Alt.History 101 (Alt.Chronicles)

by Ken Liu

  “They’ll be in the field across from the entrance of the factory,” said Juniper. “The same place you go for fire drills.” She looked anxious. “Tonio, are you ready?”

  The grumpy old man’s face split in a grin. “Ready as ever. I’ll go get the fire started.”

  Juniper glanced at Martha. “And you?”

  Martha’s throat was dry, but it wasn’t smoke this time. “Ready as evah.”

  “Then let’s go set some fires.”

  They went to the hall of lamps, the beautiful brass hall, the monument to industry, and got to work. Juniper unscrewed the gas lamp and Martha took one herself. Glancing at each other, they came to the same idea very quickly. Martha scampered down the hall, to the now dark and empty dining chamber, and returned with a couple of trays. They took one each and tossed them at the lamps. With a clattering tinkle, the lamps broke.

  The gas spilled out and there was a fwoosh as the pretty wall-hanging next to it caught—then a loud clang. A bell went off, and a series of others. Martha and Juniper bolted out the side. Martha barely restrained the urge to giggle madly.

  “ATTENTION,” said a voice over a loudspeaker. “ATTENTION. FIRE DETECTED IN MAIN BARRACKS. PLEASE EVACUATE TO FIELD AS PER PROCEDURE. ATTENTION.”

  They tore open the door and ran for the field.

  The slaves were filling it already, shepherded by guards through the main gate. No time to try to blend in; they’d left separately from the rest. It would be suspicious at best. Martha glanced at Juniper.

  “They’ve go’ guards! ‘Ow can we…”

  “Come on, come on,” muttered Juniper. She yanked something out of her belt that looked like a small gun and fired into the sky. A bright orange flame appeared. Suddenly, There was a round dark-blue section of sky falling—a perfect oval. Martha blinked, and realized it was a very large airship. The propellers whirred as the gentle giant touched down.

  The guards began to shoot immediately, but an answering volley of precise fire took them out. There were a few screams, but the only bodies on the ground were uniform-clad. Juniper grinned.

  “HALT. PLEASE HALT,” called a tinny voice. Red eyes lit the darkness, and the sound of servos and treads cut the night.

  “A Shep’erd,” Martha whispered, horrified. The machine trundled over and extended a whip towards them. Its other hand lit, the three grasping fingers heating.

  “ARE YOU INVOLVED IN AN INCIDENT?” it queried. “Y/N?”

  “They work on simple logic. Stim/response,” said Juniper. “We need to confuse it.”

  “ANSWER PLEASE. FURTHER RESISTANCE WILL RESULT IN PUNISHMENT.”

  “No we are absolutely not, yes!”

  “ANSWER NOT CONFIRMED.” Inhumanely fast, it released its whip. Juniper yelped in pain and fell down. The whip had cut through the fabric of her shirt and left a red welt on her shoulder.

  “We are returning to work!” yelled Martha. Juniper fumbled with her belt, and there was a very unpleasant snapping sensation. The Shepherd lifted its whip again and froze.

  “What was that?”

  “A small EMP. Come on. We have to get over this fence and to that ship!”

  There was an explosion from the factory behind them. Martha clutched her ears as the wave broke against the building in front of them. She heard glass shatter.

  “Wot?”she screamed.

  “That’s why! Come on!”

  Martha was a good climber, but Juniper was just as fine. They scrabbled over the brick, cutting their fingers and knees on the glass embedded in the top level. There was just enough of a ledge to lift a leg over the barbed wire; Martha managed it, swinging her leg wide and clinging precariously to the ledge. Juniper managed it, but hissed in pain as the wire scraped her leg. Their shifts tore as they tumbled down.

  “Ow! Shit!”

  “Come on, run! There’s going to be another blast!”

  It shook the night. Only a hundred metres away, the dark form of the airship beckoned. The door, a square light in the black shape of the enormous cabin, started to slide shut.

  “No! Wait!” screamed Juniper.

  A head popped out, and a tall, pretty woman gestured to them from the airship. Her steel-rimmed glasses glinted in the light of the fire, and her blond-brown hair escaped its braid to blow in the wind. “Come on, Juniper! Run!”

  There was a crack of gunfire. They had finally sent an Enforcer. Too late to stop the fire, but enough to catch the survivors.

  Juniper went down, her face contracting in pain. A scarlet blossom spread across her calf.

  “Come on! The gun bots are coming!”

  “Gi’us a second!” Martha screamed. “She’s down!”

  “We can’t wait!” The woman left the door open, her fluttering purple skirt just visible around the edge. The heavily-burdened ship started to lift off, its propellers spinning. The yard was full of wind and fire. Smoke rasped her lungs again. It could be the last time, she realized. The ship was only a short run away.

  A cry cut the air. Juniper tried to rise, and fell back to the ground. “Martha, you have to go,” whispered Juniper. “I can’t run. Save yourself, my love. Please.”

  Martha looked at the ship and at Juniper. Time seemed to stretch. The propellers spun slowly. Behind her, another explosion shattered the air. Probably more of the gas lamps or something. She didn’t intend to find out. Deliberately, she scooped up Juniper in her arms and ran for the ship. It began to lift off.

  The woman was back, and made eye contact with her; she gestured to a couple of people dressed in military gear and made frantic stopping gestures. The propellers geared down, just enough to keep the ship hovering over the ground.

  Martha’s legs ached, but Juniper was light. Light enough. Her feet pounded the turf as she ran for it, depending on her strength to hold out. They crashed through the doorway. Juniper yelped as Martha landed. Rolling to the side, she felt searing pain on her shoulder and back. The door slammed shut behind them, and she felt the ship rise up. Bullets pinged harmlessly off the incredibly tough skin of the ship as it rose far, far from the ground.

  The world blurred around her. People were walking and the ship vibrated as its engines worked to lift them. She lay still, letting her wound bleed, and closed her eyes. Juniper spoke to the woman, who efficiently examined her injury. The world swirled around Martha.

  “Ow! We’ll have to get a patching kit,” said another stranger. “Well done, agent Juniper. We’ll be back at the base within an hour. Should be able to fix that leg right up.”

  Juniper rose on her good knee. “Martha, are you okay?”

  Beneath her, the world burned. There was a ship full of strangers behind her, and the most expensive upholstery she’d seen in years around her. Juniper was bleeding onto a very attractive Turkish patterned carpet.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, Juniper,” said Martha. Juniper smiled and leaned forward, touching her forehead with her own. “I’m gonna be jus’ fine.”

  A Word from Michelle Brown

  Coming from a background in 19th century classical literature and Canadian literature, I discovered science fiction and fantasy at a young age. These apparently disparate influences shaped my authorial voice and interests. Now that I am editing the stories of others and telling new tales of my own, my fascination with diversity has shaped my direction in other ways.

  Our ideas of what gender and sexual attraction are, and what they mean, have changed a lot throughout human history, and are continuing to change—and finally, they’re starting to change within our fiction, as well. There are endless stories and inspirations to be found in examining our history and our present, and to me, that means doing my best to represent the real people involved. Some of those real people are outside the mold of ‘normal’ sci fi and fantasy characters, and instead of writing the same thing over and over, it’s time to break the mold.

  I love steampunk for its ability to offer alternative versions of a familiar narrative, but the exploratory century we love s
o much was rife with war, racism, hatred, and repression. Fiction provides an opportunity to change our knowns and represent things that might have happened if the world had been a bit different. It’s possible to love something and fairly criticize it, and this idea shaped the world of “The Factory”.

  Juniper and Martha are fictional people, but the types of people they represent have always been here. And with the right tools, support, and enough determination, it’s possible to bring even the greatest empires to their knees.

  Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer from Calgary, Alberta, in Canada. She has a cat and a partner-in-crime. Her days revolve around freelance editing, jewelry, nonsense, and nightmares. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

  She is all over the internet, far too often for anyone’s sanity, and can be found in various places, for example on Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Michelle-Browne/e/B00BGWZRCW - and on her blog - http://scifimagpie.blogspot.ca/

  Natural

  by Peter Cawdron

  SUSAN FALLS TO HER KNEES on the grass. Lincoln stands there beside the grave.

  Numb.

  The shovel makes a grating sound as it digs into the dry dirt piled to one side. Wave after wave of soil rains down on a tiny aluminum coffin, slowly burying young Lisa. The sky is a brilliant azure blue. It should be grey. Sunlight warms his cheeks, but Lincoln feels cold. Rain should fall. His tears are not enough. Nature should mourn the loss of every child.

  How can it be that clouds don’t darken the sky?

  Why do birds sing and fly with such vigor and cheer?

  Susan sobs softly, holding a lace hanky to her lips.

  Lincoln crouches beside her, resting his hand gently on her shoulder. Touch is life. Touch is all he has left. Touch is all he can do. Through tear stained eyes, Lincoln forces himself to read the tombstone.

  Lisa Jane Thompson

  2022-2026

  And yet it is the warning at the base of the stone, the tiny words etched just above the grass line that burn into his heart.

  Died from smallpox.

  Hermetically sealed.

  Do not exhume.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Lincoln isn’t sure who spoke those words. So many words have been spoken and all of them meaningless to the dead, and yet somehow the living endure on the kindness of words spoken from the heart.

  Others mumble their condolences, shuffling past him in their dark suits and black dresses. Lincoln doesn’t mean to be rude, but he barely knows they’re there.

  Susan looks up occasionally, recognizing a voice Lincoln hasn’t acknowledged.

  Empty.

  As before, he doesn’t know how he will go on, but the gravestones beside this fresh plot remind him he will.

  Alexander Harris Thompson

  2019-2022

  David John Thompson

  2021-2023

  Philip Maximilian Thompson

  2024

  Sorrow burns as acid in his heart, but why? Is his grief so intense because Lisa was his first daughter? Lincoln can’t bear to think of her as “was” she “is” and forever will be his daughter, and another tear rolls down his cheek as the casket disappears beneath the fresh soil.

  No. His grief is the anguish of burying four children—of there being no end to the torture. With each one, part of his own soul dies.

  “Mom? Dad?”

  Lincoln turns and sees his eldest son Jonathan sitting in his wheelchair.

  “Yes, of course,” Lincoln says, knowing the needs of his polio stricken son demand attention. “There’s a bathroom in the funeral home.”

  Lincoln releases the brakes on his son’s wheelchair and starts to roll him away when Susan’s hand rests on his forearm. Their eyes meet for a second, saying more than words ever could. With bloodshot eyes and pale cheeks, Susan forces a smile, fighting against the grief tearing at her heart. Lincoln nods. Life moves on.

  The drive home from the cemetery is quiet. The car radio plays, but no one’s listening. Lincoln, Susan and eleven year old Jonathan are lost to the world. Dark clouds billow on the horizon, marking a coming storm.

  A parcel sits on the front doorstep.

  Susan glances at it and says, “No, no, no. Please tell me you’ve given up on this madness! There is no cure!”

  Lincoln will not be deterred, not on the day he buried his daughter.

  He picks up the box, his eyes drifting over the return address.

  Professor James Martin

  University of London

  Senate House, Malet Street

  London WC1E 7HU, United Kingdom

  “Can you not rest?” Susan cries, pushing Jonathan up the side ramp leading to the door. “Can you not grieve for a day?”

  “I cannot,” is all Lincoln can bring himself to say in reply.

  He sets the box on the kitchen table.

  Jonathan must sense a storm brewing between his parents as he wheels himself to his room and closes the door.

  Susan sits down at the table. Her hands tremble.

  Lincoln opens the box.

  “It’s all here, just as I requested, a copy of the journal of Edward Jenner from 1796—the year he died from smallpox.”

  Susan clasps her hands together, saying, “I understand your need to fix things. You’re a doctor. But there are some things that cannot be fixed. There are times in life we have to accept our fate.”

  Lincoln thumbs through the pages of the journal.

  “It’s a male thing,” Susan says. “You’re probably not even aware you’re doing it. You fix a leaking tap. You pay a carpenter to repair the roof. You command a nurse and she follows your direction. You speak before Congress, or at an inquiry where Senators hang on your every word. You’re in control. But it’s an illusion. In life, there is no control. There is no medicine, no antibiotic that can cure a virus.”

  “So I should accept defeat?” Lincoln asks, but not with anger. There’s both kindness and curiosity in his voice.

  “Not defeat,” his wife of twenty years replies tenderly. “Reality.”

  Lincoln stops flicking through the journal, considering her words.

  “We Homo sapiens do not accept reality. We bend reality to our will. We cut down forests to make farms, pave fields to build roads, build ships to sail oceans. No, I cannot accept reality when it means watching my own children die. Reality must accept me.”

  Her lips quiver, as do his.

  “I'm sorry,” he says. “I cannot give up, not if there's a chance to change the future. No family should suffer all we have had to endure.

  “If Edward Jenner had succeeded all those years ago, how different would our world be? If he was right, the lives of millions would have been saved. How much heartache and anguish would we have been spared?”

  Susan asks, “And you think he’s right when so many others have been wrong?”

  “Yes. I think we can teach our immune system to defeat a virus it has never seen.”

  “But we can’t,” Susan protests with exasperation in her voice. “Listen to yourself. That makes no sense!”

  “But if we could, think about how different would life be! And I don’t just mean for Jonathan or poor Lisa, but for the world at large. What if, instead of a nation of thirty million, we were a nation of three hundred million?”

  Susan laughs. Such a burst of emotion takes Lincoln by surprise and he smiles. It is an absurd notion.

  “Where would they all live? There wouldn't be any room.”

  Her mood lightens.

  “We would make room,” he says, thinking aloud. “If we can't build out, we’ll build up.”

  “Up?” she replies and he nods, knowing he’s stretching the bounds of credulity, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

  Lincoln moves on. His mind is awash with ideas.

  “Would the Germans have won the war if it hadn’t been for the outbreak of smallpox at
Ardennes? Would Stalin have invaded China if the Chinese weren’t reeling from the loss of a hundred million people to the pox?

  “How many brilliant young minds have been lost to science because they were stolen from us in their youth? The great questions of our age might have been answered long before now, like what happens in the heart of an atom? Or why does light move at a constant speed? Think about it. We live in a galaxy of stars, but we have no idea how many there are. There could be hundreds of thousands of stars out there, each like our own!”

  Susan shakes her head softly, but he knows she means no ill. She smiles faintly at his irrepressible enthusiasm.

  Lincoln gestures at the light coming in through the window and the fine specks of dust suspended in the air.

  “Smallpox is hundreds of times smaller than this and yet it can kill hundreds of millions of people.”

  Susan speaks softly with a slow cadence, saying, “But there is no cure.”

  “Don’t you see?” Lincoln says, holding up the journal as though it were an exhibit in court. “We don’t need a cure. If we can prevent smallpox from ever taking hold, we win the war without fighting a single battle!”

  “But it’s not natural,” Susan protests. Lincoln understands her frustration, but he knows it isn’t with him. She’s frustrated by the loss of her children and the impotence of modern medicine to fight something as small and seemingly insignificant as a virus—just a few tiny threads of DNA that don't amount to more than a fraction of human DNA.

  “No, it’s not natural,” Lincoln replies. “What’s natural is death. For ten thousand years, smallpox has determined who lives and who dies, but we can change that. We can.”