1999, June 3rd

  William sat on the plane, browsing the technology sections again. He wanted to plan for the future. He would probably not follow it, but it would serve as a useful guide for himself. The first priority was the cloud infrastructure that was currently being developed. They would double as cloud storage and a video streaming platform. For the video streaming platform, he planned to allow user-generated content, eventually. It was far too expensive to maintain that kind of infrastructure. So, he would first focus on professional and semi-professional content distribution and expand into user-generated content somewhere around 2001 to 2002.

  Second, he would have to write his own search engine. Currently, QuantumFlux was AltaVista, Yahoo, Excite, and Google. He would need to decouple from them. He would do so around 2000, when most of these companies would be hurt badly by the dot-com crash. QuantumFlux currently only has one serious competitor, which was Internet Explorer. Netscape was no longer a significant competitor, as it lost the browser war to Internet Explorer and him. It was not over yet, as he knew that future competitors of Chrome and Firefox would be serious competitors. As for now, he had already gained 40% market share in the US, and it was still rising slowly. He had shared a few of his plans with Eve on what to do when Microsoft counterattacks.

  QuantumPay had occupied a significant market share, but was currently being pushed back by PayPal, as Confinity and X.com had merged. It wasn't going badly, as his product was simply superior in terms of convenience and security. Still, PayPal had the largest share in the market, and was currently aggressively expanding its independent merchant numbers to match his.

  Eve had shared with him her plans for international expansion. Apparently, they would launch from Ireland, as it had the lowest corporate tax. It was wrong, as Greece in this timeline had the lowest tax anywhere in the world. But operating from there might bring legal troubles in the USA, so he settled for Ireland. And the fact that to get the full tax benefit from Greece, he would have to have genuine operations in Greece, which was not something he was willing to do. Maybe in the future, but not anytime soon.

  Vox was an entirely new market. It occupied a significant market share, around 80% of the corporate market. As for consumers, it was not going well, as most Americans were still on dial-up rather than broadband and would not change anytime soon.

  Currently, he has three things he would do regardless. First, he would short the dot-com crash. It was obvious. There were significant profits to be made, and with around 800 million dollars in the stocks of various companies that he knew would fail. Of course, these were held in Switzerland for tax and privacy reasons. With proper planning, he could make up to a dozen billion dollars easily, especially with his existing capital.

  Second, after the crash, he would create a new company, Stellar Innovation. It would focus on space. He knew how important the frontier would become in the future, and he wanted to have the first mover advantage there.

  Third was plans for Axiom. He would merge it into a company he would create in the near future, Artificial Innovation. It would focus entirely on hardware and robotics. Upgrading the Axiom manufacturing infrastructure would take a year or so, but he was willing to wait.

  This was not a plan, but something he had in mind after browsing the Energy & Power category. In the Far Future (2030-2080) category, he noticed some technologies that caught his eye. They were the various fusion technologies. Technologies like Helium-3 Extraction & Refinement Process at 9,500 points, Tokamak Plasma Containment & Stability Systems 12,500 points, Deuterium-Tritium (D-T) Fusion Reactor Design 16,000 points, Inertial Confinement Fusion Ignition Protocol 20,000 points, Deuterium-Deuterium (D-D) Fusion Reactor Design 25,500 points, Compact Fusion Reactor Architecture at 30,000 points, and Proton-Boron (p-B11) Aneutronic Fusion Reactor Design at 44,400 points.

  He was still quite a bit far away from the techs, but he was intrigued by them. The technology placement meant they would naturally emerge between 2030 and 2080.

  Sighing, he leaned back on the chair.

  Once again, he had found out something that was different from what he knew in history. The difference came from the book in front of him. He had been reading it before checking the technological section. It was titled, "Laws Around The World."

  It was an interesting book, even if he hated navigating laws. They were far too complicated and required brain cells that were better used elsewhere. As such, Eve knew more than him in terms of laws.

  Back when he was young, he had checked US laws for minors creating companies. Back then, he skipped the section on the US Constitution, as he knew most of them. He should have checked more carefully then. The Second Amendment in this timeline was not the Second Amendment he remembered. The wording was similar enough that a casual reader, but after a closer read, it was completely different.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Congress, the Senate, or any body of government shall make no law restricting, regulating, controlling, or requiring the registration of Arms kept and borne by the people, nor shall this right be infringed.

  Compared to the one he knew, this one was stricter on the government's ability to regulate firearms. With wordings like that, gun control would be dead on arrival in the United States. The book said that the founding fathers explicitly mentioned the Codex Romuli as a direct inspiration for the Second Amendment, a book written by the Romulus Vestalis in the late 5th century. He sighed. The guy was everywhere.

  The second difference he noticed came yesterday, when he was looking at the world map. He noticed that the territories of Greece and Turkey were different. From what he remembered, Greece was usually characterized on the map by its light blue color. Here, it was imperial purple, the color he'll usually see in games like Crusader Kings, usually depicting the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire.

  On the map, Greece held all of Thrace and the western coast of Anatolia, which was strange to him. It was an official map. He checked other maps and found that it was the same. As such, he looked through the books he brought. One of them was a book on WW2. The book mentioned that despite the revived Byzantium having consolidated all of the Balkans and Anatolia, the German war machine tore through them after initial resistance.

  After the war, at the peace conference, the Soviet Union and the USA pressured for Constantinople and the western coast of Anatolia to be returned to Greece. As such, in the modern day, Greece called themselves Basileia ton Rhomaion or the Empire of the Romans.

  The author noted that the reasoning behind the joint American and Soviet decision was surprisingly pragmatic given their ideological differences.

  For the Americans, the calculation was straightforward. With the Ottoman Empire gone and Anatolia's interior in political chaos, the Bosphorus had no reliable guardian. A weak provisional Anatolian government controlling Constantinople was a vacuum that Soviet pressure could fill within a decade. The Romans, by contrast, had fifteen centuries of institutional continuity, a ruling dynasty with genuine popular legitimacy, and a constitutional framework that was structurally hostile to communist ideology. Its constitutionally entrenched property rights and tax structure made it the most naturally anticommunist state in Europe without requiring American direction or financial support. Giving Constantinople back to the Romans cost the Americans nothing and bought them the most strategically critical chokepoint in the Mediterranean, secured by the most durable institution in Western history.

  The western Anatolian coast followed the same logic. The coastal cities of Smyrna or ?zmir, Ephesus, and Pergamon or Bergama had substantial Greek populations and a deep historical Greek character. Restoring them to the Romans was defensible as a legitimate historical correction rather than pure geopolitical maneuvering, which mattered for how the decision would be received internationally.

  The Soviet reasoning was less idealistic and more coldly opportunistic. Stalin had no interest in a strong, unified Anatolian successor state emerging from the Ottoman collapse. Any such state would inevitably seek Western alignment to counterbalance Soviet pressure from the north and east. Stripping the western coast and Constantinople of any potential Anatolian successor permanently weakened it before it could consolidate. A fragmented Anatolian interior, divided between a rump Muslim successor state and Soviet-influenced Kurdish and Armenian territories in the east, was far easier to manage than a unified Ottoman successor state with NATO ambitions.

  Stalin also calculated, incorrectly as it turned out, that the Romans' constitutional prohibition on binding military alliances made it a potential neutral buffer rather than a Western asset. A non-aligned Basileia controlling the Bosphorus was preferable to a NATO-aligned Turkey controlling it. He was wrong about the Romans' neutrality; the Vestalis were deeply hostile to communism on philosophical grounds that predated Marx by fifteen centuries, but in 1945, the calculation seemed reasonable.

  And after the fall of the Soviet Union, Turkey as a state was finally born, taking most of the Anatolian interior that had been left in political limbo since the Ottoman collapse. It was a young country by any measure, less than a decade old in 1999, still consolidating its institutions and still negotiating the boundaries of its identity between its Ottoman heritage and whatever it intended to become. It had immediate and significant territorial grievances against Basileia, which it considered an occupying power over lands it regarded as historically Anatolian. Basileia regarded Turkey's existence as a temporary inconvenience and its territorial claims as historically illiterate. The relationship between the two states was technically diplomatic and practically hostile.

  And yet, despite all the divergence, the Soviet Union still fell on December 26, 1991. This just made William more sure of his theory that something, whether that be an individual, a group, or just the laws of the universe, was keeping all the broad strokes of history the same. Why are things so different? Fuck you, Romulus. You did this! He cursed Romulus in his mind. Despite all these changes, for major events to remain unchanged, it is improbable to think an individual or a group could do this. As Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once said, when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Therefore, the fundamental laws of the universe that we don't know of should be the culprit.

  William looked to the side, over Eve, through the window of the plane. They were still a few hours away from Japan. He sighed. Why does she take the window seat if she's just gonna sleep? He was aggrieved. But then, he sighed again. She's my girlfriend, so I guess she gets the preferential treatment? He smiled. Her head stirred slightly against his shoulder. He stilled, not wanting to wake her up. After a minute, Eve's breathing returned to normal.

  Should I change the title?