The Great Altruist

by Z. D. Robinson

  “It felt as though I had no control, like something was holding me back. Almost like having a rope tied around my waist and when I tried to run, it pulled me back. No matter how hard I tried, whatever tugged in the other direction was always stronger.”

  “What do you think it was?”

  Jadzia didn’t reply at first. She just shook her head. A moment later, she said: “It sounds crazy, but it felt like the hand of God, like some higher power wouldn’t let me succeed.”

  “You mean to suggest that World War two is meant to happen and there’s nothing we can do to stop it?” Genesis asked incredulously.

  Jadzia said: “No, that can’t be possible. I’m just telling you what it felt like...inside my mind.”

  Genesis flew back to her perch and said: “Get some sleep. We’ll decide what to do in the morning.”

  She turned on her stomach and went promptly to sleep.

  Genesis remained awake for several hours, desperate to find a means to save her friend. No scheme she could devise seemed to be sufficient enough to correct Jadzia’s ailing memory.

  Jadzia awoke just before the sun arose and climbed down from the tree-house to gather food. After cutting through the brush to find some berries and a fruit tree, she returned to the camp and prepared breakfast. Genesis was nowhere to be found, which alarmed Jadzia a little since she had never abandoned her in the clearing for more than a few seconds – except last night. Then Jadzia remembered the promise Genesis made the night before, that she would never leave her. Confident that she would not be alone long, she ate her half of the food and swam in the brook (which over the years had grown into a river) for most of the morning.

  As promised, Genesis returned and said nothing for quite some time. Jadzia kept busy around the tree-house meanwhile, scribbling in a notebook she had fashioned from leaves and twine, and a pen she made from a hollowed twig and ink made from berry juice. Genesis remained outside, sitting on her favorite perch above the shelter. There, she watched the birds play and occasionally flew around with them around the clearing. Soon, she entered the shelter and called to Jadzia to join her. She climbed through the hole in the roof and sat beside Genesis.

  “What’s on your mind?” Jadzia asked.

  “You said something last night that made me curious. About whether World War two can even be prevented.”

  “It was just a feeling,” she said. “The problem is probably in my mind somewhere.”

  “I’m worried you might be right,” Genesis said.

  “How is that possible?”

  “If what you said is right, that there is an unseen force propelling the war, then there must be a good reason - and there will be nothing we can do to stop it.”

  “I can’t believe that!” Jadzia said. “I can’t give up like that!”

  “I’m not giving up on anything. I’m in this to the end with you. If you want to keep trying to stop Hitler, we’ll decide where to go next and get to work.”

  “Good,” Jadzia said. “Because I’ll die before I give up.”

  “I won’t let that happen either.” Genesis was suddenly tempted to tell Jadzia the truth that her life was going to be tragically cut short as a result of her arrogance. She suddenly recalled the time when they first met, when she used her powers simply to show off in front of Jadzia. She disgusted herself. If Jadzia was going to survive, Genesis new that the answer would be found in humility, the only quality she desperately lacked. “Where will you go next?”

  “I want this to be over. No more head games and forcing people to say the right things,” Jadzia said in a huff.

  “What option is there?”

  “I know you’re not prepared to take a life and I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want. But I’m not taking any more chances.” Jadzia fidgeted with her hands, her knees suddenly trembling.

  “You want to kill him, don’t you?”

  “There’s no other way to stop this. Hitler needs to die.”

  “It will be hard to get to him. There were a lot of people who tried to kill him and never got anywhere near him.”

  “I want you to send me to the first War. As close to Hitler as you can.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “He can’t rise to power if he was killed in the war.”

  “Clearly,” she agreed, “but are you sure you want to take a life? It’s not like killing a fish, Jadzia.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want. We’ve been over this, and I won’t let me parents – or anyone else - die needlessly as long as there is air in my lungs.”

  “Whatever you want,” Genesis said.

  Jadzia readied her mind for the transfer and an instant later, the two women disappeared.

  Chapter 8

  The French countryside was scarred by the constant barrage of German shells that fell from every direction. Deep in the trenches, French soldiers covered their heads as planes shot across the sky, dropping bombs all across the landscape. An infantryman climbed from the trench and looked across the battlefield. German soldiers breached the barricade a hundred meters away until they hit the French bulwark and prepared to defend themselves.

  Jadzia awoke in the body of a soldier covering his head in the trench. The sudden shock of the violence around her, and its counterpoint to the peaceful clearing she just left, forced her to the ground, cowering.

  “Get up!” a soldier shouted at her. “We need to move!”

  Jadzia crawled to her knees and followed the troops out of the trench. The gunfire began immediately as the French charged the rampart and the Germans stormed to meet them. Soldiers on both side collapsed around her but she forced her way across the battlefield with a single focus. If Genesis had done her part as Jadzia hoped, Hitler would be on the other side of the bulwark. Behind the German line, Jadzia saw her mark: running along a trench was a slender message runner. He never saw her coming. She tossed her rifle to the ground and withdrew the pistol from her belt. A bomb fell a dozen meters away and the shock threw Jadzia just where she wanted - she tackled Hitler to the ground and the two rolled into the trench.

  She climbed to her feet and pressed her boot across Hitler’s neck. Hitler looked terrified, but Jadzia disregarded the guilty feeling in the pit of her stomach and readied her gun. There, in the moment when a Polish woman in a French soldier’s body stared her parent’s future murderer in the eye, she had no change of heart. She grimaced and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened. She squeezed the trigger again, but still nothing. The gun jammed and Hitler seized the moment. In the second during her distraction, he swiftly reached for the knife at his side and plunged it deep into the soldier’s chest. Jadzia fell to the ground, dropping the gun, and Hitler climbed atop the soldier and reached for the pistol. He placed the gun to Jadzia’s forehead as she whispered: “Genesis, where are you?”

  Hitler winced at the soldier’s curious words and pulled the trigger.

  Jadzia never felt the brief flicker of pain the French soldier undoubtedly did as Adolf Hitler squeezed the trigger and ended his life. Genesis fulfilled her pledge at the last possible moment and transported Jadzia back to her body in the clearing.

  Jadzia fell to her knees as she emerged from the stream and clasped her head.

  “Are you all right?” Genesis asked.

  “I’ll be fine. Thank you for getting me out of there.”

  “Sorry it took so long. Something was holding me back.”

  “Me too,” Jadzia said. “I couldn’t pull the trigger. Do you really think the future can’t be changed?”

  “I’ve never actually done something this involved before. Maybe the momentum of the stream is too great to alter its direction. Perhaps the hand of God is involved. Or maybe the future can never be altered. If that’s the case, I’ll have to come to you for nothing.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to give up.”

  “I won’t,” Genesis said.

  Jadzia climbed through the ha
tch in the roof and sat atop the shelter as a steady drizzle descended. Genesis left her alone since there was nothing left to be said. But as the hours passed and the rain intensified, Genesis grew concerned for her friend. She opened the hatch and saw Jadzia sitting with her closed eyes, a stoic expression on her face as she remained motionless. Genesis climbed onto the roof and knelt beside her and faced the storm as it descended on the clearing. Lightning struck nearby trees and thunder shook the shelter, and yet Jadzia refused to move - even after Genesis petitioned her to go inside.

  “Come inside, Jadzia,” Genesis said. “We built this thing so we didn’t have to be naked in the rain.”

  “I’m not going anywhere!” Jadzia said.

  “But why?”

  “How do I know you won’t leave me?”

  “Leave you? Jadzia, we’ve been together for ten years. When have I ever left you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Jadzia shouted. “I’ve only been here a few days!”

  Genesis said nothing. She sat frozen by Jadzia’s words, terrified that her memories had faded so quickly. She climbed back onto the roof and sat next to Jadzia until the rain stopped an hour later. Neither of them said anything. Genesis read Jadzia’s mind and watched the fear and rage course through her. Jadzia was scared of being abandoned, afraid that her inability to control her actions in the past was related to her failing mind. But Genesis sensed something far more sinister at play: the future may really be set in stone, and there might be nothing she could do about it. In that case, Jadzia would die for nothing, as not even her parents’ fate would change.

  Jadzia sighed in frustration as the sun emerged from behind the clouds and forest canopy. She climbed through the hatch in the roof and collapsed onto her bed, soaking the mattress of leaves. Genesis poked her head through the roof.

  “Are you feeling alright?” she said, trying to mask that fact that she already knew what was wrong.

  “I feel like I’m going crazy. All these memories keep coming and going at the same time. I’m so confused.”

  “How long have you been here with me?” Genesis asked.

  Jadzia looked at her incredulously. “Ten years, of course. Why?”

  “Because an hour ago you yelled at me and said you have been here a few days.”

  “I don’t remember saying that! What’s wrong with me?” she cried.

  Genesis could hold back her secret no longer. She descended from the roof and landed on the small stump beside Jadzia’s bed she used as a table. “There’s something I need to tell you. And I’m afraid you’re not going to like it.”

  A knot formed and twisted in Jadzia’s stomach. She had never seen an expression on Genesis’s face that was so hopeless. She could only assume it meant the worst. “I’m dying, aren’t I?” Jadzia asked plainly.

  Genesis nodded and bowed her head.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to scare you.”

  “Is there nothing we can do?”

  Genesis shook her head. “I’m not a surgeon. It doesn’t matter. I know the truth.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s my fault,” she said. “I did this to you when I forced all that information onto you. There’s no other way to explain it.” Genesis began to weep. “I can’t believe I let this happen. I was so careless; so confident that I knew what I was doing. I should never have come to you,” she said as she burst into the air and prepared to storm out of the ceiling.

  “Wait!” Jadzia called out. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  Genesis stopped at the hatch in the roof and covered her face in shame. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just stay with me,” she said. “I know you didn’t do this on purpose to hurt me. I pushed you. I’m the one who wanted to save my parents; to prevent the war; to learn all there is to know.”

  “And now because of my conceitedness, you - an innocent woman from a death camp - are going to die by my hand. I can’t stand to be here when that happens.”

  “What will you do?” Jadzia asked. “Will you leave me here to die alone without my best friend - my sister - to be here with me?”

  Genesis shielded her face with her hands and cried. “I’m sorry,” she said, the tears streaming down her face. She floated back to Jadzia’s side. “I can’t do that. I need to find a way to save you.”

  “And what if you can’t?”

  “Let me try at least? I need to leave, but I won’t be gone long. I promise you.”

  Jadzia smiled at her friend and reached out to lift her into her hands. “No matter what happens to me, even if I died tonight, I am grateful you came into my life. I wouldn’t trade the time we’ve shared for anything.” Genesis forced a smile and hovered away from Jadzia. She turned and looked back, etching the memory of her helpless and dying friend’s kind and beautiful face, and disappeared in a flash of light.

  Genesis returned almost immediately to find Jadzia asleep. The rain descended in sheets outside the shelter so Genesis rested atop the branch above Jadzia’s bed. As the storm intensified, crashes of thunder became more frequent and soon Jadzia awoke. She looked about the room and saw Genesis staring into the distance as though the walls of the shelter were of glass.

  “What did you find?” Jadzia said.

  Genesis snapped out of her daydream and said: “I have to remove all the information I put into you. The war, the history I shared during our years together, everything.”

  “Is it safe?”

  Genesis shook her head. “I should never have been so arrogant.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” she said. “You did what I wanted you to do.”

  “I shouldn’t have listened. And now, look at you - no matter what I do, you might die. How can I live with myself?”

  “Do your best,” Jadzia said. “That’s all I can ask. If I die from attempting to prevent the war, then I’ll have done better than all those people who served Hitler and did nothing to stop him.”

  Genesis smiled, convinced that the altruism she long felt she possessed was insignificant compared to Jadzia. “Let’s get this over with then.”

  The women disappeared into the stream.

  Jadzia watched the stream of time flow past her the same as before. Genesis was close by and prepared a massive strand of threads to connect to Jadzia. Jadzia remained perfectly still and tried to keep her mind blank. Genesis maneuvered her way across the pathways in Jadzia’s mind and began the arduous process of removing the memories that no longer belonged.

  Within hours, no traces remained of the information Genesis forced into her fragile mind all those years ago. Jadzia still remembered the years they shared together and their long talks, but many of their conversations were now just gaps in her mind. When the procedure was finished, Genesis pulled Jadzia from the stream and placed her mind back in her body.

  Genesis emerged from the stream and expected to see Jadzia milling about the shelter. Instead, Jadzia was collapsed on the floor.

  “Jadzia!” she shouted.

  She didn’t respond. Genesis lifted her from the floor and placed her on the bed. Her pulse was normal as was her breathing but there was no sign of consciousness. Genesis panicked and leaped back into the stream. Jadzia was in the same place she was just moments ago. She reached out to talk and Jadzia said: “I can’t move my body.”

  “I know. Something went wrong.”

  “I don’t think the reversal worked,” Jadzia stated. “At least not all of it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I still have one memory, but this one is different. I don’t just remember what was in the history books. I feel it like I was there.”

  “What is it?”

  “Did you ever link my mind to Hitler?”

  “No, it was too dangerous. What memory do you have?”

  “I have one of his memories, from when his mother died. I remember it like happened to me.”

  “I swear I didn’t link you
to him,” Genesis said. “I swear!”

  “I’m not mad at you,” Jadzia answered. “This is a good thing. It will give me one last chance.”

  “Last chance? Have you gone mad?”

  “I can’t move my body anymore,” she said. “And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to. What if I die?”

  “That won’t happen!”

  “I’m afraid it’s already happening, Genesis. You need to do one last thing for me.”

  Genesis blocked her mind from her so that none of her emotions or thoughts could transmit across the thread to Jadzia. She was terrified to let her sister die. Fear, in its most potent form, engulfed every shred of her; no method of reasoning it away seemed to work. If these were to be Jadzia’s final hours, then Genesis felt that she needed to redeem herself, if only for Jadzia's own comfort. “Anything,” she said.