Polar Night

Anna leads an expedition from 2008 to 1923 Munich to stop three friends who went back in time to kill Hitler at the Beer Hall Putsch. Conflict, historical figures of ill repute, and time travel. You know you wanna read it. Critplz.

P

The derisive tone in Anna's voice cut, and made Roger Quick, even though he was twenty years older and she was a third his size in every respect, feel like he was ten again and being kicked around by the schoolyard bully. It irritated him—what self-respecting middle-aged man would be intimidated by a skinny little college girl, and the parent in him smarted that she wasn't more respectful to her elders—but at the same time, at least in this instance, he really did feel like the stupid one.

“Why not? That there are countless scenarios, better than anything I could cook up right now, in movies, and books and shit mean I don't have to tell you why not. And I think like, three Twilight Zone episodes. Things would have turned out worse!”

Anna sat back, and bent her head to the side—a thing she did when she was thinking. She was a million miles away for a few moments, but then jerked back to the bar stool beside Quick's.

“So they really went back in time to kill Hitler?”

Quick nodded.

“Did you try to stop them? At all?”

He shook his head.

“I didn't know they were going until it was too late. Have you checked your email?”

Anna hesitated, shook her head, and set her beer down. Her brittle humor evaporated. She rapped her fingernails on the bar and scowled, but in an instant, the reaction reversed itself, and a cheerful smile beamed from her face.

“No. So,” she quipped, and picked up her beer again brightly. “For various reasons, it's not going to work, and/or they might end up dead. Case closed.” She took a what-looked-like celebratory drink.

“Except for the missing person's report that'll follow here,” Quick murmured. He was expecting Anna to snipe back at him somehow—but to his relief, she nodded. “I'd hate to go to jail for this.”

Anna only seemed reminded of something she'd rather forget, thank-you-very-much.

“Oh, that'll be a blast. Let's explain this to the cops and have it explode in our faces. If those idiots get themselves killed, we're screwed,” she sighed. She scratched behind an ear. “Or we'll have to come up with an elaborate plan for getting them back, ah lah Jurassic Park 3, which was a shitty movie. Alright: we've got to go get their dumb asses. I don't know how long it typically takes for somebody to notice enough to call in a missing person's report.”

“Maybe twenty-four hours,” Quick said. “I think they've got a set time period before they'll accept a missing person's report, in case somebody's just incommunicado. That said we don't have to hurry once we're in the past: we have a time machine.”

“Right, but they've been gone twenty-four hours by now. What we're racing is Now. Let me finish this beer.”

Nothing had stopped Quick from feeling increasingly panicked all day as he had been unable to get in touch with Anna or, though he managed to in the early afternoon, Dr. Quaker. He was still feeling pressed for time, and he twitched at Anna's lack of shared urgency—do something productive now. Now!

He suppressed the urge to grab the beer and chug it himself; anyway, she wasn't wasting precious time: they couldn't even meet Quaker until two-thirty.

Quick made himself sit back and nod. He looked around as something to do; this bar was rather dark, small and cheap, he was the only person over thirty, and while he had aged exceptionally well it still made him feel old. Newspapers pasted with clear garnish covered the walls, and trash art hung from the ceiling. The bar itself was constructed out of plywood and sheet metal, hand hammered into a half-moon shape.

It was called the Flying Dog, and it was Anna's favorite. She didn't come here often, since she didn't drink often, but when Quick called her at 1 AM, it was where she said to meet him. It was about five minutes downhill from her dorm.

“We're supposed to meet Dustin's professor in charge of his research at 2:30 at the lab,” Quick said. “I'll drive us there.”

“My bike's outside,” Anna replied. “Is it going to fit in your car?”

“I'm in the minivan. Yeah.”

“Sweet,” she sighed. “Okay. I'll pay for this, then let's go.”

N

Quick had called Anna because she was an email recipient, and he had called her first because she was the only one he knew of who already knew what Dustin had accidentally created in the lab.

She knew because she was the first person Dustin had called, as a devoted History major and general history buff—and his girlfriend's roommate—to ask about the plausibility of going back in time to change history “for the better.” Anna had been against it—skepticism didn't even figure into the equation.

A day later, six days ago, Dustin called Quick, also a graduate student, with whom he shared an office along with three other TAs,¹ to brag and demonstrate. It didn't go the way he had expected, and that was the last Quick heard of any of it until he received an email at 11:57 PM the previous night stating Dustin's intention to back in time to kill Adolf Hitler and thus prevent WWII and the Holocaust.

This would have been dealt with sooner if Quick had been able to get everyone concerned on the same page—the professor, Dr. Dill Quaker, did not check his email often in a day and was never in his office, and Dustin's email didn't include his cell phone or home phone. Maybe Dustin didn't know them, or he was making it difficult to be followed—anyway, Quick didn't know the numbers, either.

As for Anna, her cell phone had run out of power, as he found out after being unable to get hold of her all day. He got her on her room phone, which was a chore. He hadn't known how dorm phone numbers were set up—as he discovered, within the system, they had a shared first three digits, the fourth number determined which dorm one was dialing, and then the last three were the number of an individual's room.

It woke Anna up.

She got right out of bed and came down to the Flying Dog when Quick told her why he was calling, she just needed a drink to help it all make sense, and anyway Dill Quaker was indisposed until past two in the morning because his wife didn't want him sneaking out; after 2 AM, the house could fall down around her head and she wouldn't notice. The joys of sleep medication—if Dr. Quaker were going out, he always made sure to watch Sybil take her pills and waited until 2:15. He was always home by 6:30, thirty minutes before she woke up, like clockwork.

It was a four hour window which he took advantage of quite often.

The research lab at 2:30 in the morning was fluorescent-lit and blinding white with linoleum floors and was orderly, sterilized and placid. Quaker was already waiting for them, perched upon a tripod stool, examining Dustin's equipment and scowling over it.

Anna shook hands with Quaker, and the two of them exchanged polite but stilted niceties, as this was the first time they had met. She glanced at Quick, and took a stool for herself.

It was Quaker's immediate impression that this Anna was everything wrong with this new generation. She wore tatty clothing with gold rings and didn't sit up straight.

“I don't have to explain anything,” Quaker asked, glancing at Quick, who shook his head. Quaker had a faint New England accent when he spoke, and a pointed beard with a long, pointy, unfunny face.

“So why didn't somebody just go back to a little before they arrived and make them come back?” Anna asked.

“That's our idea,” Quaker replied. “You'll go back—”

Anna blew raspberries.

“Why me?”

“I had a hip replacement last year,” Quick said. “I don't know what kind of stress might be put on me if I try. Anyway, if it doesn't work...come back, we'll figure something else out. And Dr. Quaker...”

“I understand the mechanics behind this...thing better than either of you,” Quaker said. “I need to man this machine.”

“How did Dustin and them plan on getting back home?”

“The email asked us to open up a rift for them from...”

Quaker checked a piece of paper on the counter.

“Midnight on the morning of the 9th of November, 1924,” he said. “They planned for travel problems. He sent this email to you, Roger, and I.” Quaker handed the printed out email to Anna.

“They'll be in the past for two years?” she murmured, pursing her lips and thinking she hadn't had enough at the Flying Dog. “Have you opened a rift for when they want to come back—”

“I did when I got here,” Quaker said, and frowned harder. “Nothing came through. It could mean anything, but the fact is they didn't come through during the twenty minutes the rift stays open. Nothing did. The dynamics of communicating with someone in the future are untested; a time capsule or a letter delivered as at the end of Back to the Future might tell us more, or we might never know. History did not change—nothing about the Putsch seems to have changed.”

Anna's stomach clenched, and she suddenly felt very nauseous. What had happened to them?

“Do we know people survive time travel?” Anna asked.

“Dustin did,” Quaker replied. “He sent himself twenty minutes into the future when he was testing it.”

“When he asked me, he was still sending remote control cars...it doesn't work like in Terminator, does it?”

Quaker stared at her blankly.

“You don't have any clothes on—nothing artificial goes through. I have a couple fillings...”

“Dustin would have mentioned something like that in his notes, I'm pretty sure,” Quick said. Quaker agreed.

Anna was quiet for a long time, her head listed to the right, and both men seemed to take it for granted that she agreed with them—which she didn't, but on the other hand she couldn't come up with a better idea. There were still too many unknown variables.

“What if...what if something happened to them right as they came out? What if they got caught or arrested—”

“My wife works with the campus and Arkansas archives in the library,” Quaker said. “Of course I can't speak for anywhere else they may have gotten to, but as far as right here is concerned, there's nothing. I had her look up information for me, and on the night and at almost the exact time those three went back, there was a murder in this building—of a student. They caught the man who did it a week later, and later hung him, but nothing was ever said about three boys who might fit our description, even not related to the murder. So be careful—if you have to leave the basement, it happened at midnight on the second floor. He was shot in the neck. Another student discovered him the following morning.”

“I might get shot? Seriously? Why did they go back to then!”

“You know that the Beer Hall Putsch was on November 8, 1923. They gave themselves a full year to get to Germany somehow, and a full year to get back. I don't think they knew about the murder.”

Anna sighed.

“But wasn't this building built in the sixties?” Quick said suddenly, and Anna blanched.

“Did you check the papers for bones found during construction?” she cried.

“Yes. There was nothing that might even suggest it. There was another building here that had been built in 1897,” Quaker snapped, glancing pettishly at Anna, like she was pretending to be slow for the express purpose of irritating him. “It burned down in 1959, and they built Gray Hall in 1962, which is when it became a science building. In 1922, this level was storage. Fraternities used the basement as a meeting place until 1959, but only on Saturday evenings. November 8, 1922 was a Wednesday. Actually, you'll be going to November 7, about five minutes till midnight, because they arrived at midnight...at the very beginning of November 8.” Quaker seemed to know what he had just said sounded awkward—but he let it go, it got the point across.

Anna relaxed, but was still troubled.

“If I hear anything, I'm coming right back through the rift, and we'll have to figure something else out.”

Quaker scowled, and puffed himself up as if about to say something at length.

“Use your best judgment,” Quick cut in. He looked at Quaker. “Is there anything else she needs to know about? Any security guards or anything like that?”

“She would probably only have to worry about that if she left the basement or the building.”

“Never mind about that. We're wasting time,” Quaker said flatly. “This shouldn't take a moment. Wait for them to come through. Do not go back through their rift, you'd come back 24 hours ago. We'll open a third rift at 12:30 AM, set for twenty minutes ahead of now. Understand? Now, you have to get down and crawl into it. The rift will do the rest.”

Anna ran her tongue along the ridge of her upper teeth, rapped her fingernails, and nodded unconvincingly. She stepped off the stool after a long hesitation.

Why the hell am I doing this, she thought.

Quaker pointed to show her where to go, and after prodding the equipment, a patch of distortion appeared in the air.

“It's like stepping into another room, and then stepping back, but the door is timed. I don't know what hopping back and forth through the same rift multiple times might do to you or what paradoxes might occur, Dustin never tried that, so don't you try it. Okay, get down and get ready. Here's a flashlight.” He handed it to her.

The rifts opened at the far end of the row, between the chair and the wall, at Dustin's work station. Looking at it was uneventful, like looking into an endlessly flushing toilet bowl, except the bowl was transparent. It about three feet wide and three feet across, and smelled like burnt cheese.

Anna got down on her knees, flashlight in hand, and found herself stiff with fear and the feeling of flying blind. Why couldn't she ask everything she wanted before she did this?

“Get going!” Quaker snapped.

“Why don't you go, then!” Anna shot back.

“Young lady, fifty years from now, when you're telling this story to your grandchildren, don't you want to say you had the guts to go back in time for five minutes?”

Anna stared up skeptically at the old man over her shoulder, then slowly took her eyes off him, bringing them to bear on the rift. She took a deep breath, held it in and bit on her lower lip, and crawled forward, eyes shut.

Her first impression of the inside of the rift was that it was tingly and cool, like putting limbs in cold salt water. She tentatively opened her eyes, and almost jerked right back—it was pitch black, she could not feel or see anything, she was suspended in limbo. She had no traction for her arms to move forward, or else she didn't know whether she did—it felt like she didn't.

For a few moments she had to remain still, to get a hold of herself and reassure herself that nothing had happened. She was okay. Okay. Deep breath. Okay. Take another one if you like.

“Anna! Come on! You're fine! Don't be a baby!” she hissed at herself, flexed her feet, gripped the linoleum with her toes, and pushed out into the void, too fast to take it back if she had a moment of panic.

When her whole body was inside, it felt like she had no body left, and her hand was numb to the sensation of holding the flashlight.

What if they never got to 1922 and were just left here in space—

Anna slumped to the ground, her limbs collapsed jellylike underneath her. She scraped her chin and limbs on the ground—whatever kind of ground this was.

Ow. Ow. That really hurt.

I'm okay.

...I'm okay! Am I okay? Where am I?

For a few moments, Anna lay there, in shock, breathing the air, disturbing the dust, and quite out of nowhere she asked a question: “How come he knew November 8, 1922, was a Wednesday?” Her voice rang out in otherwise silence.

Tentatively, Anna pushed herself up into a sitting position, and rubbed at her chin with the back of her hand; it came away gritty, and stung like she was bleeding. She could smell the rift, and everything around her smelled stale.

It was pitch-black here, too, but there wasn't the feeling of nothing and nowhere, every part of her was on high alert, absorbing information quicker than she could process it. Was this actually 1922?

The flashlight. Turn on the flashlight.

Anna fumbled for the button, and her fingers found it, it gave her some sense of reassurance. She turned it on.

P

Of course not all the answers are given in the first chapter; and this isn't a case of "first chapter jumps right into traipsing off to Munich lol what about cash and papers o well we'll wing it lulz." I planned better than that.

#1. If the simple idea of stopping someone from killing Hitler is just too repulsive for you to think about, that's just too bad. #2. The polar night is the opposite of the midnight sun. Night instead of day? Clever, yes? -shot repeatedly- I own this particular story, Anna, her compatriots, everyone and everything else I came up with, and the Three Amigos.

¹ TA Teacher's Assistant

Gimme concrit! Improvement is a process, not a destination. If you put this on a sporking community, give me a link; I like to laugh at myself, it'd also be an opportunity to see more of what I'm doing wrong. See that button?