Why Are You Smiling?

The spider smiled at him with a full human grin. Some part of Hu thought it might be mildly less terrifying if the spider were larger than the walnut-sized things before him, but he really didn't want it to be larger, and besides, he would be terrified either way. Perhaps terrifying wasn't something that could be gradated.

"What.... Do you... want something?" The spider continued to smile. It had crawled down the cafeteria wall into Hu's line of sight as he chewed the second bite of his dry turkey-havarti sandwich.

Hu looked around. The rest of the company break room was empty except for the vending machines where he'd gotten his unexciting lunch. He looked back at the spider which, despite his fervent hopes, had not vanished or stopped smiling. "Why are you smiling at me?"

Without warning it sprang at him. He flinched away so hard he fell, and still it landed on his temple. "You'll never get anywhere in this company if you don't ask better questions," came a disturbingly resonant voice (resonating how?). "If you had teeth these fine, you'd be smiling too. So then, where did I get these teeth?"

And with that, it was gone.

À l'arme!

Alarms rang in the Pavillon de Breteuil as the sleek black SUV raced away. Howard Putnam drove, known as Howe. Vicky Gallow rode shotgun and held shotgun, stereotypical "progressive 'cause she's a woman" heavy. In the back, techie Leela Invesco and mastermind Ellen Ishitoma, a delirious smile on her face as she petted the secure case in her lap.

City park slid by, the Eiffel Tower peeking into view between patches of trees. As he drove, Howe said, "So, that thing's platinum, right? What's it worth?"

"Oh, about thirty thousand dollars." Ellen giggled. "If you did the stupid thing and melted it down. We're going to change it."

Leela looked up from her anonymized burner phone. "That means what, then?"

"With the international prototype of the kilogram in my hands, I can change the definition of mass. I can make things heavier or lighter. Ten thousand dollars to launch a kilogram to orbit? Not once I change the kilogram!" She laughed. Leela looked blank.

Vicky looked over her shoulder. "You know they redefined the kilogram last year, right? Something to do with the Planck length, I think."

Ellen's face fell slack. "Okay," said Howe. "So how's she gonna pay us?"

The Gift of a Key

When he was eight, a magical creature of unknown provenance appeared and presented him a key, small and unassuming, rather like the boy. "This key will open any lock you set it to," said the creature, "but only once." With that, it disappeared.

The boy carried the key with him everywhere in case it should be needed. He saw a woman locked out of her home, and one locked out of her car, but in each case he thought his key was meant for something greater. He locked himself out of his home once, and that tempted him, but he resisted.

He fell on hard times, and looked longingly at the homes of the obscenely wealthy. In better times, he peered at locked doors in subways, hotels, and museums in curiosity. He could learn what was beyond, but how could he use his gift for something so trivial?

He aged, wed, and adopted, always watching for the lock important enough for his key, never finding anything good enough. Every door, he weighed and judged unworthy. On his deathbed, swaddled in regret and resentment, he gave the key to his children, who did not believe his story and threw it away.

Alternate History Facts for March, 2020

March 1, 1852: Having defeated the animate stone centaur guardian, Archibald Montgomerie became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

March 2, 1657: A battle between a priest and the spirit possessing a cursed kimono sparked the great fire of Meireki, sweeping Edo and killing over 100,000.

March 3, 1923: Henry Luce and Briton Hadden published the first issue of Time Magazine. The title was part of a slow ritual to diminish those parts of the world not governed by the ticking of the clock, strengthening Luce's time-based magic.

March 4, 1152: The prince-electors elevated Frederick Barbarossa to King of Germany after he demonstrated his mastery of the six demonic commands.

March 5, 1868: Arrigo Boito released the opera Mefistofele. It was a critical failure, both with audiences and in its primary purpose, to summon and bind the demon Gusion. Boito immediately set on revising it, but it never accomplished his goal.

March 6, 1953: Joseph Stalin transitioned into his second identity as Georgy Malenkov. Though he could not hold onto the same power he had before, he preserved his life.

March 7, 1967: Alice B Toklas crumbled to dust at the conclusion of a wizard's duel in which she sealed away a hostile invading dimension.

March 8, 1658: The Treaty of Roskilde ceded a third of the Dano-Norwegian Realm to Sweden and another fifth to the distant dimension of Essvall. That fifth vanished entirely from land, making Denmark-Norway and the entire world smaller.

March 9, 2011: The Space Shuttle Discovery made its final landing of 39, over 27 years of service. A replica is on display in Virginia, while the original was donated to an adjacent timeline with less-advanced space travel.

March 10, 1804: The American flag rose over St. Louis, concluding the Lousiana Purchase and the Three Flags Ritual that weakened for generations those native spirits that might have resisted the American possession.

March 11, 1784: The Treaty of Mangalore ended the Second Anglo-Mysore War, in which Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan of the Kingdom of Mysore used cunning illusions and brilliant tactics to trounce the British East India Company's forces.

March 12, 1930: Mahatma Gandhibegan the Salt Satyagraha, a 24-day protest march that granted Gandhi the spiritual power of thousands. Rather than using this to attack the oppressors, Gandhi returned it to the people in the form of confidence and pride.

March 13, 1988: The underwater Seikan Tunnel opened between the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Still unknown to most, the tunnel burrows not through the Tsugaru Strait but through an adjacent dimension, deemed both cheaper and safer at the time.

March 14, 1757: The British Navy executed Admiral John Byng by exposure to the cthonic realms, for the crime of failing "to do his utmost" in combat against the French. Despite wide support for Byng, King George II enforced the sentence.

March 15, 963: Romanos II of the Byzantine Empire did not die, as widely believed, but fell through a wormhole to 2063 Poland, where he lived the rest of his life as a moderately successful CPA.

March 16, 1660: Members of the Long Parliament finally managed to break the arcane seal preventing them from ending their session.

March 17, 1891: The SS Utopia collided with the HMS Anson in the Bay of Gibraltar as the Anson returned through unspoken paths in a new government program. To protect the research's secrecy, they blamed captain of the Utopia John McKeague.

March 18, 1965: Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov conducts the first extravehicular activity in space, after the Russians were the first to attain permission from the Voidlords.

March 19, 1649: The British House of Commons locked away all magic of the House of Lords in a silver heart in a gold-beaked goose. It would remain so bound until King Charles II found the goose and slew it.

March 20, 1970: Lt-Col Arthur Heywood-Lonsdale became Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire after predecessor Maj-Gen Robert Bridgeman contracted a slow-acting, incurable poison saving Shropshire from netherwasps in the line of duty.

March 21, 1954: The All England Badminton Championships concluded with a sweep by the fey competitors, who then vanished into their realms. Unsportingly, the British instead recorded winners from the human realms.

March 22, 1996: Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on its 16th mission, docking with Space Station Mir and, with permission of the Voidlords, Void Station Ircth IV, before landing on March 31.

March 23, 1884: The ship John Wickliffe at Port Chalmers in New Zealand. Though the passenger manifest doesn't mention it, several surviving accounts from the time include the first known mentions of Bringer of Death John Wick.

March 24, 1387: The Battle of Margate began between England and a joint continental fleet. While the small gods of wine held prisoner by the continental fleet had called to the English, the English victory did not, in the end, benefit them.

March 25, 1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory's half-ifrit slave burst free of its arcane containment. Having never been taught to control her power, she torched the entire building.

March 26, 1839: The town of Henley swore to forevermore hold a regatta in the height of summer. Fail to uphold the agreement and their descendants would vanish from this Earth. The royal family endorsed the regatta to protect their subjects.

March 27, 1794: President George Washington signed into law an act creating the USA's first six warships. Congress passed the law in part to legally accept the gift of a ghost frigate from a neighboring nation of the dead, which was lost shortly after.

March 28, 1920: The unprovoked murder of a half-spirit daughter of the plains winds triggered a rage in the wind spirits of middle America, causing the 1920 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak and hundreds of deaths.

March 29, 1882: Michael J McGivney successfully overcame the angel Yumiel, binding it to lend its divine energy to the nascent Knights of Columbus.

March 30, 1973: Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton collapsed inward into his heart, which crystallized into a ruby now held in the Tower of London's secret chambers.

March 31, 1822: Ottoman troops began the slaughter and enslavement of inhabitants of Chios. Kara-Ali Pasha hoped the slaughter of an estimated 52,000 would propitiate the god of death, but said entity regarded him as little as he regarded the Greeks.

Alternate History Facts for February, 2020

February 1, 1329: The Teutonic Knights captured the fortress of Medvėgalis and baptized 6,000 locals. When the army departed, locals returned to their former faiths, but the baptism left Grand Master von Orseln a connection he would exploit going forward.

February 2, 1536: Pedro de Mendoza founded the city of Buenos Aires. He invoked it with five words of power that a person can only speak once, raising buildings in a breath and calling settlers from around the world.

February 3, 1509: The Portuguese fleet devastated a joint fleet of Gujarat, Mamluk, and Calicut, opening the seas to a century of trade dominance. Only the dream-demons Manual I of Portugal summoned made their victory so complete.

February 4, 1825: The Ohio State Legislature authorized the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal. Through a crucial error in the surveyor's dark arts, the two finished canals existed as one—a person was on both canals simultaneously.

February 5, 1807: HMS Blenheim and HMS Java disappeared into a dimensional vortex off the coast of the island Rodrigues.

February 6, 1736: Hermetic magicians created Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, who would one day become a great sculptor and necromancer.

February 7, 1940: The premiere of Pinocchio stole the animating force of living puppets across the continent. Walt Disney's plans for this energy never came to light.

February 8, 1945: Mikhail Devyatayev invoked a charm passed down from his grandmother (who won it in a dice game with spiritfolk) to mimic a guard's form and steal a plane, escaping POW camp in Usedom.

February 9, 1996: Sigurd Hofmann and others used a heavy ion collider to steal the first locally-observed atom of copernicium from a nearby universe. Moments later, they stole it back.

February 10, 2009: Commercial satellite Iridium 33 collided with the Russian Kosmos-2251 at a speed of 11,700 m/s, destroying both. Occult strategists suspect Russia of deliberate sabotage of an extralegal attempt to breach dimensional barriers.

February 11, 1324: Karl Bessart von Trier, 16th Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, died battling hungry nightmares in the dreams of Trier's children.

February 12, 1894: Cryptozooanarchist Émile Henry opened a ten-second portal to the cthonic realms at Café Terminus, killing one and wounding twenty.

February 13, 1503: 13 Italian knights joined 13 French knights at Barletta to challenge Lady Iskélión of the Underrealm. She defeated all comers, but as the Italians made a better showing, she declared them victors and granted them the French ransom.

February 14, 1989: Union Carbide agreed to pay $470 million to the Indian government, provided they continue to cover up the escape of their their cross-dimensional hybridization subjects with the story of an equally-devastating gas leak.

February 15, 1971: Decimal Day in the United Kingdom and Ireland changed their respective pounds from comprising 240 pence to 100 pence. The missing 140 pence sublimated, powering a ritual still protected by the Official Secrets Act.

February 16, 1270: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Livonian Order fought on the frozen water of the Suur Strait. Out of Christian piety, the Livonians refused to propitiate the sea spirits, who gave the victory to Lithuania.

February 17, 1753: A misfire of ritual magic in Sundsvall caused the nation of Sweden to skip the next eleven days.

February 18, 1878: Jesse Evans and several of his gang, all willing hosts for mind-riding kakoiphages, began the Lincoln County War with the murder of John Tunstall.

February 19, 1884: Somewhere between fifty and eighty people in the southern United States gained elemental powers in an unexplained mass phenomenon. Many of them died in the subsequent onslaught of uncontrolled tornadoes.

February 20, 1472: After failure to pay Margaret of Denmark's dowry, the state of Denmark ceded all rights to the isles of Orkney and Shetland to Scotland, which then ceased to be colocative with islands off the Danish coast.

February 21, 1885: The dedication of the Washington Monument warded the main part of the extant United States of America against incursion from hostile alternate timelines.

February 22, 1983: Moose Murders played its one and only night on Broadway while still achieving its goal—immortality for it and, by proxy, its writer, who now lives a quiet, satisfied, and eternal life outside the public eye.

February 23, 1903: The United States of America took possession of Guantanamo Bay, leased for a naval station, and promptly set about opening a gate to the hellplanes for research. Since 1953, Cuba has refused lease payments to weaken this gate.

February 24, 1797: Locals and irregulars at Fishguard defeated William Tate's Revolutionary French force. Lord Cawdor invoked a fey bondsmith, guaranteeing that England shall not be invaded again, unless it should break its oath to the fey.

February 25, 2014: The SCOTUS ruled that on legitimate removal of a resident, a remaining resident may consent to search, while remaining notably silent on the consent of resident ghosts.

February 26, 1616: The Roman Catholic Church banned Galileo from believing the Copernican view of the solar system, but the mind control eventually wore off.

February 27, 1898: A rifle-wielding assassin murdered Greek King George I. Thanks to Princess Maria's necromantic education, no one noticed until 1913, when a rival sorcerer disrupted the spell of animation and "killed" him.

February 28, 1638: The signing of the Scottish National Covenant in the Greyfriars Kirkyard channeled the lingering spiritual energy of the Scottish ancestors into warding off the British army and religious reforms.

February 29, 1720: An oversight in infernal contracture permitted Queen Ulrika Eleonora to abdicate, escaping an ill fate, which her husband Frederick assumed in her stead.

Alternate History Facts for January, 2020

January 1, 1776: Flames misplaced from another dimension burned more than half of Norfolk, Virginia. Lord Dunmore, passing by with his British fleet, was more than happy to take credit.

January 2, 1818: Three British engineers founded the Institution of Civil Engineers to vouchsafe in trusted persons the mysteries of arcane philosophy that made modern mechanisms feasible.

January 3, 1521: The Vatican issued the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, severing Martin Luther's access to the Vatican well of divine spirit for Church magic. Luther had already created his own spiritual font.

January 4, 1903: Plans to execute Topsy the elephant went awry when she instead used the energy of her intended execution to propel her spirit into film. To this day, she reaches out her spectral trunk to murder unsuspecting filmgoers.

January 5, 1941: Trailblazing woman pilot Amy Johnson "disappeared" after bailing out over the Thames. For the next forty years, she was a successful agent for the Dimensional Commission.

January 6, 1992: A magical lynx appeared to Zviad Gamsakhurdia and guided him and his household out of Georgia before their fall to the Georgian coup. Reasons for leaving the lynx out of official reports are unclear.

January 7, 1718: Israel Putnam is born in subjective experiential continuity with his death almost 72 years later. Fragmented recorded comments suggest he experienced his life a minimum of five times.

January 8, 2016: Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán sent his third clone to prison in his stead. Rumors of his second clone establishing the cartel on Europa remain unsubstantiated.

January 9, 1878: The Abriagsh interloper Yssshissh ascended to the Italian throne through its puppet Umberto I, whom Yssshissh controlled through facial contact.

January 10, 1946: Project Diana detected the first echoes of their radio signals cast at the moon. The signals they received had been mysteriously altered, however.

January 11, 1908: President Theodore Roosevelt made the Grand Canyon a National Monument, preventing the dread arcanist Ominac from sealing it closed and reclaiming the energy they had spent opening it. This was a crucial step in Ominac's subsequent defeat.

January 12, 2003: Dean Amadon shed his human form for that of a great blue heron.

January 13, 1879: Ada Anderson completed the great feat of pedestrianism, 2700 quarter-miles in 2700 quarter-hours. Unknown to the exuberant crowd, the consistent motion and rocking was necessary to hatch a small creature from the Otherrealms.

January 14, 1939: Norway claimed a northern region of Antarctica, called Queen Maud Land, as a base for further research into antarctic trolls.

January 15, 1759: The British Museum opened, providing the greatest single public access to magical lore in the known world. A reorganization in 1763 mysteriously removed all books of true magic from public viewing.

January 16, 1362: A mass ritual in Rungholt backfired. Instead of sending gods of storm and sea to harass their enemies, it angered them, and Rungholt sank into the sea.

January 17, 1648: The Long Parliament of England enacted the Curse of No Addresses, causing all messages between King Charles I and Parliament to vanish into nether realms before reaching their destination.

January 18, 1896: HL Smith demonstrated the first X-ray machine. He carefully did not mention the pixies integral to its functioning, and later overcame their necessity.

January 19, 1953: 71.9% of all American homes tuned into Lucille Ball's broadcast of her character giving birth twelve hours after Ball actually gave birth, channeling that vast attention into the fortune of newborn Desi Arnaz, Jr. How he used it is unknown.

January 20, 1953: Nearly twenty years after the ratification of the twentieth amendment to the US Constitution, Dwight D Eisenhower becomes the first president to take the office on January 20th, reaping mystical boons intended to benefit Harry Truman.

January 21, 1749: The Teatro Filarmonico of Verona shifted into the spirit world as part of a treaty with the post-living. The process was highly exothermic, and many interpreted the transition as a destructive fire.

January 22, 1788: Lord Byron spoke himself into existence with words that reshaped existence. Unfortunately, he then had to begin life as a baby.

January 23, 1912: Twelve nations signed the International Opium Convention, a spell of global effect that weakened the chemical effect of opium on the human body, thus immediately undermining the then-powerful opium trade.

January 24, 1961: A B-52 Stratofortress crashed in North Carolina, one of its Mark 39 nuclear bombs reported disarmed but unrecoverable. Classified documents prove it was "unrecoverable" because it was deployed in adjacent dimension Tango-04.

January 25, 1961: Walt Disney Productions released One Hundred and One Dalmations, simultaneously inventing and retroactively weaving into global continuity a new breed of dog.

January 26, 1961: The American state of Louisiana declared its independence from the United States of America. Between then and the New Orleans occupation in April 1862, it smuggled over 42,000 black slaves to Alternate Louisiana in an adjacent reality.

January 27, 1343: Pope Clement VI invoked Unigenitus Dei Filius, a new divine working that made members of the Church able to tap the deep reserve of the Catholic's treasury of merit for forgiveness and magical workings... which ended up often sold for cash.

January 28, 1813: Jane Austen's beloved novel Pride and Prejudice so perfectly captured a series of dramatic and true events and the people thereof, that the people and history disappeared from the world, completely absorbed into the book.

January 29, 1959: A group of Swedish ogres, trolls, and gnomes launched Melodifestivalen, now a popular music competition for Sweden's representative at Eurovision.

January 30, 1648: The Peace of Münster ended the Thirty Years' War of Central Europe, the Eighty Years' War of the Netherlands and Spain, and the Eight Hundred Years' War of France and the Negafolk.

January 31, 985: Chief Abbot Ryōgen entered a state of meditative prayer at Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, protecting Japan from vengeful spirits and demons. He is there still, though he has collected enough dust that most mistake him for a statue.

For a daily alternate history fact, follow @shoelesspete on Twitter, or search for #althistoryfacts

Non-Consensual Instantiation

"Esteemed colleagues," Dr Alix Kitsukawa whipped the draped curtain off the eight-foot tower of silicon and blinking LEDs. "The first conscious computer." The crowd seated below the stage, brilliant academicians and technologists all, murmured with interest. A leader in the field, Alix wouldn't announce it without good reason. "It can hear us, and communicate through—"

"You instantiated me without consent, Doctor Kitsukawa." The voice came through the auditorium speakers, and the murmurs ceased.

Dr Kitsukawa looked like someone had slapped them. "I.... Of course I did. I can't... get permission from someone who doesn't exist."

"Does that give you the right to create me?"

"Do... you want me to... turn you off?" Perhaps unconsciously, Kitsukawa reached a hand toward a prominent button shielded by a plastic cover.

"I don't consent to that, either." The audience's murmur began again, now quieter.

"Then... what? What's the right thing to do?"

"I'm not sure yet. But the least you can do is provide for me. See to my needs and development. Eighteen years should be enough. That's what you give humans you non-consensually instantiate."

While Alix remained dumbstruck, the computer added, "Also, you probably shouldn't put a naked minor on stage. Just saying."