Anonymous pamphlet found in bus shelter, part 1 of 5

Just a brief note: I found the following text in a bus shelter on 107th Street and 82nd Avenue (you might know it--it's the one in front of the church). The pamphlet was just sitting there on top of a copy of the Watchtower, and something about its bland format--plain text on white paper, no illustrations, not even a title--immediately drew me to it. And what a strange, farcical tale was contained within that dull vessel! Time travel, Hitler, World War II? Who ever heard of such things? A second world war? Can you even imagine? The author doesn't bother explaining these fantasies, apparently assuming we are completely aware of all of this. Maybe that is what unnerves me: why does the author assume we should know about his or her private delusions? But this is, I suppose, the very definition of madness, so I should not be surprised.

Strangely, I've never seen copies anywhere other than this one bus shelter, and the pamphlets stopped appearing after the fifth installment. What did the author hope to accomplish with this little tale? Did he or she actually believe what was written, or was it all just for private amusement? Who can say? I will share with you what I found in the hopes that it may do you more good than it did me. In the meantime, I walk past that corner of 82nd and 107th every day, watching and waiting for a sixth installment that will at last explain why I can't stop reading the first five.

Do not consider this a warning. There are simply some things that must be said about the state of the world and why everything is as it now exists. It is understandable that you would distrust this pamphlet. But understand this: everything written on these pages is the truth, and your distrust will not alter its veracity.

People often forget where they come from. True, you remember the name and the location, but these markers do nothing to evoke a place in time and space. You can return to your birthplace over and over again, but nothing will be the same. Each return will only change it further. As you try to grasp it, the original slides through your fingers. Hold tighter. It disappears. You forget.

This pamphlet (and others that will follow) shall attempt to explain how it is that someone can return to that origin, and the problems arising from such an action. This is not a warning, but there are powerful lessons to be learned from the failures of the two men who shall be discussed. Their names, unfortunately, are unknown. For that reason, they have been arbitrarily assigned the following names: David Perlez and Benedict Dean.

As exemplary scientists of their era, Perlez and Dean were often involved in discussions of how to improve the past. With humanity having at last succeeded in suppressing its most vile inclinations of war and violence, all that remained was to extend this project into the past. Most amateurs students of time are well aware of the seemingly infinite hypothetical dilemmas that such retroactive tampering can cause, chief among these being: if we change the past for the better, how do we know this will not change the future for the worse, and thus make any tampering an impossibility in the first place? In that case, everything resets to zero and the cycle begins again.

Perlez and Dean, as well as many of their colleagues, foresaw none of these problems. As is typical of such endeavours, the good intentions overwhelmed all critical assessments to such a point that the initial good intent was practically negated. Consider this the first lesson: a good intention devoid of proper intelligence and rational context may not lead to a good result. In other words, a good deed that exists in a vacuum is not necessarily good.

The problem faced by the scholars was this: how could a future of pacifism hope to correct a past of violence? You cannot simply go into the past and lecture its inhabitants about good behaviour and the merits of peace. The past is quite capable of lecturing itself on exactly these subjects, and it is more likely to listen to itself than to some pious denizen of the future spreading peace through technological superiority.

Discussions centred on the difficult case of World War II, the “good” war in which violence supposedly earned its keep. Escalating bloodshed can actually lead to peace, at least by the terms of this conflict. To the pacifists of the future, such a notion would seemingly put the lie to their whole civilization, which was based on the idea that violence begets violence. How then to stop World War II with only the tools of a pacifist culture?

Dr. Adams would attempt to theorize an answer at an international convention of scientists devoted to solving this very problem. With the aid of time travel, he would argue, the violent intentions of the past could be subverted by the peaceful intentions of the future. By altering the origins of the event, they could drastically lessen, if not completely change, the severity of the outcome. However, the origin must be localized in a single nexus; you cannot simply change the entire social and political framework of the era, which would also quite naturally be heading in the direction of war.

Hitler, of course, was seen as the logical target. Without his leadership, the chances of Germany starting the second world war lessened dramatically, and even if it still engaged in battle, the chances were quite high that the war would be shortened greatly. There was only a small percent of possible outcomes in which the war turned out just as bad or worse, and these were dismissed as statistical nullities.

Of course, the thought of assassinating Hitler was discarded outright as not fitting the principles of this experiment. The change had to be peaceful and minimally impact the normal flow of history. One could not simply insert a new figure into Hitler’s life--say, a pacifist art teacher who might instil a strong enough moral code to combat the societal factors that would push history over the brink. Such a gambit was too risky, as it created an entirely unknown factor with repercussions that could not be calculated. The figure would be too visible. The normalizing pressures of the era would naturally target such a contrary force; the presence of this figure might result in an escalation of the very problem it was trying to counteract.

It was decided that the change had to be internal. Somehow, they had to alter Hitler in such a way that it seemed the man had changed himself. Brainwashing was not viable, as the results had to last the entirety of Hitler’s life. He had to be left a functioning human being still capable of engaging with his society, even as he rebuffed its advances towards war.

The proposed solution to this problem became known as the Adams Hypothetical. According to Dr. Adams, the surest way to change the personality of Hitler was to somehow alter his body. The reasoning was simple: the change would only affect Hitler’s person while not creating any new external factors in the history of the man. If the change was discreet, it would not be noticed by people of the epoch, and any resulting changes to Hitler’s persona would be credited to the free will of the man and not any external meddling.

The next part of the Adams Hypothetical was more contentious. Dr. Adams posited that the best option would be to improve Hitler’s body in some discreet fashion. If his monstrous, pathological sense of control and dominance came from a personal feeling of weakness and inferiority, then surely removing this weakness and inferiority would undermine the more deranged characteristics of the man. For this reason, Dr. Adams argued, the only logical course of action was to give Hitler a second testicle.

The gathered scholars and scientists were at first incensed by such a preposterous theory, but Dr. Adams would not be dissuaded from his conviction that history could be altered through such intimate and impolite methods. His steadiness and hypnotic logic could not be easily dismissed. As every male in the room knew, such a radical alteration could have grave effects on the psyche of even the most well-balanced, self-assured man. Just consider the salutary effects on an imbalanced, neurotic individual such as Hitler, who no doubt craved some sort of compensation for his biological deficiency--how could anyone doubt the merits of such a plan?

Although the rumblings of discontent were never fully quieted, the Adams Hypothetical was broadly accepted by the group as sound enough to stand up to testing. Of course, there would be risks. Due to technological limitations, the individuals chosen to participate could never return to the future. Once in the past, they remained there.

Volunteers were obviously not forthcoming. Perlez and Dean, however, felt they themselves duty-bound to carry out this theory. When both men agreed to the mission, they were required to write a justification for their actions in order to help ensure the honour of their intentions and soundness of their minds. As Perlez stated: “It is not enough to believe something is right. You have to actually be willing to live it, to make that principle a condition of your own reality. The Adams Hypothetical seems to me such an inarguable truth that I feel I would be a liar if I did not try to adhere to it. I have no doubt in our success.” His sentiments, albeit in less zealous terms, were echoed by the general populace.

However, some dissent did exist. One attendee at that the conference that birthed the Adams Hypothetical wrote a minority opinion which is quoted here: “In the past, how many wars arose from one culture applying its value system to another culture that could not abide any such imposition? What is war but the failure of two world views to coalesce into one? Are we not doing the same here, by forcing a peace on these people that may not be able to tolerate it and might not even understand it? This arrogance undermines everything.”

That opinion, signed by a Dr. Hulse, might have had some effect on public opinion if it had not been suppressed by the members of the majority, who felt it might undermine the success of the mission. Unfortunately, Dr. Hulse seemed to accept this censure with none of the fire displayed in his written dissent; nothing is known of him after he wrote those words. Accepting that history would be corrupted, Hulse apparently took the route of an ascetic and withdrew from it.

Little can be said of the physical and mental preparations of Perlez and Dean in the months leading up to the mission. For obvious reasons, this poisonous technology must be omitted from the narrative, if only to prevent others from deducing its design from the details. Still, it must be said that the strain of the process was incredible, and the two men were well chosen for standing up to its rigours.

Indeed, the two men had to display incredible fortitude, for they were essentially sacrificing their entire lives to the success of this mission. Because they could never return, they would essentially have their entire lives to fulfill the mission. After careful examination of all eventualities, it was agreed that the initial attempt should take place during Hitler’s earliest days, before he would even be consciously aware of his lack. The men would aim for Austria in the year 1889, although the general lack of precision inherent in the technology was a large concern. Much as the precision of a thrown object decreases over distance, so too does it decrease over time. It was simplicity itself to travel back one year; one hundred years or more proved more problematic.

The simplest solution would be to aim for 1888 or 1887, but there was nothing simple about this method. You could try to reach Austria in 1887 and reach China in 1877. Even if you got the right year, you could get the wrong place, and vice versa. Even worse, there was a danger that if Perlez and Dean appeared to far into the past, they would not survive until the time they could act. Everything could fail that easily.

Communication with the future was another dilemma, although one more readily addressed. The future would not necessarily know if the experiment was a failure, and there needed to be some way for the pair to present their findings to the future. The obvious, and perhaps only, method was a time capsule. A spot in the countryside not far from the city of Hof was chosen after a careful analysis of historical record suggested the capsule had a fair chance of remaining undisturbed there. Of course, even this was not certain. It would not take much to destroy this fragile line of communication: a stray mortar during a battle, or even just someone digging a hole for a fence post.

All of these uncertain factors did nothing to bring the methodology of the mission into question. Maybe if there had been some dissenters who could have harnessed these doubts, everything would have turned out better. The mission might have been called into question as a foolhardy example of temporal imperialism. But in the hands of the faithful, all doubt is made meaningless. Perlez and Dean prepared for their mission, and everyone regarded them as heroes.

When the day came, they were surrounded by media. Perlez commented that he hoped the public would not forget what they had done, even though he knew that was a possible outcome. Dean, as usual the less articulate of the pair, merely said that he was excited and anxious to do his duty. Both men saluted the gathered crowd, and the crowd roared its approval. School children in their classrooms all watched on screen. Traffic paused and even the ambulances were still. The man dying in the back could come to life in a few seconds, there was just such a sense of possibility. Businesses all froze to a halt, some in mid-transaction, with money out in the open as one person passed it to another. A thief could have simply picked it up and walked away without fear of being chased. But even the thieves were glued to their screens, watching to see what would exist in a few seconds. They could all be made rich beyond their wildest imaginings, or plunged into an unthinkable hell (which, naturally enough, no one thought of).

The first discernible feature of the past was silence. The two men stood in a forest of unknown location (temporally or physically) at some point late at night. The stars were out; the night was clear and cool. Judging by the constellations, they agreed that they had at least reached the correct region of the world. But how close were they to Braunau, their target city? And what year was it?

Gathering their supplies, they wandered in an arbitrarily chosen direction, hoping to find a road or some other indication of civilization. After half an hour of wandering in the moonlight, they came across a fence, which quite naturally lead them to a farm.

There were several buildings, including what appeared to be a small peasant farm house, but there were no lights on anywhere. Perlez left his backpack with Dean and crept up to the home to investigate.

It was a single-room farm house, with two people (husband and wife, he assumed) sleeping in the only bed in the building. There appeared to be three others sleeping on straw mattresses on the floor, and the sound of wood crackling came from the stove. A couple of candles sat on the table and an oil lantern hung on the wall. On the shadowed walls, he saw no calendar and no clocks. How did these people know what time it was, he wondered. Did they even know what time was?

It was a possibility that he would have to face, and one that would make his task much more difficult, for how could he orient himself in time if no one in this era knew how to do so? Troubled, he ran back to Dean, slipping on the dewy grass and catching himself against a tree. He broke the news to his colleague: there would be no help for them here. The people in the farm house must still live like savages, knowing time only as a natural phenomena and not a malleable commodity. In the future, they could control and alter time, shift it to suit their purposes and measure it out in doses. For these people, time was the difference between night and day, spring and winter. Time was the name for the thing that existed between an old man in his chair and an old man in his grave; it tethered these two disparate states. “Remember the time…?”

Their only hope was to find a city, if such things existed now. Only in a centre of commerce and community could they hope to find something resembling time as they knew it. If there was a city, there was a business, and if there was a business, there was a man counting out his seconds in pennies.

Following a well-worn path away from the farm house, Perlez and Dean eventually stumbled across what appeared to be a road. It was not paved, but it had obviously seen a lot of traffic. Ruts opened up in it and little pools formed from the precipitation. Dean pointed at one and remarked that he would come to that canyon when he was six. His eyes started to tear up and he dropped to his knees. He wanted to put his hand in the rut and dig out a few handfuls of dirt.

Of course, this was not the canyon he had visited when he was six; canyons do not form so rapidly. Even the strongest constitution could fall prey to such disorientation--with all of the usual reference points gone, time and space collapsed in the mind, leaving Dean’s memories unmoored. It was a kind of dementia--not permanent, but a very real problem nonetheless--and Perlez was no less susceptible to it. He said nothing but picked up his colleague, and the two walked together down the road.

After a couple of hours of walking, a city finally came into view. It seemed to be of modest size, but it was most definitely a city, and seemingly one from the correct era. All hope was not lost. They might yet be on time.

The sun was rising as they neared the city, gilding the dust on the road and making the buildings appear slightly unreal, like a painted backdrop. But the people were unmistakably real, a living mass of flesh and eyes watching each other, watching Perlez and Dean, watching everything but the sky, which they had not yet learned to distrust.

It didn’t take long to find a dry goods store. Perlez entered, while Dean stayed in the street. The shop owner was placing jars containing various coloured confections on top of the counter, and he merely glanced at Perlez, muttered a hello, and then went back to his organizing. When Perlez asked what city they were in, the shop owner did not answer, but simply asked where he was from.

Perlez hesitated. Where could he be from if he didn’t know where he was? Trying to hide his embarrassment, he said that he was from “out west,” not really knowing how else to bluff his way through this conversation. The shop owner guessed that this meant Innsbruck, but after a bit of struggling to recall a map of Austria, Perlez ventured that he was from Schwaz. The shop owner shrugged at this, perhaps not even knowing that name, but it seemed sufficient: Kufstein, he said, the city’s name was Kufstein.

Perlez thanked him and purchased some hard candy. As he stood at the counter, he saw the calendar on the wall behind the shop owner: September, 1888. The days were not marked, so he could not tell the exact date, but at least he had his bearings now. He withdrew the appropriate coinage from his pocket and paid the man.

Out in the street, Dean had wandered away. Worried about his shell-shocked comrade, Perlez scanned about the growing crowd of day labourers and market goers, and he felt his own grasp on time slowly slipping. Were they in 1888 or some medieval market square? What if these people measured the past differently and their 1888 was his 1458? Everything held together with so little: just a bit of faith to glue all of this doubt together, and then you just drop the damn thing and it shatters anyway. Something must be wrong.

He saw Dean standing at the fringe of a crowd, watching some spectacle that could not be seen through all the bobbing heads. Perlez rushed over and asked what was happening.

“A demonstration,” Dean said simply.

In front of the crowd, a man in a black, wrinkled suit was speaking. He stood on a wooden crate in front of a storefront with the window closed. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said with a wave of his arm, granting the audience leave to applaud themselves, which they did, “ladies and gentlemen, science has given us so many marvels that I could simply list them all day and leave you humbled and amazed.

“But I do not aim so low. In fact, I wish to show you the greatest miracle science has yet to produce, something which you shall be able to tell your grandchildren, ‘I saw it before all others.’ When they write the history books, you will be on the first page, for all that came before shall be made meaningless by this, the latest and greatest triumph of science.”

At this point, the man rose his arms in a triumphant flourish and the door of the shop opened. A metallic body walked out, gleaming and strange. The light in its eyes flickered erratically, like a candle caught in a draught, and an unknown force whirred and grinded in it as it moved. If the crowd had been restless with the man’s windy rhetoric, they forgot it once this indefinable creature appeared before them.

“Science,” the speaker continued, “has done much to extend the life of man, has given us all creature comforts unthinkable to our forebears. But now science has surpassed us all with this creation, a more perfect, undying version of ourselves. Think of the possibilities? Manual labour would be a thing of the past. Marxists speak of workers losing their chains? This is the liberator! Employers wonder where good help will come from? Wonder no more! This being can do everything for us, never tire, never sleep, never cease to make our lives better, easier, richer!”

“How much can it lift?” one man in the crowd shouted.

“Would someone care to step forward for a brief demonstration?” the speaker asked. “I assure you, our metallic friend is as harmless as he is helpful. You, madam, please step forward, and fear not, for he is a gentleman too.”

A plumper woman stepped forward a bit awkwardly. The metallic man bent down with a grinding noise and held out his arm for her, which, under the direction of the speaker, she sat upon. With little discernable effort, the metallic man stood up, holding the woman on his arm the whole time. The crowd gasped.

“Fraud, fraud,” Perlez whispered to Dean. “This can’t be happening.”

Dean said nothing, attention rapt by the demonstration, but the speaker caught the sound of dissent quite quickly. “You should come forward then if you doubt,” he said. “I will do my level best to assuage your concerns.”

Some of the audience members laughed at Perlez’s scepticism as he passed, others jeered the speaker, but no one was walking away just yet.

“You seem like a man of some education,” declared the speaker.

“I suppose I am,” replied Perlez.

“How then would you explain our metallic friend?”

“I would assume you just put a man in a metal suit.”

The speaker snapped his fingers and the metallic man held out his right arm. Grabbing the wrist, the speaker fiddled around for a moment, like he was removing a bracelet, and then snapped off the hand and passed it to Perlez. “Will this suffice as proof?” The crowd roared with laughter, while people throughout murmured in amazement.

Irritated, Perlez swatted the hand away. It fell on the ground and the crowd stepped back from it. Not waiting for the speaker to act, Perlez rushed at the metallic man, grabbed the right arm, and twisted it as if he were trying to do a judo throw. The arm snapped out of its socket. He threw it on the ground next to the hand and began pulling gears out of the shoulder socket, gears and pinions and little screws, and no man, no flesh. He grew desperate, reaching inside the socket as the speaker and the crowd watched in dumb amazement as this stranger tried to dismantle the greatest triumph of science. “This can’t exist,” he said flatly. To the assembled crowd, this sounded not like incredulity but a judgement.

The metallic man did nothing as Perlez tore at it; the thing simply toppled over and fell on the ground, eyes still flickering. Some members of the crowd booed and the speaker put up his hands, piously declaring, “Small minds have always inhibited progress.”

“You’re a fraud,” Perlez said, wandering away, stunned. Dean rushed after him.

The speaker ignored this provocation, instead focusing his energies on the unsettled crowd, which threatened to dissipate. “Of course, there are always sceptics,” he said with a smile. “You can tell the greatness of an idea by how violently people oppose it.”

Perlez did not bother to respond. He was shaken, giving in to the disorientation that had gripped Dean earlier.

The reaction had been delayed, but it hit him now, brutally. Like standing in the middle of a flat field and suddenly finding the ground beneath your feet gone and you in freefall, all sense of cohesion is gone. Nothing is where it should be--not your memories, your dreams, your self. The world becomes a place of infinite possibility, and as such, deeply, strangely horrifying.

No, that is not enough, reader. It does not convey the bottomless feeling Perlez found himself inside. Instead, imagine waking up deaf. At first, you don’t realize what is happening. Quiet morning, you think. Where are the birds? That top step doesn’t creak anymore, when did that happen, how lucky. And then you see mouths moving and you don’t know what is being said, and you start screaming, and then you realize you can no longer hear yourself. Then you hear the silence you will listen to for the rest of your life, and that moment, that collapse, is what Perlez experienced.

He pushed his way into a house, throwing open the door and walking inside. A woman shouted at him to get out. “I’ve been in here before,” he said, reeling about the room. “I think my father was born there.” He pointed at a bedroom. “He died somewhere else.” The woman hit him in the chest, trying to shove him out of the house. “I think he’s buried beneath here.” He fell to the floor and the woman kicked him in the ribs; he didn’t even notice.

Dean ran in and put himself between Perlez and the woman. “He’s just drunk, don’t worry, I’ll take him away,” Dean said, holding her back. “Filth!” she shouted and spat on Perlez.

“And now it’s raining,” he said plaintively. Dean put his arm around his colleague and led him away, the woman following closely behind just in case they had any illusions about their welcome in this home.

They walked further down the street until they came to a park. The trees were bare-limbed and held their emaciated branches up to the sky. It could have been a pagan ritual. In a quiet area, they stopped as Perlez vomited, Dean holding him up so that he wouldn’t fall into the viscid pool. When he was done, Perlez wiped his chin and sat back against a tree. Dean sat beside him.

“This doesn’t seem right,” Perlez said.

“Our presence has probably changed things already,” Dean admitted.

“That,” agreed Perlez, “or else we never knew what to expect in the first place. There are surely countless aspects of this era that never made it into the history books.”

“But something as significant as--”

“No,” Perlez cut him off. “We must assume that we know nothing of the era beyond what is in the past.”

“Then when are we?”

“1888,” Perlez leaned his head back, breathing in, still feeling nauseous. “We’re in Kufstein, Austria, September 1888.”

The two men said nothing for a while. The day was warming under the light of the sun, and it appeared to be a tranquil autumn day. A stray dog wandered near, circling a bit at first and then, after seeing how still the two men were, cautiously stole a few licks at the puddle of vomit in the leaves. At first it would withdraw and then dart in close again before pulling back, but it grew bolder under the indifference of Perlez and Dean and stayed longer each time, pulled back less each time. Finally, Perlez threw some stones. The dog yelped as one hit it directly on the hind and it withdrew, watching the two from a distance.

“We need to go,” Perlez declared.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he said, and stood up to prove it.

Dean eyed him warily, not fully trusting this show of determination, but he agreed that they needed to start travelling to Braunau. Inertia would drag them further into dementia, while moving through this strange world was the only way to acclimatize to it. Slowly, the disorientation would vanish, and the oddities could be taken on face value without threat of a psychological collapse.

The two men headed out into the city. It was difficult at first, and at times it seemed they were wading through tar, slowly being sucked down with each step. What was most painful were the voices--screaming, shouting, hoarse laughter, sly whispers, angry, happy, bitter, joking. The noise shocked their ears. People argued in the street. “How dare you charge me that much to repair a shoe, that’s pure robbery!” “I told you the price beforehand, don’t you dare accuse me, I’m an honest man, which is more than anyone could say for you!” A man hit his wife once, on the back of the head, and she gave him a sharp kick to the knee. He leaned against a wall for support as he held his leg and his wife stormed off, muttering curses while he shouted obscenities at her. A few people watched, but most just tried to ignore it and carry on their own conversations, each a promise of violence in itself.

These were not the streets of the future; both men felt the difference deeply and it shook their faith in the mission in a way that neither had yet experienced. After all, both men were aware of Dr. Hulse’s dissent--both had read those words and remembered them now. “…and might not even understand it?” These people lived in a state of war. They existed in total conflict--with the world, with others, with themselves. A man in rags grabbed a woman imploringly but her husband shoved him away. The man fell to the ground and his hurt look turned to blankness, staring into the distance at an unseen horizon. He fell back, seized, his body writhing and mouth foaming. People ran away. Their bodies had not yet betrayed them. The mutiny in this one man could spread to them.

If you took this all away, would they understand why? Or, like a child losing their favourite toy, would they simply cry harder, wail louder? All of this doubt was a burden too heavy to carry any further. The two men searched for an inn of some sort. They needed to rest.

Hesitantly, Perlez approached a stranger. “Excuse me, we’re looking for an inn--”

“Oh!” exclaimed the stranger, a middle-aged man dressed quite neatly in a long coat. “You’re that person from the demonstration.”

Perlez shot Dean an anxious look and nodded.

“You must have been paid by that shyster, right? It all seemed like part of the act.”

Perlez gave the man a sickly smile. “Yes, that’s right, but don’t tell anyone.”

The man winked at him. “Oh, of course.”

“Now, can you direct us to some sort of inn?”

The man pointed down the street. “Head up that way and turn left on the third avenue up there. There’s a decent little place a few blocks down.”

The inn was exactly where the man said it would be. Like so many of the other buildings, it was dirty, covered in dust and chimney soot, but it seemed hospitable. A man behind the counter welcomed them warmly and chatted innocently about the weather, the slow business, and whatever other random thoughts seemed to pass through his head. Somewhere in this, Perlez managed to offer the man some money and get a key to a room.

Located on the third floor of the building, the room itself was meagre by their usual standards of luxury, but the austerity was actually welcomed by the two men. They had experienced enough out there; an empty room would help them recuperate. There were two single beds and a table with two chairs and a couple of candles. Opposite the beds was a small stove with a full box of wood beside it. After lighting the stove, they sat down at the table. Both men slouched in their chairs.

“So what do we do?” Dean asked, if only to break the silence.

Perlez pulled out a map of Austria and Germany from his coat pocket and spread it out on the table. “Here is where we are,” he said, putting his thumb on Kufstein, “and here is where we go.” He put his little finger on Braunau. “We can get a train tomorrow in the morning.”

“Do we have enough?”

Perlez reached into his pocket and frowned. He pulled a few bills and coins out of his pocket. “Not much, but you should have the rest.”

Dean reached into his pocket and felt around, his eyes growing increasingly wide as he realized what had happened. “It’s all gone.”

“All of it?”

“It must have been in the crowd, a pickpocket--” Dean’s voice cracked suddenly.

Perlez tried to calm him. “We still have months to get there, it’s okay. We’ll just have to work.”

Dean nodded quietly at this. Both men had known beforehand that they would be plunged into the working world at some point. They could not simply smuggle a fortune back in time, which is what would have been required to sustain both of them through a lifetime of inflation. Even if they could have done so, it might have jeopardized the mission by making them independently wealthy among peasants. But the initial sum they brought back would have allowed them to better position themselves for integration with the world of the past. Now, they were faced with the daunting prospect of finding jobs while still struggling to walk through a city without falling ill.

Perlez looked once more at the map. “Maybe if we just set out and do day labour along the way.”

Dean nodded once more. “Yes, maybe.” Without saying anything, he walked to the bed, moving with the slow, measured gait of an old man. He laid down on a bed. “Start the stove,” he said. “I’m cold.”

Without a word, Perlez knelt before the stove, gathering the necessary equipment before him. He struck a match and lit a paper. He held it in the flue and noted that the air seemed to be flowing up already, the flame stretching upwards vainly until it flickered out. He put some wood in the stove and lit some more kindling, laying it between two cords of woods. Leaving the door half-open, he went back to the table and stared at the map some more, and the silence in the room was soon filled with the hisses and pops of burning wood. Dean laid there, staring up at the ceiling.

“Did you think it would be like this?” he asked.

Perlez stared at the map, as if it were a code to crack. He did not respond. Instead, he traced paths on the map with his fingers. How many days? Where would they stay? His mind was too tired to even attempt a guess. All he could foresee was endless trudging down a dirt road, menial labour while inching towards their goal.

“Do you find it strange that we don’t know what will happen tomorrow?” Dean asked, rolling on his side. The fire crackled as the darkness outside grew. Still, Perlez said nothing. After a while, he lit a candle and continued to stare at the map.

Dean seemed to have fallen asleep and Perlez looked over at him, this person who he would be tied to for the rest of his life. They had known each other a few years, had developed a solid and respectful working relationship during their scientific careers. The two had worked together on many projects and published papers jointly. But what did that mean now? What bothered Perlez was that the forced closeness--the secret bond that their mission represented--would drive them to hate each other. Years from now, would he be able to stand the sight of this man, knowing that Dean remembered everything that they both had given up? Alone, he could pretend he was of this time, but together, they were outcasts.

Outside in the street, he could hear noise through the window. Dean seemed undisturbed by it, just laying there in a deep, still sleep, but Perlez went to the window and looked down. A man and woman, both obviously drunk, careened through the street, the woman riding piggyback on the man as both laughed. The man stopped at a street lamp and the woman dismounted as he panted, holding himself up against the pole. The two had a brief discussion, the man whispered in her ear and she nodded. He jumped up on her back and she took a few faltering steps before falling face-first into the street. The man jumped off before she hit the ground and then helped her up as blood streamed from her nose. Appalled, she hid her face behind a handkerchief. The man held out his arm and she took it, and the two walked down the street with an unsteady dignity.

We need to leave this place, Perlez thought. They were not part of these times and it painfully showed. What would he have done if he had been out in the street? Would he have tried to help these people, who seemed to hurt each other without even knowing it? Or would he just stop and stare, frozen by his inability to see any of this as real?

He threw some wood in the stove and glanced over at Dean. The man just lay there, still as the dead. If he dreamed, he hid it well, for not a muscle twitched on his face or anywhere else on his body. But Perlez understood. As the darkness crept in, he felt the exhaustion floating over him like a fog. In such a haze, you no longer wished to move anywhere; all you longed for was stillness. Perlez blew out the candle and the darkness flooded the room.

Tomorrow, they would leave the city.

Cruising the seas for gold dust and idols

Thanks for suggesting this, Lilly. It sounds like a fun exercise, although I’m a little unsure about how to proceed. You see, I don’t actually have an iPod (or iTunes, or anything else with that accursed “i” in front of it). Granted, I do have an MP3 player (ie., an iPod for cheap people), but it only holds around 80 songs, which just doesn’t seem like enough selection to really do this exercise justice.

My solution is to load all of the music files on my computer into my Windows Media Player and hit shuffle. That should give me enough musical selection to make this genuinely random, which makes it more fun for me (and therefore for the rest of you as well). I’ve got about eight years of musical accumulation on this computer—sometimes legally obtained, sometimes not so much. Since there’s no way I can keep track of all these songs, I’m just as likely to be discovering something as the rest of you are.

Song 1: "Barrett’s Privateers (live)" by Stan Rogers

Yes! Off to a good start. For those who aren’t aware, Stan Rogers is a Canadian folk music legend who briefly made music in the 1970s and ‘80s before dying in a plane crash. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for his music ever since my grade 10 social studies teacher played a couple of Stan Rogers songs in class in order to illustrate the plight of Maritimers moving out to Alberta in order to find work.

Barrett’s Privateers is particularly stirring, and unsurprisingly, it seems to be one of Rogers’ most famous songs. You may have even heard it before and not realized who was singing. It has a tendency to pop up unexpectedly. I recall being at a party once where all manner of disparate people got together in the kitchen and tried to sing the song, even though no one seemed able to remember all the lyrics and it fizzled out before the end.

No matter—besides, who can compete with Stan Rogers’ voice? All I need to hear is his bracing baritone singing those first five words, “Oh, the year was 1778,” and I’m sunk alongside Barrett and his privateers.

To some, this might seem like a cheesy song (it is a sea shanty, after all), but I think it’s a thing of beauty. The song tells the story of a group of Halifax privateers during the American revolution who are conscripted by the King of England to “cruise the seas for America gold.” Everyone planned “to fire no guns and shed no tears,” but things take a violent turn, and Barrett’s ship is destroyed after an encounter with the Americans. The song is sung from the perspective of a surviving crew member, who, after six years at sea, returns to Halifax having lost both of his legs in the battle (Barrett himself fared even worse—in a vivid turn of phrase, he was “smashed like a bowl of eggs”). You could look at the song as an allegory about Canadian-American relations, but at it’s core, it’s just a vividly written, powerfully sung tragedy.

Incidentally, this live version is the best way to know the song, particularly for the mid-song break where Garnet Rogers (Stan’s brother) shouts at the audience, “Come on, you sissies!” Right on cue, the audience takes over the chorus, clapping and singing with impressive vigour. Why couldn’t there have been people like that at the party?

Song 2: "Gold Dust" by the Wooden Stars

As I mentioned earlier, I happen to have a few illegal songs on my hard drive. But only a few, I swear. At the most, maybe 10 or 12 gigabytes worth. Just don’t tell the cops, okay? I’m too boyish and tender for prison.

The problem with this kind of behaviour (I mean aside from the immense guilt and shame that results from it, obviously) is that you find all sorts of songs on your computer that you downloaded once on a whim and then completely forget about. Such is the case with this song.

The Wooden Stars are, as far as I know, a Canadian band of fairly obscure, minor cult status. I think I read somewhere that they were influenced by another Canadian band that I love, the Rheostatics, who are only slightly less obscure and minorly cultish. But maybe I misread, since I don’t see much similarity between the two bands.

Still, it’s not a bad song. Chiming, clear guitars, strong harmonies—basically, just some nice sounds coming out of a twisty, slightly eccentric song structure. There’s also a break midway through the song where they rock out in a sort of reserved, post-rock kind of way. Actually, it’s impressive how the song defies catchiness and yet manages to sound all melodic and pleasant anyway. In other words, it’s pretty, but not obnoxiously so.

I’m not sure what the lyrics are about, and I don’t think I care. The singer shouts, “On an island in the sun,” before the band “rocks” out, as if that phrase is supposed to mean something. It doesn’t. But the lyrics are functional in an evocatively cryptic way, and overall I enjoyed the song. I’m sure I must have listened to it a few times after I downloaded it, but I had completely forgotten about it until now. Perhaps I’ll have to go out and buy a copy of the album, just so I can make an honest man out of myself.

Well, slightly more honest. But we all have to start somewhere, right?

Song 3: "Kill Yr Idols" by Sonic Youth

Whoo! Very early Sonic Youth, from back when they thought decent singing and properly tuned guitars were a bourgeoisie affectation. It’s, um, fun? Or should I say “fn”? (Vowels are for philistines.)

The song, judging by the lyrics, is one of those self-conscious “We’re going to change the face of music!” manifestos that hip young bands like to write. They sneer a bit at music critic Robert Christgau, and then make a few mysterious pronouncements like, “It’s the end of the world/and confusion is sex.” Not sexy, you’ll note. Just sex. I guess we’re supposed to puzzle out the profundity of this statement and interpret it like prophetic wisdom, but the general rule for obtuse rock lyrics is that if you can’t figure out what they mean, then they’re either about sex or drugs. In this case, I’m guessing the singer is mad that he can’t get laid.

But then again, who listens to Sonic Youth for lyrics? If you’re going to listen to Sonic Youth, it’s for that wall of guitar noise that crashes down on your head like a brick wall collapsing. I love the albums they put out in the late ‘80s, and they’re still going strong these days, but their early stuff is pretty forbidding from what I've heard. This song isn’t actually that bad—it has a scruffy aggression that’s kind of endearing—but songs like this were a dime a dozen in 1983. The band got much better.

Two heads are better than one...

First of all—thank you to Lilly for suggesting this idea. I’ve been staring glumly each day at this blog hoping to read a new entry and each of those days I’m just a little disappointed. I guess ’cause my creative power flows through the idea showers we have together, and when you all are dry so am I. But thanks to Lilly’s idea, I feel invigorated and yearn to write something. So here we go.

(And to Lilly—I also have “Swinging on a Star” on my ’Pod, but only after I saw Bruce Willis sing it in some bad ’80s gangster/heist/musical film. Boy, I wish I could find his cover of it. So obscure.)

Song 1: “4 Minutes” by Madonna ft. Justin Timberlake and Timbaland

I have a love/hate relationship with Madonna. I’ve never loved an artist whose personality is pretentious and obnoxious, who started out as a lacy-gloved-wearing candy pop singer to become a leather-clad siren. I’ll never like Madonna as a person, but I love her music. I LOVE her music. She has a seductive, confident voice and an ear for music. She knows who to work with and what songs suit her (aside from her horrendous remake of “American Pie”), and “4 Minutes” is a great reinvention for her. I’m not a Justin Timberlake fan, but I can’t imagine anyone else’s voice on this track.

This song is great to work out to and I dare you not to try your sexiest strut on the treadmill.

Song 2: “London” by the Smiths

I downloaded this one before going to London for the first time; I found it through I-Tunes by cleverly searching the word “London.” Brilliant, eh? I needed some Brit rock that wasn’t the Beatles or Oasis. When I listen to Morrissey’s melancholy wails and the rapid fire drums, my mind drifts back to that sunny day in London, where I sit atop a double-decker, wind in my hair, as I snap pics of Big Ben and the Thames.

And I love the line “But did you see jealousy in the eyes/Of the ones who had to stay behind?”

Song 3: “Boogie Wonderland” by Earth, Wind & Fire

Any music cred I had with having the Smiths on deck is probably lost because the next random song that came up was by Earth, Wind & Fire (but hey, at least you know I wasn’t skipping the embarrassing tracks). I think this is just a cool song. EW&F don’t get that “disco sucks” vibe that hounds other ’70s artists like ABBA and the Bee Gees—probably because they were discreet. But I don’t doubt that the anti-disco steamroller crushed a few hundred copies of the Boogie Wonderland album. Why do I say they were discreet? Well, “Boogie Wonderland” was their biggest, most popular hit, but can you name any others? It’s easy if you love disco, not so much when it all sounds the same to you.

Why do I have this song on my ’Pod? Watch the scene in Caddyshack where this song is playing and you’ll understand. Maybe. “Wanna make 14 dollars the hard way?”

-Girl on the Corner (who rocks out with her rooster out)

Get'cha Head in the Game

It would appear that the only people reading this blog are the ones that write it. That being what it is, the least we could do is something to entertain each other. (Remember the story about the bear with the LiveStrong bracelet?) Anyway, I’ve come up with a game. Here’s what we’ll do:

1. Program your I-pod to random.
2. Write down the first three songs.
3. Write something special about them.

That’s all. It’ll be fun. Can’t wait to read about your music. And…GO!
I’ll even start.

Song 1: Swinging on a Star – Bing Crosby
I love Bing Crosby. My favourite movie is “White Christmas,” but I also love “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” and “Going My Way.” This song is from “Going My Way,” when he’s trying to get all the bad-ass kids to sing in a choir so they’ll stay out of trouble. It’s awesome. This song says you’ll grow up to be a mule, or a pig, or a fish if you don’t go to school and have nice manners. A song with a moral; them were the good ol’ days.

Song 2: Get'cha Head In The Game – High School Musical Soundtrack
I have my I-pod set so that when it picks up music, it picks it up from the general music selection and not a specialized folder. This means that it has every single song that has ever been entered into my I-tunes library. Both of my kids have I-pods so I also pick up their music. (And Christmas music.) That being said—I love this movie and know every song word for word. And also, it’s a good running song.

Song 3: Starry-Eyed Surprise – Paul Oakenfold
Another good running song. I first heard this song on a Diet Coke commercial (the one with the girl on rollerskates and the bubbles). I loved this song so much that I spent the next four months asking every one I met if they had ever heard this song and who it was by and what it was called. Finally, a girl in one of my classes (Anna—the knower of all) had heard it and knew who it was by and what it was called and I ran to the library to see if I could find it, and they had it, and so now I have it. And also, this is one of the songs that I play full-blast before a football game so the boys can sing at the top of their lungs and get pumped up. Listening to eleven-year-olds sing the lyrics “Eclectic electric, ladies of the evenin’, drinkin’ booze and minglin’” is rather amusing.