A Neo-Atomic Tango Thru a World of Dreams

@thewhitenerd713 sends us two exposures of a Cross-Universe Flux Matrix Entry Zone (Class Megative F/ive/our, from the looks of the argonite ring patterning). Based on the surrounding landscape and the relative height of the individual pictured, I’d say this is from the New Britain Free Zone, and that the photographed fellow is Doctor Salomon Jonas, DDS, FRCD(C). Dr. Jonas is one of the few dentists who maintains a substantial cross-universe presence-- he collects new dental techniques or interesting pieces of dental ephemera.

I would ask @thewhitenerd713 how they got their hands on this one. 

I remember the day I received my copy. It was 2005 and I had just turned nine. Rav Sabbati led me into a dark corner of the Beit Midrash at the Sinagoga Al-Hambra, handed me this and told me that he understood I had an interest in cross-universe travel and that he could help me with it. He would let me have this book now, and if I turned nineteen and was still interested, he would connect me with the Consortium pour le voyage et l’etude d’univers alternatifs, in Lyons.

Since then, my copy of this book has seen thousands of timestreams in hundreds of universes. It’s gazed upon the mechanized horror of Nazi Germania and the crumbling boulevards of Paris under Soviet occupation. It’s served as a improvised notebook for recording the singsong language of the walen (Dutch-affiliated whale communities; long story) and the consonant-heavy folksongs of the Muscovite Nyandertalets.

This book has ridden in the bag of the striking garment workers of the Arbeiter Ring as a roiling New York City faced off with the National Guard. It’s seen the Appalachian Free State and the Negro Revolt, and stood stopped a Union bullet at Ninth Manassas in 1934. It’s ridden the steppes of the great Khazar Empire with the Ninth Armoured Reconnaissance Division “Khagan Yosef’s Own”. It’s seen the underwater kingdoms of the Eelmen of the Pacific Rift. It’s staunched bleeding wounds and holes in dikes. It’s been signed by soldiers and musicians, commercial airship pilots and the conductors on the underwater trains that crisscross the Pacific. In the back cover is the small, cramped signature of John Peacock Flannery O’Nann (W-Deseret), the first Neanderthal President of the United States.

Interestingly, there has never yet been an Earth I’ve seen where humans, or hominins did not tread. I think that counts for something. 

Do you have any idea what history would have been like if the Race hadn’t landed in the Worldwar? I’ve got a buddy who says that it would have ended with an explosive-metal exchanged with the USSR, but I ain’t sure.

TAH: It’s hard for anyone to know for sure. Back then, no one had any knowledge of the explosive metal at all, though I’ve heard rumours the Americans were working on a form of it. Frankly though, I can't believe we would ever have used it at all, had the Race not descended. Unlike the lizards, we have capacity for stuff like critical thinking and proper appraisal of the consequences of our actions.

Back in 1942, the Allies were getting pressed hard in the Philippines by Japan, Rommel was kicking our asses in North Africa, and the ovens were warming up to cremate my people. I know some Jews thought (and still think) that the Race’s invasion was some kind of act of G-d designed to save us from the Nazis. I never subscribed to that, but all the same I find it impossible to believe that we Jews wouldn't have revolted en masse when we found out about the death camps. At the same time, I can tell you right now we stood no chance at all in North Africa and the Pacific. The Axis forces were just too good and we’d have been totally crushed.

Here’s my personal opinion: 

-Rommel would have destroyed Allied forces in North Africa and America would have taken a serious beating in the Pacific. 

-The prospect of being faced by Rommel’s revitalized forces in North Africa, and of another Japanese attack on the American mainland, would lead the USA to hastily withdraw from the Allied nations and seek a separate peace.

-Soviet troops would have continued to refuse Allied aid and would have been forced into a bloody attrition war, which might have lasted until the 1950s. Meantime, alone and outgunned, the British forge a separate peace.

It’s interesting to think, in a strange way the invasion saved us all.

Don’t let this sound like some sort of apology for the invasion. I recently visited Washington, and I really don't want to talk about my experience. Fuck the Race. They may have saved us, but they exacted a horrible price.

Soldiers of the Kuomintang Army stand at attention with German equipment in Peking during the Anniversary Celebration of Victorious Resistance Against Japanese Aggression military parade in October 19, 1945. The Sino-Nazi Alliance, signed in 1938, was instrumental in the Republic of China being able to rapidly industrialize its economy as well as modernize its military tactics and equipment, allowing China to defend itself against Japanese invasion and eventually force all Japanese military forces from mainland asia by October 1944.

Hermann Goering was able to convince Hitler that German investment and cooperation with China would produce a more powerful asian military power than an alliance with Japan in the global war against communism, which proved correct. With Nazi support, the Republic of China was able to survive a brutal civil war that lasted from 1945 to 1948 and ended with the capture and execution of communist leader Mao Tse-Tung, after which the Chinese Communist Party was never able to organize an effective military resistance. 

Nazi Germany was finally able to call on its eastern ally in the war against the Soviet Union in March of 1949. By 1951 all organized Soviet military forces had disintegrated and partisan resistance was brought down to “acceptable levels” in 1957. With the United States still unwilling to be dragged into “war over there”, and the British Isles now being governed by a Nazi puppet government, the end of World War Two finally arrived.

A strange “Cold War” developed in the years following the defeat of the USSR, stemming from the Nazi Party’s racial policies and resentment of having to share a border with an asian superpower.

Jo Myong-rok, Chairman of the DPRK’s National Defense Commission meets with President Clinton in March 1996 (top) and Yang Hyong-sop, Prime Minister of North Korea, speaks before the UN in December of 1995. Jo and Yang were the primary leaders of the “October Heirs”, a collection of officials in the Worker’s Party of Korea and Korean People’s Army which filled the power vaccuum caused by the death of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il in october of 1995 in the midst of the great famine.

Officially, Kim was said to have fallen deeply ill from stress in dealing with the food shortage, but it is widely believed that he was poisoned as part of a coup. Officials still loyal to the Kim family led a counter-coup within days of the announcement, leading to almost five weeks  of armed conflict in and around Pyongyang and the port of Haeju, which the October Heirs emerged victorious from. 

After consolidating power, Yang began systematic reforms which later became known as “de-kiminization”. These reforms allowed the DPRK to improve its image internationally, and implement economic liberalizations similar to the ones which occurred in the People’s Republic of China, while still keeping the party firmly in control. 

Professor Kim Sŏng-Ju (1912-2004) broadcasting a radio lecture live from Pyongyang on June 25, 1950. Sŏng-Ju was an ardent believer in the need for free public education for the people of the newly established Republic of Korea, having been liberated from Japanese colonial rule in 1946 by the United States. Along with the lectures he gave monthly via radio, he also provided free public seminars on a variety of topics to the citizens of Pyongyang. He served as Minister of Education from 1958 to 1973 before returning to his university career where he taught various history and political science courses. He regularly submitted op-ed pieces to be published in his local newspaper, with topics ranging from the importance of having a free press to arguments for reinstating a monarchy. 

As laid out in his 1922 pamphlet Denn die Welt ist hohl, und ich habe den Himmel berührt, Peter Bender claimed that the Earth is not a sphere floating in space but is actually a bubble set in an infinity of rock, with humanity living on the concave inner surface and the sun, Moon, and what Bender called die Phantom-Universum (‘the Phantom Universe’) - a globe of blue gas studded with points of light which astronomers identify as stars - floating in the centre.  The radiation from the sun (“infinitely smaller and brighter than can ever be conceived by the foolish and orthodoxy-blinded!!” Bender 1922) exerts a downward pressure misinterpreted as the Earth’s gravitational pull. His Hohlweltlehre or ‘Hollow World Theory’ gained numerous adherents among the Nazi leadership following their rise to power. Sometime in 1942, a team under the leadership of infra-red optics specialist Dr. Heinz Fisher undertook an expedition to the Baltic island of Rügen to test Bender’s ideas. This photo shows members of  Sondergruppe Steinspiegel with a pair of Dr. Fisher’s Wenig Augen 22 infra-red telescopes; compact and thus easier to quickly scan across large areas of sky, they were used as sighting devices to provide alignment and aiming data for the much larger and more unwieldy Zyklopen 1.5m camera. By aligning these various devices 45° above the horizon, it was hoped that ultimately they would be able to obtain images of the British Fleet at Scapa Flow. The complete failure to obtain useful images of any sort  led to a total rejection of Bender’s cosmology, with the Third Reich’s astronomers wholly embracing Hans  Hörbiger’s WEL.    

3 Stooges (1934) was Monogram Pictures' last release before going out of business the following year. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, this gritty - and for its era, extremely violent - melodrama about a trio of small-time grifters on the run from a vengeful mob boss has since been heralded by cinema historians as a significant step in the development of film noir in Hollywood.

This poorly caricatured buzzard perched on a cloud  was the emblem of the USAF's 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, which for five years flew a series of secret missions during the Vietnam War.  When their true nature was finally revealed to the United States and the world, it resulted in a new convention (signed in Geneva, no less!) banning such activities from the lawful conduct of war.  The 54th's 'Motorpool' flights were part of Operation POPEYE, an attempt to modify the weather over Indochina; pairs of WC-130 Herculese and RF-4C Phantom aircraft would seed the clouds with silver iodide crystals, and the resulting rain was intended to turn the vital North Vietnamese supply line known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a muddy, impassable morass. 1,435 'Motorpool' sorties later, the whistle was blown by the New York Times in July 1972 (syndicated muckraking columnist Jack Anderson had the scoop over a year before but had referred to it as INTERMEDIARY-COMPATRIOT, a possibly bogus code-name). As a result, multiple House and Senate resolutions were passed banning 'environmental warfare'; these were expanded in 1977 into an international treaty known as the Environmental Modification Convention aka ENMOD. This has been a Xenophone TRUFAX submission to The Alt-Historian.

  The members of Phượng Hoàng Lực 5 (“Phoenix Force 5”) of the Vietnam People’s Air Force are caught in a jubilant mood following Operation Bolo, a combined operation with the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing of the USAF against Red China’s air force, which was massing for a nuclear attack against Japan.  Based at two airfields, the PLAAF’s entire complement of Shenyang S-4 bombers - copies of B-29 Superfortresses interned during WW2 - were destroyed on the ground by USAF strikes (“Godammit - we don’t know which of the sum’bitches are carrying, do we?” Colonel Robin Olds).  The VPAF, providing top cover for the American attackers, consequently won the lion’s share of air-to-air kills, with the pilots of Phoenix Force accounting for seven victories between them.  With the end of the conflict, the United States rewarded “our newest ally and bulwark against the Chinese peril” with lavish financial and military aid.  When they traded their Russian-built MiG-21s for F-4 Phantoms, Phoenix Force leader Tu Thic Trung told VPAF chief Nguyen Van Coc: “Excellent bird, General. But it maneuvers like a furniture van!”

Here we see King Avram the Wise, third to bear that name as ruler of the Triune Kingdom of Scythia, Pannonia & Trans-Balkania, inspecting a battery of 28cm Phlogistonic Vortex Projectors. Weapons such as these were key in ensuring the Triune Kingdom's neutrality during the Great Continental War, despite it being center-most of the Central Powers ("Who let this hedgehog into the cockpit of nations!?" - Erich von Falkenhayn 1914). Accompanying the King is 'Željezo', chief of the Special Directorate For The Scientific Arts. Between their penchant for mysterious single monikers - actually taken from ancient naming traditions of the Pannonian hill folk - and their undeniable scientific genius, Nikola Tesla was moved to say "I have already met men from Mars. They work for the Special Directorate..."

The rapid development of aerial navigation by the other Great Powers in the early 20th Century left France scrambling for effective countermeasures.  Marcel Panais and his Société Anonyme d'études et d'applications éthéré was able to scientifically harness and amplify human psychic abilities to both detect and apport enemy aerostats. Here, members of the French Army's elite 1st 'Air Wardens' Battalion are shown demonstrating the SEAE.17am Amplificateur Mesmerique. Not visible for reasons of operational secrecy is the SEAE.17's very large steel reservoir of highly compressed ectoplasm.

NSA ABOVE TOP SECRET   Ivy Bells <REDACTED> cable location ... data collection date Feb 73 ... photo facsimile transmission w/ text attachment ... partial translation summary follows ... " Archived memorandum dictated & personally transcribed by Chief Academician Konstantin Ts regarding Project Telescope.  Test series beginning with Object(s) 1, 1a, 1b etc throughObject 44k successful. <12 following text lines garbled>.....with living bacilli in growth medium and ending with live canine subject while increasing jump <? transl.> interval by 30 seconds.  May 5 1945 volunteer subjects Oleg A and Pavel K embark on first Object 45 manned test with initial planned jump <? transl.> interval of 10 seconds. Activation of vril <?? transl.> engine coincides with massive unplanned power surge. Entire safety interlock sequence completely fails. Object 45 vanishes from view as expected but at close of 10 second passage <? transl.>, no reappearance of cab or human subjects. Site 37 <4 following text lines garbled>..... inexplicable materialization of a structure of unknown origin and unfamiliar design. Also new is ornamental <? transl.> screen of B. utilis <Himalayan Birch ? transl.>. Initial lead isotope analysis of the structure's bronze plaque reading '1945' indicates structure is approx. 6,500 years " ... remainder of transmission failed to record due to <REDACTED> reaching <REDACTED> limit  NSA ABOVE TOP SECRET

In August 1943, Turkey's 'National Chief' Konya Uşak İnönü finally succumbed to Nazi Germany's incessant pressure to expand the Treaty of Friendship signed by the two nations in June 1941. The first order of business was the formation of the 1st Khanjar Mountain Brigade. This photo dated August 1944 shows the brigade's imam bestowing a blessing prior to Operation Hackfleisch - an anti-partisan campaign centred on the hill country of the NDH (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska trans. Independent State of Croatia). For all the lavish matériel support provided by the Germans, the unit's vague status as 'co-belligerents' rather than allies, the cultural and language barriers hampering co-ordination with their Wehrmacht counterparts and the adoption of the battle cry "The Turks have returned!" by both the Partisans and Chetniks meant that, unfortunately for the Khanjars, Operation Hackfleisch was bloodily and aptly named.

Well before the 1996 declassification of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops' deception activities, the missions and tactics of the so-called "Ghost Army" were being fancifully fictionalized and recounted by one of its former members: Sergeant Jacob Kurtzberg, better known to comic fans as artist and writer Jack 'King' Kirby.

On November 16th 1974, astronomers Frank Drake and Carl Sagan were working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory inside the US National Radio Quiet Zone, monitoring signals from the vicinity of the star Gliese 581.  The surviving data - what little that isn't classified TOP SECRET - indicates that an extremely complex transmission began to download itself into the facility's computers and was apparently attempting to distribute itself across the country via the fledgling ARPANET. Although the circumstances are far from clear, Sagan and Drake intuited that they were witnessing an 'invasion via radio'. Witnesses say that the pair improvised an EMP emitter to thwart the process. Tragically, neither survived the device's activation.  Designed by Croatian sculptor Josip Spomenik, this memorial stands in Green Bank, West Virginia and is dedicated to the two men many consider Earth's saviors.

From "Morrison Hotel"(1969 Fantasy Films): "One of our guardian angels. Callsign's ROADHOUSE 1. Like he sez: 'The lord giveth and the GE mini-gun taketh away' "