The Paths Between Worlds

by Paul Antony Jones

  “It relegates me to little more than a nurse whose sole job is to keep people alive until the aurora each night,” Bull said, less a complaint and more a statement of fact.

  “A hell of a problem to have, Doctor,” said Edward. “But one I’m glad we have, considering the alternative.”

  As the aurora’s light faded, one after the other, the injured sat and looked around. It reminded me of one of those old horror movies where the vampires or zombies come back to life at nightfall. But these weren’t the undead, they were the almost-dead, saved by a technology so advanced I couldn’t even begin to comprehend the intelligence behind it. How did that quote by Arthur C. Clarke go? “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” I whispered the words reverently.

  “Magic indeed,” Bull said.

  “I wonder, if we had possessed this technology in my time whether we would have continued to fight?” Edward opined. “Or whether we would have ever started those damnable wars in the first place. It seems to me that only infinite enlightenment could have created such a technology as this.”

  “It doesn’t matter what time or where,” I said, “humanity has a habit of turning everything good into a weapon. I’d bet this technology would not have stayed benign for very long once humanity got its dirty little hands on it.”

  “That’s rather pessimistic,” Edward said. He sounded honestly surprised at my dark tone.

  I threw a sad smile in Edward’s direction. “I’ve seen way too many people screwed over for a buck to have much faith in the chance of technology ever truly enlightening our species.”

  “But someone has faith in us as a species,” Jacquetta added. “Otherwise, what are we all doing here?”

  I couldn’t really argue with her on that. I stepped toward the revivified and said as reassuringly as I could, “It’s alright, you’re safe. There’s nothing to be afraid of. You were injured, but the aurora has healed you. You’re among friends now.”

  We spent the next fifteen minutes calmly explaining who we were, what had happened to them, and that they were now safe and had nothing to fear from us. By the time I saw Freuchen striding out of the shadows toward us, the formerly injured were up on their feet and being handed food and water.

  “The Nazi, he is avake,” Freuchen growled, before adding with a chuckle, “And he is not very happy vith his predicament.”

  “It’s okay,” said Jacquetta, “I’ll handle things here. You go deal with him.”

  “Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to stay back a little so he can’t see you,” Chou whispered as we drew closer to where the restrained Nazi officer was being watched over by Wild Bill. “If you are who he is looking for, it will allow us some time to interrogate him before he knows you are here.”

  “Okay,” I said reluctantly. I wanted this particular mystery put to bed as quickly as possible. The idea that this man and his band of killers had murdered all those people in an effort to find out whether they knew me seemed preposterous. But the message Silas had relayed to me had predicted this might happen; there were people, bad people, who would be looking for me. And there had been that moment of apparent recognition when the officer had first seen me. It was terrifying, if I was honest, because there was no reason whatsoever I could think of why I should be of interest to them. I was just a student who’d taken a wrong turn and become a junkie. The Voice had offered me a second chance here on this alternate future Earth, and I’d taken it. But I hadn’t asked for this. It had been forced on me. So, if we could learn more about the reason behind it from this man, then I was all for it. Still, as I watched my friends approach the restrained officer from the shadows, I felt a flutter of anxiety wing its way into my stomach.

  “Are you comfortable?” Chou said stepping into the officer’s field of view, her face soft, relaxed.

  The officer shook his head.

  “Would you like us to loosen your bindings?” Chou asked next. “Perhaps that would make you more comfortable.”

  The officer did not utter a word; he only nodded.

  Chou crouched down in front of him, her hands hovering above the belt that secured his hands. “Perhaps you would do something for me, first? Tell me, what is your name?”

  “My name is Obersturmbannführer Otto Weidinger, Commander of the 4th SS Panzer-Grenadier Regiment, and I demand you release me immediately.”

  A few years older than me, if I were to guess, Obersturmbannführer Otto Weidinger was an undeniably handsome man. His aristocratic features had looked a little bruised after I’d clobbered him with the machine gun earlier, but that had disappeared along with his concussion, thanks to the aurora, and now his classic German features were restored. There were still blood splatters on his cheek, and his military-cut black hair had mud or dirt clumped in it, but his pale skin, piercing green eyes and dashing good looks still couldn’t make up for the whole homicidal Nazi vibe. In fact, the more I watched his arrogant, smug answers to the questions Chou asked him, the more he reminded me of one of the rich frat boys I’d had the misfortune to run into at parties during my time at Berkeley. He was a grade-A asshole.

  “Why were you interrogating and executing your captives?” Chou asked nonchalantly.

  “Your German is impeccable,” the officer replied, avoiding the question.

  Chou ignored him and said, “Please answer my question.”

  He repeated his first answer again, “My name is Obersturmbannführer Otto Weidinger, Commander of the 4th SS Panzer-Grenadier Regiment, and I demand you release me immediately.”

  Chou persisted, her voice losing some of its softness, “We have already established that, now answer my question: Why were you interrogating and executing your captives?”

  “My name is Oberst—”

  Chou’s hand flashed out and slapped Weidinger so hard across his face his head turned directly toward where I hid in the shadows less than ten feet behind him. I stifled a gasp of surprise, thinking he might see me, but Weidinger’s eyes were glazed, his face slack with shock. He blinked a few times, then turned slowly to face Chou.

  “You will pay for that, you insolent whore!” Weidinger spat. “I will—”

  I flinched when I heard the crack of the second slap connect with Weidinger’s face. Blood began to drip onto his tunic’s lapels from a newly sliced lip.

  Chou’s head tilted first to her left shoulder then, ever so slowly, to her right as though she were trying to see the whole of this man who sat seething with anger and embarrassment before her. “I had taken you for a smarter man than this Obersturmbannführer Otto Weidinger. A man of your… profession should realize the situation he now finds himself in.” She stood, allowed herself to look around as though she were taking in the surrounding forest for the first time. “You are, I am sure, aware of the restorative power of the aurora. I thought that someone like you would have realized its potential.”

  I had absolutely no clue what she was talking about, and neither did Weidinger, apparently, as he looked up at her, he said, “What are you babbling about, you fool?”

  Chou knelt again, this time she was eye-to-eye with Weidinger. “I can keep you alive for days, months, years if I wish. And I can make every single hour of each day excruciating.” She took his chin in her right hand. The man tried to shake free, but she was too strong for him. “Perhaps tonight I will take an eye. Tomorrow, a couple of fingers, or perhaps a leg. Who knows? But what I do know, what we both know, is that every night your wounds will heal and then I will begin again. Over and over and over again. That will be your fate. Unless… you give me what I want. Do you understand me?”

  “Threaten me as much as you like. I will answer none of your—”

  Chou slapped him again.

  I’d had enough of this. I stepped out of the shadows and made my way casually into the light of the fire. The Nazi glanced up at me as I passed by his shoulder and stopped next to Chou. He started to look away then his head snapped back to me.

  �
��You! It is you, isn’t it?” Weidinger hissed, a look of utter astonishment shattering his arrogant demeanor. He struggled against his bindings, but the leather belts Edward had used to secure his wrists and ankles did their jobs. He thrashed impotently for a number of seconds then stopped, then he raised his head, jutting his chin out imperiously. “You are younger than I expected but that red hair… it is unmistakable. It is you.”

  “My God!” Bull hissed. “Evelyn was right. It is Meredith he wants.”

  I felt almost everyone’s eyes turn to me at the same time I felt my stomach plummet to the ground. “Who sent you?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. Weidinger just stared back at me, an arrogant smile on his lips.

  Chou’s gaze became steel as she turned her attention back to Weidinger. “Answer her,” she said. “Now!”

  “I will say no more until you release me.”

  “I’ll bet my last penny he’s working for the Adversary,” Bull said, stepping up to stand next to Chou.

  I saw a moment of confusion flitter across the Nazi’s face, then the same arrogant mask descended over his features.

  “I’ll wager that he doesn’t even know who the Adversary is,” said Edward.

  “Or the Architect, either,” Wild Bill growled.

  Confusion spread across Weidinger’s face.

  “I believe, you are all correct,” Chou said. “I think he knows less about what is happening than we do.”

  “I… I…” Weidinger stuttered.

  “Tell us who sent you. What do they want with Meredith? Now!” Chou yelled.

  Weidinger’s facade was beginning to crack under the mounting pressure.

  Freuchen stepped in closer to the prisoner, his huge bulk adding to the implied threat. “If you know vats good for you, you vill answer us, Nazi.”

  “Alright, alright, I will tell you,” Weidinger said finally, his eyes wide with fear as Freuchen leaned in close, his huge hands balled into sledgehammer-sized fists.

  “Very good, Otto. Here, have some water.” Chou raised a canteen to Weidinger’s lips, and he drank deeply from it, water spilling over his chin, washing the blood away from his split lip. The area around his right eye was beginning to bruise and swell from Chou’s last slap. “Take your time,” Chou cooed.

  “My unit was stationed in Poland. While we were traveling, our transport was caught in the open by an American bomber and attacked. We should all have been blown to pieces but as the bomb exploded… everything… stopped. I was surrounded by frozen fire and pieces of my staff car and my men, all suspended in midair as if by some magic.”

  Weidinger had an almost dreamy look in his eyes, as though he were recalling something that came close to a mystical occurrence or perhaps a brush with the divine.

  “It was then that I heard the voice of the Führer telling me he was willing to save me and my men, save us all so that we could serve him in a very special capacity…”

  “Wait a second, just wait a second,” I said, interrupting him. “You’re telling me that you were contacted by Hitler? Adolf Hitler? That’s who you heard talking to you?”

  Weidinger thrust his chin out, indignantly. “Yes. I have met the Führer on several occasions. His voice is unmistakable.”

  I looked at Chou. She met my eyes, her brows raised inquisitively for a moment then she turned back to Weidinger and told him to continue.

  “My Führer told me he had a special mission to assign us—that from all of his armies he had selected me and my men. He would save us from the attack in order to send us here to this island where we were to use any means necessary to track down and detain a very specific woman. That if I did not achieve my goal, this woman would bring about the downfall of our beloved Reich. She would destroy everything he had planned, which was why she must be found and stopped. That I would find you on this island, but if you somehow eluded me, I must go to the mainland where I would meet with more of the Führer’s agents, and together, we would find you. And if I completed this special task for him, I would be assured of a seat at his table and help him govern over the thousand-year-Reich. But first I must accept his offer.”

  “To which you said ‘yes,’” said Chou.

  “Of course, I accepted. I am not a fool. My loyalty will always be to the Führer and the Fatherland.”

  “That’s very good, Otto,” Chou said. “Now, tell me, how did you know what Meredith looked like?”

  “It was very strange.” Weidinger looked up at me and his forehead furrowed as he spoke. “When the Führer spoke of you, I suddenly had a very clear image of you appear in my mind, like an old memory I had suddenly recalled. It was as though I had met you at some point in my life and forgotten you until that moment.”

  “Describe this image,” said Edward.

  “In the image… in the memory, you are surrounded by hundreds of men and women, all smiling. You are standing on a dais, in front of a microphone, your arm is raised as if you have just won a great victory. You are older, perhaps in your late thirties, but it is definitely you, I know it.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense?” I said. “I’m twenty-seven, how could the image you have be from the future?” As the words left my lips, I already knew the answer.

  “Because the memory that was implanted in his brain is not of you, it is of a version of you. A version which did not follow the same path you took,” Chou said, without taking her eyes off of Weidinger. “What else can you tell us about this memory of Meredith?”

  “I don’t—” Weidinger winced as Chou took him by the wrist and squeezed.

  “Tell us anything that you can remember,” Chou whispered.

  “There was a sign behind her, on the wall,” Weidinger said.

  “What did the sign say?” Chou asked.

  “I don’t know what that—”

  “Answer the question,” Chou insisted. Her grip tightening on Weidinger’s wrist.

  “It said, ‘America Together—Meredith Gale for President 2028’.”

  I felt the world spin, then Freuchen’s steadying arm around my waist. When my vision cleared, Weidinger was staring at me, and I said, “Are you sure that’s what it said?”

  Weidinger scowled, “I am not a fool. I have told you everything I know. Now I demand that you let me go free.”

  I shook my head. “There’s got to be some kind of a mistake. Why would that version of me be running for president? I mean, I was interested in politics, sure; but president?” As I spoke, I noticed movement near the epaulet of Weidinger’s tunic on his left shoulder. There was something—

  “Watch out!” I yelled, as I suddenly recognized the glowing green eyes of a mechanical beetle, identical to the one Chou had destroyed that first night. It scuttled from Weidinger’s back onto his shoulder. Before any of us could make a move, the beetle leaped onto the collar of Weidinger’s tunic; there was a glint of something metallic and a needle-like rod shot from between the beetle’s jaws, puncturing the officer’s throat. Weidinger flinched as though he’d been stung, and his eyes immediately rolled back into his head, and he began to convulse. Froth bubbled from between his lips and nose. His jaws snapped shut, his back arched against his restraints and a keening whistle escaped from between the Nazi’s clenched teeth. A moment later, he slumped sideways to the ground and stopped moving, white foam tinged with red leaking from his mouth onto the ground.

  Chou was the first to react, lunging toward the mechanical assassin. But this time, the beetle was too fast even for her. It leaped from Weidinger’s shoulder onto the ground where it stopped for just a second and looked right at me before it raced into the darkness beyond the light of our campfire and vanished amongst the trees.

  “My God!” Edward said, moving to Weidinger’s side. He placed a hand against the German’s neck. “Stone cold dead!” he announced after a few seconds. His eyes drifted to where the beetle had disappeared.

  Bull stuttered, “Am I imagining it or did that… that insect seek him out and kill him specificall
y.”

  Chou looked in my direction and said, “This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered one of those beetles. Our first night here, one of them came into our camp before the very first aurora. I killed it and discovered it was not an animal, but a construct, a mechanical beetle.”

  “Mechanical? How can that be?” Bull said, incredulously.

  Chou answered him. “It is merely a device, finely crafted and integrated into a body designed to not draw attention. An agent, I suspect, of the Adversary.”

  “But why kill him?” Bull asked. He looked nervous.

  “Maybe because he was about to reveal something more?” Edward said.

  “You mean something more incredible than the idea that Adolf Hitler sent a bunch of Nazis to kidnap me? Or maybe the fact that in some alternate universe I’m running for president? Spoiler alert: it can’t get any weirder than that!” I hissed, still unable to believe what I had heard.

  “I do not believe the message he received was from Hitler,” said Chou.

  “You think it was the Adversary, pretending to be Hitler? That’s why it had to ask him to accept the offer to come here,” I said.

  “Yes. There is no reason to believe that any version of Hitler, in any timeline, would have had access to the technology required to bring Weidinger and his men or anyone else for that matter here.”

  “Tell that to some of the conspiracy nuts from my time,” I mumbled then added, “So the Adversary was just impersonating Hitler, to get Weidinger to do what it wanted?”