mmmn platmmn

Copyright © 2008 Steve Games First serial rights released to SoulCast. Photos, graphics, contents and characters may not be replicated for use outside SoulCast or commercial use in the open market or on other websites without express permission of the author. All rights reserved.

I live in an alternate reality.

It began on November 22, 1963. I was 10 years old and sitting in a classroom holding a ruler in my hands when the announcement came over the loudspeaker. It was a stunned office secretary announcing that school was getting out early because President Kennedy had been killed.

The girl sitting at the desk in front of me, Sheila, turned around and asked me if she could see my ruler. On the back of my ruler were the names of every President from George Washington to John F. Kennedy. Sheila took her pencil and scratched over Kennedy’s name, smiled and handed it back to me.

I watched the adults go into shock. They were stunned. When children got home they saw adults solemnly sitting around smoking, drinking and talking, dazed. That night, every TV station was all about what had happened that day. Every minute of continuous time on the 3 networks and every independent local station was devoted to the assassination. By midnight, some folksinger had already composed a song about it called “Shot In A Texas Town,” and was singing it on national TV. Walter Cronkite was crying and as far as I could tell, by Saturday the whole world had gone into a funk. For 3 solid days there was nothing else on TVs across the free world.

It took a long, long time for the grownups to come out of this haze, so thank your deities that we kids had the distraction of The Beatles rockin’ our way by ’64. At least the new British Invasion was for helpful purposes, and we have been exchanging international body fluids regularly ever since. I personally have done it with a bird from the Isle of Wight.

Looking back, I realize now what actually was happening. Around the middle of 1963, Earth started to pass through an extreme electromagnetic cloud in space (EECIS). It would not be until early 1973 that Earth emerged fully from the engulfment. During that long decade, parallel worlds collided in a quantum cosmology resulting in many splits of the continuum. Unfortunately, the randomness of the observer with the most observational momentum at the moment a transition window opens for an instant leads to someone like Sheila causing a major reality shift with a whim of her undeveloped mind. And although she crossed JFK off my ruler after the death was announced, she certainly seemed strangely amused by it all.

And so, in the world I was stolen from, President Kennedy was never assassinated. But I was no longer in my original world. I was in Sheila’s branch now. This unbelievable sluggard named Lyndon Johnson drawled into the White House and let his military boys have some fun in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, Pete Best was kicked out of The Beatles just as they were hitting it big and replaced by a mediocre clown named Ringo Starr.

Back in my world, JFK had his second term. When the Soviets pushed their surrogates forward in Vietnam, JFK countered with a takeover of East Berlin and the liberation of East Germany. Meanwhile, JFK set Red China and the Soviets ever more at each other’s throats through espionage causing suspicion between the Communist rivals. By 1968, most young Americans were serving in a greatly expanded version of The Peace Corps for two years before going to college.

But not where I lived. Not only was a war going on, but instead of a growing Peace Corps there was a military draft. They were making people go to war. The more people who were taken, the more the war was hated. It went on and on. And on. Fifty seven thousand Americans were sacrificed to the military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower had warned us about in 1960. It didn’t end until 1975. Meanwhile every time a leader stood out he got shot. Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, pow-pop-pow. Instead of getting off on seeing the world, we were getting off on drugs. Anything to escape this sucking branch of reality.

Back in my world, when it became obvious that the Democrats would run Bobby for President in 1968, the Republicans countered by pushing forward the charismatic governor of California, Ronald Reagan. In a close contest, Reagan defeated Kennedy and was inaugurated in 1969, along with Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.

So Reagan was President from 1969 to 1977. U.S. manufacturing and exports were at phenomenal highs. Growing deregulation of major industries caused temporary but significant windfalls for certain sectors of the economy while endangering the future of others, but for a time it was a very good ride. American folk jazz rock became the dominant music of the 70s.

But not here. Nope, here, after Bobby K was clipped and LBJ would “not accept,” the Dems put up lil’ Hubert Humphrey. Meanwhile, tricky Dick Nixon managed to worm his way back into the hearts of Republican bosses who remembered how close he came to beating Jack Kennedy. Nixon won. I remember the November morning in 1968 when I woke up to the news. Nixon? JFK’s arch enemy and obvious evil-doer? He’s actually been elected? And what did we get? Spiro Agnew. More Vietnam. Watergate. Resignation. And trustworthy, boring, vegetablized Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford, goddammit! And can Gerald Ford beat anyone else for President? Hell no. Not even an overly religious peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia. So we get Jimmy Carter. And energy crisis. And hostages in Iran. And a little island of peace in the Middle East leading to the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Bang! All that and disco, too.

Back home, from where I was stolen in a fitful moment of malicious 10-year-old whimsy, Reagan finished his second term. The election in 1976 was won by Walter Mondale. President Mondale (1977-1985) was followed by President Andrew Young, the first African American Chief Executive (1985-1993). Young’s successor was the conservative Alexander Haig (1993-2001), followed by the first woman President, Elizabeth Dole (“Elizabeth The 1st,” 2001-2009). Not a Bush or a Clinton in sight. No 9/11 … no Iraq War … no Homeland Insecurity … sure, they had their own troubles, but not like these.

I know these things because I just received an email from my parallel self, indicating another possible opening in the spacetime continuum.

I want to go home. Surely there's room for two of us there. We can be twins!

Where’s the next EECIS?

• OO –