Emperor Norton I

Joshua Abraham Norton, nicknamed Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, is a historical figure retrocreated by Mitch Hort using a coin he found during the Westercon subduction event in conjunction with the Golden Throne. Prior to that, no one with whom Mitch interacted, and certainly no one at URIEL, had ever heard of him (because he had never previously existed).

The nature of Norton’s “existence” prior to his retrocreation is unclear. Archie spent some time pondering the issue and developed two theories:

1) He's a meme. He never existed, but the narrative is just so juicy and perfect on some basic level that it fills the requirements of a tenacious, tough-to-dislodge-but-equally-tough-to-transmit meme. Whether it's boosted by the Anunnaki source code or not, it would make sense. The narrative's just too perfect: it calls upon human cultural ideas about the outcast, the insane, the dreamer, and about what America is and means; it'd make a great movie (or an issue of a gloomy British comic book, exaggerated wink to the audience). It would also explain why it appears in modified form in places like Huck Finn! So then the question becomes, to what end does this meme exist. Is it meant to get people thinking about an America ruled over by a beneficent but insane monarch? Why, that goes against every precept of American democracy and history, and smacks dangerously of Anunnaki narrative! But there it is. A meme, of unknown origin and to unknown purpose, that pops up here and there like anthrax or bubonic plague or something: tough to eradicate but also tough for humans to contract and transmit (after all, none of URIEL have become proselytizers for Emperor Norton since Mitch first mentioned him). This would explain why he bubbles up every now and again and the vast majority of San Franciscans don't know about him in our 1973... but it would not explain the discrepancies we're now seeing in the legit physical historical record.

2) He's a remnant of a reality temblor. According to this second theory, Joshua Norton existed in History A. But something happened, obviously having to do with History B-related reality shifts, that ushered him out of existence. Much like the Bucket of Blood bar in Oakland, much of reality reverted to a prior form but some stuff inexplicably remained (i.e., Zeb, and, yes, URIEL's memories of said bar!). The evidence in favor of this second theory is Mitch's weird encounter at the Transamerica Pyramid. His weird senses detected both a future ECV plaque and maybe even avatars of Norton's existence in two dogs that could have been Bummer and Lazarus. Oddly, the existence of some small paucity of physical evidence works as evidence both in favor and against this theory. In favor? Weird stuff gets flung up into reality in the aftershocks of a temblor: the vast majority of time these take the form of what SANDMAN calls reality shards and they exhibit weird powers and a definite History B taint. But that 1939 article about dedicating the Bay Bridge that ECV put behind glass doesn't exhibit any of that! But given Sophie couldn't find any documentary evidence of Emperor Norton in her research (and she did hit the newspapers) gets Archie wondering … maybe that clipping is unique? A single remnant of a former iteration of history that's now been wiped from existence. Which means … we need to know where it came from.