Sic Transit Gloria

Jocasta's Psychometry looks for the most emotionally-intense moment in an object's history.

And as often is the case in her life as a Sandman, these intense moments are usually terribly frightening. But there's nothing of the sort here. Despite this thing being filthy lucre, the first and most powerful thing that hits Jocasta emotionally is joy and hope. Jocasta's having zeroed in on the coin's aura before touching it means Jo gets to navigate its history backwards, temporally. She gets fleeting senses of it entering the coin-washing machine in the basement of the St. Francis, then moves backwards from there to a special carrying case held by a middle-aged man, who treasures the coin, keeping it literally close to his heart for decades. Jo can't get more than the most general outlines of this man's life, but she does zero in on when he received the coin, from his grandmother, in or around the year 1930.

There is a sense of something important being handed down, of a memory and an idea this woman did not want her grandson to forget, about time and history and love of country.

That memory and set of emotions echoes back further, and further, as Jocasta experiences this woman's life in reverse, as she grows younger.

And eventually Jocasta is back in 1884, and she is standing watching the little girl on the Embarcadero, strange dockside entertainment arcades Jo's never seen the likes of which before, even in history books, fluttering with multi-colored pendants, jugglers and musicians and Victorian-esque people out for a stroll, as the little girl gives a $2 coin to an ice cream vendor and gets this dollar and some assorted change back. As the girl goes back to her own daddy, holding his hand, feeling content and happy, the loudspeakers (?!) in the Embarcadero arcade crackle to life and an announcement comes over them.

"CITIZENS OF SAN FRANCISCO, it is my grave duty to inform you that Emperor Joshua Norton I, Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico, Guarantor of the Dominion of Canada, trusty cousin to Queen Victoria I, Advocate for Chinatown, and Fellow-Citizen of San Francisco ...
has died today."

The crowd gasps.

The little girl looks up at her daddy, who has a tear in his eye.

And as the little girl looks up, she sees the San Francisco-New York airship passing overhead and floating slowly and serenely over the Emperor Norton Bridge, and as long as she lives, she will never forget this day, the combination of sadness and fear at the passing of America's beloved Emperor, and the joy at the way the world has become more just, more beautiful, more fair and more wondrous since that day in 1859 Norton stumbled out of his apartment and gave his proclamation to the newspapers that he would be called Emperor. Madness that men warred with each other, enslaved each other, judged each other on the colors of their skin... all the dark facts of the past that her daddy and the schools had taught her. The Emperor had simply made America and the world... sane, finally, and she had never known a world without him. She'd hold onto this coin, as long as she could, and make sure her own children and grandchildren knew who the Emperor was, and what he had done to heal his world.

Jocasta is sure that this coin is from a real, actual history that is not either History A or History B.

!! WAKE UP !!

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