Introduction

This story takes place in a Parallel Universe. The separation point between our universe and the one you are about to read of was when the six Amulets arrived on earth. This was 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 boarders between Siam and Myanmar (Burma). Consequently, the British eventually took over a much smaller Burma than in our universe, as the Karen and many of the Shan states were eventually joined to Thailand.

The French, though they took over much of southern (lower) Lao (Laos), didn't acquire the Luang Prabang and Black Thai kingdoms in the northern (Thai) part of Laos. They also got a much smaller Cambodia, called Lower Cambodia. The Thai retained the land there that they had ruled for well over a hundred years. That area extended from the Gulf of Thailand in the west at Had Lek, just south of Trat overland through the coastal mountain range to the headwaters of the Stoeng Pouthisat River and then followed the river to Tonle Sap Lake, splitting Pouthisat Province. It included all of the land north of the Pouthisat River including Batdambung Province. After crossing the lake it included Siem Rep (Angkor Wat), Preah Vihear, Stoeng Treng, and Rotanah Kiri Provinces all the way to the border with Vietnam. This area was called Upper Cambodia.

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 that persisted died mysteriously in the jungle. Those Muslims already in the country were strongly encouraged to be peaceful. All of these additions created a Thai Kingdom nearly twice as large as the one in our universe.

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 Upper Cambodia that belonged to the Thais and bordered on Southern Laos. This cut off the Ho Chi Min trail in the Central Highlands 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 Gerald Ford never became President. However, Americans did still have to suffer through Jimmy Carter.

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