A feature of modern life, in the Grid world

Much of what life is like in the modern world, where the Grid is used, is influenced by the destruction of Washington D.C. by a nuclear weapon that had been smuggled into the city and detonated. A rump government was established in Philadelphia, where one of the first steps was to require every adult to carry a sidearm. Sadly, there was a pogram that spontaneously happened after the attack, so that many atrocities were committed by Americans running wild and killing and destroying property. Since the attack was made by radical Muslims, Muslims and property were targeted. Close to two years were required to re-establish order and a working government, operating under marshal law. There was a great debate in government circles about the propriety of hitting Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan with nuclear-tipped missiles. Rather than do that, we mobilized a great army and invaded and occupied all three, committing the usual atrocities along the way.

The Grid makes life difficult for Islamic radicals and common criminals

Once the Grid appeared, a natural application was to use it for criminal investigation and anti-Islamic radical purposes. Radical environmentalists and so-called animal rights activists also are targets. What all those miscreants hate is that the Grid can be turned to the location and moment when something bad happened and track and the authorities can track forward and backward in time and space and see where the peretrators came from and where they went. Some of the details are so secret that we cannot be sure if they can capture wireless or landline phone conversations or not. Email is simple, because you would be able to watch a message being typed into a computer, PDA, or phone.

Time travel

We suspect that the inventors of "the Grid", with the encouragement of the authorities chose to keep time travel to a "pseudo-presence, back in time. We believe that a physical presence would be too risky and would threaten to disrupt the present ("here and now"). Speculative thinkers, such as H. Beam Piper and L. Sprague DeCamp, had suggested, at least by my interpretation, that there would just be new branches created by attempts to travel back in time. Suppose you could redial the clock back to this morning and have a second chance at the current day. You would be able to experiment with alternative behavior that you would hope would produce better results. Just imagine what chaos could be generated by large numbers of people doing just this sort of thing...every day.

Language changes

We definitely know that the English spoken in 1652 was quite different than English spoken today. There is also the question of accent, as an American visiting England often has a hard time understanding what people are saying, despite the fact that they are nominally speaking the same English language. I have less exposure to English spoken by the English, and what I have heard is understandable. The question is: how much has spoken Dutch changed since 1652 and how easily would a modern Dutch speaker understand what was being said in 1652 and 1653? We are just guessing when we expect that we would not have a problem understanding 1652 Dutch, as we don't exactly have any recordings just lying around (yet).

Doing our homework

Prior to actually collection data for the initial encounters between the Dutch and English off the Start and off Dover in May 1652, we need to "do our homework". Part of that involves compiling lists of ships and captains, including known dimensions and guns. If any of the ships were drawn by Willem van de Velde the Elder, we need to have copies of the drawings available to consult. We also need as much as is available for the English ships. Many of the ships built as warships appear in Van de Velde drawings, so we need those. There will be many times as much time spent analyzing the data collected as was needed to collect it. We will also be spending a great deal more time than the "wall clock time" of the actual events.

We need to record audio, as well

I don't know why we had not thought of recording audio, as well, but we had not. We also need to have some Dutch speakers who are familiar with the period and naval history, so that we can get a real time assessment of what is being said by the Dutch. We may need to see if we can find historians who are familiar with the 17th Century English, as we may not be able to understand as much as we think. I think that we will be able to make a major contribution to understanding the exact circumstances of what happened at the outbreak of the First Anglo-Dutch War. I would like to hear what Lieutenant-Admiral Tromp heard from Joris van der Zaan that put him in a fighting mood.

Wondering about the opening shots in the war

While thinking more about recording the opening shots of the First Anglo-Dutch War (the Dutch call the war the Eerste Engelse Oorlog), I realized that we should first look at incident off the Start, where Anthony Young's small squadron stopped Jacob Huyrluyt, Joris van der Zaan, and their seven Straatsvaarders that they were convoying. Joris van der Zaan's report to Lieutenant-Admiral Tromp is what so incensed Tromp that he was angry and not ready to take any of what he felt was abuse by the English. Robert Blake, the English admiral, was nominally a friend of Tromp's, but he had some responsibility for this incident, as well. After all, the had what was almost certainly, a 32pdr demi-cannon fired at the Dutch flagship's hull. At close range, this shot was so powerful, that the shot went completely through both sides of the Brederode's hull.

Preparations for a data collection run with the Grid

We decided that we would make our first data collection run on 29 May 1652, off Dover the Downs. We would watch and record the events that lead to the outbreak of the First Anglo-Dutch War. We should be able to confirm that the Dutch flagship Brederode fired a broadside a Robert Blake's flagship James after Blake had fired a round completely through the Brederode, taking the arm off one man in the process. Blake had ostensibly fired a "warning shot" to remind the Dutch that they were supposed to salute by dipping their flags and topsails. For the shot to have gone through the Brederode probably meant that it was from a 32pdr demi-cannon on the lower tier of the James.

We had precalculated the coordinates that should place us over Dover, looking down in early 29 May. We would then adjust to get a better view and position in the temporal axis. We would then capture a quick overall all view and then take 3D models of the ships, Dover castle, and the gun emplacements on the shore. We needed to get the particulars of how each was armed. For the ships, we needed to go into the ship and grab images of papers, including log books, or whatever they had. We needed to find papers that would allow us to confirm the name of each ship and as much as we could find about the crew and provisions.

The Grid

The Grid has many useful features. We can scan through space and time with it and get a visual image that we can use to steer the search. We have enough fine control that we can image each page in a stack of papers. On a more macro level, we can grab 3D models of solid objects. We also have the ability to capture video over time, not to just grab snapshots. Snapshots are useful, though, so we have the ability take those as well. On the cosmic scale, there are complex mathematical problems to be solved to locate the exact position and time to focus the grid. The Earth and solar system are moving through the universe, and we must know where to look to see a scene, such as the Dutch fleet off the Shetlands in early August 1652.

We are researching a "safe topic"

I had wondered why we received permission to use "the Grid". I am guessing that we want to research a "safe topic" that would generate few problems. Topics that would be decidedly "not safe" would be wanting to look at Jesus's crucifixion and the resurrection or Moses parting the Red Sea, during the Exodus from Egypt. There is no way that uncleared persons would be allowed to go that far back in time, simply because they are such potentially explosive topics.

How could you keep any of this secret?

With all this fascinating and exciting news, how could you keep it secret? The answer has to be security clearances, really tough non-disclosure contracts, and people only know a piece of the story. Information is compartmentalized and one person only knows a piece. They also know who knows what information. If any appears in the press, they know exactly who to give polygraph exams to and they will do bad things to whomever discloses information. There are some pieces of the story that are capital offenses to disclose.

Faster than light drive

About the same time as the Grid, a faster than light drive was invented. This used a slightly different aspect of the same phenomenon as the Grid. Faster than light drive is more difficult and uses even more energy than the Grid, as the drive involves an actual presence, while the Grid only involves a pseudo-presence, albeit at a location remote in time and space.

The drawback of the Grid

The main drawback of the Grid is that a nuclear power plant is needed to drive the equipment. That remote viewing over hundreds of years takes a great deal of electric power. The whole process is made possible by quirks in quantum mechanics there discovered part way into the 21st Century. When the government realized the potential of the system, the entire process was declared to be "Top Secret, Special Compartmented Information". Every effort was taken to squash any public knowledge of the technology. Gradually, however rumors surfaced in the scientific community about a great scientific breakthrough.

We really need to study the English navy in 1652 to 1654, as well

The Commonwealth, under Cromwell, was either very bad at record-keeping or the records were largely lost at the Restoration about the English navy during the First Anglo-Dutch War, or even more, the period from 1642 to 1660. After Oliver Cromwell's death, with Richard Cromwell ruling, civil order had begun to deteriorate. There were men setting themselves up, in England, as warlords. The situation had gotten so bad by 1660, that there was popular support for restoring the monarchy and enthroning Charles II as King. Under those circumstances, General Monck marched his army on London and overthrew the Commonwealth government, such as remained of it. Edward Montagu took a squadron of ships across the Channel with Charles and James and brought them to England. What ensued was an orgy of retribution against the remaining principals of the rebellion and Commonwealth. Bodies of important Commonwealth officials were removed from Westminster Cathedral and were dumped in a mass grave. Cromwell's remains are somewhat shrouded in mystery. His head may have been separated fromthe rest of his body, spirited off, and preserved.

We want to be able to recognize individual Dutch and English ships when we see them

One goal of our research with the Grid is to be able to recognize the individual Dutch and English warships when we see them. We want to watch the battles of the First Anglo-Dutch War, particularly, and watch the action unfold. To really tell what is happening in detail, we need to be able to identify the ships on each side. We will need to build up a recognition database, with 3D models of the ships. Fortunately, the Grid is able to capture the detailed shapes of objects that we are viewing. If needed, after we have built up our database of models, we can use model-matching techniques, where needed, to identify ships in the battles.

One of our longer term goals was to find document stores

We knew that we wanted to find the stores of documents in the offices of the five Dutch admiralties in 1652 and 1653 and the store held by Johan de Witt, the Stadt Holder. The Grid would allow us to see every page in a stack of papers. This is the sort of functionality that is invaluable to us future historians. We will have seen the actual documents and not have to be content with what has survived until the 21st Century. We want to also find Willem van de Velde the Elder's studio and his stash of ship drawings. We want to do that despite our ability to see the actual ships and image them completely.

We planned a grid mission to take pictures of Dutch ships in the summer of 1652

We were planning our grid mission to take pictures of Dutch warships in the summer of 1652. We were particularly looking for information in the archives about Admiral Tromp's flagship, the Brederode, to help us locate at a suitable date and to help us to recognize the ship. I suspected that since the Brederode was one of the largest ships in the Dutch fleet that we should be able to pick out the ship from the rest. We wanted a bow, stern, and both sides. We would also take pictures of other ships in the fleet and see if we could collect information to help us identify the ships.

"The Grid"

"The Grid" was an invention from the first century of the new millenium. The grid allows us to look back in time, without being physically present. The grid is positioned through space and time to a particular location. The grid has a feature that allows us to "scan" through space and time to better locate an event. There is a set of vernier controls that control the X, Y, and Z positions in space and the T position in time. The grid can also be "swung" vertically and horizontally. We have the ability to move to a cabin in a ship and to look through a stack of papers.

A nasty feature of the grid is that there is no privacy. Everything can be known. Just think about the ability to watch a crime taking place and to follow a criminal from the crime scene, so that he can be arrested.

If we can do that, just think about the implications about being able to go back in time and see Noah's ark, the parting of the Red Sea, the Resurrection, and other religious events. That results would be so explosive, that having anything to do with such snooping is punishable by death. If anyone does know, they had better not make any disclosures, as doing so would be catastrophic. Because of that, locks have been put in place in the equipment so that this sort of snooping is not possible.

I was scared

There is no worse feeling than being hunted. Worse yet, it was this alien being with a blaster. I was unprotected, except by my feeble wits. I kept ducking and dodging, and only survived by chance. I was scared and almost in a panic. I couldn't give in to panic, however, as then I would be dead (burnt to ashes). We are running and dodging among large stones in the ruined city. How did I survive this far? I didn't know, but was grateful. I was dressed in my black Florsheims and blue Dockers, with a bright blue dress shirt, not hard to miss. My hunter was the usual dull grey that covered these guys in an exo-skeleton. What could I do next and where could I go?

I keep driving on the road, surrounded by green grass and trees

The road is narrow and winding, with no curb. I am driving at a modest speed, enjoying the lush green grass and tree branches and leaves overhead. The branches reach over the asphalt from both sides. I am driving a blue Altima of uncertain age, but with the rounded body style. This is very familiar territory to me, as I have driven this in my mind many times. I am heading for the downtown and will arrive as night falls. After dark, I often end up driving in circles, as I have infrequently driven the streets. Parking is always bothersome, as there are few spots on the street and those with 24-hour meters.