XPost: soc.history.what-if, alt.history.what-if   
   From: dtravel@sonic.net   
      
   On 6/13/2020 10:02 AM, pyotr filipivich wrote:   
   > Greetings all   
   >   
   > 	I was talking with The Wife about an alt-history scenario   
   > involving a sudden resource shortage, and hand waved the question of   
   > how it started by saying "Alien Space Bats did it."  Immediately, she   
   > then went straight to the point: If the Space Bats did it, then   
   > wouldn't we be pestering them for solutions to the problems they   
   > provided/caused?   
   >   
   > 	Which was an interesting diversion from the subject, but thinking   
   > about it, how do the ASB accomplish their tasks, and how much would   
   > contemporary Humans notice?  I keep coming back to the stock answer   
   > "Depends upon The Needs of the Plot."   
   > 	Aliens - Humanoids   
   > 	Aliens - non-humanoid   
   > 	Robots / doids   
   > 	Artifacts (books, working models, copies of "lost" things,   
   > "anachronistic" items placed where they will be found*)   
   > 	Time Travelers   
   > 	Time traveling Aliens   
   > 	Time Traveling alien robots.   
   > 	Time Traveling alien Robots with artifacts.   
   >   
   > 	And of course you have the issue of whether a time traveler knows   
   > how he did it, knows how to do it again, _can_ do it again ("And here   
   > I am in 12th century Wales and all I need to get back is ... a wall   
   > socket and house current..")   
   >   
   > 	Same goes for the ASB.  Do they know what they are doing, or is it   
   > a side effect of something else they are doing?**  Did they leave   
   > something as a "seed / catalyst" element?  Deliberately, or it just   
   > got forgotten?   
   >   
   The answer is "No one knows because Alien Space Bats did it."   
      
      
   --   
      
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)