Prologue

This story takes place in a Parallel Universe. The arrival of the six Amulets on Earth is the separation point between our universe and the one in which the story takes place. This occurred about fifty years before the founding of the Chakri Dynasty in Thailand (6 April 1782).

Thanks to the presence of the Amulets, Thai kings had much more influence in the Karen and Shan states on their northern and western borders between Siam and Myanmar (Burma). Consequently, the British eventually took over a much smaller Burma than in our universe, and the Karen and the majority of the Shan states were eventually joined to Thailand.

The French, though they took over much of southern, or Lower Lao (Laos), did not acquire the Luang Prabang and Black Thai kingdoms in the north of Laos. They also got a much smaller Cambodia, known as Lower Cambodia. The Thai retained the land there that they had ruled for over a hundred years.

In the south, on the peninsula, militant Muslims from the Malaysia Sultanates, the most troublesome of which had been ceded to Britain, found it difficult to cross the Thai border thanks to the Amulets. Those who persisted died mysteriously in the jungle. Those Muslims already there were strongly encouraged to be peaceful.

This is also the Universe where JFK was NOT assassinated, and LBJ never became President. Kennedy pursued and won the war in Vietnam thanks in part to the U.S. and Thai Special Forces camps in that area of Cambodia that belonged to the Thais and bordered on Southern Laos. This cut off the Ho Chi Min trail before it reached vulnerable areas in South Vietnam. The Thai and American forces were also aided, unknowingly, by the Amulets, who didn’t appreciate the North Vietnamese at all. Consequently, Richard Nixon had a lot less trouble and only had mopping up actions in Vietnam to contend with. He was never impeached, and went on to serve his entire second term, so that Gerald Ford never became President. However, the Americans did still have to suffer through Jimmy Carter’s Presidency.

This then is the world that Mike Barnett inhabits. Women are more accepted in the Thai version of the Buddhist religion, and the Amulets still quietly exert their power and wait for what they know is coming.