The Lost Time Accidents

by John Wray

* * *

  The party line on the “Jewish Question” took its final form in the winter of 1942, in a charmless stucco villa on the Wannsee; but it wasn’t until a year later that my great-uncle was summoned to Berlin from Vienna, by overnight train, for an afternoon appointment with the future. A youth-education pamphlet he’d written and published at his own expense (“The Protocols of Darwin: A Young Teuton’s Primer on Natural and Unnatural Selection”) had made the circuit of the party apparatus, eventually landing on the skull-shaped walnut desktop of Reichsführer Himmler himself. Like some schizophrenic shaman in an Amazonian village, treasured as a prophet precisely for his inability to make rational sense of the world, Waldemar had found a place—by accident, appropriately enough—among the party’s guild of racial mystics.

  The meeting in Berlin was concise but productive. Waldemar was led without pomp into a high, sunny room where a porridge-faced man in a uniform crackling with starch, who looked deceptively like the Reichsführer-SS, informed him he was being sent to Poland. A facility had been built along the Belarussian border—not much more than a ditch and some concertina wire at present, the man said apologetically—to process deportees; mostly Juden, of course, but also Bolsheviks, rapists, peeping toms, and a trainload of idiots from an asylum in suburban Düsseldorf. He, Standartenführer Waldemar von Toula, had been selected for the post of facility director, on account of his invaluable work in Vienna and his well-known interest in the Great Genetic Struggle. (Mention was made of my great-uncle’s pamphlet at this juncture, but it was unclear whether the Himmler look-alike had read it.) An eastbound express was departing Berlin Ostbahnhof at six that same evening, and Standartenführer von Toula was to be on it, in a private, heated car. Was this acceptable to the Standartenführer?

  Waldemar nodded soberly, as he’d seen diplomats and statesmen do in films.

  Once the Standartenführer assumed his post, it was emphasized, responsibility for the detainees in his custody would be his alone. The facility, recently given the name of Äschenwald but still known locally as Czas, was not (unlike, for example, Theresienstadt or Buchenwald) intended as a way station, but as a terminus. This distinction was repeated twice. Was the Standartenführer aware of the policy of the Führer, and of the party as an organ of his will, and of the will of the Great Germanic Race, with regard to the Ultimate Answer to the Racial Dilemma?

  The Standartenführer submitted, humbly, that he was.

  The little man said nothing for a moment. His eyes were pinkish, vestigial, the eyes of a cave-dwelling prawn. The resemblance to the Reichsführer-SS was nearly perfect. His uniform rasped and crackled as he breathed.

  “Very good,” he said finally. “I have no doubt, Facility Director von Toula, that you shall do your work well. Your Slavic blood may actually be to your advantage in this case.” He took off his wire-rimmed spectacles and began to polish them with a greasy scrap of silk. “Do you have any questions?”

  My great-uncle reflected a moment, biting his lip, then saluted and turned on his heels. He had no questions at all, as it happened: not one. He knew exactly what he had to do.

  * * *

  Few records of the Äschenwald camp have survived: the Waffen-SS set fire to the compound in the war’s final hours, and the Red Army leveled what little remained. The Black Timekeeper might have been blessedly lost to history if not for a forest-green ledger, wrapped first in oilskin, then in fireproof asbestos cloth, found in the cast-iron reservoir of the latrines.

  Much has been made of this text, and of what it might mean. Proof as it is of the crimes perpetrated at Czas, the care that was taken to preserve the ledger is generally interpreted as evidence that someone—some never-identified assistant to the facility director, perhaps; someone with access to the most restricted precincts of the camp—wanted the Timekeeper’s crimes to come to light, and must therefore have felt some stirrings of remorse, however primitive. I’d very much like to believe that, Mrs. Haven, but my guess is that Waldemar hid the ledger himself, confident that it would be exhumed and studied. My great-uncle feared nothing, ultimately, as much as the indifference of posterity. He was still a man of science, after all.

  * * *

  Over the years since he’d confessed his ideas to his brother in the garret of the Brown Widow’s villa, the seed of Waldemar’s theory of rotary time—the notion that chronology is an illusion, if not a deliberate lie; that the steady, one-way current we seem to be suspended in is actually a jumble of spherical “chronocosms” that can be moved through in any direction, if some great force manages to knock one’s consciousness out of its preconditioned circuit—had grown progressively more elaborate, attaching itself to random scraps of knowledge in the course of its creator’s wanderings, like a peach pit rolled across a dirty floor. The eugenic theories of Sir Francis Galton were among these bits of litter, as were The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and, of course, Mein Kampf; but the single largest and most ponderous addition was the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin’s great Gallic rival, the chevalier Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

  Lamarck, a pioneer in the fields of zoology and genetics, is now best remembered—if he’s remembered at all—for his concept of “soft inheritance,” which was famously exploited (and rapidly eclipsed) by Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Lamarck believed that the traits an animal acquires in the course of its life can be transmitted to the next generation, the most notorious example being the neck of the giraffe. His hypothesis—that giraffes strain their necks to reach leaves, stretching them in the process, and that each generation is therefore born with slightly longer necks than the one preceding—sounds like something out of Kipling’s Just So Stories now, and science instructors the world over (my own eighth grade biology teacher, Leon J. Forehand, included) know that the chevalier’s theory can always be relied on for a chuckle. My great-uncle, however, saw nothing funny about Lamarck’s ideas at all—and Äschenwald-Czas itself stands as the proof.

  Here are the final four entries in Waldemar’s log, as reproduced in Höhne’s ghoulish survey:

  12 MARCH 1943, 07:57:07—

  Having been dogged & delayed by a legion of Trifles I now finally set forth on the Course proposed in my entry of 23 February. This gap of 19 days (automatically, I find myself doing the arithmetic: 456 wasted hours!) has reduced me to a condition of nervous exhaustion. Such is the vicious Wheel of Circumstance, the cercle diabolique the Chevalier describes in his monograph “Trials of the Researcher,” adding that those of a visionary bent, in particular, are liable to be plagued by les intrusions banales.

  It is tempting, considering the Breach—half my earthly duration!—between my original Breakthrough & this long-awaited chance to put my Theory to the test, to suspect that the same super-national Cabal of Semites that perpetrates & maintains the Illusion of Chronology has been using Time Itself as a weapon against me; but I have no such exalted notions of my importance to the Cause. The indignities I have suffered at the hands of mono-directional Time are shared by every mortal Soul on Earth. Sic Gloriam Orbes.

  In the four thousand Years since the Jew slithered forth from the turgid Cunt of necrophilic Asia, the human Species has subsided into Decadence. What are Moses & Christ Jesus & Constantine & Pius XII & Martin Luther & even Kaiser Friedrich himself but Iterations of the same Passion play of Self-Aggrandizement & Miscarriage & Degradation, played out ceaselessly across the most corrupt of Stages? The Age of Epics—of Freya & Odin, of Yggdrasil the World-Tree, & of the pale-eyed Saints & Warriors who defend it—lies not, as any Child knows, in our purported Future, but entirely in our Past. The Cardinal Sin of Science is precisely that for which Science is most slaveringly praised: its dread & unrelenting Forward Motion.

  What great good Fortune, then! that this infamous Forward Motion is a myth.

  In the 17 years since my eyes became Opened I have been nurturing my Vision patiently—sheltering it, fattening it, developing it into a unified & coherent Theory, a foundation for future Research; &
as a result I feel, despite a lack of Evidence, a new man entirely. More in fact than a man, because my New Self encompasses both the male & the female. I am the mother, after all, of an Idea.

  12 MARCH 1943, 09:57:07—

  Three things are required, the Chevalier writes, to conduct an Experiment successfully:

  1 * A Laboratory (or some equivalently controlled Environment) whose conditions can be altered to suit the Needs of the Experiment.

  2 * An isolated Population of potential Subjects. &, finally

  3 * Clarity of Purpose: a hypothesis whose proof (or disproof) is the stated Goal of the experimental Trials.

  I address these three points in ascending Order. My purpose, in initio, is to demonstrate the Kinship between the Chevalier’s principles of “soft” Inheritance—the heritability of acquired Characteristics—& my own Ideas concerning spontaneous adaptation—or Evolution—under extremes of environmental Stress.

  This, however, is only the preliminary phase of my Research. The second phase, the Culmination of 17 years of arse-sniffing & subterfuge, the Reason I’ve allowed myself to be deported by my rivals to this godforsaken Polish abattoir (as if I myself were an Israelite) is neither more nor less than This:

  The Demonstration, under controlled conditions, of the Composite & Rotary nature of Time.

  The chronosphere is everywhere, as fundamental (& intangible) as Light; but its shape & Drift remain obscure to me. I have seen it in Dreams, more in fact than I can number; but never when my Eyes were clear & open. I Myself have been subjected to stressors, God knows, since my twentieth year—but perhaps Despair alone is insufficient. I know that Transcendence is possible: my own Father gazed upon the face of Time & paid the Toll required. I myself would be more than willing to take this crowning Step, if there were someone—some colleague—to carry on the Work that I’ve begun. But I have no colleagues. No confederates. No Peers.

  Since I cannot go myself, I have no Recourse but to send Others before me. My study & control groups will be made up of the Prison population under my supervision. (How fitting, how profound, that said Population should be culled from the Semitic race, the very Wellspring of Resistance to the Cause!) The Laboratory will be Äschenwald itself.

  If I cannot isolate & study the Accidents my Father wrote of—if I can’t see Them, can’t verify Them empirically, though I sense Them around me every waking Instant—I’ll simply have to generate my own. Exposed to the the correct type of Stressor, I propose that my subjects will perforce obtain Emancipation from the Present, which Ability shall pass on to their offspring, in keeping with established Lamarckian principles. My Theory & that of the Chevalier shall achieve vindication in concert, in a single set of Trials. The sub-Species Achrono sapiens—“wandering Jews” in the most literal of senses, free of the constraints of both Chronology & Stigma, liberated at long Last from the yoke of History—shall in due Time—C*F*P willing!—be brought forth.

  The Irony that I, Standartenführer Waldemar Freiherr von Toula, shall have fashioned a race of Angels out of the lowliest & most debased of genetic Material—out of the ancient & primal Enemies of Yggdrasil—is clear to me. I haven’t lost my sense of humor altogether.

  13 MARCH 1943, 09:57:07—

  I set out this morning to lay the Groundwork for the Experiment Itself, hereafter to be titled (in tribute to my Father) “Project Gottfriedens.”

  The first Order of business is the appropriation of a Suite of buildings suitable to our needs; & in this, also, Chance & Fate & Providence have blessed me. When this camp was constructed—in June of 1940—the Solution existed only as an Outline on a roll of carbon paper. The Reality of the Thing, all the circumstantial & logistic Difficulties (the unexpectedly high rate of Death during transport, to cite one example) were not factored into the builders’ calculations; as a result, Äschenwald was designed to accommodate twice its present Population of approximately 7,000 souls. A good third of the Buildings stand empty, or are used only minimally, as Storehouses of various types. At 06:47 CET, in the course of my daily Interview with Hauptsturmführer Kalk, I gave Instructions for buildings 13, 16, 27 & 29 to be cleared, fumigated, & given a fresh coat of whitewash in their Interiors. An entry has been made in the camp Records at 06:58 CET, listing these 4 buildings as “converted-use storehouses: imperishables to (sic) perishables.”

  I’ve decided (after some Reflection) to leave the Nomination of deputies, coördinators & technicians to Kalk. This leaves me free to devote my Attention to a more difficult & gratifying Task: setting down, in this ledger, not only the guiding Principles of this Investigation, but also an initial Outline of each Trial. This I hereby attempt, at 23:24:36 CET, 12 March 1943.

  ACTIVATION OF CHRONOMORPHOGENESIS IN MAN

  Standartenführer Waldemar von Toula, Principle Investigator

  Standard, viable human Cells, both differentiated & undifferentiated, contain trace quantities of virgin genetic Code in potentia, the stimulation of which—through both quotidian & exceptional Stressors, such as extreme Heat & Cold, or extended periods of Darkness, or lack of a readily available food Source—may trigger the spontaneous Development (via the activation of passive genetic Material) of compensatory Traits, which can then be passed on, through orthodox Heredity, to subsequent Generations. This, to quote a familiar children’s author, beloved of our Führer, is how “the Elephant got its trunk,” “the leopard got its Spots,” &c &c. It is how the Yggdrasilian Race came by its Fortitude & how the Semite developed his Guile. This virgin Code has no pre-ordained Purpose, no function, no Limit; no sense of loyalty to Species, or to Race, or to Time.

  MATERIALS & METHODS

  Seven groups of robust adult males will be culled from the Population at large, physical hardiness the sole Criterion for selection. Culled individuals will be assigned at random until a minimum target Number (tentatively set at 100) is met. Groups 2 through 6 will be regarded as active study groups; the 7th will serve as Control. In further Memory of my departed Father (& by extension, of the Slattern with whom he dallied each noon) I’ve resolved, as an organizing Theme, to give each population the name of a Trump in the game of Tarock.

  The 5 study or “assay” groups will be submitted to the following Regimes:

  GROUP 6 (“Pagat”) will be confined to Outbuilding 16, previously made use of as a storehouse for linen. The primary storeroom, comprising the Bulk of the building, will be subdivided into 100 wire & timber Enclosures of identical size. Subjects will be fed & exercised daily, showered & deloused with 1/100 Zyklon-B compound once per week. Temperature in the storeroom will be maintained at 7 degrees above freezing by means of a propane-powered refrigeration System (already in place). Subjects will be maintained in an unclothed Condition, 1 individual per Enclosure. All 100 individuals will be subjected to an exhaustive physical Examination, 2x monthly, with special Attention given to the dermis. A detailed Inventory of changes in morphology of the epidermis—Hair count, &c—will be kept for each Subject.

  GROUP 5 (“Mond”) will be housed in building 27, a former munitions depot, & will have full Freedom of movement within a shared Enclosure. Subjects will be fed & excercised daily, showered & deloused with 1/100 Z-B compound once weekly, at which time the building’s Butterfly roof vents will be opened, allowing for ingress of natural Light. At all other times 27 will remain in Darkness. All 100 subjects will be examined 2x monthly, subjected to Knoll reflex tests & miscellaneous other Examinations of the central nervous System, with special Attention given to retinal & nervous Response to frequencies on the margins of the visible Spectrum. Standard stimulus-response tests will be administered weekly.

  GROUP 4 (“Knabe”) will be housed as per Group 5 above, in an adjoining Structure (27 B) whose roof has been replaced with anodized wire mesh. Subjects will be nourished & maintained at a Level of hygiene equivalent to Groups 5 & 6, & attired as per the general Population. Each evening, when ambient Daylight drops below 7 lumens per square meter within the Enclosure, 6 banks of high-
wattage floodlights will be ignited. This simulation of diurnal Conditions will be interrupted by Intervals of Darkness every two hours, beginning at 20 minutes & tapering by 5 minutes per increment. During these Intervals sleep will be permitted, & even, if necessary, induced; at all other times it will be prohibited. Weekly examinations will focus on Stimulus response, Knoll & standard nervous system Tests, including verbal/visual task-&-reward Drills. Metabolic & cardiovascular Rates will be monitored & logged.

  GROUP 3 (“Skartins”) will be maintained as per Groups 4 & 5 above & housed in building 13, currently a storehouse for low-bulk Imperishables. Treatment of Subjects will in no respect differ from the Population at large, with the exception that Subjects will be confined to building 13 & fed a mixture of standard camp Rations & a combination of steppe grasses, common clover & delphinium shoots. The Proportion of “indigestibles” to standard rations will be increased in Increments (3 to 5 parts per hundred weekly, weekly to bi-weekly, pendentes progressum). Digestive & metabolic Diagnostics will be run 3x times weekly. At close of study (projected at 12 months) Autopsies will be performed, with special attention given to gastrointestinal Diversions, condition of mucal lining, cystic morphologies, &c.

  GROUP 2 (“Kavall”) will be confined to outbuilding 29, a narrow brick Structure (26 by 6 meters) predating the Construction of the camp, originally used for the drying & tanning of leather. By means of a masonwork Alteration to the Interior (pending), the tanning room (16 by 18.6 meters) will be partitioned into 60 enclosures of 1.6 by 1.8 meters. Subjects will be conjoined with the rear Wall by means of reinforced sackcloth Straps (see fig. 1-6), restricting Freedom of movement to the use of the face, jaw & uppermost 7 vertebrae. Standard camp rations will be positioned (by means of movable shelving) just within the projected Radius of movement, & refreshed 3x weekly. Rations will be located to Subject’s left in the case of right-handed individuals, to Subject’s right in the opposite case. Medical examinations will be performed bi-weekly or as Conditions dictate. Autopsies at close of Study (projected at 6 months) will target Developments in dentition, spinal & muscular Morphology (allowing for anticipated atrophic Effects) & development/degeneration of the lymphatic Network, as well as the superior & inferior spinal canal.