I really want to do a Story soon about a Prolonged Drought accompanied by steadily rising Fuel Prices.....

But in the meantime, an old story idea keeps coming back to taunt me.

You've all seen stories about Alternate Universes.....

But most of them are a Secret.

Think of "Sliders" or "Stargate" {Stargate bored me to tears...So I didn't watch it.}

First of all, imagine a World just like ours until sometime in the Fall of 1962.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was in October of 1962.

In this Alternate Universe there was a Nuclear Exchange in December of 1962.

A limited Nuclear exchange in 1962 doesn't get the population anywhere near as low as I'd like it for story purposes--So they also had several different strains of Influenza hit them pretty hard.

The US Population (in what was the Original America--add in some from Canada, Mexico and Central America) is around 95 Million--about what it was in 1910 (as opposed to about 310 million today).

This US also annexed Canada and Central America (Most Third World Countries were hit far harder by the Epidemics than the US and are Largely empty--except where Colonizing Americans have moved in...)

The folks over there aren't Primitive.....

Well read the first section of Chapter One.....

But the thing is, building Portals proves very easy when you know how.....

And pretty soon going to visit "Earth II"--or whatever you want to call it--is far easier and cheaper than flying to Vegas for a Three-Day Weekend.....

I think some of the Cultural Clashes (and Personal Clashes) between the two Americas would be rather amusing to read about.

Well, read the small intro and tell me what you think--and any Thoughts/Ideas that come to mind.

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Déj* New


Chapter One





Some think that “The Butterfly Effect” means that sometimes things are in such a precarious state of equilibrium that even the breeze from an insect’s wings or a tiny displaced droplet of moisture or a single misplaced grain of sand can wield enormous influence on the subsequent unfolding of events.

That isn’t precisely correct. “Fate” or whatever one wishes to call it, is always in the most unstable and precarious state that one can imagine. One cannot find a mote of dust or a particle of moisture or a tiny movement of a butterfly’s wing that isn’t absolutely pivotal in that particular timeline.

Move anything a few microns and the differences will multiply exponentially. In a generation or two the differences will have grown to the point that the new World will be all but unrecognizable in comparison to the old one.

Some Physics Theorist tried to work around some of the weirdness of Quantum Mechanics by proposing “The Many Worlds Theory”. The theory hypothesizes that every time that a potential crossroads is reached, the Universes splits in two—that there is an Alternate Universe somewhere for every hypothetical possibility.

This poses a number of Theoretical and Philosophical conundrums. Modern Theorists believe that the Universe doesn’t split every time that it theoretically could but only relatively rarely.

Just exactly what causes a Universe to bifurcate isn’t known. What is known is that Universes that have split relatively recently and that don’t differ too radically tend to lie closer together. It also seems that when they are in actual contact, that the bonds between them strengthens and the energy required to travel from one to the other becomes rather low.

The Alternate Universe that has come to be known, as “Two” or “Beta” was just such an Alternate Universe.

In our Universe, now generally referred to as, “Prime”, the population in the United States grew from around 170 million in 1960 to over 300 million in 2010.

On Beta the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 led to a Nuclear Exchange in December of that same year. Odds are, whatever caused the two timelines to split so dramatically happened a few days or weeks earlier. Since so many Beta records were damaged or destroyed in the war, there is no way to trace the precise moment the Universes split.

The aftermath of the Nuclear War was not quite as drastic as some had thought it would be, but many people did die. History was forever diverted into another channel on that Earth.

After the war, Beta had seven major Influenza epidemics—with seven different strains of the virus. None of them were civilization destroyers, but they did have the effect of further reducing Two’s population relative to Prime’s.

US Beta had about 95 million people in 2010—about the same as it was in 1910. Much of Beta’s Third World and Europe suffered even larger population reductions. Something also seemed to have lowered the fertility of the Beta Humans somewhat.

Much Scientific progress is a function of how many top-rate scientists there are and how much research facilities they’re given. But much can also be said about efficiency.

Two neither had the population base to comb through for potential Geniuses nor did they have the resources to fund the smaller crop of scientists that they were able to field.

What they did have was motivation. The stimulation of wave after wave of new, deadly and seemingly inexhaustible strains of Influenza caused them to become very good Biologists, Geneticists and Epidemiologists.

The transistor industry never really got started again after the war. Computer inventors working with Vacuum Tubes made much better use of parallel processing than Prime ever did. Then they did some groundbreaking work on tube-based quantum computers that they were never able to fully exploit.

Their Biologists however, managed to create artificial neurons and to weave them into very large Organic Computers. The Brains were very useful in decoding Genomes and other task that were largely a function of number crunching on Prime.

Programming was more an art and less of a science with the bigger Organic Computers. There were more emergent phenomena and more surprises. Some thought that the larger brains might be sentient in their own vague dreamy way.

At any rate, Prime discovered Beta in 2016. Within a few years moving back and forth between the two Alternate Earths was commonplace. Almost every city in America with a population of over 50 000 had a walk-through gate to the corresponding—though generally much smaller city on Two.

There were Inter-Dimensional Portals on the interstate highways where for less than the price of a good Restaurant meal for two, one could buy a round-trip ticket to go to Beta and then return—or vice-versa.

There were interconnecting Railroads and Locks on the Rivers so barges could pass between Worlds.

Also, after a few years the Gates or Portals didn’t seem to require any energy or upkeep to keep them open. They seemed to simply become an established feature of the landscape.

Prime’s Governments and many of their people had a tendency to look at US Beta as a sort of Third World Colony.

(So did many other Governments, but since most Beta Countries had a much smaller percentage of the population of their Prime counterparts than US Beta, it was much less of an issue.)

The inhabitants of US Beta—and US Beta had come to include what had been Canada, Mexico and Central America—were rustic but they were not primitive, backward or even poor for the most part…

And they began to resent the intrusions into their affairs more and more.

.....RVM45