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Alternate history

The alternate history of PITF is the campaign's version of 1992 and 1993: an early-1990s United States that looks like ours until the Paranatural Incident Task Force starts to change it. The largest change is the 1992 election, which Ross Perot wins.

The politicians and celebrities on this page are fictional versions of real people, written and voiced by Andre as characters in a story. For dates, see the timeline. For the supernatural side of the setting, see the paranatural.

How the setting differs

The world does not split from ours at a single stated moment. When the campaign opens in May 1992 the Soviet Union has collapsed, George H. W. Bush is president, and the agents carry pagers and stop to ask for directions ("There is no Google Maps"). The first difference is hidden: cryptids, parasites and stranger things are real, and a handful of people in government know it. (Radford Horror 01)

The public differences come later and are mostly the player characters' fault. A coastal town becomes the site of a nuclear incident, a surveillance scandal upends a presidential race, and two Utah towns are emptied. From the night of the election onward the table calls the result the "Perot-verse". (Appalachia 01, Walkers 07, Walkers 09, Radford Horrors 04)

Quote

Zack (out of character): "Have we entered the Perot-verse?" (Walkers 07)

The Bush administration and the task force

In the premiere Andrew Howard is offered a new task force that "reports almost directly to the president": the chain of command runs from Andrew to Big Bill Nelson, to the deputy director Floyd Clark, to Bush. Andrew's old boss warns him that it "has boondoggle written all over it" and "smells like career suicide". (Radford Horror 01, Summer Service 03)

Bush later tells Andrew the real reason. His son "has an interest in these things" and made him promise that if he won the election he would get to the bottom of it. (Walkers 01)

The government's machinery for such things includes:

The NSA is the "Puzzle Palace", which Andre explains is the CIA's name for it. (Radford Horror 04, Summer Service 01, Appalachia 07)

The 1992 election

In our history Bill Clinton won in 1992 and Perot took about 19 percent of the popular vote, a figure Zack looks up at the table. (Appalachia 07, Walkers 08)

The Georgia scandal

While the team is in Dahlonega hunting ape-men, Governor Bill Clinton is in the same town. Dick "The Biz" Baxter has secretly taken a job from his KGB contacts to plant a camera and microphone in a hotel room. Georgia state police then call a press conference to say that the FBI is in Dahlonega surveilling a presidential candidate, and that fingerprints from something recovered at the scene match an FBI agent. A reporter asks whether it is "the next Watergate". (Appalachia 01, Appalachia 07, Appalachia 08)

Quote

Rita (as Andrew Howard): "We're not surveilling Bill Clinton. We're surveilling dead Chewbacca." (Appalachia 07)

The arc's finale was never recorded, so the outcome is known only from the next session. Polaroids of Clinton, taken with a Russian camera, have become public. Bush's account is that a criminal with "a bunch of ape-men", Jan Martense, was surveilling Clinton in the same town at the same time. The state police say they found the Biz's night-vision goggles in a rose bush, and he is "the most hated cop in America". The full story is on the Clinton surveillance scandal page. (Walkers 01)

Two October surprises

Andre's summary of the alternate history is that Perot "just needed two October surprises", and that one event supplied both: the incumbent was caught spying on the challenger, and the pictures hurt the challenger too. He calls it "kind of Watergate and Monica Lewinsky at the same time". After the "double scandal" Perot polls above 45 percent and Bush clearly leads only in Texas. (Walkers 01, Walkers 08)

Bush expects to lose and reads the affair as a deliberate attack on the continuity of American leadership, perhaps by China, by "the remnants of the Soviets" or by "something else altogether, from somewhere else". This is his theory of enemy action. (Walkers 01)

Quote

Andre (as Bush): "There is coincidence, there is miracle, and there is enemy action. That is enemy action." (Walkers 01)

With the election close, the Bureau wants its version of the story out, and the price is putting the Biz on television. His appearance on Late Night with David Letterman opens the fourth arc, and in Utah he is recognized "from Leno". (Walkers 01, Walkers 02)

Election Day

Election Day, 3 November 1992, falls in the middle of the Utah case, with the phones down. When Donald McManley next reaches the team the count is unfinished and Perot has taken Ohio. The team hears of his victory on the radio as they leave the ruins of the community center. (Walkers 07, Walkers 08, Walkers 09)

The Perot presidency

Perot takes office in January 1993. As President-elect he tells Big Bill "in no uncertain terms" that he believes the task force is "a cover for Bush's weaponization of the FBI against his political enemies", which is how the Clinton affair looks from outside. He asks Big Bill to resign and disbands the task force on Inauguration Day. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02)

Quote

Dante (out of character): "Guess what, Ross Perot? You're gonna have a rough first fucking day." (Roulet Estate 01)

A few months later he calls Andrew himself. (Roulet Estate 03)

Quote

Andre (as Perot): "This is the President of the United States. I need you to come in. Something's happened in Virginia." (Roulet Estate 03)

Other changes under Perot:

Russia and Yeltsin

The Soviet Union is gone, but Marblehead locals still blame their offshore explosion on a "Russian bombing". The KGB survives as a network of fronts that reaches the Biz through a sweepstakes phone line and the Moby-Dick book cipher. (Summer Service 01, Summer Service 04, Appalachia 01)

In January 1993 Russians take the Biz from an American hospital. He is held first at the abandoned Vorkuta Corrective Labor Camp, is then flown to Moscow to meet Boris Yeltsin, and by April is living at the Hotel Metropol as Yeltsin's guest. (Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 01)

Yeltsin's Russia knows more than Washington admits to knowing:

Quote

Andre (as Yeltsin): "I have faith in my military officers, but I do not have faith that my military officers are my military officers." (Radford Horrors 01)

The official record

The public history of this world is a set of cover stories. After Marblehead Andre describes three versions of each case: the code-word report that goes to Big Bill, the one the rest of the government gets, and the one the public gets. (Appalachia 01)

Event The official version Source
Radford, May 1992 The Whateley boy, a heroin connection to a Mexican cartel, a firefight at the old church and a fire (Radford Horror 08, Radford Horrors 02)
Marblehead, June 1992 An extremist cult with nerve agent and a rogue ex-Soviet nuclear device, which attacked a nuclear plant when investigators arrived; the worms are played down (the terrorist cover story) (Summer Service 06, Appalachia 01)
Dahlonega, October 1992 A criminal with ape-men who was surveilling a presidential candidate (Walkers 01)
Ballard and Roosevelt, November 1992 A radical domestic insurgency: extremists under the community center who "went full Jonestown" when investigators showed up (Roulet Estate 01)
Radford, 1993 Missing people are said to be in rehab in California (the LA treatment cover story) (Radford Horrors 02)

Andre stresses that Marblehead "was on the news for a while". The agents leave the spin to Big Bill. (Appalachia 01, Roulet Estate 01)

Quote

Dante (out of character): "Yeah, I mean, we're the X-Files guys. We're not the cover-up guys." (Roulet Estate 01)

Invented places, companies and media

Sherman Ranch is not invented. Andre confirms that it is the real Skinwalker Ranch, "before they renamed it". (Walkers 06)

Real people as characters

Besides the presidents and Yeltsin, the fiction borrows:

  • David Letterman, who interviews the Biz on Late Night. (Walkers 01)
  • Robert Bigelow, the tenant of Sherman Ranch. When Zack recognizes the surname of "the Skinwalker Ranch guy", Dante says it is "probably intended to be the same guy". (Walkers 02)
  • Rudy Giuliani and William Sessions at the FBI. (Radford Horrors 01)
  • Jay Leno and Howard Stern, heard of but never met. (Appalachia 01, Walkers 02)

Andre looked up Perot's voice just before playing him. Dante's verdict: "Why is Ross Perot a D&D goblin?" (Roulet Estate 03)

Most of the period detail is real, and the table checks it as it goes.

Not yet

A running device is dramatic irony about things the characters cannot know. Huell shows off a World Trade Center postcard, and Kurt says the towers "will stand for a thousand years". The office's toy alien is named OJ, after "my favorite football athlete". During the Marblehead siege the table establishes that "Waco hasn't happened yet". (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 08, Summer Service 05)

Andre rules anachronisms in or out on the spot: no Beast Wars toys, no purple Game Boy ("those won't be out for another four years"), and Tasers only just, in early 1993. (Appalachia 02, Appalachia 03, Radford Horrors 03)

Trivia

  • Crystal Pepsi is treated two ways. In the premiere Andre finds that it is advertised but "not available yet"; in Marblehead a month later it "had just come out". (Radford Horror 01, Summer Service 03)
  • When the scandal breaks, one of the players asks who Bill Clinton was in 1992, and Andre reminds the table that it is October of that year. (Appalachia 07)
  • Ezra jokes that the Russians who questioned the Biz about Clinton were "the Bill Clinton team", now sent to Siberia, and that a small "Ross Perot team" suddenly has all the budget. (Radford Horrors 01)
  • Yeltsin's first question to the Biz is "Tell me everything you know about the humanists." Who they are has not been explained. (Roulet Estate 03)
  • Speculating about where the Perot-verse goes next, Dante teases "wait till you fuckers find out about 417", and Andre offers that "there's, like, a bureaucratic fuck-up and the US accidentally nukes North Dakota". Nothing of the kind has happened in an episode. (Radford Horrors 04)