Enigma: The Rise of an Urban Legend

by Ryan Schow

  “So you’ll see mom and dad, then what?”

  “Then I’m going to get laid. It’s been like…forever since I’ve had the D!”

  “The what?”

  “The D,” she says. “Dick, silly. Sex.”

  4

  An hour later, I puke twice, take a massive dump—the kind of nervous dump I used to take when I was suffering from social anxiety disorder, the horrendous kind of dump that has your freaking shins sweating and cramping it hurts that much—then I swallow my first time travel device.

  In my mind, a dashboard pops up. It’s ridiculously cool. I don’t even have to close my eyes to see it. It’s like my vision just winks away and there’s nothing but the dashboard.

  Future Savannah told me to think the date April 20, 1945 into the TIME element of what she calls our Control Center. For the DESTINATION element, I think Berlin, Germany. The screen populates with both the time and destination. It then gives me a longitude and a latitude option, but I don’t know the coordinates. Future me didn’t tell me what to enter here.

  Dammit, what do I enter?

  After a moment of panic, the dashboard disappears and it’s just me looking at future me with that look in my eye. The one that says, what the hell am I doing?

  “You didn’t give me the longitude or latitude coordinates.”

  “You don’t need them.”

  “Why?”

  “Trust me, it won’t matter,” she says. “You know what’s going to happen now. You’re going to be okay.”

  There are no words left for this situation. How do I tell myself I don’t want to do something when my future self is telling me how much fun I’m going to have? It’s not like I’d lie to myself. At this point, I don’t even know what to say other that what I’ve been saying, which is that I don’t want to do this.

  Future me sees this, smiles, and puts her hand to my cheek gently, lovingly. She then leans forward and kisses me feather light on the mouth. The last thing I hear her say before she takes a few steps backwards and I’m sucked painfully into some righteous, destructive void is, “You’ll be glad we dumped first.”

  Imagine being pulled by your hair through the bottom of the ocean about a thousand miles an hour while being crushed to death and unable to breathe and maybe you have the barest idea of what it’s like to travel through a wormhole.

  About a billion pounds of water are crushing you. You can’t see. Can’t breathe. You can’t even think straight because your brain—like the rest of you—is being made, then unmade, then remade again. Over and over and over again. It just keeps happening and right when you think it should be over, it keeps going some more, enough that your emotions begin to break and sickness and insanity threatens to set in.

  After feeling everything in me rearranging and tearing itself apart, then swirling and churning and separating into nothing, then everything, I am shat out on the dirt in the middle of a war torn area I’m sure is Germany, 1945.

  Two soldiers, they’re staring at me, slack jawed and paralyzed. They’re seeing things they’ve never seen before, wondering what this little girl with these weird clothes is doing in the middle of a war zone.

  The next thing I know, they’re speaking to me in German.

  I don’t know what they’re saying, but I know they’re asking me questions. Pretty soon the questions turn to statements, which quickly turn to demands.

  One of them aims his rifle at me and the other approaches me, cautious. I get to my feet, slowly, putting my hands up saying, “Nein, nein!” but then I hear a piercing sound, a shrill whistling that sounds like the top of the sky falling open.

  The three of us look into the stinking, smoke-filled heavens in time for that “something” to strike the ground just behind the two soldiers.

  The last thing I feel before being blown backward with violent, devastating force, is a wall of blood, guts, dirt and rocks slamming into me, launching me right off my feet.

  Sometime later, I wake up and realize, this was my first death.

  That lying bitch, I think to myself about myself. I don’t feel rested at all. I cough out a mouthful of dirt then crawl out of a pile of rubble and realize the Red Army is converging on Berlin.

  For one long moment, I see the smoking hell that is Berlin and I get really, really scared. The sky looks like pillows of ash and dust. Buildings burn. Fires eat the city. Bombs are whistling through the air, splitting the sky with thunderous booms shaking me nearly off my feet. I scurry up a pile of rubble, take cover behind a shelled building that’s crumbling, but not falling over.

  Patches of armed Russians surge forward, oblivious to me, hopping in and out of blown out windows, taking aim and firing almost single-mindedly, then scurrying up mounds of rubble, hopping over dead bodies like they’re debris rather than once human, once alive. These dead men in the streets, in the bits of collapsed buildings, sprawled out everywhere, they were husbands, fathers, sons.

  Now they’re dead. Pocked with bullet holes. Just laying there with their eyes shut or wide open and seeing nothing.

  The advancing wave of soldiers, some are shot and drop dead, others are blown up, and still more just sprint right into the middle of this nightmare like it’s where they’re meant to be. By the look of it, the are the Russian’s slated to overtake the city.

  Any fool can see they’re winning the war.

  My face is smeared with blood, caked with dirt, tangled like some horrendous dream. I hide there like the undead, watching them, aghast. What else can I do?

  Then one of the swiftly moving soldiers sees me, stops, aims his weapon at my chest and pulls the trigger. I stagger backwards, manage to stay on my feet despite the white hot pain. He looks up the road, then back at me, blinks twice, then raises the machine gun and pulls the trigger again. My head snaps back. Everything goes black.

  Death number two.

  Damn.

  SC-S Version 2.0

  1

  I never thought of myself as anything but the original. An original. But here I am, back in my own home in Palo Alto after seventy-one years. Here I am, in original me’s bedroom. She’s gone now. Back in World War II. In the middle of it.

  God, time travel has a way of messing with you.

  It’s cool though, I tell myself. I got this. Just so you know, in case you’ve missed it, I’m Savannah Crawford-Swann version 2.0. At least, that’s how I think of myself now that I saw my past self. I wondered how I would feel about that.

  I guess I feel alright.

  But now I’m SC-S v.2.0 and honestly, it boggles the mind a bit. No matter. Past me is in the past, and I don’t think I’ll run into any further versions of myself, but who knows? I’m an older woman these days, but only in years. Eleven more years and I’ll be one hundred. Which means, I got this shit.

  Past me was young, naïve, just a girl. And me now? Well, I’m a traveled woman. Worldly. Hell, I can speak five languages and pretty much rule the world, if I want. But that’s not everything.

  I learned that seven decades ago when I met future Raven and she showed me what it meant to be angry and vindictive. I’m not like that. But that doesn’t mean I won’t meddle a bit. Stepping on a butterfly a hundred years ago didn’t stop time, it just changed the landscape and the events, but who cares? Only I know. And that makes me a goddess, for now. In the future, well…that’s another story. I’m in the present moment and what I want right now is to go see my mom and dad, and my new sister.

  Deep breath, steady yourself…now go.

  I breeze out my bedroom door, see my father in the kitchen, walk right up to him and give him a hug. He asks what this is all about but I don’t say anything. It feels so good just to hug him. He starts to let go, but I pull him tighter and say, “I really just want a hug from you, dad.”

  I think at some point I start crying, which is crazy because I haven’t cried in like, thirty or forty years. Okay, maybe about ten. Still, it feels good. Then Orianna comes in and she’s like, “Honey, are you
okay?”

  I move from my dad’s arms to my mom’s and it’s the same thing. When I finally let go, they’re both staring at me like I’m insane. They don’t understand. How can they?

  “Sweetheart?” my dad asks.

  “I just missed you guys so much. I didn’t know how much until I saw you and, I’m sorry, I’ve just been alone for so long.”

  The tough girl act, the war hero thing, it’s all gone. No more feeling alone. I’m a teenager again! A daughter. A sister. Looking at my parents, I almost say, “I have my family again!” out loud. The only thing that stops me is that they might have me committed.

  “What are you talking about?” my mom says. “You haven’t been alone.”

  Looking at them both, I say, “So, I think you should sit down for this because I have something to confess.”

  Crawling their minds, really just taking a quick bump off them, I know they can handle this. What I’m about to say. After all, past me just told them about Raven, the future, me being this all powerful being, and they still love me and accept me.

  They both sit down, and they’re both staring at me, wondering what the hell I’m going to say next.

  “The girl you saw last night, the girl you spoke to this morning, mom, that was me, but it wasn’t.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” my dad says. He’s yawning, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Is it crazy that I can’t stop thinking someone as young as him should be working and not sleeping in all day? Whatever. I know what he does in the future, how hard he’s going to work, so I guess he deserves a peaceful in between.

  “I’ve been so excited to see you guys because I’ve been gone the last seventy-one years. The girl you saw last night, me technically, she went back in time, to 1945. I’m that girl from that time, but I’m also not.”

  You could hear a gnat squeeze cheese, it gets that quiet.

  “I’m confused,” my mom says, her face this mask of uncertainty. “You’re her, but not her?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old are you?” Rebecca says.

  I felt her coming. Knew she was behind us. I turn around, stand up and hug her, but not like I hugged my mom and dad.

  “How old?” my dad asks.

  “Eighty-nine.”

  “Jesus,” my mom says, her hand quickly going to her mouth.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Seriously. It’s me, it’s just not. That’s the thing about time travel, it’s just like your world…it’s like it’s just bigger, you know? With layers. Like an onion, or a pastry.”

  “Time travel?” Rebecca says.

  I erase this last ten seconds of her memory, because she won’t understand, then send her to her room. It’s an easy decision. When she turns and leaves without prompting, my dad says, “What was that?”

  “She’s not ready for this.”

  “What did you just do to her?” my mom asks.

  “Erased this conversation. Her knowing this will only confuse her.”

  “Why did you…send Savannah…well, yourself I guess…why did you go back in time?”

  My dad’s asking the question, but deep down he’s at it again. Cursing himself for ever having sent me to Astor Academy, for ever introducing me to Gerhard’s DNA cocktail. And my mom? Her eyes are watering. I’m wondering if I should erase both their memories of this conversation, but I don’t. I won’t do that without their permission.

  “Can you guys handle this conversation?” I ask. “I mean, is it okay?”

  “Are you going to erase our minds?” my dad asks.

  “If you want me to.”

  “No,” my mom says quickly. “Go on. Answer your father’s question.”

  “I went back in time to kill Hitler.”

  “That was…that was you?” he asks. Looking at Orianna, he says, “I knew she looked familiar. This new version of Savannah.”

  I get up, go to the bedroom, retrieve the history book I gave my younger self. In the kitchen, I set the book on the center island, open it up to the page with my picture on it.

  “Dear God,” my mom says.

  “Yep,” I reply proudly, “that was me.”

  I keep waiting for them to ask me what things were like before I killed Hitler, but they don’t. After the fall of Germany—after Adolf Hitler supposedly died in his Führerbunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945—history stopped recording him.

  But he didn’t die, and the world carried on.

  Adolf Hitler, for all his power and all his psychotic philosophies, he went underground and started the rise of the Fourth Reich just after 1945. It took some time to track him down. Taking him out after the war, it didn’t have much of an impact on history as I remember both this timeline and the timeline before this and nothing significant has happened.

  It’s like, if you stop a terrorist from blowing up a city, would anyone in the city know anything different? Nope. For them, life would just be what life has always been.

  I removed Hitler’s head before a camera crew in August of 1951 in the South American jungle, and that was that. Can you imagine? Me…killing Hitler? The Russians were pissed off, of course. They had to eat some serious crow, announcing they had his charred corpse in their possession after the war when no one really ever checked the authenticity of the corpse. The crispy critter wrapped in a rug, the body they claimed was Hitler, it wasn’t even male. Forensics later proved that body was the remains of a girl.

  “So you killed Hitler?” my dad says even though he knows I did. I nod. We just stare at each other, then he says, “So do you want me to make you lunch or something?”

  I blink fast, pull my head back. Then, cautious, my heart opening after having been closed for so long, I say, “I would.”

  “What do you like these days?”

  “I’m still me, dad. Whatever your silly mind is thinking, trust me, I’m still me, just…more mature.”

  My mom comes and hugs me again and says, “I guess being a good mother means loving you no matter what, right?”

  “It does.”

  “I love you, Savannah,” she says, sniffling, “and I’m glad you’re finally home.”

  Breaking bread with my family after so many decades is surreal and comforting. I’m glad I sent past me away. Glad I took her place. After lunch, I clean up, then head to the bedroom to lay down and make that call.

  I told past me I was going to get us laid, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Taking a deep breath, dragging through my memories searching for his number, I finally find it then make the call. A few seconds later, he answers.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me, Raven. Can you talk?”

  “I was wondering if I’d ever hear from you again.”

  “I want to see you.”

  Sacrifice

  1

  The phone rang and Sabrina started to cry. All week long she sat in her hotel room sobbing. Twice she vowed to kill herself the second she got the call, and now it was here. She knew it. The phone kept ringing and then it stopped. If she didn’t answer it, would it cease to be true?—this thing the caller was calling to tell her?

  The phone rang again. And again.

  On the fourth time, she picked it up and the voice said, “You need to come home,” and then the line was dead and she completely fell apart.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, Sabrina fell asleep. Maybe it was the weariness of the days catching up to her; maybe she was dying inside and the toll was too much. When she woke up the next day, she went downstairs to the hotel bar, ordered the strongest drink, took one long, uncivilized gulp after another until it was done, then ordered another. After three drinks, she called a cab who packed her bags in the trunk then drove her to the airport.

  It was all over the internet, how her mother had been killed in a home invasion. Her eyes had never been so wet for so long in her life.

  If she had the guts, could she call Garrison Rich and ask him if she sacrificed enough now? The only reason she didn’t
make that call was because she’d chosen him over her mother and this was her new life. That and she knew exactly what he’d say. He would tell her sacrifice was their stock and trade. He’d say get used to it, that everyone does it.

  We’ll see, she thought.

  Her sunglasses still on, Sabrina Baldridge turned and gazed out the plane’s window, losing herself in the blueness of the sky and the ocean below.

  Handcuffs

  1

  As Brayden pulled up to the FBI’s Vegas Field office, he told himself, “This is your plan. Stick to the plan.” His stomach lodged itself so far up into his throat, he was pretty sure if he opened his mouth he could see it looking back at him in the rear view mirror.

  “Get out of the car,” he said out loud.

  He got out.

  “Walk inside,” he told himself.

  Putting one foot in front of the other, he walked inside. With every step, he saw himself turning around and leaving, just totally chickening out. You’ve been through worse, he told himself. You’ve done worse.

  “How can I help you?” a woman at reception asked. She seemed pleasant with her big glasses and her presentable teeth. Looking at her out-of-fashion church blouse and her dull but styled hair, he was thinking she had no idea what was about to hit her.

  “I need to speak to Agent Clark of the Cyber Action Team.”

  “Is she expecting you?” the woman asked politely.

  “Yes, she just doesn’t know it yet.”

  It’s when you say shit like that that everyone gets moving with a little more urgency. The sweet, cooperative air about her was quickly cooling to concern.

  “If you could be more specific—” she said.

  “The team lost their passwords to their systems. Please let Agent Clark know I have them.”

  Her eyes registering something, her brain not knowing what to call it, she picked up her phone and made the call. He stepped away from the counter, gave her the privacy she needed for when Agent Clark freaked out. Seconds later there was a huge commotion, and he was at its center. The next thing he knew, he was face first on the ground, knee in the back, handcuffed and staring hard at all the little pores on the tile floor.