Empire Games Series, Book 1
Charles Stross
For Iain M. Banks, who painted a picture of a better way
MAIN TIME LINES
TIME LINE ONE:
History diverged from our own around 200–250 BCE in time line one. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all absent and the collapse of the Roman Empire into dark ages was complete rather than just partial. Since then, civilization in Europe re-emerged and quasi-medieval colony kingdoms sprang up on the eastern seaboard of North America. (The western seaboard was settled by Chinese traders.)
The Gruinmarkt, one such kingdom, was home to the Clan—rich merchant-traders with the ability to cross between time lines. As world-walkers, they made a good living as the only people who could send a message coast-to-coast in a day in time line one. They could also guarantee a heroin shipment would arrive without fear of interception in time line two. But all good things come to an end, and the vicious civil war that broke out in 2003 (by time line two reckoning) led to the Clan’s discovery by the US Government. Their escalating cycle of retaliation ended in a nuclear inferno.
TIME LINE TWO:
This is a world almost identical to your time line, as the reader of this book—right up to a key date in 2003. Here world-walkers from the Clan’s conservative faction detonated a stolen nuclear weapon in the White House. They assassinated the President and forced the government to reveal the existence of parallel universes and the technology for reaching them. Our story starts in time line two.
TIME LINE THREE:
This time line was discovered by Miriam Beckstein. In this alternate world, England was invaded by France in 1760 and the British Crown in Exile was established in the New England colonies. There was no American War of Independence and no French or Russian Revolutions. Therefore the Ancien Regime—despotism by absolute monarchy—shaped the world order until the Revolution of 2003. Here, the New British Empire’s Radical Party overthrew the government and declared a democratic Commonwealth. The country is now known as the New American Commonwealth.
The French invasion of England stifled the Industrial Revolution in its crib, so industrialization began a century later than in time line two. But economics and science have their own imperatives. And even before Miriam led the survivors of the Clan into exile in the Commonwealth, the pace of technological innovation was beginning to pick up.
TIME LINE FOUR:
Currently uninhabited, this time line is in the grip of an ice age—with an ice sheet covering much of Europe, Canada, and the northern states of the US. But it hasn’t been uninhabited forever. The enigmatic Forerunner ruins pose both a threat and a promise …
MAIN CHARACTER PROFILES
ERIC SMITH
Born in 1964 in time line two, Colonel Smith, USAF (retired) has been a government man all his life. He worked for the United States’ National Security Agency, then inside a top secret unit within Homeland Security. It was tasked with defending the States against threats from other time lines; these included world-walkers, those who could cross between these alternative worlds and his own time line. Many might consider this easy—after all, most known time lines are uninhabited, or populated by stone age tribes at best. However, the exceptions are the problem. The notorious Clan and their world-walkers came from time line one. And contact with this secretive organization resulted in a national trauma—dwarfing both 9/11 and the war on terror.
Smith knows that there are other inhabited time lines out there. At least one civilization is far ahead of the United States’ technology levels, fighting—and losing—a para-time war against parties unknown. And then there’s the BLACK RAIN time line, where reconnaissance drones and human spies go missing.
Defending the nation is easier said than done, when you can’t even be sure what you’re defending it from. But you can make a good guess …
KURT DOUGLAS
Born in 1941 in time line two, Kurt Douglas grew up in the German Democratic Republic—East Germany—during the Cold War. Drafted at 18, he ended up in the Border Guards. Then in late 1968 he escaped over the Berlin Wall to the West, and emigrated to the United States. Marrying Greta, another East German defector, he made a new life for himself. Kurt raised a family, and lived quietly with his son, daughter-in-law, and their adopted children—Rita and River.
However, the East German foreign intelligence service didn’t send Kurt to the West to spy on the United States—they had longer-term objectives in mind. However, that was before the end of the Cold War and the collapse of East Germany. Old skills don’t fade easily, and Kurt has given Rita the best training he could for living in a police state. And she knows, if she ever gets in over her head, that she can count on grandpa Kurt—and his friends—for help.
MIRIAM BURGESON
Born in 1968 in time line two, Miriam grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. She worked as a tech sector journalist before discovering, in her early thirties, that her mother had been lying to her for most of her life. Mother and daughter were fugitives from the Gruinmarkt—a small kingdom in time line one, which had reached medieval levels of technology. They were women of noble birth, whose designated role was to produce more world-walkers and to serve the Clan. Miriam world-walks “home” by accident and is expected to conform. But that had never been Miriam’s style. So in short order, she discovered a route to a new inhabited time line and built a business start-up—using it to import high-tech innovations into this new territory. This triggered a crisis within the Clan, reviving a dormant blood feud and causing civil war.