Day 13: You feel steamy, punk?

Interplanetary contamination prevents any hope of electronics on Earth during the early 20th century -- and attracts alien races who seek a potent biological weapon.

In 1908, the Tunguska event leveled trees for miles in northern Russia. The object that caused it, assumed to be a meteor or heavy comet, burst in air, scattering pieces in all directions. This one event -- puzzling to scientists, and traumatic for the few living near the impact zone -- soon phased out of the public conscience.

In what humanity has seen as an unrelated event, telegrams began acting strangely by 1910. First in Russia and Mongolia, the electrical transmissions began to be plagued by static -- words and letters would be garbled or simply lost. The technology became so unreliable that Russia stopped using it by 1912; Europe found telegrams useless by 1913. Worldwide communication went dark; indeed, nearly all electrical devices became useless. By 1914, only low-power devices, such as light bulbs, worked, and even low-voltage lines had high failure rates over long distances.
In response, humanity continued on the obvious technological curve -- it honing coal, steam and water power, utilizing them to generate power for hulking mechanical devices.

Without instant communication, the slogging battles of the Great War dragged even further. Brand new weapons, especially machine guns, bolstered defensive positions to a degree that was never possible before. Hugely fortified defensive lines became the norm; the war only came to an end when an exhausted Germany, blockaded from the north and cut off from erstwhile allies in the south, surrendered. The 1921 Armistice, led by a vengeful France, crippled Germany; Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were split and devoured by the Western victors. A lethargic Russia couldn't capitalize -- the socialists' failed revolution in 1917 ended with the tsar's family in coffins. Without effective communication, the country fell to pieces.

Now, in 1933, the Western powers uneasily stare at each other across fortified defensive lines. In the north, a resurgent, but still bitter German population looks to demagogues for leadership, while the Baltic is rife with anarchists and corporate statists. Both sides of the Maginot Line also struggle with mysterious disappearances and odd lights in the sky; the French and English worry that the Germans are testing some secret weapon of war, while the Germans claim that the French are kidnapping prominent German citizens.

The reality would shock even the most fantasticly inclined. Tunguska's object was a malfunctioning spacecraft; its crew had carelessly allowed the vessel to become infested with a nearly invisible organism while exploring some distant, unknown world. The creature quickly found fertile ground to replicate on Earth, where its side-effect -- the same one that caused the ship to lose control and crash -- was soon felt. The creature is attracted to large concentrations of electrons, and its presence disrupts their smooth flow. Single-handedly, this organism managed to waylay the development of electronic equipment on Earth.

Those mysterious lights in the sky are other alien vessels. Originally they came as recon ships, but the discovery of such a potent biological weapon has proven too alluring for many intergalactic privateers. The organisms have proven difficult to both quarantine and to keep alive -- meaning that many return trips are necessary. The missing people are simply those who happened to be in the wrong place when a ship landed -- many of the hardened space explorers think nothing of vaporizing intelligent and possibly dangerous beasts.