Stormfuhrer (21 page)

Without hesitation Farash replied, “The Game.  It’s real.”

Hayes looked at him and down at the floor.  Finally he nodded.  “I know.  I’ve known that for some time now.  But these people living on my land has nothing to do with the Game.”

“It has everything to do with it.”

Richard continued to reflect.  “Early on, I thought the Game might be real.  Well, it’s over for me.  It ended and the computer’s gone.  Just makes sense.”

“Your computer is gone because you never had one.  It has never been invented, at least not like it was.”

Hayes stared hard at Farash for several moments.  He was starting to make sense.

Farash continued, his voice now quite shaken and loud.  “Richard, I changed history!  I f--ked up the world!”

Despite the circumstances, Hayes was startled at Farash’s use of the vulgar vernacular, as Farash would have phrased it when referring to its use by students.  “How?”

Both were silent.  Both knew somehow that it was an absolute certainty that what Farash was saying about history was completely correct.  Neither needed further details.  They just knew.  Still, it wasn't likely that Farhat Farash was responsible.

“
If you changed history, in the game I mean,” Richard began, “then how do we remember things as they were before history changed?  Wouldn’t we also be products of a changed history and thus know nothing at all about the game?”

“
I was thinking about that on the way here.  Perhaps since we were involved, we have the retention of our memories prior to the change, at least temporarily.”

“
Whatever it is you did, or others maybe, since you don’t necessarily know it was you who changed history . . . anyway it’s permanent if computers aren’t the same.  There's no going back.”  Richard got up.  His legs were starting to cramp.

“
Yes.  No going back.”  Farash gave Richard a look of panic, even mania.   “It
was
me though.  I was a part of Hitler's inner circle.”

Richard began to ask for more specifics but the Eastern man was so upset that he decided to remain silent, watching him while leaning against a small, stained sink.  "In the game.  The Allies . . . "

" . . . don't include the Americans.  They never . . ."

" . . . entered the war."  Richard was exhausted as he finished the man's sentence.  "So it's true.  This isn't the United States anymore.  It hasn't been since the 1940's."  Richard thought.  “And the players.  They were . . .”

“Real.  All of them.”

“
And the players on this side?  The ones in the avatars?  Did you ever meet any in . . . the Game?”

“
Never.”

“
No.  I didn't either.  How many of them do you think there were?”

“
Impossible to tell.  Could be your students were the only ones.  And me.”

Richard hung his head, scratching at the couch between his bony legs.  He shook his head for a long time. “She was real.  I knew she was real.” 

Farash nodded.  They were all real.  The ones they tortured, both
with
their avatars and the avatars themselves, most doubtless driven to utter insanity.  The idea of harming computer-generated players made it easy.  There
were
no computer-generated players.  That was clear now.

After many moments, the man from India stood up and left into the blind evening without another word.  Richard, still trying to put all the pieces together, turned again to stare out the window in the direction of the dark brown water.  The black dog snored peacefully by the milk crate.

2027

“
Mr. Hayes, is everything okay?”  The nurse seemed genuinely concerned.  She had appeared after about an hour.  “Do you need to be alone right now?”

Hayes looked vacantly up from the table without moving his head.  His face reflected a mind surrounded by tough skin thickening over an old wound constantly being re-introduced to a blunt force.

The nurse left again.

After a few moments, the old woman looked into his eyes, attempting to make contact.  They met, for a few seconds, and then his fell again to the floor.

Karl stopped reading the journal and watched the pair.  The old woman sat at the edge of the bed, leaning on a walker with both brakes firmly gripped.  The prematurely aging man stared like one wanting nothing more than to be left alone but was too weak to bring about the energy and emotion needed to make it known--if the emotion of “wanting” could apply to this now spiritless being.

“
Mr. Hayes.  Mr. Richard Hayes.”  The old woman said it in German.  “Ich bin ihre Tochter.“  I am your daughter.

“Ich bin der gute Arzt.” 
The teacher from India repeated it in his mind.  “I am the good doctor.”  He brushed some lint from his military cap with a gloved hand, polished the metal insignia with his left sleeve, and positioned the black cap onto his head.  He heard cheering that he knew was for him alone.  He had succeeded. “
Ich will
.  I
will
wipe this plague from Germany.  From Europe.  I will wipe it from mankind.  I am healer. 
Ich bin
Ubermensch
!”

The street was peopled mostly with brown-shirted students making their way to school.  They wore khaki shorts, and the black neckties of both males and females were tucked neatly inside their dark brown vests.  Flags stood dead of wind above some of the shops’ sidewalks.  They were predominantly striped white and red.  But in the upper left corner, a square blue field sported a thin white double-row of stars forming four bent arms, each pointing in a diagonal direction.

In his mind, he stepped out onto a balcony overlooking the thick population that had come to greet him.  It was Munich, 1945. 
“Meine guten Deutschen!”
  My good Germans!  The crowd noise began to surge into a roar.  They saluted with 45-degree angles, palms down, in his direction.  Red flags whipped loudly above the crowds in the heavy breeze that brought mist to his eyes.  He had finally been named
Der Führer.

Through the crowd noise, a nearly-silent gunshot could be heard.  The slug penetrated the new Fuhrer's neck.  Blood poured quickly into the neckline around his white shirt.  He stumbled backwards from the balcony, half-supported by the imaginary SS comrades that hovered over him with immediate concern, but already his brain had begun entering the blind, oxygen-deprived state of graying death.

He made his way to the bedroom that he shared with his wife, Amaia.  He leaned against the wall, leaving a smear of blood on his way to the closet.  His comrades were there to assist but could do nothing.  “
Mein
Führer!”
they exclaimed as their hands held him, one holding palms against the entry and exit wounds made by the bullet that had pierced through the pale, white neck of Karl Ernst Krafft.

The ice pick that had pierced his neck fell from his left hand into a small pile of shoes.  Hanging work clothe and button-up shirts fell in folds around him as his body dipped into the gentle, swathing blackness of the closet.

After his meeting with Farash, Richard Hayes took a walk.  He had no real hope regarding what his place might be in this new . . . reality. 

He walked through the slum that had formed on his land.  They were filled with colonies of immigrants who had never left Texas, their homeland.  They were poor, discarded shreds of humanity who returned his glances with smiles.  They knew him.  What they knew had been positive.  That morning, he was dressed no less shabbily than they were.  He wasn’t wearing shoes either.  He had forgot to put any on.  His hair was unkempt.  His dark gray beard hid most of his face.  The food they made smelled good, but there was clearly no meat in their cooking this morning.  Still, it smelled wholesome and clearly full enough with calories.  Behind the two rows of makeshift homes lay gardens that stretched back to the fence line where shabby trees once stood, while gardens from the other row of shanties extended somewhat into the wide field of weeds that separated them from Richard's cabin.

Richard Hayes looked 70.  His eyes were open bags of red crust and his hair was nearly gone.  His clothes smelled of stale, septic sweat.   His feet had no shoes or socks.  His beard was mostly gray.  He sat on a bench as the wind blew through the park against the back of his hairy neck.  He had not much remembered the walk getting here, but he certainly remembered the images that bore into his mind during that walk. 

He had been a year with Savina.  They had had a child.  They were happy and safe in Poland until she was found in the attic where they lived and taken away to a camp.  Richard had been asleep in the dusty attic.  When he awoke, both were gone.  After speaking briefly with Savina’s distant relative by marriage, a man named Djon, with what little Polish he could muster, he knew that he would never see her again.  Before Savina had been taken, she had directed the man to hide the child in a wardrobe closet.  He presented the child to Mauer with no suspicion in his eyes.  This man didn’t look Jewish at all.  Here he was, a “Weisse-Jew” a “Jude Liebhaber,” a jew-lover disdained of his Aryan comrades.  Choosing for Savina to no longer be German.  Blonde, blue-eyed, and excommunicated.  The man felt respect for him.

One morning Hayes had logged in and the child was gone.  In his absence, Heinrich Mauer, clearly a changed man by all he had been through, had been out working for whatever money he could make doing various chores on the farms and in the neighboring villages to support himself and his small child while Djon cared for the little girl during the day.  The child’s makeshift bed was empty of even blankets and toys when Hayes saw it.  Djon had likewise disappeared. 

A week of mulling around, knocking on doors and breaking curfews brought the attention of the military police.  Richard didn’t care.  It was over.  He was found in the dusty attic, shot by a German soldier, and pushed out of a window by a Russian peasant who claimed to now be the new owner of the building.  The screen went dark after that.  But by then, for Richard Hayes, it didn’t matter.  The next day, Richard found that his computer, his helmet, everything had vanished.  Farhat's visit then explained that they were gone, permanently, in fact had never existed, at least not in
this
reality
.

He walked to the main street of the little town.  He watched the flags in wonder as they fanned the cold, gray morning sky.  Billows of smoke poured into the dark clouds from behind distant South Texas fields while black wisps of ash floated down and into the streets.  Sugarcane fields were burning to make room for the next planting.

On his walk, he saw bicyclists and a few cars.  Hayes finally came to the yellow bridge, crossed it, and veered left through a passage in the broken links of a chained fence behind an important-looking white building, probably still a city hall.  The fence had been overgrown with weeds.  The park that lay parallel to the deep river was deserted in the warm, morning breeze.  He sat at the end of a bench, viewing the scrubby foliage along the river.  No boats went by.

Several minutes later, an elderly, light-skinned woman wearing a purple dress and a white hat waddled up and sat at the opposite end of the bench.  Two children, also pale, ran up and down some slides while a very young girl sat spinning in a swing, dragging her feet as the twisted chains untwisted themselves above her, looking down at her shoes.

After some moments, the woman looked toward Hayes but not quite at him.  “You know, that town (she pointed south) was to be named after the first resident to be born there?”  Hayes was unresponsive, but listened.  She continued despite his silence.  “His first name was San Benito.  That was the name of the boy and so it became the name of the town.” 

“Huh.” Hayes responded.  “Didn’t know that.”  He suddenly realized that they were both speaking in German, she with a heavy Russian accent.  He also realized that his German was much better than it had been.  Perfect, in fact, though with an accent.  He didn’t have to think at all to understand what she was saying.

She continued, this time in broken English, apparently having detected in his words a bit of the aforementioned accent.  “Most people don’t.  They think it was named after a famous priest.”  She paused thoughtfully.  “Or someone who used to do miracles.”