Alt.History 102 (The Future Chronicles)

by Samuel Peralta

  Hedy fled from Mandl in 1937 and met MGM owner Louis B. Mayer in Paris who hired her and changed her name to Hedy Lamarr. When she arrived in Hollywood in 1938, Mayer began promoting her as the “world’s most beautiful woman.”

  Although Hedy made many high profile movies between 1938 and 1942, she wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of being valued just for her beauty. In 1942, she and George Antheil, a composer, patented their “secret communication system” for frequency hopping, using a method similar to the way rolls in a player piano work, to prevent radio-controlled torpedoes from being jammed. They presented their invention to the U.S. Navy which, although it classified the invention, wasn’t receptive to implementing it, and scoffed at the piano roll technology. It was suggested that Hedy would be better off helping the war effort by using her celebrity to sell war bonds, and her application to join the National Inventor’s Council was declined.

  As directed, Hedy sold war bonds and continued to make movies. Her career went into decline in the 1950s, and after botched plastic surgery she became almost a shut in. She died relatively penniless in 2000. She was always working on other inventions, but none of them amounted to anything.

  The U.S. military finally used Hedy and George’s invention in 1962 in the Cuban missile crisis, after the patent had expired, and Hedy and George’s design is considered the basis for much spread-spectrum communication technology in use today in GPS, Bluetooth, cell phones, and Wi-Fi. They received many awards for their invention late in their lives and were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

  The events in World War II unfolded as outlined. Hitler spent much of the war at his compound at Wolfsshanze, which the Allies were unaware of. The July 20 assassination attempt, Operation Valkyrie, occurred as in the story except in the true history, the second bomb was never detonated, and because Stauffenberg’s suitcase containing the first bomb was inadvertently moved behind a heavy table leg, Hitler emerged from the assassination attempt relatively unharmed. He then ordered the execution of over 4900 people involved in the conspiracy, and the war continued for almost another year. Gröfaz was a derogatory acronym for Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten, a title developed for Hitler by the Nazi propaganda machine to refer to him as the “Greatest Field Commander of all Time.”

  Jennifer Ellis lives in the mountains of British Columbia where she skis, runs, writes, and keeps cats. Add in two teenage boys and their friends, and mayhem often reigns in her household. She also works as an environmental researcher, evaluator, and strategic planning consultant when the cats agree to get off her desk.

  She writes science fiction, romance, and dystopian fiction for children and adults, including Reversal and A Pair of Docks, in her Derivatives of Displacement series, which was a bestseller in children's time travel fiction. She’s also contributed to several anthologies, most notably Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel, which hit #16 in the Amazon Kindle Store.

  You can subscribe to her blog for the latest book news and industry insights at www.jenniferellis.ca. She tweets about writing, cats, and teenagers at @jenniferlellis.

  Requiem

  by Will Swardstrom

  What if a chance meeting as children meant more to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Marie Antoinette than the history books have led us to believe? The young maestro played for Marie when he was just six years old and she was seven, and professed his love for her that day. What if he never gave up on that love and when her life was on the line, decided to test that love against the backdrop of the chaos of the French Revolution. Told by his apprentice, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, Mozart’s attempt to save the French queen—and possibly himself—could change history forever.

  PRELUDE

  Late October 1791

  Vienna, Austria

  THE RAGE. The passion. The intensity.

  I remember it all. It was constant in those days, yet there was little I could do. I was simply his assistant, after all, a man of little or no significance. Even if I could, I would not have brought myself to calm him.

  A glass shattered and a wet stain began to grow on the opposite wall. “Franz, we must do something. I…I cannot let her languish in the nightmare that France has become. We must act now!”

  His intensity defined him. If I denied him his outburst, it would be to deny who Mozart was at his core.

  The life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart could not be classified as a life of privilege. In fact, the very music with which he entertained the masses generated so little income that Mozart could call himself a member of the masses.

  Just one person in a group of millions. One fantastically talented musician who could turn the course of Europe on the swing of a baton. A man who had the power to bring a king to his knees with a simple concerto.

  Did he know the power he wielded?

  I did not know. I believe there was more to him than most granted, but that his power was only so great. Mozart’s abilities were legendary, but the words of a queen were enough to stifle this man.

  I wish I could have peered into the soul of my master, but I was afraid of the demons I might be forced to entertain. Even now, one of his childhood regrets dared to resurrect itself in the form of a letter, written by a desperate hand. Amadeus had a masterpiece to finish, yet news from France disturbed him. France. For as close as it was to Austria, it may as well have been at the bottom of the sea with Atlantis. The actions of the Third Estate ensured no reasonable man travelled across that wretched border.

  Yet that was all he spoke of.

  “Wolfgang Amadeus,” I started. I kept my voice low and calm. “You know how the maid hates to clean up broken glass. Please, put the letter down and take a deep breath.”

  The letter was fortunate to even arrive in Vienna, with an origin of Versailles, deep in the heart of France, a country in the midst of rebellion.

  My master was happy once. He had told me this, but he did not tell me when. I suspect his happiness traced back to his childhood, when at the age of six years, a chance encounter put him face to face with an important seven-year-old child. Her name was Maria Antonia, the youngest daughter of Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.

  A princess.

  The boy and girl met and fell in love. The rest of his life was a vain attempt to earn a princess’ love. If anyone could be worthy of that affection, however, I believe Mozart to be that man.

  But as life does, it moves on. Eventually, Maria Antonia became a pawn in a political chess game, and married the French king, Louis XVI. The little girl became Marie Antoinette, the queen of France.

  The letter had come in the afternoon. My master had been apoplectic since its arrival. He made me read it to him. There had been several, less and less frequent, but when they did arrive, the urgency of tone and desperation of mortality were clear. Maria Antonia feared for her life with ever more advancing terror. The mobs chanted her name and thirsted to mix her blood with the filth and sewage in the streets.

  But did the mobs know what they sought? Did they understand that the very ones they sought to put in power were the ones that would again enslave them? If they saw that the tyranny they sought to replace would simply become tyranny of a different nature, would they still plunge forward towards that uncertain future?

  These were questions that plagued me, and I knew they plagued my master.

  Who was I? What role did I play in this tale?

  My name is Franz Xaver Süssmayr, Mozart’s apprentice since I emerged from my teenage years.

  A few months after I’d been with the master, he indulged in his wine a bit too much and confessed to me. His confession was innocent as far as they went, but when that particular private declaration involved the current and ruling queen of France, one tended to take the words a little more seriously. With that one conversation, I became not only his student, but also his friend.

  A friend who would follow the genius as far as his madness would take him if need be, I often realized. His work was brillian
t. Amazing. If I could but glimpse the heavens he saw when he wrote, I might also have the ability to show people that same beauty in my own music.

  Since the letters began to arrive, I had been able to dissuade him from the call of his heart. However, as the days of revolution swept over Paris and the surrounding countryside, I found it more and more impossible to sway him. The time was coming soon when Mozart would act, and that action could lead to our destruction.

  As much as he needed to finish his Requiem, this newest letter had convinced him to engage in an act of insanity. He believed Marie a prize to be had—“the most prized possession west of the Rhine” he called her. We were musicians and composers, but that artistic talent would need to be set aside.

  He intended to steal his Maria Antonia out of Paris, where she was being kept by the people until her most-assured death by the guillotine.

  * * *

  I’d heard him tell the story so many times, I could recite it from memory. His song and verse teaching me his life story by rote.

  He was six, and his sister Nannerl was eleven when the Mozart family embarked upon a tour of Europe. Both Wolfgang and his sister were prodigies. In fact, Wolfgang would often tell me that his talent paled in comparison to his fair sister, but by accident of birth, his music would be the only Mozart compositions remembered. Even so, the two Mozart children, along with their parents, began their trip in Vienna, performing for the royal court, after an invitation by the Empress of Austria herself, Maria Theresa.

  Now Maria Theresa was quite taken by the young musicians, and even challenged Wolfgang to perform a piece on the harpsichord as she covered his hands. If you knew my master at all, you'd know that even at that young age, he excelled at the task. He could do no wrong.

  Except when it came to Maria Antonia.

  “It was as if she was an angel, sent from the gates of heaven itself, when I saw her for the first time,” Wolfgang told me often. “Her manner and her grace justified her position even at her tender age. It was as if she was born to fulfill her duties as an Austrian Princess.”

  The day Wolfgang and his family entertained the Viennese Royal Court, she made it clear she was smitten with him. In exchange, Mozart approached her, and tripped, almost literally falling head over heels.

  “It was those uncomfortable shoes my father required me to wear, like I was a trained monkey at his zoo,” Mozart recalled. But he never spoke too harshly of those shoes. If he hadn’t tripped, then the princess would never have reached down to help him up. In spite of her place as a part of the court, she willingly betrayed her position to assist him. On that very spot, Wolfgang vowed aloud that he would one day marry her. She smiled and allowed she would accept his marriage offer.

  The next month the tour continued and the Mozart family travelled on to Paris, London, and the Netherlands before returning to their Austrian home. The story of the princess and the prodigy made for an amusing anecdote, but for most that was where it ended. Perhaps it even did for Maria Antonia, but Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart never abandoned the hope of requiting that first true love.

  FIRST MOVEMENT

  Fall/Winter 1791-92

  Vienna, Austria

  Between October 1791 and February of 1792, Wolfgang began to form a plan. I could not help myself; I allowed myself to be at the fore. He gave up the opera, the symphony, the gentle grace of heaven in musical form. In a way, Mozart died in the latter part of 1791. In a way, it was only then that he truly began to live.

  “Franz!”

  I was in the salon, reading selections from the latest edition of the encyclopedia. The voice called from the hallway, but the approaching footsteps told me I needn’t get up. Wolfgang was coming to me.

  “Yes, master,” I said, turning in my seat to face the doorway.

  As soon as he entered the room, I could tell he had barely slept. He still wore the clothes he’d been in the evening before, and his hair was disheveled. It was always disheveled, though. He looked at me with a combination of a smirk and a frown.

  “Franz, I am no longer your master. No longer do I hold mastery in the areas that matter, so please, simply call me Wolfgang. We shall continue forward as equals, agreed?”

  I couldn’t help but smile at his entrance. He had that way with many, dating back to his childhood when he would entertain the masses with his joyful displays wherever he went in Europe. That boyish charm was hard to resist, but just as he knew me, I also knew him.

  “Agreed,” I said. I clasped my hands together and looked at him. “Have you rested since I last saw you?”

  “Yes... no... I don’t know,” he said. He was pacing. Something was different.

  “Wolfgang, what happened?”

  “We... I... we... have an audience.”

  “An audience? What are you referring to? We have not had a performance in months. There is no audience. Do you need to sleep?”

  He slapped the table between us. “I do not require sleep! I require justice!”

  I put my hand on his, briefly. A reassurance of our plan. “And justice shall be ours, but we need to be rational and thoughtful. Eagerness is a good trait, but to blindly rush into the powderkeg of France is suicide of the highest order. Now, please, what are you talking about?”

  He stopped his shaking for a moment, and briefly shut his eyes to calm himself. The stress would tear him apart if I didn’t keep him focused. “The king,” Wolfgang began.

  I squinted. “What about the king? Which one? King Louis XVI? Did something happen to him?”

  The revolution in France was volatile at best. Every day was another that might bring the end of the royal family in Paris. That damned guillotine—the egalitarian method of death—could one day be the end of every single person in France, regardless of which estate they claimed.

  “No, no, no. Nothing new from France that I know of. But, we do have an audience with the king—Emperor Leopold II himself!” He danced away and spun around the room like a boy just woken up on Christmas morn.

  “Emperor Leopold?” I asked. “Surely you jest.”

  He pranced back towards me and put his hands down on the table. He leaned forward. “I do not jest. Franz, I have secured an audience with Emperor Leopold himself—the very brother of my Maria Antonia.”

  I was speechless, but managed one word. “Why?”

  He spun away again. A few steps away he grabbed a nearby statue and waltzed with the motionless figure for a few seconds. “We will convince Leopold to fund our trip to Paris, of course!”

  I stood and walked over towards Mozart. I pulled him away from the statue. “And if he refuses?”

  “Why would he refuse? Maria Antonia is his sister. Ever since this folly of a rebellion began in Paris, she has been in peril. This will give him an opportunity to save her.”

  I shook my head. “Oh, Wolfgang Amadeus. I will pray that the emperor does grant us the money we need for this journey, but I would daresay the one who desires her safety most in Vienna is you.”

  We both turned at the sound of a throat clearing on the other side of the room. Standing in the doorway was Constance. Wolfgang’s wife.

  I turned back to the master. “Have you not...” I whispered.

  His eyes grew wide and he shook his head vigorously. On one hand, his callousness towards his wife was not unexpected, and I chided myself for believing he would do anything differently. Throughout his life, Mozart was known for his immaturity. I foolishly assumed that with our plan to rescue his childhood sweetheart, he would have also informed his wife of his intentions. That he would have broken ties with Constance.

  I turned to walk away, and went to pass Constance, but she stopped me before I left the room entirely. Her eyes told me she was here only for closure. Her shoulders signaled acceptance of her fate—a destiny she must’ve somehow known since she’d married the man years before. She was weary, yet resolved. “Please. I won’t be long. He needs you. Stay.”

  I could not watch, but stood facing away. I listen
ed to the two as Mozart’s own wife confronted the maestro.

  “Did you think you could just sneak away and I would not know?”

  “I... I was not sure what to say.”

  “Say how you feel. You have never had a problem telling other women of your feelings throughout your life. Why me? Why now?”

  “She... is a dream. She is an impossibility.”

  “So you believed you could strive towards this impossible dream, and then when you fell you could fall back to the wife you left in Vienna?”

  “That is a fallacy. Do not tell me how I feel.”

  Constance’s voice rose. “And don’t pretend to care about me now. You have always had a mistress before me. It might not have always been another woman, but I’ve always known I take second place in your life.”

  “Oh, my dear Constance,” I heard Mozart begin.

  A crack echoed in the room. I turned to see Wolfgang holding his cheek, a redness blooming between his articulate fingers.

  “Don’t you say one more word. You are no longer welcome in my household, Wolfgang Amadeus. Do not return to our home. I will raise your children without you.”

  She turned to leave. Her eyes met mine again before she left. What did I see? It seemed like…pity. Perhaps after all that she saw in her own home with him, she had to wonder why anyone would choose to be with him. Why I would willingly put myself through the pain she felt. She did not seek my help or tears. She was too strong for that. At the door, just before she reached my position, she turned back. “For what it’s worth. Amadeus, you deserve each other. She’s in prison, and you are in a prison of your own childish making.”