Gatsby and the Red Scare

Extract from "The Great Gatsby", written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925

Chapter 1
"You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"

I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently. "I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Syndicalist Empires' by this man Canaris?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out humanity will be--will be utterly submerged.”

"Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we----"

"Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us to watch out or these...animals...will have control of things."

"We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun. “Before they beat us down.”

"You ought to see the syndicalists in Chicago--" began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

"This idea is that we are all human. I am, and you are and you are and----" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. "Even the Bolsheviks are human. But the syndicalists aren’t. They’re different. They are more like bees or ants. And they want to turn us into them. Do you see?"

There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more.

“Thank God that the syndicalists are divided. The Totalists, Autonomists, and Free Workers are at each others’ throats and sometimes seem more willing to kill each other than they are us. But when they decide to unite, they’ll be unstoppable. Which is why us humans have to unite first.”

“Unite,” echoed Daisy, staring outside the window.

When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.

"I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?"

"That's why I came over tonight."

"Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be a manager at a New York factory, but the workers got corrupted and became syndicalists. Eventually, they tried to, tried to---”

“Spontaneously execute him,” suggested Miss Baker.

“Yes, that. He escaped, just in time, but then some human ruffian came in and broke his nose ‘to send him a message’. Our butler finally had to give up the position after the company decided to negotiate with the scum.”

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened--then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.

The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.

"I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a--of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation. "An absolute rose?"

This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose.
 
Huh?
This timeline is a spinoff of an abandoned timeline known as “The Abhwer”, which was an attempt to create a “Plausible Kaiserreich”. Kaiserreich is a popular mod for HOI2, but it’s not very plausible. I tried making it plausible, while still staying true to the source material.

Knowledge of that timeline is not necessary to understand what’s going on in this timeline, but it might be useful trivia and fluff. Everything in that timeline is canon to this spin-off.

No, I mean, what’s going on with you quoting from The Great Gatsby?
Meadow, who I admit inspired me to write “The Abwehr” in the first place, wrote the timeline “The People’s Flag” which was also an attempt at a Plausible Kaiserreich. In one update, he rewrote portions of The Great Gatsby to reflect changes that took place in his timeline. It was an interesting way to explain what was going on in the United States while not taking away too much focus from what’s going on in Britain (which was where the main action was).

I’m just expanding on Meadow’s idea and making it a full-fledged thread, with me posting excerpts from an ATL “Great Gatsby” and telling the story of Nick Carraway as he ventures East. The excerpts will be posted “out of order”.

What’s the POD?
The main POD is US noninvolvement in the Great War, allowing the Germans to defeat France. The results of Germany defeating France though led to unforeseen consequences, including a world-wide syndicalist uprising.

Woo-hoo! Syndicalism!
Syndicalism is not a good thing. At all. Read “The Abwehr” to know why.

So is this going to be a Boring Old Dystopia then?
I’m afraid it might seem that way, because I tended to focus on conflict and conflict tends to be rather disturbing and violent. If this was a cultural timeline, or a science timeline, or a food timeline, I’m sure I’d portray a perfect, shiny utopia to go along with the plot.

I will say that the United States will come out fairly okay at the end. But that’s just my opinion. I’ve been wrong before.

By the way, what happened to “The Great Gatsby” after its publication?
It was a commercial failure, and never really gained any sort of critical acclaim or recognition until after a Longist bureaucrat decided to ban the book in 1945 on the basis of being “subversive propaganda”. If it was so subversive, it must be good, right?
 
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Extract from "The Great Gatsby", written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925

Chapter 3

"Do you come to these parties often?" inquired Jordan of the girl beside her.

"The last one was the one I met you at," answered the girl, in an alert, confident voice. She turned to her companion: "Wasn't it for you, Lucille?"

It was for Lucille, too.

"I like to come," Lucille said. "I never care what I do, so I always have a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and Gatsby asked me my name and address--inside of a week I got a package from Croirier's with a new evening gown in it."

"There's something funny about a fellow that'll do a thing like that," said the other girl eagerly. "He doesn't want any trouble with anybody. Somebody told me--"

The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially.

"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."

A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly.

"I don't think it's so much that," argued Lucille skeptically; "it's more that he killed a man once. The syndicalists and their turncoat allies don’t care about body count. Gatsby does."

One of the men nodded in confirmation. “It’s because he’s a German spy. Trying to sabotage syndicalism from the inside. I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Germany," he assured us positively.

“Oh no”, said the first girl, “it couldn’t be that, because he was in the American army. The Germans don’t trust anyone in the American army.” As our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. "You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking at him. I bet he’s ready to kill again.”

She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.



Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby identified himself a butler hurried toward him with the information that Chicago was calling him on the wire. He excused himself with a small bow that included each of us in turn.

"If you want anything just ask for it, old sport," he urged me. "Excuse me. I will rejoin you later."

When he was gone I turned immediately to Jordan--constrained to assure her of my surprise. I had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and corpulent person in his middle years, not a young man in his mid-twenties.

"Who is he?" I demanded. "Do you know?"

"He's just a man named Gatsby."

"Where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?"

"Now YOU're started on the subject," she answered with a wan smile. "Well,--he told me once he was just a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his money comes from.”

A dim background started to take shape behind him but at her next remark it faded away.

"However, I don't believe it."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," she insisted, "I just think he’s lying."

Something in her tone reminded me of the other girl's "I think he killed a man," and had the effect of stimulating my curiosity. I would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York. That was comprehensible. But young men didn't--at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn't--drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound.

"Anyhow he gives large parties," said Jordan, changing the subject with an urbane distaste for the concrete. "And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy."

There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the orchestra leader rang out suddenly above the echolalia of Gatsby’s garden.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried. "We would like to, once again, congratulate the Combined Syndicate for their role in promoting American industry and economic prosperity. Without the hard sacrifices of our comrades, we would not be able to provide the fine food and drink you enjoy today.

“At the request of Mr. Gatsby, we are going to play for you an old classic which attracted so much attention at Carnegie Hall last May. If you read the papers you know there was a big sensation." He smiled with jovial condescension at the crowds and added "Some sensation!" whereupon everybody laughed.

"Four German spies were electrocuted," I said, remembering.

“Five were shot,” added Jordan.

"The piece is known," the orchestra leader concluded lustily, "as George G. Allen’s ‘Workers’ Battle Cry For Freedom’."

I glanced nervously at the crowds, but was relieved to find that there was not a single worker within them. I saw bankers, industrialists, wealthy heirs and heiresses, fashionable loafers, drunk celebrities, innovative entrepreneurs...but no downtrodden worker that might be inspired by such a battle cry. They must be busy working to attend Gatsby’s proletarian party.

The nature of Allen’s composition eluded me, because just as it began my eyes fell on Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps and looking from one group to another with approving eyes.

When the "Battle Cry" was over girls were putting their heads on men's shoulders in a puppyish, convivial way, girls were swooning backward playfully into men's arms, even into groups knowing that some one would arrest their falls--but no one swooned backward on Gatsby and no French bob touched Gatsby's shoulder and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby's head for one link.
 
Extract from "The Great Gatsby", written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925

Chapter 4
"Look here, old sport," Gatsby broke out surprisingly. "What's your opinion of me, anyhow?"

A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that question deserves.

"Well, I'm going to tell you something about my life," he interrupted. "I don't want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you hear. I'll tell you God's truth." His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by. "I am a minor prince of the Hohenzollern dynasty. I was brought up in Germany and educated at University of Bonn because my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition."

He looked at me sideways--and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying. He hurried the phrase “minor prince” or swallowed it or choked on it as though it bothered him before. And with this doubt his whole statement fell to pieces and I wondered if there wasn’t something a little sinister about him after all.

“Which part of Germany did you live in?” I inquired casually.

“St. Petersburg.”

“I see.”

“I lived like a rajah in all the capitals of Europe--Paris, Venice, Rome--to try and forget something very sad. But I could not. So I left Europe and came over to the United States, where I collected jewels, chiefly rubies, hunted big game, painting a little, things for myself only...”

With an effort, I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that a turbaned “character” leaking sawdust at every pore at he pursued a tiger through San Francisco.

“Then came the war. Not your pathetic ‘Red Scare’, but the Great War. I still had some loyalty to the fatherland, so I returned to Germany to help my nation out. But during that war, then I witnessed numerous atrocities and oppressive actions that the Germans had conducted against the ‘enemy’. When I voiced my criticism, I was arrested, beaten and disowned by own family. I left the country, dejected and disillusioned at humanity.”

His voice was solemn as if the memory of these events still haunted him. For a moment I suspected that he was pulling my leg but a glance at him convinced me otherwise.

“When I returned to the United States, the Red Scare had just begun. I volunteered to join the US Army, old sport. It was a great relief, and I tried very hard to die but I seemed to have bear an enchanted life. I accepted a commission as a first lieutenant when it began. In the Battle of Buffalo, I took two machine gun divisions straight into the middle of the syndicalist-held city and garrisoned a hundred and thirty men with sixteen Lewis guns. We stayed there for two days and two nights. By the time the Battle was over---”

Having already lost interest in Gatsby’s story, I pretended to listen while really staring outside his windows at his gorgeous car. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns. It was also real, much more real than the chests of rubies that Gatsby must had looted from the palaces of North Dakota.

“That’s the medal from the Commune of France.” A piece of metal, slung on a ribbon, fell into my palm.

To my astonishment, it has an authentic look.

Totalism, ran the circle legend, in bold letters.

“Turn it.”
Fellow Traveller #591, I read. For Valour Revolution.

“I got this medal after I joined up with the Combined Syndicate. Not as a syndicalist, of course,” Gatsby assured me, while pocketing his souvenir with satisfaction. “But I think that the Red Scare was a senseless waste of life, and that the syndies were merely misunderstood at the time. They do have some interesting ideas of how to reinvigorate society and establish social justice, and maybe these ideas ought to be heard.”

“Didn’t you previously machine-gunned syndicalists?” I quizzically asked.

“I was young and ignorant,” Gatsby apologetically replied. “I adhered only to a certain capitalist outlook on life and refused to consider other worldviews. But once the Red Scare ended and peace returned, I became eager to learn the truth about syndicalism.”

Syndicalism. He lifted up the words and nodded at them--with his smile. The smile comprehended the troubled history of the syndicalist movement and sympathized with the brave struggles of the syndicalist people. It appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances which had elicited this medal from the syndicalists’ warm little hearts. My incredulity was submerged in fascination now; it was like skimming hastily through a dozen magazines.
 
Extract from "The Great Gatsby", written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925

Chapter 1
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

My family had been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started a wholesale hardware business.

I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him--with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that once hung in Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later my family were lynched, the hardware business was burnt down, and the hard-boiled paintings were stolen. All that I had left was fake noble blood.

I do not dwell on my family’s death. I even forgave their murderers, out of a cowardly fear of being murdered myself, but also out of a snobbish dedication to my father’s advice. I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college, I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.

Despite my oft-forgiving nature, I had no desire for riotous excursions into privileged glimpses into the human heart. Frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon--for the intimate revelations of my family’s murderers (or at least the terms which they express them) were usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions.

Still, reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit.

...

My family’s murderers were soldiers hailing from Paris, who took part in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War...and watched their country lose. These soldiers then took part in a “syndicalist revolution” that seized control over France. When that revolution succeeded, the soldiers quickly vowed to rebuild their country and launch a counter-raid against those Teutons. After making that fateful decision, they then realized that France had no manpower for rebuilding, much less counter-raiding. These soldiers immigrated to our country, hoping to convert other people to their anti-Teutonic cause. When some Americans refused to convert, the soldiers, in a fit of anger, started killing. Their murderous rampages were really less surprising than the the fact that the soldiers blamed themselves for not being better propagandists: had they refined their rhetoric, my family may have still lived.

The murderers’ war stories sparked a great deal of restlessness in me. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe. So I had to leave the middle-west. If my life was to be deeply impacted by the center of the universe, I should have some say in what happens there.

I talked over the possible places to move like I was deciding on a prep-school and finally decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more man. I discreetly contacted a friend of mine in college, Tom Buchanan, and he agreed to the idea of financing me for a year. I also discreetly asked for permission from the murderers, promising to spy on Tom Buchanan in return for safe passage out of the city. The murderers conversed among themselves before finally saying "Why--ye-es" with very grave, hesitant faces.

After various delays, I came to the east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
 
Chapter 7
"I know I'm not very popular,” sneered Tom. “I don't give big parties. I suppose you've got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends--in the modern world."

"I've got something to tell YOU, old sport,----" began Gatsby. But Daisy guessed at his intention.

"Please don't!" she interrupted helplessly. "Please let's all go home. Why don't we all go home?"

"That's a good idea." I got up. "Come on, Tom. Nobody wants a drink."

"I want to know what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me."

"Your wife doesn't love you," said Gatsby. "She's never loved you. She loves me."

"You must be crazy!" exclaimed Tom automatically.

Gatsby sprang to his feet, vivid with excitement.

"She never loved you, do you hear?" he cried. "She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved any one except me!"

At this point Jordan and I tried to go but Tom and Gatsby insisted with competitive firmness that we remain--as though neither of them had anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously of their emotions.

"Sit down Daisy." Tom's voice groped unsuccessfully for the paternal note. "What's been going on? I want to hear all about it."

"I told you what's been going on," said Gatsby. "Going on for three years--and you didn't know."

Tom turned to Daisy sharply.

"You've been seeing this fellow for three years?"

"Not seeing," said Gatsby. "No, we couldn't meet. But both of us loved each other all that time, old sport, and you didn't know. I used to laugh sometimes--" but there was no laughter in his eyes, "to think that you didn't know."

"Oh--that's all." Tom tapped his thick fingers together like a clergyman and leaned back in his chair.

"You're crazy!" he exploded. "I can't speak about what happened three years ago, because I didn't know Daisy then--and I'll be damned if I see how she can love you now after you betrayed all true Americans by siding with the Combined Syndicate. But all the rest of that's a God Damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now."

"No," said Gatsby, shaking his head.

"She does, though. The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish ideas in her head and doesn't know what she's doing." He nodded sagely. "And what's more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time."

"You're revolting," said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice, dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: "I’m surprised that he didn’t treat you to my ‘foolish ideas’. Maybe because it wouldn’t be so foolish if somebody other than him looked at them.”

I asked Daisy what her ideas were.

“Tom has always been saying that mankind need to unite to combat syndicalism. But he never said how. So I suggested that we move to Chicago and studied the syndicalists ourselves...see how they worked together. And then us humans do the same thing.”

“And I told her,” Tom’s irritation being obvious, “that if we copy their methods, we will become like them.”

“And what should we do instead?” she winced. “Just wait for syndicalism to swallow us all?”

Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.

"Daisy, the Red Scare is over now," he said earnestly.

She stared Gatsby down.

Gatsby got the message and changed his tune. "It doesn't matter any more. Just tell him the truth--that you never loved him--and it's all wiped out forever."

She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing--and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late.

"You never loved him."

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now--isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I do love him once--but I loved you too."

Gatsby's eyes opened and closed.

"You loved me TOO?" he repeated.

"Even that's a lie," said Tom savagely. "She didn't know you were alive. Why,--there're things between Daisy and me that you'll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget."

The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.

"I want to speak to Daisy alone," he insisted. "She's all excited now----"

"Even alone I can't say I never loved Tom," she admitted in a pitiful voice. "It wouldn't be true."

She turned to her husband.

"As if it mattered to you," she said.

"Of course it matters. I'm going to take better care of you from now on."

"You don't understand," said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. "You're not going to take care of her any more."

"I'm not?" Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could afford to control himself now. "Why's that?"

“Because…I’m tired of you.” Daisy said, with perceptible reluctance. “Since you have a mistress, it’s only fair that I have a lover. I still want to be with you, but I can’t leave my past behind.”

"Nonsense.”

"She’s leaving you," Gatsby said with a visible effort.

"She's not leaving me!" Tom's words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby. "Certainly not for a common swindler who'd have to steal the ring he put on her finger."

“I’m not leaving him. Or you.” Daisy’s voice was cold. “If you two want me, you have to share.”

Tom broke out, “I've made a little investigation into Gatsby’s affairs--and I'll carry it further tomorrow. Once it’s carried out, he and his associates will be eliminated and the Combined Syndicate will be left searching for new patsies, buying mankind some more time. Then, Daisy, you will realize that your schemes are just as foolish as your ideas.”

Flushed with his impassioned gibberish he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.

"You can suit yourself about that, old sport." said Gatsby steadily. “People have tried to kill me before.”

“I didn’t say I’d kill you,” said Tom.

Tom turned to us and spoke rapidly. “Gatsby has made many enemies. He generally dealt with them in the way that barbarians only deal with them, through violence. I know for a fact that he murdered Walter Chase.”

"What about him?" said Gatsby politely. "He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money. But he betrayed the Combined Syndicate. He had to be punished, old sport."

“"Don't you call me 'old sport'!" cried Tom. Gatsby said nothing. “Walter’s only ‘betrayal’ was simply to question your accounting practices. Your embezzlement was just small change," continued Tom slowly, "but you're willing to kill for small change."

Gatsby began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.

The voice, instead, turned softly towards me. “The best thing a girl can be in this world is a fool. A beautiful little fool. But God has cursed me. I am not a fool.”

And then Daisy left the building, alone. Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever courage she had had, were definitely gone.
 
Chapter 9
The morning of the funeral I went up to New York to meet the Combined Syndicate; I couldn't seem to reach them any other way. The door that I pushed open on the advice of an elevator boy was marked "The Swastika Holding Company" and at first there didn't seem to be any one inside.

But when I'd shouted "Hello" several times in vain an argument broke out behind a partition and presently a lovely Jewess wearing a pretty coat appeared at an interior door and scrutinized me with black hostile eyes.

"We’re busy coordinating a rally in Chicago," she said.

This was obviously untrue for, behind the partition, someone had begun to accuse someone else of being “an Autonomist spy”.

"Please tell the Syndicate that Mr. Carraway wants to talk."

At this moment a gunshot was heard, followed by a thud.

"Leave your name number on the desk," she said quickly. "We’ll call you once the rally is over."

"But I need to talk."

She took a step toward me and began to slide her hands indignantly up and down her hips.

"You young men think you can force your way in here any time," she scolded. "We're getting sickantired of it. When we say we’re busy with Chicago, we’re busy with ChiCAgo."

I mentioned Gatsby.

"Oh--h!" She looked at me over again. "Will you just--what was your name?" She drew me into her office, remarking in a reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered me a cigar. I refused.

"Our memory goes back to when we first met him." She then frowned. “Murdered a hundred workers in the Battle of Buffalo. The crime is still fresh in our minds.”

“He is sorry,” I protested.

“'Sorry' is an empty word, devoid of meaning and vigor. When he can bring those workers back to life, then maybe we might forgive and forget. Back then, he saw us as the enemy, and he willingly conducted his massacre.” She paused. “I see you're looking at our cuff buttons.”

I hadn't been looking at them, but I did now. They were composed of oddly familiar pieces of ivory.

"Finest specimens of human molars," she informed me.

"Well!" I inspected them. "That's a very interesting idea."

"Yeah." She flipped her sleeves up under her coat. “The next time we met Gatsby, he was a young major just out of the army and covered over with medals he got in the war. He was so hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform because he couldn't buy some regular clothes. He hadn't eat anything for a couple of days, and he asked for a job. 'Come on have some lunch with us,’ we said. He ate more than four dollars' worth of food in half an hour."

"Did you start him in business?" I inquired.

"Start him! We made him."

"Oh."

"We raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. We saw right away he would be a valuable military asset, in case the Americans decide to violate the cease-fire. And when he told us he wanted to throw away his medals we knew we could use him good. We got him to join up in the American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did some work for us up in Albany. We were so thick like that in everything--" She held up two bony fingers "--always together."

I wonder if this partnership involved assaulting Daisy’s butler.

"Now he's dead," I said after a moment. "You were his closest friend, so I know you'll want to come to his funeral this afternoon."

"We'd like to come."

"Well, come then."

She shook her head as her eyes filled with tears.

"We can't do it--we can't get mixed up in it," she said.

"There's nothing to get mixed up in. It's all over now."

"When a man gets killed we never like to get mixed up in it in any way. We keep out.” The Jewess paused. “Before I converted it was different--if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that's sentimental but I mean it--to the bitter end. But then I became we, and the collective is much wiser than an individual."

I saw that for some reason of her own she was determined not to come, so I stood up.

"Are you a college man?" she inquired suddenly.

After I answered in the affirmative, the Jewess said, “Gatsby used to smuggle some weapons over to us while he was alive, and, well...it wouldn't take up much of your time and you might pick up a nice bit of money. It happens to be a rather confidential sort of thing.”

I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might have been one of the crises of my life. But, because the offer was obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no choice except to cut her off there.

"I've got my hands full," I said. "I'm much obliged but I couldn't take on any more work." She only nodded and shook my hand.

"Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead," she suggested. "After that, let everything alone."

When I left her office the sky had turned dark and I got back to West Egg in a drizzle.
 
Chapter 9
One afternoon late in October, in the valley of ashes, I saw Daisy Buchanan. She was coordinating several militiamen, “Minutemen” as she called them, giving them training in combat and pep talks encouraging them to persist in the face of adversity. She was lecturing about Huey Long, and a glorious future of political and social unity that he may bring to the country once he gained power.

Suddenly she saw me and walked to me, holding out her hand.

"What's the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with me?"

"Yes. You know what I think of you."

"You're crazy, Nick," she said quickly. "Crazy as hell. I don't know what's the matter with you."

"Daisy," I inquired, "what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?"

She stared at me without a word and I knew I had guessed right about those missing hours. I started to turn away but she took a step after me and grabbed my arm.

"I told him the truth," she said. "He came to the door of the motel while I was getting ready to leave East Egg. He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn't told him who he should kill instead. His hand was on a revolver in his pocket every minute he was in the motel----" She broke off defiantly. "What if I did tell him? Those fellows had it coming."

“Tom may have had it coming. But Gatsby?”

“He threw dust into your eyes just like he did mine. But it’s just dust.”

There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it wasn't true.

"And if you think I didn't have my share of suffering--look here, I had to create a brand new life here in this uncultured wasteland. Couldn’t rely on my last name anymore, but had to ‘prove’ myself to a bunch of unworthy slobs. By God it was awful----"

I couldn't forgive her or like her but I saw that what she had done was, to her, entirely justified. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . .

I shook hands with her; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child.

“Tom’s right. Civilization is going to pieces.”
 
I had to terminate the timeline early so that's why I posted all the updates at once instead of the normal process of posting one update at a time. Consider Chapter 9 as the last "update", and it was an attempt to close up loose ends (so that's why it seemed rushed).

I hope you like it. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, praises, criticisms, etc., please post. It's kinda lonely to be the only person posting in this thread.
 
It's a very unique concept. Big fan of the Gatsby. Did you base bits of it from Kaisserreich?
 
Okay, this is... odd.

I wrote... literally this. Like, not word for word - I am in no way accusing you of plagiarism - but we both had the same idea.

A plausible Kaiserreich told through the Great Gatsby.

Now, I only chose one extract, the rest of the book was other things, but:

It's the exact extract you opened with.

I need a glass of water.

EDIT: Okay, I've just seen you were in fact inspired by it. I kind of rushed to point this out... now I feel silly.

Still, I'm flattered I inspired you like this!
 
It's a very unique concept. Big fan of the Gatsby. Did you base bits of it from Kaisserreich?
Yeah. The roots of this and "The Abwehr" was me trying to create a Plausible Kaiserreich, so the references to the Kaiserreich universe was intentional. One thing that did influence this timeline was trying to come up with an origin story of the Combined Syndicate that logically follows from the main, defining event in the Kaiserreich mod (the foundation Commune of France).

EDIT: Okay, I've just seen you were in fact inspired by it. I kind of rushed to point this out... now I feel silly.

Still, I'm flattered I inspired you like this!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.
 
Bonus Update - When I worked on this timeline, I had a small minor detail that I wanted to mention about Jordan, but was unable to do so (and thus the detail was left out). I decided to write this bonus update to "canonize" that detail, and as an oddity, the update also provides an explanation for Daisy's "odd" behavior in the 'later' chapters.

So, enjoy this belated update.

Chapter 1
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Daisy and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to her from the "Saturday Evening Post"--the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.

When I came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.

"To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our very next issue."

Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.

"Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to bed."

"Jordan's going to attend an Abwehr briefing tomorrow," explained Daisy, "over in Berlin!"

"Oh,--you're Jordan Baker."

I knew now why her face was familiar--its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from the Combined Syndicates’“high-priority target” lists.

I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, about her sending false reports to the Abwehr to gain illegitimate promotions.

For Jordan was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage against her peers, and given this unwillingness I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard jaunty body.

It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply--I was casually sorry, and then I forgot.

"Good night," she said softly. "Wake me at eight, won't you."

"If you'll get up."

"I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon."

"Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of--oh--fling you together. You know--lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing----"

"A boat would be nice," said Jordan looking at the Presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling. "But I prefer for us to be locked up in that old restaurant."

Daisy shook her head violently. "It's too hot over there."

"Hot and small--yes," said Jordan, "but full of memories."

"What place is that?" I asked.

"The old Metropole.

"The old Metropole," Jordan brooded gloomily. "Filled with faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can't forget so long as I live the night the Combined Syndicate shot Rosy there. It was six of us at the table and Rosy had eat and drunk a lot all evening. When it was almost morning the waiter came up to him with a funny look and says somebody wants to speak to him outside. 'All right,' says Rosy and begins to get up and I pulled him down in his chair.

" 'Let the bastards come in here if they want you, Rosy, but don't you, so help me, move outside this room.'

"It was four o'clock in the morning then, and if we'd of raised the blinds we'd of seen daylight."

"Did he go?" I asked innocently.

"Sure he went,"--Jordan flashed at me indignantly--"He turned around in the door and says, 'Don't let that waiter take away my coffee!' Then he went out on the sidewalk and they shot him three times in his full belly and drove away.

Lucky sod. Wished I got shot too."

Daisy nodded in agreement. "Well, I've had a very bad time too, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything."

"You see I think everything's terrible," Daisy went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so--the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything." She laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated--God, I'm sophisticated!"

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society with Jordan.
 
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