"Sometimes, All it Takes is a Name.........."

Sometimes, all it takes is a name.

More than likely you already have multiple names in your head already. You have names for family members, friends, colleagues, and even strangers.

But I’m not talking about these names.

I’m talking about names that stretch the fabric of time. They may have came into this world in the usual way, but they grew into infamy because of either their heroic, or disastrous thoughts or actions.

I know a lot of these names, being a history professor at South Bay University it is sort of my business.

Allow me to introduce myself, I am Dr. Henry Williams; Professor of Twentieth Century History at South Bay University here in South Bay, California. It has been an honor to return to my alma mater after graduating from the same school about fifteen years ago. I have to admit I was surprised they offered me the role being so young, but as we are a small university of about fifteen hundred students, we often are below everybody else's radar.

We had just started our new Fall semester this week, and I was waiting in line for my morning coffee in the college cafe when a colleague interrupted my order and gave his as well.

“Really Matt?” I questioned in protest

“Don’t keep the lady waiting….” Matt motioned

We turned to exit the cafe only to have one of the aforementioned bushy tailed students slam right into Matt.

“OH MY GOODNESS!! I- I- I- am sooooo sorry!” spoke the young student frantically. She slammed into Matt pretty hard causing his cappuccino to end up all over his dress shirt. He didn’t realize that he dropped his portfolio on the floor, so I bent over to pick up his papers while he was still in shock.

Thats when I saw the name.

The name that haunted me for many years.

“Hans Blutdrache.” I even spoke the name aloud.

“Huh, oh……he’s one of the first years in my last class.”

A rather puzzled look came over my face. Matt, noticing my confusion, tried to give more context.

“He’s about……wait….. You know what, I can’t remember what he looks like.”

“Sorry, it’s just something about the name that made me- “ it was somewhere during that sentence I drifted away, so I was told. I woke up back in my office laying on the couch about ten minutes later. There was Matt, The young lady who crashed into him, and another student I couldn’t recognize.

“Are you alright?” Matt asked, removing the icepack from my forehead.

“Yeah…..I just…… ummmmmmm…….what happened?” I asked

“I don’t know, you just keeled over after grabbing my papers. Oh, this is Hans by the way.” Matt motioned to the student I didn’t recognize. I shook his hand as he presented it forward. Hans seemed like any other student you would have in a frist year university course. There was nothing odd or peculiar about him.

“I was actually trying to get into your history class when I signed up for courses, but I guess there was some weird computer glitch that swung me to Dr. Wang’s class instead.”

“Really?” I recalled the class lists to myself and recalled that some of Dr. Wangs students had to be sent to my class due to overbooking and scheduling conflicts.

I started to ease myself upwards as the others started to monitor my wellness.

“I’m alright!” I said out loud to the others, but I was definitely trying to convince myself that as well.

“Listen, just take the rest of the day off, we got the rest of your classes covered! Just go home and rest up for tomorrow!” I decided to take Matt’s advice. He also arranged for a taxi to take me home and said to text him if I needed anything. Matt was one of those colleagues that I knew I could keep at his word.

I came back to my apartment and casually tossed my cellphone not even noticing that there was a text message on my phone.

I picked it up again when I saw the flashing LED on my screen.

“Hey Fluffy! I’m back in town tonight! Drinks at the usual? Say 8pm?”

Don’t ask about the nickname.

All you need to know is that there is a very good reason why there’s a “NO ALCOHOL PERMITTED ON ZOO GROUNDS” at the local park, and there is only one person who knows the true story of what happened on that fateful night. And only that person is allowed to use that nickname.

That was my old college roommate Dr. Neil Brown, Physicist.

Matt picked me up as we headed to our favorite pub that we used to go to while we were going there as students. It was on the other side of the town, so there weren't a lot of students there. But a few of us rented a house in the neighborhood and just made it our spot.

Neil beat us there by half a pint. The bartender waited for the rest of us to arrive before pouring our own drinks. It was always great seeing Neil! It was nice that he wasn’t too far away. He literally lived a few hours away along the coast and worked at the research department in a much larger university. Dr. Neil did have quite a busy schedule though, which made finding the times for a pint fairly hard.

We talked about how our classes and research was going. Our latest attempts and not finding the right women for us, sports, politics, back to women for some strange reason. Suddenly Neil stopped for a moment.

“Hey Henry, Are you feeling alright?” The question caught me off guard, until I realized that some of the other patrons stood up from their tables and stared at me rather concerned. It was then the room started to fade black.

I woke up back in my own bed in my apartment. Once again I had no idea how I got there. I felt alright enough to stand up and checked myself before making my way to the kitchen.

Matt was sleeping on my couch. This wasn’t unusual, however usually our shenanigans call for me to bring passed-out-Matt to my couch to wear off the night.

“You're up!” He said, more alert than I expected him to be.

“Yeah, did I flake out again?” I asked, grabbing some cheese and fruit for breakfast.

“Yup. Same as before. I already called the university and they gave you a two week paid leave of work to get your head on straight….” I glanced at Matt nervously. He continued “.....and no, I didn’t mention the part where you thought that alcohol would be an excellent cure for a possible seizure.” he joked.

“Well shouldn’t you be in class now?” I asked

“Actually I convinced the Dean to be your ‘caregiver’ for the next two weeks.” He winked, I toasted my glass of orange juice in appreciation.

The apartment buzzer chimed. Matt pressed the speaker button on the wall “Hey, Is Fluff up?”

“Yeah, we’re good, come on up!” Matt pressed the button to let Neil into the apartment.

“You guys ready to rock?” Neil said as he poked his head in the door

“Huh?”

“Oh give us a minute…..He literally got up about ten minutes ago!”

“No worries! Are those your bags” he motioned to a couple suitcases by the door

Matt gave the thumbs up and returned to address my confusion with instruction.

“Grab some clothes, we’re heading up to Chez Neil’s for the week!”

Realizing that plans were already in motion that could not be undone I did as asked and came down to their waiting SUV a few minutes later.

The drive for the most part was uneventful. We stopped at one of our favorite roadside diners along the way. The food may not be the best you’ve ever had, but the portions were large and filling.

“Well that’s odd…..” said Matt looking at his phone, we glared at him until he continued. “........Oh, that Hans kid that helped you in our office the other day, well he had to leave the semester due to a family emergency!”

“Oh, that’s odd…..” I suddenly received a small ringing in my ear as soon as I heard his name. Dr. Neil used his non-existent medical skills to slap me back to reality.

“I’m fine…..I’m fine…..” I was not fine, I was just slapped in the face in front of a shocked crowd at a diner.

“Why is it every time we mentioned ‘his’ name you drop like a sock?”

“I haven’t a clue……I don’t even recall hearing his name before.”

“You know what, lets Google it!” Neil grabbed his phone from the table and looked at it oddly.

“That’s weird, the moment I punched his name in my phone decided it needed an update…..”

“It’s like that weird episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ where somebody is trying to erase this man from history!” Quipped Matt. Although he said it as a joke, I was kinda starting to believe him.

“No no no no no……none of that stupid science fiction crap! There has to be a perfectly logical explanation for this! This was probably just a weird coincidence.” Spoke Dr. Neil very stoutly; it was probably one of the boldest conversations they had at the diner in a while.

“English Subtitle: Time Travel.” Matt whispered to me. Dr’ Neil must’ve heard me giggle because he looked rather fiercely at me.

We paid our bill and left the diner, and it became Matt and I’s personal decision to flood the SUV with every kind of conspiracy theory possible; not so much because we were trying to explain the recent events, but mostly because we were having too much fun triggering the physicist Dr. Neil Brown. We must’ve made one too many cracks because instead of heading towards his Condo, he made a sudden exit off of the freeway.

“Ummmmm…….we’re sorry?” I inquired.

“I’m only partially sorry!” corrected Mark

“Alright you two, you want ‘time travel’, I’ll give you time travel!” said Dr. Neil Brown. The Theoretical Astrophysicist Dr. Neil. Brown.

We made it to his lab at about 8pm when most of the staff had called it a night. The janitor was finishing off cleaning the floor as Neil greeted him. One great characteristic about Neil is that he treated everybody, even the janitor with respect.

We entered one of his labs full of LED’s, computer screens, and other fancy electronics one could only dream of. It was about the seventh “Don’t touch that!” that we actually started heeding his advice.

“You want to talk about time travel…” Dr. Neil said as he uncovered and turned on some equipment “......Let’s talk about time travel…..

“Let’s say you want to kill ‘Baby Hitler.’ You go to the time of his birth and whack him. Problem solved, right? Well have you still heard of Hitler?” he did pause for a moment “Yes you have! So going back in time really didn’t work, did it! So now you might be thinking to yourself ‘Well that’s because we don’t have the technology right now!’ Well even if we invented the technology to kill Baby Hitler in the next thousands years the fact that we still have heard of him here and now means there has not been a single point in history where that has ever been possible! You’re the history experts…..tell me I’m wrong!” Dr. Neil Brown was an expert on condescending us, mostly because we were experts at giving him the opportunities to do so. You could almost taste the sarcastic rebuttal coming out of Matt’s mouth when Neil struck first

“Alright, since I know you got some lame rebuttal heading my way, lets prove this once and for all: Both of you guys stand up!”

We did as commanded as Neil grabbed a turned a switch on a wand he was now grasping

“No, I’m not going to shock you. This is a wand we developed that will detect any kind of temporal radiation on your body. If any one of you- “ And yes he fully rabbit-eared the next part “‘traveled backwards through time’ it will show up on here.” he took a moment to brush the wand over himself and motioned Matt to come over. “Beep beep beep beep beep beep beeeeeeeeeep!!!” kidded Matt but nothing really showed up on the screen.

Neil motioned me into position and ran the wand over my arm.

Even Buddy Rich never heard a drum beat so fast and so powerful. That came out of that wand.

“No I’m not one of those physics-smart people, but doesn’t that mean he should be dead?” Asked Matt

“Not just him….” said a very confused Dr. Neil “......but possibly everything one the western coast should be evaporated.” Neil glared at the screen absolutely traumatized.

“Oh Doctor Science?” I hoped to bring him back to the room

“Sorry, I just never thought I would see these readings. I don’t know how……but you somehow managed to travel back in time!”

“But you said it was impossible?! And also what this radiation you picked up?”

“I can only theorize, but the radiation you have over you must be because of not only the time travel, but something that happened while you were in that period!”

If anybody was looking for a way to stop being sarcastic, it’s now pretty clear that a scientific impossibility will do just that. We stood in complete silence.

“Well, while you’re trying to science yourself out, I took a look and Googled that Hans Blutdrache name on your supercomputer. There are over three hundred scattered across the globe, but nothing that really comes to my attention. I don’t know if this has anything to do with anything but Blutdrache literally translates to ‘Blood Dragon.’”

I’m not sure at what part I started to flake out again, but this time seemed different. This time I was out of it for sure.

I found myself in a dark place. I couldn’t tell if it was a room, or a field. All there was around me was darkness.

“You realize, of course, that you killed Baby Hitler after all, right?” I heard the voice, but couldn’t make out where it was coming from. It was only after a moment I realized the voice came from the young girl who knocked coffee over Matt’s shirt.

“You were one of the few people along with Dr. Neil, figured out how to go back in time. And you did figure out how to kill Baby Hitler.”

I think our beverage tipper was beginning to realize the state of confusion I was in.

“No, you are not dead. I’ve been trying to reach out to you to stop pursuing the name of Hans Blutdrache mostly for you own safety and well being. It will be hard to persuade you with words, so I will show you what happened……

“At a time in the future, if you allow it, you will have figured out how to travel backwards in time. You also managed to find a way to eliminate Adolph Hitler from the record books. But by doing so, another path was created by human nature……”

The room suddenly changed to a nuclear wasteland. It looked unfamiliar at first, but then I saw a familiar cliffside.

“Are we in California, right now?” I asked

“Yes, this is the present day California after you made the decision to kill Hitler. Even though you had the knowledge to solve a problem, you lacked the wisdom to realize that you might create even larger problems with your knowledge.

“Hans Blutdrache came as the solution to Hitlers disappearance. Blutdrache came at an even greater force than Hitler could. He rose to power in the late eighties while the Cold War as you know it became a very real war in which both sides started fighting, and America started losing. In fact roughly ninety three percent of the US and it’s people were eradicated as Hans felt fit to finish the job started by the Russians.

“You realized that instead of preventing one war that cost millions of lives, you created another war that caused over ten fold that amount.”

I don’t know if I handled that part well, but I handled it well enough.

Wait, you keep mentioning that this is a choice, don't you?”

“It is. You can either choose to follow your path and discover the means of time travel, now knowing the outcome; or you can be the voice that persuades your friend that he should follow other pursuits. Dr. Neil is currently ecstatic that you have traveled through time, which you have; but if you ask him to check the equipment again he will find a couple cables weren’t grounded right which caused a fake reading.

“I am only a guide to help you on the path, I do not know what your new future will hold, but I only came to warn you what happens if you pursue this one……..”

As she spoke her last line the paramedics brought me back to reality. They realized that the seizures I was having was because of the hooved shaped marks caused by a certain drunken zoo incident (wh

ich we still don’t ask about).

Coming back to this reality I knew the choice that laid before me:

Do I pursue the greatness of time travel?

Or do I tell him about the chord I, now looking at…….