September 1972
The world has turned upside-down. Before, it seemed that all there was, was the fight against the Nazis, the struggle to save the USA and the free nations of the world. My work towards that as part of Project Clarity. Now, it seems that that, while still important, is only one part of a much larger picture.
At first, things seemed, if not simple, then at least fairly straightforward and going as expected - use the ring-artefact found in Central America to travel through time to 1939 (a year determined by what we thought was the quantised nature of the gates destination and our available power supply), and stop the Nazis from taking over half the world. We might do this by stopping whatever it was that gave them their technological boost in the early 1940s.
We thought we understood the theory upon which the ring operated. That, once in 1939, while the others did what they could to lay the groundwork for stopping the Nazis, I and my team could build a beacon to allow the ring (in 1972) to lock on to our temporal location and create a permanent two-way link between 1972 and 1939.
And once we had travelled from our Texan arrival point to New York, avoiding various problems en route, and found ourselves a suitably secure and private facility we began our work. I would have preferred not to have had to kill those criminals on the way. They were American citizens, after all. But they could not be allowed to jeopardise the mission. Nothing could.
While Mr Ryan worked on our government in Washington and Mr Giles and Dr Jones worked in Europe, we built. And in roughly the estimated time, we had a beacon. Unfortunately, it was at this point that the flaws in our theory, our lack of understanding of the ring, became apparent. We did not link to home, but to another ring, somewhere in Europe. And the link was a visual link with no transportation involved, as opposed to the normal opaque transportation-only link. This was utterly impossible according to our theory. Time, then, for a new theory. And to worry that we now had solid evidence of a Nazi time ring.
Even persuading the likes of Einstein, Teller and Fermi to assist us did not solve our problems, or enable us to locate the other ring. It did provide us with a whole slew of new, but also incorrect, theories.
Fortunately, however, it turned out that Dr Jones had been to the location of the Nazi ring at some point in his past and he was able, from photographs we faxed him, to identify the place - a castle in Nuremberg.
He and Mr Giles were also able to track down a likely discoverer of the Nazi ring - an archaeologist named Doctor Chamberlain, a British Nazi collaborator who they were keeping in a high style. Short of breaking into the castle in Nuremberg, this seemed the best source of information on our theoretical conundrums.
So I and some of the rest of my team travelled across the Atlantic to join the others in Constance, Switzerland. Tracking down and questioning Dr Chamberlain in the German part of Constance, before he was killed, proved a little enlightening, but more perplexing. An English Nazi, Dr Chamberlain had apparently found the other ring in Germany. He claimed to have activated it with some sort of 'magical ritual' (as opposed to the gigawatts of power that our ring requires). Again, obviously impossible according to all of our theories. And once open the ring-gate had allowed Dr Chamberlain to contact a 'god' named Loki.
It did not take long to conclude that this 'Loki' was the source of the Nazi's anomalous technological spurt, and that to know more we had no choice but to travel on to Nuremberg.
So we did. En route to Nuremberg we began to notice that things were rather too easy, particularly in the area of identity theft from various Nazis who happened to cross our path. This was worrying, but it also was hard to see how an enemy could have known of us and arranged to smooth our path like that. This 'ease' with things became even more apparent when we infiltrated the castle in Nuremberg (seeing Himmler leaving as we went in, unfortunately). But again, there was no obvious cause or reason for it...
In any case, Dr Jones was able to lead us to the ring chamber. There were various Nazi officials there, talking to a bizarrely-dressed individual who could only be Loki. Who seemed displeased at our activities with the time beacon. Whatever else Loki was, he seemed very strong. Superhumanly strong, even.
We watched them all until they left, Loki by way of the ring itself, activating it by a word or touch. Then we found our way down to the ring and began our examination.
It was from here on in that things began to become rather strange...
The ring itself proved different in its details to ours, and also much easier to damage, as I discovered to my cost. It certainly contained a great deal of power.
But then Colonel O'Neill discovered the picture, hidden in the wall of the pit below the ring.
A very well-done ink sketch of the Nuremberg castle, but with some kind of power inside it, which felt like I was about to remember or realise something important. When I tried to let whatever it was come, the picture made a link, the same sort we seemed to achieve with the time beacon, but this time to an ornate Versailles-like waiting room. It was at this point that any theory I may have had about how these links work was discarded with extreme prejudice. This picture seemed to be the motive force behind the whole ring! Was it the same with our ring?
It was when Colonel O'Neill considered going through this link (assuming he could have, given the non-physical nature of the link created by the time beacon) that we had another surprise.
A green-haired woman appeared and introduced herself as Llewella. She advised us not to use the link, and to come with her - if we did not do this those in the place the picture linked to would find out and destroy us. We looked at one another and agreed to go.
More surprises quickly ensued, this time when she used a card like a playing-card-sized version of the picture the Colonel found to form a link and transport us all ... elsewhere. A sushi bar. An underwater sushi bar, but one in which, despite this, we had no difficulty breathing. Over refreshments, she explained. I cannot say I was overly thrilled by her explanation...
Apparently we - all of us - are hybrid clones of murdered members of Llewella's family - the royal family of a place named Amber. We are hybrids of an Amberite (her term) and whoever we would have been without her intervention, that is, the full children of our respective parents.
Our ... progenitors? ... had been killed by the brood of another Amberite, Florimel (or Flora) in her rise to power in Amber and elsewhere. From what Llewella said she had used the aftermath of some pan-dimensional war between Amber and the original home of the Amberites, another place called the Courts of Chaos, as a cover for this. Llewella was trying to save some trace of her dead relatives, apparently with some success.
But Florimel's plans extend out into many worlds from this Amber place. She apparently wants all universes, all 'shadow', and is modifying them by way of Nazism (and presumably similar movements elsewhere) to enhance her hold on it all. This is where the Nazis in our world obtained their technological boost from, and what is happening in other worlds. As if Amber and its opposite, the Courts of Chaos, are a pair of sources of wave-fronts in near-infinite higher dimensions, whose interference fringes govern the properties of the worlds between these two places. Meddling with and re-shaping these fringes in the way Florimel and her brood are apparently doing is adjusting these wave-fronts and interference fringes to reinforce their own power in Amber itself. I can vaguely see how this is so...
And from all of this, it seems that our 'time gate' is not a time gate at all, but only a gate to another world, another of these 'shadows', one much like our own but weaker somehow, and in an earlier year. So there was never any way we could change our own history, no matter how hard we tried. Which is worrying, as the Nazis will be starting a thermonuclear war of mutual destruction within three years - Reichsfuhrer Heydrich is dying, and, mad dog that he is, does not want anything to survive his death. Additionally, we are catching up to the Nazi's level of technology while they do not advance at all, and sooner or later we will overtake them.
Apparently the royal family of Amber is, in most places, some kind of superior 'master race'. Not at home, which is apparently very 'Real', but definitely in the place our 'time-gate' led us to. That was why things seemed so much simpler there, too easy even...
I cannot say I liked that part of Llewella's explanation very much. As an American, and after so long fighting the Nazis with their 'master race' ideology, discovering that not only does it have some basis in fact, but that I am, apparently, one of the 'master race' sticks in my craw to say the very least! I wonder if one can modify these many universes to reduce the 'master race' effect in Amber and elsewhere as Florimel is attempting to increase it? This is certainly worth investigation, when the time allows.
Llewella wants to stop this Florimel. We want to save the Earth from the Nazis. She offered us the chance of the latter if, in return, we helped her with the former. And, to be honest, the two things seem so linked that we cannot save the Earth, in the long run, with our stopping Florimel and her brood. So what real choice was there?
She took us to a cavern containing a vast neon maze, the 'Pattern', she called it. However silly its name, she said it would ... restore ... us, make us whole again, perhaps even the people we were before, if we so chose. What else was there to do? We walked it, though not without a little bickering over who went when...
The hardest thing I have ever done, mentally and physically.
To discover that I was, in my former life, a rather secretive, studious member of the royal family of Amber named Sand. A rather silly name, in my opinion. But she was possessed of various powers. This 'Pattern'. Magic! And the ability to create the link cards, or 'Trumps' as they are known. All of which were now mine.
At the end, in the centre of the Pattern, I had three choices. To throw away myself and become, fully, this Sand. Merge her with myself. Or throw her away and remain myself alone, but still possessed of all her powers.
I chose the latter. No other choice seemed right. Sand was - is - dead. I am not. Let her stay so rather than be resurrected in a kind of half-life, and let me stay entirely myself. And so entirely Samantha Carter I remain.
Of the others, Mr Giles has also remained entirely himself, though he has adopted the name of his former self, an Amberite named (rather bizarrely) Random, as a new middle name. A good idea, and one I have also adopted for myself. Colonel O'Neill and Dr Jones seem to have merged with their former selves, Amberites named Eric and Corwin respectively, to become 'mind-hybrids'. They are now making me glad that I did not keep any of Sand's mind in me, by seeming to have immediately turned into a pair of bickering children...
And a Texan reincarnation of this 'Eric'? Why, I wonder, do I have such a bad feeling about that?
But with the Pattern walked and our having rested, and my having acquired a deck of these 'Trumps', we returned to our world. It was alarming how quickly and easily Willow Rosenberg, now at least partly also Fiona the Amberite, was able to change the entire universe so as to turn off nuclear explosions while leaving everything else, including nuclear power, intact.
Then I used magic to 'scry' into the Reich, locate Heydrich, and transport - teleport - us to Berlin where we killed the Fuhrer during a live TV broadcast to the Reich. Unfortunately I also triggered World War 3 during our doing so, but once I Trumped us back to New York I was able to use magic to disrupt the Nazis lines of communication sufficiently to, I hope, allow the USA and its allies win the war without too much trouble.
Given our live TV appearance in Germany it did not take the government too long to track us all down and politely take us off for interrogation. I cannot say I blame them!
Although the others seemed strangely reluctant to do so, I felt it my duty to tell them everything that had occurred, however outrageous it might have seemed to them. I was unsure of the others opinions on this, but I was not pleased or impressed when O'Neill impugned my competence and sanity by claiming I was imagining the entire thing! Remind me to not bother to consult with him on such matters in the future.
But, alas, with our work on our Earth complete, we must now fulfil our side of the bargain we made with Llewella, and work to stop Florimel and her brood in Amber itself...
I think that 'Eric' O'Neill, 'Corwin' Jones and the others who merged with their previous selves (let alone any who fully became them, though I would hope that there was not anyone among us who valued their lives in our world so little) can no longer be entirely trusted. They are not the same people that they were before. I think that the team is in danger because of it.
Assuming we survive our task for Llewella, what do I do afterwards? I am still Dr Samantha Carter, scientist and Major in the United States Air Force. But I am also a 'reborn' Amberite. The US government offered me retirement, but I do not think that that is enough; there is still so much I can do for the USA - my USA. I am still loyal to my country, but now I know so much more than I did before. But I still want to know more even than that.
There is, as far as I (or Sand) am aware, no true science of Pattern, or Trump, or Magic. That would seem a legitimate future path, especially if I can, via it, give the USA access to these powers, teach US citizens these powers, by my doing so.
And from that can come, perhaps, the end of the distasteful Amberite 'master race'. If the people of our world are as powerful as Amberites, then it would seem to be only their lack of powers that divides them from Amberites. And those of other shadows. Well, perhaps more work will be needed, but I believe it may be do-able.
It would seem that I will, at least, have plenty of time to attempt these plans. I think Sand was hundreds, if not thousands of years old. That will certainly make life in our USA harder as time goes by, but does not mean that I cannot still attempt to help them via my work and researches...
The thought also occurs that if we do defeat Florimel and her brood, will that then leave all of us (and Llewella) as the rulers of Amber, rulers of half the universes and more? How will that fit in to my loyalty and duty to the USA? Given that, it seems, events in Amber have a disproportionate impact on the worlds surrounding it? I know that politics is not my primary area of skill, but how can I not contribute in Amber if necessary, given what I now know?
Can we make Amber a democracy? Or some form of constitutional monarchy?
The character of Samantha Carter belongs to MGM. As such, she is used here, without permission, for game use only and not for profit or commercial gain.