1980
XV
I rush to open the door of the time booth, hoping that I’ll somehow be on time to save Burak, but it is a totally different room. Unsurprisingly, it is dark. Unlike the other locations, however, there is a nauseating odor burning through my nostrils. I extend my arms and try to reach for any sort of solid surface. I find a table, but there’s nothing of value on it. I walk towards the exit and my foot stumbles upon something soft on the floor. I squat down and I let my eyes adjust to the darkness. The stench is stronger, deeper. Finally I see it. A rotting human body. I jump to my feet and take two steps back. The corpse is unrecognizable. It has been here for quite a long time. All I can tell is that it is completely naked and hairless. For a moment I feel the panic take over me as a thought drops into my head. Is it me? I try to make sense of it. How could it be? Will I die later? Will I die now? How can there be two dead instances of myself? My thoughts are interrupted by a loud explosion.
I duck and crouch towards the nearest corner. I wait. My ears are ringing and it is hard to make out any sounds, but after a few moments I begin to hear footsteps. I hope it is Burak.
The steps slow down as they approach the room I’m in. The beam from a flashlight floods the interior of the room, blinding me. A black, tall silhouette enters the room. The man says my name. His voice is familiar.
He flashes the light directly into me and I use my hands to cover my face. He takes a step towards me and I now discern that he is holding a gun in the other hand. He points it straight at me and bang! The dark figure is shot in the head. The flashlight drops from his hand and rolls towards me. A second man enters, also holding a gun and a flashlight. I point the flashlight at my father’s face. He turns away from the light. I point my beam to the freshly dead body on the floor. To my surprise, it is also my father. A younger version.
The beam of light flickers as my hand trembles in panic. My father asks me to calm down. I can’t. He walks towards me, slowly. His voice is soothing. He puts his gun back in his holster and assures me that he means no harm.
He begins to undress himself - that is, his now dead version of himself. He takes away his gun and asks me to put on his clothes. Without much of a choice, I go along. I only have a moment, but I notice strange markings on the dead man’s naked skin. It’s hard to tell what they are in the darkness.
Only moments later we walk towards the exit, which is actually just a huge hole left by the explosion I heard earlier. It still smells of burned explosives.
Once outside, it seems to me that we are in the middle of nowhere. It is early morning, and very cold. We are on a small island in what seems to be a lake. On the other side of the water, a mass of trees. I follow my father, my murderous father, still distrustful. I quickly notice airplanes flying over us at a very low altitude. I suppose we’re near an airport but I still can’t tell which one.
A small rowboat is waiting for us in the water. He asks me to hurry up. We both jump on it and he quickly rows away to shore. Moments later, we get off, run through some trees and reach an old Goggomobil behind some bushes. We get in and he drives off in a hurry.
On our way we pass by, what I recognize as, Tegel airport. To my surprise, we do not drive towards the center of Berlin. Instead my father continues towards Spandau. During my whole time in Berlin, I’ve never come to Spandau. It’s funny how you always end up circling the same streets, oblivious to all the beautiful spots in the peripheral areas.
I imagine we’re passing by the citadel. Of course, my father has no time to stop. In some strange way it feels like an excursion I never had when I was a child.
Minutes later my father parks the car and I follow him to an apartment block. He rings the intercom. Someone picks up, but no voice is heard. The door buzzes and we enter the complex. We go up the stairs and a fat man is waiting for us with the door open. He gestures us to hurry up and get inside.
There is an uncomfortable aura in the apartment. Something seems odd, but I can put my finger on it. The fat man nods at my dad, glances at me and leaves us. My father guides me to what I suppose is his bedroom. He takes his jacket off and hangs it inside the wardrobe. He asks me to hang my jacket too. I walk up to him and do it myself. On the top shelf I notice a suspicious, big metal box. I choose to ignore it for now. I still need to regain consciousness and think of what just happened.
I try to speak with my father but he places his finger over his mouth. He whispers. Apparently it’s not a safe place to talk.
We exit the room and walk to the kitchen. While my father looks for a jar of salt, he suggests I grab a teaspoon. I open the drawer and shuffle through the cutlery. A couple of pieces catch my attention. I grab a teaspoon and bring it close to my face. On the back I find an engraved swastika. My father hands me the jar of salt. I eat a couple of spoonfuls before I realize I’m putting a nazi spoon in my mouth.
My father stares at me while I eat salt. But, rather than watching, he seems to be studying me. When I think I’ve had enough, I hand over the jar. He puts it away and I drop the spoon in the sink.
He gives me a moment to breathe and then suggests we go outside for a walk.
XVI
Outside, the weather is getting warmer. My dad and I stroll calmly through a nearby park, as if this morning never happened. I tell myself that I should be afraid, but I am not.
His bland head shines in the sun as he marches forward, looking down at his feet with every step. We’ve been walking for quite a while now and he still hasn’t said a word. I’d usually wait for others speak first in these sort of situations, but I can’t help myself from demanding explanations.
He sits on the nearest bench, but I choose to stand instead. He stretches his arms across the length of the bench and avoids eye contact with me. I ask why he killed the other man at the bunker. He answers that he wanted to kill me. By ‘he’, he means himself. He explains that a younger version of himself was determined to put an end to my life. He collaborated with himself to find me only to put a bullet in his head in the last moment.
I ask him if he’s not concerned about the time rupture he may have created by killing a younger version of himself. He doesn’t answer. I attempt to explain as properly as I can what Dr. Vodnik said to me days ago - or rather years ago. My father chuckles. He undermines the Russian’s understanding of the whole time program and clarifies the reality of the time paradox. Once you travel, you have no link whatsoever to any previous point in time. The new instance of yourself is now existing wholly, exclusively in this time and space. You become a lone singularity that cannot be influenced by former instances of yourself. The only things that may change are those which stay in the aforementioned times and spaces. All that remains is what influences the outcome of history. For instance, if you destroy a building, that building will not exist in the future. But if you travel to the past and kill yourself, your living instance will continue living, as it is already there, independent of whatever happens in the future.
I ask him if that’s why there was a dead instance of myself in that bunker. He takes a breath and specifies that the body isn’t me, it’s him. There are now two dead instances of himself lying inside that bunker.
I ask him what happened to the rotting corpse. How did he get here? He says the only explanation is that the corpse is the outcome of his final trip. The ultimate last trip. The bunker is impenetrable, that’s why they had to blow it open. It is very likely that there was nobody to get him out and that he died of starvation. He speaks of this in a cold tone, as if he were speaking about someone else.
If that’s the case, he remarks, he has failed his mission. No matter how much he travels, that will be his ultimate fate. I ask how he knows he has failed. He says that if he hadn’t failed, he wouldn’t have made that last trip in the first place.
It’s quite a lot of information for me to process, and half of my questions are still unanswered. I ask him who he works for. He tells me it depends who you ask. This answer doesn’t help.<
br />
He says that, when he left us in Konigsberg, he moved back to Berlin to work for the Nazi regime. That’s where the experiments began. Shortly after, however, he made discoveries which urgently changed his point of view. I ask if he turned to the Soviets. He nods at first, but then quickly shakes his head. Apparently it’s more complicated than it seems.
I remember him leaving. I was very little, but I remember it well. Above all, I remember his absence. I remember his alleged death. I remember the struggles my mother had to endure on her own. I remember the day we had to abandon everything and flee from the advancing Soviet forces, her own people, after hearing the atrocities they had committed upon the people in Nemmersdorf. I remember the following months in Poland. I remember little from the village, but I remember much of the language. I remember returning home, to Konigsberg, now Kaliningrad. I remember how different it was. It was unrecognizable. It had fallen into utter decay. All you could find were prostitutes and smugglers. It’s as if the worst of Russia had fled the mainland to infect this young city with corruption. The only citizens I could look up to were the soviet soldiers stationed there. Fortunately my mother made sure we fit in quickly. She was a Russian after all, and a survivor above all.
I want to tell my father of all this. I want to recriminate my father for it. But I know it is of no use.
Instead I pace from one side to the other, trying to make sense of all the pieces. I ask if he was the one who killed Dr. Vodnik. I immediately follow up with another question; whether he killed Burak as well.
He nods in shame. He insists that things are more complicated than they seem. He insists that the technology is far too dangerous for the Soviets to get hold of. The doctor was too smart for his own good. He got too close to cracking its secrets, and it would have been disastrous if he did.
I cannot trust this man, yet I feel guilty for not doing so.
He opens his shirt and shows the numerous scars and marks on his body. He asks me if I know what they are. I shake my head. He says they’re all seeds. Travel seeds. He cut them into his skin so they would scar and therefore be able carry them with him when travelling. He notes that he has used every single seed. He has travelled for over ten years. Ten real years. And he has seen too many things go astray.
I notice that some areas of his body are completely scratched off, making the seed unreadable. He notices. He says those are places no one should never revisit.
He warns me that I do not want to end up like him. What’s worse, I don’t want to see what the world will be like in the near future. This last sentence catches my attention. I ask him what he means. He responds by saying that the future holds a most unfortunate tragedy. I tell him I have been to 1990. Nothing seemed wrong. He says he isn’t talking of 1990, but of the 2000s. I am afraid to ask, but he nevertheless answers my silent question. He says that, even though the nazis were never able to fully deploy their original plan for the time program, they were successful in generating a catastrophic anomaly at the start of the new millenium. I ask him for details, but he insists in keeping them to himself. What he does divulge, however, is that it is my responsibility to prevent it. How? Why not him? He specifies I must travel back to 1943. Smack in the middle of the Third Reich? He must be kidding. He says he cannot return himself. They know who he is. By that time he’ll have betrayed the people involved in the experiment and they’ll be hunting him down. What’s more, an earlier version of himself, a nazi-sympathizing version, would surely shoot him on sight. He needs someone new. Someone they can give the benefit of the doubt. It’s the only chance.
The plan sounds mad and plain stupid at the same time. For all I know, this could simply be a trap.
My father buttons up his shirt. He runs his hand through his hair and sniffs. His eyes are piercing into my head.
No reason to trust him. Absolutely none.
XVII
My father has taught me much about what to expect in 1943, but I don’t feel ready. Luckily, I don’t need to travel all the way back to 1940. Three years trying not to get murdered in Nazi Germany. No, thanks. As an insider, he has access to a variety of dates, so I’ll be arriving just in time, for once.
The fat man who let us into his apartment doesn’t seem to like me. That’s fine. I don’t like him much either. I confirmed my suspicions that he is a nazi enthusiast. He only helps my father because he sees him as a hero. Poor idiot. He has no idea where my father stands. Then again, neither do I. Maybe I’m the idiot.
I haven’t had a day to rest. My father insists that it’s urgent. Every day I spend here is a day I spend in danger. I am his last hope and I my safety cannot be undermined.
We make our way to the center, in a rush. My father parks near the zoo and we walk. We stroll the same area I will stroll in ten years. The Hochbunker on Pallasstraße looks exactly the same, except for the graffitis; they’re are always changing.
To my surprise, my father walks towards the entrance bunker. Only now do I notice a strange man standing by the door. He nods and opens the main door for us. There is nobody else inside. Only us. My father cruises through the bunker as if it were his own home. He has been here before. Many times. I feel like a newbie being shown around the job by a veteran.
A few minutes later we are deep underground, uncovering doors that would be invisible to the naked eye. We enter the now-familiar laboratory, holding one more iconic time booth in its corner. This laboratory seems much better maintained than all the others I’ve seen. My father says he’s made sure to keep this one functioning properly, but it has proven to be a challenge to keep it a secret from the Soviets.
I peep over the documents that are pinned to the wall. Among them I see a map that makes my heart jump. In it are what seems to be the location of all bunkers. It all make sense now. Two hexagons, one smaller than the other. One labelled A, the other B. My father skims through the details but explains that the shape was part of why the time travel was possible. In fact, the more hexagons and the farther apart they are, the further you can jump in time. However, we are still limited to the existence of the time booths. In other words, we cannot travel before 1939, when the first hexagon was built.
If only Dr. Vodnik was here to see all this. It would blow his mind.
In the center of both hexagons is a red pin, right above Friedrichstrasse train station. It marks the place my father had spoken about last night while going over the mission details. The answer to the permanent and wireless energy source was hiding under this location. If I could destroy that, it would render the whole program obsolete. It would effectively halt all operations. The Time Program had spent two thirds of their entire budget on this single site alone. Nobody would put up the money or effort to rebuild it. Not in times of war. This power source made creative use of Tesla’s principles and brought them a step further. If my father’s plan is successful, the whole technology would be lost in time, burned along with all records of the Nazi Time Program.
My father undresses me as if I were a small child. It feels uncomfortable. I push his hand away and take the clothes off on my own. Once naked, I walk inside the booth. I am unsure of whether all of this is a good idea. I try to think of an alternative, but I have a hard time coming up with one. Besides, the booth has been airsealed already. That’s it. No turning back.
My father looks at me from afar. He fiddles with the controls and prepares the trip. He rolls up his left sleeve and reads a code from one of his many scars. The booth’s engine begins to hum faintly, warming up.
My father walks up to the booth and stands in front of the porthole. We stare into each other’s eyes, expressionless. I study the wrinkles on his face, trying to remember every detail. I breathe in softly. My father winks his eye and I’m gone.
* * *
I open my eyelids slowly, adjusting to the light. What? The light? There’s light outside the booth! Before I am able to react, the booth opens up. A rush of cold air brushes my sweaty skin. It is bright, too bright. I am only able to d
iscern a human figure standing in front of me.
His hand grabs me by the arm and pulls me to my feet. I know it’s a man because of his rough palm and strong grip. I use my hands to shield my face from the light. In the corner of the room I discern an animal cage. Inside of it a beautiful Siberian Husky stares at me. Terrified, with its tail between its legs.
The man shouts at me in German. He demands I tell him who I am.
I begin to see things a little more clear now. The man is wearing a lab coat and a bushy moustache. Behind him, other scientists are gathering around. I’ve never seen one of these labs so populated and alive. It’s sparkling clean too. The walls are pristine and freshly painted. In the far corner I make out a soldier, dressed in grey, with a red armband. He has the emblematic SS pins on the collar of his blazer.
At least I know I’m in the correct year.
1943
I
I amaze myself with my lying capabilities. I tell the man that I am a fellow German soldier from the future. My impeccable accent sells the premise. The man in the lab coat buys it without a doubt. I read his name tag: H. Kammler. He demands that I tell him who my supervisor is. I tell him it’s a matter of state security and that I shall maintain confidentiality. Again, I’m amazed at my own deceit. I always felt like I was usually too honest for my own good. I just proved myself wrong.
He calls out to an assistant and I am offered a spoonful of salt. I swallow it swiftly, trying not to taste it. A blanket is thrown over me, even though I am not that cold at all. The whole situation is increasing my body temperature. I need to get out of here before I make a mistake and they find out I’m a fraud.
The Berlin Paradox Page 8
