Instability defines history. I discovered this truth through a “fraying cable” to another reality, buried deep within a thrift store bin.
It began with a strange artifact: an Italian card utilizing the distinct aesthetics of Japanese sumo promotions. Soon after, I uncovered advertisements for algae-based biofuel that were visually identical to our own 1950s gasoline campaigns.
I couldn’t stay away from the shop. Every visit uncovered another anomaly. In our timeline’s 1960s, International Times was a London based underground newspaper featuring Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Freak Brothers comics.
In Timeline-D the paper was published in Charleston, SC a century earlier. —but instead of navigating the Vietnam War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the writers were plotting against their Confederate neighbors and resisting the draft to build the transcontinental railroad.
Eventually, Q. Vellum, the store’s enigmatic proprietor, led me behind the curtains, down a long hallway, and straight toward the fracture. The last door on the left hid a small rip in the veil. I have since spent decades there—a mere two years in our time—gathering ephemera, creating an archive that uncannily mirrors our own human experience.
I tried and failed to bring physical objects through. Digitizing the files would have to do. Their computers are biologic. Children get vaccines and a wetware implant before starting school. I opted to get my own. It would be another year before I perfected the coding and decoding between timelines.
Cultural overlaps certainly exist—both realities share an intense disdain for Papyrus and Comic Sans, and both cultures enjoy wrestling and surfing. However, the divergences are stark: in Timeline-D, airplanes and corgis are relegated strictly to the realm of ancient science fiction but traveling by pneumatic orbs is just another Tuesday.
The rip between timelines is no longer stable. My hypothesis is that new art, created by synthesizing materials and references from both dimensions, is one way individuals can help. Or at least have an enjoyable afternoon of art making.
— Cyan Koda, Archivist, Timeline Traveller, Editor-at-Large