Ahab-1

"Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand!"

— Khan, "The Wrath of Khan" (Ahab-1 Edition)

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Ahab-1, in 2023, is very close to Baseline generally. The odds are good, though not 100%, a visitor will find their favorite restaurant, will recognize the mass media, will know most of the political leaders. There are countless small differences, but nothing that adds up to huge changes in history. Someone else was mayor of Des Moines in 1926, the same team won the World Series in 1950 but by one less run in the fourth game, etc. It took a decent amount of research to find the divergence point, introducing Baseline to the concept of fictives.

To the likely delight of High School English students everywhere, "Moby Dick" did not exist. More interestingly, from the perspective of BREACH, was that the events described in the novel seemed to have happened with about 95% fidelity. Registration for the Pequod was easily found, as were insurance reports, crew manifests, records of Captain Ahab Ceely (oddly, matching a 1930 movie that was otherwise wholly inaccurate) from his early career to his death in 1832, etc. Ishmael's last name was revealed to be Smith, very lacking in symbolism.

What other changes were found seemed to be "butterfly effects", that (as breach studies have shown) are often far more muted than pre-breach theory had implied. One of the more direct effects was that Peter Pan is a long forgotten story; Ahab inspired Hook, and this world's version lacked any strong villain. Media focusing on vengeance and obsession show many small changes, though obviously, those concepts are universal enough the overall effect was small.

In 1991, the wreckage of the Pequod was found, and relatively nearby, a few scattered, badly decayed, and worm-eaten bones of a sperm whale, assumed (without evidence) to be Moby Dick. This awakened some momentary fascination with an almost-forgotten whaling disaster that has been a "seven day wonder" back in the 1830s, and James Cameron somehow turned it into a love story that raked in record numbers in the 1998 box office as historian weeped, wailed (or whaled) and gnashed their teeth. (Bootlegs of the film are pretty much everywhere on Baseline at this point.)

World Type

Fictive

Divergence

1831

Current Year

2023

Author's Notes

Well, having made an Ahab-2, I had to go figure out what Ahab-1 was. I wanted this to be quick 1-2 paragraph thing, which is what they were all supposed to be, but of course it went on, and spawned the article on fictives (which will be greatly expanded), and I probably could have made it twice as long by digging into all the weird little implications that crawled into my head while writing. But I stopped. Yay, me.