Liberty was hard fought, hard won, and all knew easily lost. The overthrow of the Monarchy in France was already tittering on the brink. The Austrians and British could invade at any time. The new Republic in America could fall to Monarchy if things went wrong. But all knew that the progress of the arts and sciences depended on liberty. Despotism would set the human race back to a state worse than that of the savage. The success of liberty required that extreme measures be taken.
Adam Weishaupt knew that his experiment in overthrowing established governments had been high-jacked. It was not simply the threat of the revival of Kings that threatened his idea. Weishaupt saw his own organization, the Bavarian Illuminati, become high-jacked by extremists whose view of revolution was one of violence and retribution. Increasingly Weishaupt’s own name was attached to a form of revolutionary terrorism that he never would have recognized. Having rejected the Inquisition, the intolerance of the Church, Weishaupt saw his own organization become co-opted by its own atheist form of intolerance.
Thomas Jefferson spoke first in the council of High Illuminati Council members held on the outskirts of Paris, France. “The General, our President, proposes a plan.” George Washington and the Federalists were watching the Terror with extreme concern. They were skeptical of the French Revolution to begin with. But they wanted the ideal of liberty to survive, even if it was coupled with a Constitutional Monarchy like Britain. The room looked at Jefferson waiting for the next word to drop from his lips:
“Liberty is lost to despotism if America falls. It could fall if the Monarchists take over through Hamilton and Adams. Having Washington, who still loves liberty in spite of some Monocratic ideas, in the Presidential Chair, opens the possibility of assassination to place John Adams in the Chair. Adams himself would be opposed, but might be the unwitting dupe of a faction. Here in Europe Adam Weishaupt is also in danger of assassination in which case the extreme Jacobins revive the intolerance of the Inquisition beyond anything Throne and Alter ever would do. The plan is simple. George Washington secretly retreats to Mount Vernon, holding the hidden title of President but in exile from the Capital. In his place Adam Weishaupt will run the country, subject to the direction of those in the Know. In this country we will resurrect the Order of the Illuminati on its original plan, not this corrupt abomination we see now. No one will know, even Hamilton, given that every meeting he has with Washington will actually be in the presence of Washington. No one will suspect.”
It was clear that Weishaupt had given his assent to this audacious plan and practiced his colonial English accent. Washington would retreat to Mount Vernon and be briefed on the orderly workings of American government. He would pretend to side with the Federalists but would actually spin the wheels of progress to see to it that Jefferson became President. Meanwhile, Adam Weishaupt would be protected in America from the intolerance of the Kings on the one hand, and the radicals among his own faction on the other. It was the latter that he had helped stir up as they led mobs killing aristocrats. Soon enough the new classes of rich would take over Europe and be as despotic as Kings. It was sad that history recorded Weishaupt as actually being in favor of the Terror when it was in fact renegade lieutenants who were in service of shadowy rich men behind the corruption of his order. Those shadowy oligarchs desired to coin all money and have nations indebted to them, the opposite of the liberty that Weishaupt and Jefferson desired. Protecting Weishaupt right in the Presidential Mansion was an audacious option fitting an audacious time.
All went according to plan. Weishaupt reformed the Order in the United States and it became embedded in the nation. But, it too became corrupted. In subsequent decades, the United States was taken over by the same moneyed interests that took over Europe. Workers had very few rights during the Gilded Age. War became a national business. Over the next century, the Order ceased to be a humanitarian venture and became an Order that promoted war. Kennedy, King, Malcolm X, Paul Wellstone, and eventually President Maxwell all fell victim to assassinations promoted by the network Weishaupt had intended would lead the world to Utopia.
It was after President Maxwell’s assassination that un-corrupted members of the Order knew something had to be done. Dr. Sarah Javier was the leader of the faction that knew something would have to be done, something as audacious as Washington’s idea of having Adam Weishaupt replace him as President. “Only the Order ever knew of the plan to put Weishaupt in as President, because history never records it,” she told a group of stoic figures, as stoic as the roomful of figures in Revolutionary France hundreds of years before. “And only the un-corrupted Order will know of our plan. Time travel, friends. Time travel.” The goal would be to alter the assassination of John Kennedy. They would save his life and bring him back to the Presidency at a later point. He would not be President for more than one term; that was the plan. But his influence after the Presidency would be to build a better world. As ex-President, he would be a moral example that would put a dent in the oligarchy even though sadly, it would not defeat it. The light of hope would be present and that would be what they could accomplish.
All of them knew that in 1963, a century in the past, the Kennedy motorcade would pass the Texas Book Depository after which point Oswald would be present, believing that he would be stopping the assassination. Oswald was the unknowing “patsy.” The real bullets would be coming from the gutter in front of the motorcade and from the grassy knoll. Kennedy would be shot from the front. Only by replacing his body with a synthetic biological double would the time travelers rescue him and successfully alter history. They would of course be opening a parallel universe at which point they must be present in the past and travel forward in the future in order to benefit from the maneuver. The way the multiverse operated the actors had to be in the past and moving forward to avoid the “grandfather” paradox.
Assistants brought in a synthetic double of John Kennedy. He looked lifelike, already with a bullet in the front of his head. The real JFK would be briefed, and retrained to run for President a decade after the assassination, with an “ahh shucks” Southern accent. He would promote human rights and world peace, thwarting in part the Fascist coup that attempted to kill him. His Presidency would be short-lived and would be replaced by agents of that same coup that attempted to kill him in 1963. The brief period of his Presidency would be attacked by the media, undermined by the economic powers, and savaged by a public turned against him. Yet, the brief period between the reactionary Presidency before him and the one after him would do its trick of at least opening the world to light again.
JFK would first have to be brought to the future before he, and all of the time travelers, would then go back to avoid temporal paradox. The time machine quickly switched bodies and Kennedy appeared in the future of a room filled with scientists in an underground facility. He seemed to take his travel through time in stride. When told of the plan, he gave his assent, “I ask not what my country can do for me, but what I can do for my country.” JFK began training himself with a Southern accent. He would be an outsider. Jackie would remarry, giving her a new chance in a marriage riddled with affairs. Marilyn Monroe’s “suicide” and replacement with a synthetic double was part of the plan, already arranged. She would be disguised as the new first lady. It would be the role of a lifetime.
Eventually JFK was sent back, along with Marilyn. They were sent to Georgia and were given arranged identities. All was arranged out of time so every vector was taken into account. The conspirators went with them and would help them. Eventually JFK would run for Governor. He would climb higher and higher in to the Democratic Party. When he went to the Party headquarters to register, he was asked his name. “James Earl Carter,” he replied. The rest was a history that had yet to be made.
