The four sliders huddled together on the branch of a large oak tree. They all knew that mountain lions could easily climb trees, yet for the moment they felt safe, as the large cat down below gradually distanced itself from their location. They hadn't seen any traces of humanity on this slide. They were in a lovely yet dangerous wilderness. The past four days had been spent avoiding wild animals and taking in the pristine, breathtaking scenery. They were not aware of the fact that hominids did not exist anywhere in the Americas in this world. Africa, Asia and Europe contained nothing more advanced than Homo erectus.
The vortex was ready, and the four quickly descended the tree and slid into the unknown.
"This looks like a pretty normal San Francisco." Quinn said looking around him. They were standing right in front of City Hall.
"No it doesn't man, where are all the bums?" Rembrandt said.
It was true. Everyone around them seemed to be moderately well dressed. In fact, everyone wore very similar looking clothing. The fashion sense was hard to pinpoint, but it more or less resembled 1940's business attire.
"Holy shit, look at that," Quinn suddenly remarked.
He pointed to three tall flagpoles. In the middle flew the stars and stripes. On the left flew Japan's imperial rising sun flag, and on the right, the four Sliders looked on in terror, it was the Nazi swastika.
"It looks like the public library over there is still the public library." Quinn said. "Let's go inside. Maybe some books will tell us what the hell is going on. Otherwise it seems safe enough here at the moment. At least no one seems to be bothering about us."
The four sliders went inside the library, which looked pretty much the same as it did in their world. They received several questioning glances from library staff and patrons. Probably their clothing looked quite outlandish, but otherwise they didn't seem to create much of a stir. The halls of the library were much quieter than what they were used to. Although libraries were supposed to be quiet places, in their world people didn't always follow the rules as strictly as the people here seemed to. They spent the next couple of hours browsing through the aisles, looking at history books, atlases, newspapers and books on current affairs. They were able to go online, browsing and watching high definition videos over the internet on the computer terminals. The computers seemed a bit modern for the mid-nineties sliders. What they saw surprised, shocked and confused them.
In essence they gathered that the following events had taken place. In 1936 Hitler invited several German and American athletes, including Jesse Owens to have lunch with him during the final days of the Berlin Olympics. A few months later, he invited a number of scientists to an official state dinner. The scientists included Jews, who had not yet been sent to concentration camps, as well as non-Jews. Hitler then appointed Ralf Rosenstihl, a young not very well known German-Jewish physicist at Freiburg University, as a personal adviser in matters of science and technology.
By the end of 1937, Nazi run concentration camps were reported to contain only political prisoners. By then, religious and other forms of persecution were reported to have ended in Germany, and many people who had been imprisoned were released. During 1937, Hitler had made it clear in his speeches, that although he had once been enthralled by the studies of eugenics, he now no longer was.
In the summer of 1938, Hitler, Roosevelt and Fumimaro of Japan met in Washington. Their joint announcement following the meeting sent shock waves around the World, and was the start of the Second Great War of the twentieth century. The announcement had been that from that point onward, the three governments would not tolerate any military powers other than their own. Countries such as Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union etc., were suddenly given the order by the three forces to cease all military operations and disarm. Individual countries would be allowed to maintain control of nominal firearms arsenals for their police forces, and no more.
The World was split into three clearly defined zones. One zone was bounded by the International Date Line on one side, and a line that zigzagged through the middle of the Atlantic on the other. That zone, containing all of the Americas including the Hawaiian Islands, was the sphere of the United States. The next zone extended from the Atlantic line to the 90 degree east meridian and belonged to Germany. The rest went to Japan.
There was a general uproar across the Globe. Britain, France, Italy and the Soviet Union formed an alliance. By September of 1938, almost a full year before the advent of the Second World War known to the sliders, fighting broke out in numerous locations around the World. The three powers had to go out and disarm the other nations by force, as few disarmed willingly. In 1945, a joint team of German and American scientists completed the first Atomic bomb, and it was dropped by a Japanese bomber over Khabarovsk. They never bothered testing the bomb before its first use, but it worked, and the war came to an abrupt end. The books stated that communism, imperialism and poverty had all been gloriously defeated. The coalition of what the sliders began referring to as the gang of three reigned supreme over the Earth.
The sliders were dumbfounded, their heads were spinning. They felt dizzy and sick.
"Man, is this real?" Rembrandt said quietly under his breath as they gathered outside. "I mean, what if it's all propaganda? How can Nazis not be a bunch of racists, I mean come on. I bet they still have their concentration camps operating over there right now. Shit, this is messed up, and we're powerless to do anything to stop this."
"You could be right." Arturo remarked. "How would we know? On the other hand, what if it's all actually true? Did you see the travel guidebooks? Manila looks wealthy beyond belief, a shining stylized version of Tokyo. What happened to the slums? Guatemala City looks like a richer version of Dallas, with gleaming skyscrapers and shopping malls. The Rwandan Genocide never seems to have happened. Kigali looks like Cologne, with an astonishing replica of its famous cathedral. A video I watched showed wealthy looking Hutus and Tutsis dancing in the streets, celebrating a Rwandan World Cup soccer victory together. The buildings, the streets, the people, it all looked immaculate, so different from the Kigali I witnessed myself in person last year back in our world. Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin all have large synagogues listed as tourist attractions in the guidebooks. This might in fact be real."
"Wait, you're not actually thinking of staying in this fucked up place?" Wade shouted. The others gave her a terrified look urging her to be quiet. A few people stared over at them. One thing they noticed was that even out on the street, people seemed to talk mostly in hushed tones, as if they were afraid of something.
"Come on, let's go for a walk." Quinn said.
They walked through neat and tidy city streets. There were a few commercial billboard advertisements, but mostly there were posters advertising the WPA. FDR's New Deal was still in place, and it seemed to be working. Arturo imagined this is what the World might be like if the Singapore of his world took control over it. At the moment, he didn't entirely dislike it.
'Is this world really peaceful. Is there really no more racism, hunger and poverty?' Wade thought. An online news site she had looked at, briefly mentioned an insurgency being fought by joint US and Japanese forces in Australia. She wondered about the freedom of speech. This was the United States, but something gave her an eerie feeling. It felt like you had to be very careful about what you said in this fascist world.
It was getting dark, and they had 80 hours left on the timer. They decided to head up into the dense eucalyptus forest behind UCSF. They walked quietly. They all somehow felt it would be a bad idea to draw attention to themselves. They decided to walk along Haight street to see if there were any signs of counterculture or alternative lifestyles in this place. They found not a trace. Haight street had a few diners and hardware stores, and not much else. It would not have looked out of place in Nebraska in their world. As they stood in front of a diner advertising meat loaf and apple pie, they suddenly realized they would need food and water.
Their last world, the wilderness, had actually been fairly comfortable. They had had no trouble finding spring water, and had collected berries and trapped rabbits for food. Right now they were worried about trying to spend money. Using the wrong type of currency could land them in trouble. Quinn went through his wallet and pulled out a twenty dollar bill from a few worlds ago, that other than having been even more earthquake prone than his own, had otherwise been quite similar. He walked up to an elderly lady walking with a cane.
"Excuse me ma'am," he said. "I need to make a phone call, and all I have is this twenty. Would you by any chance be able to break it and give me some quarters. It doesn't have to be exact."
"A phone call?" She remarked suspiciously. "Don't all you young people have intelligent phones nowadays. My, come to think of it, I haven't seen a payphone in years. Are you folks from the country? Oh well, let me see here."
Quinn had no idea what an intelligent phone was, but he assumed it was one of the modern looking types of cell phones he had observed some people using from a distance earlier.
The old lady produced two five dollar bills and four quarters from her purse. "Here you go sunny boy. That should be about right," she said as she snatched the twenty out of Quinn's hand. 'You could have been a little more exact than that' he thought.
The sliders walked on with the 11 dollars they had acquired. Quinn discreetly examined the coins and bills. The bills had a bluish rather than green color, and Abe's face was really small. The quarters looked exactly the same as those of his world, as far as he could tell.
"Well guys, we could be in trouble." He remarked. "Let's hope that lady has poor eyesight and doesn't go spending that twenty for a while."
They found a grocery store. It looked like a strange mixture of the 1950's with lots of wrapped hams and tacky looking boxes of frozen dinners, but with very modern computerized cash registers. They found some Wonder Bread and lunch meats. The prices were cheap compared to what they were used to. The loaf of bread was only 39 cents. They found no bottled water, but found some cartons of apple juice. Quinn paid with quarters. The girl at the checkout accepted the quarters but rolled her eyes.
"Are y'all from the country?" she said with a mock accent. "Don't y'all have intelliphones to pay with where y'all are from?" she said gleefully, laughing at her own attempt at derisive humor.
"Um, yeah." Quinn said quietly as the girl bagged their groceries in old fashioned looking paper bags.
"Well, y'all have yourselves a nice day, and y'all don't come back now you hear!" the cashier screeched as they left the store.
"What a rude bitch!" Wade blurted out when they were back outside. "Look, prices are cheap here. Can't we stay at a hotel? But I've got to admit, I haven't really seen any hotels. God I hate this place!"
She looked as if she were about to cry. They were all very tired.
Quinn spoke with a soothing voice. "I promise we'll look for a hotel tomorrow. For now, we don't know what these fascists will ask us or look for if we try to check into a hotel. Let's just head into the woods, eat our food, and try to get some sleep."
They found shelter in the forest, and after eating were able to sleep fairly well in their space age sleeping bags on the soft ground.
Early the next morning Rembrandt, Arturo and Quinn were up talking quietly, while Wade still slept. They discussed their plans for the day. They would head back to the library and see if they could go online and find a hotel. It seemed people used their cell phones to make monetary transactions in this world.
In some respects this place seemed more advanced than the 1995 they were used to. The thin high resolution computer monitors at the library for example seemed quite impressive, compared to the bulky monitors they were used to. They discussed how technological advances might be very rapid without obstacles such as wars and terrorism. If this world had really eliminated such obstacles, it was an impressive place indeed. Arturo described the effect of having a four legged table with a wobble, and a three legged table being the most stable. With power evenly split between Germany, Japan and the United States, those three countries along with their respective vassal states might create quite a solid foundation for global stability and well being.
They wondered if there were no conflicts between the three major powers. They still couldn't believe the alliance with Nazi Germany. How could Hitler, the worst monster of all history, turn 180 degrees? Perhaps he hadn't turned a full 180 degrees they thought. Nonetheless, something in this world may have really and truly caused him to lose his mania about the Jewish people. They wished they understood more about what it was. Also, how could the vast number of German people, who had been so caught up in the wave of hatred of that era, suddenly have changed?
They wondered about racism and bigotry in the US. This San Francisco seemed to be less diverse than their version, but not a great deal less. They had seen people of various backgrounds and also mixed race couples. One thing everyone seemed to have in common here was they all dressed in a very similar fashion, and everyone seemed to be very cautious and quiet, almost fearful. It didn't seem like race or religion were issues though.
They walked back towards the library after finishing their breakfast of bread and apple juice. They took a detour through Golden Gate Park and were walking past the Hall of Flowers. They were suddenly approached by a girl of about 17.
"Excuse me," she said with a strong foreign accent, "is this the Hall of Flowers?" She pronounced it like 'the whore of France'. She seemed to be a foreign visitor to the city, and they saw this as an opportunity to make some small talk and maybe find out a thing or two about this world from a real person, since the natives seemed to be mostly stuck up and unapproachable.
"Yes it is," Quinn said. "Hi my name is Quinn, and these are my friends Arturo, Rembrandt and Wade. Where are you from?"
"Oh. I am from Korea." She remarked. "My hometown is Pyongyang. My name is Mi-Sook. Pleased to meet you." She said with a smile, as if having successfully remembered the lines from her textbook.
"Oh cool, Pyongyang. Wow! That's in North Korea!" Quinn remarked.
"Pyongyang is in central part of Korea." Mi-Sook replied.
"Oh, uh, well, what do you think about Japan?" Quinn blurted out.
"Japan? I study Japanese for two months in Osaka when I'm in junior high school," she said. "Japanese person is very kind to me. I want to go Sapporo next time to see ice festival."
"Oh, yeah, I've heard about that," Quinn said. "That's cool. Have you been to a lot of other places. Like have you been to China? I haven't traveled much, so you know, I'm like really curious to learn about other places."
"Of course I have been to China many times." Mi-Sook replied with a giggle. "I love to shop. Shanghai is the best."
She had been all over the place, to India, Thailand, New Zealand, England, Germany. She didn't appear to bear any hostility towards any place or group of people. Korea hadn't been split apart. Quinn didn't know what atrocities had been committed by Japan in East Asia in this particular world. He didn't know whether countries such as Korea or China were at this point bothered by the fact that they couldn't have their own military, or they had to live in a zone controlled by Japan. Mi-Sook didn't let on about anything. They said goodbye and continued their walk.
The people of this world seemed to be well traveled, judging also by the numerous guidebooks at the library. Quinn wondered though, whether there was any sense of adventure left. In his world cities like Dhaka or Sao Paulo or Sydney were all completely different from one another. Some places had high crime rates, some had abject poverty, others less so, but they were all exciting. In this place everywhere possibly felt more or less the same. He had mixed feelings about wanting to explore it further and wanting to get out ASAP. There were many police officers patrolling the streets, and one could feel the mood of authoritarianism in the air. The sliders were all afraid of being arrested, but they didn't know specifically why.
On the computers at the library, they soon figured out that staying at any type of hotel would be next to impossible. One would need two official identification documents, and each stay was registered with the authorities, whatever that meant. As far as they could tell, there were no seedy parts of town, where they might find a place that didn't care about the rules. Everyone here seemed to care about the rules.
They needed to shower and wash their clothes. They decided to go to a museum and see if they might be able to get inside a restroom and lock the doors, so they could at least wash themselves. 62 hours were still left on the timer. They thought about walking across the bridge and heading into the Marin headlands. They might be able to hide there until the timer ran out, and they wouldn't necessarily need to be clean and free of body odor to do that. Something about this world was both eerie and fascinating at the same time. They also felt an urge to stay in the city and learn more about this bizarre nightmarish world. They were afraid of doing something as simple of boarding a bus, for fear of making a mistake and causing a scene. So far they felt they were seen as some kind of country bumpkins by the locals, perhaps on a visit from out of town.
They decided they could manage another night on Mount Sutro. The area was heavily forested and didn't seem to be patrolled at night. They would find another grocery store, buy dinner and camp out again. It didn't seem like it would rain either. First they decided to go in search of restroom facilities, where they could wash. The library turned out to be alright for that purpose. On the top floor they found some bathrooms that seemed to get very little traffic. They took turns using these and were able to get quite clean, and wash some of their clothing as well. The air driers came in handy too, and it didn't seem like anyone had noticed them. They stayed at the library, studying more about this strange world.
Arturo was at a computer, trying to find out on the internet, if the Bill of Rights was still in force, and if so, how it was being interpreted. He was particularly interested in the freedom of speech. He looked for examples of subversive literature, political rallies, protests, etc. Suddenly a library employee walked right up to him.
"Sir, I advise you to tone it down a bit. I've noticed that you seem a bit nervous, so I went and had a look at your searches from my terminal. You know the Feds keep track of all online activity, and I've seen them coming in here before and arresting people. People tend to think their online activity at the library can be done incognito because they don't even need to log on to use our computers, but seriously, you are being watched. We get all the crazy types in here. I'm not saying you're one of them, and I'm certainly not going to report you or anything, but just a friendly bit of advice to ease up a bit." And with that he suddenly walked off and disappeared again behind his desk.
Arturo felt as if he were about to vomit. Cold sweat formed on his head. He quietly went round and told the others to come with him. He told them what had happened when they got outside. A police car slowed down as it drove past them. The cop stared at them with a cold expressionless glare before driving off again. They saw some men in black SWAT team style uniforms stopping a teenage boy and asking him for his identification. They quietly started walking, not knowing where to go, but decided to just keep walking.
After an hour of walking they stopped. Quinn said it would be best to buy dinner and go back to Mount Sutro. It was getting late, and he didn't think they would be seen. They bought the same meal of Wonder Bread, lunch meats and apple juice as the night before from a different store, and furtively darted into the woods. They went as deep into the forest as they could and crouched among the trees, whispering to each other. They felt they were being watched from every direction. They decided to sleep in shifts.
They managed to each get a bit of sleep. The next morning just before sunrise, Quinn heard footsteps. He woke the others, but it was too late, a man saw them and approached.
"Well hello there," he said. He was an elderly man with a white beard. He was wearing brown corduroy pants and a checkered hunting jacket. He seemed friendly. "Are you folks from out of town? Decided to save money by sleeping in rough huh? I like that. Don't mind me. I like to take walks here sometimes in the mornings. I've been lonely since my wife passed."
"Um. Yeah. We got in kind of late and it was nice out." Quinn stammered.
"You folks get lucky and land a WPA construction job here in the city?" The man asked. "Where you folks from? I'm from Kentucky originally myself. I got sent here to work in shipbuilding during the war. It's a lovely town, but it can seem cold at times. I don't do much foreign travel, but I sure do enjoy going back to Appalachia whenever I can. Hey, we still got moonshine over there," he said with a nervous grin. "But hush hush, don't tell anyone. Oh, so where'd you folks say you were from?"
"Um, we're from Santa Rosa." Quinn said nervously.
"Oh yeah?" The old man said, looking a little bit skeptical. But he smiled. "Well if you folks want coffee and flapjacks, and if you want to take a hot shower and get your clothes cleaned, you're all welcome to come over to my place. Like I said, I'm a lonely old fellow, and I sure don't mind the company."
They trusted the old man and went with him. He had a nice downstairs unit in an old house on Page street. They all ate breakfast, took proper showers and did laundry all morning. Quinn tried telling the old man where they really were from. He knew it might be a huge mistake, but he felt it was worth the risk, mainly for the sake of gaining the use of a safe and clean hideout until the next slide, but also because the old man would surely be a treasure trove of knowledge.
The sliders were in luck. The old man let them stay until their slide. He didn't let on whether or not he really believed them. He seemed genuinely lonely and was glad for the company, regardless of who the sliders were. They all stayed awake for most of the next 36 hours, talking to the old man.
They found out such things as, prohibition had gone back into effect in the late 1940's. The old man liked to smuggle moonshine back from Kentucky, but the penalty could be ten years in prison if he got caught.
McCarthyism, or some similar type of witch hunt had been very extreme and continued to this date.
The Republican and Democratic parties had become even harder to distinguish from one another than in the sliders' world, and third parties were entirely non existent. Political protest was considered an act of treason and could be punished by death. Although the open expression of opinions was slightly more tolerated in the American zone, than in the German or Japanese zones, people were mostly afraid of being accused of treason, and so they kept very quiet in public.
It was true that Hitler and his cronies had for the most part given up their bigoted and racist ideology. The old man didn't know exactly why. They still used what they said was an Aryan symbol, but claimed it was a sign of power, which all humanity could benefit from. The old man himself had grown up in a very racist environment in Kentucky, but after having worked for many years in the shipyards with people from all over the world, he had given up such outdated ways of thinking.
The reason government repression was so tight, was said to be that war and poverty went hand in hand. The World was never safe from the dangers of war and poverty, no matter how far away they seemed. If they cropped up in one place, they could spread like a wildfire. The government had to therefore exert tight controls, to stamp out any fires when they were still tiny. Subversive activities were said to be the root of war and poverty.
As far as the old man knew, it was also true that living conditions had become more or less equal across the globe. It didn't matter if you were in Chicago, Port-au-Prince, Geneva, Jakarta or wherever, slums simply didn't exist. There were rich people, and no one was really poor.
The old man was aware of an occasional insurgency, which was always quickly quelled by the three powers. The most recent one had been in Australia, where an independent free republic had been declared in the outback. Ranchers in Idaho had at one point in the 1970's been found to poses home made firearms. They quoted the Second Amendment and fought US troops, that were flown in to take their guns away from them. The Supreme Court had made it clear, that the Second Amendment did not apply to individual people, but rather that individual state governments were allowed a certain latitude in determining the size of their local police forces. At first the Army tried to end the Idaho standoff peacefully, but after an Army helicopter was shot down by a home made rocket propelled grenade, the whole area was leveled in a massive bombing raid. Many people were killed in that rebellion.
As far as conflict between the three major powers was concerned, so far there had been none, as the geographic spheres of influence were clearly defined and strictly adhered to. There was of course the danger of two of the partners suddenly turning on the other. They were all reported to have nuclear arsenals of equal strength.
Arturo felt tired. He was tired of sliding, never knowing what would happen next. He thought of staying in this world. If you kept your mouth shut, you could live a comfortable life here and travel anywhere you wished. A strong emphasis was placed on science and technological advancement. Despite the cruelty of stamping out freedom of expression; the elimination of poverty, famine and widespread disease was commendable. He tried to look beyond his understanding of who the Nazis were. Clearly they still had evil tendencies, but Rosenstihl, whoever he had been, had surely helped to at least curb that evil. Arturo felt that conditions might gradually improve in this world over time, and it could become a real utopia.
None of the other sliders even for a second thought about staying in this place. They didn't need the old man to verify the facts, about the lack of freedom of expression and political repression. One could feel it in the air the moment one walked out onto the street. The freedoms established in the Constitution were meaningless here, as their interpretation could be laid out any which way to suit those in power. They were sure they wanted to slide, and the time was now approaching.
Suddenly there was a pounding at the door. The old man quietly told the sliders to hide in his bedroom closet. They squeezed into the cluttered little space. FBI men entered the apartment. They told the old man they were looking for a stout man with a beard, who had engaged in subversive activities at the public library. They had a witness, who had testified against him. Retina scans on the surveillance footage hadn't shown his identity. Voices had been heard at the old man's place, and the bearded man was believed to be in the area. The FBI was conducting searches of houses. The old man said that he had been talking to himself. The agents started going through his apartment, and they were headed for the bedroom. They most certainly didn't need a warrant to search a person's home in this world, and even if they did, they could presumably get one instantaneously online whenever they wanted to anyway.
Arturo thought, while sweating inside the closet, that with further technological advancements, this world could become even more nightmarish. He had completely changed his mind about wanting to stay. Luckily the timer was ready, and from within the closet, the four friends slid into the next world that awaited them.
They were seemingly inside the same closet. For a moment all was dark and quiet. Then they heard voices in the room outside.
"Honey what was that?" A woman's voice said.
"Huh, I don't know, it's probably nothing." A man answered.
"I swear I heard something inside the closet."
"I'm sure its nothing, let's go back to sleep."
The four sliders burst out of the closet shouting "Excuse me!" and ran for the front door.
"Hey! Who the hell are you?" the man in the bed shouted.
The sliders burst out into the street, and ran as fast as they could. They were in a world, where the 1918 flu pandemic had wiped out approximately 89% of the Earth's population, instead of around 5%, leaving around 218 million survivors. The population had at this point grown back to around 380 million, and like the last world, it was a peaceful and prosperous one. Unlike the last world however, it was also a bastion of freedom and democracy, but it still wasn't their world, and so the sliders continued to slide.
THE END