#29

Klaus stands over the murdered bodies of a platoon of Imperial soldiers. Their screams still echo in his head, but he shows no remorse. But then, Klaus has never been much for showing much of anything.

Perhaps today can be different. Today may be the day that it all happens. He guided You to the right spot, and if You survives the rigors ahead, HE might be able to come through and commence what Klaus has prophesied this whole time. From there, the time for guiding will be over, and Klaus will just be another gerbil in the wheel. For now, though, it's time to wait. And, it's time for a drink.

Klaus decides to head for a cantina; as a matter of fact, he heads for the one that he and You went to just hours ago, before he watched You stare at the ocean for hours, and before the soldiers showed up. He heads inside and sits at the bar, noting that there's a new bartender now. He doesn't make eye contact, and mutters, “Ein Bier, bitte.”

The bartender obliges, saying in return, “Sprechen sie Deutsch?”

“Ja.”

“Ich auch.”

“Ah.” Klaus looks up and cups his hands around his beer. Speaking still in German, he begins to tell a story.

“My name is Klaus, but it was not always such. I was once named something else, but the name is a word in English, and using magic, I lobotomized myself so I can no longer speak English.”

The bartender looks at him, raises an eyebrow, and listens patiently, cleaning a glass as he does so.

“I am not the same as the man I was born as. I do not remember much of what I was like when I was born, but when I was made a separate individual, the man I was born from told me his story. I suppose, in retrospect, you could call this man my father.

“He said he was a scientist, but not a particularly good one. He would steal the research of others, like a modern day Edison, and cobble things together to produce half-functional devices and theories that never went anywhere. He described his lab as a wonderful of shitty machines, covered in pointless Tesla coils and rusting analog boxes that did nothing. Somehow, through one of these many broken mechanisms, it was in this way that he accessed The Unscene, the place where timelines flow.

“Being unable to comprehend the nature of time at that point, he entered The Unscene, and found what he called 'icicles in time'; places where time travel has occurred, where timelines intersect. An angle between crossing strings of chronal matter. He learned—the hard way, of course—that by throwing oneself onto one of these time-spikes, a chronal duplicate can be created. A person can be split in two.

“When my father first duplicated himself, both duplicates were astonished. At first, it seemed there was no way to tell them apart—but a medical examination revealed a small birthmark on the neck of the clone. From this my father theorized that while chronal mechanics allow the duplication of an individual, the old science fiction trope—that two identical individuals cannot exist in the same period of time via time travel—holds true. So when a chronal duplicate is created, a slight variation is induced to separate the pair.

“My father didn't know it at the time, but due to the nature of the native universe, he had unleashed something nameless; or rather, he had become something nameless. The universe, at least the one that he lived in, does allow a promise of power to worthy explorers; but it acts blindly. My father admitted he didn't deserve the power he found, but he took it anyway.

“It was decided amongst the duplicates he made—twenty-one in all—that they would all live vastly different lives, all around the world and perhaps even on other worlds. With time travel easily available, space travel could be accessed from different historical periods; any new power was possible to find. It was in an alien place that my twenty-one siblings, who included my father, found magic of a very particular and refined sort. It theoretically allowed us to do or create anything; but we wanted to stick by our goals in life, so we changed ourselves to suit our new roles.

“It was here that I altered my body to be an old man—an old German man, to be specific. I changed my fashions to those of stereotypes, and warped my brain so I can literally speak nothing but German. I took the name Klaus, because my father's name started with the letter 'K'. We all took names with that letter, to suit our roles; Klark, Klayton, Klaarghus, Kletus...

“Many of us, our brains scattered by the transformations, forgot our identities, and so it was that our father explained who we were. He then used the product of his magic—a bicycle with powers over time and space, and perhaps other things as well—to leave us behind for another place. We never saw him again.

“I ended up in an old house—not an important house, I should say, but just a simple house—where I lived a simple life, embracing the culture of Germany. During this time, two of my brothers met with me. The first was a prophet named Kleric, because he was a cleric. (Though not in the classical sense; more like the role-playing sense, in that he could harness magic. This was in the days before the Empire.) He told me he, in a vision, saw the rise of the Empire and the death of hope and magic, and a bitter strike by an evil enemy. He said I would need to be the guide for a young boy who would open the gates to The Unscene, to bring back a strange messenger who would help us. He then transformed my private trope, to make me into this guide.

“When I was visited again, it was by one of my brothers who had become a sorcerer. Kleric had found him and spread his message, but he responded by aggressively trapping my brother in a voodoo doll. He had traveled the world, trapping as many of my brothers in such dolls until none remained. Some of them had already died, but he still made dolls in their likenesses, and made one of our father, whom he hadn't seen since. I tried to explain that I was the necessary guide who would save them from the peril he was trying to protect us from, but he didn't speak German. In the misunderstanding, I too was trapped, and in my absence the Empire rose to power, and magic died on this Earth. I was only freed recently, to embrace my destiny.”

Klaus reaches into his pocket and pulls out a blood-stained badge.

“This is the badge that I took from an Imperial Captain I killed. If you repeat this tale to anyone, or report my attempts to assassinate the Emperor, I will kill you as well, and any soldiers that you send for me.”

The bartender grows pale and gulps, just as Klaus gulps when he swallows the last of his beer. He pays his tab, and then returns to the city streets.