Alternate

An 'Alternate timeline', known informally as an alternate,was the term used by Crosstime Traffic to describe the various timelines where they established business. An alternate timeline was a world where historical events hadn't gone the way they had in the Home timeline.

Such alternates were exploited for their resources to feed the hungry, resource-scarce Home Timeline by the Crosstime Traffic. However, the company was always in the fear that one of the alternates were advanced enough to travel to different alternates and have trading enterprise and would be hostile towards competition.

Alternates with oppressive regimes or hard conditions, such as those destroyed by nuclear war, were helped by CT, though this wasn't always so. Fraternizing with someone from an alternate was discouraged.

Known Alternates
Note: The first entery in each sub-section is the main setting of that novel.

Gunpowder Empire

 * Agrippan Rome, in which the Roman Empire never fell and continued to thrive well into the 21st Century
 * Vikings settled North America
 * Successors of Alexander the Great rule a half dozen empires
 * Native Americans are the most advanced civilization
 * Spanish Armada conquered England and created an empire that bordered Russia
 * Confederate States won the American Civil War
 * Germany won World War II
 * China discovered and settled the New World
 * No American Revolution
 * China kept European trade out of the Indian Ocean. However, it was subsequently conquered by Japanese warlords.

Curious Notions

 * In an alternate designated "3477," the German Empire won a brief World War I and went on to conquer the world.

In High Places

 * The Black Plague eventually took 4 out of 5 European lives, leaving Islam to dominate the world.
 * The Roman Republic lost the Samnite Wars, and technology remained in the Bronze Age.

The Disunited States of America

 * The United States Constitution was never adopted, and the United States dissolved in the early 19th century.
 * In another, the U.S. became a tyrannical state which dominated the world.

The Gladiator

 * The Soviet Union won the Cold War.
 * Several alternates where Fascism came to dominate the world, including one in which the Axis conquered the United States.

The Valley-Westside War

 * The Russian-American War, probably initiated by the Soviet Union in 1967, left the world in ruins.
 * Other alternates where the last war was started by the United States, China and even Nazi Germany.