Sheron's Fandom Journal

A transatlantic crossing in 1897 was a very different experience than it would be even five years later. The first Marconi wireless system was not installed on a ship until 1900 so, for Will's parents in 1897, this meant 7 to 10 days of complete communication blackout. A week or more on a 500ft boat in the middle of the Atlantic, with no way to call for help or contact your loved ones if something went wrong.

Living in an age where you can watch a family member's flight take off 5,000 miles away in real time on your handheld supercomputer - that sort of isolation is difficult to even fathom.

Needless to say, a message confirming to your loved ones that you had arrived safely would be a top priority for most people once you found yourself on solid ground again. And being that it could easily take another week or so for a letter to make its way back to the US (or 17 days in the case of the first letter Will's dad sent from Gibraltar), the ability to communicate almost instantly by wired telegraph was the obvious choice. However it came at a (literal) price.

International telegrams were expensive. Really, really expensive.

Telegraphers charged by the word and the cost varied significantly based on the destination of the message - as the rates below (from March 1897) show...

So sending the short message "Arrived safely. At Grand Plaza Hotel, Rome. Will write soon." back to the US would run you $3.80 ($147.18 adjusted for inflation). And Europe was on the lowest end of the cost spectrum...

Sending a telegram from the US to Brisbane, Australia in March 1897 was $2.62 per word (roughly $100 in 2025).

Fortunately there was a rather clever way to lower the cost of cable communication ...

On May 18th, 1897 (the travelers had departed on the 7th), Will's grandmother received the long awaited message from Will's parents in Europe. It consisted of a single word - misentry.

Instead, get each player to tell you the god their character follows, then roll a d6 behind the screen.

6: Their god is real, and as powerful as they believe it to be; maybe they even listen to prayers; maybe they even care. Maybe they care more about if your shellfish wear mixed fabrics.

5: It's a real entity, but whose power is exaggerated - like as a river spirit, but they're worshipped thousands of miles away from it for prayers their expertise with rivers leaves them woefully unprepared to answer

4: It's a powerful demon or dragon or monster of some kind which has tricked people into worshipping it - sure it's powerful, but that power is entirely self-serving, it couldn't answer your prayers if it wanted to

3: It's a person who, through real power, political influence or just straight up charisma, has tricked people into worshipping them, or through a series of misunderstandings has been mistaken for a god against their will

2: It was a long-dead person whose legacy has passed into legend - they may once have been a 3, or they may just have been famous in their life and not seen as godly until long after their death

1: Just a wholesale myth with no basis in reality. Maybe your god started off as a cautionary tale a mother made up to stop her children sucking their thumbs and over the retellings the whole "god of war" thing just sort of happened because of the massive scissors, and now the scissors are gone and all that's left is battlefield chants.

Biggles & EvS, waterlogged

Charles & Hawkeye, fetal position

For the first: Biggles & EvS, waterlogged

--

"Biggles!" Algy shouted, scrambling down the wet rocks. He had lost sight of Biggles in the churning whitewater.

It had all been going well until it wasn't. Von Stalhein pointing a gun at them, standing on the edge of the jumbled rocks dropping off to the river. Ginger, unnoticed until then in the bushes under the trees, had hurled a rock with excellent aim, glancing off von Stalhein's temple.

Von Stalhein dropped the gun, went limp, and collapsed, vanishing from sight.

And Biggles jumped in after him. Because of course he did.

Clambering down the sloping rocks, Algy glimpsed a sleek water-dark head in the foaming water, and struggled down to the water's edge. It was Biggles he cared about getting out; von Stalhein could take his own chances. But Biggles was clearly having trouble, dragging someone with him (three guesses who, Algy thought). 

Algy waded into the swirling and treacherous water around the rocks, reaching out and grabbing handfuls of sodden clothing, and eventually, Biggles's belt, helping drag him ashore with cold-numbed hands. They both staggered out onto a small, rocky beach, Algy half-dragging Biggles, and Biggles half-dragging a limp, water-soaked figure.

"Help me -- Algy -- here --" Biggles was trying to speak between fits of coughing, and Algy found that he was halfway having to hold Biggles up. 

Ginger appeared at the top of the pile of rocks, shouting something down that was lost in the roar of the river thrashing around its rocks. Algy shouted back, half-dragging Biggles from the waves, "A fire and something hot, and get to it!" and Ginger vanished, presumably he'd caught the better part of that.

They both half-collapsed on the shore, Algy clutching Biggles -- Biggles, coughing, gasping, falling forward, who still had his fingers locked around the belt of a limp, straggling Erich von Stalhein.

"Well," Algy said, coming out of the back office with fierce satisfaction, "I just got off the phone to Gaskin, and it looks like that's one gang who are going to be wrapped up tighter than --"

He stopped.

Going out in the field with von Stalhein was still a strange experience; some part of Algy just wanted to slap handcuffs on him on general principles. But it made Biggles happy, and Algy was able to tolerate it (mostly), even if he didn't particularly like turning his back on him. 

And on this particular case, von Stalhein had turned out to be instrumental in getting Biggles back from the gang who'd had him in their hands for almost 24 hours. After nearly going out of his mind with worry, Algy was willing to put up with von Stalhein gladly in exchange for what the man had done for them.

When he had left them, Biggles and von Stalhein were sitting together on a bench in the hall, quietly talking. They were both a mess; Biggles had his arm in a sling, his face still bruised from the gang's attentions. Von Stalhein had taken some blows of his own, and had a bandage across his forehead, and another swathing one of his hands. Algy had figured it was unlikely they could get into any new trouble in five minutes (well, they probably could, but at least he more-or-less knew where they were) but he was unprepared for what had happened in his absence.

They had fallen asleep on each other.

Algy simply stood and stared. He had a sudden wild urge for a camera, it would make good blackmail material, but there was far too great a chance that Biggles would not only fail to see the absurdity in the situation, but would want several copies of the photo for himself. No, definitely best to let it go.

Ginger came around the corner, starting to speak. "Algy, have you seen the chief? I need to ask --"

Algy held his finger to his lips and shushed him just as Ginger saw why and stopped talking anyway. For a minute they both stared at the scene in front of them. Then Ginger whispered, "What I wouldn't give for a --"

"Think about it," Algy whispered back. "He'd probably frame it and put it on the wall."

Ginger stifled a grin. "You're right. How long should we let them sleep?"

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comments:

Don't know how to do something? Look it up.

See a piece of news mentioned on social media? Look it up.

Not sure if something is making it to the broader public consciousness, either because you don't see it much or you see people saying nobody is talking about it? Look it up.

Don't know what a word means? Look it up.

It will make you a better reader and a better writer, but it will also just make you more equipped to cope with the world.

So often, I see people talking about something as though it is the first time anyone has ever acknowledged it, when I've been reading reports about it on the news for months or years. Or I see someone totally misinterpreting an argument because they clearly don't know what a word means--or, on the other hand, making an argument that doesn't make sense because they aren't using words the right way.

You have the whole internet in your pocket!!

When I was a kid, we had an encyclopedia in the house. And it was a normal dinnertime occurance to say, well, let's look it up.

But it was frustrating, because there were so many limitations.

But you have! the whole! INTERNET! in your pocket! ALL the TIME!

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: MASH (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Words: 3,246 Characters: Charles Emerson Winchester III, Honoria Winchester, Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, “Trapper” John McIntyre Additional Tags: New Year’s Eve, New Years, Friendship, Post-Canon, gen but also kind of not in that hawkeye sort of way Summary: On New Year’s Eve in Boston, the winter after the armistice, Charles gets invaded.