3:10 A.M.
February 15th, 2008
Los Angeles, California
The Doctor was high as a kite.
And it was starting to piss Sarah off. She was very much regretting giving him the marijuana as a pain killer.
He was actually giggling as they stood in front of the Hope Street door to the Main Library – except, it wasn’t called Hope Street. It was called Empire Street. All the other street names were still the same – Wilshire, Flower, and the numbered streets hadn’t changed.
But it was enough to disconcert Sarah, especially since her only company was a stoned alien who was now struggling with some sort of electronic device, trying to open the lock. The sonic screwdriver, he’d called it.
Finally, it clicked open. Sarah yanked open the door – coming face to face with a security guard with a gun the size of a howitzer.
Reacting surprisingly fast for somebody high on marijuana, the Doctor whipped the psychic paper out, holding it up for the guard to see. Immediately, his gun dropped.
“My apologies, Senator,” he said, allowing Sarah and the Doctor to pass.
When they were out of earshot, Sarah turned to the Doctor. “Just why the hell did that make me a Senator?” she hissed. “It’s pretty clear to me that the Sarah Walker of this reality is a fast-food employee!”
“Maybe you’ve just got a politician’s bearing!” the Doctor replied with a laugh. “After all, as a spy, you have to lie all the time, don’t you?”
Sarah didn’t respond, her face turning red as she turned on her heel and stomped off. The Doctor followed hot on her heels as she stormed off to the Tom Bradley Wing – that hadn’t changed, she noticed – to go down to the fourth sub-basement, where the history and genealogy references were kept.
Four hours later, the sun was peeking over the horizon, and library employees were starting to filter in. A few had been surprised to find Sarah and the Doctor, but the psychic paper had kept them at bay.
Sarah was at a loss to understand what was going on. The Doctor, on the other hand, had filled almost an entire legal pad with notes, as he breezed through book after book, absorbing the information within them at an astounding rate.
Finally, he closed the last book in his pile. “Well, I think I’ve figured it all out,” he informed Sarah.
“How?” she asked, incredulous. “It’s been four hours, and you were high as a kite for most of it! How did you go through all those books and figure out what’s going on?”
The Doctor’s face lit up with a thousand watt smile. “I must have forgotten to mention!” he said. “I’m brilliant!”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” she snarked. “Get on with it.”
The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t think we should stay here,” he replied. “This is a government building, it’s probably more wired than a Pac-Man game.”
With that, he stood up, shrugged his overcoat on, and swept out of the building, legal pad in hand, his back pains of a few hours prior seemingly forgotten. Now it was Sarah struggling to keep up as he strode outside, onto the plaza on Fifth Street.
He crossed the street, then turned into the entrance to the shopping plaza underneath the Citibank building… No, though Sarah, looking up, the Banc Français building.
Despite the change in ownership, some things never changed. Such as the Starbucks at the bottom of the escalator. That was still there. And so, the Doctor with his tea, and Sarah with a frappuccino that the Doctor had declared “looked revolting”, he began his presentation.
“Somehow,” he began, “when Reinette touched me, it healed something that was wrong with her. She was supposed to die in 1764, but she didn’t. In fact, not only did she not die, but in 1770, when Marie Antoinette arrived to marry the king’s daughter, Reinette was assigned to acclimate young Marie to French culture.
“Reinette insisted that Marie never think herself above the people, and so she was able to convince her husband, King Louis XVII, to institute a series of reforms. These led to a very, very high degree of popularity for the royals, and the French Revolution never happened.
“As a result, France grew stronger and turned into the French Empire. When Reinette finally died in 1797, France had become one of the strongest and most influential countries in Europe.
“Now, in late 1861, French forces invaded Mexico, at the orders of Louis XX.”
“But that happened anyway,” Sarah objected.
“Yes,” the Doctor replied, “but in your timeline, Napoleon ordered the invasion of Mexico because they were behind on tribute. In this timeline, Louis XX ordered the invasion of Mexico because he wanted to expand the French Empire.
“Mexico begged both the United States and the Confederate States for their assistance, but obviously, they were both rather busy fighting the Civil War. Mexico was quickly overthrown, with Mexico City falling on May 5th, 1862.”
“Mexico City fell on Cinco de Mayo,” Sarah whispered.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” the Doctor asked. “The French quickly took over all of Mexico, and then bided their time. They waited until Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9th, 1865, and then on April 11th, the French struck, invading the southwestern United States through Texas, and what we would now consider New Mexico and Arizona.
“What was left of both Union and Confederate forces mobilized, all under the command of Ulysses Grant. Lincoln was not at Ford’s Theatre on Good Friday of 1865, for obvious reasons.
“When Grant was killed in action on July 4th – again, a certain irony – Robert E. Lee assumed command of the forces. French forces managed to surround him on three sides, pushing his armies eastward, until finally, on Christmas Eve 1865, he and President Lincoln were both present at the White House to surrender to General Charles de Lorencez.
“King Louis XX declared the United States of America to be a protectorate of the French Empire, renaming it the Imperial States of America. In an attempt to further project power over the new ISA, he appointed a Polish Duke, Leonidas Bzechewski, of the Warsaw Duchy, as the first Emperor of Columbia, to rule over the former United States.
“After that, things were actually fairly peaceful for about seventy years. No Mexican-American wars, no Spanish-American war, none of that. However, just like in your timeline, in this timeline, a pesky little cockroach named Adolf decided to play genetics games in the 1930s.
“Nazi Germany did rise, and they did start murdering people not of the ‘master race’ in large quantities. However, they were unable to conquer France, and naturally, when they invaded France, the Imperial States of America took exception, and entered the Great War on France’s side in 1939.
“A very weak Tsarist Russia did fall to Nazi forces; however, by the spring of 1945, Allied forces had managed to drive the Nazis completely back into Germany. Unfortunately, German scientists had managed to create a rudimentary atomic bomb, which they detonated over Washington not two weeks before Hitler’s death and Germany’s surrender.
“The Bzechewski family and the government had advance notice of the attack, and relocated to Los Angeles, thanks to Wild Bill Donovan’s OSS –“
“Wait, you mean Bill Donovan was responsible for the CIA in this timeline as well?” Sarah asked. “The more this universe seems different, the more it seems to be the same.”
“Apparently so,” the Doctor replied with a shrug. “Anyway, things were peaceful again for the next almost fifty years. With no Soviet Union, there was no Korean War, no Vietnam War, not even a Desert Storm – the United Kingdom never gave up their footholds in Iraq and Palestine.
“Then, in 1994, Emperor Irving died of a heart attack. His son – who was only fourteen at the time – ascended to the throne. He is an interesting young man. Claims to be an emperor of the people, but British newspapers jokingly call him the Tyrant of America – well, maybe not so jokingly, but they do it nonetheless.
“Anyway, on his twentieth birthday, he took on an Americanization of his last name, started going by a nickname, and dropped the title of ‘Emperor’. The government was shocked, but the people love him.
“You see, even though he invaded Canada and Mexico in 2002, creating a pan-continental American empire, and then in 2004 told France where they could go and what they could do with themselves, the people love him. He’s being called the man who can usher in America’s golden age.”
The Doctor looked up at a flatscreen TV mounted on the wall. “Well, there he is right now. He’s right outside Los Angeles City Hall – just a few blocks away!”
Before Sarah could turn around, America’s leader spoke.
“My fellow Americans,” he began – and Sarah froze.
She knew that voice. She knew that voice better than she knew her own. It was a voice that had joked with her, pleaded with her, shouted at her. A voice she had often imagined whispering sweetly to her.
The Doctor was watching the address, and Sarah turned around, a cold hand of dread gripping her stomach.
“He’s quite a good looking fellow,” the Doctor said, “this Chuck Bartowski.”
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