Accepting a part of the blame was not enough, I will probably die tonight.

            It seems that most of us trash through life knocking dominoes over, starting a domino effect without actually thinking through or visualizing what the final pattern could potentially look like. Peter was one of those people and the last domino piece is me and I’m about to be knocked down. I have nowhere to go or to run. My entire existence is contained in what is essentially a trap. Like rodents in a maze, we are all continuously trapped in the grips of time, space, history and human nature. These things make up the walls of the labyrinth.

            Nazis burned books because physically killing people wasn’t enough. They tried to kill human souls, to extinguish them and to destroy the forms in which the soul expresses itself out into the world. They burned books, stole and destroyed art but the life force does not want uniformity; it wants itself to be expressed in multiple forms. That is why people like the Nazis and all the other factions and rulers who had grand plans to conquer the entire globe will always in the end fail. No one will ever have uncontested dominion over the planet. No one idea or creed will ever rule unchallenged.

            Many religious and political factions cannot accept this truth. The religious leaders of various creeds deep down will not consider the world an ideal place until everybody else accepts their dogma. Capitalists will not sleep until the entire world becomes capitalistic, the communists will not rest until the entire world accepts communism. This applies to every political and economic doctrine. As long as we think there is something that we have to convince other people of, that we have to win at something then we will always lose in the end. As long as we think that there are two or more sides and that one of those sides must eventually overpower and assimilate all the others then we will all lose in the end. Believing in that is going against the very life force that permeates through us and everything else in existence.

            But maybe there was a way out of this maze but Peter and my father didn’t look close enough during their lifetimes. If time travel were possible, I could go back and gun down my grandfather even though that would automatically erase me out of existence. It would be the most unique way imaginable of committing suicide. It actually would be more than suicide because I would erase my entire lifetime and my father’s also. It would be as if we never existed and maybe that would be more acceptable than the lives we were given. Maybe my father should have joined the protests. If the political climate changed earlier than maybe bombs wouldn’t be falling out of the dark skies tonight. I wonder if there were openings in the labyrinth that could’ve changed the entire pattern of the maze through specific choices. Maybe I had an opportunity to change things but I can’t imagine where. My life has been too short to have such opportunities. How could a little boy change history?

            As if on command, the gray tunnel descends upon me and various scenes are playing on its walls. There’s the last day of the demonstrations with the Marshal Joseph showing up on a white horse. Where was my father that day? Another scene is showing Peter as he is putting on the Nazi uniform for the very first time. There’s me in that one. It’s that day when Helena and I had our bicycle trip. I reach out with my hand to the screen to touch the image of Helena’s face. The screen, like a magnet, starts to pull me in and I fuse into it.

*

            “Let’s go. There’s really nothing to see here. All these things are so ugly. Let’s go bike down by the river.”

            Helena is on her bicycle beside me. I’m sitting on my bicycle. I feel a complete loss of orientation and coordination. The moment feels so real, it’s exactly how it was when it happened the first time, I feel the same way I felt when I lived through it the first time. Helena notices that I’m not responding so she slowly starts leaving.

            “Hold on. Wait,” I finally break out of my dazed state.

            “What is it?”

            I’m thinking of what to tell her but it’s almost impossible to explain what’s been happening to me. How do I tell her that I have already lived through the future, that the Military Alliance will bomb our country, that as the first bomb exploded I ended up flying away into a secret dimension of the universe where every moment that ever happened is recorded and can be accessed? How do I explain to her that now I am actually back in the past, that I already lived through this day that hasn’t even ended for her? Maybe none of that has happened and I have been imagining all of it. Maybe I lost a sense of time and now I was back to reality. I don’t know if I’m coming from a dream or going into a dream or both.

            “I’m going and you can...”

            “Wait Helena please.” I interrupted her. “Please just wait. I need to think about something, I’m trying to remember something important. Don’t worry. We’ll go soon I promise you that.”

            She went silent but gave me a puzzled look. I don’t know if I should tell her anything. It seems that now I do have the option to change this memory, to choose a different path. I’m not completely sure that this is the actual past thought. Will the future, the future I come from, actually be affected by my actions here? Maybe this is just a frozen moment, with no past or future to affect, separate from the rest. I’m I back in the same timeline that I come from or is this a parallel timeline, a parallel universe? If it is then my actions won’t matter at all when I end up going back to the timeline I come from. Will I be going back? I don’t even know that.

What if I’m stuck here, what if I have to live through every possible choice. I have to do something regardless of whether I go back or not. I can leave the country with my family, or I can warn the people and tell them that the Military Alliance will bomb if Freeman is not overthrown...nobody is going to believe me. People will say that I’m a kid who’s making up stories to get attention or they will simply pronounce me as medically insane. I will eventually be proven right when the bombs start raining from the skies but it will be too late by then.

Freeman...was here that day, I mean this day now...the day I’m living through again. I look over at Helena and she is looking at me clearly displeased. I love her and want to share everything with her but there is no way she will believe anything.

            “Hey I’m really sorry. I just remembered something. Last night I had a dream and Freeman was in our town, touring the oil refinery. It took me a while to remember why I was feeling weird. I was having a long déjà vu. All this around us, this whole scene, with you and me on bikes at the gate of oil refinery was in my dream. The crazy thing is that I see a crowd in the distance and I’m sure that Freeman is in that crowd. You see all the black cars that are parked just beyond the entrance.”

            I guide her gaze with my pointed finger until she notices the cars. Then I point to the crowd that’s walking through the oil refinery.

            “How do you know for sure that he is there? Having that dream doesn’t mean that the dream was showing you the future.”

            I feel like telling her that I saw the news later that evening and that it confirmed that Freeman was touring the refinery.

            “It’s just too much of a coincidence to not be true,” I tell her. “I know it’s him and if you don’t believe me then why don’t we go and take a look.”

            “There’s no way. I’m not sneaking into the factory,” she said while nervously shifting her feet around.”

            “Why not? If it turns out that it’s him, then we can assassinate him and become national heroes. We can be like Bonnie and Clyde but in a good way.”

            “You're completely crazy.”

            “I know I have to do something. I am here for a reason and I know that’s him right there.”

            “You are actually thinking about attacking him?”

            “You don’t have to come but I need to go in there.”

            “I’m scared. Don’t go. Something bad can happen to you. What if his bodyguards catch you?”

            “I’m not going to approach them directly. I’m going to climb up somewhere high.”

            “What are you going to do from there?”

            “I...don’t know. I guess I’ll throw something on his head. I’ll take a big rock or a brick to throw at him.”

            “You’re talking crazy; they will arrest you and put you in jail. Let just go please.”

            “Someone has to do something and this is my chance to do something historical. It’s now or never. I’ll never get another chance like this again. His visit was not announced but I know he’s here now and he has to pay for what he has done.”

            She looks away into the distance, toward the riverbank where she wants us to go. I notice that she is trying hard to hold back her tears. My heart is breaking as I try to ignore her tears. I know she is scared to come with me

            “Listen...why don’t you go down to the riverbank and wait for me. I won’t be longer than half an hour I promise.”

            “You can’t promise that,” she said while wiping her face so I wouldn’t see her tears. “You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

            I know now that she is in love with me. She loves me as much as I love her. I hope I don’t have to go back to my timeline after I kill Freeman. I hope I can actually run back and meet her at the riverbank. I swear that I will kiss her there and then.

            “Alright, I’m going to hop the fence now. You should go.”

            She starts pedalling as I slowly put my bike down on the grass. The fence has spiralling barbwire on the top of it. I realize that it will take a lot of patience and careful placement of hands and feet if I want to hop over without a scratch on me. Luckily, the barbwire is old and some spikes have even fallen off from the rust. Left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot and I’m on the top. I repeat the process and I hop off the fence.

I’m on the other side. I look into the distance and notice that the crowd is facing the other way. I run towards the nearest metallic reservoir. The reservoir has a ladder and I hop on and start to climb.

            A sudden scream cuts my chest through my throat. I look back at the fence and see Helena with her right arm tangled in the barbwire. She’s hanging on the outer side of the fence and she seems stuck. I jump of the ladder and run towards her as he lets out another anguished scream.

 I look back at the crowd and there is a commotion. Some of the men are pointing in my direction and others seem to be breaking off from the rest of the crowd and going towards the black vehicles. Freeman is escaping. I jump on to the fence and quickly climb to the top ignoring the pain of the spikes that are cutting my flesh. Suddenly, I’m losing balance, I’m falling, the barbwire is cutting me, I hit the ground and everything goes black.

*

            It goes from black to gray and I’m back in the foggy tunnel. I guess I failed. I didn’t manage to change anything. I just made a bigger mess by getting Helena injured. Another screen starts to pull me in and before I get to see what memory it is, I am morphed into the screen. A kaleidoscope of colours dances in front of my eyes as my vision slowly starts to become more focused.

*

            I’m sitting on a bar stool while holding a shot glass in my right hand. I look up straight-ahead and catch a reflection of me in the bar mirror. Behind a row of bottles, I see my father’s young face reflected back to me. I smile and my father smiles back at me. I am my father. I look around and I realize that the bar decor is definitely straight out of the 60’s.

My eyes stop at the sight of Marshal Joseph’s portrait hanging above the bar. This is the day when Joseph appeared in public to talk the students down. I stand up and throw the shot glass at the picture, shattering the glass that protects the portrait. The entire bar goes numb and all eyes are fixed on me.

            “Call the police and tell them I did it. I’m not afraid,” I yell out as I exit the bar.

            As I start to walk towards the protest, I start thinking about assembling my father’s friends but I don’t know what they look like. I decide that there is no time to walk around the campus. It’s better this way actually, I should be alone. I don’t want anybody to get injured like Helena did. If I’m going to change anything, I’ll have to do it alone. I’m time travelling all by myself, nobody is experiencing this the way I am. It’s just me against history.

Suddenly in the distance, I see the historic scene. It’s the Marshal Joseph himself, dressed in a white and gold admiral uniform while trotting surely and slowly on a white horse. The police and state security men are clearing out the path in front of him by squeezing the mass of students away. He feels confident, as it’s an unannounced visit so he doesn't fear for his safety.

Again, just like with Freeman, I knew he was coming and that’s why I’ve been carrying an empty beer bottle which I took from the bar. I run towards the back of the crowd and start pushing through. I get to a point where it’s too dense with people and any further pushing and shoving is useless. I cock back with my right arm and then with all the anger I can muster I whip the bottle at the Dictator and it hits him flush on the side of his head across his right ear.

            Pandemonium ensues as Joseph collapses off his horse. The police start to baton the students who, inspired by my example, decide to fight back by throwing bricks and rocks. Through the mayhem, I try to see what’s happening with my target. Joseph’s personal security lifts him up off the ground and I notice that his right ear is bleeding, blood streaming down and ruining his impeccable white suite. His men start to whisk him away from the scene and I see that my chance is slipping. I duck down, grab a jagged piece of a brick, and start to pierce through the crowd again.

Gunshots begin to go off. The police opened fire on the students who are now screaming in terror and causing a stampede. I realize that this is my last chance and I desperately whip the shard in Josephs direction. It misses him and his security but lands on the behind of his white horse who was already panicking due to the turmoil that has unfolded on the streets. The horse shrieks and lifts his front legs in the air and as he brings them down, he seems to collapse them onto the head of my target.

More shots ring out and my chest starts to feel warm and empty. I look down and realize that I’ve been shot. I collapse against a lamppost as I see a bunch of police officers running towards me with their guns drawn. I look to my left and I see the security men picking up Joseph from the ground. He motions for his hat and his bodyguard dusts it off for him before handing it over. I slightly shake my head in disbelief. I look back in front of me and I see those same police officers, who are much closer now, unloading their guns in my direction.

*

            I’m falling through the gray tunnel again. I haven’t disappeared. I’m still alive. My father was just shot to death before my birth and yet I still exist. What do these jumps to the past mean then if they don’t change the present, if my actions in the past don’t change the future that I come from? Maybe I’m not doing the right things. Maybe it’s trying to make me understand something.

I’m still falling and scenes are flashing past me. I land where it all began and where it all might end. The mushroom cloud is still expanding, growing, imploding endlessly. There had to be a way out. There was a chance to change something at some point, somewhere. There is still time, I can change this situation and save myself and everybody else in the process. I need another jump and this one has to count. Where is the crack in the wall? Who had the opportunity? Who could have made a difference?

*

            I fall through the gray tunnel again and suddenly find myself in a washroom. I look at myself in the mirror and I see Peter reflected back to me in his Nazi uniform. Today is the day when he first put on his uniform and started a domino effect, a shattering echo. Today is when they ordered him to collect books and then burn them. It was a trial by fire, a test of his allegiance.

What can I do to change the course of history, or at least the course of my family history? As I ponder all the possibilities, I go through the steps exactly as Peter did. I report for duty, I’m given the list of books, and I soon find myself in the school library. In the quiet of the empty library, I crunch up the paper list and let it drop to the floor. I sit down and start contemplating. I notice that the uniform is making me sweat a lot so I take off the hat. I start to weigh my options.

            If I try to take on the Nazis by myself then it will end how the protest against the Communists ended. If I assassinate the top officers then I’ll just be dooming the civilians that would be executed in the reprisals. I could run with Maria and join the resistance fighters but as Peter said himself, there are huge risks of being caught by the Germans or being unwelcomed by the rebels.

            The uniform starts to feel really itchy and uncomfortable. I sit up and start to unbutton the uniform. I slow down as an idea unfolds in my head.

            I sit patiently in the in the library waiting for the dusk. As the sun slowly slips down on the horizon, I slip out of the school through the open window at the back of the building. This way I completely avoid running into the guards at the main entrance. I slowly make my way to the town square where I know they have already started the bonfire.

On the way there, I notice how charming my hometown was then with its cobblestone streets, old street lamps, brick houses, and not a building in sight that’s over three stories high. There were no factories that polluted the river making it unsafe for swimming. There were no industrial plants that released poisonous gases that choked the citizens of this idyllic town. The air in my lungs feels crisper. The only element that’s ruining the tranquil picture are the swastika flags that are hanging from every corner. I guess people then had to deal with a different kind of pollution.

            I decide to make a detour and go for a short swim in the river. Ever since I was seven, I heard stories of how the river was once clean and the whole town would descend upon its banks at the first break of summer to enjoy the water. I imagined and dreamed about those days when there were fish in our river and children my age were able to float on its slow currents and bask in the summer sun. As I approach the river, I sprint towards it and almost jump in with my uniform on. I quickly take it off and instead of jumping I slowly submerge myself into it. I float on the surface while looking at the dusk sky with just a few stars breaking through.

            I am completely at peace with myself upon emerging out of the water. I have no doubts about what needs to be done anymore. These quantum jumps are a teaching tool and I am the student. The Cosmos is the teacher.

            As I approach the town square, the Nazi Captain is the first to spot me and his eyes go through a range of emotional expressions, from shock to perplexity to resentment. I defiantly keep eye contact with him as I approach the bonfire which looks and feels like a long forgotten pagan ceremony. The captain allows a very sour smirk while he squints at me.

He is squinting at what I am carrying in my arms while the other soldiers are starting to notice me as I approach the fire. I give him back the same sour smile but with open, fearless eyes. I’m barefoot and wearing only an undershirt and underwear. I have the Nazi uniform bundled up in my arms with the black leather boots on top.

            I throw the uniform upward and forward into the blaze with my arms wide open as if performing some ancient ritual of cleansing. The individual pieces of the uniform separate in midair and are engulfed by the flames as gravity brings them down. I stare into the flames and then I close my eyes as the heat caresses my face. Light, soft hues of orange, red, and yellow are dancing behind my closed eyelids.

            I feel several hands grabbing my arms. The soldiers are arresting me. I open my eyes and see the Nazi Captain looking me up and down.

            “Does your life mean so little to you that you are willingly throwing it into the fire,” the Captain asks.

            “I am actually celebrating life by throwing that uniform into the fire,” I answer.

            “What do you think to achieve by doing this? Nobody was around to see your act of defiance; nobody will know what has happened and what you have done after we execute you.”

            “I am not doing this to be famous Captain. I am doing this for myself...and for my family. It has to be done. When a man makes certain choices without much thought or foresight, and when those choices eventually lead him to be a servant of tyranny, the only honourable choice left is death.”

            “What you are doing is committing suicide which is a sin. The last decision of your life that you are making is yet another bad choice.”

            “On the contrary, you and your soldiers will be the ones to kill me. My choice might have been suicidal but you and your men are the executioners not I. You have a choice to let me go so I can live out the rest of my natural life. What is one less German to you, to the Wehrmacht? Does one less servant make that much of a difference? Will my servitude guarantee a German victory? My participation or non-participation will not change the course of history. You might as well let me go.”

            “When you put it that way then leaving you alive or executing you doesn’t make that much of a difference either. You are scared and now you are trying to plead for mercy.”

            “I’m pleading for reason, nothing more. I wouldn’t have done what I just did if I was scared of death. I’m not afraid of something that’s not real. I now understand that the fear of death made my grandfather make choices that guaranteed his survival. Death is an illusion Captain. It describes something that doesn’t exist, it does not possess reality just like the word ‘nothing’ describes a non-reality. The universe exists, we are in it, we think and talk so there is something and there always is something. If ‘nothing’ truly existed then it would be impossible for us to exist and to even give it a name, to assign a word to it.”

            “That’s a great philosophical explanation but I assure you that death is very real and you will be convinced of its reality in a very short time.”

            “It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. I’m thinking aloud about the lessons that the Universe has revealed to me during this journey. You are just another among many other illusions.”

            The Captain pulls out his Walter P38 gun and hits me on the forehead with the butt of the pistol.

            “Is that an illusion?” he’s screaming. “Is that painless? The pain is real and so is death! Death is a great pain, the most painful thing you will ever feel.”

            “You’re afraid of death Captain,” I say while feeling the pain crushing my forehead. “You believe that death is painful, the most painful thing ever. That is your belief, your fear. That’s why you participate in the Nazi killing machinery; you inflict pain and death on others so you can have some measure of control over pain and death. You believe that as long as you are not on the receiving end then somehow you are winning the battle against death. By killing others, you believe that you are preventing the possibility of your own murder at the hands of the ones you kill. You will not escape death Captain; it will come for you eventually no matter how hard you fight against it. Your death will be that much more painful for having obsessively fought against it.”

            “Enough,” the Captain screams out and hits me again with his pistol. Everything is dark now. I feel a little pain in my head. I’m trying to open my eyes but it’s not working. I feel like I’m awake in my body but I can’t operate the body, I can’t move the eyelids, I can’t move anything. I’m not back in the fog tunnel. Suddenly I get a sense that my body is being moved around. I see flashes of faint white lights.

            I’m opening my eyes but the sunlight immediately blinds me again. It’s daytime, it must be the next day. I have a noose around my neck and I realize I’m in front of the cemetery wall with my back turned to it. I am standing on a makeshift wooden platform. The Nazi Captain is standing at the bottom of the platform and he gives a sign to the executioner to drop me. I drop and I keep dropping down with no ground underneath to stop my fall.

*

            I finally hit the ground and I’m rolling down a hill. There are other men running down the hill beside me. There is gunfire and lots of yelling. I manage to get up and run with the other men. They seem to be retreating from some battle. ‘We’ seem to be retreating from a battle. I keep running and criss-crossing between trees. As the sound of gunfire becomes more distant, I notice that the men I’m running with are wearing the royalist guerrilla uniforms from WW2.

Whose memories are these? It has to be my mother’s father but my mother told me he fought with partisans not the royalists. We get to an abandoned house and the leader of the group motions to stop. We are all heavily breathing. One man turns to me and says:

            “Maybe...you’re right...we should think about...our families,” he keeps pausing to catch his breath. “If communists win...they’ll prosecute us...and execute us. We should have a plan for...the worst-case scenario. If it looks like the communists will take over then we should go to a different region of the country, switch our uniforms to partisan ones, and pretend that we were an independently organised, revolutionary unit. That’s the only way that we can survive if the civil war doesn’t go our way.”

            So that’s what happened. My other grandfather also had a secret. He started the war as a royalist and ended the war as a partisan in order to save himself. Both of my grandfathers were with the partisans but Peter completely joined the partisan movement, he didn’t pretend to be them, he was with them, his unit was directed by the communist party. Peter truly served with them but they turned on him eventually because of the fact that he served with the Nazis before. I guess they didn’t turn on my other grandfather because he did a good job of concealing the past. Either way, it’s depressing that both of them joined a faction that caused our country much harm.

            “There is more at stake here then our lives,” I say. “The future of the entire nation and the future of our families is exactly why we have to keep fighting. What good are our lives and our families if we are going to be living in an authoritarian system? People criticized the king for his autocratic behaviour but I guarantee you that the communist rule will truly show us the true meaning of dictatorship. There is no surrender until the last day. There should be no desertion, no migration out of the country, no switching sides. Do you think that General Alexander is going to give up, to switch sides? He’d rather die in battle even if he had to go alone into battle. You all know this to be true.”

            There’s silence, most of them are looking down at the ground, and all of them are avoiding eye contact with me.

            “The partisans are approaching, we have to move,” says the leader of the group.

            “I’ll stay back and create a diversion,” I say.

            “There’s too many of them, I’m ordering a retreat.”

            I know I have to stay back; I need to set an example. The leader pleads with me again.

            “There’s no time to stand here and argue. Let’s go.”

            “I’m going straight at them,” I tell them. “I’ll cover your rear while you make a getaway. If I die here today, honour me by fighting to the very end. Convince all the others to do so as well.”

            “No, don’t do it! I order you to stop” the leader yells.

            “Just go,” I yell back.

            I run and notice the partisans spread out between the trees. I run towards them while holding my submachine gun which I don’t intend to fire. The partisans notice me and they take cover behind the tree trunks. They open fire and I continue running toward them. They are all firing towards me. I start to feel piercing pain all throughout my torso. I’ve been shot multiple times and I start to stumble forward. For a split second, I notice a female face behind one of the trees. It’s Maria! I yell out to her:

            “Maria! The communists will ruin us all! They will ruin our country, they will ruin your family! Get as many people as you can to change sides...” I stumble and fall forward and I keep falling with nowhere to land.

*

            I’m slipping and falling into wet mud. I’m lying on my belly. I look around and there is complete carnage around me. There are explosions going off and chunks of earth are flying around everywhere. Machine guns and rifle fire is going off and soldiers are falling down. It’s World War 1 and I’m one of my countries soldiers.

I can’t move. I’m frozen from fear. The sights are horrific. Soldiers are screaming with their limbs blown off while others are charging forward and being cut down by machine gun fire. Someone grabs me by the collar and lifts me up from the ground.

            “What do you think you are doing soldier,” an army officer screams into my face. “I saw that you were lying there pretending to be dead.”

            “I wasn’t pretending I was dead. I was just afraid to get up” I protest.

            “You are afraid? Are you are thinking about staying back while everybody else is charging forward? You’re a disloyal rat! I’ll execute you for subversion,” the officer screams while swiftly pulling out his pistol from his holster and pointing it at my face.

            “Don’t shot! I’ll charge forward right now! I just momentarily froze, I was disoriented.”

            “Go forward for the glory of our nation! This is our country’s finest hour! We are on the brink of pushing out the German bastards and you are selfishly thinking about saving your own skin. I will shot you in the back if I see you hesitating again! Do I make myself clear soldier?”

            “Yes sir!”

            “Let us charge towards total victory! I’m right behind you soldier.”

            I’m running forward and I turn around to look at the officer who’s slowly walking forward while pointing his gun at my back. I wonder which ancestor’s memories I’m living through now. Am I Maria’s father? A bomb falls near me and I go flying into the air. Time slows down. As I’m falling down I see that the army officer behind me is shot. He’s on his knees and emptying his pistol in the direction of the enemy troops. I swirl and spin and everything becomes muddled.

*

            My vision clears and I’m standing behind a crowd of people who are lined up along a street. There is a motorcade passing through and most people are cheering and waving. I turn around to look at my reflection in the shop window. I am wearing a nice suite but I don’t who’s face is being reflected back at me. I turn around and realize that I’m probably Philip’s father and that this motorcade is carrying Archduke of Austria-Hungary.

To my right I notice a young man with a black moustache, wearing a black suit with a black hat pulling out a pistol from his right pocket. He is approaching a car that seems to have stopped and is trying to back up and turn around. This assassination sparked World War 1. I run towards the young man as he pistol-whips a spectator to create a clear trajectory towards his target.

            “Don’t do it. Stop,” I yell out

            This startles the young man who turns towards me and instinctively fires his gun at me. Pandemonium breaks out with people running and shouting as I fall to my right side.

*

            I’m falling off a horse to my right side. I hit the ground hard. I feel heavy. I am wearing armour of a medieval knight. I have a sword, a shield, and a helmet. I’m in the middle of yet another battle. How many battles must I jump through? I don’t think I can handle these jumps much longer. There was so much dread and agony; people killing people for decades, centuries, millenniums with no end to it.

An angry Ottoman Turk rushes towards me with his curved blade. I instinctively block the swing of his sabre with my shield while another knight stabs him from behind. This is the historical battle when the medieval empire of my country suffered its first major defeat, which eventually led to a complete takeover by the Ottoman Empire.

The lack of unity among the ruling aristocrats contributed to the defeat. The Ottoman Empire ruled over my people for three hundred and fifty years until the first successful uprising against the Turks took place. If the tsar and his aristocrats had managed to beat back the Ottomans, the history of our country would have been radically different.

            A wounded knight is on his knees and the Ottoman rushes to deal him a deathblow. I jump in between them and block the blow with my shield. Suddenly, I feel a blade go through my left side. I can’t stand it anymore. This is too much! I have been killed so many times now. I get the point! I understand. I don’t want these jumps anymore.

Nothing I do in them effected the present, the future that I come from or they would have stopped by now. Future can’t be affected from the past because the future didn’t exist then. No single man can successfully change future outcomes; no one can influence the future without some help. The future is co-created. I don’t want to dwell in the past any longer! No more wars! No more violence! No more killing and being killed! No more death! Stop the jumps!

*

            I drop down through the grey tunnel and back to my fateful night. I am staring at a historical explosion. An entire history of conflicts has led to producing a more efficient and laser guided missile whose effect is spreading towards me.

            The dominoes were set in motion a long time ago and everything has been and is still collapsing. I see an equation in my mind.

The first domino is Hitler’s father who beat Hitler when he was a small boy. Hitler is the second domino who comes up with an extremist ideology. The third domino is the fascist terrorist group that takes up Hitler’s ideology and assassinates King Paul’s father. King’s father is the fourth domino and whose fall affects the fifth domino, which is his son Paul. King Paul is then knocked over by the sixth domino, which is the German invasion of my country. This event then knocks the sixth domino, Marshal Joseph, into action to try to make his own pattern visible by taking over as the ruler of the country. His rule and system produces the seventh domino, President Freeman, who is tagged in by the death of Marshal Joseph. The seventh domino’s oppressive dictatorship knocks the eighth domino, Military Alliance, into action. The ninth domino is me, who is about to be crushed under the weight of the eight domino, me and many other small little pieces of this insane puzzle.

If there was any luck, Hitler would have been one of the many causalities of World War 1 and the domino effect would have ended with him. But does taking out one man out of the equation really change the result? Would that really change the overall picture, taking out just one domino, one piece?

I fear that Germanys defeat in World War 1 gave many Germans the same ideas that it gave Hitler. Somebody else would have arisen to take his place; after all, he wasn’t the only member of the Nazi Party. Would preventing World War 1 prevent the rise of Nazism? How does one go about preventing a war, let alone a global one? The spark that started WW1 was the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary but preventing his assassination would have just delayed the inevitable conflict that was brewing.

If my country joined Nazi Germany, would WW2 have played out the same way as it did? Many would say no, our country’s defiance was crucial in the war effort but was it really? If we joined, our country would have definitely been very different from the country we live in now. What would have been the cost of joining as opposed to the cost we suffered for standing up to Nazi Germany? I guess I will never know. Nobody will ever know because nobody is a complete and utter master of the dominos of history.

            I don’t know where the structure is the weakest, I don’t know where one could have changed the pattern of the maze, changed the outcome of events. I’m just another piece in the series that’s about to be knocked over for the sake of forming some sort of a pattern.

The worst thing about is that I do not think that there is a pattern at all. There is no power guiding or interfering at certain key moments. No one man or thing has set the domino effect in motion. The finger that flicked the very first domino does not exist. No one man or god had set the pattern either.

Sometimes the outline can be grasped, the blueprint can be perceived at the periphery of awareness but that is just the Universe peeking through the cracks of the man made prison that our minds are all in. The true state of being is like a wide-open meadow but we built a concrete labyrinth right in the middle of that meadow, a concrete web with no way out.

The confusing maze without an exit is entirely our own construction, a creation of every domino that has been knocked over, and has knocked over others in turn. Some pieces are bigger than others and these big pieces try to knock over many smaller pieces. Some big pieces start to knock over certain specific pieces so a pattern they wish to see would start to emerge.

In the end, we are just left with an undecipherable picture, half-images, half-finished moulds. The direction of the dominoes and the pattern of the picture changes so often that one has to realize and admit to oneself that there is no divine plan at work; just people pulling and pushing in numerous different directions. It’s just people trying to control, to meddle, to direct, to control, to conquer.

            I feel like crying for my father, for my grandfather, for Helena...I feel like crying for everybody, myself included. I start to cry as I acknowledge everybody’s mortality. I’m ready to accept. I’m dropping the past and I’m allowing the future. The future needs to start flowing towards me again. I have to allow it knowing that the future contains my own impermanence.

            I close my eyes and for the first time I realize that it’s very warm for a March night. It’s only then I realize that a warm breeze is blowing just like the one on the day I was born. The breeze feels cool on my wet cheeks. I feel the heat increasing. It feels like the explosion is just in front of my nose, about to incinerate me. I hear a murmur; I open my eyes, and realize I’m at a funeral. I don’t know if it’s grandfathers, my fathers, or my own burial. The murmuring is coming from the priest and it finally starts to come in clearer as I hear him or mishear him say:

“In the midst of dread, we are in life.”