Time Twisters

by RABE, JEAN

  Japan had a solid grip on Southeast Asia and China, and the Imperial War Cabinet again raised the possibility of invading Australia. Admiral Kogetashi pointed out to his lord and master that Australia had sufficient resources of its own that the lack of supply from outside was an inconvenience, not a stranglehold that would bring the country to its knees. But the Emperor would not be swayed. That evening, the admiral committed seppuku to atone for his temerity.

  In the Nevada desert, the scientists showed the Army and Air Force generals what it was they had been working on these past four years—a bomb, about the size of the one-thousand-pound ones that had been raining on Britain the past twelve months. The generals were disbelieving when told that this bomb was over ten thousand times more powerful than a conventional bomb the same size. The scientists had known would happen, and so had prepared a little demonstration for their high-ranking visitors. At 6 AM the next day, they would show the generals what all the fuss, and funds, had been about.

  In France, and throughout occupied Europe, the leaders of the Resistance movement were quietly contacted and told to get their people out of Berlin—within twenty-four hours. For some, this was not going to be possible, but they did their best. None knew why such an instruction would come from the French leaders in England, but there was surely some important reason for it.

  In Moscow, the Russian commanders received a coded message from London that it was time to end this war—one way or the other. This was the signal they had been waiting for, and they quickly dispatched messages to their field commanders to prepare to march on Germany.

  June 7, 1944:

  In the desert of Nevada, as the sun rose over the Rocky Mountains, there was a rumbling sound from beneath the earth and a bright flash at the base of the mountains. Where the day before there had been a moderate-sized town nestled at the base of the mountain range, now there was nothing but a huge cloud of dust thrown up when the earth heaved. The doubting generals doubted no longer, and inquired as to how long it would take to get these bombs into production. When the scientists said it would take another year, the generals said it was wartime, and they had six months to get the job done.

  On the Russian front, the German forces were getting nervous. It was clear the Russians were up to something, but the superior German equipment and training had so far kept the Russians from mounting an attack. If not for the Russians being so well dug-in, the Germans would have overrun them last summer. They had learned the lesson of Russian winters, and would not repeat that mistake. But summer was a different matter.

  In London, Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent a message to Berlin, and another to Washington, inviting Hitler and Roosevelt to contact him to discuss surrender terms. With Britain on her knees, it did not occur to any of Churchill’s staff, nor Hitler’s, nor Roosevelt’s, to wonder why the Prime Minister had not explicitly stated whose surrender it was to be.

  In the north of Scotland, far from the nearest town or farmhouse, at a secret airfield, six planes were loaded with a single bomb each, and every spare cubic inch of space on four of them was taken up with extra fuel tanks. The planes were wheeled into separate hangars, all of them disguised with peat moss to look like another hillock on the moors. As soon as darkness fell, four of the planes would be on their way, the other two following around dawn. The flying fuel cans would make a stop at Port au Choix for refuel before heading to their final destinations.

  In Tokyo, the Imperial War Cabinet met to discuss their options. Japan had taken all of Southeast Asia, had effective control of China, and the warlords wanted more. But, with the disgrace of Admiral Kogetashi fresh in their minds, they had no suggestions as to how to expand the empire further.

  June 8, 1944:

  Washington, DC. 4 AM. The air raid sirens started their banshee wail as the fighter planes scrambled to find the enemy planes that had caused the alarm. None of the American fighter pilots had yet seen action, as the United States had not been attacked. It could only be the Canadians, but what were they thinking? Once the British surrendered, it would be a formality for Canada to do the same, and become a part of the U.S. Why would they attack, when the war was all but over? Their confusion wasn’t eased at all when the fighters found only two bombers, flying a little apart from each other, coming from the direction of Newfoundland. There were no enemy fighters visible, which did nothing to settle the nerves of the untested American pilots. Still, they had their orders, and they moved to engage the bombers.

  The dogfight did not last long—perhaps thirty seconds from start to finish. One of the enemy bombers was hit in a wing-tank within a few seconds, and it exploded in a ball of fire that engulfed three of the attacking American fighter planes. The remaining fighters kept back from the other bomber, making it harder to target accurately, but ensuring they would not be caught in any fireball. It was still only a short time before one of the fighter pilots got lucky, and his bullets shredded the bomber cockpit canopy, the instruments, and the enemy pilots. As the invading bomber’s nose dipped, a single bomb fell from the bomb bay.

  Less than a minute later, the bomb struck and a bright flash, brighter than the midday sun, lit up the night sky. Within seconds, the American fighter planes’ engines died and the pilots survived only a few seconds more as the shock wave from the blast picked up their planes as a child picks up a toy, and tossed them carelessly away, to fall out of control to the earth. The fighter pilots did not live long enough to see the mushroom cloud forming over what had been the American capital.

  In New York, just before sunrise, the scene of devastation was worse. Two bombers managed to release their deadly cargoes before they fell out of control. The center of U.S. economic might was a smouldering ruin, with poisonous dust filling the air and fires burning unheeded across the rubble of the city.

  Berlin, 10 AM. Two bombers flew over Berlin, unnoticed in the crowded skies. The British had seemingly put every aircraft they had up today, and the Luftwaffe was busy shooting them down as quickly as possible. But it was inevitable that some would get through, and the two special planes did. They dropped their bombs and turned for home, one of them with flames licking at the tail. The bombs exploded in the air above Berlin, and hell on earth followed. Cars, trucks, trams, all came to a shuddering halt. In the skies, the planes closest to the explosions were vaporized, while farther away the engines simply stopped and would not start again. Then came the shock wave, which hurled man and machine alike in all directions.

  June 9, 1944:

  What was left of the German and American high commands scrambled to surrender to the British, lest any more of the hell bombs be used against them.

  In New York, those who survived—and who up until yesterday had been the rich and powerful—quietly packed up their most treasured belongings and headed for Mexico and South America.

  On the Russian front, the German troops stopped wondering what was going on, as their Russian opponents had their orders rapidly changed from invading German territory to accepting the surrender of the German army.

  In Tokyo, the Imperial War Cabinet abandoned the plans to invade Australia. It was still a part of the British Commonwealth, and whatever weapon the British had developed was not one the War Cabinet wanted to face.

  November 11, 1944:

  In London, Prime Minister Churchill greeted his guests and showed them to comfortable, overstuffed armchairs. An exquisite Oriental tea service was laid out on a sideboard, with a Japanese woman hovering over it. She served a cup to Emperor Hirohito before retiring to the background. At the other end of the sideboard, a glass and silver tea service was set out, a wisp of steam drifting lazily from the spout of the teapot. Josef Stalin served himself a cup of the jet black brew—not for him the trappings of servants. Churchill poured himself a cup of tea from a Wedgwood teapot into a matching cup, added some milk and sugar, and sat to face his visitors.

  “Gentlemen, it seems the world has changed quite a bit these past few months. Though it’s a cliché
d term, I venture to suggest things will never be the same again, and we three must decide where we go from here.”

  It took several days and much talking among the functionaries each of the leaders had brought to the meeting. But the three leaders eventually hammered out an agreement.

  Eastern Europe would be ruled by Moscow.

  The Africa nations would remain as they were—governed by various Western European capitals or in a few cases ruling themselves.

  Western Europe was now free of Hitler’s yoke and would be allowed to recover and choose its own destiny.

  Asia would be governed from Tokyo.

  Britain would reclaim her recalcitrant North American “colony.”

  South America would be left to its own devices, as none of the victorious leaders wanted to contend with mother nature in the jungles down there.

  There would be combined efforts to find a way to clean up the mess that had been Berlin, as well as Washington and New York.

  And a few visionaries among the delegations suggested that the technology which had helped end the war might be useful in sending a rocket to the moon.

  Present day:

  The claw reached out and turned the dial to the right again, slowing it down in the early 1990s.

  The figure saw that in the fashion houses of Paris, the latest designs were being shown to an appreciative audience. The financial capital of Western Europe had grown stronger in the past forty-five years. French was now the official language of Europe, and the franc its official currency. Many of the other Romance languages were still spoken, but the Germanic languages were forbidden.

  In the center of what had been Germany, the figure noted that a sheet of black glass absorbed the sun’s rays. Underneath the glass were the remains of old Berlin, but only twenty kilometers away (Europe was definitely a metric society) another city had been built. New Berlin was a hive of industry, and the hub of the aeronautical industry in Europe.

  In the northeast of what had been the United States—and what was now known as New Britain—a two-hundred-square mile (the British Empire refused to adopt metric measurements) nature park sprawled where once New York reached for the sky. Two hundred miles to the south, the governor of New Britain built a grand city on the ruins of an old one. He’d had to wait twenty years for the environmental engineers to figure out how to clean up the mess, and then do it, but it had been worth the wait.

  In Tokyo, the Emperor was getting very old and frail, but his son stood ready to take over the reins. Japan had found ways of making their expanded empire very productive, and had taken the lead in developing an electronics industry that continued to amaze the rest of the world with their “what will they think of next” ideas.

  In Eastern Europe, much of the land was being used for farming. Advances in fertilizers and growing methods had led to a threefold increase in output. Famine was a thing of the past. In the cold wastes of Siberia, people who had been forgotten by all but their closest families dug mineral ores from the earth using electric jackhammers and loaded the ore into mine carts that were hauled to the surface by remote-controled electric locomotives.

  Everywhere in the world, people drove to work in their cars, rode pushbikes, walked, took the train, or rode in buses. All motor vehicles were hydrogen or electric-powered; the air in even the largest cities was clean and crisp. Even aircraft used hydrogen fuel cells to get them off the ground, and solar cells covered their wings to power the plane in flight.

  In the deserts of Africa, locals and Europeans worked at reclaiming the land from the sands. Progress had been slow to begin with, but at last the results were beginning to show. As more and more land was reclaimed and put to use growing crops, or the ever-important trees, the climate was beginning to shift away from the harsh extremes to a more temperate one.

  In the heart of Australia, a concrete tarmac led to a gantry system. In the low buildings all around, workers made ready for the next launch of the Aerospatiale-Boeing orbital vehicle. It was the only vehicle on the planet that still used hydrocarbon fuel, and the scientists were working on a more efficient fuel cell to replace the polluting technology. They just hadn’t got it right yet.

  On the moon, the scientific research station housed two hundred and thirty-six people from all the nations of Earth. They studied the moon’s structure and tested the soil and the very thin atmosphere. Terraforming the moon was still a pipe dream, but it might not always be so.

  In the jungles of South America, the children and grandchildren of those once-powerful Americans conducted research of their own, into the properties of the juices of the many plants they had to choose from all around them. The answers might not come in their lifetime, or in their children’s, but one day their descendants would use the biological agents they were developing. They would strike at the descendants of those who had murdered their parents and grandparents, and they would claim their rightful place as leaders of the modern world.

  In the darkness, the clawed hand withdrew from the dial. “Must keep an eye on the South Americans, and not let them get too far too quickly.”

  A few feet away, another clawed hand reached toward a similar screen and twisted a dial hard to the left. “Now, about this Genghis Khan . . .”

  ONE TIME AROUND?

  John Helfers

  The man shimmered into existence at the end of Oak Street on a beautiful summer afternoon in July. His instant, incredible appearance went completely unnoticed on the sleepy suburban street—except by a dog. Lying in the sunlight in the front yard of the house on the corner, the animal raised its head for a moment at this new intruder.

  He checked himself over, making sure that nothing was missing, his movements hesitant and unsure as he verified that he was in one piece. With a sigh of relief, he realized that he was breathing fresh, clean air. And he filled his lungs with as much as they could hold before letting it out in a slow whoosh that deflated his chest, exulting in the untainted oxygen around him.

  He gazed at his surroundings in rapt awe, taking in the squat, wide-roofed bungalows that were already a few decades old in this northern Minnesota town. Trees that would be towering and stately in fifty years—and dead in a century—were just new saplings now, barely able to shade the grass around them, much less the street. Blocky, stocky cars dotted the suburban landscape; curved fenders and large shadows were cast by Fords and Packards and Chevrolets and what would be the last of the Studebakers. There wasn’t a car in every driveway—not yet—but here and there, for those who could afford them. Everywhere the man looked he could feel a sense of anticipation—a sense that the time of troubles was over, and that a golden age was about to begin.

  And that was exactly why he was here—to ensure that one person in particular would share in that golden age. Studying each house intently, he began strolling down the street.

  “Would someone please turn that damn klaxon off?” David Melchior barely managed to get the words out before a violent fit of coughing doubled him over. He knew better than to try and stop it, but instead just let it run its course until the hacking spasms stopped, leaving him bent over his control panel, sweating and exhausted.

  The woman next to him, a tall, Nordic-looking blonde with thick eyeglasses and snow-white, almost translucent skin, stabbed several buttons on her keyboard while pushing a thick, plastic bottle of water over to him. The hooting, deafening alarm stopped as quickly as it had turned on, making her raised voice echo in the silence. “David, please, take a drink.”

  He managed a feeble grin in response, running a hand through his close cropped, thinning brown hair. “No—thanks, Irena, I’m all right. Besides, I’ve used up my ration for today—no need to waste yours on me too. Besides, we have to figure out what happened before the good general comes down here and sticks his nose in our business. I—”

  Another coughing burst cut off his speech, and the woman gently pressed the bottle into his hand while studying her bulky analog screens with a practiced eye. “Everything l
ooks normal—wait. I’m reading traces of residual activity in the temporal displacement chamber.”

  David nearly choked on his water. “What? That can’t be—we have no tests scheduled for today, nothing until tomorrow morning.”

  “Maybe Jack has an idea as to what might have happened—” Irena looked around, a frown crossing her normally calm face. “Hey—where is he?”

  David put aside his thoughts of taking another gulp of Irena’s water as the unsaid implication of her words hit him. “There’s no way out of here until our shift is done—unless he went into the chamber—Oh my God . . .” Fingers made clumsy by sudden fear stabbed buttons that seemed ludicrously small. “Come on, come on, scan, damn you.”