Take Me to Your Leader 
by George Henry Smith

   I was just sitting in this here bar, see, having a beer, when this funny-looking joker in the odd clothes turns to me and says, "Take me to your leader." 
   I look at him real disgusted and don't even smile. "Hell, Mac, that's the oldest joke I know. Can't you come up with something newer than that?" 
   "But I've got to see him! What do you call him? . . . your President?" 
   "Look, Buster, I'm just an ordinary guy havin' a beer after work. Even if you wasn't some kind of nut, how could I take you to the President?" 
   "But you've got to . . . you've got to. . . . I am . . ." He wipes a hand across his bald dome. "Have you ever heard the theory about parallel worlds. . . about how thousands of time tracks exist side by side in the same place, their worlds very much alike?" 
   "Nope," I says, taking a big gulp of my beer, "I ain't never heard nothing like that. It sure sounds crazy." 
   "The theory holds that significant events in history have caused the different time tracks to go in different directions." 
   "You puttin' me on, mister?" 
   "Listen," he says, putting a hand on my arm, "you've got to believe me! I'm a scientist from one of those parallel worlds. 'I come from another dimension. My country occupies this same continent. Do you call it North America? Is it still North America in this world?" 
   I close my eyes and pucker up my face in exasperation. 
   "Of course we call it North America. What the hell else would we call it? It is North America, ain't it?" 
   "Yes, yes, of course. Our worlds are very much alike. They would have to be because they are the closest to each other. Their histories must be very similar, too. . . . Not like the North America that is still dominated by the Spanish or the one where the Vikings settled or . . ." 
   I turned back to my beer. This guy was really nuts.
   He pulls at my sleeve again. "You see, I'm a scientist. My colleagues and I were working on the problem of parallel universes, of closely related time tracks. We discovered that various patterns of vibrating rates could move a man from one track to another. We were just about to complete our experiment when the Russians attacked. It was an overwhelming attack. . ." He pauses to wipe at his head again.
"In my world, America was destroyed! Wiped out! Are you having trouble with the Russians, too?" 
   "Yeah, we're havin', trouble with the Russians, as if you didn't know. Say, maybe you're a Russian yourself!" 
   "No, no!" the little man says and goes white. "I assure you I am an American scientist and that I've come to warn your world. Everything in my country was wiped out by their new ion-powered rockets. I managed to get into a reverberation machine and reach here, our nearest time alternate. I've got to warn your leaders! Any event as catastrophic as this world tend to extend across several tracks. Your country is in deadly danger." 
   "The Russkies wipe out the States? Don't make me laugh," I says.
   "But they have. . . they can! Don't you understand? That's why I came to Washington …..you do call it Washington, don't you? I have to see your President! I have to warn him!” 
   Now this is about enough. I've about had it with this guy. I see a policeman I know come into the bar just then, and without another look at this crackpot, I go over and whisper in the cop's ear.
   He takes a look at the guy and nods. "Sure, I'll pick him up and take him down and let the docs have a look at him." 
   I walk out of the bar into the hot, humid Washington night, still thinking what that nut had said. For a minute I wonder, but then I shrug it off. Them Russkies ain't gonna give us no trouble. That Czar of theirs ain't got the nerve to fight over no icebox like Alaska. And anyway, their dirigibles couldn't get this far over to bomb us. Leastwise, I don't think so. But then I grin to myself as I see the Capitol dome in the distance with the flag flying. No Russkies are gonna bother us. . . not while the good old Stars and Bars is flyin'.
Not while Jefferson Davis VI is Hereditary President of the Confederate States of America!