Zeitpunkt
Sven Gelbhaar
09/22-24/2017
Zeitpunkt 0x255b
Snow. Everywhere: white pristine snow. While it looks beautiful in pictures, it
brings about certain problems as well, such as not being able to see where your
lane is on the road. After a while though, once enough motorists have driven
over it, there will be the ruts on the otherwise white, featureless road where
the lanes hopefully are.
Elise Hauptmann was late for class. Her excuse, pre-rehearsed in her mind since Zeitpunkt 0x2689
waking up to a rude alarm was redolent of so many of her fellow students’.
“Sorry, I had to drive slow to school so I wouldn’t end up in a ditch. ” was the
mantra of hundreds of her sly classmates. The rest took their lives into their
own hands, plowing over invisible terrain and probably fated for a rendezvous
with the ditch or worse.
Elise was born in East Germany, right after the wall came down in ’89. Her
immediate family saw how great the West Germans were doing and decided to go to
the source of all that was good, ultimately deciding on Anchorage, Alaska. They
lived there doing odds and ends, somehow managing to build up enough credit to
send their beloved Elise to college without racking up insane amounts of student
loan debt.
She was in her second semester at university when she met Klara Przybylski.
Klara was just an inch or two shorter than Elise, and had the classically
beautiful visage of a model. The two of them, being misplaced foreigners in a
strange land, both in America or Europe, befriended each other in a big way.
They were constantly helping each other academically and, on rare occasions,
financially.
As luck would have it, the two chanced across each other in the student parking
lot. Both greeted each other in the other’s native tongue. “Czesc, Klara! “,
said Elise. “Hallo, Elise.” rejoined Klara.
The two made it to their first class of the semester that they had together: Bio
- Neither of them had any aspirations in Biology, nor its schisms such as
medicine. Being from the former East Bloc, they were more inclined to the hard
sciences and mathematics. In fact, if Biology weren’t a mandatory class for
every degree, they surely wouldn’t have bothered.
The professor looked up at the latecomers but eschewed shaming them on their
first day. “Hello, and have a seat. ” she said, motioning them to adjoining
seats up front of the class.
The dining-facility was a hectic bustle of shy intellectuals after class, save
for two men who appeared to be in their 30’s. They were wearing the digital
uniform of the Air Force. The one who appeared to be of senior rank looked at
a sheet of paper he was carrying and approached Elise as she waited in line.
“Hi, are you Elise Hauptmann? My name is Colonel Giavonni” “I sure am. ” she
emoted nervously. “That’s great. Do you have a minute? It’s really important.”
They took a seat in the corner of the cafeteria, with the officers facing toward
the center of the room.
“What do you know about your Grandpa and his work?”
“Which one? I had four, after all.”
“Dr Max Hauptmann.”
“All I know is that he worked at a hospital in Berlin as a
researcher. I was always told that his work wasn’t related to the war — rather
his work was purely academic.
“We would like to exchange notes with you. The university staff say you’re
quite the little physics buff. “
“Yeah, thanks. It’s always been an avocation of mine. I have Fridays off,
if that works for you. “
“Great. Please meet us at JBER in the Reserve Center at 10am Friday.
Don’t worry about the gate security checkpoint; just tell them you need to see
Colonel Giavonni. They’ll assume you’re a MEPS Airman — that you haven’t gone
to Basic Training yet. “
With that the Colonel abruptly rose from his seat, his subordinate just a
second behind him.
Zeitpunkt 0x2595
That Friday found Elise intrigued and mortified about what the Colonel would
reveal pertaining to Opa Max. Surely he wasn’t a participant in the genocide or
inhuman medical experiments. However he worked at a hospital in Nazi Germany,
so anything was possible. “No matter what they say, he’ll always be grandpa Max.
” she thought in German.
The gate guard at the Muldoon entrance to the Joint Army and Air-Force Base had
given her turn-by-turn directions to the Reserve Center. Having followed his
instructions, She slowly climbed out of her car. Resignation and dread were
all she felt as her legs propelled her forward of their own accord.
There were disparate groups of soldiers and airmen, apparently doing some
medical training both in- and out-side the center. The center itself was a
modern building, constructed of concrete but it was better known for its expansive
windows than the former. People were splayed out in the grass outside the
building; more than half of them portrayed trauma patients while the rest of
the service-members buzzed with energy, trying to fix the moulaged soldiers.
She was greeted just inside the door by a friendly sergeant. After exchanging
pleasantries she was escorted through a maze of cubicles to a back office.
The door closed behind her before she could really get her bearings.
Colonel Giavonni sat opposite her behind a nondescript table. There was no
pretense of privacy, as there were several recording devices laying on the
table. The walls were covered in motivational posters and placards.
The Colonel was sitting back in his ascetic chair as the poster child of
patience and serenity .
“Are you ready to share? I assume you’ve brought the notes we discussed.”
“I did, yes. ” she said in a bluster, sliding them across the table. The
Colonel flipped through them before starting to take pictures, page by page.
“I hope you know that this is strictly confidential, but you can
feel at ease as, honestly, none of it is bad. Quite the opposite in fact.” He
assumed a paternal smile. “Your grandfather worked at two research
places, or Forschungsstellen, in Nazi occupied Europe. He was indeed working at
a charity hospital in Berlin for a time before running Forschungsstelle A.
Forschungsstelle D was working on anti-gravity, but that wasn’t the real prize.
They discovered that if you collide various particles at high speed, some of
the mass is lost. You’re probably going to suggest that it was converted to
energy, but some of that was lost too. Naturally this discovery terrified the
scientists, as entropy in Newtonian Physics is bad enough. They experimented
with both linear particle accelerators as well as cyclotrons, where particles
are accelerated in a circle or a cone before they are made to collide. “
“I know what those are. Anti-gravity?!” Her mind raced.
“Of course. Sorry to belabor the details, but they’ll be relevant shortly. Now
where was I? Oh yes. Research Point D tried to negate the force or energy
using high frequency particle collisions, but the energy cost was orders of
magnitudes above the newly designed and manufactured jet engines.
Forschungstelle A had more success with their abstract goals when the phantom
particles appeared out of nowhere shortly before and after the collided mass
disappeared. “
“Wait, why would they be missing?”
“You’re missing the point, ma’am. Mr. Stochastic, as we lovingly refer to him
as, can fill you in on the details. All I know is that he told me that in
collisions, say an automobile accident, matter goes in every direction. In
every dimension, in other words. It’s all terribly complicated, as you can
imagine.”
“So what was the result? Missing matter? That doesn’t sound too terrible.”
“Like I said, quite the opposite. The matter did indeed disappear… for a
while.”
“Are you saying they built a time machine?! “
“The most basic, minimalistic variant that is conceivable, yes. Naturally the
researchers neglected to tell the world about this discovery, and thank god for
that because look at what happened with the Manhattan Project! “
“Yeah, I can imagine,” she said, her mind still trying to come to terms with
what it had so fundamentally refused to accept until now.
“Can you really? If everyone had this technology then everything would be in
constant flux. Nothing would be set in stone. That is why you must never speak
of this again after we’re done here. “
“Agreed. “
“Mr. Stochastic can fill you in on all the details.”
“Who is he anyway?”
“Stochastic is the guy who formulated the physics theory surrounding these
discoveries. What I mean by that is that he exended Dr. Hauptmann’s work, which
we just uncovered. You’ll meet Stochastic if we recruit you on to the project. “
“OK. Are you sure my Opa really set the stage for time-travel?”
We’ll tell you more if we end up recruiting you. Just rest assured that your
Grandpa — your “Opa” — was a first class mind that likely contributed more
to science and humanity than you could ever have imagined.”
With that he gently closed the folder containing Elise’s notes. Elise rose from
her chair, Colonel Giavonni following suit a split second later.
Elise, glancing in the direction of the door leading back to reality quickly
said, “Please let me know if you need anything else.”
“Thanks for your help, Miss Hauptmann,” Colonel said.
And with that she left.
“I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other,” said Col. Giavonni
to an empty room once Elise was down the hall past the cubicles and well
out of earshot.
Zeitpunkt 0x2689
It had been another busy week for Elise. She remembered the Col. and his tale
sporadically between memorising the ins-and-outs of Vertical Marketing and
Bayesian Probability. She hadn’t discussed what she’d learned with anyone, not
even Klara. Klara in turn had asked about it relentlessly, but Elise had wisely
decided to lie that she even met up with him. After all, who knows what
sort of consequences awaited those who risked the ire of a man who
knew such highly classified information. Clearly he was an important and
powerful man, and not to be disobeyed over incessant inquiries of a girl-
friend.
The world and its propensity toward synchronicity had Mr. Stochastic write
Elise an email that very night.
“Come to our facility at your earliest convenience ” he wrote, followed by
a Google Maps link.
“313 KGB road,” she read, her mind immediately wary of heading way out past
Wasilla, which was roughly 50 miles from where she was. She adorned some casual
attire, jeans and a shirt, mostly just to show how little she cared about what
these stuffy military types thought about her. Better not to make her
nervousness anymore ostensible than it would be anyway.
An hour later her GPS voiced that she had arrived, which was odd considering she
was in the driveway of a regular-looking house in the middle of the woods. Dunes
of snow and ice bedecked the smothered lawn. Begrudgingly she toddled through
the ankle-high snow and rang the doorbell. “Great time for sneakers,” she
thought. A gruff looking 30-something complete with goatee and disheveled hair
opened the door. She politely returned his smile while thanking her intuition
not to dress fancily earlier. He looked like what can only be described as a
scrub, wearing tattered jeans with an Army physical fitness shirt.
“Sorry, I didn’t expect you until later. Come on in and have some coffee.” he
said through his grin, obviously glad for company. “
“I’d love to, thanks. ” she followed him at a distance, still not sure she had
the right address.
He led her to a regular kitchen in the regular house, which made her think she
was in the wrong one. Elise’s relief was palpable when the Col. appeared out of
the garage.
“There you are! Once you two are done here join me in the garage. “
Elise, glad for the reprieve, casually followed the officer after beaming
a smile at Mr Stochastic.
The Col. gestured them toward a raised platform next to the pantry. No sooner
had they all taken their places on it when the Col. recited the pledge of
allegiance, and was rewarded with the descent of the platform with its three
passengers to only-god-knows-where.
Half an hour later found them in a laboratory that was constructed from a
regular basement. Elise’s eyes began to glaze over as ‘Mr. Stochastic’ covered
the tedious details of his Army career, clearly trying to show off for her.
Much to her relief, the Colonel came back from the adjoining conference room
with his usual stern all-business look zeroing in on them. He gave a
disappointed glance at Stochastic and said: “I’m sure she’s duly impressed at
you doing your job, serving your country and all by crunching numbers in cozy
Alaska.” With this Stochastic reverted back to his normal meek yet studious
manner and all-too-casually glanced over a printout which had been silently
waiting for attention since before the three of them had descended into the
laboratory. They all sat down at a table adorned with an industrial-looking
ring.
Stochastic, having regained some of his lost confidence started, “The Colonel
already told you the major points. The best I can describe it is
that during every collision there is the potential for time-shifting. I
presume,
along with my colleagues who are in the know, that when force is applied from
all directions, that a point-particle will pop into another coordinate on a
hybrid spatial-temporal dimension. Our 4d universe is actually a sliver of an
11 dimensional manifold, and it isn’t the higher dimensions that are folded,
but rather our 3 spatial dimensions. “
“Folded? How? “
“The best way to describe it is Protein Folding in Biology. … Like a layered
column of whipped cream on a cake. The higher dimensions have our three
dimensional plane in a kind of rut, like tire tracks on a snowy road. They always
return a particle to our three dimensional plane, but at which position is dictated by
the direction and amount of energy we hit the particle with. If we angle more of the
energy up, or as I like to call it “bevel up”, away from the center of gravity, it seems to go forward in time, and vice versa. “
“But because of the 4d folding nature of our plane it only has a certain set of
4d points it can go to. “
“Precisely. We call the range of potential end-points — emergence points
rather — Zeitpunkte. That’s German for time-dots or time-points, in honor of
your Opa.
Elise realized that she had been holding her breath. She had a guilty
suspicion of looking outwardly incredulous but played it off with a yawn.
“That is certainly a lot of speculation based upon..what, exactly? “
Now it was the officer’s turn to talk. “We have successfully tested all the
predictions garnered from these theories. In other words, we have sent
something both forward and backwards in time. See that terrified hamster over
there? He’s exactly 5 minutes younger than he ought to be. “
“That’s incredible. “
“The initial bombardment was easy, but all we sent were little pieces of
his fur about 2 minutes into the future. We had to ramp the speed of the
propellant particles down so that the whole hamster arrived simultaneously.”
“What do you use for propellant? “
“Regular hydrogen atoms, which combines chemically with atmospheric oxygen
during the time-shift itself. The propellant tends to accompany the subject, so we
wound up with one time-traveling hamster and about a liter of water. “
She paused, letting it all sink in. “If you don’t want my help getting it to
work, but then why am I here? “
“The officer in charge of this project feels it is only proper to congratulate
the man responsible for all of this. Who better to do so then his own
granddaughter, who — as luck would have it — is also well-versed in
contemporary Physics? “
“Okay… great. One question: How would I be able to get back? “
“We’ll send all of Mr Stochastic’s notes along with you, which is mostly just abstract
theory, but using them we’re hoping he can build another time-shifter in our
past so that the both of you can shift into the present. We could use a brain like
his moving forward. “
Elise thought for a couple of seconds. “What if he doesn’t want to leave behind,
I don’t know, everything he knows and loves?”
“We’re hoping he’ll be so elated at the prospect of leaping into the future, but here,
take a look at this old newspaper clipping.”
Elise scanned the headlines. Nothing except Nazi propaganda, until she looked
at a curiously small column tucked away in the corner of of the paper.
“Prominent Nazi Scientist Among The Victims Of Cowardly Allied Bombing Run,” it
read, “Herr Doktor Maximillian Hauptmann will be missed by family and colleagues
alike.”
The Colonel’s voice rudely interrupted her visceral reverie, “If that doesn’t
convince him then we’ll respect his wishes and allow him to live out the rest of
his natural life in his own time, short as it may be.”
Zeitpunkt 0x3000
It felt absolutely horrifying. Maybe it was the Placebo Effect, for she had
anticipated it to feel strange and probably painful. She looked down to inspect
the damage done. She was soaking wet, which was to be expected, but there
were no obvious transmission errors or omissions, or the tell-tale signs of
pain or tingling.
Elise took a look around. It was dark and raining, all of which were good
indications of a properly computed and executed time-shift. She could hear some
faint conversations in the distance, where the glow of distant flames were the only
source of illumination save for searchlights scrambling for a target in the evening
sky.
She approached a couple, and in her best formal German asked the time. “23
uhr,” was the reply. So 11pm local time. “But what’s the date? ” she asked in
German. They responded sharply with the 2nd of March. She didn’t dare ask the
year, but she fervently suspected that it was indeed 1943 as Stochastic had
promised her it would be.
She made her way through the empty streets, not counting crumbled brick and
mortar from that night’s air raid. Seven-hundred seventy-one dead, her inner
monologue commented. It had to be tonight though, for this was the earliest
Zeitpunkt which followed Dr Hauptmann’s discovery.
She reached the hospital. Opa Hauptmann worked in an annex here, but
that didn’t mean she could just barge in through the front door. She resigned
herself to queueing in line with the hundreds of bombing victims. Some were
carrying disembodied body parts: arms, legs, feet, etc. Others were layed out
off to the side of the main entrance. These were the patients that the hospital
couldn’t help, as they were either already dead or heading there fast. They
were surrounded by family members, and Elise grieved along with them in
her mind and spirit. Such a terrible thing to see so many people desperately
cling to life despite and against the odds.
It was 8am the next day by the time she was able to flag down an assistant.
Elise had rehearsed a lengthy alibi to see Dr Hauptmann, but she only skimmed
over the salient points. The assistant was either attracted to her or believed
her outlandish claims to be a visiting professor because he escorted her to a
small waiting room almost without so much as a second thought.
It wasn’t long before the good Doctor called her into his office. Elise
smiled at the garments he wore. “Such a cliche, ” she thought upon seeing
the white lab coat and exaggerated glasses, but then again they are clich s
for a reason.
It took the better part of an hour to translate the notes and the accompanying
math, and in her less-than-perfect Hoch Deutsch (formal German) no less, but
she hadn’t even been born yet so that was forgivable. He skimmed through the
notes himself, interjecting little notes of his own and chuckling to himself.
“So it really works?! “
“I couldn’t be here if it didn’t. “
“Well that’s marvelous. Simply astounding! What happens now? “
“Now you get to decide whether you stay here, in war-torn 1943, or if we both
go to 2018 and continue your research there. You wouldn’t be missing
much here, except… well, there’s no easy way of putting it, but your time here
is almost up anyway.”
“Well you have that tied up with a neat little bow. How long do I have to send
us back to your time? “
“They told me you have 9 months, but all we have to do is build a larger scale
model of your linear accelerator. Then we go through the unimaginable higher
dimensions until we reach the safe, advanced future. “
“For me the future, you mean. “
“We might end up farther ahead in time, so maybe for the both of us. I’ll let
you calculate the probabilities.”
“There really aren’t enough data points to work with, and there are a lot of
assumptions that we have to work with. For example: what if the length of
the 4d world fold differs over time. What if I don’t have enough astronomical
data to plot the future position of Earth so that we don’t come out in outer-
space? The list goes on indefinitely!”
“We don’t have a choice, Opa. We have to hope for the best. I recommend that
we build this time-shifter as quickly as possible. God knows how long before
this hospital is completely destroyed. “
“Any real granddaughter of mine would’ve done more research. Clearly they
switched the bassinet when you were born” he said with a playful look in his
eyes, seeking succor in humor where sheer intellect wavered.
“Haha, not funny! We acted as quickly as we could to avoid all those fun
assumptions you yourself just mentioned. We… I took a risk just in getting
here, so what’s one more perilous journey?”
After a restless day of recovery, the two of them requisitioned all the parts
they’d need under a high-secret supply request. Even Onkel Addy — as Hitler
was known as to his more mirthful Generals — couldn’t have put in a request
with a higher priority.
News from the fronts came in every day as the months came and went. The Russians
had taken back Leningrad. A high ranking Nazi general had surrendered along with
all of his troops, giving the Russians Nazi battle- and contingency-plans. The
end of the Reich was approaching like a train, and the Hauptmanns knew that if
Berlin were captured before they shifted back to Elise’s time then there’d be no
hope of them escaping its colossal momentum. In fact, it was the closest thing
to a death sentence next to the real thing. In mid-December all their
prototyping and manufacturing were complete.
“We need to test it before we gamble with our lives ” said the PhD. Elise
suggested “let’s send a message through first.”
“What kind of message? ”Help, I’m a renegade Nazi Scientist who needs to
defect?!””
“I didn’t know scientists, let alone German scientists, had such a flair for the
dramatic, Opa,” Elise chided.
“It doesn’t need to be fancy or elegant. A simple ”Is it safe to shift?
Return with a yes or no.” will do. “
“Well that shouldn’t be too hard. Do I write it in English or Russian?” but he
decided for himself, quickly scribbling the message at first in German and then
in broken English. After he was done he took a cold, long look at the letterhead
which was ordained with a swastika, through which he resignedly drew a line. He
felt a rather odd realization swallow the rest of his thoughts, the realization
that he was crossing out his entire world and everything in it.
“Okay, all set. It’s sent. “
The generators spun up to speed, the flywheel surging with power, and then
suddenly a resounding thunderclap illuminated the laboratory. Once their eyes
adjusted back to normal illumination there was a simple memo on top of his desk,
dripping wet but still legible.
Elise was quick to pick it up, wipe the water away, and read the missive.
“It’s in English, Opa, and it says we’re good to go.” Elise’s obvious relief
wasn’t shared by Doktor Hauptmann.
“Then let’s get going before that ruckus calls forth every soldier in the
vicinity. “
“What about the time-shifter itself? Won’t your colleagues find out what it is?”
“Nobody would have a clue what the accelerator is for, nor how to aim it, and
so on. They’ll probably demolish it after a while. “
A couple of seconds and another deafening thunderclap later and they were off. The
Nazi soldiers found nothing for their troubles except for a curious amount of
water where once an ominous machine had stood.
…
I’d like to thank A. Attwood and E. Bomhof for their editing expertise. If it
weren’t for them this story would have literally and metaphorically been half
of what it is now.