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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 decisions and events had not 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 toward 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, though an employee bringing a lover to the home timeline was not unknown.

Known Alternates[]

Note: The first entry in each sub-section is the main setting of that novel. Most of the rest are just mentioned. However, in In High Places, the first two alternates listed are visited for large parts of the novel.

Gunpowder Empire[]

Curious Notions[]

In High Places[]

  • The 14th century Great Black Deaths took 80% of European lives, leaving Islam to dominate much of that continent. Christianity underwent a drastic change, and technology stagnated throughout the world.
  • The Roman Republic lost the Samnite Wars, and technology remained in the Bronze Age. Neither Christianity nor Islam existed in that alternate.[2]
  • In an alternate with a low level of technology, Christianity seemingly never existed.

The Disunited States of America[]

  • The US Constitution was never adopted, and the United States dissolved in the early 19th century, leading to a North America shared by numerous small, often warring countries.
  • Humans considered sending manned missions to Venus.
  • The U.S. was a tyrannical state which dominated the world.
  • Human life never evolved, so Crosstime set up quarantine safehouses in this alternate, where species such as the Carolina Parakeet and the passenger pigeon flourished.

The Gladiator[]

The Valley-Westside War[]

References[]

  1. Gunpowder Empire, pgs. 11-12.
  2. In High Places, pg. 245.
  3. The Gladiator, pg. 262.
  4. The Valley-Westside War, pg. 258.
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