"The Journey from Omsk" and "Para trope" by Mark Young.

The journey from Omsk

Half-lived iso-
topes, gradients &
graduations. Passing
out parades as if were
candy. Novosibirsk-
Irkutsk. Three
years to bring a
thousand miles to-
gether. Simple 
is not always 
simple. Trains 
change. The Academy
of Science is over-
run. Shimanovskaya 
beckons. Eventually 
the caribou return.

Para trope

3

The knot is made up of the names of places. That mix of prosaic English & magical Maori that is found throughout New Zealand. Wellington, named after the first Duke of Wellington, victorious over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo & for whom the wellington boot was also named. Whitianga, more correctly Te Whitianga a Kupe, the place where Kupe crossed. Whangarei, cherished harbor, though the Harbor was originally known as Teranga Paraoa, water in which whales run.

2

The first starts the day before the assassination of John F. Kennedy though the date, because of dissimilar calendars, is the same for both events. Even then it doesn't start there, but the latitude allowed is minimal, perhaps only one day back. Before that it is strands, a thousand openings. Better that we begin with some sort of knot.

1

As I write the beginning of the story I am thinking about its end, concerned that I have the chronology wrong. Then I realize it is two stories that overlap, not in time but in foreshortened memory, one that has something of a start but whose end is unclear, & another whose end I know but cannot remember the beginning.