One fictional choice an author can make is to include a thinly-veiled – or entirely open – version of him/herself in the tale. One of the better known examples of this Dante Alighieri including himself as the main character in his “Divine Comedy.” In lesser hands, the concept is often lazy wish fulfillment and says nothing good about the author and his/her skills. In my own limited store of crappy fiction I have at least tried to avoid this as much as possible.
Still, I have one story idea – almost certain to never go much further than this lameass blog post – that would include a “self insertion” so blatant I might as well use my own name for the character.
The story came to me in a flash a few weeks ago. The basic idea is not that clever, since it has been done in various forms numerous times: some geographic region finds itself displaced from time, dropped somewhen else. Hijinks ensue. (see: “1632,” “Island in the Sea of Time”).
The specific idea that occurred to me was this: a few square miles of my local area (Thatcher, Utah) suddenly – apparently due to bad management or some cosmic paperwork foulup – finds itself in the same physical location, but in mid 1942. Hijinks then ensue.
Thatcher is a small place, but if such an unlikely event were to occur, somewhere in the region of 500-800 people would find themselves in a different time period. This makes for an interesting situation; a single person could disappear into the background and not affect history, but a region like this with hundreds of people *won’t* be able to hide. Sooner or later, the FBI is going to find the place *terribly* interesting. A small, *kinda* isolated place like this would provide the possibility for the event to remain hidden; were it instead a block of Chicago, there’d be no hiding it.
Obviously, there will be some immediate problems, first up being the lack of utilities. Until new power and gas lines can be hooked up, most of the homes here will be dark. Cell phones won’t work. The internet will be non-existent. But 2016-era cars will still function and can be gassed up… but that will draw stares and paying for the gas might be problematic.
Since it’s wartime, something you *don’t* want to have happen is to bring the wrath of FDR’s government down on you. You will want to maintain some measure of control. So my thinking is that some small number of 2016-folks will need to find the nearest Army base or FBI office (both available about 40 miles from here) and nonchalantly stroll in, find someone with power, and show them a functioning Iphone and say something akin to “if you’d like to know more, meet me up in Thatcher tomorrow, noon.”
Assuming you can get hold of some 1942-officials who can accept the situation without freaking out, a whole lot of things will happen. Here you’ll have hundreds of people who know how the war will turn out. Some fraction of them will be reasonably well versed on certain historical details… their father served in Iwo Jima, their grandfather was in D-Day, etc. And there will be books.
Here’s where it’d be *real* difficult for me to not self-insert into this yarn. Because in my basement I have a couple shelves specifically on the Manhattan Project and nuclear weapons in general. Just *imagine* how the War Department would go absolutely ape with this treasure trove. Everything from “ok, let’s stop wasting time on Thin Man” to “let’s have a chat with Mr. Fuchs,” to “will someone *please* keep Mr. Slotin away from the screwdrivers.” I could have endless fun showing “Trinity and Beyond” to Robert Oppenheimer and the like.
Then there are the books on rocketry, jet engines, aircraft design, etc. My house is incredibly boring today, but in 1942, nations would have gone to war over what I’ve got. And with all due modesty, I could probably keep a whole bunch of folks entertained for years just rattling stuff off.
The firearms in probably every house, including a range of modern sporting rifles and “assault weapons” including AR-15’s, AK-47/Saiga’s would be of great interest to the Army and Marines. No doubt there are some really interesting things out here; wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a Barrett or two.
The trick would be for the 2016-locals to maintain control. It would be easy for the 1942-Army to simply sweep in, confiscate everything and lock all the 2016-folks into deep dark holes; this is the FDR era, after all. But if the 2016-folk are able to convince the 1942-authorities that the best approach is to be civilized, this sleepy little wide spot in the road could become one hell of a research facility. The 2016-folk would become fabulously wealthy on royalties.
Care would have to be taken in how 2016 technologies were utilized. Let’s face it, 1942 scientists would not have been able to meaningfully analyze a smart phone. The tech wasn’t there to build the tools needed to study the tech. A microchip would be difficult to explain… and without good scanning electron microscopes, they wouldn’t even be able to *see* the details of the chips, assuming they could disassemble the things to get at ’em without destroying them. A lot of 2016-tech would be simply inaccessible. Still… crappy junk people have long ago tossed into their attics would be monumentally useful. A cheap transistor radio that was last on when Kool and the Gang were relevant would provide all kinds of entertainment value to Bell Labs. Imagine if practical transistors were “invented” in, say, 1943.
In the post-war period, there would be opportunities for the 2016-folk to make *buckets* of money. Assuming everything remains functional, I can see movie studio execs coming out here under armed military escorts to watch DVDs and Blu rays, and negotiating for the right to point their cameras at the screen. A lot of the movies on my shelf would make no sense in 1942; imagine trying to sell “The Matrix.” But… “Star Wars?” Yeah, I can see Fox executives backing up a dumptruck full of cash to get *that* on film.
The weird area is when authors in 1942 find out that 2016-people have books they won’t write for another few decades. It’d be interesting to have Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov come pay me a visit. Would they *want* to read the books? What would the courts decide as to the ownership of, say, “Starship Troopers?” 50% to the 2016-person with the book, 50% to the 1942 author? How about books written in the 21st century by authors who not only haven’t been born yet in 1942, but who now very likely won’t be born?
Anyway.
I’ve talked this idea over with a friend; there’s much more to it, but it’ll probably not go much further (because why would it?). Still, I had an idea for the very last scene: after the time travel hijinks, the US defeats Germany in mid 1944, Japan later that year; the USSR is weakened and shoved way back. The US occupies *all* of Eastern Europe; Mao Tse Tung meets with an unfortunate accident. Communism is thus contained and quickly fades into the obscurity in which it belongs. A few years after the war, the arrival of 2016-Thatcher is revealed; the role it played in the fabulous technologies that have appeared in recent years comes to light. Through the early 1960’s Thatcher is a better-guarded military reservation than any Manhattan site. But after the late 1960’s, the secrets have all been wrung out. The adults from 2016 are pretty much all dead by 2000; the children from 2016 are quite old by the time 2016 rolls around again. In the second 2016, Thatcher is no longer a closed-off camp, but an open-air museum with some high-tech labs continuing to develop new technologies. And so when The Day rolls around in the second 2016, the place is loaded to the gills with tourists who want to be here. And then… there’s a mighty flash, and at the exactly same day and hour, the second iteration of 2016-Thatcher disappears again.
