Chapter 5
It was the Seltiac that were the first to notice that the Earth had changed.
The Seltiac are a race of furry, bloody-minded, weapons dealers. All the major wars in the Galaxy, from Trakhen to the Banner Worlds, had given the Seltiac heaps of money for ways to quickly kill off their foes.
It was because of their mercenary ways that they were able to notice the difference.
They had just completed a very shady deal with the government of the Third Zone (more on that trainwreck later) when they started to notice something wrong with the communication signals coming from Earth.
As this had piqued their interest, they set up a small base on the Earth's Moon to have a proper look.
What they saw was enough to chill even their souls.
Everything they were seeing, and I do mean everything, was so beyond wrong that they thought about making up a new word to describe the level of wrongness they were witnessing.
You see, the Seltiac had extensive information on good old Sol 3, it was their way of preparing for that day when they could start selling Black Light Accelerators to Earth's blood-thirsty folk.
These files were a detailed breakdown of the planets history, and future. And what they were seeing didn't add up. At all.
This was in the Sol year 2012, two years before young Ms. Jenkins went missing. The Earth that should be there was one of Facebook, Barack Obama, and the iPhone.
What they saw was… worrying, to say the least. A Soviet Union existing on the brink of ruin. An increasingly isolationist USA. This list could go on..
The Seltiac knew this was something that needed to be brought to the appropriate authorities, namely the Time Lords.
With this in mind, they dispatched a message to Skaro. They didn't have the ear of Gallifrey, but they knew some mutants that did.
After hours of waiting, the Seltiac received a reply to their message. If the information they sent was worrying, then the response from the Daleks was truly chilling.
It was two words: We Know.
Then there was another message from the Daleks, a much longer message. It said, in no uncertain terms, that the Seltiac were to leave the Earth system, never to return. Oh, and they were to speak of this to no-one. Ever. Or Else!
The Daleks, as well as their Time Lord allies, had been aware of this 'discontinuity' for some time. It had become a constant source of worry and dread.
What had gone wrong? And when?
It all went awry in 1944, the failure of Operation Overlord. This caused the Second World War to last until 1947 when it came to a messy, and somewhat confusing end.
An ending that led to no Soviet presence in Germany due to Churchill implementing Operation Unthinkable. Along with reliable German troops, the British and French fought the Red Army back, street by street, in Berlin. The Americans, for reasons never made clear, decided that they had done their bit, and toddled back across the Atlantic.
With the exception of the non-existent East Germany, the USSR pretty much stood as you would know it, albeit a bit less bombastic.
The Korean War happened as it should have. Although, North Korea wouldn't survive past 1968 due to the long and bloody collapse of the People's Republic of China.
Through all this, by some miracle, Great Britain stayed just that. Great. What can only be described as a post-war economic miracle took place, and Britannia very much ruled. From the motor industry to electronics. Made in GB was everywhere.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that what you've just read is a bit, well, off. That the years post WW2 were a bit of a confusing mess that barely made any sense. And you wouldn't be alone. It was a mess. A horrible, horrible mess. Almost everything from 1944 onwards was wrong, on many levels.
The Daleks and Time Lords had been aware of this state of affairs for quite some time. In fact, the latter knew it would happen. Unbeknown to the Daleks, the High Council breathed a collective sigh of relief when it did. That meant that things could start to move forward.
That, however, is a story for another time.
The big question was, of course, how could this have happened to the history of only one planet? Well, for a start, once the distortion had been detected, the Time Lords isolated Earth from the rest of the universe, just to be sure. Yes, ships still did get through, but they were always sanctioned visits.
But what caused this whole episode to play out? The answer to that can be traced to a small town in the North West of England.
It's name? Winsford.
In 1989, the entire town was destroyed by what was at first thought to be a thermonuclear explosion. The force of the blast was felt as far down the country as Birmingham, hence the initial reaction. Shortly after the blast, it was discovered that there was no errant atomic radiation anywhere nearby.
It was far, far worse. It was an explosion in Time.
Again. That's a story for another time.