An atlas of possible realities

The Atlas

89 timelines · 7 kinds of twist

Fateful Choices

A human being chooses otherwise, and history bends.

Delegates in a smoky congress hall lean forward as a sealed envelope is opened at the rostrum, Moscow 1924

FATEFUL CHOICES · MAY 1924 · MOSCOW

The Testament is read aloud

Moscow, May 1924. A sealed envelope from the dead Lenin asks the party to remove Stalin, and a steering committee is voting on whether the Congress will ever hear it. This is the timeline where the vote goes the other way.

An old man and a younger friend confer by lamplight in a stone cell before dawn, Athens 399 BC

FATEFUL CHOICES · 399 BC · ATHENS

The cup passes by

Athens, 399 BC. In a cell by the agora, an old man's friends have bribed the guards and a boat waits for Thessaly. This is the timeline where Socrates says yes.

Senators debate by candlelight over a great map of the Mississippi watershed, 1803

FATEFUL CHOICES · OCT 1803 · WASHINGTON

The Louisiana refusal

Washington, October 1803. The treaty doubling the United States lies before a Senate full of men who think buying it is unconstitutional, and the President half agrees with them. This is the timeline where the scruples win.

Three men confer in a dim Downing Street cabinet room, red dispatch box on the table, 1940

FATEFUL CHOICES · 9 MAY 1940 · DOWNING STREET

The quiet peace of 1940

London, 9 May 1940. Chamberlain is finished, and the premiership lies between two men in one room. This is the timeline where Lord Halifax does not stay silent.

Napoleon stands at a map table by candlelight as his ambassador argues, Saint-Cloud 1812

FATEFUL CHOICES · SPRING 1812 · SAINT-CLOUD

The Grande Armée stays home

Saint-Cloud, spring 1812. An ambassador who knows Russia is begging Napoleon, seven hours at a stretch, not to cross the Niemen. This is the timeline where the Emperor listens.

Codebreakers work under green lamps in a cluttered Admiralty office, London 1917

FATEFUL CHOICES · JAN 1917 · ROOM 40

America stays home

London, January 1917. In Room 40 of the Admiralty, a German telegram offering Mexico three American states is being decoded. This is the timeline where it never reaches the codebreakers' desk.

A merchant in a fur-trimmed coat weighs coins across a counting table from a hopeful craftsman, Mainz 1450

FATEFUL CHOICES · 1450 · MAINZ

The letters are never cast

Mainz, 1450. A goldsmith with a secret machine needs eight hundred guilders, and a merchant named Johann Fust is deciding whether to lend it. This is the timeline where Fust keeps his money.

Hannibal on horseback at dusk over the field of Cannae, officers waiting on his word, 216 BC

FATEFUL CHOICES · 216 BC · CANNAE

Hannibal at the gates

Cannae, the evening of 2 August 216 BC. Rome's largest army lies dead in a day, and a cavalry commander begs Hannibal to ride for the city itself. This is the timeline where Hannibal says yes.

Continental soldiers crowd the Brooklyn ferry stairs at night under clear moonlight as boats wait on the East River, 1776

FATEFUL CHOICES · 29 AUG 1776 · BROOKLYN

The king keeps his colonies

Brooklyn, the last night of August 1776. Washington's beaten army waits on the wrong side of the East River for boats, and everything depends on the weather. This is the timeline where the fog never comes.

Professors in dark coats confer over portfolios of drawings in a tall Vienna academy hall, 1907

FATEFUL CHOICES · OCT 1907 · VIENNA

The academy says yes

Vienna, October 1907. The Academy of Fine Arts is grading its entrance drawings, and one Austrian applicant is about to be refused. This is the timeline where one juror argues, and the list gains a name.

A worn leather briefcase standing under a wooden map table against a massive oak plinth, officers’ boots crowded around

FATEFUL CHOICES · 20 JUL 1944 · WOLF'S LAIR, EAST PRUSSIA

The bomb under the map table

At 12:42 on 20 July 1944 a briefcase bomb exploded two metres from Hitler, and he lived, because an officer wanting a clearer view of the map had moved the case behind a heavy oak table leg. This is the timeline where nobody moves it.

German storm troopers filing past a stacked British supply dump in dawn fog, artillery flashes on the horizon

FATEFUL CHOICES · MAR 1918 · THE WESTERN FRONT

The Kaiser’s peace

On 21 March 1918 Ludendorff’s spring offensive tore a forty-mile hole in the British line and stalled short of Amiens, partly because his starving storm troopers stopped to feast in captured British supply dumps. This is the timeline where the spearheads eat marching and take the rail knot of the Western Front.

A Roman atrium at morning, a wife gripping her husband’s arm as a visitor waits in the doorway

FATEFUL CHOICES · 15 MAR 44 BC · ROME

Caesar stays home

On the morning of the Ides of March, Caesar nearly did not go: Calpurnia had dreamed him dead and he ordered the Senate adjourned, until a conspirator came to his house and talked him out the door. This is the timeline where the door stays shut.

A dense English shield wall on a ridgeline at morning, banners overhead

FATEFUL CHOICES · 14 OCT 1066 · SENLAC HILL, SUSSEX

Harold holds the hill

On 14 October 1066 the English shield wall held a Sussex ridge from nine in the morning until dusk, and lost England in the last hour by chasing a retreat that was not real. This is the timeline where the wall does not move.

A Roman governor at a lamplit camp table as a Germanic noble leans close in warning

FATEFUL CHOICES · SEP, AD 9 · GERMANIA

Varus reads the warning

September, AD 9. Three Roman legions are about to march into the Teutoburg Forest, guided by a trusted German officer named Arminius who has secretly raised all Germania against them. The night before, at dinner, a loyal chieftain warns the governor to arrest his guide. In our timeline Varus laughed it off as a family feud. This is the timeline where he listens.

A duty officer frozen at an amber console as the alarm banner glows, Serpukhov-15, 1983

FATEFUL CHOICES · 26 SEP 1983 · SERPUKHOV-15, USSR

False alarm, 1983

A quarter past midnight, 26 September 1983. In a bunker south of Moscow, a screen says five American missiles are on their way, and duty officer Stanislav Petrov has minutes to decide what to tell the Kremlin. In our timeline he called it a malfunction. This is the timeline where he follows protocol.

The open motorcade rolls along the Appel Quay through Sunday crowds, Sarajevo 1914

FATEFUL CHOICES · 28 JUN 1914 · SARAJEVO

A wrong turn, corrected, at Sarajevo

28 June 1914. A bomb has already missed the archduke once this morning. His route changes; in our timeline, nobody tells the driver, the car stalls two paces from Gavrilo Princip, and the century catches fire. This is the timeline where someone says one sentence in time.

A Soviet submarine officer raises his hand in a red-lit control room, 1962

FATEFUL CHOICES · 27 OCT 1962 · THE SARGASSO SEA

The man who said no

27 October 1962, the deepest hour of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Aboard the Soviet submarine B-59, firing the nuclear torpedo takes three officers. Two have said yes. This is the timeline where the third says yes as well.

What Never Fell

What fell in our timeline, doesn’t.

A cluttered safe house room with crates and papers by lamplight, rain on the window, Hankou 1911

WHAT NEVER FELL · 9 OCT 1911 · HANKOU

The last Qing summer

Hankou, 9 October 1911. In a safe house in the Russian concession, a revolutionary is packing explosives beside the membership lists of every plotter in the New Army. This is the timeline where the fuse stays dry until evening.

A small band shelters around a hearth in a river gorge at dusk in the ice age, firelight on limestone

WHAT NEVER FELL · 40,000 BP · IBERIA

The other people endure

Iberia, forty thousand years ago. The last bands of the other human kind are wintering in the river gorges, and the cold is deciding. This is the timeline where the winters relent one lifetime sooner.

A great fleet crowds toward the sea walls of Constantinople at dusk, the city dark and waiting, 717

WHAT NEVER FELL · 717 · CONSTANTINOPLE

Constantinople, 717

The Golden Horn, autumn 717. Eighty thousand besiegers ring the city, and its defense hangs on a secret liquid fire and a hard winter. This is the timeline where the fire's makers are not inside the walls.

An Inca emperor borne on a litter pauses at the edge of a stone plaza at dusk, warriors ringing the hills, 1532

WHAT NEVER FELL · 16 NOV 1532 · CAJAMARCA

Cajamarca refuses the ambush

The Andes, 16 November 1532. An emperor with eighty thousand soldiers is about to enter a small square, unarmed, to meet one hundred and sixty-eight strangers. This is the timeline where his scouts finish their count.

The Alhambra glows above a snow-dusted Granada at dusk as watchfires ring the valley, 1491

WHAT NEVER FELL · WINTER 1491 · GRANADA

Al-Andalus endures

Granada, winter 1491. The last Muslim state in Iberia is starving behind its walls while its princes feud. This is the timeline where the feud ends, the corsairs come, and the siege breaks.

British armored cruisers turn through dawn haze toward the distant smoke of a fleeing German battlecruiser, 1914

WHAT NEVER FELL · 7 AUG 1914 · THE IONIAN SEA

The peace of the steppes

The Ionian Sea, 7 August 1914. Two German warships are running for Constantinople with a war in their wake, and a British admiral is deciding whether to fight them. This is the timeline where he turns to engage.

War elephants advance through rolling dawn dust toward Roman lines on a North African plain, 202 BC

WHAT NEVER FELL · 202 BC · ZAMA

Carthage must stand

Zama, 202 BC. Eighty war elephants are about to charge into cleverly opened Roman lanes and be wasted. This is the timeline where the dust hides the trick, and the charge goes home.

A nearly finished white supersonic delta airliner in a floodlit 1970s assembly hall at dawn, engineers tiny beneath its wing

WHAT NEVER FELL · 24 MAR 1971 · WASHINGTON

The sky that kept its thunder

In March 1971 the United States Senate voted, 51 to 46, to cancel the Boeing 2707 and abandon supersonic flight. This is the timeline where three senators chose otherwise, the American delta flew, and the world learned to cross an ocean before lunch.

A huge red Soviet flag hangs still above the floodlit Kremlin dome before dawn, tanks massed below, August 1991

WHAT NEVER FELL · 19 AUG 1991 · MOSCOW

The hands that did not shake

August 1991, the last summer of the Soviet Union. Eight men seize power to stop the country from dissolving, and in our timeline their nerve fails within three days. This is the timeline where it holds.

War canoes with torches close on a stone causeway over a black lake at night, the Great Temple lit beyond, 1520

WHAT NEVER FELL · 1520 · TENOCHTITLAN

The lake city holds

The night of 30 June 1520: Hernan Cortes and his army are fleeing Tenochtitlan across a causeway over the lake, a portable bridge their only way past the gaps. In our timeline enough of them clawed across the dead to escape. This is the timeline where the causeway keeps them, and the city on the lake does not fall.

A fevered young king wakes by lamplight in a Babylonian palace, a chart of the known world beside his bed

WHAT NEVER FELL · 323 BC · BABYLON

The fever breaks

For ten days in the summer of 323 BC, a fever holds Alexander the Great in Babylon, and a fleet waits to carry him past the last blank edge of the map. This is the timeline where, on the tenth night, the fever breaks and the king wakes.

A weary bearded officer in a khaki tunic signing a telegraph form at a lamplit desk, a second paper pushed aside

WHAT NEVER FELL · MAR 1917 · PETROGRAD

The tsar keeps his throne

In March 1917 a week of bread riots and a garrison mutiny ended three centuries of Romanov rule; the Duma’s president wired the tsar that the last hour had struck, and the tsar called it nonsense and dissolved the Duma instead. This is the timeline where he signs the other paper.

The Great Library at its height: cliffs of scroll racks, scholars at long tables

WHAT NEVER FELL · 48 BC ONWARD · ALEXANDRIA

The Library of Alexandria never burns

The ancient world kept its entire memory in one building in one city, and history spent seven centuries misplacing it. This is the timeline where one librarian read the warning in Caesar’s dockfire, and made forgetting impossible.

The torch-lit Theodosian walls at dusk, the Ottoman siege camp stretching to the horizon

WHAT NEVER FELL · 29 MAY 1453 · THE THEODOSIAN WALLS

Constantinople holds in 1453

The fifty-third day of the siege. The great bombard has opened the wall, the last emperor stands in the breach, and the defense turns on one Genoese captain staying on his feet. In our timeline a shot found him at the worst hour. This is the timeline where it missed.

The Roman fleet safe at anchor in Cartagena harbor by torchlight, AD 460

WHAT NEVER FELL · AD 460 · CARTAGENA, HISPANIA

Rome never falls

Cartagena, AD 460. Three hundred Roman warships lie at anchor, built to take Africa back from the Vandals and save the West. In our timeline, traitors let the Vandals burn that fleet, and within sixteen years there was no Western Rome to save. This is the timeline where the traitors were caught the night before.

Twists of Chance

Chance falls a hair differently.

A theatre box draped with flags holds two couples in lamplight as a soldier stands post at the door, 1865

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 14 APR 1865 · WASHINGTON

Lincoln lives

Washington, 14 April 1865. The Grants have declined the President's theatre invitation, and the box will be guarded by one unreliable policeman. This is the timeline where the general changes his mind.

A vast silver airship descends toward a mooring mast in late sunlight as ground crew reach for its lines, 1937

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 6 MAY 1937 · LAKEHURST

The Hindenburg lands quietly

Lakehurst, New Jersey, 6 May 1937. The largest flying object ever built is waiting out a thunderstorm before landing. This is the timeline where the front passes an hour sooner, and the ship comes down in sunlight.

A sleek longship with lanterns waits at a torchlit Norman quay as young nobles board, 1120

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 25 NOV 1120 · BARFLEUR

The white ship comes home

Barfleur, the night of 25 November 1120. The heir to England is sailing on the newest ship in the harbor, and the crew is drinking the wine he brought aboard. This is the timeline where the wine stays on the quay.

A riderless horse stands over a fallen figure on the winter steppe as riders race in from the horizon, 1226

TWISTS OF CHANCE · WINTER 1226 · THE ORDOS

The khan falls at Yinchuan

The Ordos steppe, winter 1226. The conqueror of half the world is hunting wild horses when his mount rears and throws him. This is the timeline where the old man does not get up.

A lantern glows among stacked barrels and firewood in a dark undercroft, 1605

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 5 NOV 1605 · WESTMINSTER

The gunpowder under Parliament

London, 26 October 1605. A lord at supper is handed an anonymous letter warning him away from the opening of Parliament. This is the timeline where he reads it once, and burns it.

A Japanese floatplane fires off a cruiser catapult into a grey Pacific dawn, 1942

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 4 JUN 1942 · THE PACIFIC

The scouts of Midway

The Pacific, dawn, 4 June 1942. On the cruiser Tone, a catapult refuses to fire, and the search plane that matters most sits on its rail while the minutes drain. This is the timeline where it launches on time.

A gaunt banker in a dark suit stands at a tall window above Wall Street, ticker tape machine beside him, 1929

TWISTS OF CHANCE · OCT 1928 · NEW YORK

The long boom

New York, October 1928. The one central banker who knows what a panic needs is dying of tuberculosis at fifty-five. This is the timeline where Benjamin Strong lives to meet the crash.

An open presidential limousine speeds through Dallas as the last rifle shot misses, 1963

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 22 NOV 1963 · DALLAS

A clear noon in Dallas

Dallas, half past noon on 22 November 1963. The sky has cleared, the top is off the open car, and a rifle in a sixth-floor window has already fired twice. This is the timeline where the third shot goes wide.

Space Shuttle Challenger on the pad before dawn under a clear cold sky, no frost on the tower

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 28 JAN 1986 · CAPE CANAVERAL

Seventy-three seconds, and climbing

The coldest launch morning the program had ever known, 28 January 1986: ice on the gantry, and an overruled warning that the booster seals could fail in the cold. In our timeline the seal failed seventy-three seconds after liftoff. This is the timeline where the cold front stalls to the north, the rings stay soft, and Challenger climbs on.

Union soldiers resting in a sunlit clover meadow, one corporal’s open hand in the empty grass

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 13 SEP 1862 · FREDERICK, MARYLAND

The lost order stays lost

On 13 September 1862 two Union soldiers resting in a Maryland meadow found Robert E. Lee’s entire campaign plan wrapped around three cigars, and the road to Antietam and emancipation ran through that clover. This is the timeline where the courier drops nothing.

A tired official at a press conference table peering at a note through his glasses

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 9 NOV 1989 · EAST BERLIN

The wall stays up

On the evening of 9 November 1989, a tired East German spokesman was handed a note about new travel rules he had not read, and answered a question wrong. The Berlin Wall opened that night by mistake. This is the timeline where he says he will have to check.

A 1986 Soviet control room in daylight shift, operators calm at analog panels

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 25 APR 1986 · PRIPYAT, SOVIET UKRAINE

The reactor that never burned

Friday, 25 April 1986. Reactor four at Chernobyl is scheduled to run a routine safety test that afternoon, with the day shift that rehearsed it. In our timeline a grid controller in Kyiv phoned to say hold the test nine hours, and it ran after midnight instead, on a poisoned reactor, with a crew that had never seen it. This is the timeline where the phone stays quiet.

The Great Khan setting down a silver cup in a firelit ger, courtiers frozen

TWISTS OF CHANCE · DEC 1241 · THE FROZEN DANUBE

The khan lives one more winter

December 1241. The Mongol war machine has annihilated the armies of Poland and Hungary in a single week and stands on the frozen Danube, aimed at Vienna. Four thousand miles east, the Great Khan Ögedei drinks himself to death in a single night, and the horde turns home to choose his successor. This is the timeline where the cup is set down.

Two lookouts in the crow’s nest of an ocean liner on a moonless night, breath steaming

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 14 APR 1912 · THE NORTH ATLANTIC

Thirty seconds on the crow's nest

A flat calm, moonless night in the North Atlantic, 14 April 1912. Two lookouts with no binoculars are watching for ice from the crow’s nest of the largest ship ever built. In our timeline the iceberg came out of the haze with thirty-seven seconds to spare. This is the timeline where the haze thinned half a minute earlier.

A man in a bow tie washes Petri dishes at a lab sink, the bench behind him wiped clean

TWISTS OF CHANCE · 3 SEP 1928 · ST MARY'S, LONDON

The mold that was wiped away

3 September 1928. Alexander Fleming comes back from holiday to a cluttered London lab, and in our timeline one contaminated dish on that bench becomes penicillin. This is the timeline where he tidied up before he left.

Discoveries & Inventions

Knowledge arrives early, late, or never.

Two men confer over papers at a table on a summer cottage porch, sailboat rigging beyond, 1939

DISCOVERIES & INVENTIONS · AUG 1939 · LONG ISLAND

The letter stays in the drawer

Long Island, August 1939. Leo Szilard has drafted a warning to the President about atomic bombs, and needs the one signature every American knows. This is the timeline where Einstein declines to sign.

A solitary scholar works by candlelight among papers and a reflecting telescope in a Cambridge room, 1684

DISCOVERIES & INVENTIONS · AUG 1684 · CAMBRIDGE

The apple misses Newton

London, January 1684. Three men in a coffee house set a wager that will send Edmond Halley riding to Cambridge, where a reclusive professor has the answer in a drawer. This is the timeline where the ride is never made.

A single unsigned sheet of paper on a desk at CERN beside a black NeXT computer, 1993

DISCOVERIES & INVENTIONS · 30 APR 1993 · GENEVA

The web stays in the lab

Geneva, 30 April 1993. A one-page declaration waits on a desk at CERN, releasing the World Wide Web to everyone, forever, for nothing. This is the timeline where it is never signed.

A woman in a 1977 pantsuit leans toward a glowing upright computer screen on a mock office desk while suited executives stand back with arms crossed.

DISCOVERIES & INVENTIONS · 10 NOV 1977 · BOCA RATON

The chairman uncrosses his arms

November 1977, a Xerox sales conference in Boca Raton. On a mock office set flown in on two chartered jets, the company's Palo Alto laboratory demonstrates the personal computer it has already built: the screen, the mouse, the network, the laser printer. The executives cross their arms. This is the timeline where their chairman does not.

Punjabi farmers broadcasting pale wheat seed by hand into dark earth at dawn, distant smoke on the horizon, 1965

DISCOVERIES & INVENTIONS · 1965 · THE PUNJAB

The seed in the dry year

In 1965 two failed monsoons and a rising population set India and Pakistan on course for the famine Paul Ehrlich would soon call unstoppable. Norman Borlaug's dwarf Mexican wheat reached them late and half dead, and was sown by hand as the two nations went to war. In our timeline that thin seed still came up and helped feed a subcontinent. This is the timeline where it comes up too thin to save.

A 187-foot lattice tower crowned by a vast copper dome throwing electric-blue fire into a winter night over a Long Island hamlet.

DISCOVERIES & INVENTIONS · 1901 · LONG ISLAND

The tower that lit the coast

1901, Long Island. J.P. Morgan's money is raising Nikola Tesla a tower meant to send words and power through the earth to all of it at once. In our timeline the checks stopped, the tower was dynamited for scrap, and Tesla died in a rented room. This is the timeline where Morgan signs one more check, and one winter night the copper dome answers.

A surgeon scrubs his hands in a basin of chlorinated lime at the door of an 1847 Vienna maternity ward

DISCOVERIES & INVENTIONS · 1847 · VIENNA

The doctors wash their hands

May 1847, the maternity wards of the Vienna General Hospital. A young doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis has proved that a basin of chlorinated lime at the ward door cuts childbed-fever deaths from nearly one mother in five to almost none. In our timeline the profession mocked him and let him die unheard. This is the timeline where Vienna believes the basin.

An aging caliph sets down a Mongol envoy's letter beside an inkwell and open manuscript in a lamplit Baghdad hall

DISCOVERIES & INVENTIONS · 1258 · BAGHDAD

The ink stays in the books

1258, and the Mongol army of Hulagu Khan stands at the walls of Baghdad, seat of the caliphs and keeper of the richest libraries of the medieval world. This is the timeline where the caliph opens the gates in time, and the books are never poured into the Tigris.

A small brass sphere spins on steam over a brazier in a first-century Alexandrian workshop, a Greek engineer and a merchant watching

DISCOVERIES & INVENTIONS · AD 62 · ALEXANDRIA

The engine in the temple

AD 62, the Museum of Alexandria. Heron the engineer builds a brass sphere that spins on steam, and the age keeps it as a temple wonder and a rich man's toy. Grain is ground by slaves, and no one asks the sphere to work. This is the timeline where a grain merchant asks, and pays to find out.

An aged Greek geometer traces circles in the sand as a Roman soldier holds back his raised sword, a burning city behind

DISCOVERIES & INVENTIONS · 212 BC · SYRACUSE

The circles are not disturbed

The autumn of 212 BC, the sack of Syracuse. The Roman general Marcellus has ordered that the geometer Archimedes be taken alive, and a soldier has found him bent over circles drawn in the sand. In our timeline the soldier killed him anyway. This is the timeline where the order is obeyed and the circles are left undisturbed.

Ada Lovelace and Babbage before the vast half-built Analytical Engine, 1843

DISCOVERIES & INVENTIONS · 1843 · LONDON

Ada Lovelace boots the first computer, 1843

In 1843 Ada Lovelace published the first program ever written — for a machine that existed only on paper, because Parliament would not pay for it. This is the timeline where the Treasury said yes, and the computer age began ninety years early, in brass.

Forces of Nature

Nature bends: the mountain, the storm, the stone from space.

A woman at a high window at dusk, a faint red aurora spreading over a lit city, July 2012

FORCES OF NATURE · 23 JUL 2012 · EARTH

Nine days early

In July 2012 the Sun threw off the most violent storm of the space age, a Carrington-class cloud that crossed Earth's orbit and found the planet nine days gone from the spot. This is the timeline where it came nine days early, and a wired civilization was standing in its path.

A snowy Chelyabinsk boulevard of frost-covered cars at dawn, a thin white seam brightening in the eastern sky

FORCES OF NATURE · 15 FEB 2013 · CHELYABINSK

The stone the sun hid

15 February 2013, a Friday morning over the southern Urals. In our timeline a twenty-meter stone burst twenty-three kilometers above Chelyabinsk, and its worst wound was broken glass, filmed on a thousand dashboards. This is the timeline where the stone was three times as wide, and came in low over the city.

Twelve medieval galleys laboring toward a stone harbor mole through a black autumn storm at dusk

FORCES OF NATURE · 1347 · MESSINA

The galleys never dock

In October 1347, twelve Genoese galleys carry the Black Death west toward the harbor of Messina, the first door by which the plague enters Europe. This is the timeline where an autumn storm takes the ships before they can dock.

A vast fleet of Spanish galleons becalmed on a mirror-flat sea at dawn, sails hanging dead under a bruised sky

FORCES OF NATURE · 1588 · THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

The Protestant wind never blows

August 1588. The Spanish Armada, mauled off Gravelines and saved from the Flemish shoals, is about to be driven north into the storms England will thank God for and name the Protestant wind. This is the timeline where the wind lies down instead, and a flat calm settles over the barges of Parma's waiting army.

An immense medieval fleet at anchor in a bay under a clear evening sky, a long stone wall on the shore

FORCES OF NATURE · AUG 1281 · HAKATA BAY, KYUSHU

The kamikaze never blows

In August 1281 the largest invasion fleet the world had yet built lay off the Japanese coast, held at the beach by a stone wall, until a typhoon destroyed it and was named the divine wind. This is the timeline where the storm passes north.

Campfires and stars over a dry Belgian ridge at night, gun teams moving on firm ground

FORCES OF NATURE · 18 JUN 1815 · WATERLOO, BELGIUM

The dry morning at Waterloo

On the night of 17 June 1815 a thunderstorm drowned the fields of Belgium, and Napoleon spent the next morning waiting for the ground to dry while his last battle shrank from a day to an afternoon. In our timeline the Prussians arrived before he was finished. This is the timeline where the storm slides east and the guns open at first light.

A Cretaceous coast at dusk, tyrannosaurs at the river mouth, a new star low on the horizon

FORCES OF NATURE · 66,000,000 YEARS AGO · THE PROTO-GULF OF MEXICO

The asteroid misses by an hour

Sixty-six million years ago, a rock ten kilometres wide crossed Earth’s orbit at the exact wrong moment, and the age of giants ended in an afternoon. This is the timeline where it crossed one hour early — and the age of giants never ended at all.

The forum of Pompeii shaking, birds bursting from the temple roofs, Vesuvius smoking beyond

FORCES OF NATURE · AD 79 · THE BAY OF NAPLES

Pompeii is evacuated before Vesuvius

AD 79. For days the wells have been failing and the ground has been shivering, and Pompeii has learned to ignore both. In our timeline the town was still full when the sky came down. This is the timeline where somebody read the warnings out loud.

Voyages Beyond

A journey goes further than it did.

Massed cavalry under monsoon clouds face a small line of redcoats in a mango grove, Bengal 1757

VOYAGES BEYOND · 23 JUN 1757 · PLASSEY

Plassey stays loyal

Bengal, 23 June 1757. Half the Nawab's army is standing still under a bought general, waiting out the battle that will hand India to a trading company. This is the timeline where the general keeps his faith.

Great Ming treasure junks with red batten sails crowd a river anchorage at dawn, 15th century

VOYAGES BEYOND · 1436 · BEIJING

The treasure fleet sails on

Beijing, 1436. A boy emperor's ministers are drafting the edict that will end China's ocean voyages forever. This is the timeline where the edict is never issued, and the great fleet keeps the sea.

A surgeon leans over a broad-faced man on an operating table under a hard lamp, Moscow 1966

VOYAGES BEYOND · 1968 · THE SEA OF TRANQUILITY

The Chief Designer lives

14 January 1966, a Moscow operating theatre. The anonymous genius the Soviets call only the Chief Designer is bleeding to death under a surgeon's hands. This is the timeline where the bleeding stops.

Two men crowded at the single small viewport of a 1960 bathyscaphe, a floodlight beam and a pale flatfish in the black water

VOYAGES BEYOND · 23 JAN 1960 · THE CHALLENGER DEEP

The lamp at the bottom of the world

On 23 January 1960 two men in a steel sphere reached the deepest point on Earth, and then the age turned its back on the sea and reached for the Moon instead. This is the timeline where the century chose to go down.

A fleet of Norse longships crossing a vast grey sea toward a wild forested coast at dawn

VOYAGES BEYOND · 1021 · VINLAND

The second fleet sails with families

Around the year 1000, Norse ships from Greenland reached a coast they called Vinland, the wine land, then gave it up after a few blood-soaked winters and the long distance home. In our timeline the camp at L'Anse aux Meadows lasted only a handful of years. This is the timeline where a larger second fleet arrives with families, livestock, and the patience to stay.

The three-masted ship Endurance among Weddell Sea pack ice, a black lead of open water opening ahead of her bow, 1915

VOYAGES BEYOND · 1915 · THE WEDDELL SEA

The Endurance holds

January 1915, the Weddell Sea. Ernest Shackleton's Endurance lies a day's sail from Vahsel Bay, where the first crossing of Antarctica is to begin, when the pack ice closes to crush her. This is the timeline where a lead opens instead, and the ship goes through.

A fleet of Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoes runs onto a gray American beach below green mountains at dawn

VOYAGES BEYOND · C. 1200 · THE PACIFIC COAST

The canoes make landfall

Around 1200 a Polynesian voyaging fleet, having crossed the largest ocean on Earth by star and swell, does not turn for home but settles the American Pacific coast and keeps the searoad open in both directions.

A heavy nao and two lean caravels coming about on a vast empty ocean at first light, sails swinging

VOYAGES BEYOND · 1492 · THE OCEAN SEA

The caravels come about

October 1492, weeks past any landfall Columbus had promised, his crews near mutiny in the middle of the Ocean Sea. He had agreed to turn back if no land appeared within two or three days. This is the timeline where the deadline passed empty, and the caravels came about for Spain.

An Ottoman siege camp at night, lanterns and banners, a mine glow beneath a bastion

VOYAGES BEYOND · 11 SEP 1683 · VIENNA

The sultan takes Vienna

By 11 September 1683 the Ottoman mines had opened Vienna’s walls and the city had days to live; the relief army crested the hills that same morning, one march from too late. This is the timeline where the bridges at Tulln cost one more day.

The Ming treasure fleet mid-ocean, colossal nine-masted junks in golden afternoon light

VOYAGES BEYOND · 1421 · THE UNKNOWN OCEAN

Zheng He's treasure fleet reaches the Americas

The sixth voyage, 1421. The greatest fleet on Earth stands off the coast of Africa, done with the known world, and its admiral must decide whether the ocean has another side. In our timeline the fleet turned for home, and China burned its ships within a generation. This is the timeline where it sailed on east.

Impossible Fables

The impossible arrives. No bridge of causes leads here; the atlas keeps it anyway.

Leonardo presents an open folio of machine drawings to the Duke of Milan in a candlelit hall, 1482

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · 1482 · MILAN

Da Vinci's machines are built

Milan, 1482. A thirty-year-old Florentine writes the Duke a letter listing ten kinds of war machine he can build, and adds painting almost as an afterthought. This is the timeline, recorded in the fables' galaxy, where every machine in the letter works.

A colossal reinforced timber crate on the stone quay of Ostia at dusk, dockworkers frozen and silent

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · AD 80 · ROME

The beast in the Colosseum

During the hundred days of games that opened the Colosseum in AD 80, the animal hunters of the empire delivered one crate too old for any map. Through a fold in deep time, a subadult tyrannosaur reached the arena that was built to prove nothing alive outranked Rome. This is the fable of what Rome did when it met an animal it could not beat.

A storm-worn fleet of Japanese war junks off a jungle coast where a stepped pyramid rises above the trees

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · 1515 · THE GULF COAST OF MEXICO

Obsidian and steel

No storm in our history ever carried a fleet whole across the Pacific. This is the fable where one did: two thousand soldiers of Japan’s civil wars set down on the Aztec gulf coast in 1515, four years ahead of Cortés.

A Han envoy with a camel at the crest of a snowy mountain pass, looking down on terraced vineyards and a straight Roman road

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · AD 97 · THE PAMIR PASSES

The two empires meet

In AD 97 the Han general Ban Chao sent the envoy Gan Ying to find Rome, and Parthian sailors turned him back at the Persian Gulf with tales of a two-year sea. The two greatest empires of the age never met. This is the fable where the atlas folds the map once, and a nineteen-day mountain pass joins Roman Syria to the Tarim Basin.

Thousands of Mongol riders emerging from ground fog across the lanes of a motorway toward stopped trucks with headlights on

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · A TUESDAY IN OCTOBER · THE HUNGARIAN PLAIN

The horde on the motorway

On a Tuesday in October, out of the ground fog of the Hungarian plain, ten thousand riders of Batu Khan’s army come through onto the M5 motorway near Kecskemét, still carrying orders written in 1241. The one fable in the atlas told from our side: the past visits us, and is met by dashcams, quarantine law and an offer of asylum.

Merlin raises his staff on a hillfort rampart as a helicopter descends from the storm

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · THE AGE OF ARTHUR · THE WALLS OF CAMELOT

Merlin calls the thunder over Camelot

The fortieth night of the siege of Camelot. The gate is splinters, the wells are low, and on the last wall Merlin asks the storm for help. What answers is not a dragon and not a demon: a made thing, from a timeline of iron.

Two Bronze Age armies drawn up at dawn on a river plain while the sky between them glitters with small dark machines

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · THE NINTH YEAR OF THE WAR · THE PLAIN OF TROY

Achilles and the swarm

In the ninth year of the siege of Troy, a military drone swarm falls through the seam with no operators, no country, and one standing order: deny this ground to all combatants. The war becomes a siege against a god who never sleeps but is dying from the moment it arrives.

Genghis Khan on the ridge above a column of modern tanks

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · AUTUMN 1219 · THE OTRAR STEPPE

Genghis Khan charges a column of tanks

The steppe thunders. A hundred thousand of Genghis Khan’s horsemen pour over the ridge toward a column of modern main battle tanks grinding across the grass — horn bows against armour plate, the old world against the new.

Napoleon on horseback beneath a towering iron war-mech at Waterloo

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · 18 JUN 1815 · WATERLOO

Napoleon commands a war-mech at Waterloo

18 June 1815, Waterloo. Where the Old Guard once marched, a towering iron war-machine strides through the mud at Napoleon’s command, its cannon-arms wreathed in smoke. The line that broke him may not break today.

Viking longships rowing toward a towering lit oil platform in a storm

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · LATE OCTOBER, THE VIKING AGE · THE NORTH SEA

Viking longships raid a North Sea oil rig

A storm hurls a raiding fleet of longships against a colossus of steel rising from the North Sea — an offshore oil platform, blazing with impossible lights. The Norsemen row in, axes ready, certain it is a god or a giant.

Blackbeard’s sloop beside a towering modern container ship in fog

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · 22 NOV 1718 · OFF THE CAROLINAS

Blackbeard boards a container ship

1718, off the Carolinas. Blackbeard’s sloop draws alongside a mountain of steel drifting silent in the fog — a modern container ship, ten storeys tall. Cutlasses against a hull no cannon can dent.

A grey guided-missile destroyer looms among Spanish galleons in a Channel storm

IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · AUG 1588 · THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

A modern destroyer meets the Spanish Armada

The English Channel, August 1588. Between the Armada and the English fleet, out of a rain squall, comes a hull of grey steel that belongs to no century either side has seen. No bridge of causes leads here. The atlas keeps it anyway.