Musician's Vanguard | HMS Vanguard's Story

aLtErNATE LoG #12: Our Painful Goodbyes

Santa Ana Freeway, Anaheim, California - October 22, 1962

In San Francisco, the Tagomi family decided to go to a popular theme park that has been talked about. For the first time, they invited Tagomi who is the Trade Minister in his original reality. At first, when he found out that in this reality, the Allies won the war, with the United States dropping 2 atomic bombs in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he was shocked and angered by this seeing his home nation fallen and have surrendered to the allies.

However, upon meeting his family, to which his wife and son are alive in this reality and his son, Noriaki has a wife and child, he begins to change his emotions seeing the contrast in both realities.

He finds out that the Tagomi in this reality must have died and in replace of him was the Trade Minister himself. He realizes that he, himself wasn't a good father and husband to the family, thus the Trade Minister decides to repair and reconnect his alternate family to which he finally gets to feel his own grandson.

Trade Minister Tagomi gets to spend time with his alternate family which made him happy inside, finally taking a break from all of the problems that are happening in his original reality.

On October 19, at around night time, Tagomi watches with his family and a group of protestors who are Noriaki and Alt. Juliana's friends around the city. The film that was taken by Noriaki's journalist friends was the recent nuclear bomb testing in Bikini Atoll to taunt the Communists of the Soviet Union.

However, even though they made a more powerful weapon, the United States was now in danger as there is Soviet influence in Cuba where De Castro planned to nuked the US by putting Soviet Missiles at their territory.

Others including Tagomi are shocked by the power of the new bomb that the United States made, it was a Hydrogen Bomb, an nuclear weapon more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tagomi looks at the film, realizing that there is also an ongoing risk of the Japanese building their Heisenburg device to attack the Nazis, he decides to use the film inorder to stop his reality from going into ashes.

However, his time with his alternate family, made him conflicted as some part of his mind tells him to leave his original reality and live with them as this is what he wanted. The other was for his original reality to be spared.

When Noriaki invited Tagomi, his father to come with them to the theme park, his mind instantly says that they should leave that world and spend time with them.

Inside the car, Noriaki drives the car with Alt. Juliana beside him, carrying their son. Tagomi sits beside Alt. Michiko at the back seats. Tagomi apologizes to Alt. Michiko to what he has done to her to the family, Alt. Michiko was slowly forgiving him after what he did with the broken mug.

Tagomi then looked at the window, looking at the many infrastructures and views outside San Francisco. He was astonished my the many stores, houses, businesses, and several buildings built around the interstate highway. Some ares are in large flat plains to which followed by many cars passing and driving by the car.

Meanwhile...

Unknown to the Tagomi family, another car comes a few kilometers behind them. A blue-painted 1958 Ford Fairlane drives at a normal speed heading to the same theme park as the Tagomi family.

This is because back in Oct. 19-20, the human embodiment of U.S.S. Alaska reunites with his former Admiral when an accidental meet up with their son, Athony in Las Vegas. That is where the woman, introduces herself as Lexiare, the former Captain of U.S.S. Lexington (CV-16). After a little bit of lecturing, the former Captain brought Alaska to the Higuraishi Household in one of the villages in Las Vegas, far away from the rising casinos.