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Post by rvm45 on Mar 30, 2023 12:45:15 GMT -6
Chapter Twenty-Two 50 912
1862
A Warehouse in Managua Nicaragua
Quern and his fellow troop of transmigrators could not simply materialize as if they had teleported from some SF Starship. It would have vastly simplified things if they could have.
When Quern had transmigrated the first time, he had slipped into the body of little Quern. There was no ethical dilemma. Little Quern was already dead. He had no further use for the body ergo, Quern I might as well claim squatting rights to the body that fit him so well.
None of Quern’s crew had been alive in 1862. Even if they had been, there was an ethical dilemma about seizing a body from a sentient; living host.
There was a certain amount of slop and uncertainty about the date of emergence and Quern could have multiple Temple Maidens making straight his way.
There was no male equivalent to the Temple Maidens—though that was purely an aesthetic choice on Quern’s part, since he designed the Temple Maidens in great detail.
Temple Maidens were cross-fertile with humans though.
Temple Maidens were universally very dark, with very African facial features. However, when they mated with a human—even if he was a very dark-skinned human—their hybrid children would all bear a certain resemblance.
They had the extra thumbs and golden slit-pupiled eyes of the Temple Maidens. They had the long-pointed ears with the twin ear holes—a “Woofer” and a “Tweeter”—of the Temple Maidens.
They had a Temple Maiden’s 190-year life expectancy and the Temple Maiden’s minimum IQ of 200—though many had higher IQs.
They had the same hair; the color of ginger hair washed in henna. Though the Temple Maidens shaved their heads, they would have the red hair if they chose to let it grow.
The skin tone of the hybrids was a mellow bronze—like an Olde Tyme bodybuilder, all tanned-up for contest day—before spray-on tans became de rigueur—and their facial features were more consistent with Caucasian standards of beauty—though with traces of African heritage.
There would be no atavisms in future generations, due to recessive genes. The Temple Maiden genes replaced key human genes, on the human half of the chromosomes, with the new; improved genes.
Quern could have had selected Temple Maidens to serve as surrogate mothers to the bodies that he and the others would need to possess…
However, the choice was to move into the body while it still a small embryo—before it attained sentience—or wait until the host body was more developed and then displace a sentient being to steal their body.
Quern refused to take possession of an owned body, like some sort of unclean spirit. Nor did he enjoy the thought of starting life as a toothless mewling infant, unable to speak or control his bowel movements.
Fortunately, there was a third alternative.
A hybrid body was created, using either a sperm or egg cell from the transmigrator and mixing it with a half-genome of a Temple Maiden…
So genetically, each new host body was the son or daughter of the transmigrator. That let the transmigrators enjoy all the benefits of having an improved hybrid body.
Then the fertilized ovum was placed into one of the same artificial wombs that nurtured the first-generation Temple Maidens.
A Temple Maiden body grew from ovum to about the size and physical maturity of a 12-year-old; in about 11-months, without ever leaving the artificial womb.
Temple Maidens also matured at an accelerated rate. Quern chose to let his hybrid hosts’ bodies mature at a normal rate. If they aged from 12 to 20 in two years, then they would lose 5 or 6-years of longevity in consequence.
That meant that each consciousness would have to spend 6 or 7-months conscious, while inside an artificial womb.
A steady stream of drugs kept the consciousnesses in a dreamy; passive state. Otherwise, they might have become claustrophobic or at best, they might have been bored shitless.
************* ****************** *********************
The artificial wombs weren’t in the mortal warehouse, of course. As Jesus said, on Earth, moths and rust corrupt and thieves break through to steal. The artificial wombs were largely in a part of Otherwhen that Quern would find it increasingly difficult to access in the future—at least until the next mass transmigration.
However, as one after another artificial womb decanted its contents in quick succession, one after another amniotic-fluid-covered 12-year-old body appeared in the warehouse.
As each body appeared, a pair of Temple Maidens would clean up the new arrival and make sure that they were alright.
Quern hadn’t spent his time in vitro in drug-addled reverie. He had the artifact and he had the memories of Voice to thoroughly assimilate.
Nonetheless, once he set the parameters for the unprecedented mass transmigration—at least unprecedented in “The Modern Era”—and cast his javelin, he was cut off from almost all feedback from the outside world while in vitro.
He could only navel-gaze and count his neuroses—that and go over his long-term plans.
He gazed at all the people who he had brought along with him. Quite frankly, he was amazed.
There was Debra, of course, and their children. His father; mother and sister were there—along with Bertram and the traitorous Beauregard.
Jo-Jo; Elmira; Ronnie; Anya; Tosh and Terry were there.
G Gordon Liddy and his whole family were there.
He was surprised to see Bill Holmes and son; as well as all the famous gun-writers that he’d contacted: Elmer Keith; Jeff Cooper; Skeeter Skelton and Major Nonte were there—as well as many of their spouses; children and other kin folks.
Tom, the orderly, was there, with his wife; children and grandchildren.
Joe Aaron and his wife were there. Aaron had been roughly interrogated, several times, about his relationship to Quern and that may have contributed to his fatal car accident in 1992.
Then there was Miss Anderson—sane again and relieved of the compulsion to fondle herself continually, for the first time in over three decades.
Quern had meant for that to be a short-term compulsion; but somehow it had formed a resonance with some of her deep-seated neuroses and she had to be placed in a straight jacket sometimes, so she could heal from rubbing herself raw.
“Bring me a cigarette,” Quern said, once he was coherent.
“Is that a good idea, so fresh from the womb?” his attendant asked.
“Get me a cigarette,” Quern repeated patiently.
“Gaw! That is foul!” Quern said.
‘Note to self: Start a cigarette-making industry capable of producing good quality cigarettes, soon!’ Quern thought to himself.
Quern only half finished the rank; foul-tasting cigarette, before he cast it aside in disgust.
“The cigars are better,” his attendant consoled him.
“Why are there so many people here?” Quern queried the Artifact.
“You gave the instruction to transmigrate your friends and kin—and anyone who might suffer as a result of having associated with you. I had the power to gaze about 25-years into your future…” the Artifact replied.
“In lieu of your vanishing—and other preternatural acts—the government and TPTB went after anyone who had known or associated with you, with great diligence—even people that you had only met once or twice—especially if their life-course shifted radically after your meeting. The result is what you see here,” The Artifact added.
************** **************** ********************
Quern was so disgusted that he wanted to spit—purely as an editorial comment.
He had had one over-riding goal, in his first transmigration. He wanted to disseminate enough information about how to make firearms, particularly his well-thought-out revolvers and semi-automatic pistols—his designs were well-thought-out for the purpose of cottage and home manufacture—that the whole idea of total gun prohibition became all-but-impossible to enforce.
Then he wanted to inspire a chosen few to follow the solitary path of becoming kensei.
Along the way, he had helped some friends and accumulated funds to push his pro-gun; anti-communist and anti-government agenda…
And he had pretty well accomplished most of that.
He wanted to retire from public life and go somewhere isolated—perhaps Northern Idaho. He thought that he had a fair chance of persuading Debra to accompany him. If not, he was prepared to go alone.
He had longed to be a hermit for two lifetimes now.
Quern sourly concluded that his longed-for life of solitude was nowhere in sight—at least, not for the next several serial lifetimes.
Quern loathed Altruism. Altruism held that one had an iron-clad obligation to help any random stranger, even to the degree of harming oneself—just because.
Crabby old Ayn Rand had said that there was nothing wrong with giving a spare dime to a beggar. (In those days, a dime would buy something.) That was with the proviso that one had a dime to spare.
However, letting an arrogant beggar, who felt entitled to your dime demand, and then receive one of your dimes—even if you were rolling in dimes and generosity—was a cardinal sin. It was a genuflection to the Heathen God of Altruism.
Nor did Quern subscribe to either of the comic-book bromides:
“With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility.”
Or,
“The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few.”
Quern now had great power and he felt that he owed nothing to the inhabitants of this timeline—except to let them follow their geas without wrongfully interfering with their destiny.
The thing was: TPTB would follow him here—they would arrive, on or about 2062.
Quern and his entourage were no longer limited to a single lifetime. When TPTB arrived in force, they could pick up and move again. However, left unchecked the power of TPTB would grow linearly while the amount of territory under their control would grow geometrically—exponentially.
Within a couple of transmigrations, there would be nowhere within reach for them to migrate to, that wasn’t already under TPTB’s iron thumb.
************ *************** ********************
Quern cleared his throat and addressed the throng:
“People, I am sorry that I brought many of you here without asking your leave. I had no opportunity. Most of you had either been executed by agents of the state, or were undergoing torture and interrogation at the moment you were grabbed,” Quern said.
“That being the case, I would reckon that you will forgive me for snatching you and bringing you here. All of you were asked, by the Voice in your head, if you consented to transmigrate—you just weren’t given any details until after the event,” He continued.
“People, you now know everything that I can tell you about the mysterious Backers and TPTB. You all have enhanced intelligence—IQ’s of 300 at the very least. You can all mentally picture 7-S; 3-T spaces in your minds,” Quern said.
“You might think, that because we are arriving in this timeline with almost 200 transmigrators and over one-million Temple Maidens, that we are far more powerful that TPTB,” Quern said.
“Not so much. My power to transmigrate is on a rather long cool-down at the moment—and when I use it, it is an ‘all-or-nothing-phenomenon.’ If I left anyone behind when I moved, then I have severed all possibility of future interactions with them. We have come to a permanent parting of the ways,” he said.
“We’re here and here we must make our stand—with no logical reason to look for outside assistance. TPTB can travel back and forth between parallel timelines. Even if we beat all of them—they can send a second wave; a third wave—etcetera.” Quern said.
“So, what is our plan?” Debra demanded—partly rhetorically, to let Quern make his point.
“We need to dig in—get entrenched in preparation for the coming invasion. We need to invent new weapons and we need to vastly increase our understanding and capabilities in the 17-S; 5-T Continuum.”
“I don’t expect all or even most of our breakthroughs to come from y’all. Epiphanies and ‘Eureka! Moments’ are very rare and unpredictable. However, if we start colleges and search far and wide for gifted students—particularly in mathematics and physics—enhance their intellects and show them the theoretical work up till the 2040’s—in 200-years, they should be able to come up with something—a lot of somethings,” Quern shrugged.
“Everyone may not be onboard with what I wish to do. There will only be three prohibitions placed on those who choose to leave—and those who choose to stay as well,” Quern said.
“Number One: No deliberately working at cross-purposes to The League.
“Number Two: No talking about League secrets.
“Number Three: It is 1862, as y’all know. The War of Northern Aggression is going strong. You cannot help the Confederacy—though you’re welcome to try. Trust me, we’ve ran too many simulations on this,” Quern said.
“If we had arrived 20-years sooner and had built up our industrial base…but no,” Quern said.
“No one is allowed to go North and aid the Federals.”
“Outside of what I think are three very reasonable restrictions, y’all are free moral agents. Feel free to walk away now—or at any time in the future,” Quern said.
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Post by rvm45 on Apr 9, 2023 17:42:16 GMT -6
Chapter Twenty-Three
53 137
Quern’s first order of business was to start his Railroad. Some of his precursors had lain a bit of rail here and there—about 180-miles worth, when added all together.
Now, it was 1862 and like Saul of Tarsus, Quern was ready to put away childish things.
He organized over a dozen large rail-laying gangs and a score of smaller gangs. Each of the large gangs was capable—in the beginning—of laying 100-miles of rail per year—and the standard would increase every year. The small gangs could lay between 35 and 50-miles in a year.
Quern wanted a double spinal column of Rails, running on both the East and West Coasts from Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula to Columbia; Ecuador and Venezuela. Then he wanted a rich network of East-West short-lines serving the interior and connecting the East Coast and West Coast Railroads.
Of course, as with many other things in life, a half-completed Railroad can be spectacularly useless and a huge money drain.
Quern was in no danger of going bankrupt any time soon.
He had discovered, that when he moved from one timeline to another, that very briefly, he was connected to the Energy of Continuous Creation.
To the Pillars of Creation, the Conservation of Mass/Energy is no more than a well-meant, and a bit naïve, suggestion.
Quern had used the power of continuous creation to make rails; plates; anchors; switches; etcetera—as well as phantastic quantities of gold; silver and platinum coins.
Heavier rail tends to last longer. It is sturdier and steadier. Trains can go faster on the steadier rails. The wider foot distributes the weight better and saves wear-and-tear on ties.
In the old days, 90 or even 80-pound rail was used. The weight given, is per yard of track.
Quern had seen a few of the ancient 90-pound rails on little-used sidings. During his time on the Railroad, 139-pound rail was the gold standard—though some lines with less priority were still using lighter rail.
The heaviest rail that Quern had ever heard of was 156.2-pound rail that was used on some lines in Europe.
Quern had stockpiled enough 177-pound rail; along with plates; anchors; ties and switches, to build the Railroad of his dreams, and to maintain it for the next 450-years.
Rails, plates; anchors; ties—whatever—are made to be cost effective. Sure, better materials might perform better in the abstract, but did it make enough difference to pay for itself?
Every piece of material that Quern had stored in otherwhen, was the very best alloy or other material possible—with no regard for cost. There was no cost. If doubling the “cost” of the materials will net a 1% gain in performance or durability—go for it!
In an era where most rail was 80-pounds and plates and anchors were unheard of, Quern was laying 177-pound rail.
He ran few trains the first few years and the trains that he did run, were contemporary steam engines.
However, over the next few years, Quern’s agents were patenting a number of devices in America; Central America and Europe. It might take a genius to figure it all out, sight unseen.
In 1880 though, when Quern’s rails were largely lain—at least over most of Central America and much of Columbia; Ecuador; Venezuela and Guyana. Quern opened two factories to turn out diesel locomotives—containing all of the best features of the historical engines from about 1945—it didn’t pay to run too far ahead of oneself. He also produced other rolling stock, including Pullman cars.
Now he had rock-solid rails and trains that could run like blue-striped racer snakes.
Still, that might beg the question: in late 19th century Central America, what was there to transport?
********** *************** ******************
The second portion of Quern’s plans, was to use many of his Temple Maidens to open orphanages and schools all over Mexico; Central America; Columbia; Ecuador and Venezuela—as well as lesser numbers in nearby countries that he hoped to annex eventually.
In 1862 8% of the children in the affected region started kindergarten in a Gaeilge School. As with Latin Schools, the whole of the curriculum was taught in Gaeilge.
Quern intended to change the official—and unofficial—language of Latin America to Gaeilge.
Why? First of all, because he could. Second, the decline of the Gaeilge Language had always saddened him. Third, the more differences between this and nearby timelines, the harder TPTB would have to work, both to find this side-pocket of time and to transport men and materials here.
All of Quern’s Temple Maidens could tweak and download. In fact, any Temple Maiden could raise someone’s IQ by 89-points, 10 points more than the old Quern II. They weren’t limited to just a single instance either. While 89-total points was their limit, if they raised someone a lesser amount, they could add more points later on.
Everyone who went one day to Gaeilge School, got a 49-point boost to their IQ; plus, a perfect reading; writing and speaking knowledge of both Gaeilge and Gaelic. They would always have a life-long preference to communicate in Gaeilge when at all possible.
People who had attended the schools would often shout:
“Tá tú i Meiriceá anois, speal Gaeilge!” at anyone they heard speaking Spanish.
“You’re in America now, speak Gaeilge!”
Of course, there were tweaks, so that these language prodigies would hide their light under a bushel for a while, lest people should be taken aback.
The tweaks were given on the first day, because there could be many a slip betwixt the cup and lip. Once the student had his IQ and his fluency in the new tongue of the land, he would always have them.
8% was a rather small amount, but every year the percentage increased by over 3%.
By 1880, 18-years later, over two-thirds of the youngsters in the territory attended Gaeilge School. Of course, that meant that over 66% of the kindergarteners, starting kindergarten in 1880, were attending Gaeilge School. The percentage went down a bit for each preceding year.
Of course, other large groups of people got the Gaeilge download—for instance, anyone who worked on Quern’s Railroad; on any of the Temple Maiden’s Plantations or Quern’s factories.
18-years had a special significance in terms of Quern’s educational system.
Kindergarten—8th Grade—9-Years High School—4-Years College Bachelor’s Degree—5-years
Quern thought that since few college graduates ever attended Graduate School, that an extra year to fully cover all the basics was a good thing.
At any rate, if one started in kindergarten, it would take 18-years to graduate from college—having taken all of one’s classes within the Temple Maiden Private School System.
How did poor farmers and peons pay to send their children to private schools?
Well they didn’t. Quern wasn’t opposed to free education—though he resented either parents or students arrogantly asserting that they had a Right to free education.
Quern objected, most strenuously, to the State robbing people at gunpoint, to give their neighbor’s children “Free Public Edumacashun.” “Free” Public Edumacashun was simply a pretext to let the State download all sorts of Statist propaganda into young minds.
Did Quern’s schools indoctrinate? Hell yes! However, no one was required to attend Quern’s schools. People didn’t have their money extorted under the title “taxation” to pay for Quern’s schools—and besides, Quern’s curriculum tried hard to teach logic and rational analysis, so the introverted ones would have the proper tools to critically evaluate what they had been taught.
However, one could attend a Temple Maiden high school without having attended a Temple Maiden Grade School and one could attend one of the new, but prestigious, Temple Maiden Universities without having attended a Temple Maiden High School.
In fact, High Schools and five Universities were built on the same day as construction started on Quern’s kindergartens.
Nonetheless, in 1880, the first batch of graduates who had attended Gaeilge School every year they were in school, graduated college.
Quern had attended Purdue University in two lifetimes. He was very impressed with Collegiate Gothic buildings covered in ivy. He especially liked the Cary Quadrangle dorm. He also grooved on the more modern Math Sciences building, that looked like it was sitting on stilts.
Managua University was kinda like Quern had told a gifted architect to design a college with many oversized classrooms and dorm buildings, more or less patterned on Cary Quadrangle—only make them regular pentagons rather than rectangles…and throw in a few Math Science buildings.
Quern—or Quern’s agents, to be more precise—recruited some of the world’s top professors to come and teach at Quern’s universities—especially the Managua University, that was the flag ship of the Temple Maiden colleges.
The best teachers or the most original thinkers, weren’t always the most highly regarded—but Quern’s agents had ways to ferret them out.
Quern offered academic freedom; extraordinarily high pay; the chance to get in on the ground floor of something extraordinary…
And for the aged and aging professors, Quern offered to add another 50-years to their life expectancy—while reinvigorating the physical man.
It didn’t matter if a few turned him down. They would be prevented from ever sharing what was said to them.
Mathematicians; philosophers; mechanical engineers; physicists; chemists; physicians; linguists; anthropologists—all sorts of professors with useful knowledge came to teach at Quern’s universities.
It didn’t matter if they spoke German; Danish; Croatian; Persian; Hindi; Korean or whatever. After a tweak, not only would their IQ increase by 89-points, but they would also be able to speak Gaeilge as if they had grown up speaking it.
Quern’s colleges would give him one probable source of the flood of innovations that he intended to flood the civilized world with shortly.
************* **************** ********************
1885
It was time to announce the formation of the SCM—Stáit Chónaidhme Mheiriceá.
The SCM included the Yucatan Peninsula up to the narrowing. Quern wanted to annex all of Mexico, but he still didn’t feel comfortable antagonizing the NKS. They might get all wet and soggy; remarkably saline and damned hard to get along with, with a growing federation on their Southern Border.
At least, Quern consoled himself, he had the oil fields of Campeche. In another 20-years—or less—he could endure a pissing contest with the NKS and it would be fine to annex the rest of Mexico then.
It might seem all-but-unprecedented for a sovereign state like Mexico to voluntarily cede a big chunk of territory to a neighboring kingdom.
The Temple Maidens all had IQs of at least 300. They had access to almost limitless reserves of gold and silver to bribe and cajole. They had intelligence gathering—and for extreme cases, assassination abilities—on par with the storybook ninja.
They offered honest politician honest and forthright benefits. They bribed and blackmailed crooked politicians.
Quern’s agents had been convinced that the ceding of territory benefitted them now, and would continue to benefit them in the future.
Outside of a “vow of silence” that could not be broken, the Temple Maidens never forced someone to act against their will—unless or until, someone tried to betray them—then anything was fair game.
Being able to boost the IQ of your trustworthy allies by 89-points was also a tremendous boost. Politics isn’t solely, or even mainly, about intelligence—but intelligence often comes in handy.
The proven reserves of Venezuela were greater than the reserves of the whole Arabian Peninsula—but the oil of Venezuela was sticky; viscous and a pain to refine.
This problem had been solved in the latter half of the 20th century and Quern meant to solve it while still in the 19th century—but not quite yet. In the meantime, it would be easier to refine the sweet oil from Campeche to feed the growing number of internal combustion engines that Quern was about to manufacture.
But still, freight trains need freight or they serve no useful purpose.
Irish immigrants and local farmers—both Indian and the descendants of Spanish immigrants or black slaves—tended huge plantations.
They grew oranges; lemons; limes and grapefruit. He didn’t wait for the Big Mike bananas to get hit with blight, before going to the Cavendish banana. The Cavendish proved much easier to ship and to keep than the old Big Mike.
It was a truism, that when you are far enough South to grow oranges, you are too far South to grow apples.
Quern had genetically altered Apples—Granny Smith; Red Delicious; Pink Lady and Winesap—that were capable of growing and prospering in a tropical climate.
He also grew modified peaches; pears; plums; cherries and apricots—as well as grapes; strawberry; blackberry and gooseberry.
He also had large pecan and walnut trees that thrived in the tropics.
The fruit was sold as fruit. The fruits that wouldn’t ship well—like peaches; plums; strawberry; and blackberry—were canned or made into jellies; wines and brandies.
Some plantations grew peanuts. Some grew cotton and some grew tobacco.
The tobacco companies made cigarettes and cigars that were duplicates of the brands produced by the big American companies in Quern’s day.
Quern wanted to avoid any and all drug-prohibition—nipping it in the bud, so to speak.
There were plantations that grew row upon row of marijuana plants. Factories turned the pot plants into cigarettes; cigarettes consisting of pot and tobacco mixed; pipe tobacco; blocks of hashish and THC pills.
There were also plantations that grew opium poppies and made morphine as well as places that grew psilocybin mushrooms or turned out LSD-25.
Quern had distributed several big gross of metal-working treadle lathes and turning out high quality pocket watches in little one-to-five-man shops became common.
Some foreigners coveted and collected the well-made watches.
In 1882, Quern had also cranked-up his arms factories. They went public in 1885.
Quern quickly armed his military with what was the equivalent of a greatly improved SKS Rifle, chambered in 7mm TCU and equipped with 12-round, detachable box magazines—and ghost-ring aperture sights.
His army’s sidearm was the Star BM—configured; .40 ACP pistols; that were pure Browning on the inside. Quern thought long and hard about using the .45 ACP, but many of the troops were small-statured people.
He produced a raft of other firearms products: H&R style revolvers in all calibers; copies of the Ruger Security-Six and the Ruger Redhawk.
He made a “.38 Super” that was a true .38 instead of a .36. He chambered it into an all-steel gun that externally resembled a S&W Model 39—but was a Browning design on the inside.
Then he made a high-capacity pistol that resembled the S&W Model 5906—but even though it used the slightly fatter cartridge, he managed to make the grip three-sixteenths of an inch smaller in circumference.
The pistol had a 3-shot burst along with a forward folding grip like the Beretta 93-R, and while the standard magazines held 16-rounds, there were extended 21-round magazines and a wire shoulder-stock available.
He manufactured Buck Lockbacks; Balisongs of various descriptions and Western Bowies.
He also manufactured a bunch of toys: Etch-a-Sketch; Rubik’s Cube; Slinkys—along with Hula Hoops and Socko-paddles.
He printed brightly colored children’s books—copied from the same books that he had read as a child—before children’s books became a battlefield for ideology.
The SCM plantations grew produce. The breweries made Scotch; brandy; tequila; mescal and wine. The big dairy centers made cheese. The factories manufactured all sorts of products.
The the Railroads shipped them—first to the coastal railways and then up or down the coast to fairly large cities on the coast.
It was good that the nation had shipyards, because there was a market for many of their products in the NKS and Europe.
The NKS and Canada wanted some of Quern’s dramatically improved locomotives and other rolling stock.
It wasn’t out of the question to ship the locomotives by boat—particularly if they were only partially assembled…
But it would have been so much easier to simply roll the stock through Mexico to Texas—if Mexico only had an advanced network of Railroads.
That rationalized a major Railroad building frenzy in Mexico.
Ordinarily, someone building a large-amount of non-portable property, in a third-world nation, would be at risk of having it seized and “Nationalized” at some point.
Quern’s group already had large numbers of the Mexican politicians in their back pocket.
All of the Mexican Railroad workers would get the Gaeilge download and the 89-point IQ boost—and they had to swear loyalty to the Railroad Union.
Investors all along the Railways showed the local people how to make goods and produce that could be sent to lucrative markets via the Railroad.
Letting Quern build his Railroad through Mexico, with the consent and with the aid of the NKS government, was equivalent to handing Quern Mexico on a silver platter.
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Post by feralferret on Apr 9, 2023 21:52:18 GMT -6
Quite a chapter. It will be interesting to see how well this alternate reality works.
Thanks for the chapter.
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Post by rvm45 on Apr 10, 2023 14:55:40 GMT -6
Chapter Twenty-Four
55 960
“There is something that I’ve been meaning to discuss with you,” Quern said to his father.
“You know that I transmigrated into Little Quern. These are scenes that I still carry from my first life,’ Quern said.
He shared scenes from his first life. He showed them to his father with as much fidelity as if his father had lived them himself.
There was the boredom and general feeling of malaise that come from being groomed from the age of 5, to be a personal masseuse for his father. There was the deep-seated shame and frustration of being forced to wear sissy-shorty-pants every summer. There was the humiliation of having his hair shorn.
He shared how his father hadn’t missed a day, bitching about Quern’s muttonchop sideburns, from when Quern grew them in 1975 until his father died in 2006.
There was his father, all red-faced, threatening to ban Quern from the family if he caught him dating a black girl again.
“You aren’t him. The fact that I survived the tonsillectomy in my timeline, and your little Quern did not, proves that there are significant differences between the timelines. Until I accessed the artifact, I had no idea how deeply the differences ran.”
“You were given a set of scripts about head-rubs; sissy-shorty-pants and crewcuts and you were compelled to act them out—just to give me the satisfaction of defying you. I don’t know why the system thought that I needed those strokes to my ego, in order to prime my creative pump. You were forced to do things that you probably wouldn’t have done on your own, if you weren’t under compulsion—or at least, you might have gone about them quite differently.”
“And the things that you did under compulsion caused me to dislike you and avoid dealing with you. I am sorry,” Quern said.
His father had not been a deep thinker in either of Quern’s lives. He had roughly normal intelligence and his life experiences had made him very pragmatic and non-speculative. He was the epitome of what Ayn Rand had labelled “a non-conceptual mentality.”
Now though, he had had the mind-shattering experience of transmigration and he had all the mental powers that Quern II had started with—though of all the people, only Quern III; Debra and Jo-Jo had full-artifacts. The others had the briefest tip of a cybernetic tentacle in their brains.
At any rate, the man before him was far more able to understand than he would have been before his transmigration.
“I have been given a second chance. You’re even luckier than me. You’re on your third chance to set things right. Will those people who killed your mother and my grandchildren follow us to this place?” Father asked.
“Aye, eventually,” Quern replied.
“When they do—spike them!” Father said.
************ ************** ********************
1897
Over the last twelve years, Quern had quietly annexed Mexico without unduly upsetting the NKS.
He extended his Railroad into Texas—a vast all-inclusive network. Quern had never been to Texas in his first life and he had only visited it briefly in his second life.
He had a vast respect for Texas though. It was so big and so Texan.
Quern had lived in both Mississippi and Alabama in his first life. He had been a frequent visitor to Bertram’s family in Georgia. He had an abiding respect for those three states.
He had nothing against Louisiana, but he had no particular affection for it either. Nonetheless, if he wanted to extend his Railroad and his economic benefits to Georgia; Alabama and Mississippi, he must needs build it through Louisiana as well.
He eventually wanted to include Kentucky and Tennessee as well as parts of Southern Indiana—and his OCD soul wouldn’t be content until he had the Evansville to Chicago line and the Louisville to Chicago lines—the old C&EI Line and the old Monon Line.
Quern had no desire to annex all or part of the NKS. The territory that he had resolved to occupy would be quite enough of a headache, thank you!
It was possible to groom the NKS to be a much more tolerant neighbor though.
Quern’s Railroads employed a great number of people. The Temple Maiden’s Pentecostal Holiness Church fell onto fertile ground in most parts of the South.
Gaeilge Schools sprung up all over Dixie. Poor children even had their parents compensated, in some instances, in order for their children to attend the prestigious private schools and get the best education the late 1800’s had to offer…
And of course, the children were taught in Gaeilge—acquiring a second language. They were taught logic and Laissez Faire Capitalism. They were taught to believe that bearing arms was the most fundamental human right. They were taught to question authority and they had an extensive working knowledge of the KJV Bible—both in American and in Gaeilge.
Many of the erstwhile planter families were displaced and lost their all during the war and in the chaotic and arbitrary rule of the carpetbagger reconstruction occupation.
Quern used some of his vast storehouses of gold to bail out and support some of the old, but newly impoverished, aristocratic families. He recruited some to move South. He allowed others to keep and even expand their plantations and businesses.
Thirty years after The War of Northern Aggression had ended, some of Quern’s subsidized aristocrats were already in their second generation and would soon be in the third generation of solidarity with Quern.
Quern—or the Temple Maiden organization—six of one, half-a-dozen of the other—had become a local and largely hidden PTB in the South—and not only the South.
Quern’s mother had been heard to remark, on several occasions, that she couldn’t see why the Southerners had no qualms about sleeping with black people, but didn’t want to eat with them.
Many of the legislatures struck down laws against miscegenation. The golden-eyed double-thumbed Temple Maidens were considered a different race altogether…
And many young Southern Aristocrats could imagine far worse fates than marrying a Temple Maiden and acquiring her bountiful dowry.
Quern also financed a number of factories in the South.
Meanwhile, Temple Maidens travelled far and wide, giving young children their curious tests to detect genius—especially genius for mathematics and abstract thinking. The families of geniuses were offered very generous compensations to move to the SCM with their children.
The Temple Maidens travelled all over the world looking for talent, Quern instructed them to pay special attention to the young in Appalachia; the Ozarks; Ireland and Scotland. They built an especially large number of schools and churches in those areas as well.
************ ************** *********************
In 1897 it was time for Quern to do one of his magic acts. He disliked doing large-scale “Miracles”—like the spontaneous appearance of over one-million Temple Maidens…
Thankfully, the Temple Maidens mostly materialized in remote areas and neither immigration standards nor censuses were anywhere near as strict as they would become in the 20th century.
Still, when the first scouts of TPTB arrived in this world, it wouldn’t take great insight to recognize the Temple Maiden’s abrupt appearance in the world as an artifact of a timeline-hopping organization.
The second thing was that big miracles exhausted resources. There was a limit to how much “Miracle-Dust” one could acquire in one transmigration.
The Temple Maidens were one “Miracle.” Quern’s Railroad material; other top-quality material—like tons and tons of 4340 steel and tons and tons of precious metal coins, all minted out…
That was his second “Miracle.”
It was time for Quern’s third “Miracle.”
The NKS started dicking with the idea of a canal in Panama—though Panama did not yet exist—sometime about 1903. Quern wasn’t sure if they would try to bully the SCM into letting them build and control a canal forever and in perpetuity…
But he meant to steal a march on them.
Originally, Quern had thought to simply transport enough earth and other material from the area of the Panama Canal otherwhen—leaving a sea-level channel somewhat wider and deeper than the Panama Canal of his world.
The problem with that was that when a huge block of millions of tons of Earth vanished, leaving behind nothing but vacuum—and then the air and then the sea water rushed in to fill the resulting gap—the impact; tidal waves and dust thrown into the air—would all be as bad as a large asteroid strike.
Instead, Quern’s interdimensional transporter nibbled away at the rate of about one-mile per day—though it was working from both ends.
Although quite a lot of water was churned up, the canal proceeded at a slow enough rate that even an arthritic old person could walk fast enough to avoid the zone of destruction.
Quern had heard environmental alarmists say that a sea-level canal connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific might bring about ecological disasters. Quern really doubted that, but he had enough of the mad scientist in him, to say:
“That will be interesting, if it comes about.”
Meanwhile, Quern wasn’t satisfied with one canal. He set about gradually connecting Lago Cociboica and Lago Xolotian and connecting both of them directly to the sea.
That would take some doing, because the lake beds of each of the lakes was actually higher than sea level. Never mind. Quern had been quietly and gradually deepening both lakes for some time.
Quern really hated to sacrifice the freshwater lakes to become salt water harbors, but the lure of having a huge port city in Managua was too great.
The third canal was across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec running from Coatzacoalcos to Tehuantepec.
The SCM would be a crossroads for cargo going from the Atlantic to the Pacific—or vice-versa.
Quern was on a roll. He widened and deepened the Suez Canal—about three-miles wide—hopefully too wide to be easily blockaded in the future.
There had long been a plan to dig a canal and flood the Qattara depression in Egypt. You should end up with a sea the size of Lake Huron. Supposedly, evaporation should create a green zone around the inland sea.
Later, some quibblers had objected that large parts of the depression weren’t quite deep enough to form a true sea. You would only have a noisome unhygienic salt swamp.
This was one of those projects that was just within the capabilities of mankind, but were so expensive that they would almost certainly never be attempted.
Quern had been gradually deepening the depression. The inland sea that resulted when Quern created the canal, would be 60% larger than Lake Huron—with not one, but three canals connecting it to the Mediterranean Sea—without a nasty salt swamp in sight.
There had also been talk of creating a more modest sea in Tunisia. While he was at it, Quern did Tunisia a solid and created a small inland sea for them as well.
Finally, Quern connected Lake Eyre in Australia to the sea. The “Lake” was a dry salt bed most of the time. Every few years, there would be enough rainfall to fill the basin.
The water would start at the same salinity as ocean water. Then as the water evaporated over the next few years, it would become increasingly saline.
Since the depression wasn’t that far from the sea, some had hypothesized about digging a canal and having a bay all of the time—but it was another money-eating project that would probably never get built.
While Quern was building Railroads and button-holing congressmen in the NKS, he quietly annexed Peru; Dutch Guyana; French Guyana; Haiti and Jamaica and several small Caribbean islands.
Quern was lukewarm about Peru and the Guyanas, but he definitely wanted Chile very badly. Having Chile would guard their whole Western Coastline.
He kinda wanted Bolivia—to control the cocaine coming out of the area. Having Argentina in the confederation would be nice. Once Bolivia and Argentina were annexed, Paraguay and Uruguay would be “Gimmes.”
Quern didn’t intend to annex Brazil. He didn’t want the responsibility of being steward of the great Amazon rainforest and the Amazon River.
Quern did understand about jungle soil though. The soil in rainforests is very thin and poor. One reason that deforestation proceeded so voraciously, is that once the forest was cleared for farmland, the soil was rapidly ruined, necessitating clearing even more forest.
The ancients—by accident or design—had created Terra Preta. Terra Preta was a black soil that seemed to never become exhausted. In fact, scientists who tested it found that it was almost impossible to exhaust Terra Preta even deliberately.
There were patches of Terra Preta in the Amazon Rainforest. Some were deserted and grown over, but some were still under cultivation.
Scientists analyzed Terra Preta. There were fish bones and terra cotta pot shards—but those weren’t absolutely essential. The essential ingredient was at least seven tons of charcoal per acre.
Burning giant rainforest giant trees to make charcoal would not be happy-making, but Quern had many, many tons of charcoal tucked away in otherwhen. His mix even had pottery shards and fish bones.
Maybe, if he could turn the Brazilians—and others—on to Terra Preta, then the destruction of the rainforests could at least be slowed down considerably.
Once Quern exhausted his supply of charcoal, he had a formula to make ordinary coal serve the same purpose as charcoal.
One thing that made many people more than happy to join the SCM, was the lure of having Quern come in and build Railroads. Quern’s Railroads brought prosperity, particularly if someone in the family was asked to join the Railroad Union.
Quern could put in a few spur-lines in Haiti. Building rail lines in Jamaica was kinda like putting air-brakes on a bantam rooster—but Quern offered other inducements.
Quern really had his eye on Cuba—but the time to annex Cuba wasn’t yet upon him. Meanwhile, the Temple Maidens built orphanages; Gaeilge Schools and churches in Cuba while Quern dabbled with a few factories.
It must be understood that Quern did none of these things under his own name. Outside of the not-quite-200 transmigrators and the Temple Maidens—no one was aware that Quern even existed.
Well, Quern had a plantation where he and Debra stayed and he had neighbors who greeted him on the roads and in town. None of the neighbors even vaguely suspected that Quern was one of the world’s main mover-and-shakers. Arguably, the biggest Rick-Swinger on Earth.
*********** *************** ***********************
1900—Quern’s Plantation House near Managua
Quern looked at his closest friends. Debra was there, of course. Jo-Jo; Terry; Tosh and Bertram were also there. Ronnie and Anya were there. Elmira was even there.
“Bertram, you and your three fellow HAM radio enthusiasts have been bored shitless, haven’t y’all? It is 1900—time to introduce commercial radio to the world. We control all of the patents and we pretty much control the legislature in the NKS. We will have a virtual monopoly for about 25-years…” Quern told them.
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Post by feralferret on Apr 10, 2023 17:11:48 GMT -6
Radio. That ought to be interesting to watch.
Thanks for another fine chapter.
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Post by rvm45 on Apr 12, 2023 15:14:32 GMT -6
Chapter Twenty-Five
58 686
Quern had made a number of alterations to the natural world—partly to further distance this timeline from the one that he’d just fled—well, he hadn’t exactly fled…
He and all of his compañeros were either dead or captured. That game was over for Quern & Co. It was time to set the board for another game.
He would probably never know, but the people that he had taught to make guns and some of the institutions that he had left behind should continue to fight TPTB for a long time—perhaps indefinitely.
Some of Quern’s alterations to the environment served some obvious purpose. Others were undertaken simply to be different or just to see what would happen.
For instance, in Quern’s time, the big oysters—the ones with big enough shells to make mother-of-pearl pistol grips were all-but-extinct.
Now, a genetically modified oyster quite big enough to make pistol grips, was common in the Gulf of California between Baja and the rest of Mexico.
There were also oysters that were particularly suited to pearl culture growing in the waters around Central America.
There was less reason for Quern’s transplanting alligators to freshwater lakes and rivers all over the world. Quern just wanted to see if alligators could successfully compete against the crocodiles, and prosper in The Nile; The Congo; The Amazon; Lake Victoria and other lakes and rivers all-around, including Australian lakes and rivers.
The alligators appeared about 1790 and it would an abiding mystery how the alligators appeared in so many widely separated places at the same time.
Some researchers joked about a hypothetical “Johnny Alligatorseed”—like Johnny Appleseed. In point of truth, they were almost right.
Quern added salmon to many rivers where they had never been before—including small rivers in Hawaii and Tahiti.
The artifact also planted large sections of the world’s deserts with Giant Seguro cacti—along with a whole Mojave ecosystem. There were places that the Giant Seguro cacti could grow and prosper, where nothing else could, and they added a bit of life here and there.
Of course, Quern was responsible for three sea-level canals across Central America and the flooding of the Qattara depression as well as the Tunisian Depression…
Quern finagled in other affairs too—political affairs.
When Russia sold Alaska to the NKS in 1867, they were also inspired to throw in a Texas-sized chunk of Russian Siberia for a wee-bit extra…
The NKS and Canada were well on their way to uniting into a single nation in this timeline.
In Quern’s time, three things kept the two nations apart: The Metric System; the reverence that the Canadians had for the British Crown and the Canadian’s much greater respect for authority and reluctance to embrace an absolute right to keep and bear arms.
The Gaeilge schools that sprang up all over Canada taught their students to love guns; to distrust authority; to look askance at any and all things British and to loath the Metric System.
While the NKS and Canada were working out the terms of their merger, Quern’s agents brought in tens of thousands of Laplanders and their reindeer to take advantage of the Siberian; Alaskan and Canadian tundra.
Meanwhile, the former Confederate States—and a few more—were agitating again, through the legislature this time, to secede.
Most of the issues this time, were contrived. However, the fact remained, that many highly-detailed simulations on Quern’s super-computers showed that the hemisphere was most stable with four—not three—large nations in the region: SCM; CSA; NKS and Brazil.
In spite of all Quern’s technological innovations—and despite avoiding WWI as a nonsensical affair—a major worldwide economic depression seemed a predestined occurrence in this timeline.
All the erstwhile Confederate states: Texas; Louisiana; Mississippi; Alabama; Georgia; Florida; Virginia; North and South Carolina; Tennessee and Kentucky were included. There were a few new partners: Arkansas; Missouri; Oklahoma; New Mexico and Arizona also joined the New Confederacy.
The Confederacy also got California—so that the CSA could also run “from sea to shining sea.”
Quern wasn’t sure that having Los Angeles was a good thing—and not because the town later became synonymous with the most extreme liberalism.
Nah, it was more because the desert town was a white elephant, fated to grow and suck up water from all around—and probably destined to dry up at some point, despite every effort to salvage the situation.
Maybe, the big cities and desalination plants/irrigated and covered crops in Baja could take some of the tension off Los Angeles.
At any rate, Quern’s agents helped bail the NKS & Co out of depression with the quid pro quo of granting Dixie independence.
Yeah, it was surprising how easy it was, with huge amounts of bribes and all-else-failing—the ability to mind-control key politicians.
The CSA wasn’t Quern’s. Once he had wound it up and turned it loose, its politicians could use or abuse it as they saw fit. Keeping track of the SCM was more than enough headache for Quern.
However, Quern had been angling to include a bit of Southern Indiana in the new CSA—maybe going as far North as Vincennes in the West and running to Madison in the East and then sashaying into Ohio enough to grab Cincinnati.
Ach Ja, the CSA got Cincinnati alright, but the whole state of Indiana went off-script and insisted upon joining the Confederacy. Quern had been quite generous with Gaeilge Schools in his old home state and they had altered the political climate.
On a humorous side-note, West Virginia inquired about joining the Confederacy and they were soundly snubbed.
“What makes you think that we’d want your traitor state, after the way you betrayed the Confederacy during The War of Northern Aggression!?!” the president of the CSA had demanded.
Anyway. The state of Indiana stood straight up, way into the Northern Part of the NKS—making it look—whimsically—as if the CSA were giving the NKS the finger.
************** ****************** **********************
In Quern’s original timeline, the first commercial radio station was launched in 1920, in Pittsburg. It caught on quickly. Within four-years, there were 600 radio stations broadcasting in the NKS.
Quern started his radio network in mid-1900. He started with 400 radio stations in Central America; Columbia; Ecuador and Venezuela. He also launched 200 radio stations in Georgia; Alabama; Mississippi; Kentucky and Tennessee.
Many of his broadcasting stations were super-stations like WLS had been in Chicago or the super-powered radio station in Del Rio.
Even with the somewhat crude radios that Quern was selling—crude by the standards of the early 1930’s; with a good antenna, some of the 500Kw super-stations could be received anywhere in the world at night.
Quern was tempted to go straight to transistors—as much as he disliked transistors.
Quern grooved on the complexities and subtleties of vacuum tubes. He felt that much of the romance and glamor of electronics was lost, once transistors replaced tubes.
Nonetheless, Quern wanted to hit the market with affordable; good quality color televisions with 19’’ screens by 1920—televisions with automatic fine tuning. He wasn’t going to get there with tubes…
Nor was VCRs practical with tubes. Quern wasn’t even sure a vacuum tube VCR was even possible—much less practical.
But, Quern’s ingenious home tinkerers had been doing some glass-blowing—some of them. Well, Quern had guided them into blowing glass.
With the right set of skills, one could make vacuum tubes in the home workshop—even if the home workshop is a grass hut halfway up the side of a jungle mountain somewhere.
Given tubes, one can create a superheterodyne radio receiver. You can even create a small pirate radio station…
Quern wanted the fundamentals of guerilla radio to be widely disseminated.
He planned to keep an absolute monopoly on radio broadcasting for 25-years—except for small pirate stations that he approved of.
Now ordinarily, the people who fiercely resent anyone having an ice cream cone, when they don’t, would be clamoring for the state to make Quern play nice and share.
Nope. Quern had the legislatures in his pocket. Also, anyone who had graduated from one of the Temple Maiden’s Gaeilge Schools was highly likely to lobby for absolute property rights.
Quern built a super-station in Ireland to regale Europe He built several super-stations in India and what would eventually be Pakistan. He built two super-stations in Japan and three in Korea—all of them blasting out at 500Kw, just like the old XERF radio station in Del Rio Texas.
The Temple Maidens had been infiltrating Indian society for almost 80-years now.
Some of their Gaeilge Schools taught the poor and the disadvantaged—people who wouldn’t have been able to go to school at all otherwise—and who would have probably have grown up stunted from a poor diet and hard work done far too early an age, as well.
But the super-persuasive Temple Maidens had convinced a significant portion of the elite and near-elite that the education in the Gaeilge Schools would benefit the young aristocrats. And being able to converse fluently in Gaeilge was becoming a status symbol—the way that being able to communicate in Latin had once been.
All of Quern’s stations broadcast half of each broadcast day in Gaeilge. Feel left out? Learn Gaeilge! Each station gave daily Gaeilge lessons.
Music? Querns taste in music was eccentric, but he was tolerant. He could tolerate anything as long as it wasn’t Country—and the genre that Quern hated so much, that came to be known as “Country,” hadn’t yet developed.
Quern liked the intricate melodies of Bluegrass and the complex cords of the Blues. He wondered what a fusion of the two styles might yield.
He also wondered what would have happened, if at the height of the rise of the Blues, someone had introduced wholesale numbers of shamisen; guguin; yun; digeridoo and Scottish bagpipes—five and six-stringed violins too…
Yeah, he had brought any number of skilled shamisen and guguin players from Japan and China and introduced them to Blues guitarists; trumpet; bass and saxophone players and let things take their course…
And of course, he broadcast their music on his radio. He also had some of the best rock and rock-and-roll from two timelines. He introduced the music gradually, to let people get accustomed to it.
There were also Educational Radio Stations. You could get a workbook and study along, while you were taught Algebra; Calculus; Basic Mechanics—or Radio Theory…
And plenty of instruction on how Laissez Faire Capitalism is supposed to work.
The first year, Quern sold about 55 000 radios—at a slight loss—in the Southern NKS alone.
Quern’s outlets were always sold out. The next year, Quern started charging market price for his somewhat improved radios. Although he kept raising prices, he still couldn’t keep up with demand.
Only when he introduced transistor radios in 1915, did the demand for vacuum tube radios start to taper off—though some people still preferred the big tubes radios in the big wooden cabinets, 50-years later.
************ *************** *******************
The CSA wouldn’t be formed until 1930. The CSA might—probably—would have, had a great deal more respect for Quern’s private property and capital gains than the NKS.
The NKS ordered Quern to divest himself of about 80% of his radio broadcast stations in the NKS under some sort of “Equalization of Opportunity” bill.
All this at a time when Quern’s patents were expiring and anyone could choose to build a radio station or a radio manufacturing plant. They didn’t want to build their own. They wanted to loot the factories and broadcasting facilities that Quern had built.
Quern could have squashed the bill flatter than a grape, but nah—he had expected—even exacerbated—the abrogation of his property rights.
He didn’t sell any of his radio stations to greedy “Crony-Capitalist” bros. Instead, he liquidated every radio station and radio manufacturing company that he owned in the NKS and shipped the hardware back across the border into the SCM—even though it caused him a financial loss.
The big depression was coming and the socialist finagling by the federal government was one more reason for the former Confederate States to chafe under federal rule.
************ **************** ******************
“We are very unhappy with you taking the radio-building equipment back to the SCM,” a Washington Bureaucrat told the Temple Maiden who ran Quern’s businesses in the NKS.
The Bureaucrat was a shave-tail, with only a pitiful cockscomb of hair and he was wearing a suit.
The Temple Maiden was one of the 1% of Temple Maidens, who chose not to shave her head. Her hair was long; red and flowing. Curiously, the Maiden had a manlier head of hair then the male Bureaucrat.
She lit a cigarette and glanced indifferently at the man from Washington.
“I really don’t give a shit about your state of happiness. There is far more desire than there is satisfaction in the world,” Brienne said.
“I dislike the smell of tobacco,” the man snapped.
“This is my office, if I want to take a dump on my desk and set the refuse on fire, I can,” Brienne said,
“We could nationalize your Railroads,” he threatened.
“You could. Could you endure my retaliation?” Brienne said as she blew smoke at the man.
“I don’t believe that the SCM would go to war over some rail lines and rolling stock,” he said.
“We might. Even if we don’t—there are many avenues to make the economy of the NKS suffer. I hate to punish the workers and the common men of the NKS, because their leaders are like idiots. Then again, they keep electing idiots like your boss,” Brienne said.
“They say that you Temple Maidens never turn down a marriage proposal. Would you marry me?” the Bureaucrat taunted.
“We do cull some. Otherwise, we’d have to marry the first scum that popped-up. Let your hair grow out until it covers your ears and touches your shoulders. Then ask me again. I’ll give you a fair hearing,” Brienne said.
“I was only joking.”
“I wasn’t.”
************* **************** *******************
The Wright Brothers plane first flew in December of 1903 in Quern’s timeline.
In 1900—just about the time that Quern needed to promote his radio network, a fleet of canvas-winged; wooden propeller aircraft flew across the Texas Border.
Quern had several fleets of the biplanes making goodwill tours around the world. There was a big gross—a dozen gross—1728—planes in each fleet—and a few extra/substitute planes trailing well behind.
The planes travelled along Quern’s Railroads and the Railroads brought them fuel and spare parts. The planes were a modest improvement on the best planes used in WWI, but Quern stuck to canvas wings and wood propellers, so as not to discourage any home plane-builders.
The planes put on barnstorming shows and at every stop. They sold Quern’s books on home plane building; home radio receiver manufacture and they plugged Quern’s radios and radio broadcast channels.
Quern had much better; aluminum-fuselage planes already stocked in the warehouses, but he wouldn’t reveal them for a few years. The olde tyme barnstorming shows had some of the aspects of a circus and they had never had anywhere close to the number of planes that Quern used…
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Post by texican on Apr 12, 2023 17:29:42 GMT -6
rvm,
Enjoyable tale with three days of reading. Your writing does inspire and picks at today's problems. Keep it up.
And...
More Chapters, please.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Apr 12, 2023 18:48:07 GMT -6
V C R
V CEE R
DAMN, I'm getting OLD! That just didn't LOOK RIGHT—But Damned Nation!
…..RVM45
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Post by feralferret on Apr 12, 2023 22:09:05 GMT -6
I thought that might have been what you meant, but Quern is just strange enough that he might have pulled something weird out of his hat. As the saying goes, "That boy ain't right!".
Thanks for the chapter.
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Post by rvm45 on Apr 14, 2023 17:35:12 GMT -6
Chapter Twenty-Six
61 050
1925
Quern examined what he had accomplished.
The SCM now controlled all of South America with the exception of Brazil.
Quern had done Brazil several solids. He had run Railroads up and down Brazil’s coasts and connected them with his railroads.
Brasilia hadn’t gotten built until the middle of the 60’s in Quern’s timeline. He had financed and largely planned the futuristic city of Brasilia for Brazil and connected it to his Railroad system.
There was an idea that was just catching on, in Quern’s later years, in his first lifetime.
Inventors had come up with a way to laminate wood into huge plywood pillars—very strong; very resistant to decay and surprisingly, the wood was so dense that it was very hard to ignite—no more flammable than a steel beam.
Presumably, these plywood columns could be used as support columns to build skyscrapers. The best guestimates said that about 60-stories was the limit, but in Quern’ time, they hadn’t yet topped 45-stories.
Quern had improved the formulas and the blueprints and he had gotten the good conservative upper limit to 71-stories—only the wood high-rises needed concrete floors in the upper stories, for ballast, lest they sway too much in the wind.
Managua and Brasilia had many of the wood high rises. Once the CSA became a thing once again, builders working under Quern’s purview would help develop Atlanta; Memphis; Evansville; Dallas; Phoenix and even Los Angeles with the wood high-rises.
Quern was at a partial impasse about the Amazon Rainforest. It wasn’t within the realm of the doable, to have millions of poor Brazilians live in shanties and live like ragamuffins, when there was “Free” land in the Amazon for the taking…
Even if Quern were 100% indifferent to their fate, such conditions created pressures that were impossible to quell—well, unless your name was “Adolph Hitler” or “Pol Pot.”
He slowed the forest’s destruction by using the Terra Preta. That way, when someone built a small homestead, he wouldn’t be forced to desert it within a few years and scramble to claim and clear yet another homestead.
Quern knew some dodges, that would speed up reforestation by a couple of generations—so, if the Brazilians felt constrained to clear-cut some areas for lumber, at least it would recover much faster.
He tried to think of sustainable ways that the forests—or forest products—could be harvested without destroying the forest.
Suppose, just for instance, that Quern modified an apple tree to grow as tall as any jungle giant, and to prosper in the tropical rainforest.
What earthly good were apples growing 300-feet off the ground? If they fell when ripe, they would almost certainly smash upon hitting the ground—making a feast for slugs and maggots and creating the smell of a vinegar works.
HMMMmmnnn…?
Palm trees are adapted to grow near the ocean—but a jungle giant could be genetically modified to grow coconuts—or extra-large pecans—and it could also be genetically engineered to drop all of its fruit within a short time frame…
Well, that helped—but it wasn’t the answer to all things.
Feeding the world was not the answer to all things either. When people are hungry, most of their time and energy is spent obtaining food and shelter. Once a man is well-fed and has a sound roof over his head—then he starts pining for luxuries—particularly if he has leisure time.
Still, feeding the masses was a good start.
Quern—acting through intermediaries, of course—had introduced Brazil to Aqua-Culture in a big way—the techniques were more than 100-years more advanced than anything yet seen in this world. The scale, given Quern’s almost limitless funds, was epic.
Brazil built boats and many Aqua-Culture installations and now many of Brazil’s poor added fish as a cheap staple to their diet.
This redirected at least some of Brazil’s people and energy towards the sea and not The Amazon.
There was no patent on Aqua-Culture. There were big commercial fish and other marine animal raising ventures off the coast of Chile; around Baja; the coasts of Mexico and the coasts of Cuba, now that Quern had successfully annexed it.
There were also fisheries in the Mozambique Channel—between Mozambique and Madagascar. There were fisheries around Nigeria.
Quern installed a large number of Aqua-Culture operations around Japan—and he brought their Railroads up to his 177-pound; welded-rail specs. Largely, below cost.
Why?
Quern admired parts of Japanese culture—and he wanted to head off WWII, if that was at all possible.
He wasn’t sure if giving Japan cheap radios; a bang-up Railroad and extensive Aqua-Culture facilities would head off WWII. If it didn’t and war came: A.} Japan might be on Quern’s side this time and B.} Even if they weren’t, things would be much more interesting, at least.
Second, one of the concessions negotiated, made it much easier for Japanese to emigrate to the SCM.
Draining off a couple of million people should also ease the strain on Japan’s resources.
Quern wanted skilled Japanese carpenters—the dudes who could build those four and five-story pagodas and the big Japanese mansions, without using a single iron nail.
He wanted buildings like that built all over the SCM. He also wanted some of the second-generation carpenters, with boosted IQ’s and a college degree in Civil Engineering, to try their hand at designing wooden high-rises.
He brought in all sorts of traditional craftsmen: bows and arrow makers; sword-makers; painters; sculptors; mask makers; weavers; creators of musical instruments: copperware smiths...
There was also an influx of people qualified to staff Japanese style saunas and bath houses.
He also imported wholesale lots of disaffected poor—many of them were peasants.
Some of them would continue to plant rice—though on much richer soil—in Mexico; Central and South America. Some of them would switch to wheat; corn or potatoes—or become pig or cattle feeders. Some of them would join Quern’s growing navy—both Merchant Marine and military.
Quern also admired the Turkish baths. He made sure to recruit enough architects and bath house managers to make Turkish bath houses bloom in the SCM.
Quern brooded a bit about the mercury in fish. The problem wasn’t as bad in 1925 as it would be in the late 20th century. Quern was using all of his influence to get people to stop dumping mercury into the waterways and eventually, into the seas.
The SCM and Brazil dumped a bare minimum of mercury into the environment. Once the CSA declared their independence, Quern could subtly bully them into ixnaying the mercury—the NKS too
That still left Europe; Africa and the rest of the third world…
The Temple Maidens; the transmigrators and the descendants of Temple Maidens would not be subject to Heavy Metal poisoning—mercury; lead; strontium; osmium—even excess iron—their improved bodies would simply isolate and excrete the noisome metal poison.
Quern still had the Golden-Eye Virus at his command. The virus had been modified, it was too late in life for an infected to grow an extra thumb, but in every other way, anyone infected with the Golden-Eye Virus, became a hybrid. All of his children would be hybrids.
But the Golden-Eye Virus in its current incarnation wasn’t something to be strewn about casually.
Still, it ill behooved Quern—who couldn’t get mercury poisoning—to push mercury-containing fish onto the unsuspecting poor in the guise of a panacea.
There were great glass factories in Baja, using the desert sand and focused solar heat; to create great curved sections of sheet glass—thick; high-strength; tempered glass panels.
Run a canal about 8’ wide and about 8’ deep. Build a high glass arch—perhaps 20’ tall in the center. The arch might go on for a mile—eventually, several miles. Make the glass arch wide enough to include about 12’ of soil on either side of the ditch.
The seawater will evaporate; condense on the glass as distilled water—especially at night—and the water will run down and irrigate the soil patches.
Meanwhile, small fish; shrimp; crawdeads; lobster and clams can be grown in the canals.
There were several hundred of the arched glass tunnels sitting side-by-each and reinforcing each other—while large pumps dumped fresh seawater into the canals.
Quern guestimated that he could feed all of Mexico just with the produce that he would get if he covered much of Baja de Sur with his greenhouses.
Once the CSA was formed, he would finance some tunnel gardens in California and Texas.
He wasn’t an altruist. He meant to sell large quantities of glass and technical expertise to the entrepreneurs in Texas and California.
Meanwhile, he kept the prices and the payment schedule low enough that folks in Tunisia and Egypt could afford to build glass tunnels. Some of those folks were starving.
Once they were back on their feet and well-fed, they would provide many potential customers and trading partners for Quern.
In 1920, Quern had introduced color television. His sets were solidly constructed; small portable models with a 19’’ screen. They were fully transistorized, except for the CRT—Cathode Ray Tube.
When Quern was a boy, only those who were fairly well-off—by working-class standards—had a color TV. They were very hard to adjust and after the new wore off, people got used to seeing actors with blue faces and green hair—it was either live with off-color or spend many frustrating moments diddling with the tuning knobs every time the TV was turned on.
Then about 1968, or so, Zenith started marketing their “Automatic Fine Tuning.” It became dramatically easier to keep a color TV properly adjusted.
Quern’s televisions were color and they had Automatic Fine Tuning from when they were first introduced.
Now, the thing is: radio signals in the right frequency range can bounce off the ionosphere and with a little luck, they can be picked up anywhere on Earth.
Television signals are, by necessity, of a wavelength that simply penetrates the ionosphere and goes on into space. With only minor exceptions, television signals are limited to “Line of Sight.”
With a good tall antenna on both ends, maybe you can receive a television signal 30-miles away—maybe 35-miles.
In the modern era, there are repeater stations that pick up a signal; boost it and then pass it to the next leg of the relay. Also, there are satellite and satellite dishes.
Quern didn’t plan to fully launch his space program until 1932, or so. There were no satellites and he wasn’t prepared to really buckle down to build extensive arrays of relay stations yet.
In a few years, large parts of the civilized world would be introduced to cable television.
In the meantime, there were over 400 television broadcasting companies scattered across the SCM. That covered many/most of the major metropolitan centers in the country.
However, Quern had a one-two punch lined up. First of all, were the televisions—second was the VCR’s that came on the market at the same time.
In that time and place, the televisions were thought of, much like “Kindles.” They were a device to watch VCR recordings on—and never mind if there was a television station in the area.
Quern had an extensive library of movies and television shows on tap.
Quern’s super-computers could take old classic movies like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”; “The Terminator”; “The Outlaw Josie Wales”; “The Wild Bunch”; “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and “Clockwork Orange” …
It would remove all of the credits—none of the actors or writers existed in this world, so there was no need to give gratuitous credit.
Then the program dubbed the flawlessly in Gaeilge—including the proper lip movements. No one could guess that the movies were dubbed.
You could get subtitles in most any language; but the only audio was Gaeilge—one more incentive to learn Irish.
Some of the old sitcoms from the 60’s and the 70’s were like weird glimpses into an odd and eccentric alternate universe. No one even remotely talked or acted like that in real life…
No one acted like the odd actors on shows like “Leave it to Beaver” or “Bewitched.”
Odd shows like “The Twilight Zone”; “The Outer Limits”; “Gilligan’s Island” or “The Adams Family” were easier for the literature profssors to interpret.
The Johnny Weissmuller “Tarzan” movies; the original “Star Trek”; “Lost in Space” and “Time Tunnel” were available. “The Lone Ranger”; “The Cisco Kid”; “Roy Rogers”; “The Three Stooges” and “Tom Corbet: Space Cadet.”
Most of the old soap operas…
Quern was trying to deliberately mystify people to a degree—get them out of their comfort zones; get them ready for the space age that was just around the corner—especially if WWII could be avoided…
Also, in 1925, Quern introduced the first home microwave ovens.
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Post by texican on Apr 14, 2023 21:55:26 GMT -6
rvm,
Quern does have an active and fully ripe mind and imagination. Must get that from the writer.
Thanks for the read.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Apr 15, 2023 13:14:56 GMT -6
Chapter Twenty-Seven
63 204
1932 Paramaribo
On 1 April 1932 the SCM launched their first satellite. Quern wasn’t in a pissing contest with the NKS; Russia or anyone else. Consequently, he had no need to resort to stunts like the Sputnik launch, that was essentially a glorified weather balloon placed into near Earth orbit.
Quern had skipped over the early Telstar designs and had gone straight to a geosynchronous satellite similar to the Intelsat I AKA “The Early Bird”—the first geosynchronous satellite that was launched in 1965.
Quern was rarely content to simply copy, without improving things though. The original Intelsat I had weighed 76 pounds, Quern’s Intelsat was 21-pounds heavier and 21-pounds better—not to mention, it had more sophisticated internal circuitry.
Within three-months, there would be eight of the Intelsat satellites in orbit around the Earth, neatly dividing near space into 45-degree sectors.
In one fell swoop, the space age began. It became possible to beam television images anywhere on Earth and backyard satellite dishes became a thing.
Since the CSA was founded in 1930, Quern had built—or financed—over 300 television stations in the CSA. He was still a bit peeved about the attempted nationalization of his radio-stations by the NKS. His patents would run out in 24-years—that would be in 1944. In 1944, the NKS was welcome to build however many television stations that they felt was helpful. Until then, unless an NKS citizen lived close enough to the border to receive a CSA station, then they could get by with what was available on VCR.
Actually, several stations in Gary and East Chicago served the greater Chicago area, while still being in Indiana. Pity that more NKS cities weren’t as near the CSA border as Chicago…
Quern’s satellite broadcasts were meant to be picked up; recorded and then rebroadcast by local channels, but they could be received and decoded by dedicated finaglers. Quern had no objection to individual hackers receiving his broadcasts—even in the NKS.
However, if anyone had the temerity to create a pirate television station to rebroadcast Quern’s programming in the NKS, Quern would be happy to sue for patent violations.
************** ***************** *******************
Quern and Debra watched the rocket lift off and cruise into space.
“This is something necessary, but it makes me a little sad,” Quern said.
“Why is that?” Debra asked.
“Well, it isn’t an absolute—but by and large, things that take group action to accomplish, aren’t worth doing,” Quern said.
“In Daniel Boone’s day, a fellow could take a flinchlock rifle—and a flinchlock pistol or two, though Boone never seems to have been enamored of pistols…”
“He could head off into the wilderness with what he could carry on his back and he could live apart from people—and live well—for two or three years. Boone was not an iconoclastic hermit, but if he had been, he could have probably have loaded two or three pack horses and never come into contact with another human again—at most, selling some furs, or gold nuggets every few years, to buy all the powder and lead that a packhorse could carry,” Quern said.
“You cannot live like Daniel Boone today. Nonetheless, fools want to argue that the Earth isn’t too crowded. Some even argue for higher population levels,” he added.
“When I read the ‘Rocket and Ray-Gun’ stories as a boy, or when I read about John Carter on Mars or Carson Napier on Venus—those were places that a man could do a ‘Daniel Boone’,” Quern said.
“The protagonist of the old SF stories—was often the sole owner of an FTL spaceship that should have cost at least as much as a 90-foot luxury yacht—though the protagonist was often portrayed as ‘down and out’,” Quern said.
“But the dude was like always discovering some planet—way the Hell off the beaten track. And this planet was enough like Earth, that after a few tests, he could get out and walk around in his shirtsleeves,” Quern said.
“Mars isn’t Barsoom. It will take centuries to terraform it—if it is ever attempted and if it is even doable. By the time that you can walk around in your shirtsleeves on Mars, the planet will be quite settled and quite civilized,” Quern said.
Quern could not say the words: “Civilization”; “Civilized” or “Society” without putting a contemptuous sneer into his voice.
“Even if there are planets that host life, it will take centuries of terraforming before men can live there…”
“That is, if one of the coalitions to ban coalitions doesn’t claim that remaking an indigenous biosphere is some sort of heap bad juju,” Quern said.
“And even if, by some chance, you found a perfectly habitable world—it would take decades of study by hundreds of biologists and chemists before any sane person would dare go outside without a Hazmat suit,” Quern said.
“What would you do, if you were the lone captain of one of those FTL torch-ships, and you come across a very remote habitable paradise?” Debra asked.
“This is something that I have never seen one of the protagonists in one of the stories do. You can load lots of stuff onto a spaceship—presumably. They’re kinda like the semi-truck and trailers of space…”
“But I might take three or four trips to my planet. I’d have stocks of weapons; beaucoup, beaucoup books; tools…”
“I’d take dogs and cats; draft horses; livestock; fruit trees; seeds; and I’d build me a big brick house. I’d move in and I would peacefully spend my days there…”
“I’d have zero worries about idjitants coming to try to confiscate my Guns; or tell me that I cannot grow apple trees in my front yard; or to try to force me to castrate my sons…”
“Or as far as that goes, to demand that I pay my ‘Property Tax’ or forfeit my land,” Quern said.
“If you lived your life in solitude, you wouldn’t have any sons,” Debra kibitzed.
“That is true, but in principle, Big ES could not randomly schedule any children of mine for mandatory gender reassignment surgery,” Quern said.
“Big ES?”
“Big Earth Society. Haven’t you read “Half-Past Human” and “The Godwhale” by T J Bass?” Quern asked.
‘Note to self: Translate Bass’ works into Gaeilge and get them out on the market,’ Quern thought to himself.
Quern was poised to build a series of spoked-wheel space-stations in near-Earth geosynchronous orbit. He meant to take the high-ground early in the game.
It had been a mistake, rushing to the moon with no thought for the future of space and space development. It was a product of a furious pissing contest with the Russians—well, the USSR.
The USSR was not a thing in this timeline. Quern had supplied the Czar with Railroads; multiple schools run by Temple Maidens and both industrialization—to a degree—and some Maidenly tweaks to recalcitrant nobles on the Council of Nobles.
Russia had become a Constitutional Monarchy—though the Czar had unprecedented power for a constitutionally-bound monarch. The Czar—with Quern’s aid—had squashed the Bolsheviks flatter than a grape.
Modern, 1932 Russia was quietly assimilating the 20th Century—The Quern Super-Charged 20th Century—and they had no time or energy to antagonize other governments.
At any rate, Quern meant to have multiple space-stations in near Earth orbit by 1940. The next step was colonizing the moon and mining it to provide the raw materials to build O’Neil Colonies—multiple O’Neil Colonies—at Lagrange 4 and Lagrange 5.
Eventually, there would also be O’Neil Colonies orbiting Earth and the Moon.
Touching boots on Mars was okay, so far as that went, but Quern thought that it should probably be a higher priority to build a few O’Neil Colonies around Mars and perhaps a base or two on the two tiny moons of Mars.
Any future colonization of Mars would go much smoother with tens of thousands of humans in near Mars orbit.
So far as that went, for people willing to live in an O’Neil Colony, it made little difference if they were in near-Earth Orbit; one of the Lagrange Points or in Mars orbit.
Still, none of this granted any scope for iconoclastic rugged individualists. So far as Quern could see, nothing in the future ever would grant any role to lone individuals.
Sometimes, Quern was tempted to throw up his hands and say, “To Hell with all of these group-effort projects!”
There may be no “I” in “TEAM”; but there are four “I’s” in “PLATITUDE QUOTING IDIOT”!
Still, the modern world was. Quern must either control it or let it run over him roughshod. At least this way, with his hand at the helm, he had a modicum of control.
A piece of half-remembered verse came into Quern’s mind:
“Inkle-Pinkle; “Mongoloid Spit; “Upon Ornate Thrones of Gold; “The Gentle Collared Clergy Sit— “Condemned to Always Cramp; “But Never Shit…”
The “Gentle Collared Clergy” were the preachers and priests of the “High Church” sects. Their sects stressed logic and rationality over emotion. No one was ever inspired to run; jump; shout or dance during one of their dry sermons.
These clergy were willing to question the inerrancy of the scriptures. They embraced evolution and other modernisms. They were even ordaining women and tolerating same-sex unions in Quern’s last two lifetimes.
These dudes were being punished for all eternity for not being Fundamentalists.
Quern sometimes wondered if he wasn’t compromising his principle of the Individual forever at odds with the Collective—much like the Gentle Collared Clergy who embraced Darwin and turned their backs on God—all the time talking about what good Christians they were.
“Earth to Quern,” Debra said.
‘O well! The Sages acts purely for the sake of action without regard for consequences!’ Quern reminded himself.
“I want to go into space,” Jo-Jo said.
“Space is dangerous,” Quern said with a frown.
“Life is dangerous,” Jo-Jo said.
“Jo-Jo, I don’t worry about you much, here on the ground. With your abilities, you take a lot of killing and besides, you are usually fairly close to me,” Quern aid.
“Have any of our original transmigrators died,” Quern asked rhetorically.
“A few. Accidents happen,” Jo-Jo shrugged.
“I know, even without being told, because I have their programs here,” Quern said, while pointing to his head.
“I can’t bring them back here and now, in this timeline, but when I make the next mass transmigration, they will be there—just like all of you were here,” Quern said.
“You are different. You and Debra both have full-fledged; complete artifacts in your brain. If you die, you will transmigrate—immediately. You will end up somewhen around 1762 or maybe 1662—I haven’t solved all of the equations,” Quern said.
“You will be all alone. It will probably take you three or four more transmigrations to fully assimilate your artifact. That means that not only will none of your friends be there, you probably won’t even have any Temple Maidens to aid you—though that isn’t 100% certain. You might have a bare handful…” Quern continued.
“You will never see any of us again—and we will never see you again. It will be very lonely for you. If you still want to go—go. Do be aware of what is involved,” Quern said.
********** ************* ********************
The three friends went back to Managua, which was largely Quern’s main base.
At first, Quern had zealously transported every brilliant mathematic or physics genius to Managua University.
Eventually though, the university had 50 000 students and it was chock full of genius faculty.
Quern moved future geniuses to his other universities—and eventually, he sponsored several overseas colleges. Theoretical knowledge grew faster when there were rivalries and regional preferences in theories.
Quern used his students’ theories and “Inventions” to rationalize much of his futuristic innovations.
The same day that he launched his first satellite, the “Magnolia I” hit the market. This was far more advanced than the Magnolia I from the last timeline. It would probably have been a bleeding-edge computer in 2005.
Quern only had information on computers up through 2045. Hopefully, his cadres of geniuses would continue to innovate and create even better computers—but they needed a few years’ worth of faux progress to get them into the “Progress Mode.”
Anyway, except for some very limited applications, the modern user in 1932 would have little reason to prefer a bleeding-edge 2045 Computer to a laid-back 1980 design.
In fact, the age of home computers hadn’t truly arrived yet. They were too far outside most folks’ weltanschauung. Let the technology ferment for a decade or 15-years first.
Quern mostly sold his computers to universities; businesses and arcades.
It wasn’t time for a true Internet—not yet.
Quern connected Central America—because it was easy and he made his headquarters in Managua. Might as well include Columbia down South, while he was at it—then Ecuador and Venezuela, just because they were at hand.
He ran Internet connections to Paramaribo because Caracas and Paramaribo were his two main space centers—comparable to Cape Canaveral in his own timeline.
On the other end, Quern wired Texas—because it was close-by and why not?
The first six or seven years, the Internet was used mostly for scientific exchanges and business reports. There was little clamoring from New Mexico; Oklahoma or Louisiana to be included in the net.
Then gaming took hold—with plenty of judicious prodding from Quern.
For a few hectic years, the number of people with Internet Access doubled every thirteen months—until all of North, South and Central America was interconnected.
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Post by texican on Apr 15, 2023 14:36:18 GMT -6
rvm,
Trying to see forward and there are too many paths and doors to walk and open. Need moar to see what may happen next such as when will the bad guys show up in force.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Apr 16, 2023 15:24:45 GMT -6
Chapter Twenty-Eight 65 486
1951 Managua
In 1951, the Earth had solidly entered the space era. People who were graduating college in 1951, were only 4-years old—still a year away from kindergarten—when the first satellite was put into orbit.
The SCM had a dozen wheeled-hub space stations in geosynchronous orbit, splitting their coverage of the Earth into 30-degree segments. There were also three of the wheeled-hub space stations in polar orbits.
The space stations were all nearly identical. They had a long central shaft that would allow another wheeled-hub to be added on each end when there were the resources and the need to expand. Each space station had room for 280 men at present—as well as a fair number of temporary callers—since the stations served as staging grounds for Lunar missions.
The stations were spin-stabilized to give artificial gravity. The gravity on the space stations was only 70% of Earth’s gravity. At the last moment, accepting the lower gravity let the stations be made smaller and since they weren’t spun as hard, they didn’t have to be quite so strong either.
No one knew what the effects due to long-term dwelling in 70% gravity would be for the human body.
Quern suspected that it wouldn’t matter a great deal, especially if the space-station inhabitants kept up regular exercise—particularly strength training.
He was persuaded that any detrimental effects due to spending many months at 70% gravity, would be much less serious and debilitating than spending the same amount of time in freefall.
There were bases on the moon and there had been several “proof of concept” robot probes sent to the asteroids, anticipating the era of asteroid mining.
While a couple of Lunar mines were stockpiling light metals, it appeared that some research and development was in order before the Earth could start to create the 50 000 inhabitant O’Neil colonies.
The Internet and other long-distance communication now spanned the globe.
In the 19 years since Quern put the Magnolia I on the market, the state of computer technology had advanced about 25-years. Computers were roughly comparable to computers in 2030 in Quern’s original timeline…
Except that Quern’s cadre of geniuses had made a few discoveries unheard of in Quern’s timeline.
Quern; Debra and Jo-Jo could boost someone’s IQ by 139 points. They had decided to keep the milky-white IQ-doubler under wraps for the moment.
It was more than that, though. Quern’s Temple Maidens identified geniuses all over the world—not saying that some did not get overlooked—and they offered to send them to the best schools, whether they could afford it, or not. If their families could ill afford to spare an underaged worker, they could even reimburse the family for the youngster’s presence.
The best of the best minds went to college in Managua or one of the other five top SCM universities, where they got to meet and benefit from associating with other geniuses.
Though a farmer needn’t spread all of his fertilizer on his kitchen garden. Increasingly, very bright young people were steered to any one of 50 other top-ranked universities while supported by Temple Maiden scholarships.
At any rate, one of the innovations let about 11x as much data be stored in the same size hard drive. Hard drives had already gotten to enormous capacities by 2045, and multiple hard drives and portable hard drives were—so maybe the newfangled hard drive didn’t revolutionize computers—but still…
The new hard drives also sped up entering and extracting data by about 8% and they generated about 17% less heat…
Also, the computers in Quern’s new timeline, stressed multiple-chip; small Beowulf’s on one “Motherboard”—although the motherboards were often stacked creating one 3-D “Motherboard” from three or four flat boards.
Analog Computers and Neural Nets were more advanced in the new timeline. EE…Neural nets were fearsomely complicated—many of their uses having been discovered empirically with little or no understanding of the underlying principles.
It was still that way, but whole cadres of people who could think in 7-S; 3-T Dimensions rapidly developed some of the mathematics of multiple-layer neural nets…
Then there were people like Quern or Bertram, who could think in 17-S; 5-D—and hypotheticals. They would look over the shoulders of the mathematicians and then drop a sheath of equations into their hands that would keep them hopping for years, tracing out the implications.
There were a new kind of computer on the market. They were expensive, but the price would come down with time. They were a hybrid computer that paired an analog/neural network working in tandem with the best digital binary number-crunchers.
Frankly, the hardware had raced ahead of the software and it might be a generation before programmers could fully exploit the potential of the new bicameral computers—although even so, they were already a sensation in some circles.
************* ***************** *************************
Debra had trained as a biochemist. She had lived over 100-years and her IQ was over 400—as nearly as that can be extrapolated.
She had almost unlimited laboratories and she had large numbers of brilliant lab assistants…
She had spent the last 30-years diligently researching something that Quern had suggested to her. It didn’t occupy all of her time, but that is the beauty of being able to delegate.
The idea was to use artificially grown; genetically modified brain neurons to create a large synthetic “Brain” or biological computer.
There wouldn’t be much advantage to the biological computers, if they weren't modular and amenable to modification and upgrading.
Debra was proudly showing Quern and a cadre of biology students the result of three-decades of diligent research.
There was a box—similar to an aquarium—of about 18’’ on a side.
“This is a breadboard prototype. When we’re finally ready to turn out a full working prototype, the aquarium will be no more than 9’’ on a side—hopefully, less. A larger brain is necessarily, all else being equal, a slower brain,” Debra said.
Debra showed them something that looked like some sort of filter—about 16’’x 16’’ and less than a quarter-inch thick.
“These are genetically modified brain neurons. It won’t hurt them to be exposed to the air briefly, so long as they don’t dry out. There are seven layers of them. Neurons can interconnect in a plethora of ways. We have tried to limit these to a few stereotypical patterns, in order to make them a bit more predictable. Still, in the whole damned universe, you will probably never have two identical panels,” Debra said.
“These neurons function best at 120-degrees—hot enough to kill natural neurons and febrile enough to kill many bacteria. You know that for every 10-degree rise in temperature, the rate of many organic chemical reactions doubles. These neurons are running like blue-striped racers,” Debra said.
“The neurons will eventually wear out or die due to other effects of entropy. When their function falls below a certain minimum. The cells self-destruct and nearby cells will fission and fill in the resulting gap,” she lectured.
“One panels of neurons isn’t good for much, but these panels are machined to fit very closely together. When you place a number of them side-by-each into an aquarium and give them the right axion-stimulating hormones it will connect to the nearby panels,” she said.
“The axiom interconnections are much more random and idiosyncratic than the interior panel connections. In addition, organic brains reprogram themselves by rewiring their inter-neuron connections,” Debra said.
“So, the exact wiring of each brain will be in a constant state of flux. Anyway, if you need to replace a panel, you can just rip it out. The axions will regrow. If you’re not in a hurry, you can add a hormone to the broth that causes the inter-panel axioms to disengage. That has the disadvantage of disconnecting all of the inter-panel connections—not just the panel that you want to replace,” she said.
“There is some evidence, that hormone disengaged axions tend to reconnect at least 89% similar to how they were connected immediately before hormone application. We are not sure why,” she said.
“Anyway, the brains are in a very richly oxygenated medium; with all the glucose that they could possibly want and they are cooking at 120-degrees. They should be able to run rings around natural organic brains eventually,” Debra said.
“What kind of performance are you getting?” a student asked.
“This is a proof of concept device—or devices. Frankly, we’re putting a lot more time and energy into programming; using far more resources and spending a lot of money to get performance that barely equals a Magnolia II. That is the way things generally are in the early stages,” Debra replied.
“Why is it connected to so much digital processing power,” another asked.
“At present, programming the organic brain and interpreting its output, is requires extensive data-processing. We need to largely resolve this issue in order to make the system of any practical use,” Debra said.
“Can you make it larger?”
“Do you mean, can I increase the number of layers and the processing power? Not at present. This system requires all the data-processing that we can bring to bear on it,” Debra said.
“What motivates the organic brain to perform its duties?”
“On the neuron level—have you heard the theory of ‘The Hedonistic Neuron’? The idea is that each neuron is programmed, within the constraints of the system, to fire as often as possible. The more often the neuron fires, the happier that it is. It devotes much of its surprisingly high levels of internal computing power, to rationalizing excuses to fire. This creates purposeful behavior as an emergent property, when spread over enough neurons,” Debra explained.
“The theory isn’t fully applicable to natural neurons. It is more applicable to our artificial neurons. We also find that the brain performs much better, when the brain as a whole is rewarded with chemical stimulation. We find the brains respond quite well to caffeine; nicotine and cocaine,” she added.
“Your brains are addicts!?!”
“Not really addicts—more like casual users who can be highly motivated by chemical rewards,” Debra said.
“What would happen, if you removed all of the panels; shuffled them like a deck of cards and reinserted them?”
“That I why we have more than one prototype—one reason, anyway. We have turned up some very useful and fruitful insights into how neural networks function an a result of some of these ‘shuffling’—enough to keep mathematicians busy for decades,” Debra said.
************* *************** *******************
In his third lifetime, Quern was still refusing to encumber himself with any sort of cellphone—as if they had cellphones in 1951…
No wait, they did have them in 1951 in this timeline.
As Quern walked into his situation room, Tosh greeted him. His original inner-circle flitted around like gadflies, mixing in here and there and putting their fingers in many pies…
But today, Tosh was working in the situation room.
“There is something here that you need see. There is a dude named Kamran Hedayati in Iran, in Mashhad. He claims to be the Mahdi—but he has started some sort of crack-brained nihilistic cult that is as far removed from traditional Mussulman religions as it is from anything else—though it seems to include bits of both Mussulman and Hindu scriptures,” Tosh said.
“When this dude was like mucking around Mashhad, I wasn’t too concerned—but he has expanded his base of operations. He has multiple followers in Ashgabat—and he seems to have leap-frogged into Baghdad,” Tosh said.
“There was no WWI in this timeline. Hence, there was no T E Shaw—AKA “Lawrence of Arabia” to kick off the resurgence of Mussulman nationalism. The oilfields of Venezuela and your somewhat more oil-efficient technology—along with the fact that no one has felt the need to extensively survey the Middle-East for petroleum reserves has reduced the power and reach of the Mussulmen a great deal and they seem a lot less fanatical about their tenants…”
“But that is kinda what has let this lump on a bump’s crack-brained cult get started. In our timeline, he’d have long since been stoned for blasphemy,” Tosh said.
“Look at this raving of his though:
“The Great Shaitan’s servant lives in the South and the East, beside a lake that he poisoned with bile. His name is ‘Millstone’ and he is the enemy of mankind.”
“Get Beauregard here as fast as humanly possible. I don’t think that he is capable of acting against us—but better be a safe than a lorry—damned Briticisms. Have all the Temple Maidens check and double-check for security-leaks…”
“And keep an eye on this knob-gobbler!” Quern aid.
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Post by texican on Apr 16, 2023 16:33:14 GMT -6
A living brain computer, just what could go wrong?
Will the Mussulmen follow a new Mahdi and start a new mideast or world war?
So many unanswered questions.
Just need moar chapters to see what happens.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Apr 17, 2023 14:32:43 GMT -6
Chapter Twenty-Nine
67 612
1962 Managua
“It has been exactly 100-years since we all arrived in this timeline. Happy birthday everyone!” Quern said.
He wasn’t being facetious, since the transmigrators decanting out of the artificial wombs in otherwhen, into the warehouse in Managua, could be thought of, as a “birthday” of sorts.
All of the transmigrators weren’t there. Some of the group felt little solidarity with Quern or his inner circle. There were even a few who harbored a smoldering resentment against Quern or Quern & Co.
That was alright. The quite lenient mind-lock that Quern had put on each of them, should make it impossible for any of them to actively scheme against him.
Beauregard was there. Quern had vetted him quite carefully and he had not leaked any information about the League to anyone.
Beauregard had betrayed them and he had shot his own father—and had his nose blown off by Quern’s retaliation shot.
He had gone through a number of painful surgeries to rebuild his face. He had become increasingly dissatisfied with his role working for TPTB—especially since he had been given the IQ doubling drug.
As Ecclesiastes said, he who increases wisdom, increases grief. As the down-home proverb said, “Life is a bitch and then you die.” Wisdom serves to more fully illustrate how everything is a “Vanity of Vanity” and “a vexation of spirit.”
Not that wisdom and intelligence are 100% congruent, but there is considerable overlap.
As time went on, Beauregard was required to take many blood tests to try to extract the IQ doubler from his tissues. They went so far as taking marrow samples and tapping spinal fluids.
Beauregard never rose to a position of real prominence and he was subjected to increasingly strenuous interrogations, trying to wrest some scrap of heretofore uncovered data from him.
Finally, he was arrested and sent to an interrogation center. At that point, none of the higher-ups really expected to extract anything useful from Beauregard. Incarcerating and torturing him was just a soul-satisfying way to deal with someone who had disappointed them.
And the horrid fate of Beauregard and other disappointments served as a warning to everyone else, not to disappoint.
Originally, Beauregard was neither a sociopath nor a true malignant narcissist—though he had elements of both. He was quite self-centered and had a grandiose opinion of himself though.
He’d had his IQ boosted twice. He’d betrayed his kinfolk and killed his own father. He’d had his face destroyed and gone through painful reconstructive surgery. Then he had spent several lonely years in prison being tortured…
And that could have been the depressing end to a noir biography…
Except Beauregard had transmigrated. The very act of transmigrating was mind-altering. He was given a new body. All of his senses were much sharper than in his previous life. His new body was far stronger and more agile than his original body.
The transmigrator’s hybrid body—superior in many ways to a standard hybrid body—was wired for an IQ of about 400—approximately the same as his doubled IQ after taking the IQ doubler. Also, he could easily visualize 7-S; 3-T geometry using his new brain—and Beauregard had the math and other theoretical background to truly use the mathematical insight this gave him…
And all of the transmigrators had large stores of knowledge and languages downloaded into them—only a fraction of what Quern III had, but still…
Now Beauregard had lived 100 years as a transmigrator.
Quern regarded Beauregard sourly. Still, the man before him was a greatly changed person to the one that had shot his own father.
Also, so far as Quern knew, the group that had accompanied him to Managua would rejoin him and transmigrate with him whenever and wherever Quern transmigrated to…
Except there was the worrisome possibility of losing Debra or Jo-Jo. Quern felt a far stronger link to Debra than to Jo-Jo. He wasn’t sure that he would lose Debra if she died before their next transmigration. He wasn’t going to put it to the test, if there was any possible way to avoid it.
But the question remained. If Quern transmigrated 100-times and lived more than 10 000-years—and if Beauregard turned up in each and very incarnation—just like a bad penny…
Quern could see no conceivable way to exclude Beauregard.
Would it still make sense to shun the man and turn a cold shoulder to him after 10 000-years? Was that fair? Was it rational?
If it wasn’t rational or fair to hold a grudge for 10 000-years, was it rational and right to hold onto a grudge for 100-years?
************* *************** *********************
“Beauregard, come here,” Quern said.
“The past is dead. It can be forgiven—but not forgotten. You are welcome to join us as a full-fledged member of the group. I cannot order other people to forgive you. That is between them and God. However, if there are ever security leaks or the suspicion of betrayal—though hopefully, that isn’t even possible…But if…you will be one of the first ones to fall under suspicion. I won’t condone torture like TPTB, but my mind scans can be quite thorough. If the day ever comes, that you are the object of discrimination—you are the one who placed yourself in that position,” Quern said.
“Can I go now?” Beauregard asked.
“You’re free to associate with all of us as you will,” Quern mildly objected.
“I know and I am truly grateful—more than words can say. However, this is a mind-blowing occurrence. I need to find some quiet place to reboot and adjust to my new state of being,” Beauregard said.
“Go.”
************* **************** *********************
It had been 11-years since the “Mahdi” had appeared as a minor blip on Quern’s RADAR.
In those 11-years, Quern had added double hubs to all of his geosynchronous satellites. He had placed five spoked-wheel satellites around the Moon.
The Lunar satellites weren’t “Geosynchronous” or “Lunar-Synchronous” or whatever. The Moon had a “day” 28-Earth days long. A Satellite falling slowly enough to stay hovering over the same plot of Lunar ground would have to be an astounding distance away. The five satellites in Lunar Orbit rotated around the Moon in a pentagonal formation.
Construction on a true pair of O’Neil Cylinders had started at Lagrange 5. Since the O’ Neil Colonies spun and since they required a slight modicum of steering—mere inches or at most a few feet per year—to prevent eventual orbital decay—it made navigation easier and prevented “Gyroscopic Procession” if one paired two O’ Neil Cylinders together into one super-colony. The two halves rotated in opposite directions and the spins cancelled.
At any rate, once the double colony was complete, it would house slightly over 100 000 people.
Quern wasn’t sure exactly what good the O’ Neil Colonies were—unless you believed that having more human beings in the universe was an unambiguously good thing.
He had read extrapolations that said eventually there might be as many as 50 000 O’ Neil Colonies at L-4 and L-5. Even if the Colonies were singles—not paired—each one could hold 50 000 people. That would equal something like 5-Billion people…
But so what? There wasn’t enough lifting power on Earth to send enough people into space, to make a serious dent in Earth’s population. Over 99% of those 5-Billion people would be assembled on-site.
The first few O’ Neil Colonies would help mine the Moon and eventually mine the asteroids—and significant tonnages of metal would find its way to Earth—though eventually, most of the material would be used in space to make more O’ Neil Colonies.
The O’Neil’s basically ran on sunlight—not saying that fusion or matter-antimatter reactors might not be hypothetically possible.
Big ass, but flimsy, mirrors are easy to set up in the vacuum of space. With no wind or gravity, they can be made of very thin fabric, coated with a very thin film of aluminum and spun slowly to keep them open and stiff due to centrifugal force.
O’ Neil Colonies in the Asteroids; around Jupiter or Saturn—and perhaps as far away as Uranus—could get by just fine. They would just need to create bigger mirrors.
Some speculated that one day there might be Trillions of people living in O’ Neil Colonies, in our solar system alone—not counting possible colony building expeditions to other solar systems.
Quern was reminded of Ecclesiastes:
“When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?”
There was Art though. Quern thought that Art was an unambiguously good thing. He included mathematics; theoretical physics; computer programming; firearms design and genetic engineering in the broad category of “Art.”
True creativity—the kind that innovates and energizes—is very rare in mankind. Many are called, but few are chosen.
With 100-Billion like human beings, there should be a plethora of wonderful paintings; sculptures; revolvers and mathematical theorems and proofs—beaucoup beautiful tunes, as well.
If mankind ever devolved to the point that they no longer appreciated beauty or Art, then Quern washed his hands of them in disgust. Such knob-gobblers were no longer human.
There was even a fleet of ships on the way to build a Spoked-Wheel space station in geosynchronous orbit around Mars. It would take a long time to accumulate enough material in Mars orbit to create an O’ Neil Satellite—but the fleet had a start on the building materials.
*********** ************** ******************
Meanwhile, much of the societies on Earth had seemed to settle into some sort of Malaise.
Quern hadn’t scrupled to release some of the movies and sitcoms from the contentious 60’s in his own timeline. There had been no WWI; WWII; Korean or Vietnam War in this timeline.
Parenthetically, Korea was one of Quern’s favorite places—though he had never set foot on Korean soil in his first and third lives and he had only visited it briefly in his second life.
Quern enjoyed Manhwa—Korean Manga. He also loved Korean light novels—particularly the ones that featured Murim.
All of Korea in this timeline was prosperous. The nation had an “better than excellent” Railroad system. Quern had placed many Temple Maiden schools in Korea. Perhaps 45% of Koreans were fluent in Gaeilge and it was considered a sign of culture and good breeding to be able to converse in Gaeilge at gatherings of the rich and influential.
Quern had fed the Korean works of literature back into modern Korean culture.
Martial arts were almost universally practiced in Korea and IPSC style pistol competitions were one of the nation’s favorite sports. The Korean shooting team always did well at the yearly World Champion Combat Pistol contests—as well as the long-range sniping contests.
Be that as it may, Quern saw no harm in publishing the noir ramblings of Kerouac and much of the angst-ridden literature of the 60’s; 70’s and whatever.
While none of the characters in the literature of other timelines ever broke the fourth wall to proclaim they dwelt in an alternate universe—the references to wars that hadn’t happened; historical figures that weren’t historical; odd nations like Canada and Mexico—that had ceased to exist decades earlier—made it plain that they were in an odd place.
The fiction had become its own genre—Alternate World Fiction.
He really didn’t think that the Nihilism and despair of such mainstream literature would infect the people of this timeline—things were too different here.
People were far more prosperous here in 1962 than people had ever been—even in the early 21st Century in Quern’s timeline, before things had started to fall apart.
Even now, Quern didn’t think that some sort of ideological virus had infected people from watching movies and reading books from Quern’s timeline.
Quern wasn’t a people person. Sometimes he had puzzled why people behaved in certain ways, but in general, people bored him. He would much rather meditate on a firearm design he was creating; a painting that he was contemplating or even the antics of his dogs.
He had started seriously studying people in his second life. He had spent many hours contemplating mankind in this incarnation.
He had tentatively concluded that many/most societies became decadent and had collapsed when they become too prosperous.
Struggling societies have no time or energy to work diligently for their own demise. Also, those who are well-acquainted with death and destruction have no patience with people rocking or trying to set the lifeboat of state afire.
Really bored people have been known to sit and pluck out all of their hairs, a few at a time, until they are as bald as a cue-ball. Some even pick up the charming habit of eating the hair that they pluck out.
That is generally people who have been in solitary confinement for years—or who are neurotic all on their own.
Instead, the bored youth of 1962 were organizing sit-ins and protests—and even Quern had little or no idea what they were protesting or what they wanted to replace the protested object with.
There was even a very vocal group that loudly proclaimed that personal weapons should be banned.
In a society where almost everyone was armed and skill with arms was highly regarded, there were few problems with violence. There would always be a few—a very few—who would lose their temper and attempt to inflict trauma. There would also be a few who would try to rob others at gunpoint.
These incidents were far too few and too infrequent to cause a firearm banning movement.
The antigunners apparently believed that guns should be banned—just because.
The problem was that they believed in restriction so strongly, that brainwashed followers were sent in to make kamikaze attacks on large assemblages of people—on the principle that if there were enough mass shootings, that the governments would be forced to restrict firearms.
************* *************** ********************
Meanwhile, Kamran Hedayati had disappeared from public view. The growth of his cult had slowed, but it continued to grow slowly. Hedayati’s followers claimed that the Mahdi had gone into “occultation” and that he would reappear after the signs had appeared.
There was little to raise concern—until an important and influential Arabian sheik was murdered while visiting Mecca. The Mahdists insisted that this was the murder of “Nafs-e-Zakiyyah” that was foretold in the prophecies.
No one but the Mahdists could see any connection between the rich and decadent sheik and the Nafs-e-Zakiyyah, but there you had it. The cultists seemed galvanized and recruiting went into high gear once more.
In the absence of T E Shaw’s unifying influence, the Arabian Peninsula was balkanized into numerous small sheikdoms.
Shortly after the assassination a couple of small armies of militants met in what was “The desert of Bayda.”
Lo and behold! There was a huge earthquake. The sand liquefied and both armies were swallowed up without a trace.
The Mahdist proclaimed that one of the armies was led by Sufyami and the other was led by Yamani—and thus, four of the five signs had come to pass.
Within hours of the huge earthquake there was a huge explosion in the air over Arabia. It is said that the explosion of Krakatoa was so loud that it could be heard all over the world—heard several times, in fact, as the soundwaves lapped the globe several times.
This boom was almost as loud as the Krakatoa eruption. People heard it all over the world.
Within hours, Kamran Hedayati was on the airwaves, proclaiming that he was the Mahdi and declaring war on the whole damned world.
************ *************** ********************
Quern had assembled as many of his close collaborators as he could assemble on short notice.
“This ‘Mahdi’ is mangling his own damned scriptures,” G Gordon Liddy said.
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that people believe his bullshit. Do you remember when I built the canals? I simply transported the material into otherwhen. If I had taken a large chunk of earth all at once, I could have created a huge explosive effect,” Quern said.
“This knob-gobbler is doing much the same thing, only he is using some sort of bomb that transports everything within a 10 to 15-yard radius into otherwhen,” Quern said.
“Also, he is at least peripherally aware of me. A quern is a sort of grindstone. He said the ‘Millstone’ that ‘poisoned the pure lake with bile’,” Quern said.
“I let the sea into Lago Cociboica and Lago Xolotian. That can be interpreted as a form of poisoning,” Quern said.
“How do you know this?” Liddy asked.
“The seismic disturbances gave me the approximate size of his otherwhen bombs. My computers are able to resolve the effects of multiple spheres of sand—yards below the surface—all simultaneously turning to pure vacuum. I wasn’t 100% sure, but the air-blast confirmed it. He transported huge amounts of air to create the mother of all air blasts. I have snapshots from space,” Quern said.
A courier walked into the situation room and gave Quern a message.
“How delightful. The people just rose up in huge numbers and deposed the Shah of Iran. Iran is now run by a council of Imams and they all pledge allegiance to Kamran Hedayati. The ruler of Iraq is also acknowledging the Mahdi,” Quern said.
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Post by feralferret on Apr 18, 2023 22:18:10 GMT -6
Looks like the Middle East is going to crap. This could be an interesting battle between Quern and Kamran Hedayati.
Thanks for the fine chapter.
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Post by rvm45 on Apr 20, 2023 14:23:07 GMT -6
Chapter Thirty
70 532
1968
Quern watched the rise of the Mahdists with a sick fascination—the way one might gaze on jiggers or mango worms being removed from a living host. It wasn’t pleasant, but it drew the eye.
At least, when watching videos of huge boils being lanced and botworm larvae being removed, there was the satisfaction of knowing that overall well-being had increased.
As the Mahdists took over more and more territory, Quern—and the world’s—overall state of wellbeing declined.
The Mahdists had taken over most of the Arabian Peninsula—except Israel and Lebanon; and they had reached across the Red Sea to annex Somalia.
Afghanistan was now Mahdist and what would have been Turkmenistan; Uzbekistan and Tajikistan had been snatched from the Russians.
Pakistan and Bangladesh had never seceded from India and Pakistan was still not under the Mahdi’s control.
Libya; Sudan and Tunisia had bowed the knee to Kamran Hedayati but Egypt—as a long-time ally of Israel—was still resisting.
Quern was very poogly about doing anything in The Holy Land. The Jews were God’s chosen people. People or nations that offended either the Jewish Race—if they could be called a “Race”—or the Nation of Israel—always got dealt with eventually.
There had needed to be an “Israel” for Jesus to be born in—and he had been. Then the Romans destroyed Israel and drove all the Jews out of The Holy Land.
Then, in an unprecedented event, after being gone from the area for almost two millennia, the Jews returned to reclaim their ancestral homeland.
There was subsequently great hue and cry about the plight of the Arab squatters who had moved into the Jews’ rightful territory, while the Jews were indisposed.
The Nation of Israel was reborn, not because of any machinations of man, but because Israel had an indispensable role to play in the End Times.
But that was in Quern’s timeline. There was no way to convince Quern that Jesus wasn’t a historical personage in Quern’s own timeline. Quern was also absolutely certain that Jesus had preached a Gospel largely congruent with the Gospel that the Pentecostal Holiness Churches preached.
There was only one messiah. It became ridiculous to hypothesize endless Jesuses being born; preaching and then being crucified.
Anyway, Christ’s singular crucifixion was supposed to be sufficient atonement for all time.
What then? Did Jesus have to climb up on the cross in each and every timeline? That seemed contrary to the scriptures as well as remarkably tedious for Jesus.
So, if someone had claimed that Jesus had never been born in this timeline, Quern was at least ready to entertain the notion. It would explain many things if Christ was simply never born here, or any other timeline but the one—and its downstream branches.
It was quite sufficient for Christ to be born in one otherwhen.
But then, where did that leave the Jews? Were they still under God’s patronage, in a timeline that really didn’t need them?
Maybe not. Maybe God wouldn’t care if someone squashed the Jews in this timeline flatter than a grape.
Still, leaving aside the fact that Quern had no particular desire to stomp the Jews flat, he didn’t want to risk getting on God’s bad side either.
Quern had used his resources to nip WWI in the bud—turning it into one more inconsequential European military soap opera.
Without the humiliation of losing WWI and the lack of ruinous “Reparation”—read, “Retaliation”—to put the German economy into a state of acute malaise—Germany was not ripe for Hitler and the rise of the NAZIs.
Parenthetically, there were a few Temple Maidens operating in this timeline as early as 1820 or so. Adolph Hitler was born in 1889. By then, the timeline should have changed sufficiently that Hitler was never even born.
Surprise! A few pivotal people seemed able to get themselves born, regardless of the chaotic turbulence engendered by transmigrators.
Adolph Hitler had been born right on schedule. Quern had taken away the stage that he had played his destiny upon and it was hard to see how the man would have much impact on history, this time around.
Quern was cautious though. He had the Temple Maidens bring the young Adolph to Managua.
Adolph wasn’t a genius—except at absorbing the mood of the mob, sort of by osmosis, and then feeding their own powerful emotions back at them—but magnified many times over.
Adolph in Quern’s timeline, had once wanted to be an architect and he had applied to a painting atelier and had been turned down due to mediocre talent.
Young Adolph in Managua, grew up going to Gaeilge School. His artistic ability and general intelligence were boosted—plus he had extra art tutoring from an early age.
And he also learned—had it downloaded, truth be told—Hebrew and attended Talmudic studies three times weekly.
He had designed some of the more innovative wooden skyscrapers in Managua and other towns, and his paintings were also quite sought after…
And perhaps because of his early immersion in Talmudic studies, he ended up marrying a Christianized Jewish girl.
All that might have been protein for the home team, but by avoiding WWII—and the Holocaust—Quern had finagled away the particular events that Led to the reestablishment of The Nation of Israel.
Quern had invested huge amounts of gold and time—Temple Maiden time—whipping up a Zionist movement and persuading large numbers of Jews to relocate to Quern’s improved Holy Land.
In this timeline, the Mussulmen were much less monolithic. Quern had amply reimbursed any displaced squatters and he had arranged—over the decades—for Egypt; Israel and Lebanon to become very close friends.
Quite frankly, though Quern couldn’t imagine why God might need a Nation of Israel in this timeline—Quern didn’t want to be the one responsible for there not being a Nation of Israel, when God reached for one. The punishment might be severe.
Quern had the Venezuelan oil fields. There were roads in the cities and people drove cars that were fair replicas of the old classics—like the 57 Chevy Belaire; Cadillacs and Lincolns with exaggerated tail fins; Tuckers and 1975 Comets—along with late 70’s Ford Econoline Vans. Motorcycles—full-sized Harley-Davidsons and others—were also popular.
Every high school aged teen wasn’t hankering for a “Rod.” Frankly, few high schoolers could afford even a second-hand vehicle.
The cities were laid out so that walking or taking a streetcar was a small inconvenience—streetcars were a small Railroad after all… And so, there were light demands on the SCM or the CSA’s petroleum distillates.
Quern had, in a number of surreptitious ways, discouraged looking for oil in the Middle East. He didn’t trust super-charging the Mussulmen with huge amounts of cash and he wanted to forestall a parallel to OPEC in this timeline for as long as possible.
Over the last 5-years though, Kamran Hedayati had sent oil-drillers to the richest sites in what had been Kuwait; Arabia; Iran; Iraq and Dubai. It was like the bastard had a cheat-sheet—like Quern.
The oil had started flowing remarkably quickly. Everyone in the pumping stations and refineries were fanatical cultists, willing to work long hours for very little pay—up to 16-hours per day, 6-days per week.
Kamran Hedayati was spending huge amounts of his oil money on tanks; jet planes and other military armaments.
************ *************** *********************
Quern had scaled-up his own military preparedness.
Hydrogen bombs, or even atom bombs were as yet unknown in this timeline. Quern had coopted almost every promising engineer or physicist bright enough to create an atomic bomb.
Much of the SCM was powered by nuclear reactors—but exactly how the plants worked, was a carefully kept secret. Anyone with insider access, was carefully vetted and then subjected to a “gag-order” by Quern himself.
There were probably a few scientists who had a fair idea what Quern was up to. But without the frantic and obsessive; WWII-driven “Manhattan Project” with its unlimited wartime financing—they weren’t likely to come up with a bomb anytime soon.
Quern had nuclear weapons—of course—but he had carefully refrained from a single open-air test—not even to impress his allies and scare his potential enemies.
Nah, an atom bomb, or nuclear bomb, gave off trace evidence that scientists with advanced spectrograms could sift out of the atmosphere and gain clues from, anywhere in the world. Also, an open explosion was “Proof of Concept.”
Quern had his own ideas about non-combatants and “Innocent Bystanders.”
In the first place, no one is innocent. The Bibles says, “There is none righteous, no, not one!” Neutrals were guilty for not picking a side. If they decided that they were against Quern, then they were the enemy and they were a legitimate target. If they were for Quern, casualties from friendly fire are a tragic, but inescapable circumstance in war.
The Sage acts solely for the sake of action, without regard for consequences.
Still, Quern had an abiding reluctance to release the horror of nuclear strikes on the world that he had worked so hard to develop.
He tried to monitor the Mahdists from space; from high altitude “flyovers” and from what spies he could send in on the ground.
His spies vanished without trace in an astonishing number of cases. When the casualty rate rose above 80%; Quern ordered a halt to overland spying.
He sent a command, via the Temple Maidens, to attempt to abduct Mahdists, the higher—ranking, the better.
He found that while he could mind-control the lower-ranking Mahdists, that they had little or no worthwhile data. The higher-ranking Mahdists had some sort of ward in their minds, that not even Quern could remove.
Just when he felt that he was on the verge of breaking through, something would totally mind-wipe every memory from his client.
Quern was absolutely horrified.
He had always sneered at the supposed “good guys” in fiction, who erased parts of people’s memories to prevent the spread of inconvenient truths.
So far as Quern was concerned, erasing one of a person’s memories was rape with violence. No, it was something far more sinister and more evil than mere physical rape.
It didn’t even excuse altering someone’s memories, if they asked you to. That was like killing someone just because they asked you to; or performing an optional amputation.
Some things are so unspeakably evil, that consent changes nothing.
Given a choice between having one of his memories erased and being put to death, Quern would have unhesitantly chosen death.
This “Mahdi” had left a booby-trap in his follower’s minds, that erased every memory in their brain.
Such an evil opponent must be fought without single scruple.
Well, some things were still off limits. Quern would kill Kamran Hedayati without a moment’s hesitation. He would torture him, if that somehow furthered Quern’s cause.
Things that Quern would never do to Kamran Hedayati—or anyone else:
Blind him; castrate him; amputate one or more of his limbs; alter his memories or take away his ability, but leave him alive.
All those were fates worse than death. Death should be sufficient. Leave torment to God—if God feels that torment is called for.
O, sure, in some sort of fight, it was okay to chop off a hand; gouge out an eye or squash testicles. Much of the modern world said that even when fighting in self-defense, one must cease fighting once the client was no longer a threat…
But in an ideal world, when your client falls to one knee, bleeding from the stump where his right hand used to be; with a gaping hole where his left eye once was and his former testicles turned to paste from a hard kick…
It is a chivalrous act of mercy to step close and behead him and evil and sadistic cruelty to let him live on, in that condition.
Quern wasn’t opposed to assassinating Kamran Hedayati, but the man had at least a dozen doubles and he kept up a dazzling shell-game that obscured his exact presence.
For the moment, Quern seemed reduced to playing a passive waiting game.
************* ***************** *********************
Quern’s Situation Room
“Kamran Hedayati is massing troops on the Pakistani border,” G Gordon Liddy said.
Of course, Pakistan was just a part of India in this world.
“He has demanded their total surrender and their acknowledgement that he is the Mahdi. They have 12-hours to decide,” Liddy added.
Quern couldn’t help humming a bit of an old—dirty language—ditty that he had heard a few times:
“Redneck Dickheads, “Are all a bit Inbred. “Redneck Dickheads’ “Just Shoot Them “In the Head!
“Redneck Dickheads. “Are Better Off “When dead. “Redneck Dickheads, “Just Fill Their Ass with Lead…”
Only Quern was mouthing:
“Kamran Hedayati, “Better if He’s Dead. “Kamran Hedayati. “Just Shoot Him in the Head!”
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Post by texican on Apr 21, 2023 14:01:31 GMT -6
The mahdi is on the road to conquer all of the middle east and working on east Europe. Now how will this wanton destruction and evil be stopped? Only rvm knows.
Texican...
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Post by rvm45 on Apr 26, 2023 15:59:12 GMT -6
Chapter Thirty-One
72 693
The Temple Maidens did not control India, but they had maintained a firm presence there since about 1870.
They ran hundreds of orphanages and Gaeilge Schools for the poor and wretched. About 69% of very poor Indians—not real Indians from America, Sub-continent Indians—who were literate, were literate because they had attended Gaeilge Schools. Of course, the course content was always taught in Gaeilge, but reading American and Hindi in Devanagari script was also covered.
Everyone who attended the schools got at least a 39-point boost to his IQ—even if they just went for a single year. Given the Temple Maidens’ ability to download, even a single year would also make one fully literate and fluent in both Irish and Scottish and fully literate in American, Gaeilge and Devanagari.
On the other end of the spectrum were the elite. The Temple Maidens ran several elite private grammar schools; prep-schools and a small elite university for the children of the rich.
Gaeilge was increasingly becoming the lingua franca between folks who did not speak each other’s native language and it was a shibboleth of the rich and powerful to show their urbanity by conversing in Gaeilge at various upscale social functions.
A child who went to a Temple Maiden school would be able to speak Irish or Scottish as if they were both his native languages. That was no real feat—it was an artifact of downloading directly to the mind. The student got the full download on the first day—but various temporary constraints kept him from demonstrating his miraculously quick acquisition to the outside world, too soon.
The elite students also got a minimum IQ boost of 59-points. They mastered a systematic method of using mnemonics and the curriculum taught relentless memorization of all sorts of things—since it was very easy for a mnemonist and because you never knew when various facts; tables or equations would come in handy.
That is, the students were encouraged to memorize all sorts of things that they encountered serendipitously, on their own initiative.
The students were taught history and mathematics. Symbolic Logic was heavily stressed. That and the thoughts of Jeff Cooper and the KJV Bible.
Every student who graduated from a Gaeilge School wasn’t necessarily a Christian. It couldn’t even be said that none of them would ever willfully misrepresent Christianity for some reason, if it seemed to their advantage.
However, every graduate was well-grounded in the essential fundamentals of Christianity.
No graduate of a Gaeilge School would ever confound Christianity and Romish Papism. No graduate would ever think that Jesus taught a Social Gospel or that salvation was a matter of “Good Works” outweighing “Bad Works” on some sort of Cosmic Scale.
Many of the elite Gaeilge Schools graduates—and even a few graduates of the poor schools, went on to become influential members of India’s ruling class, or high-ranking officers in India’s military.
The Temple Maidens’ church— “The Church of Jesus the Messiah” “C.O.J.M.” was one of the major religions in India.
There are always a few fakes and hypocrites, but none of the sincere members of C.O.J.M. were likely to kneel down and worship Kamran Hedayati as the messiah—more and more, he was presenting himself as God made flesh.
Interestingly, the explosive growth of C.O.J.M, had caused many Hindu; Buddhist and even Mussulmen in India to become more firmly committed to their own beliefs.
The street-corner debates that the Temple Maidens used extensively had caused the die-hards from other groups to brush up on the fundamental premises of their faiths, so they could make a good showing in the town squares; market places; public parks and street-corners.
The various groups stressed non-violence and civility and they competed for converts in a genteel and orderly manner—occasioned by a bit of impassioned shouting occasionally.
The continual interaction with the Temple Maidens had sharpened and tempered the Hindus; Buddhist and Mussulmen of India. It had made them more committed to their various faiths and more willing to step into the breech and defend them to the death.
They weren’t willing to worship Kamran Hedayati any more than the Christians were.
So, of course they didn’t surrender to Hedayati’s ultimatum.
************** ***************** ***********************
Quern sat and stared at the huge television screen showing the situation on the Afghani-Indian border.
A number of smaller auxiliary screens showed a number of other views.
Quern sat looking at tables and columns of numbers. He could memorize anything as fast as he could read it, of course. He could read about three-times as fast as the fastest non-augmented human could read.
He firmly believed that once you had quantified something, that you were much closer to understanding it—as a general rule with very few exceptions. He also found that staring at the numbers before him, rather than on one of the “heads-up” displays within his own mind, helped him to concentrate.
A blackboard would have been even better. There was a reason that the charter of all the universities that Quern created specifically required blackboards rather than marker boards; overhead displays or computer monitor sharing.
‘Note to self: Install a few blackboards in the Managua situation room,’ Quern thought.
Hedayati had 4236 tanks and about 125-times that in infantry.
There were 3500 of the “Hedayati I” tank. They almost seemed to be inspired by the Sherman Tanks of WWII—only there had been no WWII in this timeline. They were a couple of feet shorter; about 10-miles-per-hour faster and better armored than the WWII Sherman.
The 75 mm main gun was still a bit under-powered for tank-to-tank duels; but the anti-personnel HE round had been improved noticeably. Each of the small tanks also carried a mini-gun in a caliber that was very much like a .17 Fireball—the tank could carry more of the mini-rounds than it could carry in larger calibers.
There were 650 of the larger and more powerful “Hedayati II” tanks—seemingly inspired by the NAZI Tiger Tanks.
Then there were 86 the ungodly huge “Mahdi I” tanks. The damned thing weighed over five times what the Hedayati II weighed. It was a good 12-mile-per-hour slower than either Hedayati Tank and Quern wasn’t sure what purpose it served in the world.
Meanwhile, the Hedayati I and II both could travel about 45-miles-per-hour. That was far faster than any infantry could march.
The US had transported many of its troops in the back of the big M-2 trucks during WWII. They had also made some use of primitive troop transports that existed then. Troops in a truck are very vulnerable—both to mines; airstrikes and ambushes. A single belt-fed machinegun, firing the length of the truck bed can probably get at least 40% casualties before the infantrymen can dismount. Add in a squad of riflemen firing at the same truck along with the machinegun…
The primitive troop transports had very light armor. An AP round would sometimes penetrate one of the aluminum walls and then bounce around inside, racking up several casualties.
The Bradley Vehicle was meant to be a troop transport—with a 25 mm Chaingun and some capability to support the infantrymen after they disembarked.
Now whether the Bradley was a good troop transport or not, was open to question. It was expensive and a bit persnickety and it only carried eight infantrymen.
With the 25mm Chaingun and its treads, it looked a little bit like a small tank—a “Tank-Lite” as it were. Most of the criticisms addressed against the Bradley focused on the notion that the Bradley was a piss-poor and extremely fragile tank.
“Well no shit Sherlock! It was never intended to be a tank. It is intended to be an APC!”
However, Hedayati had about 5000 tracked vehicles— “Ghater”—“Mule” in Persian—that resembled a poor-country-kin of the Bradley. The vehicles had little or no armor—just enough sheet metal; Lexan and Kevlar to be somewhat better than nothing—the first couple of times that it was hit.
It mounted a .50 Caliber M-2 and it carried six infantrymen—and it was a good 15-miles-per-hour faster than a Hedayati Tank.
What the Hell!?! Hedayati’s followers were both fatalists and fanatics and they openly courted martyrdom. If a few of the Ghater exploded. Killing crew and passengers—O, well… The US had fielded about 7500 tanks during WWII. Germany only had about 3900—while the Soviets were guestimated to have had between 18 000 and 22 000. In the Yom Kippur War, Egypt had 1500 tanks—though they only utilized 1080, while Israel only had about 385 tanks.
Kamran Hedayati wasn’t dicking around. He had respectable numbers of tanks. More than Hitler had used in his Blitzkrieg, while fighting on two fronts.
************* *************** *****************
When the deadline that Hedayati had set expired, Hedayati appeared once again on the airwaves—temporarily pirating many stations and over-riding their signal.
“I warned you. Let this be on your head,” he broadcast.
Relatively few people spoke Farsi or Persian but Hedayati had learned a heavily accented American somewhere.
Pakistan was mountainous and there were a number of passes between Pakistan and Afghanistan and Pakistan and India—though in this timeline, Pakistan was a region of India.
The most famous and main pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan was of course, the notorious Khyber Pass
There were passes to Kashmir; numerous internal passes between regions of Pakistan and the Muztagh Pass and the Karakorum Pass even connected Pakistan to China.
A mere instant after Hedayati ceased speaking, he unleashed a barrage of otherwhen bombs.
Hedayati hit a hundred military bases and troop concentrations along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Simultaneously, he hogged out a dozen mountain passes—widening; lowering and flattening them to make it easier for his army to advance.
He hit the Bolan Pass; the Dorah Pass; the Gomal Pass; the Karakorum Pass; the Khunjrab Pass; the Muztagh Pass and the Tochi Pass simultaneously—along with more than a dozen internal passes.
Quern was watching from space; from high-altitude spy planes and from hundreds of drones of varying sizes and capabilities.
Hedayati only seemed to have one sort of bomb with one destructive radius. The radius of destruction was precisely 12-yards and 7-inches.
The highest resolution; highest speed cameras that Quern could bring to bear, could neither spot the point of origin nor chronical the process. One minute something was there. The next instant, it was gone—leaving a vacuum in its wake.
Quern couldn’t make small pieces of matter vanish into otherwhen extemporaneously. He needed to set the system up and build the mental machinery. It wasn’t done in minutes. It took several days.
However, Quern could move far more mass than Hedayati. He could have transported all of his canal’s worth of earth and rock simultaneously, if he chose to.
All of that material and the earthquakes; tidal waves and dust thrown into the atmosphere might have been an extinction level event—at any rate, it would not have been happy-making.
The point wasn’t whether Quern should. It was whether he could.
His transport ability outstripped Hedayati.
There were huge rockslides in many of the passes that Hedayati had just cleared. He promptly vanished the debris.
Quern face-palmed and hoped that Hedayati hadn’t thrown enough dust into the air to kick off the equivalent of a “Nuclear Winter.”
“Nuclear Winter” had largely turned out to be anti-nuclear propaganda—but that didn’t mean that there couldn’t be enough smoke and dust thrown into the atmosphere to kick off a new ice age, on short notice.
Hedayati seemed to have a limited range to his otherwhen bombs—but he had quite enough reach to devastate Pakistan.
Karachi; Lahore; Faisalabad; Rawalpindi; Hyderabad and Peshawar were all squashed flatter than a grape by wave after wave of Hedayati’s otherwhen bombs.
The remains of Pakistan’s top twenty towns weren’t exactly flat—since some of the otherwhen bombs had left craters—some quite distinct and others caved-in and overran by subsequent destructions.
All of the towns looked at least as bad as Dresden after the blitz bombing.
It was all over within a period of ten minutes—or at least no more than fifteen.
Hedayati appeared on television once more.
He had a dozen Temple Maidens by his side. They were beaten and bruised. One had lost an arm. At least one had a gaping hole where an eye had been. Another had a crude bandage around both eyes.
All the Temple Maidens were bound with handcuffs and leg-shackles and they were gagged.
Quern had no special mystic connection to his Temple Maidens. He had no clue what school; orphanage; mission or other work that the Temple Maidens had been engaged in—or where they were working. He had no idea how Hedayati had managed to capture them…
He did know that they were his Temple Maidens and his lemon-yellow sclera instantly turned red as the rage drove his blood pressure to levels that would have instantly killed a human.
Hedayati ungagged one of the Temple Maidens.
“Will you kneel and accept me as your God?” he demanded.
“Dream on, Cool Breeze,” the Temple Maiden answered.
“You are a dead-man walking, when my master learns of this,” the Temple Maiden added.
“If you don’t worship me, you will die,” Hedayati said.
“Some of them that sleep in the dust will awake to everlasting life. Others will awake to shame and everlasting contempt. Jesus created the Heavens and the Earth. He created humans. We are manufactured beings, created to serve the master as he serves Jesus—as we serve Jesus by working diligently at the tasks that our master has assigned us,” the Temple Maiden said.
“If our master is the sun; then Jesus is more than a billion-billion galaxies of suns—and on that scale, you aren’t even equivalent to the feeble gleam of a firefly,” she said.
“Worship you? I’d sooner sculpt an idol from my own turds and worship that. It would be worthier of worship than you,” she concluded.
Hedayati used a Karambit to gouge out both of the Temple Maiden’s eyes.
“I let her speak, so that you all could witness the depth of these Temple Maidens’ depravity,” Hedayati said.
“Flog each of them and then sodomize them to death—while the Millstone can do naught but watch helplessly,” Hedayati commanded.
Quern was a bit stunned. He was surprised that the Temple Maiden would openly admit to being a gynoid—though no one would believe that she was a manufactured being.
He was absolutely flummoxed by the depths of the Temple Maidens’ commitment and belief in him. He expected total—but intelligent—compliance from the Temple Maidens. That is what they were built and programmed for.
He had been totally unaware that the Temple Maidens believed that by serving him they were serving Jesus.
Quern firmly believed that “He who calls on the name of the Lord SHALL be saved.”
IF an AI or an Android became self-aware enough to knowingly call on the name of the Lord, then he—or she—or it—should be saved. IF there were exceptions, then the verse didn’t mean what it said—period.
He gave the Temple Maidens all sorts of religious material—the KJV Bible; all of Spurgeon and David Wilkerson and Billy Graham’s sermons. The writing and sermons of Brother JED.
He had sent them forth like teaching machines—to promote the Gospel—and other things…
And he had never bothered to ask if they believed. He was well-disposed toward them—but they were machines, after all.
Now, this tortured Temple Maiden on the point of death had given him such a glowing tribute.
“You might torture us—if we chose to allow it. We cannot be sexually molested. When faced with a ‘Fate Worse Than Death’ our suicide switch automatically kicks in, Cool Breeze,” the Temple Maiden with empty eye-sockets calmly said.
All of the Temple Maidens went slack—dead before they hit the ground—as all of their suicide switches activated simultaneously.
“Prepare to nuke Hedayati big-time. He is bigger threat to humanity than a bunch of radioactive fallout and some more dust in the air,” Quern said.
His voice broke a bit at the end, but his words were still understandable.
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Post by feralferret on Apr 26, 2023 22:17:50 GMT -6
A remarkable chapter! Thank you.
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Post by texican on Apr 27, 2023 14:36:47 GMT -6
Nuclear war coming to the mideast with loss of the oil money.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Apr 28, 2023 14:12:38 GMT -6
Chapter Thirty-Two
75 411
Quern was a child of the Cold War and he thought in terms of a nuclear strike as “The Ultimate.” However, after a moment’s reflection, he realized that he had several alternatives on hand.
Quern had perfected “The Thor Project” AKA “Rods from God.”
He had requisitioned quite a few of the telephone pole-sized tungsten rods, along with his 177-pound rail, when he briefly connected to the Energy of Continuous Creation.
The idea was that you had a number of very heavy tungsten rods in orbit. Each rod had fins to stabilize it and a very small rocket motor to guide it. With the right entry angle, the damned things needed only slight attitude adjustments to hit their target.
Gravity would accelerate the telephone pole-sized rods to over ten times the speed of sound. The kinetic energy when they struck would rival the destructive force of the Hiroshima bomb. The rods also penetrated many stories into the ground—making them ideal for taking out hardened bunkers.
One problem with the concept in Quern’s original timeline, was that it cost about $10 000 for every pound launched into space. Each rod would be very expensive.
Quern had reduced the price to lift mass from Earth to space to about $560 per pound—otherwise, he couldn’t have built his satellites, particularly before his Lunar strip mines started contributing to his space program.
He had started out with more than twice as many rods as he ever thought that he would need. Then he had manufactured and transported a few more from Earth and the Moon over the years. More is always more better.
He couldn’t create something very sophisticated—like a rocket motor with a very compact and advanced computer guidance system, using the Energy of Continuous Creation. Even Quern couldn’t hold the image of the circuitry of a ballistic guidance system in his mind unambiguously enough for the Fountains of Creation to reproduce it for him.
Not a biggie…Quern’s technicians had built and retrofitted the sophisticated parts.
One of the beauties of the tungsten rods was that there was no radioactive fallout. At the moment though, Quern was more concerned about the vast amounts of dust that Hedayati was throwing into the atmosphere with his otherwhen bombs.
His “Rods from God” would also throw up a great deal of dust.
Well, dust—in and of itself—was better than a devilish brew of dust and fallout—specially in a world that had never heard of nuclear fallout.
Only, Quern not only needed to wreck Hedayati’s oilfields—both to starve Hedayati’s heavily mechanized military, and also to deny him funds from selling petroleum and related products.
Quern had some hollow rods. He carefully packed them with short-term radioactive materials that should make the Middle East oilfields a very toxic work environment for the next 60-80 years.
There was no way to completely prevent collateral damage due to fallout but it should be kept to a minimum.
The beauty of using “Dirty Bombs” was that it wouldn’t give anyone any clues on how to build atom bombs or hydrogen bombs.
While the rods were being prepared for launch, somehow, Hedayati penetrated deep into India and reduced the once beautiful city of Rajasthan to smoldering ruins.
“He had to have had the machinery to create those otherwhen bombs already in place. It boggles the mind to think that he could move something from the Afghani border to within striking distance of Rajasthan in less than ten minutes,” Quern pondered aloud.
Quern launched at troop concentrations along the border. Most of the tanks and massed infantry had not yet began to advance into Pakistan and they were sitting ducks for the Rods from God.
Quern had a variation, that was the kinetic equivalent to a multiple warhead nuclear missile or a cluster-bomb—a bundle of 2’’ diameter rods separated shortly before contact with the ground—having much the same effect as a shotgun blast.
The bundles were more expensive per unit and the overall net effect was less—though they did somewhat increase efficiency when attacking lightly armored targets.
Quern wasn’t greedy. He shared every rod that he had on hand with Hedayati. He had more rods stashed in otherwhen, but they needed to be loaded into their launching bays and equipped with rockets and navigation computers.
Quern also targeted oilfields; refineries and factories capable of producing war matériel. He did not deliberately target population centers; but he did make multiple strikes at every Hedayati sighting.
Hedayati used at least eighty doubles—probably more. Quern had some reason to suspect that about thirty of them had some possibility of being the genuine article—and those were the only ones that he had a good fix on at the present.
At any rate, though doubles weren’t extraordinarily valuable, they weren’t terribly easy to come by. Depriving Hedayati of thirty doubles should hurt him a bit…
And while Quern wasn’t yet at the point of deliberately targeting population centers—but to the degree that the civilian casualties resulting from targeting Hedayati clones resulted in confusion and loss of morale amongst the opposition—that was protein for the home team.
Rod after rod fell from the sky. The sands of the desert were heated red hot and turned to volcanic glass under the continual barrage. Oilfield pumping stations and refineries exploded. Oil fires raged out of control.
Collateral casualties in the cities harboring Hedayati clones mounted.
“It looks like you rim-wrecked the Mahdi’s army,” Jo-Jo said.
“Preliminary reports say that you destroyed over 3000 tanks and over 100 000 ground troops,” Jo-Jo added.
“Yabba—Yabba—Yabba,” Quern replied.
“Yabba” was olde tyme cant for “Yeah, But…”
Quern’s drones gave him multiple up-close and personal views of the devastation that he and Hedayati had wreaked.
The remnants of Hedayati’s army were rejoicing. One dude had lost an arm above the elbow. The only reason that he hadn’t bled to death was that whatever had taken his arm had serendipitously cauterized the wound and he was dancing around and celebrating as if his wife had just given birth to a 10-pound baby boy.
*********** ************* *******************
Quern called for an assembly of the Railroad Union. The SCM was a constitutional republic, but it was governed by the Railroad Union.
A man couldn’t run for public office unless he was a member in good standing, of the Railroad Union—though there were a few exceptions to this rule—but they were just that—exceptional.
And a man couldn’t become a Union Steward until he had put in at least six-years doing manual labor on the Railroad. That should eliminate eunuchoid pencil-necks, who had never done an honest day’s work in their lives, making rules for their betters to have to live by.
It was an interesting theory of government—but it was hardly put to the test here. Quern’s Railroad was still running on almost zero maintenance cost, at least for the tracks—using stockpiled ties; rails; plates; spikes; anchors; telegraph lines and telegraph poles that Quern had pulled from otherwhen.
Quern’s Railroad was also was backed by Quern’s almost limitless stocks of precious metals.
And, truth be told, the Railroad; the Railroad Union and the rest of the SCM was ran behind the scenes by Quern; his fellow transmigrators and the Temple Maidens.
Still, he needed to get the Railroad Union to formally declare war on Hedayati and the Mahdists.
That went without a hitch. Quern would have been astonished if there had been a hitch.
Shortly afterward, CSA declared war on Hedayati as well. Quern did not rule or control the CSA, but his Railroads permeated it and their interests generally coincided quite harmoniously.
The NKS would sit on the fence for awhile longer. That was in keeping with their national character. Quern was satisfied as long as they didn’t enter the fray on behalf of Hedayati.
Brazil also chose to be neutral. Brazil had become weird. They were almost otherworldly.
Brazil’s scientists and engineers had taken the ideas on Aquaculture that Quern had given them and they had run with them. Their coasts were dotted with cities filled with the wooden skyscrapers that Quern had introduced.
They had multiple mobile floating cities that called Brazil their home port but ranged all over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The country had colonies in Antarctica. They made extensive use of genetically altered jungle plants and animals that Quern had given them. They were bold pioneers in making sustainable use of the huge rainforest that they had come to think of themselves as holy stewards over.
Brazilian scientists had used cutting edge computer technology as well as extensive use of MRI scans to filter through the myriad meditation systems and come up with a system that worked well enough to bother with…
Practitioners of Brazilian Meditation were not demonically possessed or even oppressed, but they often became odd enough to make Thoreau look like a milquetoast conformist by comparison—though the practitioners often had widely varying weltanschauungs.
Portuguese was still Brazil’s official language, but over 50% of Brazil’s population were graduates of Gaeilge Schools ran by Temple Maidens and almost everyone in Brazil was bilingual.
Quern was quite content for the contemplative and non-contentious Brazilians to sit this war out. He didn’t need them anyway.
************** **************** ******************
Quern pulled Debra and Jo-Jo to one side.
“Jo-Jo, you have been my confidant and my right-hand man for a long time, I would hate to lose you,” Quern said.
“Debra, you’re my wife in three lifetimes—though you only remember the last two. It goes without saying, that I would hate to lose you. You both have fully-formed artifacts inside of you. If you die, you may very well transmigrate elsewhere—or elsewhen,” Quern said.
Quern showed both of them a vial full of red liquid.
“This is the fluid that let me thoroughly access my artifact—yes, well…I’m still studying parts of it. Debra; of course you have the knowledge to manufacture more—but if you slide back another century or two, it may take you a good long time to fabricate any,” Quern said.
“If we must part, I want you to live well. Controlling the artifact will let you do that. I think, that despite some risk, that both of you should use the red liquid now,” Quern said.
“And Debra, if you die from taking the red liquid, I will hunt you down across all the otherwhens, just to kick your ass,” Quern said.
*********** ************* *********************
1969
“Pond and honor! Hedayati doesn’t even seem to be slowing down,” Quern said.
Quern’s Thor Project attack seemed to have been a minor blip on Hedayati’s road to conquest.
It was worse than useless to send armies to attack Hedayati. Any army that set down within his territory was immediately hit by a barrage of otherwhen bombs and were promptly annihilated.
Meanwhile. The Winter had been severe. Spring was late in coming and there was every indication that Summer would be short, cool and rainy.
The dust in the air was responsible. Things weren’t quite as bad as in the aftermath of Krakatoa, but it was close.
Much of the SCM was in tropical or semi-tropical areas. Still, if there was less sunlight then there was less energy for photosynthesis.
Quern had hundreds of miles of glass tunnels in Baja and Mexico running seawater through his canals and relying on sunlight—and heat—to cause the water to evaporate and condense on the glass—and water the rows of crops. If the Sun became even a little less reliable, Quern’s massive crop-growing system didn’t work as well—and food prices would rise.
The seawater tunnels in Egypt, Tunisia and Australia would also be affected—though Tunisia had already gone over to the dark side.
Hedayati’s factories quickly replaced the tanks that Quern had destroyed and added to their numbers. Factory workers were willing to work themselves into exhaustion for Hedayati.
Volunteers were sent into the radioactive oil fields to reopen the oil wells. When they sickened and died, they were stacked up in the dry desert climate—like so many sticks of cordwood…
And every once in awhile, Hedayati would use an otherwhen bomb to dispose of the accumulating corpses and when the radiation poisoned workers, with their festering sores, saw the piles of corpses disappear into thin air, they took it as proof that the martyrs were resurrected in Hedayati’s Paradise.
While Quern pondered how to effectively attack Hedayati, the Mahdists invaded South-Western China by way of the Muztagh Pass and the Karakorum Pass—though they were more like wide-open thoroughfares in the wake of Hedayati’s flattening and widening.
Quern had made little attempt to mold China. China had a huge population—though well short of one billion, in this timeline. Quern only had so many Temple Maidens to go around.
He had extensively aided Korea. He concentrated on Japan and Taiwan a bit less. He only kinda half-assed injected Christianity and Capitalism into India—but India had benefitted greatly from the Temple Maiden presence…
He had greased the skids for the Philippines to become a state of the CSA—after all the NKS had Hawaii and he didn’t want the CSA to be slighted. He presumed that setting things up that way, meant he was obliged to set up a good Railroad and a certain number of Gaeilge Schools in the Philippines.
Quern had hoped that China could learn from the numerous examples around it—including Russia.
Quern had mercilessly crushed any Communist or Socialist organizations in China and had largely let them do as they liked.
China had modernized a great deal, though they were still a behind much of the developed world.
It didn’t really matter. There didn’t seem any effective way to defeat Hedayati’s military. He sent in massive amounts of tanks. Whenever a group of defenders managed to give the onward march of his army a significant pause, they would be hit with otherwhen bombs and blasted into oblivion.
That wasn’t the main problem though. The problem was that bumper crops of Chinese were embracing Mahdism and becoming fanatical followers of Hedayati.
Mahdist China started to put pressure on the remaining enclaves of free India and Tibet.
Sooner than anyone would have thought, the Mahdists were poised to invade Korea.
“Can you get me a worldwide pirate broadcast like Hedayati had?” Quern asked.
“No problem,” Tosh told Quern.
Tosh and Terry—as well as Jo-Jo—had maintained a continuing interest in radio.
“Numb-Nuts! I mean you, Hedayati! I am Quern—not Millstone. If anyone in your accursed army sets one foot across the border into Korea, I will use a weapon of mass destruction on you, that will make the Rods from God look picayune by comparison. You have been warned,” Quern said.
As Quern watched in amazement, Hedayati once again seized the airwaves.
A daemonic head with horns; long pointed ears; fangs and a huge third eye appeared above the Middle East. It was almost as broad as Iraq.
A 3-D hologram of Quern materialized before the daemonic head.
“This is Quern. I will pay a bounty of 1000-pounds of pure gold to anyone who can bring me Quern’s head. Fool did you think that I did not know my opponent!?!”
The Hedayati head slowly devoured the virtual Quern, one limb at a time, while Quern pleaded and begged for mercy. Finally, the daemonic head swallowed what remained of the virtual Quern in a single gulp. Then he belched and licked his lips.
“I have wrested control of the airwaves back—though I don’t know how long that I can keep control,” Tosh informed Quern.
“I’m not impressed by your magic show. I have warned you and I will repeat myself once more. Do not invade Korea!” Quern broadcast.
************* *************** *******************
After the broadcast, as Quern watched his situation boards, an aide came and spoke to him to him.
“There is an old man outside, who says that he needs to speak to you. He says that its urgent. He is on the list of very special people, so…”
“What is his name?”
“Adolph…Adolph Hitler,” the aide read off dispassionately.
“Show him in,” Quern said.
“What’s up, Adolph?” Quern asked.
“That daemon…I recognize it. It used to court me when I was young. It showed me images of another place and another time. It said that I was once great. It said that I could be great again. When you brought me here and taught me about Jesus, the daemon was furious,” Adolph said.
“He said that if I accepted Jesus, that he would never speak to me again. He has never reappeared. I never told anyone. I didn’t want to be stuck in a mental hospital,” Adolph said.
“But look,” he added.
Quern examined a collection of exquisite watercolors. Red and black predominated and most of the images were of NAZI themes: Swastikas; SS Death’s Heads; parades and assemblages of black uniformed soldiers bearing Swastika flags. There were paintings of Adolph speaking to the multitudes from a platform.
“I had to tell you this. I don’t know what use that you can make of this, but this I my journal with everything that I can remember,” Adolph said.
Adolph grabbed his chest and looked in pain.
“Why do you try to intimidate me? I am 80-years old. I have lived a good life and death holds no terrors for me. You hold no power over me. Begone,” Adolph shrieked in his native German before he slumped over dead.
“That is something that you don’t see every day,” Quern remarked as he calmly studied the holographic like daemon that had briefly harangued Hitler.
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Post by feralferret on Apr 28, 2023 18:42:09 GMT -6
That was quite an ending for this chapter!
It appears that Quern could use a little divine guidance and inspiration at this point.
Thanks for the chapter.
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Post by rvm45 on May 6, 2023 11:12:42 GMT -6
Chapter Thirty-Three
78 375
Quern watched Hedayati’s tanks assemble on the Chinese side of the Yalu River.
In Quern’s timeline, the Mahdist’s tanks would be poised to invade North Korea, home of the unhinged Kim Jong Un…maybe not, though, since this was still 1969. Kim Jong Un was just an unhappy eventuality in 1969…
Quern had wrested this timeline out of any semblance of the old timeline though. Kim Jong Un had ceased to exist—even as an unrealized potential—in this timeline. Well, unless someone or something watched the pot to assure a Kim Jong Un being born, like something had made sure that Hitler was still born—and had even tried to mentor him.
Quern doubted that would happen in the case of Kim Jong Un. Hitler, whatever his shortcomings, had been as charismatic as Elvis. Kim Jong Un was simply a loathsome little toad who had been born into power.
At any rate…
He had started sending Temple Maidens into Korea even earlier than he had been sending them to India. He’d sent more Temple Maidens, in terms of sheer raw numbers and far more in comparison to the population of the two countries.
Korea; Japan and Taiwan were all prosperous and thoroughly modern nations in Quern’s new timeline. The Philippines were also thoroughly modernized, but they were two states of the CSA, rather than an independent nation.
Anyway, Quern liked the literature of Korea very much and he had made Korea his special project. You might say that of all the “foreign” states—that is, states not touching the SCM, that Korea was Quern’s favorite…
Though he had never set foot in Korea in this timeline.
He had come to understand, to some degree, how God felt about Israel and the Jews. The Jews were God’s chosen people—and Quern wished every one of them health and good fortune…
But the Koreans and Korea were Quern’s chosen people—Outside of Quern’s Nation of chosen people—the SCM—of course.
He was in a very foul mood watching Hedayati preparing to invade Korea.
“Quern, I know how you feel about Korea, but if you hit Hedayati with a nuclear strike…” Debra tried to persuade Quern.
“It isn’t because its Korea. The Mahdists are like damned zombie/vampires or some such. I staked them through the heart with a rod strike and they shrugged it off like it was only a good bath,” Quern said.
“When the Mahdists come into an area, about 80% of the population becomes genuine converts. The rest of them either have to pay lip-service to Hedayati; flee the country; head for the hills and become guerilla fighters or become martyrs,” he continued.
“Somewhere between 60 to 65% of his new converts will become so fanatical, that they will volunteer to work in the radioactive oilfields or to jump around and celebrate after having an arm seared off in Hedayati’s service,” he said.
“He is rapidly assimilating the gameboard. If I’m gonna like nuke him, it behooves me to do it while there is still a part of the world worth saving,” Quern said.
Quern grimly reflected on the ruin that Hedayati was making of India. The Taj Mahal and countless other historical buildings and temples in India were in smoldering ruins because the Indian Army still refused to surrender to the Mahdists.
Quern believed in giving credit where credit was due. It wasn’t just the Christians wh0 refused to worship Hedayati. The Hindu; Buddhists; Mussulmen; Sikhs; Papists and Jehovah’s Witnesses of India were just as recalcitrant.
India’s people; their infrastructure and their architecture were paying for India’s defiance of Hedayati.
A ground army that confronted Hedayati would be screwed. Whatever mechanism that Hedayati used to manifest the otherwhen bombs didn’t seem fast enough to take out bombers or fighter jets though.
Quern recalled the “Bomb with Love” campaigns from his second timeline. Radical Pacifists with a streak of Nihilism believed that there would only be true peace on Earth once all of the Warriors and their sympathizers had been blown apart with high explosives.
Quern culturally appropriated their slogan.
“Bomb with Love,” he commaded.
It was a coded-command to follow a very detailed protocol for bombing the Mahdists back to the Stone Age; using nuclear bombs; high explosives; conflagration bombs; Rods from God and poisoned gas.
If you are going to use weapons of mass destruction, there is no future in being hypocritical and pretending to be concerned about non-combatants.
The NAZIs certainly hadn’t worried about collateral casualties when bombing London and Stalingrad…
But then again, the Allies hadn’t hesitated to saturation bomb Dresden—almost 100% for psy-op purposes, since Dresden had little tactical significance at that point in the war.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also intended as psy-ops:
“It is like: surrender or we’ll start dropping atom bombs in wholesale lots.”
At least the two atom bombs had achieved their purpose. They brought a hasty conclusion to the war.
Quern had no great hopes of stopping or defeating Hedayati with his brutal assault. He did hope to slay both military and civilian supporters of Hedayati in boxcar lots; to slow Hedayati’s takeover and—hopefully—to forcibly uncover a vulnerability or two.
Hedayati’s oilfields were ablaze once more. Even more radioactive fallout carpeted the area.
Scores of Middle-Eastern population centers were hit. Reservoirs and watersheds were poisoned. Prime cropland was hit with enhanced radiation bombs.
Rods from God; neutron bombs; smart bombs; conflagration bombs; bombs laden with Sarin and with LSD-25 struck the army massed along the Yalu River.
The lyrics to a song from another time and place ran through Quern’s mind:
“The Eastern world, it is explodin' “Violence flarin', bullets loadin' “You're old enough to kill but not for votin' “You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'? “And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin'…”
Ach Ja! Quern did believe in war—under the right circumstances—because there were worse things than dying…
Actually, under the heading of “Things worse than death…” Quern included military service…
However, he staffed his own armies with people who did not share his extreme aversion to regimentation—and he had eliminated some of the more irksome parts of military service—so he didn’t think that it was too hypocritical to command the armies, that he himself would have refused to serve in, even under pain of death.
There was little to see. He had shut down most of his drones to try to avoid the worst of the EMP effects. He could see the glowing mushroom cloud from space, especially when the bombs exploded at night.
“Sleep may be hard to come by, once Hedayati retaliates. I am going to lay down. Give me a wake-up call in seven hours. I’d suggest that y’all rotate and try to get at least four hours of sleep yourselves. Of course, if something requiring my personal attention comes up, feel free to disturb me at any time,” Quern said.
Quern ran through a brief set of Yoga and Tai Chi movements. Then he showered and set out clean clothes for when he awakened.
He still had a handful of minutes over 6-hours to sleep once he lay down. He activated the mental switch that sent him to sleep immediately, with no time wasted, tossing and turning.
Quern and the other hybrids could get by very well, on a bit less than 4-hours sleep daily. He could survive and prosper to a degree, but it was not the ideal.
Further, Quern had been shorting himself even this minimal amount of sleep the last few days.
Research seemed to indicate, that extreme sleep deprivation was something that one never recovered from 100%. There was sequela that lingered for years—or decades.
The hybrids were more resistant to the damage that sleep deprivation could do to the brain and their brains were better at sorting themselves out and rectifying much of the sequela after a period of sleep deprivation…
But the best plan was still to try to take good care of oneself.
************ ************ ******************
Quern had a mental image of a dude with very rotten buck teeth and a tendency to both lisp and drool as he talked—and he generally held on to a paper cup full of coffee as he pontificated like a jackass:
“Sleep? Never mind sleep! There will be time enough to sleep when you’re dead!”
“You fool!” Quern wanted to scream at this mental avatar.
Sleep, to Quern, meant—ideally—laying between clean sheets with a fan playing on him. Sometimes, he would rouse slightly as he turned over and reflected just how good it felt to lay abed.
Getting up to piss in the middle of the night could also bring a sense of satisfaction—when Quern realized, that bladder drained, he still had 3 or 4 more hours to sleep…
Then there were the pleasant—and sometimes perplexing dreams.
The Bible said that the dead slept awaiting resurrection—but the Bible also said that to be “Absent from the body” was to be “Present with Jesus.”
There were also the martyrs from the end-times, in Heaven, urging God to avenge their martyrdom.
Quern wasn’t dogmatic, but the interpretation that made the most sense to him—at death, the soul and the spirit both leave the body and go to be with Jesus, meanwhile, the body “sleeps.”
As wonderful a state as the soul and the spirit find themselves in, it is still somewhat lacking without the body—so the spirit and the soul look forward with happy anticipation to the day that they will be reunited with a newly upgraded and incorruptible body.
Quern didn’t sweat God resurrecting folks who had been cremated or thrown into volcanoes or eaten by rabid; mutant; vampiric wombats. God could handle it.
But Quern couldn’t imagine even the corpses that were whole and lying in coffins—yawning comfortably and turning over in their sleep—much less getting up to take a potty-break.
Ole Bucktooth was also fond of braying:
“Everything I gots is fer sale, if’n the price is right. I ain’t in love with any of it.”
Generally, Ole Bucktooth would say this, even though it was a non sequitur—like a profession of a strange inbred redneck tribal creed.
Quern recognized that it was hard to hold onto an auto or a home all of one’s life—but one should only divest oneself of these things after a great deal of sober reflection and with a quiet tear or two.
Clothing wore out. Things got completely ruined and needed to be discarded. Quern saw very little justification to ever sell a book or a personal weapon though. One didn’t so much buy a firearm as one adopted him. You didn’t adopt a child and then take him back to the adoption center wanting to trade him in on a different model.
Sure, if you owned a gunstore or you manufactured guns—then of course you would sell them—but the guns that you sold were NOT your personal firearms that had already been adopted by you.
A doofus who loves to brag that “Everything I gots is fer sale,” means it on a far deeper level than even he may realize.
Ole Bucktooth would sell his children into slavery. He’d peddle his wife’s chastity; his honor; even his sacred balls, given a high enough price.
People with swapitus were only marginally better than whores.
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May 1970
“The Eastern World, it is a Glowin’ “Bombs Exploded, Fallout Floatin’ “Strontium 90, the Bones are Encoatin’ “Iodine 131 leads to men Chokin’ “Mutant DNA is being Encoded “Nothing Good is being Foreboded…”
Little or nothing happened in the wake of Quern’s nuclear strike.
Of course, large numbers of Mahdists died. The invasion armies were rim-wrecked and the planned invasion of Korea was put on indefinite hold.
Quern watched the activities from his orbital platforms and he actively interfered with any attempt to rescue, much less rebuild in the affected cities. He also noted and bombed any cities that had been spared in the initial salvo and looked to become new centers of commerce for the Mahdists.
All this changed in May.
The daemon death’s-head appeared once more—this time in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Baja del Sur—where many of Quern’s seawater food tunnels grew a large portion of the free world’s vegetables.
In a matter of minutes, the food tunnels and much of Baja del Sur had vanished into otherwhen. Tidal waves were set into motion that would devastate much of Mexico—never mind folks on the other side of the Pacific.
“Evacuate Mexico’s Western coasts and hit that thing with Rods from God until I tell you to stop!” Quern commanded.
The lower half of Baja thoroughly wrecked, the deaths-head moved toward the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Within two hours, the half-mile-wide sea-level canal was hogged-out to an extra deep; ragged fissure 150-miles wide—and millions of people were consumed by the deaths-head in the process.
“Evacuate all key personnel to Limón. Get them on shuttles to one of the O’Neil Colonies at L4 or L5. We will hope that thing—whatever it is—cannot go into space," Quern said.
At this point, the deaths-head turned and started plowing a 5-mile-wide channel down the center of the Yucatan and Guatemala as it headed to do the Managua Canals the same favor that it had just done to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
Earthquake after Earthquake shook the Earth. Tidal wave after tidal wave was spawned. Long dormant volcanoes all over the world reawakened and started spewing volcanic gases into the air and lava flowed down the slopes.
“Nuke that demented ‘Pac-Man’! Hit it with the most powerful bombs we have. The damage due to the nukes pale in comparison to the destruction this thing is creating,” Quern said.
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A few bombs convinced the team that they were ineffective.
“That thing is a mechanism—a virtual AI machine—as it were. It is kinda in this world, but not of it. It can eat things in our world, but we cannot reach it to strike back,” Jo-Jo said.
“There is a way to jam the signal—temporarily. I can give us a couple more hours to evacuate—but I have to be in a quadcopter and fly close to it,” Jo-Jo said.
“Can’t someone else do it?” Quern asked.
“The jamming device takes second-to-second adjustments to suppress the deaths-head. Only someone who has an artifact and who has taken the red serum has sufficient data-processing power to operate the device,” Jo-Jo said.
“If you die, its game-over and everyone transmigrates—leaving this timeline to whoever or whatever is behind Hedayati. You cannot spare Debra. That leaves me,” Jo-Jo said.
“It’s dangerous,” Quern said.
“No, it is a Kamikaze mission. There is 0% chance of survival. Goodbye Quern. It has been nice knowing you,” Jo-Jo said.
Quern thought of Jo-Jo—the man with rotten teeth and an IQ of 87. He thought of how Jo-Jo used to drink cheap rotgut wine and roll his own cigarettes. Now he was willing to throw his life away for Quern and his other friends.
Quern seized Jo-Jo in a fierce bear hug.
“Goodbye my friend,” Quern managed to choke out.
“He’ll need a pilot. He cannot fly a quadcopter and operate that device at the same time. Let me be the pilot,” Beauregard said.
“Jo-Jo won’t be with us, the next place we go. If you’re close to him when he’s struck down, in all likelihood, you’ll be pulled into Jo-Jo’s cycle of transmigrations. It will be goodbye to all of us and it will be lonely,” Quern warned.
“I’m lonely all the time now and I did it to myself,” Beauregard said.
“Will you accept Beau as your pilot?” Quern asked.
“Yes.”
“Goodbye son,” Bertram said.
It was the first time that he’ spoken to his son in this timeline.
“Things can’t be much worse for humanity in this timeline. Release the Kraken—and then everyone head to the spaceport at Limón!” Quern ordered.
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