"Dad, I wish 1066 had never happened,"
my son says to me, with a dead serious look on his face. Waiting for me to
challenge his opinion on the Norman Invasion of England.
"Whatever, son. It happened," I say.
We've discussed this a hundred times. Maybe 200. "You have to get over
it."
"They destroyed true English," he
persists. "We speak a bastardized version of English." He says
'bastardized' like it's a curse word.
"Bastardized version. Bastardized." He
rolls the word off his tongue, tasting its bile.
The stop bell rings, some passengers get on and
off. We accelerate, the parade of small storefronts that is a New Zealand
cityscape resumes. The boy thinks for a while.
"Dad." Another subject is coming.
“If Disney has just bought out Marvel Comics, and
Warner Brothers bought out DC, do you think Fox should buy out Dark Horse
Comics”?
“I guess, son.” He waits for more. “I suppose,
but Dark Horse is owner-created work. They don’t have the ownership of the
titles the older companies have. That makes it less of an attractive property
for the big companies.”
“Why do you think no one’s bought out Archie
comics?”
“Not sure, son,” I say. “You’d have to look that
up on the Internet.” That seems to satisfy him for a moment.
"What do you think the impact on the
Abrahamic faiths if Hannibal had gone ahead and destroyed Rome during the
Second Punic War?"
I look at him. Not getting a rise out of me, he
continues. "The area did have two other empires... the Seleucids of Persia
and the Ptolomies of Egypt. What do you think they would have done with those
two empires if there was no Rome?
"Dammit, how should I know?" I snap,
while trying not to attract attention from the other riders. "I'm not an
expert on biblical religious/political development!"
"Okay." he says, crestfallen. I know
what he’s doing. He's looking for new material for his alternate history
timeline, a document he's been working on for over a year. The two dozen or so
paragraphs he's written are constantly reviewed, rewritten and edited as he
learns new information on the subject. Or if I learn new information.
"I think they would have had a harder time
spreading out from the Holy Lands if Rome wasn't there. There'd be no structure
to ease its spread without Rome," he says, a little hurt.
He looks ahead and mutters to himself about
Seleucids. I sigh.
"Look son,” I say, giving in. “The iron-age Judeans
found themselves in the unfortunate position of being in the front lines of
territory disputed between two powerful neighbours.
"In your timeline, for over two centuries
the empires would have fought a back-and-forth war that devastated the Jewish
lands and decimated their populations. Many tribes found themselves having to adopt
the faith of their conquerors to survive."
"Yeah, so what can I say in my timeline?"
he asks.
I think for a moment.
"How about this: while some tribes remained
monotheistic, the religion was never the basis for the sweeping spread of the
Christian faith of the 1st century and on into Rome. Any information about the
historical Jesus, and the subsequent Gospels, were lost in the battlefields and
to history. A few converts came here and there as word spread about Jesus, but
these populations were small and eventually died out.
"That ok?
"Yeah," he says, deadpan.
"What do you think of that?" I ask again.
"It's good," he replies. "AIso,
but now I've come to the conclusion that maybe It would've been impossible for
Hannibal to destroy Rome during his initial assault, it would've taken years.
Maybe he would've marched on to Rome, severely damaging the city, then
retreating only to come back after a while to finish it off completely."
"It
sounds like you are thinking the same thoughts Hannibal must have had two millennia
ago about Rome," I tell him, trying to be encouraging. It's not a bad
hobby to have, after all, and he learns a lot of history.
"He thought it would be too hard and costly
too, which is why he didn't attack," I continue. "But he was unable
after two years or longer to defeat Rome after they got their breather. In
fact, it took almost a decade, and he lost in the end. So if that's the case,
Carthage would have lost. So I think it's just best to say, for the sake of the
timeline you've written, that he did decide to attack, and he was successful
doing it. That way the rest of the history makes sense.
"I think Carthage would have lost to a
Celtic Empire," my sons says, referring to another branch of the timeline.
"It's possible son," I say. I'm
repeating myself for the tenth time, but for him, sometimes just hearing the
words brings him comfort. "The Celts would have been gaining more power
from their trade with Carthage, they had a healthy population. Perhaps they
would have taken some land from Carthage when it was declining."
"Do you think a Celtic Empire would have
fought the Seleucids eventually?" he continues.
"The Celts were forest people, though,"
says a young man, turning to face us from the seat ahead. He's tattooed, has
long hair, thin. "They may have not
gone that far south."
I look at him for a second. Wondering if to
engage.
"Sorry to interrupt," the young dude
says. "But I was listening to you, and found what you were talking about
fascinating."
"No problem," I say, and my son
continues to converse with the stranger on the bus. They discuss strategies and
tactics, Iron Age geopolitical realities and what-ifs. They compare notes on
Celtic armament and resources.
It's rare there’s someone else to pick up the
ultra-detailed conversations, so I have no problem letting hipster dude engage
for a while. With autism, you never know how and when you'll connect with
someone. You take advantage of the small windows that open up for the boy to
have real-time conversation.
I happily gaze out at the passing shops and
houses of Wellington, silently appreciating the world of the here and now.
Travelling with autism means rarely being in that world.
Soon enough, we'll be discussing the evolution of
synaptic reptiles. Or more on corporate ownership trends in Hollywood. Or
Muslim extremism. You never know.
