Look to the West (Thande's first proper timeline, and it's about time!)
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Part #100: ___NO TITLE ENTERED___
#########said that the most dangerous men in the world are those who create great ideas. In fact I would say that the most dangerous men who, by some devilry, may reduce reality to ideas, and then persuade others that this lie is the truth...
*
From – “Pablo Sanchez: A New Life”, by Raoul ############# 2003) –
As I have stated (probably with little need) throughout ###### attempting to provide a historically accurate account of the life of Pablo Rodrigo Sanchez y Ruiz is a task that might charitably be described as ‘completely impossible’. I do not speak merely of the efforts of censorship on the part of the members of the Assembly of Sovereign Nations, whether state-mandated or otherwise, which have made it increasingly difficult to build up a picture of the father of Societism anything other than the incarnation of Lucifer the peoples of the world now regard him as. Of course, nor was Sanchez the messianic figure the Combine painted him as. He was a man. No more, no less. A good or evil man? Can the life of any man be reduced to such simple categories, particularly when one factors in what was done in his name after his death? I say not. Let us cast aside the vitriol of mainstream thought and instead attempt a humanistic analysis of the man who defined a century which dawned long after he died.
############### birthplace in Cervera, in Catalonia.[N] His father, ############# 1807 ######### collaborator and his entire family were killed by the townsfolk – save Pablo himself of course. As a ten-year-old he was recruited by a band of Spanish Kleinkriegers as a drummer boy and ###### The next years are obscure, and of course in the middle of the nineteenth century, many grey-haired frauds were ready to step forward and claim that they had been Sanchez’s good friend and taught him all he knew, to the point that the actual record – what little of it even existed in the first place, for who cared about a drummer boy in a ragged band of Kleinkriegers not even significant enough to earn a song or painting – has been covered over by layer upon layer of lies. It is known that that Kleinkrieger band was folded into a regular Aragonese regiment by the Neapolitans after the partition of Spain in 1808, but ############# and under those circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that Sanchez jumped ship. A poor choice of metaphor, perhaps, given what happened next.
Sanchez next surfaces in Castile in 1815, working as a minor clerk in a bank in Santander. As a mayor’s son in Cervera he would presumably have received a good basic education, and there are vague unconfirmed reports that he expressed interest in the revolutionary ‘new science’ that the French officers he was friendly with would occasionally expound upon, but there is still a gap here: he lost his family and was pulled into a Kleinkrieger group at the age of ten. ############### without further education. There is a much less reliable (but widely believed by my predecessors as biographers) report that Sanchez had previously worked in Saragossa as an adolescent after leaving the Aragonese army, with the obvious implication that he might have learned something from the university students there he would presumably have come into contact with.[N] This is very much guesswork, however, and should not be regarded as canonical history.
####### exacerbated by the fact that Sanchez himself was always vague about his early years. Some have claimed this was an attempt to cover up a dark secret (making a pact with the Devil if you believe the Tsar’s propagandists) but I believe that it was simply an aspect of the man he was. Sanchez did not set pen to paper to write anything more profound than a ship’s inventory before he was thirty: frustratingly, there are no (genuine) contemporary diaries or personal musings of any of the events that he would later recount in his major works. And in those works they serve purely as examples, in which Sanchez himself is at best reduced to a colourless narrator who observes the incidents without becoming involved in them – which seems rather unlikely based on what we know about his character in later life. ######################## quite simply believed that he himself was of no interest, and by the time he was writing, his head was too filled with ideas, like a bubbling coffee-pot, to concern himself with clearing up his own origins.
In any case, a (slightly) more coherent record of Sanchez’s life begins with his decision to join the Portuguese East India Company in 1817 at the age of twenty. Once more, how he got from Santander to Lisbon is unclear, but he appears to have been working as a bank clerk once more before joining the Company. ############ have suggested that it was this background in finance that discouraged Sanchez from making any sort of commentary on economics in the otherwise bold and radical strokes of his later writings which sought to completely turn the world upside down (and did, if not perhaps in the way he intended). It does appear odd that at a time when the merits of the gold and silver standards were being debated and concerns over whether finance should serve the state, the rich or the people as a whole would spark some of the more minor elements of the Popular Wars, Sanchez remained silent. ############# rather black humour to suggest that his work there convinced him that there was one area, perhaps, where mankind could never come to an agreement.
##### reasons for joining the Company, though much speculated upon, have never been satisfactorily explained, and I am forced to resort to the very dull standard justification that he did it to escape the black memories of his past, his parents’ murder and the rough life he had endured with the Kleinkriegers. Whether he sought the exotic locales that he would voyage to is a more problematic question, and highlights the fact that any attempt to acquire a biographical portrait of a historical individual is usually hampered by the simplification that a man never changes throughout life. ###### indeed a reason then what happened to Sanchez might be considered an even more profound change than is already recognised, but ## unclear.
Whatever his reasons, Sanchez joined the Company and after eighteen months continuing to work in his clerical role in one of the Company offices in Lisbon, boarded the East Indiaman Centauro, bound for Goa via Brazil. What few reports from his supervisors which have not been wildly distorted by one side or the other ########## but unimaginative’. It was a time of great expansion for the Portuguese in India, with the Maratha War weakening the two great Maratha houses of Scindia and Holkar and allowing the Portuguese-backed puppet Peshwa to assert more authority over the Confederacy.[N] ########### ‘Indian Board’ was founded[N] and its early meetings would have some influence on Sanchez’s life.
It is known that the Centauro, thanks to bad weather in the Bay of Biscay, stopped in Dakar in order to purchase more canvas to repair a sail (returning to Portugal would probably have been easier, but the Centauro’s cocky captain, Fernão de Sintra, saw such an action as returning with his tail between his legs and sought an alternative that would preserve his pride. On such petty decisions does the world turn). Due to his position, Sanchez was drafted in by the ship’s quartermaster to help negotiate for the canvas needed. Sintra had hoped to obtain what he needed from Portuguese Cachau further south, ####################### Sanchez found himself negotiating with blacks from the Freedonia Colony.[N] He found that the Freedonians viewed him with deep suspicion, as they did all Spaniards and Portuguese, and after asking what by report are questions of quite child-like innocence, one of the Freedonian merchants – a man named Jonathan Quimbo – told him about the slave trade.
Some have suggested that it was at this moment that ######## but I would argue that, while the incident was obviously of great importance and quoted prominently by Sanchez in Unity Through Society, he did not truly recognise the import of it until the contrast of the later Brazilian affair. It is also worth noting that some scholars have pointed out that Sanchez may have witnessed an unusually rosy treatment of blacks ############## height of the Dahomey Revolt against the Oyo Empire, when the British Royal Africa Company was recruiting many more jagun[N] and in particular was allowing educated blacks from Freedonia to serve as officers in its army. ##### else only exaggeration.
The Centauro, equipped with new (and rather overpriced) sails, then sailed on to Brazil. In support of my point above, there is no record of Sanchez having been unusually thoughtful on this voyage, whereas the diary of Second Lieutenant Duarte Álvares (one of the most precious sources for any biographer of Sanchez) does make two mentions of him seeming ‘not himself’ on the outbound voyage to Goa afterwards. ########################## beneath our consideration.
Initially the Centauro went into port at Porto dos Casais in what was then the south of Brazil.[N] In the event the unrest there meant that Captain Sintra had to offload his cargo of manufactured goods further south, in Montevideo. ########################viduals have cited this as ‘evidence of chronological confusion’ due to the fact that King John VI would not ascend the throne of Portugal until 1821 and would not embark on his policy of “Rédea do Rei” until the year after. Such ############## that the southern provinces of Portuguese Brazil were already restless even before John abolished the Cortes in Bahia. The Cortes’ representation moderated the southerners’ distaste for the way they were disadvantaged within the Viceroyalty by high internal trade tariffs, but it was not the cure-all some have sugge##########
######uncertain whether Sanchez was influenced by the issues plaguing Porto dos Casais, but Montevideo was certainly a turning point in his life. The Centauro was stuck there for a full month while Sintra attempted hopefully to get something approaching the original price for his cargo, and while Sanchez was naturally involved in these talks with local merchants, he had plenty of time to himself to explore the city.
Montevideo ######### turning point. Contested between Spain and Portugal in the years before the Second Platinean War, the Meridians had been content to leave it in Portuguese hands. At the same time the realities of geography and trade meant that Montevideo was tied culturally and economically much closer to Buenos Aires across the River Plate than it was to Bahia, or even to Porto dos Casais. It was here that Sanchez meant a living example of those ties, the Meridian businessman Luis Carlos Cruz.
########## still at an early point in his career, but nontheless far outclassed the penniless clerk Sanchez, and thus one can only speculate on ##################################################################################################################### but in fact Cruz was there as an agent for the Priestley Tonic Company, now run by the son of José Priestley, Juan Miguel Priestley.[N] The phlogisticated water had found such a market in Brazil that it remained a valuable product even when the Jacobin Wars had torn up the trade to rich Europeans that had previously dominated Priestley’s business. However ################################################# that Cruz expressed his distaste for the institution of slavery and explained that it was illegal (though not always enforced) in the United Provinces. While Montevideo cleaved to Meridian practices in many ways and there was widespread thought within the city’s intellectual community (which had ultimately been sparked by Carvalho’s brief residency there years before[N]) it was still a part of Brazil, and slave ownership on the part of many locals was open#######################################################################despite Cruz’s admonitions, Sanchez indeed inquired of one slaveholder of his opinion of the institution and, perhaps by chance, got not an unthinking individual who took the system for granted but an intellectual who proceeded to lecture him on Linnaean Racialist theory.
The man (whose nam######rded) opined on the subject that while the Jacobins had obviously got many things wrong (such as seeking to overthrow a king), he feared that they might discredit by association the obvious truth of the Linnaean theory, and went on to list evidence for the innate superiority of the white European race, and the superiority of the Latin group within it. It was at this point that Cruz (a mestizo) punched the man out and a bar brawl erupted#########################################################################################reeing the man, Sanchez discovered what he would later write in Unity: “Education obviously makes a difference, but in raw fundamentals there was little to separate#########################uimbo who lectured me on this vile practice months earlier. Many of the slaves were dull-witted, of course, just as there are many dull-witted white men on any street who deserve their low station, or an even lower one...but many more were###########hold their own with any European philosopher.”
For now Sanchez did not share his thoughts. Perhaps it was the shared blood that meant that he and Cruz became lifelong friends, and wrote to each other even when Sanchez was far away (sadly, all of Sanchez’s letters and nearly all of Cruz’s are lost). The Centauro departed and Sanchez got a brief glimpse of the ‘vile practice’ once more in Portuguese Mozambique, and later remarked on the paradox that the local colonial governors would sometimes commit to the same kind of arguments############n Montevideo, yet would at the same time trade quite happily with the native Matetwa Empire and recognised its notables as men of rank. “It seems the humanity or lack thereof of the black African is variable dependent on ################### wryly remarked.
Then, finally, the Centauro proceeded to Goa and Sanchez spent eight largely uneventful years working for the Company in the city, slowly rising through the ranks. Twice he was brought out by senior Company men who wanted his ready command of figures to help them negotiate with Maratha notables, and Sanchez ########################## curse the brown man in private, yet recognise him as the equal of a prince in public.” It was the time of the foundation of the Indian Board and this example of co-operation between the rival European Companies also had an influ##############################such meeting he occasioned to meet Matthew Castleton, a British Company factor and amateur linguist who explained Sir Arthur Sawbridge’s theory that there was an ancestral link between Sanskrit and the ancient European languages such as Greek and Latin. Again##############cannot be discounted.
These events are studied in more detail in Chapter################## omplete our brief study of Sanchez’s early life and travels, we must finally turn to his next posting with the Company – Portguese North Formosa. It was here, and more specifically in China proper, that Sanchez would finally reach the conclusions that would one day set the world aligh
[GARBLED SOUND]
[END TRANSMISSION]
*
REPORT CLASSIFIED THANDE MOST SECRET
INSTITUTE DIRECTOR’S EYES ONLY
Recorded 07/08/2015, Thande Institute, Cambridge
Dr Rogers—
The above transmission was the last recorded from Captain Nuttall’s team prior to the link going dead. As you are well aware, under Institute lockdown protocols, the relevant Portal was then immediately closed until an assessment could be made of the potential problem.
I fear that it may be greater even than we had anticipated. My colleague Dr Cassimaty and I have attempted to recover as much of the corrupted datafile as we could: through reconstruction we believe that it was transmitted imperfectly with limited encryption, as though in an emergency. Where we were unable to make any satisfactory reconstruction, the symbols ############ are used to represent static.
The recording contains no specific commentary from Captain Nuttall, Dr Pylos, Dr Lombardi or the other four members of his team (who, it is worth noting, generally remained silent for previous recordings in any case). There is no footnote log unlike the other recordings: although footnote placeholders were entered, they link to nothing.
Based on the recent transmissions, Dr Cassimaty speculates that the team may have aroused suspicion amid the locals through their acquisition of books considered subversive in their locality in TimeLine L, such as the one whose extract forms the basis for this very transmission. I have no opinion on such speculation. However, Dr Cassimaty also pointed out that due to the design of the Institute recording devices (reverse-engineered from TimeLine C technology as you will recall, sir) the garbled sound at the end may contain some of the ambient noise surrounding the recorder before the transmission was dumped, which might hold a clue to events on the other side.
Bearing in mind that our attempted reconstruction in this case is far more hypothetical and speculative, I transcribe it below.
##################################ere! They’re he########
#############ecautions! Couldn’t possib#############you########hideout#######ibrary#####
#######police#################Oxford#######evacuate####datadump###################distress call########
No##############no time############send send######door####bar######
[SOUND OF GUNSHOT]
[TRANSMISSION ABRUPTLY ENDS]
I consulted with Captain MacCaulay and, though I cannot speak for the captain’s expertise with firearms, he claimed that the shot does not match any of the weapons or calibres that were supplied as standard to Captain Nuttall’s team. With less certainty he suggests that it may be a calibre not even found in our own world, with obvious implications.
I await your response, sir.
DR DAVID WOSTYN
THANDE INSTITUTE, COMPARATIVE INTERPRETATION DIVISION
(CONTRIBUTION FROM UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, FRANCE, EUROPEAN UNION)
#########said that the most dangerous men in the world are those who create great ideas. In fact I would say that the most dangerous men who, by some devilry, may reduce reality to ideas, and then persuade others that this lie is the truth...
– George Spen###########925 speech.
*
From – “Pablo Sanchez: A New Life”, by Raoul ############# 2003) –
As I have stated (probably with little need) throughout ###### attempting to provide a historically accurate account of the life of Pablo Rodrigo Sanchez y Ruiz is a task that might charitably be described as ‘completely impossible’. I do not speak merely of the efforts of censorship on the part of the members of the Assembly of Sovereign Nations, whether state-mandated or otherwise, which have made it increasingly difficult to build up a picture of the father of Societism anything other than the incarnation of Lucifer the peoples of the world now regard him as. Of course, nor was Sanchez the messianic figure the Combine painted him as. He was a man. No more, no less. A good or evil man? Can the life of any man be reduced to such simple categories, particularly when one factors in what was done in his name after his death? I say not. Let us cast aside the vitriol of mainstream thought and instead attempt a humanistic analysis of the man who defined a century which dawned long after he died.
############### birthplace in Cervera, in Catalonia.[N] His father, ############# 1807 ######### collaborator and his entire family were killed by the townsfolk – save Pablo himself of course. As a ten-year-old he was recruited by a band of Spanish Kleinkriegers as a drummer boy and ###### The next years are obscure, and of course in the middle of the nineteenth century, many grey-haired frauds were ready to step forward and claim that they had been Sanchez’s good friend and taught him all he knew, to the point that the actual record – what little of it even existed in the first place, for who cared about a drummer boy in a ragged band of Kleinkriegers not even significant enough to earn a song or painting – has been covered over by layer upon layer of lies. It is known that that Kleinkrieger band was folded into a regular Aragonese regiment by the Neapolitans after the partition of Spain in 1808, but ############# and under those circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that Sanchez jumped ship. A poor choice of metaphor, perhaps, given what happened next.
Sanchez next surfaces in Castile in 1815, working as a minor clerk in a bank in Santander. As a mayor’s son in Cervera he would presumably have received a good basic education, and there are vague unconfirmed reports that he expressed interest in the revolutionary ‘new science’ that the French officers he was friendly with would occasionally expound upon, but there is still a gap here: he lost his family and was pulled into a Kleinkrieger group at the age of ten. ############### without further education. There is a much less reliable (but widely believed by my predecessors as biographers) report that Sanchez had previously worked in Saragossa as an adolescent after leaving the Aragonese army, with the obvious implication that he might have learned something from the university students there he would presumably have come into contact with.[N] This is very much guesswork, however, and should not be regarded as canonical history.
####### exacerbated by the fact that Sanchez himself was always vague about his early years. Some have claimed this was an attempt to cover up a dark secret (making a pact with the Devil if you believe the Tsar’s propagandists) but I believe that it was simply an aspect of the man he was. Sanchez did not set pen to paper to write anything more profound than a ship’s inventory before he was thirty: frustratingly, there are no (genuine) contemporary diaries or personal musings of any of the events that he would later recount in his major works. And in those works they serve purely as examples, in which Sanchez himself is at best reduced to a colourless narrator who observes the incidents without becoming involved in them – which seems rather unlikely based on what we know about his character in later life. ######################## quite simply believed that he himself was of no interest, and by the time he was writing, his head was too filled with ideas, like a bubbling coffee-pot, to concern himself with clearing up his own origins.
In any case, a (slightly) more coherent record of Sanchez’s life begins with his decision to join the Portuguese East India Company in 1817 at the age of twenty. Once more, how he got from Santander to Lisbon is unclear, but he appears to have been working as a bank clerk once more before joining the Company. ############ have suggested that it was this background in finance that discouraged Sanchez from making any sort of commentary on economics in the otherwise bold and radical strokes of his later writings which sought to completely turn the world upside down (and did, if not perhaps in the way he intended). It does appear odd that at a time when the merits of the gold and silver standards were being debated and concerns over whether finance should serve the state, the rich or the people as a whole would spark some of the more minor elements of the Popular Wars, Sanchez remained silent. ############# rather black humour to suggest that his work there convinced him that there was one area, perhaps, where mankind could never come to an agreement.
##### reasons for joining the Company, though much speculated upon, have never been satisfactorily explained, and I am forced to resort to the very dull standard justification that he did it to escape the black memories of his past, his parents’ murder and the rough life he had endured with the Kleinkriegers. Whether he sought the exotic locales that he would voyage to is a more problematic question, and highlights the fact that any attempt to acquire a biographical portrait of a historical individual is usually hampered by the simplification that a man never changes throughout life. ###### indeed a reason then what happened to Sanchez might be considered an even more profound change than is already recognised, but ## unclear.
Whatever his reasons, Sanchez joined the Company and after eighteen months continuing to work in his clerical role in one of the Company offices in Lisbon, boarded the East Indiaman Centauro, bound for Goa via Brazil. What few reports from his supervisors which have not been wildly distorted by one side or the other ########## but unimaginative’. It was a time of great expansion for the Portuguese in India, with the Maratha War weakening the two great Maratha houses of Scindia and Holkar and allowing the Portuguese-backed puppet Peshwa to assert more authority over the Confederacy.[N] ########### ‘Indian Board’ was founded[N] and its early meetings would have some influence on Sanchez’s life.
It is known that the Centauro, thanks to bad weather in the Bay of Biscay, stopped in Dakar in order to purchase more canvas to repair a sail (returning to Portugal would probably have been easier, but the Centauro’s cocky captain, Fernão de Sintra, saw such an action as returning with his tail between his legs and sought an alternative that would preserve his pride. On such petty decisions does the world turn). Due to his position, Sanchez was drafted in by the ship’s quartermaster to help negotiate for the canvas needed. Sintra had hoped to obtain what he needed from Portuguese Cachau further south, ####################### Sanchez found himself negotiating with blacks from the Freedonia Colony.[N] He found that the Freedonians viewed him with deep suspicion, as they did all Spaniards and Portuguese, and after asking what by report are questions of quite child-like innocence, one of the Freedonian merchants – a man named Jonathan Quimbo – told him about the slave trade.
Some have suggested that it was at this moment that ######## but I would argue that, while the incident was obviously of great importance and quoted prominently by Sanchez in Unity Through Society, he did not truly recognise the import of it until the contrast of the later Brazilian affair. It is also worth noting that some scholars have pointed out that Sanchez may have witnessed an unusually rosy treatment of blacks ############## height of the Dahomey Revolt against the Oyo Empire, when the British Royal Africa Company was recruiting many more jagun[N] and in particular was allowing educated blacks from Freedonia to serve as officers in its army. ##### else only exaggeration.
The Centauro, equipped with new (and rather overpriced) sails, then sailed on to Brazil. In support of my point above, there is no record of Sanchez having been unusually thoughtful on this voyage, whereas the diary of Second Lieutenant Duarte Álvares (one of the most precious sources for any biographer of Sanchez) does make two mentions of him seeming ‘not himself’ on the outbound voyage to Goa afterwards. ########################## beneath our consideration.
Initially the Centauro went into port at Porto dos Casais in what was then the south of Brazil.[N] In the event the unrest there meant that Captain Sintra had to offload his cargo of manufactured goods further south, in Montevideo. ########################viduals have cited this as ‘evidence of chronological confusion’ due to the fact that King John VI would not ascend the throne of Portugal until 1821 and would not embark on his policy of “Rédea do Rei” until the year after. Such ############## that the southern provinces of Portuguese Brazil were already restless even before John abolished the Cortes in Bahia. The Cortes’ representation moderated the southerners’ distaste for the way they were disadvantaged within the Viceroyalty by high internal trade tariffs, but it was not the cure-all some have sugge##########
######uncertain whether Sanchez was influenced by the issues plaguing Porto dos Casais, but Montevideo was certainly a turning point in his life. The Centauro was stuck there for a full month while Sintra attempted hopefully to get something approaching the original price for his cargo, and while Sanchez was naturally involved in these talks with local merchants, he had plenty of time to himself to explore the city.
Montevideo ######### turning point. Contested between Spain and Portugal in the years before the Second Platinean War, the Meridians had been content to leave it in Portuguese hands. At the same time the realities of geography and trade meant that Montevideo was tied culturally and economically much closer to Buenos Aires across the River Plate than it was to Bahia, or even to Porto dos Casais. It was here that Sanchez meant a living example of those ties, the Meridian businessman Luis Carlos Cruz.
########## still at an early point in his career, but nontheless far outclassed the penniless clerk Sanchez, and thus one can only speculate on ##################################################################################################################### but in fact Cruz was there as an agent for the Priestley Tonic Company, now run by the son of José Priestley, Juan Miguel Priestley.[N] The phlogisticated water had found such a market in Brazil that it remained a valuable product even when the Jacobin Wars had torn up the trade to rich Europeans that had previously dominated Priestley’s business. However ################################################# that Cruz expressed his distaste for the institution of slavery and explained that it was illegal (though not always enforced) in the United Provinces. While Montevideo cleaved to Meridian practices in many ways and there was widespread thought within the city’s intellectual community (which had ultimately been sparked by Carvalho’s brief residency there years before[N]) it was still a part of Brazil, and slave ownership on the part of many locals was open#######################################################################despite Cruz’s admonitions, Sanchez indeed inquired of one slaveholder of his opinion of the institution and, perhaps by chance, got not an unthinking individual who took the system for granted but an intellectual who proceeded to lecture him on Linnaean Racialist theory.
The man (whose nam######rded) opined on the subject that while the Jacobins had obviously got many things wrong (such as seeking to overthrow a king), he feared that they might discredit by association the obvious truth of the Linnaean theory, and went on to list evidence for the innate superiority of the white European race, and the superiority of the Latin group within it. It was at this point that Cruz (a mestizo) punched the man out and a bar brawl erupted#########################################################################################reeing the man, Sanchez discovered what he would later write in Unity: “Education obviously makes a difference, but in raw fundamentals there was little to separate#########################uimbo who lectured me on this vile practice months earlier. Many of the slaves were dull-witted, of course, just as there are many dull-witted white men on any street who deserve their low station, or an even lower one...but many more were###########hold their own with any European philosopher.”
For now Sanchez did not share his thoughts. Perhaps it was the shared blood that meant that he and Cruz became lifelong friends, and wrote to each other even when Sanchez was far away (sadly, all of Sanchez’s letters and nearly all of Cruz’s are lost). The Centauro departed and Sanchez got a brief glimpse of the ‘vile practice’ once more in Portuguese Mozambique, and later remarked on the paradox that the local colonial governors would sometimes commit to the same kind of arguments############n Montevideo, yet would at the same time trade quite happily with the native Matetwa Empire and recognised its notables as men of rank. “It seems the humanity or lack thereof of the black African is variable dependent on ################### wryly remarked.
Then, finally, the Centauro proceeded to Goa and Sanchez spent eight largely uneventful years working for the Company in the city, slowly rising through the ranks. Twice he was brought out by senior Company men who wanted his ready command of figures to help them negotiate with Maratha notables, and Sanchez ########################## curse the brown man in private, yet recognise him as the equal of a prince in public.” It was the time of the foundation of the Indian Board and this example of co-operation between the rival European Companies also had an influ##############################such meeting he occasioned to meet Matthew Castleton, a British Company factor and amateur linguist who explained Sir Arthur Sawbridge’s theory that there was an ancestral link between Sanskrit and the ancient European languages such as Greek and Latin. Again##############cannot be discounted.
These events are studied in more detail in Chapter################## omplete our brief study of Sanchez’s early life and travels, we must finally turn to his next posting with the Company – Portguese North Formosa. It was here, and more specifically in China proper, that Sanchez would finally reach the conclusions that would one day set the world aligh
[GARBLED SOUND]
[END TRANSMISSION]
*
REPORT CLASSIFIED THANDE MOST SECRET
INSTITUTE DIRECTOR’S EYES ONLY
Recorded 07/08/2015, Thande Institute, Cambridge
Dr Rogers—
The above transmission was the last recorded from Captain Nuttall’s team prior to the link going dead. As you are well aware, under Institute lockdown protocols, the relevant Portal was then immediately closed until an assessment could be made of the potential problem.
I fear that it may be greater even than we had anticipated. My colleague Dr Cassimaty and I have attempted to recover as much of the corrupted datafile as we could: through reconstruction we believe that it was transmitted imperfectly with limited encryption, as though in an emergency. Where we were unable to make any satisfactory reconstruction, the symbols ############ are used to represent static.
The recording contains no specific commentary from Captain Nuttall, Dr Pylos, Dr Lombardi or the other four members of his team (who, it is worth noting, generally remained silent for previous recordings in any case). There is no footnote log unlike the other recordings: although footnote placeholders were entered, they link to nothing.
Based on the recent transmissions, Dr Cassimaty speculates that the team may have aroused suspicion amid the locals through their acquisition of books considered subversive in their locality in TimeLine L, such as the one whose extract forms the basis for this very transmission. I have no opinion on such speculation. However, Dr Cassimaty also pointed out that due to the design of the Institute recording devices (reverse-engineered from TimeLine C technology as you will recall, sir) the garbled sound at the end may contain some of the ambient noise surrounding the recorder before the transmission was dumped, which might hold a clue to events on the other side.
Bearing in mind that our attempted reconstruction in this case is far more hypothetical and speculative, I transcribe it below.
##################################ere! They’re he########
#############ecautions! Couldn’t possib#############you########hideout#######ibrary#####
#######police#################Oxford#######evacuate####datadump###################distress call########
No##############no time############send send######door####bar######
[SOUND OF GUNSHOT]
[TRANSMISSION ABRUPTLY ENDS]
I consulted with Captain MacCaulay and, though I cannot speak for the captain’s expertise with firearms, he claimed that the shot does not match any of the weapons or calibres that were supplied as standard to Captain Nuttall’s team. With less certainty he suggests that it may be a calibre not even found in our own world, with obvious implications.
I await your response, sir.
DR DAVID WOSTYN
THANDE INSTITUTE, COMPARATIVE INTERPRETATION DIVISION
(CONTRIBUTION FROM UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, FRANCE, EUROPEAN UNION)
Intense. I wonder if the institute has a protocol for situations like this. And why did the team have to travel to an area like this again?
Sanchez seems interesting. Almost like an anti-Marx, disinterested in economics, and beginning in an actual career, almost the most directly involved in the repression he will later write against while at the same time having a huge amount of world experience (compared to Marx). Interesting.
Sanchez seems interesting. Almost like an anti-Marx, disinterested in economics, and beginning in an actual career, almost the most directly involved in the repression he will later write against while at the same time having a huge amount of world experience (compared to Marx). Interesting.
Fucking. Epic.
Did you just kill of Bruno, Chris, and the rest of the crew?
Of course a bunch of Sanchez' theories would be rooted in slavery! How did I miss that
Regardless I love it (except for the hiatus for obvious reasons), can't wait for the tales, can't wait to see how Pablo's ideas break the world, can't wait for more, can't wait! Can't Wait!!!!!
Did you just kill of Bruno, Chris, and the rest of the crew?
Of course a bunch of Sanchez' theories would be rooted in slavery! How did I miss that
Regardless I love it (except for the hiatus for obvious reasons
), can't wait for the tales, can't wait to see how Pablo's ideas break the world, can't wait for more, can't wait! Can't Wait!!!!!
MrP
Banned
Part 100? Thande, you've produced a metric work, you rascal. The ASN, I presume, is something akin to the Warsaw Pact or an evil UN*. Well, I'm intrigued, and you have cut off the flow; you are the very devil for cliffhangers, you know! Anyway, my thanks for all the work you have done, and I hope you enjoy your rest, coming back refreshed to work 24 hour days for our pleasure.
I misinterpreted the # symbols just as you did, Finn. At least two of us are in that boat!
The ASN, I presume, is something akin to the Warsaw Pact or an evil UN*. Well, I'm intrigued, and you have cut off the flow; you are the very devil for cliffhangers, you know! Anyway, my thanks for all the work you have done, and I hope you enjoy your rest, coming back refreshed to work 24 hour days for our pleasure. I misinterpreted the # symbols just as you did, Finn. At least two of us are in that boat!
This shows one of the many things I love about LTTW; it's not just a timeline, it's a narrative. And turning the framing device of the research team into a narrative that also drops hints at the state of the world into which they've stepped is a brilliant idea.
By the way, I'll message you about making a contribution to the Tales over the weekend...
By the way, I'll message you about making a contribution to the Tales over the weekend...
Thande
Donor
Good, I'll bump the thread soon.
I did consider starting with Wostyn explaining about the static and the abrupt transmission, but decided it was more shocking to leave it until the end,
Damn, wasn't expecting that. Anyway, I have one quick question: the prolouge post has a date of 18/04/2018, with the first month of observation done, but this latest post has the doomed transmition report on 07/08/2015. Is this a typo, or did I miss something going through this wonderful TL?
Thande
Donor
That's odd, I was sure I had it as 2015 all the way through...well, it's supposed to be 2015, anyway.
HOLY CRAP. AWESOME.
How suitably creepy. I have goosebumps.
I like, how looking into the world as a whole, it's certainly similar to ours-the post Napoleonic Wars' status of starting up the New Imperialism and starting the Far Eastern trade-and yet you capture a sense of wonder and excitement of the times on such a local level and leave us pondering on what will happen next (not that we could, but, y'know). I haven't felt such excitement over anything 'historical' in any sense of the word in such a long time!
I salute you, for this is a most excellent story and I'll recommend it to anyone and everyone I can.
How suitably creepy. I have goosebumps.
I like, how looking into the world as a whole, it's certainly similar to ours-the post Napoleonic Wars' status of starting up the New Imperialism and starting the Far Eastern trade-and yet you capture a sense of wonder and excitement of the times on such a local level and leave us pondering on what will happen next (not that we could, but, y'know). I haven't felt such excitement over anything 'historical' in any sense of the word in such a long time!
I salute you, for this is a most excellent story and I'll recommend it to anyone and everyone I can.
I get the opposite impression of more chaos, though possibly more nationalism. It doesn't seem very militay/police to threaten to scalp someone. Though perhaps TLL is just rather twisted.
Just it seems there's more censorship then our TL and stuff, since I'm assuming he's in what OTL would consider the 1st World. I wouldn't be surprised about the world being more nationalistic; I really get that vibe sometimes, especially stuff from earlier updates saying the ENA is regionally divided or maybe even ceased to exist as an entity (can't remember what update though, I just remember someone saying they wished the modern North America was united as it was back in the day
).Who knows though, I really wasn't expecting this TL's Napoleon to become France's PM. The world will probably be very different then we assume; I just hope the Iroquois survive.
.... especially stuff from earlier updates saying the ENA is regionally divided or maybe even ceased to exist as an entity (can't remember what update though, I just remember someone saying they wished the modern North America was united as it was back in the day
It was in the teens (entry-wise, not page-wise) if I remember right.
And don't remind me! Poor ENA.
Oooo exciting and this post gives me a strong idea about how it all ends but I will just have to wait 3 years and see how it goes!
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