June 6, 1944 2:40 PM
We were negotiating. I was in a human morph, a early-thirtish African Male. It was the largest human morph I had. I doubted that a fifteen-year-old boy would have frightened them so.
Of course when you have a wolf and a Hork-Bajir as an entourage, I could look like a six-year-old girl in pigtails, and the Germans would have still taken me seriously.
The captain was en route. We wanted to take Visser Four without incident, and the best way to do that was by having approved by the German Captain.
But when the German Captain drove up, it wasn't him we saw. It was his driver.
Adolf Hitler.
Wait. Maybe I should go back.
November 13, 1999 9:04 AM
Life is always in balance. When it seems like one part of your life goes slow another part picks up. My work with the animorphs averages less than two mission a month. It leaves me time to do other things. So I've been spending time with my new lady love, Melissa. I care for her deeply.
Which is why I sometimes desire to strangle her.
"Terry?" Melissa asked me. "When you're not with me or at the mall. Where are you?"
We were lying on her bed. (Fully clothed; no hanky-panky) She was lying across my chest. I believe it's called spooning.
"I thought we weren't gonna talk about that."
"No, you weren't gonna talk about it. And every time I bring it up, you give some empty answer or excuse."
"Well, maybe I don't wanna talk about it."
"Why not?" Melissa said getting up.
"Because I don't see how it's any of your business."
"That's nice. That's real nice." she said, angrily.
"This is like the third time today you've asked me that same question. Why the sudden increase in frequency?"
"When I met you, I told you about my friend Rachel. Why didn't you tell me you knew her?"
"What are you talking about?"
"At the dance, Rachel seemed to know you."
"Um, . . . well, . . . I met Rachel a few months ago. She was helping out with The Sharing back when I lived in this shelter in Newark." Ha. I am smooth.
"Wow, that almost sounded like the truth." Melissa spat sarcastically.
Nice going, Smoothie. "Melissa."
"Look, I'm not trying to be psycho about this, but it's starting to worry me."
"Ok, look, if you're worried that I dated her, believe me, I didn't. I could find more suitable girlfriends at Bellvue."
"Where were you Thursday at around noon?"
I had one mission in the last two weeks, and it was in fact on Thursday. Ayla found out that the Yeerks were installing a second Kandrona for the NYC area yeerks in one of the WTC towers. I convinced the guys that we had to stop it, despite the fact that it was just an auxiliary. It was during the school day, so Jake only allowed himself and Rachel to ditch. Less suspicious. Marco and Cassie had to stay. Needless to say, it got messy. After the battle Jake and Rachel returned to school.
"I was in New York. Why?"
"I told you how Rachel is different. Well, sometimes I see her and she's like out of it. On Thursday, I didn't see her at lunch. Cassie said she and Jake had a family emergency, but she comes back, late seventh period and she out of it. Calmy, twitching, its like she saw some get blown up in front of her. I see you after school and you're the same way. I get home later that evening and my father has scratch marks on his head. What the hell is going on, Terry?!"
"Melissa, I . . . ." Oh, Shit. 9:06. I need to demorph. I made a mad dash to the bathroom.
"No. You're not going in there again. I want to talk about this." Melissa said, grabbing me.
"Let me go, Melissa." I said curtly.
"Stop hiding in the bathroom! You go in there like every . . . two hours or something."
9:07. Two hours and one minute since morph time! "Let. Me. Go!" I yelled.
I pushed her. Hard. I pushed her so hard she fell. She looked like I slapped her. I now had two reasons to hide myself. I closed the door and quickly demorphed. No problem. I re-morphed.
"Terry!! Terry!!! Get out here."
I opened the door and she quickly began to usher me to her window. "Out."
"Look, I'm sorry. I didn't want to push you."
"Just get out. I want you out of here now."
I climbed from her window to a low-slung branch of a tree in her yard. "You don't understand, Melissa. I never meant to hurt you."
"Make me understand, Terry."
I didn't have an answer to give her.
"That's what I thought." She said as she slammed the window shut.
I climbed down the tree and walked from the Chapmans' house.
"FUCK!!!" I said as I took out my frustrations on the Chapman's mailbox.
Can things get any-
"Worse." I answered confidently. "Things are getting worse!"
"Why do you say that, son?" My father asked me.
"These fucking niggers man. I swear to God. They think they own the damn colony. Do you know I heard today? This sweet woman, Mom's age, lost all five of her boys in the Battle of San Paulo and not two hours afterwards she gets a call from the police saying that her only daughter was raped and killed. And guess by who. A Nigger."
"What's your point?"
"The INE says that 78% of the white population of the Empire is in some way shape or form part of the war movement. You know what the percentage is for our 'black brothers'? 10%. Ten fucking percent. What the hell is that?"
"There they are, sir." said the driver.
"Ok, Men." my father said. "Let's move out." We exited the truck, and instantly, the vagabonds ran. Mostly niggers. Some spics and chinks. No white people. Most of them went quietly. Women and children. Some fuckers gave us problems. We took care of them.
Then we heard gunfire. They were shooting at us.
"Fucking Niggers!" I shouted as I unloaded my machine gun, or Tommy guns as they're called. Latest in weapons technology. The gunfire stopped. A nigger came forward on his hands and knees with his gun in his hand. I came up to him.
"Did you fire that gun at me?" I asked him as I pointed my gun at him.
He just shook with fear.
"Answer me!!!" I said as I grabbed his dirty shirt with my other hand and shook him roughly.
He just shook.
"What's the matter? Can't talk? Did you try to shoot me?"
He finally nodded his head jerkily.
I shout him through his throat. "Try to talk now, jungle bunny."
"David!" My father yelled. "You are not authorized to kill people."
"The Triple S was gonna sentence him to death anyways. I just saved the Imperial Government £200."
"That is not your call to make. The Empire does not need you to save them money."
"If they had more money maybe they could hire a real Cleansing Squad."
"Sir!" said Witmore, another volunteer Cleanser, like me. "This one says he knows you."
"No fucking nigger knows my Dad."
"David, shut up." said my father. He walked over to the man that Witmore brought. The nigger said a string of words that I didn't understand. Must be Swahili. "Let him go."
"What the fuck?!"
"David, we kill many niggers a day. One won't make a difference."
"One always makes a difference." I said as I raised my gun. The nigger was fast and took out a small revolver and fired.
TSWWW! A strange sound. A beam of light. I dodged but my gun arm was singed.
I looked at the nigger and the gun he was holding. And it was weird looking.
"What the fuck?" I said as I started to walk toward him with my gun raised again. "Motherfu–"
Half of my fellow volunteer cleansers pulled out strange guns. And leveled them at me.
"What the hell is going on?"
"We're going to have to take him Covar." the nigger said. "Him and the rest of your unit."
"Yes, I know. My host does not like this." My father said.
"You're with him." I realized.
"Shut up, you ridiculous human. You may be in great numbers and of moderate physical condition, but you're not worth Gedd shit!"
My father said that. What? What's a Gedd?
One of the Cleansers holding the weird guns looked at me. Caldwell. I hated that guy. "Oh. You know, this is the first time, my host and I are in agreement. We have both been looking forward to this for such a long time."
I dropped my gun and reached into my pockets. I had stolen two grenades earlier. I used them then on my fellow white man. White men who were good. White men who were loyal to the empire.
But if they sided with a homeless nigger, than they can't be good, right?
My grenades wiped out all of them except for the Nigger and my father. They began shooting the weird guns at me. Hot light beams heated the air. The Nigger missed me and hit my father. Half his head was gone. I picked up my gun and fired it at him. I fired so many bullets, it tore his arm off. The gun's magazine was used up of course. I walked over to that nigger.
I beat him to a bloody mess. I beat him so badly that they wouldn't be able to recognize him. He was dead of course. Part from the shock of losing an arm. The rest I did with the butt of the gun.
I walked over to my father's body. My whole unit was destroyed. I did most of it. I could see what was left of my father's brain.
It was covered in something yellow.
A Car marked SSS came around. The Triple S. Thank God. I could explain everything. The weird laser guns. Everything.
A Triple S agent approached me.
"Sir. There's a conspiracy here. My father and a bunch of others have some kind of sickness that makes them follow niggers. It makes their brains yellow. They all have these weird guns."
"Son, come along with me." said the agent.
"Agent, you should look at this."
"Son! Come along with me." said the agent. He held a weird gun.
"What the hell's going on?" I whimpered.
Suddenly, I was not in front of the Triple S. I was in a barn. With four other people. A hawk and two aliens.
I knew these people. They were my friends.
I was different too. I was . . . .
My God.
"Oh look. Our friends Rachel and David are back." said the Drode. "The Beast-Rat and Miss Potential herself. I don't care what Crayak says, she's still my fav." The Drode then did a rather obscene gesture.
The Drode, Crayak's slave, began to explain to us what had happened. A human-controller, one who was once Visser Four, had found the Time Matrix and started fucking around with Human history.
And now we had to stop him.
We chased him through Agincourt. Because I had seen Henry V, I was able to tell them what to do to keep history the same. We saved Henry V.
But we failed at the Delaware River. George Washington was killed. And America never happened.
Oh. Yeah. And Jake was killed.
We were involved with a battle called Trafalgar, which we knew nothing about, but we failed there too.
That's when things started slipping. Einstein wasn't where he was supposed to be in 1934.
Which takes us to World War II. Or perhaps even World War III for all we know. What must be the British Empire versus the combined forces of France and Germany.
No Nazis. That baffles me to no end. And the most evil man ever to have existed. The epitome of all that is wrong . . . and all that I became in another timeline . . . . was nothing more than a driver.
We found Visser Four. And his host, John Berryman. Crushed by an overturned truck. He was gonna die. The Yeerk was dead too. I ripped him in two with my bare hands while Marco was trying to coax Rachel or Ax to do it. Naturally I was third choice. Psycho David. The intellectual killer.
John was reciting Henry V.
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er–"
"–so vile" I continued.
"This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's Day"
"I'm dying." John said when I finished.
"Mr . . . John . . . I . . ." Cassie tried to say.
"What is it?" John asked. "Ask me your question."
"John. I'm so sorry. But . . . John, do you know, did your parents ever tell you . . . How did they meet? When and Where?"
John was confused, but then seemed to accept his fate.
What fate? What . . .Holy shit.
"San Francisco. 1967. My dad's name is John, too. My Mom is Theresa. Theresa Knowlton."
"You're not going to . . ." I began to say.
September 3, 1967 11:31 AM
We made our way to an apparently unaltered 1967 San Francisco. Hippies.
"Visser Four changed history." Tobias said. He was in human morph. "Maybe for the worse, but maybe not. Hitler was just a lowly nobody. No Holocaust! We want to change it back so there was one?"
"You saw the way our future was." Cassie argued. "We still had slavery. We had no freedom. The Drode said homeless people were rounded up and shot."
"He wasn't lying." I said.
"We can't let that happen."
"But we can let the Holocaust happen?" Rachel demanded. "Tobias is right. That future we saw that Future we were in, that's back when Visser Four had done all he did, but without us getting in his face. That was the result without our intervention. Maybe in that timeline he did ten more things. We don't know what the result is with our intervention. Maybe the future is better now. Maybe us saving Henry, and even taking out that Hessian officer, I don't know! Maybe . . ."
"We could use the Time Matrix, travel back to our own time, see what's happened. See if things are good." Tobias said.
"Does that not seem foolish now that we see how complex that history is?" Cassie wondered.
"We're already taking a gamble erasing an entire person from existence." I said.
"I'm just saying we go take a look." Tobias repeated. "See how it all played out."
"Hey, history is never 'played out'" Marco countered passionately. "We start fucking with the past, we fuck with the future. Maybe we like the way things look to us back in our time, but maybe we've screwed something else up down the line."
"We do that everyday." Rachel said. "Every time we do anything, or do nothing, we change the future. Why is this different? Look, let's just go see. Maybe our time is great now. I mean, maybe, right?"
I gorged myself on the maggot invested carcass of my fallen rival. I had killed him in mortal combat over a dead mudskipper. I won and I ate the mudskipper. I have not eaten in days so now I will eat him. Thus is the life of the rat.
Wait . . . . wasn't I just in San Francisco?
I'm not a rat!
"Oh but you are" said the Drode.
"This is not as it should be. You should be a rat. I am concerned." said the Ellimist
We changed history. John Berryman, Jr. never existed.
I became the nothlit I was always meant to be.