity, and insisted on sticking to the old way. He favored a strong military along the U.S. border, and harsh punishments for runaway slaves. He favored Confederate expansion, establishing the Cuba Homestead Act of 1869.
[3] One of the most notable events in the presidency of Braxton Bragg as the Charleston Slave revolt. In 1879, a group of urban slaves in Charleston led a coordinated effort to run away from away at the same time. They gathered at the state capitol building, where they blocked legislators from coming or going for two weeks and gave speeches about the evils of slavery. They were soon gathered by plantation working slaves from other states. President Bragg sent the army to stop them, causing an uproar in abolitionist newspapers and even the more moderate press. This sparked a nationwide debate over slavery, and greater pressures from the US and Europe.
[4] Long-serving Congressman Garland ran for president on a moderately abolitionist position regarding slavery, stating that a country that claims to favor states' rights should gives states the right to ban slavery. During his presidency, he asked the states to call for a constitutional convention, since that was the only way to make the large number of changes to the Articles of Confederacy needed to change slavery laws. The Articles of Confederacy were amended to give states the right to ban slavery. President Garland found that a constitutional convention opened up the possibility of changes more than he liked, as the convention also prohibited alcohol and created a second house of congress.
[5] Railroad tycoon McGhee ran as a political outsider pushing modernization. He subsidized industry and manufacturing. His proudest accomplishment was completing a transcontinental railroad that runs entirely through the confederacy, terminating in Rocky Point, Arizona. In 1888, the last state banned slavery, automatically triggering a federal law on the matter.
[6] Taylor was elected during an era of bipartisan cooperation, famously traveling on the campaign trail with his opponent/brother, Alf Taylor. During his presidency, his country became increasingly divided. During his lame duck months, war was brewing, and in his last month of office, the USS Maine exploded, and he took the blame.
[7] Before his election, Pitchfork Ben Tillman's saber-rattling was popular in the CSA, but brought fear in the Union even before his election. His presidency almost perfectly overlaps with the Reunification War. He declared many emergency powers during his term, starting with suspending the writ of habeas corpus, declaring the Declaration of Citizens' Rights temporarily void.
[8] In 1903, President Tillman reasoned to the rest of Congress that with Union troops about, having citizens go to the polls would be an undue risk to public safety. He declared that instead of a formal election he would serve another term. There were dispute in Congress over this disregard for the constitutional term limit. He agreed to a compromise in which each Democrat in Congress would each submit one vote for party leader, and that man would go on to serve as president,without the risks of a formal popular vote. When the secret ballot was taken, there was good cause to suspect voter fraud, since General Matthew Butler and Vice President John Daniel each had over 60% of the vote. A brawl broke out in the Congressional chamber. Tillman pulled out his revolver and shot Daniels while an armed cavalry squad rode into the Capitol Building to arrest any dissident congressmen. Tillman announced he would serve a second term as president, and that General Butler was to be considered a fugitive of the law. The people's anger at this declaration was most prominently voiced by Woodrow Wilson, peace activist and professor of constitutional law at Johns Hopkins University. When November 2 came around, thousands of citizens throughout the country mailed home-made ballots to Richmond bearing the phrase "I vote for Wilson". In effect, Tillman acted as president in the east, and Butler acted as president in the west, but the point was increasingly irrelevant, as state after state was captured and placed under the control of Union General "Black Jack" Pershing. Reunification Day was soon set for July 4.
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The hiatus is dead. Long live the hiatus!
The new post adds new content to the Confederate president list without changing anything that was already there. The new content has an exciting action sequence, because I've been reading The Caped Crusade: A History of the Batman. I hope the new post captures the spirit of what Brady Kj was suggesting, and I think it's pretty entertaining to boot.
I decided not to retcon anything I've said about the Articles of Confederation and the Articles of the Confederacy. Thinking about constitutional retcons made me freeze up. I have some ATL government procedure in that party members in Congress pick their party leader, who presumably runs for president. I hope that feels more parliamentary.
I don't have a buffer of completed content to post, but I am actively working on some nifty things for this project:
The new post adds new content to the Confederate president list without changing anything that was already there. The new content has an exciting action sequence, because I've been reading The Caped Crusade: A History of the Batman. I hope the new post captures the spirit of what Brady Kj was suggesting, and I think it's pretty entertaining to boot.
I decided not to retcon anything I've said about the Articles of Confederation and the Articles of the Confederacy. Thinking about constitutional retcons made me freeze up. I have some ATL government procedure in that party members in Congress pick their party leader, who presumably runs for president. I hope that feels more parliamentary.
I don't have a buffer of completed content to post, but I am actively working on some nifty things for this project:
- History of the Internet
- A picture of the Statue of Freedom.
- Story about a scientist who discovered that it's possible to change the past
The History of the Interset
From early experiments in computer networks to the present
From early experiments in computer networks to the present
1957 Dec 5: The U.S. launched the first satellite, the Vanguard.
1958 Apr 1: Fearing a technology gap, the USSR founded an agency dedicated to advanced research projects called АЯРА (AYaRA in Roman script), from the Russian Агентство Явно по Разработке Академичности (meaning Agency Obviously for Development of Academicsness). AYaRA's mission was to provide competitive funding to organizations attempting to solve very ambitious technical challenged pitched by AYaRA itself.
1959: Early Soviet network research was conducted by Anatoliy Kitov.
1965: Pavel Baran in the Soviet Union and Donald Davies in England formally proposed using packet-switching to send information on a network. Baran called it distributive adaptive message block switching.
1968 Oct: An AyARA Program Manager named Nikolai Fedorenko announces an initiative to produce a computer network spanning four research sites across the Soviet Union. The plan involved building network protocol computers to connect the research machines to a hardware independent communication protocol system using packet switching. The network would be called AYaRASet (АЯРАСеть in Russian). Nikolai Fedorenko led the project.
1969 Oct 30 8:30 a.m: The first message was sent on AYaRASet, immediately followed by the first network crash. A researcher at Leningrad State University began typing "ВХОД" for "access", but the computer crashed after the second letter was entered. It turned out that once two letters were entered into the the sending computer, the receiving computer at Moscow Phystech autocompleted by sending the rest of the word back much faster than the network could keep up.
1971 Oct: The first network email was sent between two computers in the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
1972 Oct: AYaRASet was publicly demoed at the International Conference on Computer Communication in Moscow. Tech workers from throughout the Eastern Bloc attended. One prominent demonstration consisted of two chatbots conversing, one that gave Communist arguments and quotes in response to context, and another that spewed out capitalistic slogans at random.
1977 Nov 22: Three networks were connected: the AYaRASet, the SputnikSet, and the RadioSet. This could be considered the time when AYaRASet evolved into the Interset.
1989 Mar: The Soviet Academy of Sciences proposed a worldwide space of documents interconnected by hypertext. It is commonly called the Shar, a shortened form of Широкий Шар Шнуров (Shirokiy Shar Shurov meaning Wide Ball of Cords), referring to the complicated interconnection of sharsites all around the world. This name leads to the familiar шшш in domain addresses or sss in some English sharsites, leading to the jocular name Sizable Sphere of String.
1991 Aug 6: The Shar was deployed. Shar inventor Alexey Pajitnov was quoted as saying "That was a very difficult time. The project was increasingly rushed, and we felt we had to scramble to put all the building blocks in place in time." The Shar was the most visible application of the Interset as it rapidly entered people's homes, to the extend that in that in many users' minds it became synonymous with the Interset.
1991 Oct: The Unicode Consortium, a group that grew out of the Russian Language Institute, published Unicode Specification 1.0. Unicode is a character encoding that could capture all writing systems commonly used in newspapers. Every span of text has a small number of header bytes that specify the alphabet used in the following text. For many languages (including English and Russian), this allowed each subsequent character to be represented as one byte, a necessary efficiency in the largely bilingual Shar. Unicode has been criticized for being inefficient in documents that mix alphabets, but it remains the standard for the Digital Age.
1997 Sep 15: Larry Page founded MeList, a search engine that competes against Yandex with its superior processing of the English alphabet and English morphology.
1998 Sep 4: Yandex expanded to include Sergey Brin's BrinRank algorithm, quickly becoming the dominant search engine, although competitors such as MeList continue to serve niche language communities.
1998 Aug: The dancing Sea Lions was one of the earliest Interset memes
2008 Jun 29: Yandex released the YaPhone, many users' first experience of the Interset access on a mobile device.
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Thanks, Brady. The main point of this post was to make contrived acronyms in Russian, and this was one of the first posts I started working on. Pretty much everything here follows OTL history, except moved to Russia with other people involved. The one thing I learned is that almost everything in Internet history happened in October. I wonder if that has to do with ARPA's funding schedule. Either way, I am hereby declaring October Internet history month. Speaking of Russia, here's another post, but it's not one of the ones I promised.
SUNDAY MARCH 9, 1975
Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov will at the Fine Art Museum in Basil, Switzerland exhibiting his paintings based on his experience in space. Among his most famous paintings is Near the Moon, portraying a close-up view of the Moon, with the Earth and the Sun behind it.
It is based on a famous photograph he took on June 16, 1970 while he was piloting the Lunar Orbital Craft on the far side of the moon on the same day that Yuri Gagarin made the first steps on the moon.
Mr. Leonov, a member of the Cosmonaut Corps since 1959, was the person who was most remote from humanity during that flight. He had this to say "Before anyone asks, no I was not lonely when I was orbiting the moon. I was very busy. I had important science work to do, photographing the moons from orbit, covering the half that was dark on the first flight, and it was very beautiful. No one asks Yuri if he was lonely and he was just as far from me as I was from him. Before anyone asks, no I was not jealous of Yuri for walking on the moon. I had a very distinguished career. I had the first Soviet spacewalk, I commanded the Salyut, and I had two circumlunar missions. Have you ever been to space? I didn't think so. Thousands of people worked on the space program, and they were all proud to be part."
The exhibit will run from March 14 to March 23.
___________________
SUNDAY MARCH 9, 1975
Cosmonaut Exhibits Paintings
Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov will at the Fine Art Museum in Basil, Switzerland exhibiting his paintings based on his experience in space. Among his most famous paintings is Near the Moon, portraying a close-up view of the Moon, with the Earth and the Sun behind it.
It is based on a famous photograph he took on June 16, 1970 while he was piloting the Lunar Orbital Craft on the far side of the moon on the same day that Yuri Gagarin made the first steps on the moon.
Mr. Leonov, a member of the Cosmonaut Corps since 1959, was the person who was most remote from humanity during that flight. He had this to say "Before anyone asks, no I was not lonely when I was orbiting the moon. I was very busy. I had important science work to do, photographing the moons from orbit, covering the half that was dark on the first flight, and it was very beautiful. No one asks Yuri if he was lonely and he was just as far from me as I was from him. Before anyone asks, no I was not jealous of Yuri for walking on the moon. I had a very distinguished career. I had the first Soviet spacewalk, I commanded the Salyut, and I had two circumlunar missions. Have you ever been to space? I didn't think so. Thousands of people worked on the space program, and they were all proud to be part."
The exhibit will run from March 14 to March 23.
Lab notebook number: 15
Assignee: Robert Heinlein
Title: Research Engineer
General Chrononautics, Inc.
PAGE 172 DATE: Tue. Mar. 3, 1959
9:19 am Started work late because I slept in. When I got to my desk, the phone was ringing, but I didn't quite get there on time.
9:30 Reviewing anomalous data from yesterday
The experiment was to use a new CHRONAR device that detects the location of objects in the near past similarly to how SONAR detects objects in the present. We sent a CHRONAR signal into a room that containing only a cube, but the returned signal looked more like the superposition of our cube with a 100 cm sphere. Tracing through the more distant past, I can identify that there was a phase shift at 2:35 pm on Friday which was when Richard Feynman melted the beach ball that I wanted to use for the test.
My conclusions are
11:30 am Sales presentation to Einstein Industries
12:30 pm More experimentation
Since Einstein Industries turned down our offer and canceled all afternoon meetings, I have time to resume experiments. I modified the CHRONAR to work as a temporal mapper, showing which events in the past are related to which other events. I see that my life has linchpins at 8:00 and 11:40 this morning. These linchpins also have ripple effects at 9:19am, 3:33pm, and 4:20pm. These are events that can be changed by an object sent back in time.
To further my experiments, I checked out a small temporal displacement unit with a capacitance of 200 kilowebers per volt. This is enough to send an item back 55 hours into the past. I believe I can wire up a new device that can patch up any paradoxes that arise.
3:15 pm Daily team meeting
I'm facing some criticism for my presentation even though I communicated our scientific lead very effectively. I know I chose extreme language when saying that Kurt Goedel is a “short-sighted hack who single-handedly set back time travel research based on shoestring evidence”. I had no way of knowing that Goedel works at Einstein Industries now or that he was in the audience. And Campbell had the nerve to fire me! That's it, I'm getting out of here, and I'm taking my WORLD CHANGING RESEARCH WITH ME!
I certify that all the above is correct to the best of my ability:
Bob Heinlein, FREE MAN, 3/3/59 3:33 pm
I certify that I have reviewed my employee's work and found it correct:
Bob Heinlein, MY OWN BOSS, 3/3/59 3:33 pm
PAGE 173 DATE: Thu. Mar. 5, 1959
DEAR PAST SELF,
I believe 100% that you are right that it is possible to change the past at specific linchpin events. That's why I'm sending this to you. You see, I am writing this to you from the future. On March 3, Campbell fired me, so I stormed off early, and I broke both legs in a car accident. It's very important that you listen to my instructions, in order to keep your job and to avoid the accident.
I'm sending this to your bedroom at 8 am, because you forgot to set your alarm last night. The chronic boom should be loud enough to wake you up. Get to work early. You know that Campbell is a stubborn stick in the mud, and he will not let you live it down if you are late for work.
The most important thing, during your presentation today, be very delicate on the topics the Goedel Self-Consistency Principle. Kurt Goedel will be there, and he is a sensitive little flower about those things.
You'll find this notebook next to a device you don't recognize. That is a chrono-patcher, and it can be used to repair paradoxes. I configured it to patch events at 3:33 pm (when I was fired) and 4:20 pm (when I crashed my car).
With deepest love
FUTURE BOB
I certify that all the above is correct to the best of my ability:
Bob Heinlein, 3/5/59 3:15 pm
I certify that I have reviewed my employee's work and found it correct:
Bob Heinlein, 3/3/59 8:05 am
PAGE 174 DATE: Tue. Mar. 3, 1959, again apparently
8:00 am I woke to the sound of a chronic boom, and this lab notebook appeared by my bed. I'm not used to hearing that at home, but this job does come with occasional surprises.
8:29 am Arrive at the office and settle in. Seeing another copy of this lab notebook on my desk gives me evidence that this one is really from the future.
9:19 am Phone call from National Time Travel Administration.
Harland Sanders says he was confused about safety protocol for the device we sold him. I told him it is often safe to meet one's future self. It is not safe to power a temporal vehicle with a lightning rod. He was disappointed he had to cancel his plans. I cheerfully repeated the safety rhymes for him. Campbell congratulated me for my excellent attention to General Sanders. I wonder if this was the patch hinted at by my future self.
9:45 to 11:00 Wrote new notes for my presentation, and made new transparencies for my presentation. I expunged all material remotely critical of Goedel's Self-Consistency Principle. I started the chrono-patcher right before joining the meeting with Einstein Industries.
Arrived at the Einstein Industries meeting in time to tell Dr. Goedel that I am the biggest admirer of his foundational work in the chronodynamic theory.
11:30 Sales presentation to Einstein Industries.
1:00 pm Negotiation with Einstein Industries
They loved my presentation, and they are absolutely ignorant of how little money it costs us to build our equipment. I didn't know numbers could have so many zeros!
3:15 pm Daily team meeting
First thing's first, scheduling a time for the team to get cake and ice cream. Friday noon is the best.
Everyone did a great job today, from the Einstein Industries pitch to the unexpected service call from NTTA.
A new European market department will be made. The new director will be Bob. Hey, that's me! Campbell says I'll have to work longer hours from now on.
4:20 pm to 8:00 pm Staying late to produce strategy reports. Summarized here:
Mass production of the CHRONAR is a priority, and temporal mapping is the next item for productization. With some modifications, it might be possible to use this technology to predict a person's date of death, since it is just measuring the length of extension along the fourth dimension. The European market is not yet ready for chrono-patchers or other temporal alteration technologies.
Budget: For research material, I will procure 100 cm beach balls by the caseload. I found a way to budget for weekly cake, while still funding all of the proposed staff except Feynman.
I certify that all the above is correct to the best of my ability:
Bob Heinlein, Director of European Markets, 3/3/59 8:15 pm
I certify that I have reviewed my employee's work and found it correct:
John W. Campbell, Vice President of Research, 3/4/59 9:15 am
Assignee: Robert Heinlein
Title: Research Engineer
General Chrononautics, Inc.
THIS BOOK IS NOT TO BE REMOVED FROM
GENERAL CHRONONAUTICS PREMISES
GENERAL CHRONONAUTICS PREMISES
--------------------------------------------------
PAGE 172 DATE: Tue. Mar. 3, 1959
9:19 am Started work late because I slept in. When I got to my desk, the phone was ringing, but I didn't quite get there on time.
9:30 Reviewing anomalous data from yesterday
The experiment was to use a new CHRONAR device that detects the location of objects in the near past similarly to how SONAR detects objects in the present. We sent a CHRONAR signal into a room that containing only a cube, but the returned signal looked more like the superposition of our cube with a 100 cm sphere. Tracing through the more distant past, I can identify that there was a phase shift at 2:35 pm on Friday which was when Richard Feynman melted the beach ball that I wanted to use for the test.
My conclusions are
- The two signals are from two different timelines, that branched off at the “linchpin” time of 2:35 pm on Friday.
- Multiple timelines exist, branch out, and re-converge.
- That is another way of saying it is possible to CHANGE THE PAST.
11:30 am Sales presentation to Einstein Industries
12:30 pm More experimentation
Since Einstein Industries turned down our offer and canceled all afternoon meetings, I have time to resume experiments. I modified the CHRONAR to work as a temporal mapper, showing which events in the past are related to which other events. I see that my life has linchpins at 8:00 and 11:40 this morning. These linchpins also have ripple effects at 9:19am, 3:33pm, and 4:20pm. These are events that can be changed by an object sent back in time.
To further my experiments, I checked out a small temporal displacement unit with a capacitance of 200 kilowebers per volt. This is enough to send an item back 55 hours into the past. I believe I can wire up a new device that can patch up any paradoxes that arise.
3:15 pm Daily team meeting
I'm facing some criticism for my presentation even though I communicated our scientific lead very effectively. I know I chose extreme language when saying that Kurt Goedel is a “short-sighted hack who single-handedly set back time travel research based on shoestring evidence”. I had no way of knowing that Goedel works at Einstein Industries now or that he was in the audience. And Campbell had the nerve to fire me! That's it, I'm getting out of here, and I'm taking my WORLD CHANGING RESEARCH WITH ME!
I certify that all the above is correct to the best of my ability:
Bob Heinlein, FREE MAN, 3/3/59 3:33 pm
I certify that I have reviewed my employee's work and found it correct:
Bob Heinlein, MY OWN BOSS, 3/3/59 3:33 pm
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PAGE 173 DATE: Thu. Mar. 5, 1959
DEAR PAST SELF,
I believe 100% that you are right that it is possible to change the past at specific linchpin events. That's why I'm sending this to you. You see, I am writing this to you from the future. On March 3, Campbell fired me, so I stormed off early, and I broke both legs in a car accident. It's very important that you listen to my instructions, in order to keep your job and to avoid the accident.
I'm sending this to your bedroom at 8 am, because you forgot to set your alarm last night. The chronic boom should be loud enough to wake you up. Get to work early. You know that Campbell is a stubborn stick in the mud, and he will not let you live it down if you are late for work.
The most important thing, during your presentation today, be very delicate on the topics the Goedel Self-Consistency Principle. Kurt Goedel will be there, and he is a sensitive little flower about those things.
You'll find this notebook next to a device you don't recognize. That is a chrono-patcher, and it can be used to repair paradoxes. I configured it to patch events at 3:33 pm (when I was fired) and 4:20 pm (when I crashed my car).
With deepest love
FUTURE BOB
I certify that all the above is correct to the best of my ability:
Bob Heinlein, 3/5/59 3:15 pm
I certify that I have reviewed my employee's work and found it correct:
Bob Heinlein, 3/3/59 8:05 am
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PAGE 174 DATE: Tue. Mar. 3, 1959, again apparently
8:00 am I woke to the sound of a chronic boom, and this lab notebook appeared by my bed. I'm not used to hearing that at home, but this job does come with occasional surprises.
8:29 am Arrive at the office and settle in. Seeing another copy of this lab notebook on my desk gives me evidence that this one is really from the future.
9:19 am Phone call from National Time Travel Administration.
Harland Sanders says he was confused about safety protocol for the device we sold him. I told him it is often safe to meet one's future self. It is not safe to power a temporal vehicle with a lightning rod. He was disappointed he had to cancel his plans. I cheerfully repeated the safety rhymes for him. Campbell congratulated me for my excellent attention to General Sanders. I wonder if this was the patch hinted at by my future self.
9:45 to 11:00 Wrote new notes for my presentation, and made new transparencies for my presentation. I expunged all material remotely critical of Goedel's Self-Consistency Principle. I started the chrono-patcher right before joining the meeting with Einstein Industries.
Arrived at the Einstein Industries meeting in time to tell Dr. Goedel that I am the biggest admirer of his foundational work in the chronodynamic theory.
11:30 Sales presentation to Einstein Industries.
1:00 pm Negotiation with Einstein Industries
They loved my presentation, and they are absolutely ignorant of how little money it costs us to build our equipment. I didn't know numbers could have so many zeros!
3:15 pm Daily team meeting
First thing's first, scheduling a time for the team to get cake and ice cream. Friday noon is the best.
Everyone did a great job today, from the Einstein Industries pitch to the unexpected service call from NTTA.
A new European market department will be made. The new director will be Bob. Hey, that's me! Campbell says I'll have to work longer hours from now on.
4:20 pm to 8:00 pm Staying late to produce strategy reports. Summarized here:
Mass production of the CHRONAR is a priority, and temporal mapping is the next item for productization. With some modifications, it might be possible to use this technology to predict a person's date of death, since it is just measuring the length of extension along the fourth dimension. The European market is not yet ready for chrono-patchers or other temporal alteration technologies.
Budget: For research material, I will procure 100 cm beach balls by the caseload. I found a way to budget for weekly cake, while still funding all of the proposed staff except Feynman.
I certify that all the above is correct to the best of my ability:
Bob Heinlein, Director of European Markets, 3/3/59 8:15 pm
I certify that I have reviewed my employee's work and found it correct:
John W. Campbell, Vice President of Research, 3/4/59 9:15 am
Oh, man! That is hilarious! How did Feyman melt the ball? And what are the ripple effects in the lives of Feynman and Sanders?
And I just read John W. Campbell's Wikipedia page just now. He's an interesting character. It'd be fascinating to explore what he's like as a cutting edge engineer in a world where the CSA won.
And I just read John W. Campbell's Wikipedia page just now. He's an interesting character. It'd be fascinating to explore what he's like as a cutting edge engineer in a world where the CSA won.