1941 A.D. London

Kairos lifetime 120: Nadia Iliana Kolchenkov, Doctor Mishka

Recording …

Doctor Misha knew where she was in 1914.  She might not have remembered the exact time and location, but she could make a good guess.  Where she might be in 1941 was a complete mystery.  About all she could do was dress Elder Stow in a suit, gather some American dollars, and tell Elder Stow to go to a bank when he arrived to exchange the dollars for the local currency.  That, and she hugged him and said good luck.  Elder Stow hugged them all and when he stepped out on to a city street, he sniffed and wiped his eyes.

“Who would have thought?” he asked himself.  Homo Sapiens were not the evolutionary mistake he grew up believing.  They were complex, indomitable spirits.  And the Earth belonged to them.  It was no longer the Gott-Druk home.  It took a couple of years of travel to realize that, but he no longer had doubts.  The Gott-Druk home world was out there, in the night sky, and it was a good world—no, it was a very good world.

Elder Stow pulled out his scanner.  It did not take much effort to recognize he landed in London.  He had visited most of the European capitals in his day and set their recognition patterns in his scanner.  Of course, he was most familiar with Berlin where his people settled and decided on a strategy to take down the human race.  He touched his communication device but paused.  He thought first to find that bank.  He might be stuck in this place for a long time if there were no Gott-Druk presently monitoring the planet.  He looked around.

Elder Stow saw several damaged buildings and one that collapsed entirely.  Men walked around the rubble that looked like it had been on fire several hours ago.  He saw the emergency vehicles parked in the street and plenty of street repair vehicles as well.  He saw three men rummaging through the rubble of one building.  Somehow, he knew they were looking for bodies.

“Excuse me,” he interrupted one man’s journey as the man crossed the street.  “The nearest bank?” he asked.  The man pointed at a broken building where several police officers stood around guarding the vault in case the crowd decided to see what money got liberated by the bombs.  “The nearest open bank?”  Elder Stow rephrased the question.

The man, a workman of some sort frowned and set down the bag he carried.  Elder Stow stared at the bag.  It appeared full of red sticks.  The man did not notice.  He got busy looking around at the streets.  He appeared to think, but at last, he pointed.  “Two blocks, turn left, two more blocks on the right.”

Elder Stow shifted his eyes again to the man and smiled.  “My thanks, Mister…”

“Duko,” the man said.  He snatched up his bag and hurried off.

Elder Stow walked the four blocks shaking his head.  Something did not seem right about that man.  He wondered about the red sticks as well, but he had to pause as he got to a street wholly untouched by the bombs.  It looked full of cars and commerce like any street in any major European city untouched by the ravages of war.

He stopped an elderly woman on the street.  “The bank?”

“That is where I am headed.  You can walk with me,” the woman said, and Elder Stow grunted.  He realized what was wrong with that man. He was not an Englishman.  He spoke with an accent, though Elder Stow could not pinpoint the man’s country of origin.

The woman walked, Elder Stow beside her, and she spoke.  “I’m Mildred Harkness.  I assume you are not from this neighborhood.”

Elder stow shook his head to clear his mind and focus.  “Stow,” he said, and then thought to humanize the named.  “John Stow, and no, I am from America.”  It was the last time zone he visited so he figured it was not entirely a lie.

“I thought I heard Irish for a minute,” Mildred said.

Aha, Elder Stow thought.  The man was Irish, and something else…  “No,” Elder Stow responded.  “Strictly American, and I have some money I need to exchange into the local currency.”  He pulled out a bill to show her.

“Yes, I see,” Mildred said, and smiled for him.  “It just so happens I know the right person to talk to.  Mister Wilson is the man that keeps up with all the current exchange rates.  I’ll introduce you.”

“That would be very kind of you,” Elder Stow responded and returned the old woman’s smile.  They walked in silence for a minute.  Elder Stow hardly knew what to ask.  He thought through information he had gleaned about the second world war.  That was during the early part of his journey with the travelers before he honestly realized the integrity of history was at stake.  At first, he was curious to hear about what his crew might be facing in the future, and what the shape of the world might be in if and when he returned.  He heard all about the Nazis and the atrocities they committed as well as the subsequent Soviet oppressors.  Oddly enough, neither wiped the European map clean the way the Gott-Druk would have wanted.  Something must have interrupted the Gott-Druk plans, because surely a relatively empty Europe that the Gott-Druk could recolonize would have been the plan.

“Odd time to be in London,” Mildred picked up the conversation.  “I assume you are here on official business.  Odd time for a tourist to visit London, what with the blitz and all, though the spring is nice.”

“I have a feeling the blitz may be coming to an end,” Elder Stow said and smiled again.  He recalled it was less than a year.  October to May if he remembered correctly.  He imagined his people would have wanted to break the spirit of the English people, but that just told him how little the Gott-Druk really understood Homo Sapiens.

“An end to the constant barrage of bombs day and night would be wonderful, especially the night raids.  I hardly remember what a good night’s sleep feels like.”

“I would say hang in there, but you Londoners appear to be doing that very well.”

Mildred nodded before she said, “Here we are.”  She took Elder Stow to the window and Mister Williams was very accommodating.  Elder Stow had to remember pounds and shillings were not decimal like dollars and cents, but he could handle the math well enough.

When he left the bank, he saw Mildred had gone.  She seemed a nice person.  Many humans were nice people, and it was good to remember that.  He saw an open luncheon place across the street and thought to get a snack, and tea.  He thought, England and tea.  He had some things to think through before he stumbled forward any further.

Of course, his people did not give the Germans atomic weapons.  They did not want an empty Europe that was full of atomic radiation, even though atomic energy would be the next logical step on the technological ladder, followed by lasers and some primitive sort of computers—what Lockhart and the others called computers—and rocketry.  Such rocketry was little more than fancy explosions that did not happen to use gunpowder.  So anyway, his people planned to empty the continent by more primitive means, by using gunpowder and such, even if it took a long time to do it.

Elder Stow paused.  He recognized the red sticks the man carried.  Trinitrotoluene.  Decker called it TNT; a stable explosive that needed to be set off with a simple pressure wave.  Elder Stow wondered why a man would be carrying around a bag full of…what was the word? …Dynamite.