One moment of hesitation by Harry Truman veiled this world in darkness. In August 1945, as Stalin massed his forces for an invasion of Japan-controlled Manchuria, and then the home islands themselves, Truman grew unsteady, and chose not to warn Stalin to stay out of the Pacific war. Russia therefore destroyed Japanese forces on the Asian mainland and then launched a cross-channel invasion of weakly defended Hokkaido, which he used to subjugate the entire nation by sheer weight of numbers. Truman, who had planned to first use the A-bomb on Hiroshima, instead found himself compelled to build up a secret nuclear stockpile, as American-Soviet relations rapidly deteriorated. When the bombs fell in 1946, on Moscow, Vladivostok, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, the Soviet Union began to dissolve, and broke up into several constituent republics. Communism, though, was hardly finished; for Stalin and the hard-liners set up a government-in-exile in Tokyo.

Today, America's economy spirals downward; hunger and civil unrest are rampant. Why? The sheer cost of maintaining millions of troops in southern Russia and Mongolia to counter the threat posed by Soviet Japan and its puppet state within China, Manchukuo. (By shrewd diplomacy and tacit intervention in the Chinese Civil War, Stalin created three states: Manchukuo, Mao's Greater Red China in the north, and, in the south, the capitalist People's Republic.) Current Japanese Premier Gennady Zyuganov maintains a powerful navy and economic hegemony over much of the Third World, along with ICBMs in great numbers.

Pleasant sights to see in this world are, understandably, few. For a sight akin to Europe's Auschwitz, tour the remnants of Stalingrad, destroyed first by house-to-house fighting between German and Russian and then by two atomic bombs. The city's Empress Elizabeth Hospital has one of the most extensive cancer wards on Earth, as well as expertise in care for infants with birth defects; the sad reasons for this may be guessed. Or, for a slightly lighter time, visit the British Isles, socialist since the 1960 General Strike spurred by huge expenses on nuclear submarines to the detriment of social welfare. For a socialist country, Britain as a fairly strong economy, as can be seen in the ten-story Lenin Grand Hotel in Manchester, host to many visiting dignitaries and wealthy Japanese businessmen.