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	"A Connecticut Yankee in the Archon's Court"
Contact author			Chapter 2				Last Updated: 2005-10-14

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Backward to Chapter 1

Chapter 2: Whenever Two Worlds Collide

"Come now, Watkins! It is a maxim of mine that whatever may remain, after all impossibilities have been excluded, and however improbable it appears at first, must be the truth."
"The Adventure of the Walnut Grove", Sir Thomas C. Doyle, 1893.¹

Base Security Force Headquarters
Sandia Air Base
28 March 1998
1701 hours

"All right, let's hear what you have so far."
"Sir, we've made only a preliminary analysis…"
Major Schottinger's hand-chopping motion halted the young Lieutenant before he could temporize even further.
"Let's have it, whatever you got. I need some data now!"
"Yes Sir!"

The abashed Lieutenant began his report; the many incredible items about the incident last night made quite a long list. He hadn't known the Brazilian Captain, and the Hispanic Technical Master Sergeant was still recovering from shock², but some of the physical evidence was just too strange. Maybe all the work his people did last night and this whole day would work out to his credit. The Major seemed more interested in facts, not in assigning blame. The Lieutenant popped the "Most Secret / Security Forces Only"³ seal on the thick folder he held, and began reading from the first of several sheets of paper inside.
"Most of the debris within the circular area is from a flight of stairs, but some of it isn't the same as what was on the building originally. The covering on the lowest 3 or 4 of the steps is very different, some kind of non-skid asphalt over wood. Our stairs were just old boards. The remaining paint is a different color than the rest of the stairs, and the metal is a different type. Still steel, but a different thickness and tubular rather than an L shape. If I had to guess, it looks like a modern set of stairs built with safety in mind, compared to the relic from when the building was first constructed that we never replaced."
The Major interrupted "You're not being paid to guess, son, but sounds 'bout right."

The Lieutenant flushed, but continued on. "The concrete inside the circle is a centimeter or so higher than that outside, and shows no cracks like the rest of it does.
"Captain Miraflores was killed instantly by the event, whatever it was. His right hand was apparently holding a hand-held radio near his mouth. The antenna would be over a meter and a half long if fully extended. We found the very top of the antenna inside the circle, cut off as if by a laser. Our initial notice that something had happened was his interrupted transmission to Security HQ. His left arm was apparently outstretched towards the top of the stairs. Tech Master Sergeant Garcia tells us he had been pointing his flashlight at her while she started descending the stairs. It looks like the Captain's right foot extended into the circle, and we've made some interesting conclusions based on what remains of his right leg. The circle on the ground is evidence of a hemisphere about 3 meters across, centered about 10 centimeters above the top of the concrete slab. The noticeable curvature in what's missing from the Captain's leg and arms, assuming…"
The Major interrupted again with "Spare me the gory details."

"Of course, Sir. Anyway, basically whatever was inside that hemisphere at the time of the event just disappeared. Now we have a hemisphere of stuff from somewhere else, including our mystery man. There are no underground cables or pipes running through that particular area, but the concrete looks different between the inside and the outside of the circle so I wouldn't be surprised if that hemisphere was really a sphere that went into the ground as well. Residue at the edge indicates a peak temperature of about 2500 degrees, but over a very small area. Again, similar to a laser.
"To generate the effects we found, you'd have to use a crane or aircar, quickly chop out an entire section of ground with a laser, and replace it with something else. We didn't spot anything like that on the airfield sensors, but we asked Space Force; the orbital sensors did pick up one bright flash of about 1 second duration at the right time and place, but classified it as too small to be even a fission weapon. The theory boys are still arguing about quantum tunneling and rats that are half-dead and half-alive and other strange things⁴, but the consensus is that we don't know how it was done. They all do agree that if this is some secret weapon, it isn't very useful or controllable. If the Snakes could do this, they'd sure go after New York first, rather than out here. Uh… Sir."

The Major leaned back, too distracted by thought to notice the late courtesy. "True. But that doesn't mean it hasn't happened elsewhere before, and we didn't notice or somebody's keeping it quiet. Even a weapon that you can't control very well can cause terror if the news gets out. Might be some strange new infiltration technique. Tell me about this mystery man, is he a Draka spy?"
"Well, Sir, we have an identification badge found around his neck with a picture that looks like him without a mustache, different clothes, but wearing what look like the same glasses. Calls him 'Frank J Carson.' Here are enlargements of the front and the back. We're still analyzing the inside of it." The Lieutenant pulled two large photographs from the thick folder, and laid them on the desk before the Major.
"A F O T A? What's this symbol?" The Major sounded out the letters and pointed at one image.
"We can barely read it, Sir, but we think it says 'Air Force Operational Testing Agency.' That red thing in the center of the shield is obviously a scale or balance, and the triangles are stylized airplanes with trails behind toward the bottom of the shield. The number there is 1974, probably an organizational establishment date."
"And what's all this on the back?" as the Major waved his hand at the other photograph.
"Close to the kind of language we put on our own badges about losing or misusing, Sir. Except that the numbers and addresses are wrong. And there's no Section 500 or Title 19 in the U.S. legal code; we've got the National Security Act for this sort of thing. Same thing for Kirtland — that's the name of our airfield, not the base. The street address is a real one, but it's a building a block away from the incident site that's used by the Air Force Safety Inspection Office. This string of numbers could be a postal identification code, but it's all numbers, not alternating letters and numbers like ours."⁵
"What's that you said about an inside to the badge?"
"Sir, it's much thicker than it needs to be just to have the writing and picture on it. There's an embossed logo in the material on the back, see there. 'Point Checker' and a tiny copyright symbol there, and a serial number and date over here. We used a Roentgen scanner⁶ on the badge; it has metallic circuitry inside that responds to an external microwave field by radiating a coded signal on a different frequency. Not a technology we use, but feasible for an automated hands-off access system to secured areas. It's nothing Draka either. They check papers and use guards rather than badges, and nothing like this."⁷
"So this isn't Draka?"
"No Sir! Not unless they went to a lot of trouble to build a badge none of my guards would accept, using technology neither of us uses, referring to completely phony laws and places."

The Major nodded, sighed, and shoved the photos to one side of the desk surface. "That's the badge, what else do you have?"
"The man had on denim jeans and a leather belt, Sir. Label on the jeans says Levi's. Matches the Levi Strauss Company, but this is a model that they don't make anymore. The button fly 501 was last made sometime in the early 1920s, according to the company. We made some discreet inquiries and told them to keep quiet.
"Black plastic comb in a back pocket, looks exactly like what you can buy in the base Exchange, down to the 'Unbreakable' written on it.
"The badge was around his neck on a thin white flexible plastic strap with a spring-loaded metal clip, also nothing out of the ordinary there.
"The label on the shirt is 'J. Crewe.' There's a hunting outfitter by that name back in New England, but they don't make a shirt in this pattern. From what we told them about the shirt, it's faux hunter chic, not really meant for going out in the woods. Fabric's too thin."
The Lieutenant paused for breath and consulted his list again for the next items.
"Cotton briefs underwear and white cotton socks, nothing unusual about either. No brand name tags to check.
"His shoes are some sort of tennis shoe, but black. Lots of padding inside. Nobody can find any record of this 'Nike' brand or company though. Nike is the Greek goddess of victory, and we used the name on an anti-aircraft missile system forty years ago. Those are the only references we could find.
"The watch is a Timex, but this lickin' was just too much for it. We passed it on to the micro-circuitry lab here on base for them to analyze. I specified we needed a preliminary report by 1630, and not to do anything they couldn't undo. Unfortunately, they broke part of the case while opening it, so they still have it. Here are some pictures of the outside and inside though." The Lieutenant pulled several more sheets from his folder, tossed some more photos on the Major's desk, and began summarizing while the Major leafed through the pictures.
"Black leather strap, heavily worn, with a small brass buckle; nothing special. Brass-plated case with some dirt and minor dents, glass covering the hands and digital display has a few scratches. The watch runs on a small lithium battery, which still had power, but has numbers on it that don't correspond to the batteries of similar size used by us or the Snakes. The timekeeping mechanism is a quartz crystal, nothing out of the ordinary there. The face has standard hour, minute and second 'hands' and a small monocolor crystal sandwich digital display. They think they figured out what all the buttons do through trial and error; so far nothing really out of the ordinary, no hidden communications or data storage functions. Combinations of buttons access a second time zone, military or AM/PM display, a daily alarm, a beep at the start of each hour, the day and date, and a stopwatch function. One thing the lab was very interested in is the hmm… don't know how to pronounce this, but I'll guess 'In-dee-glow', marking on the face. The top left button makes a dim blue-green glow on the watch face for a few seconds when you press it. The Timex Company actually has something like that, they said something about Orca team⁸ watches, but they haven't released it to the general public yet. The circuitry is rather crude, but you don't need much for a watch. There's a small comp chip that seems to do all the work inside; it's doped silicon and copper, no exotic materials, so it's either an old technology or a cheap mass-produced item. But again, only a little like what Timex makes or ever has made. At first glance, it looks completely normal though. Oh, one last thing Sir. The time on it was almost 12 hours slow compared to ours, and was March 27th when we first saw it, so right now it would show about 0515 hours on March 28 if it were still working. Although they aren't synchronized by the internal workings, the hands and digital display were set for the same time within about two tenths of a second."

"Anything else?"
The Lieutenant shuffled some papers and started up again "We gave his glasses to the optics lab, same protocol as the watch. There's a photo-reactive chemical layered on the lens, so they get darker several seconds after being exposed to bright light. They clear to a sort of beige color when the light is removed, much slower than the darkening. This stuff also responds to temperature, you get some strange effects if you put cold water on them in bright light. We only recently found that photo-reactive effect by accident⁹, and use on prescription glasses is still a year away, just house windows for now. We've had laser-reactive coatings on helmet faceplates and aircraft canopies for over 20 years, but nobody was interested in chemicals that worked at lower power levels. Sergeant Garcia mentioned that when she first saw him, his glasses were all dark then became clear, but there was a bright flash associated with the event that may have caused that. These are prescription lenses, different corrections on each side. If these are indeed his glasses, he's nearsighted with the left eye worse than the right, but he could probably pass an automobile driving test. Very light materials used, and springs on the hinges so you can nearly bend the frame in half and it'll bounce right back. Probably took a couple of days and a lot of money to make these. But they show a lot of wear and grime and scratches.
"Three pills wrapped up in tissue paper were in his shirt pocket. The base hospital analyzed them and reports that those are some strong pain relievers and muscle relaxants there. The pill shapes are wrong, but the chemical analysis shows dosages similar to those a doctor can prescribe for muscle spasms or other pain. Unfortunately, the pills were destroyed during analysis, but we have pictures and a chemical breakdown for them, and can easily supply substitutes if necessary. We've got him heavily sedated and taking antibacterials, also restrained and under guard in a private room under isolation protocols right now. He seemed to be having back pain, and apparently just caught several kinds of airborne infections, so it seemed the best place until we could figure out what to do with him.
"There's one more little surprise he was carrying too; the coins in his pants pocket."
"What about them?"
The Lieutenant put some more pictures on the desk for the Major to look at, followed by several small clear plastic bags, each containing a coin. "Well, Sir, the coins all say 'United States of America,' and stuff like 'Liberty' and 'E Pluribus Unum,' but the designs and faces aren't right. Looks like Washington on the face of the quarter dollar, here. There's Jefferson and a building labeled Monticello on the five-cent piece. The other coins, we have no clue who the faces are. They're dated 1979 through 1998, most of them have a tiny capital D near the date, a few have a P, and one has nothing. One of our people who's a coin collector thinks those letters are markings designating which specific mint made the coins; the United States used to do that before we unified the currency."¹⁰
The Major handled the coins through the plastic for a few seconds, and pushed the enlarged view prints around while he leaned closer to examine them. Then he straightened up and barked "No other ID?"
"No, Sir. No wallet or pass case. We're running the dental patterns and fingerprints, but nothing matches yet in any of the datastores we can access. No serf tattoo on the neck, or scarring indicating there ever was one. He's got several small scars on his left hand, is circumcised and had some surgery on his nose over a decade ago, but nothing shows up on a Roentgen scan of his body as being out of the ordinary inside. He hasn't been taking care of his teeth lately, but he had a lot of fillings done and probably 'braces' to move his teeth around to correct his bite when he was younger. DNA analysis shows he's definitely human, not New Race, ancestry a mix of Eastern European types, mostly Polish and Ukrainian.¹¹ Blood tests show effects from a bout of mononucleosis earlier, but no biological agents we can detect. Slightly low whole-body radioactivity count for a native of this area.¹² Out of shape, prematurely gray, in his late 30s. Give him some clothing in the current styles, and he would be a man on the street. Except that he was found on base after curfew."

The Major leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "Your conclusion?"
The Lieutenant snapped the folder closed, braced to attention and responded. "Sir, we believe this man isn't from the Alliance. And not from the Domination either. There's too much bizarre physical evidence. The Snakes are too smart to plant this kind of phony stuff when they have such good counterfeiters working for them. My team believes he came from some other United States, gives us the creeps. Also, one of my people pointed out that it was a bit chilly last night, and this guy wasn't wearing a jacket or sweater, just that light shirt. His watch indicates he somehow came from a different time of day as well. Somebody will sure have a lot of questions to ask him when he wakes up."
"Hmm… Box up all his stuff, and we'll give him and all of it to the OSS. We'll let them figure out who he is. Keep him sedated until they come by to pick up the whole package. Of course, the Sergeant didn't see anything and the Captain just had an unfortunate accident when those old stairs collapsed under her."
"Yessir! Stairs collapsed, I'll tell Sergeant Garcia and the Captain's CO. The man and all the stuff to the OSS. How do I call the local field office?"
"You don't. I will. Instruct your people, and the hospital and lab people, to forget this happened once the OSS has him. I don't want anybody outside finding out a man can suddenly appear in the middle of one of our bases, and that the process can kill people it lands on. Last thing we need is another invasion panic. Dismissed."
The Lieutenant saluted and left the Major's office.

Major Schottinger waited a few seconds, then reached for his vidphone¹³. The stranger could stay sedated for a while longer. Let the spooks wring his brain when they got him. A pretty good effort from that Lieutenant. Only one thing he'd forgotten to consider — where had the pieces from this world gone? Well, even the Draka couldn't do much with a hand-held two-way radio, a flashlight and some barbecued pieces of a Brazilian Captain. The Major dredged his memory for the number and innocuous message he was supposed to use to initiate contact with the OSS. Although the Alliance Central Intelligence was supposed to be involved, theoretically this was a military operation on a military installation, and ACI was civilian while OSS wasn't. Plus, the ACI "suits" he had seen all came across as stuck-up paper-pushers with no realistic concept of what they were facing. Détente indeed! Let the OSS tell ACI about this, or keep it under their hat if they liked. Reminded by his train of thought, the Major smiled to himself, then reached inside his uniform beret¹⁴ for a small slip of paper with a myriad of numbers and passwords written on it. Rules were rules, but some things were too complicated to remember.

---

OSS Regional Office
Second sub-basement, Federal Office Building
Santa Fe, New Mexico
March 28, 1998
1740 hours

This stint at the New Mexico state office of the OSS was grating on Randolph Kustaa's nerves. His previous assignment in the field had been a real bear, and this one was supposed to be a chance to rest and recuperate. However, some bureaucratic foul-up had put him in charge of the entire office while the Senior Agent and her deputy were both off for long-term refresher training. All the other agents in the office were either younger than Randy, or just on the useful side of a medical discharge. And he just wasn't the paperwork type. That was the whole purpose of being a field agent — to avoid the paperwork.

Randolph looked Finnish only by virtue of his blonde hair; his face reflected his mother Maila's Filipino heritage more. The surname went back to his grandfather. Even after she remarried, Grandma Aino had insisted on keeping her first husband's surname. It wasn't that she hoped for his return — Chantal LaFarge had described Fred Kustaa's situation when last seen alive as nothing less than dire. He had been surrounded by armed Draka with nothing to protect him but the hand of a Polish nun on a dead-man switch wired to explosives and plutonium. Chantal had gotten out then, one of the concessions extracted from the Draka for not setting off the bomb right away. Since then, there had never been any news. Going by the information that the plantation's bomb shelter had been filled with concrete and then removed soon after that date, odds were that the explosives had gone off in there. Anyone around the bomb that wasn't killed by the blast would have died from the scattered plutonium dust. That had been over 50 years ago. To survive more than a few hours as a known Yankee spy in the Domination was unheard of, and those hours would be very painful, if any Draka Citizens or their Security Directorate were involved.

Randy was the second son of his mother's first marriage. His use of the Kustaa surname was homage to a revered man he had never met, an agent who apparently hadn't survived that long mission in the Domination. One of the OSS agents right after the Eurasian War, who had seen both the battlefields of the Pacific and Europe, and what Draka reign meant to the newly conquered peoples of Europe and Asia. A man who had fought his personal demons back enough to take another trip behind enemy lines.¹⁵ Randolph's step father, Elias Verken, didn't belong in such august company. By the time Randolph had gotten his mother out when he was 22, Elias had taken to beating her every time he got drunk, which was too often. The confrontation had been succinct.
"Mom's coming with me. I can't let you hurt her anymore."
A bull roar of rage responded, degenerating into sputtering incoherence and wild accusations. "What! You can't tell me what to do with my wife, and you my son! The two of you, you're worthless! I never should have married you! And I should have known you'd betray me, just as bad as your brother…"
When his father had come for him, waving the bottle, Randy had consciously used the drunk's rage against him, and wrenched the bottle away while grabbing the outstretched arm. A careful hold on the arm to force movement in the desired direction, and a pivot, and Elias had crashed into the wall. As he staggered back into the middle of the room, a hand up to his bleeding nose but still looking for a fight, Randy had swept a leg out from under him, to send Elias crashing to the floor in a moaning heap. There were much worse things he could have done; the legacy of unarmed combat training better than a Marine's still fresh in his memory and reflexes from the OSS boot camp less than a year earlier.
He had escorted his mother down the stairs, leaving Elias to sleep off his rage and pain. It was some measure of the goodness of the man while sober that they had never heard from him again. The separation and eventual divorce had been uncontested, probably since Maila hadn't asked for any property or money. There had been too many times when Elias had repented once sober, a model husband and father until his stored-up anger drove him to drink again. Randolph had legally changed his surname to Kustaa a few weeks after leaving. Maila now lived in the state of Philippines with some other relatives, including Grandma Aino. She was better off living out the rest of her days surrounded by loving relatives, even if none of the children there were hers.

A shake of the head, and Randy tried to banish his onrushing thoughts of Roland Verken, his brother, the first son of Elias Verken. An evil boy of the fairest appearance, Rollie had gotten through life using his good looks and silver tongue to get him out of jams on both sides of the law. Eventually, a local gangster down in Chihuahua had taken a shot at the blonde gringo sleeping with one of his women, and no amount of slick talking could have kept Roland out of the morgue. Not a chip off the old block anybody was proud of. Randolph mused, "And what's the difference between you two, huh? Just using your assets for the good guys, that's all."

Randolph was now about the same age that Rollie was when he had died 3 years ago. 25, blonde, but not too handsome to stand out, unless he turned on the charm. Dark eyes a legacy from his mother. A promising OSS Field Agent that had "faced the snake"¹⁶ and survived. Randolph had made it back from a mission that had gone bad in one of the typical ways. A contact turned by the Snakes, a missed rendezvous his only cue to bug out of Nantes to the French coast. A wild ride in a small rubber boat out to the pickup point, the lights of the attack aircars missing him only because he'd thrown the bodies of the two Orpos into a canal and then run the other way to the beach. The terror of watching the searchlights sweep closer and closer as the search radius expanded, hoping that the underwater pinger would summon the retrieval submarine while there was still a chance of getting it and him to safety. There had been cases of the Draka deliberately holding back on capturing an escaping agent, hoping to snag the sub too. Luckily, the diversionary explosions had gone off as timed, pulling the aircars back to the beach to support what was supposed to look like a firefight. The retrieval sub practically sucked him and his little boat underwater; he had been prepared and tied the precious satchel to his waist per instructions. He hoped the contents had been worth blowing two cover identities and the lives of everyone in Emil's network.¹⁷ Apparently it had been enough for a promotion to Field Agent (Grade Two), which wags said was your gift for just getting back alive on the first bad one. Posthumous promotions didn't do much for your career in the OSS.

All this introspection and retrospection had done was delay Randolph's confrontation with the paperwork for a few seconds. The beeping vidphone brought him back to the here and now. A quick glance out from the glassed-in Senior Agent's office confirmed that nobody else could handle this call. Most of the desks in sight were empty, and of the few that were occupied, all had people at them talking on their phones already. Accepting the call, he waited while the phone verified the identity of the caller and negotiated a commercial-grade security protocol. The expected challenge and response to a call on this number were displayed at the bottom of the screen, so even Randy could properly answer the call.
A gruff male voice gave the proper challenge "Ethel's looking for something. Can you help me out?" from a blacked-out screen.
Randy read off "Fred's here. We deliver. What's your problem?"
The screen lit up to show a military officer. "Major Schottinger, Security Force at Sandia Air Base." he rapped out, then stopped as he apparently noticed Randy's unfamiliar face on his screen. "You're not Rosslett!"
"No, Senior Agent Rosslett and her deputy are both out of the office for the next few days. I'm Randolph Kustaa, the agent in charge of this office until they return. Is there something we can do for you?"
The officer seemed unsure, but let out "We need some people from your office to take charge of some evidence and a suspect from an incident here."
Randy glanced at the phone's control panel. It was fitted with a military scrambler in addition to the commercial one.
"You wanna discuss this on a mangler?"¹⁸
"Sure. But you still need to be here. You won't believe it when I tell you…"
The voice trailed off into a wild cacophony of squeals and hums, and the image momentarily tore sideways before being replaced with a black screen and red text reading "ENCRYPTED SIGNAL: INVOKE APPROPRIATE DECIPHERMENT TO CONTINUE COMMUNICATION."
Randy winced at the noise, then punched the military scrambler button to bring the voice back into intelligibility, "… the sooner the better."
"OK, I gotcha now. Tell me why I gotta send people over to your base on a Saturday night, and what we have to take charge of."
Randy began making notes on one of Rosslett's legal pads. It sounded like the Major was still holding back, even on a military-scrambled line. But the need to take a look at this Frank Carson, probably have some long-term interrogation, was obvious. The other physical evidence, that needed to get to the OSS labs, wherever they were. Field Agents didn't need to know exactly where, just that they existed. Three agents and an unmarked airvan¹⁹ should be enough, maybe an ambulance version and some medical people if the suspect was still sedated. A quick hop from Santa Fe down to Albuquerque. Get back East to a safe house, either in the airvan or a tiltrotor, no need to hurry that much or waste the taxpayer's money with a scramjet. Proximity to New York City would help if somebody wanted to come out from Donovan House and see for themselves. A covert extraction, but on friendly territory this time. Randy smiled at the thought of taking charge of this operation, going along for the ride, and dumping the responsibility for the office on the next local in line.

Forward to Chapter 3

Footnotes:

1. The OTL author of Sherlock Holmes has an analogue in this timeline, but there are noticeable differences in what he wrote. The quote supplied is a paraphrase of several OTL ones and the title is my own invention. (back)
2. "Post-traumatic stress disorder" or "battle shock" is well known in the Alliance, but just referred to as "shock"; the context makes it clear if the trauma is physical or mental. (back)
3. Alliance security classifications are applied on a group inclusion as well as level of secrecy basis, e.g. "Secret / Government Only". After the merger of sovereignty following the Indian Incident, there are no more internal distinctions of nationality like the OTL "US Only" and "US/UK Only" classifications for information releasable only to certain US allies. (back)
4. The quantum paradox known as Schrödinger's Cat in OTL is called Kubbelman's Rat in this timeline, as seen in the beginning of Chapter 16 of "The Stone Dogs." In general, the world of the Alliance and Domination usually has theory play catch up to applications, so quantum physics appears to the layman even more like magic than it does in our world. (back)
5. Instead of a 5+4 numeric ZIP code, the Alliance uses a postal code system of alternating numbers and letters. The Domination still uses a multi-line address consisting of province, district, city, and finally plantation or street address for locations on Earth. Off-earth Alliance codes begin with 4, which was set aside as leading to too many humorous or scatological possibilities when the system was first set up. The Domination uses more specific addresses on off-Earth locations already, e.g. "Luna, Aresopolis, 6Nw0933A", and is considering imposing a postal code similar to the Alliance's, but starting with D and then continuing with alternating numbers and letters. (back)
6. The OTL "X-ray" is named for its (analogue) discoverer on the Alliance/Domination timeline, Roentgen. Therefore, an X-ray machine is called a Roentgen scanner there (roentgenoscope is an archaic term). (back)
7. Although both sides use bar-coded identification tags and scanners, the Domination prefers to have pairs of armed Janissaries at almost all checkpoints, while the Alliance often uses a single soldier after the first layer of security. Only the most secure facilities have unguarded automated checkpoints, and these only after at least two outer levels of manned locations at lower security classifications. Security by obscurity, i.e. an unguarded concealed entrance, is rare given the length of time the Protracted Struggle has continued; eventually any such secret will be discovered and penetrated. (back)
8. The Alliance Navy has a small special-forces organization of "Orca teams", similar to OTL US Navy SEALs. However, the Alliance Orca teams have closed-cycle underwater breathing gear, fully waterproofed weapons, lightly armored wetsuits, and "dry" sensor/comm helmets. There are unconfirmed rumors that the Domination has developed gene-modified porpoises and sharks to perform underwater patrol duties. (back)
9. Many serendipitous technological discoveries on OTL, such as photo-reactive coatings for eyeglasses, or Post-It Notes, were made at very different times on the Alliance/Domination timeline. There was similar exhaustive testing of materials for useful properties, but less basic research and more applied, i.e. looking for something to perform a desired function rather than cataloging the properties in case an application can be found. (back)
10. The Alliance for Democracy has had a joint currency since the Second Treaty of Rio (late 1945), according to "The Stone Dogs." This makes any US coin a collector's item and a 1998 quarter-dollar an ahistorical curiosity. Differing physical appearances as the timeline diverged from OTL means that the face of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the American dime is unrecognizable in the Alliance. (back)
11. The Alliance does gene typing as a screening measure to detect New Race Draka infiltrators in the few serfs that trickle in, and determine ethnic makeup when it is closely linked to genetically carried disorders. There is no genetic engineering generally available in the Alliance, although there are rumors that the OSS has dabbled in it for "super agents," and that extremely rich people can go to the Domination to have their children "fixed up." The popular repugnance in the Alliance for biotechnology means that anyone perceived to have been gene-altered would be shunned if not attacked by extremists. (back)
12. Given that there was much higher usage of nuclear weapons in this timeline, both in the close of the Eurasian War, and the Indian Incident, the Earth of the Domination and Alliance has a slightly higher dose of fallout scattered about. Weapons testing is assumed to be less; there are only two powers that do any. (back)
13. The vidphone is a common communications device in the Alliance; a video telephone with crystal sandwich color display, hands-free audio pickup, and at least a commercial-grade encryption device installed. Some expensive models have voice recognition for simple commands. (back)
14. Alliance military officers below General wear berets with service and rank insignia attached, which can be tucked into a shoulder loop when not worn. The hat with "scrambled eggs" on the visor is the sole province of Generals and Admirals in a rear headquarters, or the commanding officer of a surface ship in the Navy. Submariners wear a head covering only during the rare surface excursions during inclement weather. Space Force personnel wear an opaque close-fitting "beanie" with adhesive rank and unit insignia while in the field, which also keeps loose hair out of ventilation systems. (back)
15. This recaps the end of "Under the Yoke" as far as the Alliance knows for certain. Of course, Chantal didn't tell Aino that Marya had passed her microfilm… (back)
16. "Faced the snake" is the equivalent of "seen the elephant," although in the OSS a face-to-face (not necessarily hand-to-hand) encounter with Citizens or Domination armed forces is a requirement for full acceptance in this select unofficial group. Killing an Orpo (Domination Order Police, lightly armed serf policeman) or two hand-to-hand would qualify. (back)
17. The few remaining Resistance networks in Europe are so valuable that sending in an OSS agent to hand-carry out a physical item is extremely rare, more so that the agent survives a Security Directorate operation that captures the entire network. (back)
18. Varying degrees of additional security are available for a vidphone, with the slightly user-unfriendly device requiring the user to decide which ones to invoke to restore a signal encrypted by the other end. The military-grade encryption device is commonly referred to as a "mangler," and uses several stages of analog and digital conversion and operations to make hash out of the audio and video signals; it can take a substantial fraction of a second to synchronize two manglers. (back)
19. The airvan is a larger version of the VTOL ducted-fan "aircar", with an opaque covering for the rear compartment. Military versions have drop-down panels so personnel or equipment can be quickly unloaded. Tiltrotors are used when fuel economy and cargo capacity outranks speed, and when the takeoff or landing field can't handle high-temperature exhaust. With nuclear and fusion reactors in common use, plus solar power beamed down from orbit, and a lower total population on Earth (albeit with a higher average standard of living in the Alliance) there is an abundance of fossil fuels and fast air vehicles for personal and commercial use. (back)

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By Peter Karsanow.
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