The Valentine Divergence
Setting notes

by Trismegistus Shandy

Updated 2015/9/15 re: neospecies featured in "Nora and the Nomads", and other telepathic neospecies

Before I start talking about the world in which my stories “Butterflies are the Gentlest” and “A House Divided” are set (warning: this will contain spoilers for those stories), let me clear up a couple of possible misunderstandings. This isn’t exactly a “story bible” like the writers of Star Trek episodes or tie-in books have to religiously adhere to, or a set of “rules” like those that ElrodW wrote for his MAU setting. This is a cleaned up version of my notes to myself while writing the above-mentioned stories. These notes, and the stories themselves, are under a Creative Commons license that allows you to create all kinds of derivative works based on them. That includes new stories in the setting, fan art, etc. But nothing about it says your new stories have to be perfectly consistent with my stories. In mine, for instance, nobody knows what caused the changes as of ten years afterward. But if you want to write a story about people figuring out why the changes happened that’s set less than a year later, your story is still a permitted derivative work under the Creative Commons license, as long as you give me credit for the setting your story is (loosely) based on, don’t make money off it, and allow other people to base stories off yours as well. See the "Legal" section at the end of the document and for details.

Now, to the world itself.

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At 12:41 EST on Saturday, 14 February of an unspecified year in the early 21st century, every human on Earth was changed in some way. People within the same contiguous region changed in roughly the same ways, and each change-region is the home of a different neospecies; the people who were within the same change-region are interfertile with each other, and can no longer interbreed with people who were in other change regions at the moment of the changes. The changes breed true.

As of the date Jeffrey Sergeyev is looking back from when he tells the story in “A House Divided” — at least ten years after the changes — no one knows what caused them.

The changes tended to cause temporary numbness and in some cases lingering headaches and nausea in their subjects, for amounts of time varying with the particular neospecies and the extent of the physical changes involved. Where the numbness extended over the whole body and lasted more than a few milliseconds (as in Marietta), or where there were extensive changes to people’s sensory systems (as in Nashville), there were widespread automobile wrecks and plane crashes. Such accidents were less common where the physical changes were less extensive, or on the night side of Earth where most people were asleep at the time, but nearly all regions suffered some accidents at the moment of the changes.

The changes healed all infections, cancers, injuries and genetic diseases in their subjects. Medical implants such as pacemakers remain in place, but sometimes become inaccessible or ineffective due to a person’s rearranged anatomy. Cosmetic surgery was sometimes undone by the changes.

The boundaries of the change-regions correspond not at all to political boundaries, and only loosely to geographical features such as bodies of water and mountain ranges. They have slightly more correlation with population density contours, but not very strong.

The population of change-regions varies greatly, but not as much as their area. The vast majority of change-regions have between 250,000 and a million people in them as of the time of the changes, but there are a few smaller or larger than this. The smallest-population change region covered all of Antarctica and a large tract of ocean surrounding it, around 5,000 people; the average population is around 500,000. There are over 12,000 change-regions and neospecies worldwide.

There's no magic in this setting, unless perhaps the initial changes qualify as such; all the neospecies featuring in my stories have biologies that are theoretically physically possible, as far as I know. Some neospecies more or less resemble mythological creatures in appearance, but just because, e.g., the Salonika gorgons (to make up a random example that doesn't feature in a story yet) have tentacles on their heads with eyes and poisonous stingers doesn't mean that their glance will turn people to stone.

The changes sometimes seem to be adaptive to the local climate or environmental conditions, but not always or even often. In coastal areas, the change-regions are often long and narrow, with an aquatic or amphibious neospecies on the shore and in the water and a different one (or several different ones) just a short way inland. Some aquatic neospecies change-regions extend along rivers and lakes (e.g., the Allatoona otters who figure briefly in “A House Divided”), but most rivers and lakes are included within non-aquatic change-regions.

The initial rapid changes respect conservation of mass, but a lot of neospecies have programmed into them a gradual increase or decrease in size/mass over the weeks or months after Valentine’s Day. E.g. the winged people mentioned in “Butterflies are the Gentlest” are going to lose height and mass until they’re light enough to fly, and similarly with other winged species worldwide. The Marietta centaurs gradually put on weight, though they don’t grow as big as mythological centaurs — they’re more like cervids in size and scale.

I'm not sure yet what is the smallest extreme of size that some neospecies might reduce to. I don't think any of them will have a reduction in intelligence, so probably the mass and size of a human brain (about 2-3 pounds, a little over a liter in volume) presents a lower bound to the size any neospecies will shrink to. That doesn't mean that the various winged peoples' heads are going to remain as large as before; possibly their brain will change shape, being spread out from their head along along their spine or into their chest cavity. On the other hand, maybe they will be changed so radically that their nervous system is no longer made of the same kind of stuff as other vertebrates, but something much more compact and efficient. If you want to write about people six inches tall (and have it be at least notionally science fiction rather than fantasy), you should probably do some handwaving to that effect.

A couple of further ideas have occurred to me for reducing the size of winged people so they're light enough to fly, without reducing their brains to subhuman size or invoking handwavium-based nervous systems. Their digestive systems could be simplified so that they can only digest certain things -- blood, for instance, or a kind of milk produced by others of their own species who have a more omnivorous diet. (The flightless milk-producing omnivores might be at a different stage of their lifecycle from the flyers, perhaps, or they might be differentiated from the flyers from birth (or from the Divergence). Maybe it's sexual dimorphism, with one sex flightless and the other flying.) Their reproductive system might be simplified so that they have no reproductive organs except during mating season or while pregnant; perhaps while pregnant they are too heavy to get off the ground. Or maybe they're egg-layers.

There is no obvious upper bound on the size some larger neospecies might reach. Some aquatic or semiaquatic species might grow to be whale-sized or apatasaurus-sized. Even land-based ones could easily be a little larger than elephants. But the vast majority are within 50% to 200% of the average size of old-style humans.

Not everyone changed in obvious physical ways; the Huntsville telepaths, for instance, had purely neurological changes. The Bowling Green nesters had primarily neurological changes, with subtle changes to their glandular system as well which aren’t fully understood as yet.

A fairly sizable minority of neospecies had significant changes to their reproductive systems. There are a fair number of marsupial- and monotreme-like species, some hermaphroditic species, and some with a highly unbalanced sex ratio, as among eusocial insects. Perhaps some neospecies change sex one or more times in the course of their life cycle, e.g., being born female and becoming male after bearing their litter of children?

With a few exceptions, people of a given neospecies are only sexually attracted to others of the same neospecies; being attracted to people of different species is a kink somewhat rarer than, say, a transformation fetish used to be before the Divergence. Affection and friendship between people of different neospecies is still possible, but may have new obstacles to overcome.

Eventually, all of the ~12,000 neospecies will get official names, both in Neolatin and in the local official languages, to be used on the next census and on lots of other government and corporate forms. (Some people will make a principle of refusing to answer the “neospecies?” question on such forms, as today many refuse to answer the race or gender questions.) Maybe all the Neolatin names involve a subspecies tag to Homo sapiens, e.g. Homo sapiens athenanthus; but some scientists prefer a straight “Homo athenanthus”, to more clearly indicate that the neospecies are not interfertile. The common names tend to involve place name + comparator animal/plant name, e.g. “Marietta centaurs” or “Athens magnolias” (for their large white flowers), but with some exceptions.

There were 19 neospecies in Georgia at the moment of the change (but several regions overlap into neighboring states); adding in all the Georgians who were out of state at the time and returned soon afterward, plus additional immigration over time, there are probably hundreds of neospecies with at least one representative living in Georgia by the time of the next census.

There are around 630 neospecies in the U.S. Again, some regions overlap into Mexico or Canada, immigration from foreign change-regions continues over time, many U.S. residents were out of the country at the time and return home afterward, so several thousand species have at least one member in the U.S. within months after the Divergence.

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Speculations

To what extent will the change-regions tend over time to become new political divisions? They won’t be perfectly homogeneous in population; many people were away from home at the time of the changes. On the other hand, some people will tend to leave home and settle in the change-region they happened to be in on Valentine’s Day among members of their own species — that happened a lot with the nesters in “Butterflies” and will undoubtedly happen a lot with extreme environmental adaptations, e.g. aquatics. Less so with other types, perhaps — unless they suffer persecution or ostracism on their return home, especially if they were a long way from home and there are few or no others like them living anywhere near. There is blurring at change-region boundaries, where e.g. someone living in the Marietta centaurs region was a couple of miles away shopping for groceries in the Smyrna wolves region, or vice versa — there would be many such cases, and demographically most regions would tend to blur at their edges like that. But even there, over time there might be social pressure to segregate more severely into different neighborhoods.

In high schools e.g., to what extent will the neospecies remain orthogonal to the old subcultures and cliques? Or will they replace the old divisions? Probably both to some extent; less so in relatively homogeneous areas. If there are say 5-10 or so students of a given neospecies in a given school, they’re likely to form a new clique, possibly overlapping with their old circles of friends according to interests and subcultures, especially if they’re persecuted by the majority or plurality neospecies belonging to the change-region(s) the school district falls into. But students of the majority or plurality species will probably remain with their old subculture or clique, not necessarily bonding with others just because they’re the same species. Students of isolate species with only one or two members in the school district will probably band together in another “outcast” clique.

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Specific change-regions and their neospecies

The Athens magnolias who figure in “Butterflies are the Gentlest” and “A House Divided” are native to a region of around 250,000 population consisting of all or part of eight counties in northeastern Georgia: nearly all of Clarke County, most of Oglethorpe, all of Madison, much of Jackson, most of Franklin and Hart, part of Stephens, and a little corner of Banks. The change region doesn’t quite reach the Oconee County line in southwest Athens. Among the cities in the region are Athens, Lexington, Commerce, Danielsville, and Hartwell.

Most of what I know about the Athens magnolias is implicit in the text of the two stories written so far. Their average fertility is probably not as high as straight extrapolation from Robert and Laura Vance’s experience would suggest. As of the time of these stories, the only effective contraception is to stay indoors during bloom and avoid getting pollinated, but probably within a year or two contraceptive drugs tailored to their biochemistry will be developed.

The anatomy of Marietta centaurs is described pretty thoroughly in several passages of “A House Divided”. That of Smyrna wolves and Allatoona otters is vaguer; if you want to use those neospecies and need to be specific, feel free to make something up. The Allatoona otters change-region extends for a long way along the Etowah River and along the shores of Lake Allatoona. River/lakeside homes tend to be expensive; maybe the majority of otter-people are upper-middle-class to rich, with a handful of others who happened to be on or near the water that day (it’s winter, so not much boating etc. going on, but maybe some fishing).

Kennesaw chameleons are hairless, with thick, photophoric skin. I suspect that after a while, they can start learning to consciously control their skin color changes.

Valdosta frogs are insectivorous, with large eyes and an extensible froglike tongue. Their region includes Bainbridge as well as Valdosta, and extends west into Alabama.

Waycross possums (an allusion to Walt Kelly’s Pogo, mascot of Waycross, Georgia) are marsupials. Males have a bifurcated penis. The region extends south into Florida and northeast into the Savannah metro area.

There are also an unnamed, unlocated species with tails and webbed fingers, and an unnamed, unlocated species with tentacle-like arms.

There’s a four-armed species in Washington DC, and a species with four thumbs and four big toes, in the same city. The border between the change-regions runs north-south just east of the Mall, the Capitol, White House and so forth, with the latter being in the four-arm region.

I mentioned Hollywood capybaras but haven’t established anything definite about their biology or appearance. Possibly they were named purely for the shapes of their new skulls and faces, and they don’t necessarily have the herd behavior and diet of their namesake.

The tripods of a certain part of Chicago were briefly mentioned. Chicago is a big city and undoubtedly has several other change-regions.

There is another centauroid species somewhere in Eastern Europe, with hooves and fur.

There are winged people in Perth, but whether this is the Perth in Australia, that in Scotland, or one of those elsewhere in the English-speaking world I leave unspecified in case someone wants to use them.

The Nashville bats have no eyes, but have an instinctive echolocation ability. This is a large change-region covering most of the Nashville metro area.

The two neospecies in Bowling Green, Kentucky in “Butterflies Are the Gentlest” weren’t given official names in the story. I’m calling the people of south Bowling Green the “Bowling Green nesters”, but I haven’t a good name yet for the five-eyed marsupials of north Bowling Green.

There are several telepathic neospecies in North America and a number of others worldwide. All seem to have modified brains which act as radio transmitters and receivers; most of them use different radio frequencies and thus are only telepathic with others of their own neospecies: none can mind-talk with people of non-telepathic neospecies, and few can mind-talk with people of other telepathic neospecies. Some suffered interference shortly after the Divergence from technologically-generated radio waves, and local laws have been modified in some places forbidding the technological use of the radio frequencies used by telepathy.

The other properties of telepathy vary greatly from one neospecies to another; some only share thoughts when they delilberately broadcast them, some automatically broadcast all their conscious thoughts, some also their emotions, some only their emotions. Some neospecies are capable of narrowcasting their thoughts toward a particular person, but others located in that direction may pick up on them as well.

The Huntsville telepaths are telepathic only with each other, within a certain range — well under a mile. The North Platte dreamers and the Kelowna nomads are exceptions, unable to mind-talk when awake but able to share dreams. The Brooklyn telepaths are rumored to have merged into a group mind; this rumor may or may not be confirmed if anyone writes a story about them.

There are three change-regions covering most of Nebraska: the North Platte dreamers, the Lincoln bison, and the Omaha sheepdogs. There are also some change-regions of neighboring states that overlap into northern and southwestern Nebraska. The North Platte change-region is the largest geographically and the smallest in population.

The Kelowna change-region covered part of eastern British Columbia and western Alberta. Unlike most change-regions, it is not inhabited chiefly by the neospecies native to it, as most of the Kelowna nomads have scattered across the world, and others from neighboring regions have moved into some of their abandoned houses. The Calgary marmots are native to a region covering the west side of Calgary and suburbs and rural areas to the west, bordering the Kelowna change-region; there are other change-regions and neospecies in other parts of Calgary.

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Chronology

Valentine’s Day was on Saturday in 2009, and will next be in 2015. Easter was 12 April in 2009, and will be 5 April in 2015. 4 July falls on Saturday in those years as well.

The news of Robert and Laura Vance’s discovery became public on March 20. The first general blossoming in the Athens-Danielsville-Hartwell change-region was in mid-July; it would fall earlier or later in different years depending on the weather, and probably gets gradually earlier in the year with climate change.

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Story ideas

I don’t promise I won’t use these myself, but I have no definite plans to do so. Besides, two different writers working from the same story idea will produce completely different stories. Feel free to use them.

In an isolated area where the sex ratio is not in balance, the divergence might make it so by changing the sex as well as the species of some people — some of the male researchers in Antarctica become female, while perhaps in places at war where there’s been a high mortality rate among the young men, some of the women become male.

Maybe in some places, two neighboring neospecies will be in a parasitic or symbiotic relationship.

Maybe the astronauts and cosmonauts in Earth orbit at the time got adaptation for freefall (similar perhaps to the quaddies in Lois McMaster Bujold's stories)? Probably not; they would be too small a gene pool for a viable neospecies. Probably astronauts were included in whatever change-region they were orbiting over at the moment of the changes.

A family at the beach: one member goes to the restroom up at the beach house while the others are swimming or surfing, and ends up in a different change-region than their spouse and children, or siblings and parents, who become aquatic or amphibious.

A story focusing on actors, director, producer etc. of a local theater, or of a low-budget Internet TV show, who have an increased local audience because there’s a backlash of disinterest against Hollywood TV — people want stories about people like themselves, especially if their biology/psychology is very different from the Hollywood capybaras and other Los Angeles-area neospecies that dominate TV shows nowadays.

Or: Hollywood producers traveling around the country to places where the neospecies looks human or nearly so, at least when fully dressed, to recruit new actors — those scattered areas all put together are a bigger media market than any of the more unique-looking neospecies. Maybe these actors recruited from old-fashioned-looking populations are wanted for historical movies set before the divergence.

Investigators traveling around interviewing and examining people of various neospecies, — maybe especially in rural areas of the first world and in the third world? — trying to figure out patterns that will lead to the cause of the divergence.

Someone whose transformation makes them unable to perform their former work duties, and has to change careers or at least jobs...? Could be a Hollywood actor who was a long way from California on Valentine’s Day and doesn’t fit with the all-capybara cast of his show anymore, maybe? Or they worked in radio, and they’re now mute, with new physical means of communication, like photophores in their skin or something... Or their voice is too high for human (?) ears, or just annoyingly high to most people of other species though still understandable. Or a visual artist who becomes a Nashville bat or a member of some other blind neospecies.

The Huntsville telepaths beg for a story. And they’re one of the places where producers of historical movies will come looking for locations and extras, or trying to hire local actors to come to Hollywood.

Maybe do something with a character who is healed of some serious illness by the changes.

Probably, some time after the summer flowering, Athens-Clarke County will repeal its public nudity laws, seeing as how the magnolias are compelled to be naked and outdoors when they’re in bloom, and feel no sexual attraction for one another when they aren’t. Maybe the smaller towns in the same change-region will eventually follow suit? Are the public nudity laws at state or county level? Maybe Athens gets in trouble for not enforcing the state law, if it is a state law...?

Other regions where the neospecies has fur will probably do the same sooner or later, including Cobb County/city of Smyrna.

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Legal

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to repost or mirror it on any noncommercial site or list. You can also create derivative works, including adaptations to other media, or stories or art using this setting, as long as you mention and point to this document and release your own stories or adaptations under the same license.