Doppelganger

by John Schettler

  He remembered the logic he had settled on before—both ships could never occupy the same space, but two objects could easily occupy the same time—just not the same spacetime. Is that what had just happened here? Did this ship come through to 1941 from the future, just as I feared, even as the ship I was on came to this same moment from the past? If this was happening, then was I simply moved here, like Alan Turing’s watch? And what about the other Fedorov, the man I was just hours ago, speaking with Admiral Volsky on the bridge as we decided to make that last shift with the reserve control rod? Did the other Fedorov vanish, just like Kamenski had vanished, or do I have a doppelganger out there as well?

  No he thought. I am that man. I know I am. I’m the man who watched the sea red with fire when Yamato burned. That memory is etched in my mind forever. I’m that man!

  Chapter 24

  Fedorov had a very long time to consider his situation as he rested in his quarters, though his mind was so beset with questions that sleep did not come easily. He passed moments of deep sadness, realizing that the men he had known were gone now, the Admiral, the bridge crew, every man on the ship. Oh, they were still here, all around him, yet they were not the same. There was an innocence about them, and unknowing. At this very moment, they did not even know what had happened to them. They were here and gone all at once, and his mind and heart were shaken as he remembered that last speech the Admiral had given to the crew, and the sound of their voices cheering, singing, celebrating that last moment just before they shifted into oblivion.

  And so it ended there, he thought with grim finality, even as it begins again here. A story never really ends, as a river never ends. It just flows on and on, turns round another wide bend, curls back on itself. Some leave it to find a longed for shore or the promise of the sea, others come to it beginning a journey they can never really see the end of. That was life. We were here, and hearty travelers all, and then gone. Yet here he was again, strangely changed, yet in the eyes of those all around him, he was still just Fedorov. Here he was, still aboard this old familiar ship, and everything in his quarters looked the same.

  After he was finally released from sick bay, he made a point of taking a walk about the ship before he retired, almost as if he thought he might suddenly find it back the way it was, bruised, yet unbowed by every circumstance and trial they had faced.

  The first thing he did was to go to the reserve command citadel. That was the place that had been demolished in the Pacific when a Japanese plane came careening down on the ship there. Only the heavy 200mm armored roof, and then the equally well armored floor, prevented the plane from penetrating deeper into the ship. Yet the battle bridge, as they called it, had been completely demolished, and everything there had been destroyed.

  Before they returned to Vladivostok, they cleaned the space up, painted over the fire and smoke damage, and then covered the whole thing with a tarp. Once in port, the roof was sealed off with some new armor plating, but restoring the equipment there was impossible during their short stay in the Golden Horn Harbor.

  Fedorov wanted to see the place again with his own eyes, and when he arrived there, finding it all in perfect working condition, completely undamaged, he knew his premise was now proven. The impossible had happened again. This was the ship they had started this whole journey on, and not the one he had commanded only hours before that last attempted shift.

  Some sort of strange time loop was in effect here. Either time had made a choice as to which ship she would allow in this meridian, or both ships were here. The implications of that last possibility had already shaken him, for it would mean that everyone here might have a duplicate self out there somewhere, on that battered and weathered ship he had recently commanded. Yet he knew in his bones, with no doubt whatsoever, that he was the man from the ship that had fought Yamato, the ship that had been boldly engaging a German battlefleet just before they vanished into the grey fog of Paradox. He had taken the good counsel of Admiral Tovey, and given the same, and he had stood with restrained awe beside Churchill in the desert oasis of Siwa.

  So now I wear this old Lieutenant’s uniform, and not the Captain’s hat I earned through all those harrowing hours at sea. But I am not that younger officer, naive and unknowing. I remember everything we did, every experience. So how did I get here? Was I moved here during the shift, just as Alan Turing’s watch was moved to that file box? If that is so, what happened to the other Fedorov, the man I replaced here? Is he gone forever so that I might remain. Have I stolen away his innocence, his astonishment, the delight in his eyes when he first saw that Fairy Fulmar overfly the ship?

  If the old ship is still out there somewhere, then they are probably realizing I am gone. From their perspective, I was just another crewman who failed to shift properly, just like Orlov and Tasarov. I wonder… Did time move them here as well? Is that where the missing men all went—to this new ship? No. Orlov gave no indication he knew anything at all. He was his old grumpy self, ordering me about like a schoolboy on the bridge. I knew that felt odd when it happened, but I was so relieved to see him there that I overlooked it. Then the real shock came—Karpov.

  How could this have happened?

  He thought deeply about it, unable to sort through the Paradox, and then a possible solution suddenly occurred to him as he lay awake, staring at the ceiling. It was born of his own tortuous logic when he had been trying to determine what might happen to the ship. He reasoned that the very existence of the ship, its design and building, rested on a long series of events that had been stored away in the icebox of the Cold War between Russia and the West.

  I just could not see how everything would turn out the same, he thought, particularly with all the damage we were seeing in the history. With Russia fragmented into three warring states, how would events lead to the building of this ship, and to that very same mission to the Norwegian Sea to conduct live fire exercises? How could that same accident aboard Orel trigger everything as it did—the first cause. It seems so improbable that it simply could not happen. And yet… that same logic also told him that for him to be there in the past worrying about all of this, Kirov had to begin this journey somehow. That was an imperative. It had to happen, yet he could see no way it could repeat itself now.

  The evidence of his own eyes told him differently. Here he was, Lieutenant Anton Fedorov, posted as Chief Navigator on the ship. It had happened again, and now he thought he knew why. The changes to the history were going to affect the future, that much was certain. Yet he had no idea how long it took for the damage to migrate forward.

  I was assuming that when we change something in the past, the effects it might have on the future occur immediately. Maybe that was true of some things. Admiral Volsky had no trouble getting that letter I put in the storage locker at the Naval Logistics Building—except when Volkov intercepted it. Yet I wrote it in the past, and because that locker remained undisturbed for all those years, it turned up in 2021, almost immediately. Perhaps there were no other events in that chain of causality that could have interfered with it.

  He shook his head. What about the Japanese? They occupied all of Vladivostok. Wouldn’t that have interfered with the survival of that letter? No. At that point, Karpov had not yet even gone to 1908, so the letter got through. The locker proved to be a safe means of transmitting the information from the past to the future. I found that journal Orlov wrote that put me on his trail, and Kamenski had produced photos of Kirov in the past, and of Orlan in 1945. He turned up evidence of these events with no problem, but does that always happen? Do the changes migrate forward immediately?

  What if that is not so? What if some events in the past are so profound, or so complex, that their consequences cannot be immediately reflected to the future. What if it takes… time?

  Yes! Admiral Volsky and Kamenski were talking about something like this earlier. The Admiral wanted to know why we could not simply go to a history book and see what would happen during my rescue operation to fetch Orl
ov, or what Karpov would do in 1908. Kamenski said the events were still underway, and we were all involved, and with the power to change things. He used that term right out of the American Physicist’s technical papers—nexus point. It was like the eye of a hurricane, or the center of a whirlpool in the river of time. Everything was caught up in the chaos of change around it, yet from within that point, a willful agent could move in many directions, enter the stream of events, effect further changes that would all bear on the outcome.

  So what if Kirov was in such a place? What if it caused a nexus to form, and these events cannot completely migrate forward to the future until its actions in the past conclude? In this case, that future might still be intact. We noticed some effects at Vladivostok when we got back there. One man claimed his house was gone, and hung himself! But yet, the world seemed largely intact, right down to the restaurant where the Admiral and I had that dinner with Karpov. That was when I was first hatching my plan to go back and rescue Orlov. Yes… I was determined to do that, and convinced that Orlov was going to cause further damage to the history. He had his damn service jacket with him.

  And look what I did to the world. I found Orlov, but I took a wrecking ball to everything else. And yet… We went forward again to get to Kazan, and that world was still remarkably intact. I had already whispered that warning to Mironov, but the world we entered seemed to take no notice of the fact that he would kill Josef Stalin! So the change I introduced with that warning had not yet migrated forward. The world we entered to board Kazan with Gromyko was not yet altered by my meddling! Yes, there were some changes, but they were very minor. The really big things were still in play. I was again determined to go back and stop Karpov in 1908, and that was going to have everything to do with the outcome on history.

  Then his logic took one last leap. What if that world we returned to was the same as the one we left, with only these slight alterations? We stopped Karpov, and then tried to come forward again, but we could only reach 1940. There the changes Karpov caused in 1908—the changes I had caused with my warning to Mironov, had time to take effect. The world was clearly altered, drastically different. But those changes may not yet migrate to 2021, because Kirov was still in the past, still operating to effect the outcome. Our story had to resolve itself before the consequences of our actions could be fully determined. If that is so… My god! Then the ship that arrived here from the future—this ship—must have come from the original time meridian—the world that was as yet unaltered by our actions! So my complaint that events would never stack up to permit that was faulty logic. I was assuming the future was already changed, but that may not be the case.

  Of course! That is the only way this ship could be here now—the only way Karpov could be up there on the bridge. Did he replace the other Karpov in Siberia? Did that man vanish when this ship arrived here some hours ago? That thought gave him some hope, because at this point, Karpov had not yet fallen into the darkness that consumed him. He was all potential, dangerous potential, yet the possibility of redemption still remained in him.

  There were still so many questions in his mind. He needed to start getting some answers. First off, where were they? Was the ship in the Norwegian Sea? That seemed likely, because that was where Kirov was operating when the accident happened, the first cause.

  Then will events play out the same way as before? Will we soon make contact with Wake-Walker’s task force headed for Petsamo? How could that happen given what I saw? The history of the 1940s had clearly been overtaken by the wave of changes migrating from 1908. In fact, that was the theory posited by the American Physicist Paul Dorland. He called it a Heisenberg Wave, and claimed it acted to re-materialize the world to account for the changes made in the past. It migrated out from a major variation like ripples in a pool of still water. Here in the 1940s, we’ve already been overtaken by the wave that was initiated in 1908. But it has not yet reached the future in 2021! Not entirely. Some changes were seen, like the fact that the US entered the war earlier, but otherwise, things were still intact, and they should have been drastically altered.

  My god… I think Kirov just came from that original time line, only it entered the meridian already changed by events in 1908! I’ve got to find out if this is so. I’ve got to find out what is happening on the bridge, but I must be very cautious here. As I recall events when we first shifted to 1941, we would have made contact with Wake-Walker’s task force by now. Yet the ship is quiet. I heard the KA-40’s return some time ago, and we are no longer at action stations. That would certainly support my theory that this ship entered the altered timeline. If I could just get to Nikolin, he would probably know what is happening. In fact, he’s most likely off duty by now.

  That thought prompted him to get up and steal down the corridor to Nikolin’s quarters. It was very late, well after midnight, and he knocked lightly on the door, waiting impatiently. Thankfully, Nikolin was a night owl, and he had been listening to his own short wave radio, still monitoring stations as he had been on the bridge. He opened the door, surprised to see Fedorov there.

  “Fedorov, how are you feeling?”

  “Well enough… May I come in? I need to speak with you.”

  A moment later the two men were sitting by Nikolin’s desk, where he had been playing solitaire with a deck of cards while listening to the old style music being played on the radio. Nikolin explained that it was all he seemed to find—that and old news documentaries.

  Fedorov’s eye fell on the dark King of Spades, wielding a sword of doom, and arising from the very image of its own self, one king above, the other below. The image brought a strange feeling, a doppelganger, he thought grimly, just like Karpov.

  “Listen,” said Fedorov in a half whisper. “I need to ask you some things. I’ve been off duty a long time. Do you know our position and heading?”

  “We’re circling,” said Nikolin. “Right where Slava was supposed to be waiting with those targeting barges. The Admiral wants to put a submersible over the side in the morning to have a look at the sea floor.”

  “Then we are in the Norwegian Sea?”

  “Of course, where else?”

  “Alright… Have you heard anything from Severomorsk?”

  “Nothing. I can’t get through to any of our normal military bands, but my equipment was very weak until just a few hours ago, Then I started picking up this stuff.” He gestured to the small shortwave on the desk, illuminated by the cone of light from a metal hooded desk lamp.

  Fedorov inclined his head, listening. “What have you found out?”

  “It’s very strange, Fedorov. There’s nothing but these old news stories. That made the Admiral think there was no war, because every station would be alive with that news if something really big happened. They were just talking about the last war, bombing France, and things about the Russian front. Just old news from WWII.”

  “Did you get any details?”

  “Something about German ships in France. It didn’t make any sense to me. What would they be doing in France?”

  Fedorov looked excited, nodding his head. “Did you hear any names? Hindenburg? Bismarck?”

  “That’s the one—Hindenburg. The BBC said the RAF was bombing French ports, and they claimed to hit that ship.”

  “No other news? Didn’t the BBC carry live news feeds?”

  “That’s what’s so scary. They only broadcast these old documentaries from WWII. There’s been nothing else on the band for the last five hours. I’ve heard the same thing out of Reykjavik on the AM band. And I’ve heard shortwave from the U.S. and England. I’m still listening here, because Karpov and the Admiral will want my report first thing in the morning.”

  “Were these broadcasts dated?”

  “Just the old dates from the documentaries.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Well, that’s what is so odd. It’s as if they were doing some commemorative replay of the old news reels, because they’re just reporting the news from this
very day. Seems odd, especially since this is preempting all other local and international news. It’s as if nothing else is happening but this damn documentary.”

  “The date, Nikolin. Can you remember it?”

  “Sure—this broadcast here was BBC, and they time stamped it 28 July, 1941. That was two hours ago—the 11:00 newscast out of London. It’s past midnight now.”

  That was the date Fedorov expected, yet hearing it sent another chill down his spine. It was Paradox Hour, and now it was behind him. He had finally come through to the other side of midnight, and yet he was still alive, his memories all intact, but strangely here on this phantom ship. It had arrived from the same world he left so long ago, and he was the only soul here that knew anything of all that had happened to them. He suddenly felt very lonely, but he put that emotion aside and asked Nikolin his next question.

  “Have you tried using our coded ship-to-ship transmitting band?”

  “Just once, right after this thing started. I tried to raise Slava, but nothing came back. And all my satellite links are dead too. The Captain thinks this was an attack, Fedorov, but it’s gone eerily quiet since that fog lifted.”

  “Good. I Think I’ll go out on deck and have a look at the stars. If I have to plot manually tomorrow I’ll get a good fix on things tonight. What else is happening on the bridge? Any idea what the Admiral is planning?”