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Description

A somewhat older one I forgot to put up.

This is meant to be a somewhat more realistic "reimagining" of Harry Turtledove's WorldWar setting, with the reptilian Race not being quite the total idiots the books sometimes makes them out to be (honestly, how were they supposed to have figured out space travel in the first place? That's some risky, high-cost, low-return stuff in its early stages).

Warning: massive notes ahead

It’s 2011, and the Race still rules most of the world. There is no FTL starship coming along to save the day for humanity, this not being the Ass-Pull Universe.
Human beings are accustomed to the race: the invasion will soon see its 70th anniversary, and most people do not remember a world without them. It’s not like they aren’t still seen as the Enemy, but they are no longer aliens, but part of the “normal” world, like Soviets OTL.

THE RACE AND THEIR LANDS

The Race are hairless, scaly egg-layers, but they’re not really reptiles: their scales are more like the fused hair of a Pangolin, their joints are arranged differently from the upright therapods of our world, and their globular, turret-eyed heads, and their many, many pale blue, sharp little teeth aren’t really reptilian. Still, “Lizards” they most resemble, “Lizards” they were named, and “Lizards” they remain, despite the grumbling of exobiologists. Their civilization has written records going back some 100,000 years, and the current Imperial House has ruled their entire planet for some 50,000 years. They are conservative and unimaginative by nature, and although not actually _stupider_ than humans, tend to follow chains of logic with a ponderous determination that most humans tend to find excruciating. On the other hand, their capacities for learning and steady, plodding work are substantial. If by human standards overly accepting of received opinion and precedent, they are also less likely to be carried off by new ideological will-o-the-whims, cults, and fads: while it is almost impossible to convince a member of the Race of something contrary to experience without actual evidence, they less likely to stubbornly double down on an accepted belief in the face of solid evidence than most humans. They are ultimately a pragmatic people.

The Race, being R-selective breeders with a mating season, abundant egg production, and offspring able to fend for themselves in the wild from birth, do not have families. Instead, the base unit of Race civilization is the “clan”, as humans call it, which descends from the single-sex “packs” in which their distant ancestors foraged and hunted together, adopting and socializing younglings of their own sex to make up for losses. In the modern era, these are loose congregations of friends and allies and useful specialists centered on a few charismatic leader-types, sharing the duties of socializing and incorporating the young and assisting eachother in attaining their goals. In early eras these were single-sex, but in modern times they usually consist of members of both genders, only separating during the mating season. (Mating with a fellow clan-member is considered very squicky, and the taboos are at least as strong as those related to incest in our society). Young members of the Race bond to those that raise them, and are generally as emotionally tied to their clan elders as humans are to their parents, in spite of the lack of genetic bonds. The Emperor is worshipped as, so to speak, the leader of the greater racial “clan of clans.”

Religious enthusiasm is not a major factor in Race history: the notion of exclusive revelations and eternal punishment for those who diverge from dogma has never caught on, and the state religion is in some ways like the Roman state faith, a thing of ritual and form which people carry out as a matter of course, ornately decorated with bits and pieces derived from the varied religions of long-vanished independent Race nations. Many Race members of a scientific turn of mind, if questioned, admit being uncertain as to whether spirits of past Emperors are actually watching over them, but there no point in arguing over it: it is after all a useful tradition, and it makes no demands re ones beliefs about the physical universe, and any contradictions are corrected and rewritten by the Priesthood as they arise, being clearly some sort of error in interpretation. (Getting violent over fine points of religious dogma is another human characteristic the Race find a bit puzzling).

The Race tend naturally to hierarchical societies, and find the notion of essentially using a poll of an uninformed population as a means of selecting leaders absurd. Like the Chinese Empire, the Race is big on tests, although for a number of millennia now of practical know-how and historical precedent rather than their equivalent of the Confucian Classics. The Race has science, but not quite as we know it: the notion of knowledge for knowledge’s sake is alien to them, and the notion of the scientist as a revolutionary, a shattered of paradigms and a demolisher of old, outdated notions is downright repugnant. There is research, and experimentation, on an extensive scale: but it is always a matter of building and extending what is already known, not bold speculation. Race scientific theory tends to grow slowly and cumbersomely, with added cycles and epicycles until the contradictions grow too great: contradictions tend to make members of the Race uncomfortable, and with painful slowness an imperfect theory will be poked at, changes proposed and examined, alternatives gone through with plodding thoroughness, until after looking at the geocentric and the polycentric and the circular orbits and the oval orbits and the heliocentric with epicycles the final elliptical orbits-with-heliocentrism model is examined and found to plug in all the holes, after which the scholars sigh with relief and get back to putting together that 600 volume atlas of stellar observations of the last three millennia.

This sort of approach leads to different results in different disciplines. Since the Race has a cosmological model that fits the observed universe with no really important holes, they have been happy to stick with it for millennia rather than try other models, and see no point in expensive experiments to test it. It's not like there are any obvious benefits to building a particle accelerator with the circumference of a planet. On the other hand, since medical and biochemical theories have actual and observable effects on the lives and well-being of other Race members, the sciences of medicine and genetics and biochemistry slowly but steadily move forward over the centuries, one folded-molecule model at a time. This means that the Race has what are called “closed” and “open” sciences: cosmology and some fields of physics are considered “closed” fields, and although there are experts in these fields, they are scholars rather than experimentalists, expected to provide useful feedback and information to engineers and scientists working in “open” fields, they are not expected to come up with anything new.

One strength of the Race is expertise: millennia of incremental improvements in medicine and careful genetic tweaks and gene therapy methods have given the Race a lifespan roughly twice as long as the human (although the age distribution doesn’t have quite as long a “tail” as the human one does: no member of the Race has lived to 220, although some do break the two-century mark). Given their capacity for steady work and good memories, a Race expert in some fields can be very good at it: Race soldiers from the invasion are still serving 60-odd years later, and really do know all the tricks backwards and forwards, if less able to come up with new ones than human soldiers, and elderly Race scholars may have a depth of knowledge in their chosen fields to match any three human Professors Emeritus.

The Race doesn’t have the expectation of endless progress humans do: what was good enough for my great-great-grandfather, etc. A comfortable house will not be torn down for a newer model, but repaired and perhaps piecemeal replaced over centuries. As a result, there is a sense of “good enough” re a great number of forms of technology: although a Race combat tank has far better electronics and comfier seating than the model of 20,000 years ago, the armor, propellant, explosives, etc. are all unchanged: since it works fine for its purpose, why make any sweeping changes? A lot of technological advances come from commerce: like terrestrial companies, Race corporations have their R&D companies, which look for changes in their products that would make them more appealing to their customers. Not that a member of the Race would try to sell a product on the basis of it being _new_: rather on the base of its comfort, or utility, or soothing color or smell, and on the basis of testimonials from high-ranked members of society, and, not least, a laundry list of approvals granted by the Government Product Safety Board, the Social Utility Board, the Economic Disruption Rating Agency, and so on and so forth. (Product cycles tend to be…long, but some Race corporations have been around longer than humanity has been living in cities).

All this helps keep in perspective the fact that a race of beings able to travel at more than half the speed of light between stars arrived on Earth with military technology roughly on a par with late 1990s - early 2000s OTL. Fusion-drive starships remain beyond the technological ability, let alone the financial resources, of the early 21st century free human states. Also rather advanced are effective anti-cancer and leukemia gene therapy, genuine holographic projection, and a number of other elements of Race technology. But the Race had no incentive to improve on their military tech (aside from marginal things such as making it less prone to wear and tear, more comfortable to drive, etc.), so they went with Good Enough, at least for the Medieval barbarians they expected to find. As for building new and better weapons – well, innovative thinking is not a Race strong point.

************************************************** *

The Race rule over the majority of the world’s land area, although their population is concentrated in hot, dry areas such as North Africa, Arabia and the Fertile Crescent, Australia, and northern Mexico. Over the past four decades the Race has been dealing with the problem of guerilla warfare and terrorism by simply “draining the pool”: human resistance has been met by mass movements of tens of millions of people: Australia outside of green, damp Tasmania, northern Mexico, and large parts of Arabia and North Africa are nowadays pretty much human-free save for a smallish population of human laborers (perhaps 10% of the total population of these regions) which are carefully identified and vetted (their first effort at creating a truth serum that worked on humans as well as Race members was a flop, but with decades to work on the problem – at the cost of a few hundred “spoiled” test subjects - they have come up with a much more effective product).

Some 200 million Race members now live on Earth, some 40 million in Australia alone. Not all live in the more “pleasant” areas of heat and dryness: tens of millions are settled at strategic points of control in Tropical Africa, Latin America, India, and China. Since the situation is now a permanent Soldiers Time, some 7% of every litter is raised by Soldier clans: some 15 million male and female Race soldiers keep order throughout the Empire on which the sun Tosev AKA Sol never sets. Most of these are not combat troops, but are trained in peace-keeping, insurgency suppression, etc. The Race troops are supplemented by lightly armed (often just electric-shock sticks and knockout gas bombs) human auxiliaries, a force of some 10 million drawn from the more pacific of their subject peoples and deployed in regions other than their homelands.

These troops maintain order (or try to, anyway) over some 3 billion people. This is rather fewer than inhabit the area OTL: the demographic transition has been earlier, for a number of reasons. The Race, which has little sexual dimorphism compared to humanity, also has no real difference in status between male and female: they generally behaved the same with respect to human women, when it came to jobs, education, etc. Noting the fast-multiplying tendencies of their human subjects, the Race were quick to duplicate and mass-produce first the condom, and after it was developed in free human territory, the Pill. Also, in much of Africa and parts of Latin America (if not in East Asia) economic development was faster than OTL, as well as growth in literacy (universal mastery of the Race spoken and written language was considered an important prerequisite for the assimilation of humanity into the community of the Empire.) There are those who, like some Palestinians OTL, fight the “battle of the wombs” and resist all means of birth control as a Race plot, but they are not numerous enough to buck the general trend.

Normally, the process of modernizing a conquered world up to Race Home standards would take place over a few centuries, to prevent severe disruptions of subject society, and equally important, give them time to assimilate into the Race system before giving them full access to powerful technology that might be turned against the rulers. Given the need to develop local industries, both military and civilian, to compete with the Free Humans, not to mention the whole Hearts and Minds thing arising from their subjects remaining stuck in pre-industrial poverty while Free Humans prospered, things were substantially accelerated, much to the discomfort of Race administrators, who curse Fleetlord Atvar's name every time new "impossible" goals are set. Infrastructure was built up, with a lot of human sweat: the Race may be civilized, but have no qualms about using mass corvee labor, although unlike, say, the USSR, the Race generally fed and hydrated it’s laborers adequately (admittedly, occasionally shooting people to Encourage the Others if slacking got too ridiculous). Factories, run by a mix of humans and Race overseers popped up from Paraguay to Poland. Of course, in the more developed areas humans built their own factories, often through loans from the scrupulously honest and monumentally traditional Race banking system, (which has not brought on a financial crisis since before the walls of Jericho were raised) and sometimes in partnership with entrepreneurial Race members. (Conflicts often arise between the leadership and outraged Financial, Safety, and Social Utility officials over the sloppy standards and the absurd speed at which permits are granted to human andRace industrial projects here on Earth: the leadership reasonably points out that things are even sloppier and more hurried in Free Human territories, and the point is to keep a lead, not fall behind gracefully).

Economic development has been uneven: the economy of the Race settlements tends towards the capitalistic, while the push to build military-industrial complexes has distorted the economics of the human-settled areas. (Distressingly, the Race on earth has finally put together a high-tech military industry superior to anything back on Home, only to find that the terrestrials are now putting out still better models). Levels of development vary: most of Africa is rather wealthier than in our world, while China (in part due to the endless insurgencies that plague that land) is poorer: Latin America is roughly comparable, while all parts of Race-controlled territory contribute more of their output to military manufacturing than they do OTL. A large share of that output comes from the Race settlements, which are a world of their own, with a standard of living (for Race members, anyway) superior to that of Tosev III’s USA. (The Race does not tolerate the socially detrimental effects of poverty, and in any event their clan-like organizations means that everyone has a substantial social support network: the occasional oddball who cannot find a clan to fit into is provided a support system and given work by the state - whether they want it or not).

Race territory is laced together with high-speed rail and highways, powered by fusion plants, and peppered with millions of hidden cameras, another idea taken from human beings. It can be divided into several major sections: Race heavy settlement areas, China, SE Asia north of the Japanese territories, India, the still-human majority Muslim regions of the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the European territories.

Race heavy settlement areas are typically hot and dry, and Race vegetation and animal life is very noticeable. Imports from Home, they do not do well in humid and/or cold environments, but out-compete their terrestrial equivalents in desert and semi-desert environments. The Race is better at dealing with desert environments than any earthly civilization: Race cities are marvels of water saving and recirculation (the human obsession with swimming pools and fountains in hot, dry climates simply baffles them), massive fusion-powered desalination plants provide water to irrigate vast stretches of the Sahara, SW Africa and interior Australia, and fusion is supplemented by huge solar power farms. Specialized plants hold together sandy soils while sending down taproots hundreds of feet. When it comes to making deserts bloom, the Race makes Israelis look like _pikers_.

Said Race cities tend to be made of utilitarian, cubical or rectangular buildings: ornamentation is meant for the inside of buildings, where it will not be harmed by sun or wind-driven sand. A Race city is a well-designed machine built for regular repairs and maintenance: such things as sewage, electricity, water, etc. are designed to be easily accessible for expansion if the city grows, and if it does not to last with minimal maintenance for centuries. The Race has been living in cities for ten times as long as humankind, and they are adapted to urban life: human cities are hideous ramshackle affairs tossed together in a fit of absentmindedness, from the POV of a Race urban designer. Public transportation is always available, everything in conveniently located, everything works and is neat and Swiss-clean, and tends to slowly devour the soul of any humans of the bohemian disposition unfortunate enough to find themselves living there.

Race rule over human territory is autocratic, but legalistic: the Race has no compunctions about using force up to nuking cities to maintain control, but everything is done by the book: there are no random atrocities, aside from the occasional brutalities of severely stressed soldiers. In areas where terrorist action is minor or absent, people are generally safe in their lives and property, and now that the basic work of building an infrastructure is done, are at no risk of being conscripted into a labor battalion, although a certain amount of service to the State is required on a regular basis. Humans usually participate in the Race administration, in increasing numbers and influence in relatively secure areas, although no Race member ever serves in a position under a human (this will change given another century or two, Race officials assure). The legal system works efficiently and is generally impartial between human and Race, although humans are liable for heavily punished crimes Race members are not, principally because no Racemember would, say, (save perhaps the craziest of exiles in human territory) spread anti-Emperor propaganda.

Censorship is, admittedly, rife. Television and radio news always presents the Empire and Race rule in a positive light, and the Internet (which is not connected to that of the Free Human territories – see below) is more heavily policed than that of OTL China. School educational programs must pass Race approval, histories must present the Raceoccupation as superior to human self-rule, references to the benefits of democracy are to be removed, and all must attend classes about the Greatness of the Empire and the Sacredness of Former Emperors. Most fiction is acceptable if it is not too ideologically pro-independence or pro-democracy, and skilled authors can usually make their way around the Race censors, which often have trouble with human satire and metaphor. Quisling human censors are more of a problem, and indeed sometimes have to be reined in by Raceauthorities.

The European territories of France and Poland are a bit of a special case, the well-developed political culture on the one hand meaning that the locals run most of the day-to-day details of the human economies and administration, while the looming menaces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union means that they are in no great rush to throw theRace out. (Which is not to say there are no terrorist groups, but they lack much popular support). Human-Race relations are on more cordial terms, and the human economy is almost as developed as that of the Race settlements. Spain and Portugal, on the other hand, separated from the Nazis by Race-held France, lack such inhibitions, and terrorism is a common problem. The Iberian terrorists aren’t as bad as the Chinese ones, less willing to turn their country into a wasteland if it means causing trouble for the Race, but the local economy is in substantially worse shape than Poland’s.

Human cities rebuilt or built up after the War tend to incorporate Race architectural styles and techniques, but in an often imperfect and partial manner that greatly annoysRace urban management and planning officials: but if humans build their houses and infrastructure on their own dime, it’s more trouble than it is worth to force them to keep toRace standards of construction.
Generally speaking, fewer people under Race rule paint their skins or shave their heads than do in US territory: it is the equivalent of hanging a big sign with “COLLABORATOR” on it around their necks, and even in the most peaceful areas, it’s not sensible to provoke the terrorist types.

Sub-Saharan Africa used to be second only to the “loyal two” (as Race officials sometimes refer to Poland and France) as the most peaceful of Race-occupied territories: local independence movements were quite weak when the Race invaded, and after getting over their fear that the Race would eat them or father hideous half-lizard babies on their women, the Africans found that the Race were generally better and fairer administrators than the Europeans they replaced, and more determined to improve their lot, if on the downside that meant a more unpaid labor. There have been rebellions of course, and various resistance groups, but the Africans haven’t seen white people army one since 1942, and are rather skeptical that 1.) They are likely to be liberated any time soon and 2.) That they will find things better under their “liberators”, given Nazi and Japanese ideologies.

So, Africa remained fairly quiet under Race rule for quite a while, but of late there have been increasing problems: overall, under Race rule, economic growth has kept ahead of population growth, and the area is definitely wealthier than OTL, but the locals, not having an inter-dimensional viewer, are unaware of that while being quite grumpily aware about how much better off Americans are. (Nor are they grateful for the Race doctors who successfully contained an AIDS outbreak in its early stages).

The resettlement in various (non-Muslim) areas of Muslims removed from Race-settled areas to the north has led of late to increased inter-community violence as well as a sharp increase in terrorist activity. (Some Race members now are suggesting the resettlement of the Muslims in China instead, in an “all the addled eggs in one basket” approach.) Compounding these difficulties, Race crops and plants and animals are displacing local varieties in the drier parts of Africa, which is driving farmers and pastoralists from their land: although Race food distribution is efficient and there is no starvation, a great many now (further) impoverished people are flocking to the cities: while there is a lot of shiny new infrastructure, high growth rates from land flight as well as from natural increases (still fairly high in spite of Race efforts) means that most of the nice new cities are surrounded by familiar-from-OTL shantytowns of people too poor to afford for-profit-constructed housing. (The Race government, often cash-strapped due to unavoidable military costs, is reluctant to subsidize housing for _all_ those people). From Cairo to Capetown, the Race struggles to prevent an explosion.

India is not doing too badly from either the local or the Race perspective. Race rule replaced British rule, and a lot of Indians simply accepted that they would not be able to overthrow these new, more powerful overlords: they were after all accustomed to foreign rule (admittedly, a bit less foreign…). Gandhi of course made trouble, but ended up dumped in Saudi Arabia, where his views on non-violent resistance were not widely appreciated. There have of course been rebellions, but the divided nature of Indian society and the useful advice provided by many captured former administrators (once the usual racist bullshit was filtered out) has allowed the Race to remain fairly firmly in control: the fact that there has been little Race settlement in India, outside the lower Indus desert regions, has helped. Economic growth has been substantial, and the maintenance of the Caste system has won the Race the loyalty of much of the more religious-minded Brahmin population: Hindu and Sikh troops have proven themselves as useful auxiliaries in maintaining order in more fractious parts of the Race’s planetary empire.

Still, all is not well. Gandhi may be long gone, but the Indians are masters of Good Soldier Svejk obfuscation to baffle Race plans and make things unworkable without anyone doing anything shooting-worthy: through various means fair and sneaky, the Indian upper classes push for greater autonomy and self-rule and freedom from annual service to theRace government. And the Hindus have the advantage of playing “good cop” to the Muslim “bad cop”: the Unpleasantness in places like the Arab world and Iran and what is left of Afghanistan (the Race have done some people-moving on a scale that would impress Stalin) has infected many Indian Muslims, especially in the west, with Jihad Fever. Look at Lahore or Karachi. You really wouldn’t want that to happen in Bombay or Delhi, now?

Latin America is a variegated picture, from Mexico and Venezuela, almost as rebellion-wracked as China or the Fertile Crescent, to terrorism-troubled but rapidly growing Brazil, to downright peaceable Bolivia, where the high altitudes keep the Race largely away and the native and mixed majority has seen itself raised to equal status with the lighter-skinned traditional rulers (many of which have since moved to areas such as Argentina and Chile, where one can be a bigot in peace ). Americans, Nazis and Soviets all do their best to stir up trouble. Latin American culture under Race rule has developed in some odd and occasionally downright hallucinogenic ways (the Magical Realism is serious mind-screw), and the odd new religious mashup between a renewed Feathered Serpent cult and Lizard Emperor worship still puzzles the Race, who aren’t quite sure if they should be flattered or worried. Race settlement has been mostly along the dry coasts of western South America: Lima is a majority Race city nowadays.

The native Amazonian Indians have lucked out: with no jungles on their mostly desert and semi-desert worlds coming close to matching the size and ecological diversity of the Amazon, the Race have set aside nearly a third of Brazil as nature conservations, to be protected from damage and studied by deliriously happy Race biologists. Human-run lumber companies, cattle ranchers and slash and burn cultivators (less than OTL: the Race disapproves of starving peasants) are kept out far more vigorously than OTL: since the locals are too few and scattered to provide much in the way of useful labor, as long as they don’t interfere with Race investigators they are largely left alone. (There are also some Race-run tropical preserves in Africa and SE Asia, but nothing on quite such a scale).

The worst places in Race territory are the Middle East and the Far East, China and Vietnam in particular. Religious resistance to “heathen” Race rule, combined with nationalist rage over large-scale Race settlement in the hot, dry region, has made the peaceful development of this Home-like area almost impossible. Eventually (“More in sorrow than in anger”, in the words of a Race administrator) the Race begin to simply removing the population of particularly unpleasant regions elsewhere, dumping them in other Islamic areas unsuitable for Race settlement or among non-Muslim populations likely to be disagreeable to Islamic terrorists (outright extermination is so far unacceptable: it even squicks out the Race, and in any event would make relations with the free Human Powers even worse than they currently are). Much of the Persian Gulf and eastern Arabia has been depopulated, along with Libya, Mauretania, and a considerable length of Nile valley (huge areas of the Sahara are Race-only, but there weren’t that many people to move out anyway).

The more secular Turks have been less trouble, but tend to resist doing anything but the very minimum of cooperation that will not lead to executions, and tend to make an art of “arrogant incompetence” in any task their masters assign: many have skated a bit too close to the edge and have been shot or jailed, but Turks continue to do it.

A “quietist” Sufi movement has arisen, that explains the Lizards as test from God and a burden to be borne, has emerged in North Africa, and has slowly spread as many grow sick and hopeless from the constant bloodshed. (The Race stopped giving it support when it was explained that such connections tended to get the Sufis assassinated).

Special solutions have been applied to Palestine and the Holy Cities. After a looong period of bloody trouble, the Muslim and Arab population was replaced by Polish and French Catholics and Jews, both happy to be well-behaved inhabitants of the Holy Land (alas, they have started quarreling over who truly belongs there, although so far the shootings have been fairly infrequent). The Muslim reaction to that was bad enough, but the explosion of dissent and violence after the second Race military occupation of the Holy Cities (after they had abused their autonomy by virtually becoming terrorist rest homes) was so bad that a rather peculiar solution was achieved: the only long-term residents of the Holy Cities are now relatively peaceable Muslims from Malaysia and parts of Indonesia on long-term “guest worker” status from the Japanese Empire, which get excellent pay and get to stay long-term in the Holy Cities in exchange for keeping the Pilgrim traffic running smoothly and leaving promptly upon the end of their visit.

The “move ‘em out” method, although it has to some extent intimidated Islamic terror sympathizers elsewhere, is not an ideal solution: there are simply too many Arabs and Iranians to resettle them elsewhere: other groups resent being lumbered with Muslim refugees, keeping them employed is problematic, and those of a Jihadist inclination simply start stirring up shit in their new location. New solutions involving brain chemistry or electronic implants are being methodically investigated (the Race may not be very good at thinking up entirely new tech solutions themselves, but they read a lot of US popular science and technology magazines).

Mongolia is largely left to run itself, if heavily Race-subsidized. Race negotiators didn’t care what validity Soviet claims to Mongolia had: it might have been a total hellhole, but it put some more buffer space between the densely populated regions of China and the Soviets, and correctly estimated that the locals had found the Soviet experience horrible enough that as long as they were largely left in peace and supplied with plentiful weapons, they would gleefully massacre any Soviet infiltrators (some now think they should have done the same with Xinjiang, but no use snapping over spilled water).

If the Middle East is purgatory, China is hell. (Vietnam is Fun-Size hell). Even with Mongolia to some extent neutralized, there are too many miles of more porous border. And while the Soviets have cut down a bit on supporting Middle East violence (worried about the rise of loud, angry Islam in their own nation), they continue to stir the pot in China: a China firmly under Lizard control, adding its potentially formidable industrial output to India and Latin America and Africa, would not be a Good Thing in the eyes of any of the Human Powers. So China continues to bleed: the old Nationalists are gone by this point, and the Communists, although still around, are broken into three major factions: but it doesn’t matter, for a dozen new movements, ever more loony and xenophobic have arisen. The Chinese have to some extent given up on actually driving out the Race by force of arms: after the Race nuked two “liberated” cities, the approach has been to make China a permanent economic drain on the Race, an ungovernable quagmire that will eventually make even the seemingly eternally patient Race throw up its claws in despair and leave. They have to some extent succeeded in making China ungovernable outside a few key cities where collaborators run the show and some ethnic minority areas which dislike the notion of being reabsorbed into China: but the Race’s patience is yet to be exhausted. (Although some of them are now suggesting that since the Race withdrawing would lead to a horrible multi-sided civil war that would discourage further rebellion, the general view remains that while a certain limited amount of autonomy is acceptable for negotiation purposes, the Race cannot afford the loss of prestige involved in a totalwithdrawal from so large a part of its territory).

Finland is the odd man out: the Finns are a race “protectorate”, but pretty much entirely run their own affairs. It is suggested that this arrangement was agreed on by the Raceprincipally because Atvar wanted to put a thumb in the Soviet’s eye.

NOTES: CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

(Darn deviantart only gives me 64 kilobytes)

Description

A somewhat older one I forgot to put up.

This is meant to be a somewhat more realistic "reimagining" of Harry Turtledove's WorldWar setting, with the reptilian Race not being quite the total idiots the books sometimes makes them out to be (honestly, how were they supposed to have figured out space travel in the first place? That's some risky, high-cost, low-return stuff in its early stages).

Warning: massive notes ahead

It’s 2011, and the Race still rules most of the world. There is no FTL starship coming along to save the day for humanity, this not being the Ass-Pull Universe.
Human beings are accustomed to the race: the invasion will soon see its 70th anniversary, and most people do not remember a world without them. It’s not like they aren’t still seen as the Enemy, but they are no longer aliens, but part of the “normal” world, like Soviets OTL.

THE RACE AND THEIR LANDS

The Race are hairless, scaly egg-layers, but they’re not really reptiles: their scales are more like the fused hair of a Pangolin, their joints are arranged differently from the upright therapods of our world, and their globular, turret-eyed heads, and their many, many pale blue, sharp little teeth aren’t really reptilian. Still, “Lizards” they most resemble, “Lizards” they were named, and “Lizards” they remain, despite the grumbling of exobiologists. Their civilization has written records going back some 100,000 years, and the current Imperial House has ruled their entire planet for some 50,000 years. They are conservative and unimaginative by nature, and although not actually _stupider_ than humans, tend to follow chains of logic with a ponderous determination that most humans tend to find excruciating. On the other hand, their capacities for learning and steady, plodding work are substantial. If by human standards overly accepting of received opinion and precedent, they are also less likely to be carried off by new ideological will-o-the-whims, cults, and fads: while it is almost impossible to convince a member of the Race of something contrary to experience without actual evidence, they less likely to stubbornly double down on an accepted belief in the face of solid evidence than most humans. They are ultimately a pragmatic people.

The Race, being R-selective breeders with a mating season, abundant egg production, and offspring able to fend for themselves in the wild from birth, do not have families. Instead, the base unit of Race civilization is the “clan”, as humans call it, which descends from the single-sex “packs” in which their distant ancestors foraged and hunted together, adopting and socializing younglings of their own sex to make up for losses. In the modern era, these are loose congregations of friends and allies and useful specialists centered on a few charismatic leader-types, sharing the duties of socializing and incorporating the young and assisting eachother in attaining their goals. In early eras these were single-sex, but in modern times they usually consist of members of both genders, only separating during the mating season. (Mating with a fellow clan-member is considered very squicky, and the taboos are at least as strong as those related to incest in our society). Young members of the Race bond to those that raise them, and are generally as emotionally tied to their clan elders as humans are to their parents, in spite of the lack of genetic bonds. The Emperor is worshipped as, so to speak, the leader of the greater racial “clan of clans.”

Religious enthusiasm is not a major factor in Race history: the notion of exclusive revelations and eternal punishment for those who diverge from dogma has never caught on, and the state religion is in some ways like the Roman state faith, a thing of ritual and form which people carry out as a matter of course, ornately decorated with bits and pieces derived from the varied religions of long-vanished independent Race nations. Many Race members of a scientific turn of mind, if questioned, admit being uncertain as to whether spirits of past Emperors are actually watching over them, but there no point in arguing over it: it is after all a useful tradition, and it makes no demands re ones beliefs about the physical universe, and any contradictions are corrected and rewritten by the Priesthood as they arise, being clearly some sort of error in interpretation. (Getting violent over fine points of religious dogma is another human characteristic the Race find a bit puzzling).

The Race tend naturally to hierarchical societies, and find the notion of essentially using a poll of an uninformed population as a means of selecting leaders absurd. Like the Chinese Empire, the Race is big on tests, although for a number of millennia now of practical know-how and historical precedent rather than their equivalent of the Confucian Classics. The Race has science, but not quite as we know it: the notion of knowledge for knowledge’s sake is alien to them, and the notion of the scientist as a revolutionary, a shattered of paradigms and a demolisher of old, outdated notions is downright repugnant. There is research, and experimentation, on an extensive scale: but it is always a matter of building and extending what is already known, not bold speculation. Race scientific theory tends to grow slowly and cumbersomely, with added cycles and epicycles until the contradictions grow too great: contradictions tend to make members of the Race uncomfortable, and with painful slowness an imperfect theory will be poked at, changes proposed and examined, alternatives gone through with plodding thoroughness, until after looking at the geocentric and the polycentric and the circular orbits and the oval orbits and the heliocentric with epicycles the final elliptical orbits-with-heliocentrism model is examined and found to plug in all the holes, after which the scholars sigh with relief and get back to putting together that 600 volume atlas of stellar observations of the last three millennia.

This sort of approach leads to different results in different disciplines. Since the Race has a cosmological model that fits the observed universe with no really important holes, they have been happy to stick with it for millennia rather than try other models, and see no point in expensive experiments to test it. It's not like there are any obvious benefits to building a particle accelerator with the circumference of a planet. On the other hand, since medical and biochemical theories have actual and observable effects on the lives and well-being of other Race members, the sciences of medicine and genetics and biochemistry slowly but steadily move forward over the centuries, one folded-molecule model at a time. This means that the Race has what are called “closed” and “open” sciences: cosmology and some fields of physics are considered “closed” fields, and although there are experts in these fields, they are scholars rather than experimentalists, expected to provide useful feedback and information to engineers and scientists working in “open” fields, they are not expected to come up with anything new.

One strength of the Race is expertise: millennia of incremental improvements in medicine and careful genetic tweaks and gene therapy methods have given the Race a lifespan roughly twice as long as the human (although the age distribution doesn’t have quite as long a “tail” as the human one does: no member of the Race has lived to 220, although some do break the two-century mark). Given their capacity for steady work and good memories, a Race expert in some fields can be very good at it: Race soldiers from the invasion are still serving 60-odd years later, and really do know all the tricks backwards and forwards, if less able to come up with new ones than human soldiers, and elderly Race scholars may have a depth of knowledge in their chosen fields to match any three human Professors Emeritus.

The Race doesn’t have the expectation of endless progress humans do: what was good enough for my great-great-grandfather, etc. A comfortable house will not be torn down for a newer model, but repaired and perhaps piecemeal replaced over centuries. As a result, there is a sense of “good enough” re a great number of forms of technology: although a Race combat tank has far better electronics and comfier seating than the model of 20,000 years ago, the armor, propellant, explosives, etc. are all unchanged: since it works fine for its purpose, why make any sweeping changes? A lot of technological advances come from commerce: like terrestrial companies, Race corporations have their R&D companies, which look for changes in their products that would make them more appealing to their customers. Not that a member of the Race would try to sell a product on the basis of it being _new_: rather on the base of its comfort, or utility, or soothing color or smell, and on the basis of testimonials from high-ranked members of society, and, not least, a laundry list of approvals granted by the Government Product Safety Board, the Social Utility Board, the Economic Disruption Rating Agency, and so on and so forth. (Product cycles tend to be…long, but some Race corporations have been around longer than humanity has been living in cities).

All this helps keep in perspective the fact that a race of beings able to travel at more than half the speed of light between stars arrived on Earth with military technology roughly on a par with late 1990s - early 2000s OTL. Fusion-drive starships remain beyond the technological ability, let alone the financial resources, of the early 21st century free human states. Also rather advanced are effective anti-cancer and leukemia gene therapy, genuine holographic projection, and a number of other elements of Race technology. But the Race had no incentive to improve on their military tech (aside from marginal things such as making it less prone to wear and tear, more comfortable to drive, etc.), so they went with Good Enough, at least for the Medieval barbarians they expected to find. As for building new and better weapons – well, innovative thinking is not a Race strong point.

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The Race rule over the majority of the world’s land area, although their population is concentrated in hot, dry areas such as North Africa, Arabia and the Fertile Crescent, Australia, and northern Mexico. Over the past four decades the Race has been dealing with the problem of guerilla warfare and terrorism by simply “draining the pool”: human resistance has been met by mass movements of tens of millions of people: Australia outside of green, damp Tasmania, northern Mexico, and large parts of Arabia and North Africa are nowadays pretty much human-free save for a smallish population of human laborers (perhaps 10% of the total population of these regions) which are carefully identified and vetted (their first effort at creating a truth serum that worked on humans as well as Race members was a flop, but with decades to work on the problem – at the cost of a few hundred “spoiled” test subjects - they have come up with a much more effective product).

Some 200 million Race members now live on Earth, some 40 million in Australia alone. Not all live in the more “pleasant” areas of heat and dryness: tens of millions are settled at strategic points of control in Tropical Africa, Latin America, India, and China. Since the situation is now a permanent Soldiers Time, some 7% of every litter is raised by Soldier clans: some 15 million male and female Race soldiers keep order throughout the Empire on which the sun Tosev AKA Sol never sets. Most of these are not combat troops, but are trained in peace-keeping, insurgency suppression, etc. The Race troops are supplemented by lightly armed (often just electric-shock sticks and knockout gas bombs) human auxiliaries, a force of some 10 million drawn from the more pacific of their subject peoples and deployed in regions other than their homelands.

These troops maintain order (or try to, anyway) over some 3 billion people. This is rather fewer than inhabit the area OTL: the demographic transition has been earlier, for a number of reasons. The Race, which has little sexual dimorphism compared to humanity, also has no real difference in status between male and female: they generally behaved the same with respect to human women, when it came to jobs, education, etc. Noting the fast-multiplying tendencies of their human subjects, the Race were quick to duplicate and mass-produce first the condom, and after it was developed in free human territory, the Pill. Also, in much of Africa and parts of Latin America (if not in East Asia) economic development was faster than OTL, as well as growth in literacy (universal mastery of the Race spoken and written language was considered an important prerequisite for the assimilation of humanity into the community of the Empire.) There are those who, like some Palestinians OTL, fight the “battle of the wombs” and resist all means of birth control as a Race plot, but they are not numerous enough to buck the general trend.

Normally, the process of modernizing a conquered world up to Race Home standards would take place over a few centuries, to prevent severe disruptions of subject society, and equally important, give them time to assimilate into the Race system before giving them full access to powerful technology that might be turned against the rulers. Given the need to develop local industries, both military and civilian, to compete with the Free Humans, not to mention the whole Hearts and Minds thing arising from their subjects remaining stuck in pre-industrial poverty while Free Humans prospered, things were substantially accelerated, much to the discomfort of Race administrators, who curse Fleetlord Atvar's name every time new "impossible" goals are set. Infrastructure was built up, with a lot of human sweat: the Race may be civilized, but have no qualms about using mass corvee labor, although unlike, say, the USSR, the Race generally fed and hydrated it’s laborers adequately (admittedly, occasionally shooting people to Encourage the Others if slacking got too ridiculous). Factories, run by a mix of humans and Race overseers popped up from Paraguay to Poland. Of course, in the more developed areas humans built their own factories, often through loans from the scrupulously honest and monumentally traditional Race banking system, (which has not brought on a financial crisis since before the walls of Jericho were raised) and sometimes in partnership with entrepreneurial Race members. (Conflicts often arise between the leadership and outraged Financial, Safety, and Social Utility officials over the sloppy standards and the absurd speed at which permits are granted to human andRace industrial projects here on Earth: the leadership reasonably points out that things are even sloppier and more hurried in Free Human territories, and the point is to keep a lead, not fall behind gracefully).

Economic development has been uneven: the economy of the Race settlements tends towards the capitalistic, while the push to build military-industrial complexes has distorted the economics of the human-settled areas. (Distressingly, the Race on earth has finally put together a high-tech military industry superior to anything back on Home, only to find that the terrestrials are now putting out still better models). Levels of development vary: most of Africa is rather wealthier than in our world, while China (in part due to the endless insurgencies that plague that land) is poorer: Latin America is roughly comparable, while all parts of Race-controlled territory contribute more of their output to military manufacturing than they do OTL. A large share of that output comes from the Race settlements, which are a world of their own, with a standard of living (for Race members, anyway) superior to that of Tosev III’s USA. (The Race does not tolerate the socially detrimental effects of poverty, and in any event their clan-like organizations means that everyone has a substantial social support network: the occasional oddball who cannot find a clan to fit into is provided a support system and given work by the state - whether they want it or not).

Race territory is laced together with high-speed rail and highways, powered by fusion plants, and peppered with millions of hidden cameras, another idea taken from human beings. It can be divided into several major sections: Race heavy settlement areas, China, SE Asia north of the Japanese territories, India, the still-human majority Muslim regions of the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the European territories.

Race heavy settlement areas are typically hot and dry, and Race vegetation and animal life is very noticeable. Imports from Home, they do not do well in humid and/or cold environments, but out-compete their terrestrial equivalents in desert and semi-desert environments. The Race is better at dealing with desert environments than any earthly civilization: Race cities are marvels of water saving and recirculation (the human obsession with swimming pools and fountains in hot, dry climates simply baffles them), massive fusion-powered desalination plants provide water to irrigate vast stretches of the Sahara, SW Africa and interior Australia, and fusion is supplemented by huge solar power farms. Specialized plants hold together sandy soils while sending down taproots hundreds of feet. When it comes to making deserts bloom, the Race makes Israelis look like _pikers_.

Said Race cities tend to be made of utilitarian, cubical or rectangular buildings: ornamentation is meant for the inside of buildings, where it will not be harmed by sun or wind-driven sand. A Race city is a well-designed machine built for regular repairs and maintenance: such things as sewage, electricity, water, etc. are designed to be easily accessible for expansion if the city grows, and if it does not to last with minimal maintenance for centuries. The Race has been living in cities for ten times as long as humankind, and they are adapted to urban life: human cities are hideous ramshackle affairs tossed together in a fit of absentmindedness, from the POV of a Race urban designer. Public transportation is always available, everything in conveniently located, everything works and is neat and Swiss-clean, and tends to slowly devour the soul of any humans of the bohemian disposition unfortunate enough to find themselves living there.

Race rule over human territory is autocratic, but legalistic: the Race has no compunctions about using force up to nuking cities to maintain control, but everything is done by the book: there are no random atrocities, aside from the occasional brutalities of severely stressed soldiers. In areas where terrorist action is minor or absent, people are generally safe in their lives and property, and now that the basic work of building an infrastructure is done, are at no risk of being conscripted into a labor battalion, although a certain amount of service to the State is required on a regular basis. Humans usually participate in the Race administration, in increasing numbers and influence in relatively secure areas, although no Race member ever serves in a position under a human (this will change given another century or two, Race officials assure). The legal system works efficiently and is generally impartial between human and Race, although humans are liable for heavily punished crimes Race members are not, principally because no Racemember would, say, (save perhaps the craziest of exiles in human territory) spread anti-Emperor propaganda.

Censorship is, admittedly, rife. Television and radio news always presents the Empire and Race rule in a positive light, and the Internet (which is not connected to that of the Free Human territories – see below) is more heavily policed than that of OTL China. School educational programs must pass Race approval, histories must present the Raceoccupation as superior to human self-rule, references to the benefits of democracy are to be removed, and all must attend classes about the Greatness of the Empire and the Sacredness of Former Emperors. Most fiction is acceptable if it is not too ideologically pro-independence or pro-democracy, and skilled authors can usually make their way around the Race censors, which often have trouble with human satire and metaphor. Quisling human censors are more of a problem, and indeed sometimes have to be reined in by Raceauthorities.

The European territories of France and Poland are a bit of a special case, the well-developed political culture on the one hand meaning that the locals run most of the day-to-day details of the human economies and administration, while the looming menaces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union means that they are in no great rush to throw theRace out. (Which is not to say there are no terrorist groups, but they lack much popular support). Human-Race relations are on more cordial terms, and the human economy is almost as developed as that of the Race settlements. Spain and Portugal, on the other hand, separated from the Nazis by Race-held France, lack such inhibitions, and terrorism is a common problem. The Iberian terrorists aren’t as bad as the Chinese ones, less willing to turn their country into a wasteland if it means causing trouble for the Race, but the local economy is in substantially worse shape than Poland’s.

Human cities rebuilt or built up after the War tend to incorporate Race architectural styles and techniques, but in an often imperfect and partial manner that greatly annoysRace urban management and planning officials: but if humans build their houses and infrastructure on their own dime, it’s more trouble than it is worth to force them to keep toRace standards of construction.
Generally speaking, fewer people under Race rule paint their skins or shave their heads than do in US territory: it is the equivalent of hanging a big sign with “COLLABORATOR” on it around their necks, and even in the most peaceful areas, it’s not sensible to provoke the terrorist types.

Sub-Saharan Africa used to be second only to the “loyal two” (as Race officials sometimes refer to Poland and France) as the most peaceful of Race-occupied territories: local independence movements were quite weak when the Race invaded, and after getting over their fear that the Race would eat them or father hideous half-lizard babies on their women, the Africans found that the Race were generally better and fairer administrators than the Europeans they replaced, and more determined to improve their lot, if on the downside that meant a more unpaid labor. There have been rebellions of course, and various resistance groups, but the Africans haven’t seen white people army one since 1942, and are rather skeptical that 1.) They are likely to be liberated any time soon and 2.) That they will find things better under their “liberators”, given Nazi and Japanese ideologies.

So, Africa remained fairly quiet under Race rule for quite a while, but of late there have been increasing problems: overall, under Race rule, economic growth has kept ahead of population growth, and the area is definitely wealthier than OTL, but the locals, not having an inter-dimensional viewer, are unaware of that while being quite grumpily aware about how much better off Americans are. (Nor are they grateful for the Race doctors who successfully contained an AIDS outbreak in its early stages).

The resettlement in various (non-Muslim) areas of Muslims removed from Race-settled areas to the north has led of late to increased inter-community violence as well as a sharp increase in terrorist activity. (Some Race members now are suggesting the resettlement of the Muslims in China instead, in an “all the addled eggs in one basket” approach.) Compounding these difficulties, Race crops and plants and animals are displacing local varieties in the drier parts of Africa, which is driving farmers and pastoralists from their land: although Race food distribution is efficient and there is no starvation, a great many now (further) impoverished people are flocking to the cities: while there is a lot of shiny new infrastructure, high growth rates from land flight as well as from natural increases (still fairly high in spite of Race efforts) means that most of the nice new cities are surrounded by familiar-from-OTL shantytowns of people too poor to afford for-profit-constructed housing. (The Race government, often cash-strapped due to unavoidable military costs, is reluctant to subsidize housing for _all_ those people). From Cairo to Capetown, the Race struggles to prevent an explosion.

India is not doing too badly from either the local or the Race perspective. Race rule replaced British rule, and a lot of Indians simply accepted that they would not be able to overthrow these new, more powerful overlords: they were after all accustomed to foreign rule (admittedly, a bit less foreign…). Gandhi of course made trouble, but ended up dumped in Saudi Arabia, where his views on non-violent resistance were not widely appreciated. There have of course been rebellions, but the divided nature of Indian society and the useful advice provided by many captured former administrators (once the usual racist bullshit was filtered out) has allowed the Race to remain fairly firmly in control: the fact that there has been little Race settlement in India, outside the lower Indus desert regions, has helped. Economic growth has been substantial, and the maintenance of the Caste system has won the Race the loyalty of much of the more religious-minded Brahmin population: Hindu and Sikh troops have proven themselves as useful auxiliaries in maintaining order in more fractious parts of the Race’s planetary empire.

Still, all is not well. Gandhi may be long gone, but the Indians are masters of Good Soldier Svejk obfuscation to baffle Race plans and make things unworkable without anyone doing anything shooting-worthy: through various means fair and sneaky, the Indian upper classes push for greater autonomy and self-rule and freedom from annual service to theRace government. And the Hindus have the advantage of playing “good cop” to the Muslim “bad cop”: the Unpleasantness in places like the Arab world and Iran and what is left of Afghanistan (the Race have done some people-moving on a scale that would impress Stalin) has infected many Indian Muslims, especially in the west, with Jihad Fever. Look at Lahore or Karachi. You really wouldn’t want that to happen in Bombay or Delhi, now?

Latin America is a variegated picture, from Mexico and Venezuela, almost as rebellion-wracked as China or the Fertile Crescent, to terrorism-troubled but rapidly growing Brazil, to downright peaceable Bolivia, where the high altitudes keep the Race largely away and the native and mixed majority has seen itself raised to equal status with the lighter-skinned traditional rulers (many of which have since moved to areas such as Argentina and Chile, where one can be a bigot in peace ). Americans, Nazis and Soviets all do their best to stir up trouble. Latin American culture under Race rule has developed in some odd and occasionally downright hallucinogenic ways (the Magical Realism is serious mind-screw), and the odd new religious mashup between a renewed Feathered Serpent cult and Lizard Emperor worship still puzzles the Race, who aren’t quite sure if they should be flattered or worried. Race settlement has been mostly along the dry coasts of western South America: Lima is a majority Race city nowadays.

The native Amazonian Indians have lucked out: with no jungles on their mostly desert and semi-desert worlds coming close to matching the size and ecological diversity of the Amazon, the Race have set aside nearly a third of Brazil as nature conservations, to be protected from damage and studied by deliriously happy Race biologists. Human-run lumber companies, cattle ranchers and slash and burn cultivators (less than OTL: the Race disapproves of starving peasants) are kept out far more vigorously than OTL: since the locals are too few and scattered to provide much in the way of useful labor, as long as they don’t interfere with Race investigators they are largely left alone. (There are also some Race-run tropical preserves in Africa and SE Asia, but nothing on quite such a scale).

The worst places in Race territory are the Middle East and the Far East, China and Vietnam in particular. Religious resistance to “heathen” Race rule, combined with nationalist rage over large-scale Race settlement in the hot, dry region, has made the peaceful development of this Home-like area almost impossible. Eventually (“More in sorrow than in anger”, in the words of a Race administrator) the Race begin to simply removing the population of particularly unpleasant regions elsewhere, dumping them in other Islamic areas unsuitable for Race settlement or among non-Muslim populations likely to be disagreeable to Islamic terrorists (outright extermination is so far unacceptable: it even squicks out the Race, and in any event would make relations with the free Human Powers even worse than they currently are). Much of the Persian Gulf and eastern Arabia has been depopulated, along with Libya, Mauretania, and a considerable length of Nile valley (huge areas of the Sahara are Race-only, but there weren’t that many people to move out anyway).

The more secular Turks have been less trouble, but tend to resist doing anything but the very minimum of cooperation that will not lead to executions, and tend to make an art of “arrogant incompetence” in any task their masters assign: many have skated a bit too close to the edge and have been shot or jailed, but Turks continue to do it.

A “quietist” Sufi movement has arisen, that explains the Lizards as test from God and a burden to be borne, has emerged in North Africa, and has slowly spread as many grow sick and hopeless from the constant bloodshed. (The Race stopped giving it support when it was explained that such connections tended to get the Sufis assassinated).

Special solutions have been applied to Palestine and the Holy Cities. After a looong period of bloody trouble, the Muslim and Arab population was replaced by Polish and French Catholics and Jews, both happy to be well-behaved inhabitants of the Holy Land (alas, they have started quarreling over who truly belongs there, although so far the shootings have been fairly infrequent). The Muslim reaction to that was bad enough, but the explosion of dissent and violence after the second Race military occupation of the Holy Cities (after they had abused their autonomy by virtually becoming terrorist rest homes) was so bad that a rather peculiar solution was achieved: the only long-term residents of the Holy Cities are now relatively peaceable Muslims from Malaysia and parts of Indonesia on long-term “guest worker” status from the Japanese Empire, which get excellent pay and get to stay long-term in the Holy Cities in exchange for keeping the Pilgrim traffic running smoothly and leaving promptly upon the end of their visit.

The “move ‘em out” method, although it has to some extent intimidated Islamic terror sympathizers elsewhere, is not an ideal solution: there are simply too many Arabs and Iranians to resettle them elsewhere: other groups resent being lumbered with Muslim refugees, keeping them employed is problematic, and those of a Jihadist inclination simply start stirring up shit in their new location. New solutions involving brain chemistry or electronic implants are being methodically investigated (the Race may not be very good at thinking up entirely new tech solutions themselves, but they read a lot of US popular science and technology magazines).

Mongolia is largely left to run itself, if heavily Race-subsidized. Race negotiators didn’t care what validity Soviet claims to Mongolia had: it might have been a total hellhole, but it put some more buffer space between the densely populated regions of China and the Soviets, and correctly estimated that the locals had found the Soviet experience horrible enough that as long as they were largely left in peace and supplied with plentiful weapons, they would gleefully massacre any Soviet infiltrators (some now think they should have done the same with Xinjiang, but no use snapping over spilled water).

If the Middle East is purgatory, China is hell. (Vietnam is Fun-Size hell). Even with Mongolia to some extent neutralized, there are too many miles of more porous border. And while the Soviets have cut down a bit on supporting Middle East violence (worried about the rise of loud, angry Islam in their own nation), they continue to stir the pot in China: a China firmly under Lizard control, adding its potentially formidable industrial output to India and Latin America and Africa, would not be a Good Thing in the eyes of any of the Human Powers. So China continues to bleed: the old Nationalists are gone by this point, and the Communists, although still around, are broken into three major factions: but it doesn’t matter, for a dozen new movements, ever more loony and xenophobic have arisen. The Chinese have to some extent given up on actually driving out the Race by force of arms: after the Race nuked two “liberated” cities, the approach has been to make China a permanent economic drain on the Race, an ungovernable quagmire that will eventually make even the seemingly eternally patient Race throw up its claws in despair and leave. They have to some extent succeeded in making China ungovernable outside a few key cities where collaborators run the show and some ethnic minority areas which dislike the notion of being reabsorbed into China: but the Race’s patience is yet to be exhausted. (Although some of them are now suggesting that since the Race withdrawing would lead to a horrible multi-sided civil war that would discourage further rebellion, the general view remains that while a certain limited amount of autonomy is acceptable for negotiation purposes, the Race cannot afford the loss of prestige involved in a totalwithdrawal from so large a part of its territory).

Finland is the odd man out: the Finns are a race “protectorate”, but pretty much entirely run their own affairs. It is suggested that this arrangement was agreed on by the Raceprincipally because Atvar wanted to put a thumb in the Soviet’s eye.

NOTES: CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

(Darn deviantart only gives me 64 kilobytes)