Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! (36 page)

As I moved through the ghost crowd of angry workers, listening with growing anger and sympathy, I spotted a yellow halo around one of the figures across the street. I moved towards it, and as I got within a dozen meters, a tag popped up beneath the group photo. Only his head and shoulders had been caught in the old picture, a young man with light hair trimmed in an unflattering bowl cut. He had the same thin lipped, wide mouth as my dad (and me), and it was shut tight in a serious frown. The tag said “Leon Manning, 72% match. Can you confirm? 0 people have identified this person”

I couldn't confirm. I'd never seen a photo of Uncle Leon. When my dad and oma fled East Berlin, they'd left everything behind, including the family photos that had survived the war. Oma never talked about it, so I only had dad's version to go by. Since he'd only been three, his story didn't have much to it, and I honestly hadn't thought or cared to ask him about it since I was a freshman or sophomore in high school. So no, I couldn't confirm, but I knew it was him. So I hit “Yes” Yes, this was Uncle Leon. The app thanked me for my feedback.

I stood and stared at the blurry, pixelated ghost of Uncle Leon and wondered why he'd been here that day. He wasn't yelling like some of the others around him. He looked worried though. And surely he'd been too young to be a worker, upset that his quota had been raised by 25 percent. I thought maybe he'd just been wandering by and stopped to see what all the fuss was about. I imagined oma in her apartment, my toddler father at her knee, waiting and worrying about her oldest son being caught out on the street.

The double pulse shook the phone in my hand, just enough to make the image vibrate. It was the bad pulse. I switched over to Messenger.

Ned: Where are you?

I assumed he wouldn't ask if he didn't already know. I ignored the text for the moment, whipping around and not quite running back towards the restaurant I was supposed to be selling in. I felt the phone pulse in my hand again, but didn't slow down to look at it until I was standing outside the window, looking in on white table cloths and heavy wooden chairs.

Ned: ???

Ned: Martin?

“Sorry, was talking to chef,” I said to the phone. The voice to text software didn't seem to mind that I was panting as I said it.

Ned: Where?

“We went for a walk so he could smoke,” I said. That seemed plausible, right?

I heard nothing from Ned for two and a half long minutes, during which time I stood there, catching my breath and staring hard at the damn phone.

Ned: Sale?

“He wants to talk to his partner. I'm going to come back tonight.”

Ned: No sale.

Did he mean me not closing the sale or him not buying my bullshit story? I took a page out of his book and decided not to respond since he hadn't actually asked another question. Instead I activated Sales Tacker and checked out of the restaurant, dutifully marking “No Sale,” but scheduling a return appointment for 19:00 tonight. Trying to make the pitch during dinner rush wasn't likely to work out at all, but I'd give it a go.

My next appointment was another souvenir shop, further along Wilhelmstrasse. Which was good news. The tourist joints were always the easy sells. I started walking in that general direction, even as I brought up Berlin City once again. I thought I might swing back through the plaza and try and get a screen capture of my uncle's photo to send to my dad. I didn't bother to turn my GPS back on. If Ned asked, I'd claim battery life concerns.

As soon as the app loaded, it gave me a new alert. “New possible facial recognition match for Leon Manning found. 37 percent Match.” I tapped the alert, and a map of downtown Berlin filled the screen, a glowing yellow pinpoint hovering right near the Brandenburg Gate, less than a kilometer from where I was standing. Now of course I wanted to check that one out too, even more than I wanted to go back to the plaza. I figured I was due my twenty-minute lunch break, even though I knew Ned hated us to take them when we were behind schedule like I was. I risked the slack badge and logged off for lunch, which automatically started the countdown timer on my phone. With 19:37 on the clock, I headed towards the Brandenburg Gate.

I followed the line of tanks down the road. They were old-model Soviet tanks, in black and white and two dimensions, and there were people throwing stones at them. Unter den Linden, packed to the modern-day gills with cafés, car showrooms, and tourist traps shown bright and airy everywhere but on my phone. Back in 1953, it was grainy and dark, with frustrated, angry German workers were throwing stones at Soviet tanks.

The street widened into Pariser Platz, the cleaned and restored Brandenburg Gate directly ahead, it's four-horse chariot ready to gallop off and down towards me. But between them and me were three actors dressed as East German, American, and Soviet soldiers, charging five euros to pose in pictures with tourists. And there was a man on stilts, and another man in a bear suit for those who wanted less militaristic symbols of the city. Although I wasn't sure what the stilts-guy had to do with anything. But through my camera, there was a sixty-years-gone crowd of angry workers.

I noticed that a slider had appeared along the left side of the screen, another time line for another Crisis Point. Moving it up or down changed the year, and with it the augmented reality laid over the pristine, tourist-friendly Brandenburg Gate I was standing before. I flipped to the twenty-first century and held the phone up, the gate's three arches center-screen, and started to move the slider back from the present day. Ebullient Berliners atop the gate at night as the Wall came down gave way to Cold War-era East German guards, first in color, and then, further back in time, in black and white. Then battle-scarred Soviet soldiers transitioned into Nazis on their hate parade into jazz-age Weimar Republicans celebrating just being alive before the army of the Kaiser took their place.

The weight of tragedy in the stones and streets within my view made me feel both lucky and sad. To have escaped all that, to have lived a life free of even needing to know it ever happened, much less suffer through it—that made me lucky as sin. The sadness came when I came to suspect what I'd been brought to this point to see. I slid the time line back to the black and white, Cold War-era layer, the one marked 1953.

A yellow haloed figure was falling to his knees in the middle of the platz. A line of East German cops were firing into the crowd, and it looked like the young man had stepped forward to hurl a stone, which he still held tight in his left hand. My first thought was to wonder aloud, “Huh, my uncle was left-handed too.” It was my uncle. It was certainly the same boy I'd seen outside the Ministry building. I moved up close to him, the phone held before me. Around me, at least a dozen others were holding phones or cameras as well, taking pictures or maybe looking at their own historical realities.

I don't imagine many people ever have to look at a photo of a loved-one's murder. To say an uncle I'd never met, who'd died almost thirty years before my birth, was a loved one seemed crazy. But that didn't mean I didn't feel it. And that didn't mean I wasn't outraged at all he'd lost in that moment, and all my oma had lost, and my father, and me.

The phone vibrated in my hand, the image of my uncle and his comrades being shot by the Volkspolizei shivering in response. It was a message from Ned. A Slack Badge, awarded without comment. There went vacation days. Another one, and I'd lose 20 percent of my commissions for the next week. The colorful, stupid fucking Slack Badge taking the place of my uncle's murder on my screen was so ridiculous, so utterly petty, that I laughed out loud. Not an odd sight these days, someone laughing at their phone, but I didn't care if the tourists around me did think I was some sort of nut. I figured I'd be a nut to put up with this insanity.

Ned's petty tyranny lost all meaning and definition when seen through the lens of real oppression. The polizei wouldn't shoot me no matter how much Ned wanted them to. My uncle had stood up to tanks with just cobblestones. Ned wanted more sales, I'd make him more sales.

I copied the photo of my uncle being shot, opened up the Thrifty City sales app, and started creating a New Business:

Name: Workers Revolt

Location: Berlin and Everywhere Else

Business Type: Saying Fuck You to Pigs.

Est. Revenue: Millions Dead and Counting.

Promotion Type: Shoot one, Shoot another Free! 100% Off Worker's Rights

I attached my uncle's death shot as the Location Image and uploaded it to the server. Then I started on the next one. From where I was standing I could see the exact sites of a thousand different crimes. Maybe a million.

Name: Democracy Destroyed

Location: Reichstag and all of Central Europe

Business Type: One Man, No Votes

Est. Revenue: Billions if you're making tanks and bombs and poison gas.

Promotion Type: 100% of voting franchise. Burn one Parlimant, Burn a Second for 50% off

I uploaded that, and then started trying to figure out something poignant to say about the Berlin Wall. I was working up to the Holocaust. My phone buzzed, a text from Ned.

Ned: ?

I ignored it, deciding on “Name: Dreams Divided,” and it buzzed again.

Ned: ??

Two question marks. He really was mad. I knew the next Slacker Badge was on its way and decided to step into the punch. “This is what's important here, Ned,” I dictated to the phone, my voice dripping with acrimonious venom. “This is what the fuck matters.”

Ned: ?

“Fuck!” I yelled at the question mark, then started to dictate. “This is what fucking tourists need to see. This is where my uncle died making a stand.” The voice-to-text software replaced the “fucking” with “####” but I sent it anyway.

I was ready to throw the phone as hard as I could at the Brandenburg Gate if he sent another question mark. Out of the corner of my eye, about fifty meters away, I could see a cop eying me. Wouldn't that be ironic. But he just stared, and no guns were drawn. I had that on my uncle anyway. The phone buzzed.

Ned: I get it.

“You get what?” I asked, but didn't send.

Ned: We need to be culturally sensitive.

Ned: Let's effort this new proposal of yours.

Ned: We'll do historical events. An educational component. It's a good plan.

My outrage started to dissipate in a gust of confusion. My first question was, why wasn't I fired. And if I wasn't fired, that meant, well, it meant I could make car payments. And student loan payments. And I had health insurance still. And all those things. That was good, right? It didn't feel good though. It felt like a tire wrapped around my neck. But how could I quit when Ned was being reasonable with me?

“Thanks,” was all I could dictate back to him.

Ned: Finish out your day and we'll Skype about it tonight.

I nodded. “Okay.”

Ned: We'll be joined by Philip in London and Gina in Paris. I'll add it to your calendar.

“Sounds good,” I said. Ned didn't reply, and after ten or fifteen seconds, I brought up Berlin City History again, and pointed my phone back at the scene of my uncle's failed revolt. I wondered what it had sounded like. I tried to imagine the gunpowder smell.

My phone buzzed, alerting me that I had a new item on my calendar. I opened it up. “RE: Monetizing Historical Crises through coupons and attraction discounts.”

I hurled my phone as hard as I could, shattering it against the left-most column on my side of the Brandenburg Gate. It shattered, glittering shards of glass screen and plastic innards blossoming and tinkling to the ground. The cop was on top of me a second later, and as I was slammed to the ground I'd never felt more relieved.

Larry Fondation

You are dead, my love.

That I know.

I am supposed to radio in. I do not.

I stay with you in the shrub and the sand. I stroke your hair. Your hair does not stiffen.

We ran for the truck. We almost made it. When the bullets hit you, I scorned the hands that reached out for me. The hands of our fellow soldiers. I scorned them to be with you.

We fell in love at boot camp. We laughed amidst sweat and pondered our prospects. From North Carolina, steamy and wet, to Texas heat to arid Iraq. I stole your shampoo. We believed that no one knew about us.

Time passed here, the invasion easy, the aftermath troubled, letters home, your embrace, still furtive, glancing, clandestine. A game of soccer in the scattered sand.