[New York, USA – 9:42 AM, 27th of October, 1928]
I watched bemusedly while waiting to unboard as Charlotte had a staring competition with a seagull that was sitting on a railing near us.
Charlotte was still in my arms, because she apparently considered walking to be an optional feature rather than a basic function of the human body, and I had the resistance of a wet napkin when she asked for me to pick her up since I knew one day would be the last time I did.
The seagull was standing perhaps six feet away from us, staring directly at her with one beady little eye. Charlotte stared back with exactly the same intensity. Neither of them blinked.
I looked from one to the other.
They genuinely looked as though they were trying to eat each other or perhaps melt each other's brains. I had absolutely no idea what was going through Charlotte's head, but the seagull seemed to be considering whether a toddler constituted an acceptable breakfast.
Charlotte leaned forward slightly.
The seagull leaned forward slightly.
I decided that this was probably where I should intervene and said. "Don't touch the bird," as I shifted her higher against my chest and half turned away from it, breaking their staring contest.
She looked at me, then back at the seagull.
"Mm-mm."
"Good. I'm glad we've established that."
The seagull gave one final stare before apparently deciding that we weren't worth the effort and flapping off towards its next victim. Charlotte watched it go.
"Bird," she murmured.
"Yes. Bird." Where was I?
Oh, yes. Getting off the ship.
The moment we reached the dock, the familiar smell of New York hit me. Salt water, coal smoke, engine exhaust, food, people and the peculiar smell that seemed to belong exclusively to enormous cities…then again, that could just be the cumulative suffering.
We'd spent nearly a week crossing the Atlantic, and although I had long since become accustomed to the journey, there was always something satisfying about stepping onto solid ground again. A porter collected our luggage while I kept hold of Charlotte, and Kitty walked alongside me as we made our way through the terminal.
Then I spotted Anthony.
He was, technically speaking, an assistant. In practice, he was also a butler, occasionally a secretary, a man of all work and the person who kept an eye on the Manhattan apartment whenever we weren't in New York. I had bought the apartment largely because I came to the city two or three times a year, and travelling across the Atlantic every few months made having somewhere permanent to stay considerably more convenient than living out of hotels. Jeffrey lived there as well, which seemed like a reasonable arrangement considering that someone needed to look after the place while we were away.
He spotted us almost immediately and smiled as he approached.
"Good to see you again, Mr Sullivan," he said, extending a hand before glancing at Charlotte. "And you too, Miss Charlotte," to which Charlotte gave an enthusiastic wave.
I shifted Charlotte over to my other side, freeing my right hand to shake his and smiled. "Good to see you too, Ant."
Kitty greeted him as well, and within a minute he had taken charge of the luggage with the sort of efficiency I'd come to expect from him. He had a distinctly New York accent with hints of Italian, which I still found faintly amusing because I had absolutely no idea why I had chosen him in the first place. I had simply found a competent man, offered him considerably more money than he could reasonably expect to earn elsewhere, given him a free place to live and asked him to make sure our apartment didn't fall apart while we were gone.
Apparently that was an excellent incentive for loyalty.
As we reached the car, Jeffrey opened the door for Kitty first. She climbed in, and I carefully placed Charlotte in the middle before getting in beside them. Jeffrey handed me a folded newspaper as he came around to the driver's side, and I accepted it with genuine enthusiasm.
Six days.
That was the problem with crossing the Atlantic by ship. Six days without newspapers meant six days of being almost completely disconnected from whatever lunacy had decided to happen in the world while I was at sea. I had investments scattered across several markets, although comparatively small amounts outside Britain and America, and I liked knowing what was happening to them. More importantly, I liked knowing what was happening generally.
Afterall, while I had long gotten over my phone addiction thanks to just not having one on me. The desire to be as well informed as a modern person was still theirs. I'm a nosy bastard, am I not?
I unfolded the newspaper.
Before I could start reading, Kitty glanced across at me and asked why I insisted on taking ships when airships were obviously an option. She pointed out that we had more than enough money to charter one and that the journey would be dramatically shorter. I looked at her with the expression of a man who had just been asked whether he fancied voluntarily climbing into a burning building.
"Kitty, I know you have nausea issues, but I refuse to get inside one of those flaming airbags," I said, folding the newspaper slightly in my hands.
Kitty raised an eyebrow. "They're not flaming airbags."
I then said in a patronising tone. "They are enormous bags filled with a highly flammable gas."
"Helium exists." She argued.
I argued, "Yes, but those are not commercially viable, so we couldn't get one. If we wanted to, all the ones actually doing flights across the Atlantic use hydrogen."
She sighed and looked out of the window. "You realise that most people don't think like that?"
"I am aware. I have even written to several companies warning them of the dangers of static electricity…they ignored me." I said flatly.
"You're being insane," she said, her tone indicating she'd given up.
In response, to which I shrugged. "I'm perfectly happy admitting that. And besides, at this point I embrace it."
The truth was that I had seen the Hindenburg.
Not in person, obviously. But I'd seen the footage. I'd seen the thing go up in flames and watched the hydrogen ignite and the entire enormous structure collapse to the ground in seconds. Once you had that image lodged somewhere in your head, getting onto an airship filled with hydrogen suddenly seemed rather less appealing.
And aircraft weren't much better.
I knew perfectly well that aviation would eventually become extraordinarily safe. By the modern era, commercial flying would probably be statistically safer than almost every other practical form of long-distance transport. But this was the 1920s. Aircraft were still developing rapidly engines were becoming more reliable, airframes were improving, navigation was getting better and aviation was becoming more practical every year.
That did not mean I trusted the bloody things.
"I'll fly eventually," I told Kitty. "Probably."
"When?" she said sarcastically.
"Somewhere around the 70s. Because by that point they'll probably have worked out how to make them stop falling out of the sky." Anthony huffed at my remarks…not having a clue what I was on about.
I finally opened the newspaper.
The first few pages were exactly what I expected. American politics, business, industrial developments, stock prices, international news and the usual assortment of murders, scandals and stories that demonstrated humanity's remarkable ability to remain humanity regardless of how advanced its technology became.
I skimmed past most of it.
Then my brain finally kicked in and I frantically went back to the front page.
[U.S. OCCUPIES VERACRUZ.]
I stared at the page. "What the fuck?"
Kitty turned towards me sharply. "Hey Teddy…Language?"
"Sorry…" I said in that way, which meant you were busy, focused on something else. I read the headline again. Then the first paragraph. Then the next.
The United States had occupied Veracruz and the surrounding railway approaches.
Mexico was in turmoil. There had been fighting, political instability and an American military intervention. The details were complicated, and the article was written in the sort of breathless style newspapers seemed to reserve for events that had happened approximately five minutes ago.
I blinked and said in a slightly hollow tone. "Huh. That's…not supposed to happen."
The more I read, the worse it became. No, this definitely hadn't happened. Not in the way the newspaper was describing it. I had no memory of the United States occupying Veracruz in 1928. There had been American interventions in Mexico. There had been the occupation of Veracruz in 1914. There had been the Mexican Revolution, the Cristero War, endless political instability and enough American involvement in Mexican affairs to fill several textbooks.
But this?
No.
Something had changed.
I leaned back into the seat, now staring into the New York Cityscape which passed by as we drove instead of my newspaper.
How the hell did that happen?
I'd spent years telling myself that my knowledge of the future gave me an advantage. It did, obviously. And I'd always known there would eventually be divergence. Once you started changing things, history stopped being history and became a branching mess of consequences.
Still, this was different.
I hadn't gone to Mexico.
I hadn't intervened in Mexican politics.
As far as I knew, I hadn't done anything that should have produced an American military occupation of Veracruz in 1928.
I continued reading.
Apparently Mexico had spiralled into a much broader crisis than I remembered. There were reports of fighting, competing political factions and serious instability and even different army units fighting. The American government had justified its intervention on the grounds of protecting American interests and citizens.
I frowned.
How bad had things actually been historically?
I tried to remember.
The problem was that I knew enough history to recognise the major events, but I wasn't some walking encyclopaedia of every political crisis in every country during every year of the twentieth century. I remembered the Mexican Revolution. I remembered various presidents. I remembered the Cristero War.
But I couldn't remember every little political dispute that might have led from one event to another.
Maybe I'd forgotten something. Maybe this had always happened and I'd somehow invented a different version of history in my head.
No.
Absolutely not.
I remembered the American occupation of Veracruz in 1914. I remembered the later history. This wasn't right. I folded the newspaper slightly and stared out of the window as New York rolled past us. The possibilities multiplied almost immediately.
Something I'd done in Britain could have changed American foreign policy. Something I'd done economically could have changed Mexican politics. A technological development could have altered military calculations. An individual I had never heard of could have lived or died differently because of something completely unrelated to me.
Butterfly effects were supposed to be a metaphor.
Apparently history had taken the concept personally.
I folded the newspaper and set it beside me.
I'd have to investigate. Not immediately, because there wasn't much I could do while sitting in the back of a car with a two-year-old on my lap, but eventually. I wanted to know what had changed and, more importantly, whether I had caused it.
Because if I had, then I would have had a rather unpleasant question to answer.
Should I feel guilty?
I didn't know.
I hadn't intended for any of this to happen. I hadn't gone to Mexico and manipulated its government into an outright civil war. I hadn't told Washington to invade anything. I hadn't even particularly thought about Mexico in years.
But intention wasn't necessarily the same thing as consequence.
I looked down at Charlotte.
She was staring out the window, apparently trying to figure out what I was looking at.
We eventually reached the apartment, where Jeffrey helped us unload. Kitty gave me a light kiss before she took Charlotte and stepped out of the car. She smirked faintly. "Try not to bankrupt America."
"No promises." I said as Anthony closed the door. Our next destination was Number 26, Wall Street.
The House of Morgan.
P. Morgan & Co.
I continually had to remind myself that it was still just J. P. Morgan. My brain kept trying to append 'Chase' to the name because in my head it was still J. P. Morgan and Chase.
Time travel shenanigans.
What could you do?
The car pulled up outside the building, and I looked up at it through the window. This was going to be a difficult conversation. For them, anyway. It was my money. I could tell them what I wanted done with it.
The difficult part was going to be convincing them that I was serious.