Issue 13: Fiction
Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History: Einstein Saves Hiroshima
by Phong Nguyen
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), theoretical physicist and famed discoverer of the Theory of Relativity, also played a curious role in the failed Manhattan Project (1940-1945). Soon after his sixtieth birthday, while living and working in Princeton, New Jersey, he was visited by a former student, Leó Szilárd (1898-1964), who had been doing ground-breaking research on nuclear chain reactions (based, in part, upon Einstein’s own research in Physics), and who had approached Einstein with the proposition that they compose a letter warning President Roosevelt of the possibility of Germany developing nuclear weapons. Knowing, of course, this would mean that the United States government would be compelled to develop nuclear weapons of its own, Einstein demurred. Anticipating heinous future acts of war featuring unfathomable civilian casualties, Einstein regarded it his duty to not contribute to the development of those weapons.
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- The Very Vexatious Tribulations of Mr. Mortimer Winklehouse by Henry F. Tonn
Mortimer Winklehouse stood in line at the supermarket, patiently waiting to buy a box of prunes. His eyes were glazed over in a vacant stare and he was contemplating nothing in particular. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a beautiful girl in a tiny bikini staring at him. She had a flat stomach, beautiful tan, and generous breasts that spilled abundantly over her colorful red top. She wasn’t real, of course, she adorned the cover of a magazine, but her lust for him was unmistakable. Feverishly, his mind began to conjure up lurid details of past desires that had never come to fruition. He became weak-kneed and faint. He staggered out of the store and drove directly home where he took a long nap. For the rest of the evening he was punchy and lethargic. He forgot to bring home his prunes.
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