The computer screen flickered again, then then the power went out, leaving Jeff in darkness. When the lights came back on, Jeff looked around in confusion. The dual flatscreen monitors of his gaming system were now a single CRT monitor with orange letters on a black background. And his bedroom was totally different, small and simple, with a single bed and dresser, a bookcase, and the desk he now sat at. Even his chair had gone from a black leather office chair to a wooden chair that did at least have wheels.
Jeff saw that the screen was still flashing, but this time the message said 'Anomaly adjusted. Timeline stabilized.' What had he done? Saving one person? He was supposed to just let the poor kid choke to death? He didn't even know the kid's last name! Hands trembling, Jeff started typing on a thick, clunky keyboard. It took forever to get a response, and he realized his connection to the internet was via phone modem. There was no search engine, and his attempts to connect failed because he didn't know how to use this primitive network. Frustrated, he looked around the room and realized there were a large set of matched books - encyclopedias? World Book 2017? He stared at the volumes, confused both at having a set of books like that, and also wondering if World Book had even existed in 2017?
There was a calendar hanging on his door - the correct month and year at least, so the encyclopedias were old. He started flipping through the books, trying to identify what might have gone wrong. It didn't take long to find a lot of changes. Hawaii and China were part of the Japanese Empire, and Alaska was a region of the mighty Soviet Nation. And most of Europe belonged to the Third Reich. The United States had survived the war with the continental states, but was considered a second-rate country socially and economically. They had lost the war, suing for peace after Washington DC and New York City had been levelled by the world's first Atomic Bombs in 1942!
Jeff paled as he looked up the crucial event. The bombs had been snuck over the Atlantic by German suicide crews. They had stolen cabin cruisers to travel unchallenged up the Potomac and Hudson Rivers, and detonated the weapons simultaneously on December 7, 1942, the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Besides the horrific loss of life, the blasts also destroyed major financial records and threw the economy into a nosedive. More research determined that the Germans had started working on atomic weapons in the thirties, and made a major breakthrough when a lab assistant to J. Robert Oppenheimer in 1934 made copies of the scientist's theories and notes and showed them to German military leaders. The German Reich, just emerging, recognized the potential and put a team of scientists working on creating atomic weapons. With a sick sense of dread, Jeff read deep into the article and finally found the Assistant's name: Fritz Leiber. Fritz. The soldier who he had saved from choking to death.