Another short chapter today. Actually, very short. Just a few snippets of connective tissue, really. So short that if you fart and forget to roll down the window you’ll almost miss it.

So? How bout some music…? Some brief music? The Minute Waltz, perhaps?

No. No way. I guess you could try U2s new anti-Trump anthem, but I’m trying to remain apolitical for the time being so just Walk On By. Ooh…ah yes! How about some old Dionne Warwick? Walk On By…certainly. Valley of the Dolls? Ooh yes, please. And my all-time favorite: The April Fools (and that’s from one of my favorite movies too…and I’m referring to the Jack Lemmon & Catherine Deneuve film from 1969). Too laid back for you? Well, here’s a nice short one for you: Octavarium, by Dream Theater. Or another shortie? How ’bout: At The End Of The Day, by Spock’s Beard. You can thank me later. Of course, Yes just released the 50th anniversary edition of Tales From Topographic Oceans. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s only four songs long, too…

And now our brief chapter, and this one brought to you by Listerine, because nothing else quite makes your mouth taste like industrial waste quite like a nice swig of that old amber original.

Chapter 5

Rüdiger Abendruth had been nothing if not attentive. Most of the people gathered for his funeral had considered him a bright man, some thought him a genius. Yet as a young man, most considered him a student with few innate talents – save an unmatched capacity for self promotion. Or was it, as others closest to him seemed to imply, simply a case of self adulation?

His parents immigrated to Chile after the war, but when pressed they would admit to fleeing Berlin in the closing hours, or was it minutes, of the Soviet advance on the capitol of their Thousand Year Reich. They did so by flying to Basel, then on to Lisbon; not by chance, they met up with several other members of the chancellery staff fleeing Europe. The false bottoms of their children’s suitcases concealed dozens of 10 ounce gold bars; these families bribed customs and immigration officials with smaller bars of gold or silver before boarding tramp steamers bound for Buenos Aires or Valparaiso. Some actually went to America. Many other high ranking members of the Reich made the same journey, some by way of Marrakech, while a few high ranking members did so disguised as priests, flying directly to Rome from Switzerland and staying for months within the cloistered confines of the Vatican. This last route was rumored to be the Führer’s chosen escape route, this last-ditch effort planned months in advance – with, of course, his way out of Germany paved with prodigious quantities of gold and the finest intentions.

Rüdiger Abendruth remembered very little of those dark days. Fragments on a steamship in the middle of the ocean, the pain of his first real sunburn standing out in his mind most of all. He did not remember the dysentery and typhus onboard, or his mother’s seasickness – so bad that she very nearly died. He did not remember his little sister at all, who did pass away – from an outbreak of typhus among the crew that spread to the passenger decks.

Rüdiger did not remember the Reich, did not remember Hitler or Goering, even though his father worked with the latter in the German rearmaments program before the war, and then with Wernher von Braun in Peenemünde. He did not remember that his family’s history was intimately linked to I. G. Farben, nor did he know that his father managed their Mittelwerk, GmbH facilities – the sprawling underground facility that manufactured components of the V-1 and V-2 rockets during the war. Had he known of his father’s involvement, he might also have known that the facilities his father managed utilized inmates of nearby concentration camps as their primary source of labor.

Yet even if he had known these inconvenient truths it is doubtful that Rüdiger Abendruth would have objected.

For like many National Socialists, Rüdiger had always been virulently antisemitic. By the time he graduated from Heidelberg University in the late 1950s, he was a staunch proponent of National Socialist policies then being promulgated by the former ‘ministerium’ of the Reichskanzlei living in the mountains outside of Bariloche, Argentina, and when he returned from Germany after his studies were complete, he joined the descendants of other high ranking members of the Reich in developing a more cohesively organized colony in the Argentine Alps.

Funded by the very same industrial conglomerates that had once propelled Hitler to power, this new colony was reclusive in the extreme, to the point that people who – whether by accident or design – stumbled upon the colony and discovered the true objectives of the project…simply disappeared. Invited former members of the Party apparatus soon arrived, and all pledged allegiance to the new Reich when the colony’s objectives became clear. Quiet entreaties were made to critical industries in both Europe and the United States, and by the late-1980s the colony’s influence soon rivaled the largest corporations in the industrialized West. For a quiet, unincorporated colony of fewer than ten thousand people many were shocked to learn that the colony’s annual budget exceeded Switzerland’s, and yet only a handful of people beyond the colony’s borders knew precisely why.

Two months after the Berlin Wall came down, the colony elected who would become their last freely-elected chancellor.

His name was Rüdiger Abendruth, yet this new ‘Führer’ had no intricate designs of world conquest in mind, no hidden agendas or plans for world conquest. In fact, unlike the Third Reich he had little interest in the affairs of man.

Because Rüdiger Abendruth had only one objective.

He was going to take his new Reich to the stars, and he would let nothing stand in his way.

© 2025-26 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, plain and simple. Thanks for dropping by, and we’ll see you next time.

And see! I told you it was brief, but don’t forget where you are in the arc.

A short chapter today, hardly time for tea. Kind of a transition waiting to happen.

Music matters… So, do you M83? If not, you might give them a try. Check out Midnight City and Where The Boats Go, as well as the title track from their 2011 album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. Everyone knows In The Court of Crimson King, from King Crimson’s 1969 album, but have you heard the version on Steve Hackett’s The Tokyo Tapes? If you have the time, run on over to Spock’s Beard’s album Noise Floor (2018) and check out So This Is Life. Then one last piece today, from Steven Wilson’s Insurgentes (2009): the track called Salvaging. And take what you will from it, but you may get lost inside this one.

Okay, on to the story.

Chapter 4: Temporal Alignment

She had always wanted to live in Paris. The lights, the gaiety, the salons – but above all else, the music. When she  had first left Königsberg she had taken an oath never to return to East Prussia, so when life in Copenhagen took a turn for the worse it was only natural that she move to France. Despite her upbringing, Paris had always seemed home.

Almost immediately, Anna Regina Kant discovered that the City of Lights was quite literally awash with pianists, of every sort. With the end of the First World War it seemed that every writer, painter, and musician had decided that life was only worth living if done so here, and Anna soon found herself taking a position, and teaching, in Honfleur, a small coastal town located just across the Seine from the port of Le Havre.

She had earned a decent amount of money in Copenhagen and by living quite frugally had managed to save almost everything she had ever earned, so she was able to travel some – from time to time, so she considered it important to find a suitable position in a location not too far from Paris. She was invited to a school in Le Havre, but was then summoned to another school across the Seine, and her interview had gone well.

When she first arrived in Honfleur she immediately fell in love with the old medieval village, and while the school there was small the pay wasn’t much worse than in LeHavre, so she took the position there. Before school started, she found a stone cottage on a bluff overlooking the Plagne du Butin, and the previous family living there had managed to create a wondrous garden that surrounded the main dwelling. The cottage faced both the river and the English Channel, in an estuary called the Crique de Rouen. The first thing she felt was the golden sunlight of that late August afternoon, and that wondrous glow washed over the walls of her new kitchen with the same amber-hued warmth of her childhood home in East Prussia.

Because cottages were much less expensive this far from Paris, Anna was able to buy her first piano, an older Bösendorfer the headmistress of her new school knew was available. The rolling fogs of autumn would wreak havoc on the sound board, but if she diligently kept the cottage warm through the colder months she might just be able to keep the new piano in tune.

As she had in Copenhagen, Anna soon found herself engaged to teach younger students after school, and she still kept to her frugal ways and saved all her money. When Spring came she tended her garden on sun-drenched airs, working to create a world within a world, someplace far away from all the noise of the outside world. She spent her summers traveling, often to Paris but as far away as Rome and Florence. She was now in Madrid, walking through the vast collection in the Museo del Prado when she first noticed the Old Man.

He kept his distance, but there was no doubt he was following her.

And she wondered why.

She had not once tempted the fates, not once played Schubert’s Doppelgänger or any piece even remotely like it. She had understood the owl’s warning, and taken it to heart.

But unexpected change was sweeping aside the fragile peace of Versailles, and the new German Republic was first to fall away. The few surviving monarchies in Europe were nervous as they watched populist extremists undermine expectations across the continent, and some of the changes, she could see, were leading humanity deeper into uncharted extremes. First there was Mussolini, then Hitler, and then, while she was win Spain, civil war broke out – a civil war coordinated by Europe’s other fascist states and Spain’s internal extremists. As open conflict broke out she managed a hasty retreat to France, yet as she arrived in Paris she saw new, visible signs of mobilization almost everywhere she looked.

And still the Old Man followed her.

Riding across France in the train, she had decided to spend more time in Paris before returning to Honfleur, but after feeling the mood of the people there she decided to go home. She took the express to Le Havre, then the ferry across the Seine to the Old Port, and a complete stranger with an automobile carried her the last mile out to the ancient cottage she now called home, and this kind soul even helped with her luggage before smiling and bidding her a fine afternoon. She watched him depart in clouds of dust, leaving her standing beside the stone wall that lined the old road that rambled past her home. She opened the gate that entered that other world, the world of greens and pinks and honeybees she had nurtured for so many years of her life, then she walked slowly along the garden path that took her to the front door of her cottage. She loved this walkway, too. Old gray cobbles set in sand with a little mortar, she had crafted this walkway just the way her father had taught her. Sight lines were important, but a sense of mystery even more so. She had to push long dangling vines of green ivy out of the way, tendrils grown wild over her summer away from home, all this life awakening in the moist night air and just now blooming. So yes, as she completed the last few steps of her journey she seemed to slip into this other world, the world she had created to get away from – that other world.

But then reality intruded, for there at her front door stood Neils Bohr, and though she had not seen him in more than two decades it was not so difficult to see, and to feel, the pain in his eyes.

She had tried to forget about them, those two. Neils and Freja, identical twins, identical worlds. To forgot about that world, their world, and all the gathering implications the owl had implied, because there were monsters out there in the night. Real monsters. So they had sworn off taking further explorations, and the three of them each seemed to go on their separate ways.

But now she could see that Time had not been so kind to Neils after all. Something had happened. Something awful.

+++++

“A neighbor told me you were away,” Neils said as he reached for the cup of tea she offered, looking around the small, one room cottage, at the way Anna had used the limited space to create little nooks dedicated to each part of her day. Her kitchen was one such space, and while it was small everything within was so well organized it almost defied imagination. Her bed, hidden behind layers of Japanese screens, hinted at another. Her sitting room, where he sat now, was comfortable and focused on the most important thing in her life: her Bösendorfer grand piano.

And the view of the two large windows?

Incredible.

First of all was her magical garden. Than the sea beyond. The ochre bluffs beyond LeHavre, striated by one broad buff colored band of ancient limestone, surf crashing on the rocks below. Everything was small inside her cottage, small but perfect. Nothing wasted, nothing to remind one of the world beyond her walls.

So nothing was wasted her. Nothing, that is, but a life in hiding.

“Why have you come here?” she asked as she sat across from him. “And why do you wear such pain?”

Neils took a sip of tea; the temperature was perfect, the blend unrecognizable – but scented like a garden. Her china was the finest England could offer, a jumble of vines and flowers frozen in time around a delicate porcelain rim. Indeed, everything around him, from the upholstery on her chairs to her draperies and bedding seemed to reflect a sublime desire to reside within her garden. To return to the soil, to the Earth, to bring the outside in…

“You left us so suddenly,” Neils sighed. “What made you leave without at least saying goodbye?”

“I felt it safer, for us all,” Anna replied. “Considering. I’ve heard interesting things about you, of course. You and this Mister Einstein. And what of Mister Hitler? What are your plans? You plan to leave soon, I trust?”

Neils Bohr shrugged. “Those things seem inevitable now, don’t they? Cast in stone, mad men set in motion.”

She sighed. “Yes. Hate seems to boil up out of us every so often. From the soft underbelly of our ignorance, I think. So tell me. Where is Freja? How is she?”

Neils looked away, gathering his thoughts. “She’s gone,” he finally said.

“Gone?”

“Murdered, or so they tell me.”

“Oh, Neils, I am so sorry. I know how incredibly close you were.”

“She went down to the sea, you understand. She had a friend there. A whale, one of those orcas, one of the big black and white beasts. She took her daughter there often, to the shore, and they would walk for hours and hours, but one day this whale came to them.”

“Oh, God no. Tell me she didn’t…”

“Apparently many people saw the creature the owl warned us of. Shiny and black, black like oil. It came out of the water for her – and then our Freja just disappeared. Gone, in an instant, inside a blinding flash. Then the creature slipped back under the sea.”

“You said she has a daughter?”

“Ah, yes, Imogen. Imogen Schwarzwald. Our Freja married a physician, so of course he is just like our father. A kind man, and he has doted on his little girl since Freja left us…”

“Did Freja teach her daughter to play?”

“Yes, of course, but while Imogen is quite gifted she is pulled between her music and a profound love of mathematics.”

“Schwarzwald, did you say? Imogen Schwarzwald? Was she the child who wrote those piano concertos?”

“Yes. Two so far, when she was quite young. And now she is studying physics at the university. She will attain her doctorate soon.”

“Your brother? What was his name?”

“Harald. He is studying mathematics. And Jenny, our older sister, is teaching now.”

“And your parents?”

Neils shook his head; nothing more needed to be said.

“So, you came all this way to tell me about Freja?”

“In part, yes, but I wanted to know if you have encountered these whales?”

“After what the owl told us? Seriously? I am so afraid of such a thing that I rarely go to the shore.”

Neils nodded. “Then yes, I have another motive.”

She smiled. “Of course you do.”

“Imogen has a suitor. I suspect he knows about this ability we share, and I think he has talked about it. He is a physicist, but he has many friends in this new Reich.”

“You don’t think he’d tell anyone, do you?”

Neils sighed and splayed his hands wide. “I do not know this boy well enough to answer such a question, but can you imagine the outcome if such capabilities were to fall into the wrong hands?”

She turned and looked out the window, at her most cherished possession on Earth – her garden. And in an instant she knew it was time. That she would soon lose all this, because that other world had just come calling.

“Where will you go?” Anna asked. “America?”

He nodded. “I think so, yes. If Europe falls to Hitler, America may well remain free – for a while, anyway. But we need time. Time enough to finish a project.”

“So you think I should go to America, too?”

He nodded. “Yes, and before you lose the opportunity. It is getting more difficult by the day for Jews to enter the country, unless…”

“Unless you have something of real value to contribute? And I am but a piano teacher? Isn’t that what you’re trying to say, Neils?”

He nodded. “Not exactly. I can see, however, that you have created the perfect space to escape from our world.” He turned and looked out the window, and suddenly he could see into the years ahead. The sacrifices that would have to be made. Pain as yet unimagined to be endured. And cruelty, all the endless, unspeakable cruelty. That beast always lurked in the shadows, didn’t it?

“It’s not so difficult to see what it is about us they fear,” she whispered. “Is it?”

“No. It isn’t.”

“So, I suppose you have friends in America that can sponsor an old Jew like me?”

He turned back to her and smiled. “Of course. Why else would I have risked exposing you?”

“I see. And when am I supposed to leave?”

“Today. Right now. Or tomorrow morning, at the latest. You should pack only what you need, and no more.”

“I see. Is there so much need to rush?”

Neils shrugged. “When people realize what is happening it will already be too late. For us? For you and I? I hope it isn’t already.”

“Well, I’ve not had time to unpack yet, so I suppose I’m ready to leave – right now.”

“Do you have your papers, and documents that prove your ownership of the house?”

“Yes, of course. Should I bring those?”

“I would,” he said, though he said so more cheerfully than he really felt. “Who knows, you may be able to return someday.”

“I need to check the water, make sure that the pump is turned off,” she sighed.

“Where is your well?”

“In back. A small stone building, by the last hedgerow.”

“I’ll go. You might start with your luggage back out to the lane.”

He went out the cottage’s back door and found the pump-house, and after he located the breaker he closed the circuit before he stepped back out into the garden. And he felt the wonder of it all, that she really had created a perfect world out here.

Every little thing, every plant, every fountain and bird bath, every tree and even the garden pathway, seemed to coexist with nature, suffused in their immediate surroundings. A side path led to a bench and he walked over, anticipating the surprise – and yes, she had created something even more perfect. A tiny sliver of light between the cottage and the row of shrubs on the far side of the property, where just the perfect view of the sea breaking against the rocks on the far side of the estuary remained in hiding, just waiting to be discovered.  

He shook his head, surprised by her deft understanding of such things, then he went inside and locked the back door before making his way through the house and out the path that led to the road. He pushed all the dangling vines out of the way – again – then closed the gate behind him as he walked through the last length of overarching trellis, only then reaching daylight just at the road’s edge. Because this lonely road seemed to mark the boundary between two worlds…

But as he looked around he saw that she was gone.

Her luggage remained by the wayside, but Anna was nowhere to be seen.

Then…

Something caught his eye and he saw dust lingering above the narrow lane, and a small Citroen speeding back into Honfleur.

And he could just see two men restraining Anna in the back seat, and he knew then that they had failed.

And then the Old Man appeared.

“I shouldn’t have left her alone,” Neils sighed. “Not even for a moment.”

“Perhaps.”

Then the Old Man tapped his staff on the pavement and thunder crossed the channel, and a moment later both men disappeared – leaving only dust to mingle with the remnants of Anna’s fear.

© 2025 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, plain and simple. Thanks for dropping by. See you next time.

 

Writing this has been a challenge. The mind is willing but the eyes are problematic. I’ve tried dictating text but my mind doesn’t visualize the storyline at all when I try to do that. I’m sure you’ll find scads of errors and I apologize in advance. Things should improve as time goes by.

Gee, I remember a song with those words so it must be time to go over the music I listened to while writing this. First and foremost was Franz Schubert’s Doppelgänger, the Franz Liszt piano transcription as recorded by Dora Deliyska in 2012. You’ll find your own way to the eighty-eighth key in that one. Moving on to the pop music spectrum, let’s go back to 1975, to Eric Carmen’s eponymous album, and let’s look at two songs in particular. The first is a chart-topping ballad titled All By Myself, the second is Never Gonna Fall In Love Again. Give them a listen and then go and find a recording on Deutsche Grammophon of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2 in C Minor, (2023), in particular the second movement – the Adagio sostenuto. Just sit back and have a listen and let me know what you think. Music is so fun! Let’s keep in the lower registers for a while longer, so hop on over to Black Sabbath’s debut (eponymous) album, and go to the first track, also titled Black Sabbath, and you’ll find Prokofiev lurking in those shadows. And speaking of Prokofiev, head over to Emerson Lake and Powell’s only work, to their (eponymous) album and to the track titled Touch and Go. The opening synthesizer riff of this famous rock anthem is a play on themes within Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite, op. 60.4, the Troika sequence. Also on the lone ELPowell album is their version of Mars, The Bringer of War, from Holst’s The Planets. And I couldn’t not remind you to go back to The Doors The Alabama Song, to their version of Kurt Weill’s Alabama-Song, from the operetta The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Look for Lotte Lenya’s version in English if you can’t handle German. And let’s ignore the classics for our last two, The Who’s Who Are You, (1978), and lastly let’s revisit Stephen Still’s Love The One You’re With. Ah, didn’t that feel good?

With all that out of the way it’s time for tea and an orange–walnut scone fresh out of the oven, then get comfy and have yourself a read. You’ve met Anna before, briefly, and I won’t spoil the surprise, but Freja looms large in TimeShadow so pay attention. And I do hope you know who Neils is…?

The Infinity Song

Part II

Harmonic Entanglements 

Chapter 3

Anna Regina Kant usually walked to work, to her position as a piano teacher in a girl’s school located near a tidy neighborhood in central Copenhagen, but the snow was too much even for her this morning. Drifts had blown up from the cobbled streets and covered the sidewalks, and so far only a few horse-drawn streetcars were operating. She managed to get onboard one and rode in silence out to the school where she taught, at the Døtreskolen af 1791, then she walked the remaining distance to the school’s main building. Despite the bad weather, she had arrived early enough to attend morning assembly, then she walked to her ‘classroom,’ as usual surrounded by doting students.

Anna was popular among most all the girls in the school, but of more importance, she was popular with the parents of her students. This had led to her being engaged as a piano teacher, working most afternoons and evenings in many of the more prosperous households near the university. She soon gained a following, and word of her skill spread quickly. 

Anna was popular because she was not a scold, and she never berated even her slowest students. Rather, she tendered praise when praise was due, yet offered endless reserves of encouragement to those a little more tone deaf than was usually tolerated by the more established teachers in Copenhagen. Where she really excelled, however, was in her handling of those truly gifted students who came her way. 

Freja Bohr was one such student. 

Her father was a professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen; her maternal grandfather was one of Denmark’s most prominent bankers. She had an older sister and a younger brother, but of utmost importance, she had an identical twin brother, Neils. Her sister would become a teacher, while her brothers grew deeply entranced by the world of numbers.

The family resided in Copenhagen’s East Quarter, in the university district at Bredgade 62, in a large residence assigned to the medical school’s faculty. Because of their proximity to laboratories and academic facilities, the children grew up and nurtured within vast realms of scientific exploration. Theirs was a wonderful childhood, years of intellectual curiosity inside a household where science and logic were ways of life. 

Yet, and perhaps this was a deliberate choice, Freja remained relatively untouched by that world.

Again, perhaps.

Her brothers’ dormers overlooked Copenhagen’s inner harbor, with the tall masts of merchant ships beckoning just a few blocks away. Freja’s window, on the north side of the residence, looked out on Sankt Ansgars Kirke, Saint Ansgar’s Church, which was home to the last vestiges of Catholicism inside deeply Protestant Denmark. More to the point, her window was in close proximity to a large cluster of pipes that belonged to the church’s rather impressive organ, and on Sunday mornings she was treated to the most elaborate recitals imaginable – complete with the voices of hundreds of parishioners. So – perhaps – her world was redefined by these unseen pastiches of Bach and Mozart that played out just beyond her reach every Sunday morning.

And while it might be hard to imagine, this calliope of music and the mind opened a door, a passage to another world. A world defined by the mathematics her mind craved, yet a world suffused in the dim underworld of the most thunderous music in the world.  She could feel power in the music within those stone walls, a latent call to arms under the banner of things she knew nothing about, and so as an innocent she fell under the spell of music.

The Bohr family was, of course, Jewish, and that one of their own would fall under such a spell was disconcerting in the extreme to Freja’s parents. Yet her brother Neils understood, perhaps because his room was next to hers. He too felt the power of this music, and at times he was sure he could feel something deeper within certain passages, too. When the organist found the deeper registers, the pillars of the earth seemed to shake and rumble in the most delicious way, and inside those tremorous moments both children seemed to hover along the edge of a vast precipice, drifting through time and space…at least until the music stopped. And while Neils examined these moments with a budding scientist’s inquisitiveness, Freja drifted aimlessly within these aural kaleidoscopes, often lingering there long after the music stopped. Soon enough, she approached her mother about taking organ lessons.

Which led to her taking piano lessons at the school and then, when she showed promise, to more rigorous lessons at home. Her mother listened to these sessions, disappointed in the quality of sound produced by the ancient piano in the residence hall, and so purchased her family a new Bösendorfer grand, a magnificent creation – and an instrument that even the esteemed Anna Regina Kant seemed to admire.

+++++

It was an event, the delivery of this new piano. A thing of beauty, friends and neighbors came to see, and to hear, Freja playing this magnificent creation. The piano was placed in the parlor, a warm, wood-paneled room that looked out over the city’s high court building across the street. The parlor was also right off the family’s library, and the walls of books mellowed the sound somewhat. On warm afternoons in late spring, Freja played with the windows open, the room’s light filled curtains billowing from time to time on a passing breeze, and yes, there were times when even the curtains seemed to soar on musical airs – as Anna and Freja explored this new world together…

…and then one afternoon, with Miss Kant by her side, they came to a new piece of music.

“This is the Liszt transcription of Schubert’s Der Doppelgänger, and you must be careful here, Freja, for you may find many daunting passages within?”

“Daunting, Miss Anna? How do you mean?”

Kant opened the score and placed it on the music stand, then she moved around the piano to open the lid, carefully placing the prop just-so before moving to stand behind Freja.

And when she did so, she placed her hand on Freja’s shoulder. And this was something she had never done before.

Freja studied the opening bars for a moment, then inched down the bench a bit to the left, to better address the keyboard.

And then she began playing, slowly, carefully, and as Anna intended, Freja soon found her way to the eighty-eighth key.

+++++

It was as a hammer blow, this sudden change that came upon her.

One moment she had been playing and that same feeling returned. The same feeling she had first experienced when the organist in the cathedral next door visited the lower registers, when the entire residence seemed to tremor and come alive with wild magic…

…and now, here she was, standing in a field full of wildflowers on a gorgeous sunny afternoon, standing on a high bluff overlooking the sea…

And she jumped back in horror when she realized this wasn’t another one of her daydreams. She jumped back when she saw she was standing on the edge of a vast precipice. Indeed, the toes of her shoes seemed to be over the edge of this cliff, but then she felt Anna still behind her, her teacher’s hand still firmly on her shoulder.

“This place was very important to me when I was your age,” Anna said, lifting her head to face the breeze coming to her off the sea, closing her eyes as the sun bathed her soul with the infinite music of pure memory. “I came here on days much like this one. I came here to hide from my life.”

“From your life, Miss Anna? But why? Why would you do such a thing?”

Anna sighed as an unwanted memory came to her, and she closed her eyes, turned away from the feeling as sudden darkness fell over the land. The seas below grew tempestuous, storm clouds gathered along the far horizon and lightning flickered in seething clouds.

And as Anna lifted her hand from Freja’s shoulder they were at once back in the parlor, the sun-filled breeze still lifting the curtains.

And as Freja lifted her hands from the keyboard she turned to face her teacher. “What has happened to us?” she whispered. “Were we not just standing in a field of flowers, standing beside the sea?”

“Yes. We were near my father’s home in Königsberg, where I lived as a child.”

“And how did we get there?”

“I don’t know the how of these things, but is that so important? We did, you and I. That is the truth of it and so all that is important.”

“The music. That low progression? Was that it? Was that what happened?”

“I believe so, yes, but the first time I felt this surge I was much younger than you are now.”

“I have felt it too. From the cathedral, when then organist practices. The pipes are close to my window. Even my brother has felt this thing.”

“Not many can, but you must remember something. And this is very important, so listen to me when I tell you that you must never tell anyone about this. If you do, only tell someone you would trust with your life.”

“But Miss Anna, does that mean you place so much trust in me?”

“Yes, but there is another reason. I have seen a man, an old man. He has been following me, and I am not sure but I seem to remember him from home, from Königsberg.”

“But Miss Anna…you have been here now how many years? Fifteen, did you not once tell us?”

“Ah, yes, fifteen, but it was years ago when I told you this. I have lived here almost twenty-five years…and isn’t that strange? I don’t think the old man has aged. In all that time, he hasn’t aged even a little? Don’t you think that strange?”

“Are you afraid of him?” Freja asked nervously.

“I don’t know? He has never approached me, never has he said even one word to me, but he is there, following me…”

“Have you talked to the constable?”

“The old man disappears, Freja. I mean…he literally disappears.”

“How is that possible?”

“I do not know, yet minutes ago we were standing in a field near my home – almost forty years ago – so please tell me, how is that possible?”

“I am fairly certain it has something to entangled particles,” Neils said, sitting in a wingback chair with his back to them.

Freja and Anna wheeled around, their eyes wide, their shocked expressions clear for him to see.

“How long have you been sitting there?” Freja asked.

“Long enough,” her brother replied. “I often come quietly, just to listen as you play. I find great peace in this room.”

“What did you mean?” Anna asked, still startled, now a little annoyed. “What does this entangled mean?”

“I mean that some particles are bound together inextricably through time, and they cannot be undone. But what if a particle, or a pair of particles, can be induced to rejoin themselves in an earlier state? Freja and I have felt this on Sunday mornings, and also when the organist practices. I felt myself adrift in time one time, but it was some time in the future, I mean eons ahead. At first I thought this must be a dream…”

“But you do not feel this now?” Anna asked.

“No, I do not, and yet you just provided me the key to understand why. Because I too have seen the old man. He wears a loden cape, does he not? And he walks with a wooden staff?”

Anna nodded, dismayed. “Have you, by chance, seen him summon storms?” Anna asked, clearly now fearful beyond reason.

“No? I take it you have?”

Anna nodded. “Oh, yes. I have on several occasions. He pounds his staff on the earth and clouds appear in the distance, but thunder and lightning soon follow. I saw him do this when I was a child, in Königsberg, and once again, on the night after I arrived here, in Copenhagen. It was not an accident of circumstance, either. I feel certain he summoned these storms.”

“And you say he disappears?” Neils asked.

“Yes, I have seen this many times. Once I felt certain he did so when I turned and looked at him, yet on another occasion he came close, closer than he ever had before, and he stared at me until I finally turned and looked at him. He smiled at me for a moment, then doffed his hat and, again…he simply disappeared.”

Neils furrowed his brow at that. “And you say you have literally seen him disappear? That he didn’t just slip out of view?”

“Oh, no. He quite literally disappears.”

“Then I must follow him,” Neils Bohr said. “I must observe this. Note the circumstances. If he is what I suspect he is, then his presence destroys everything we know about Time.”

Anna seemed interested now. “And what do you think he is?”

“He is either a time traveller, or he is not of this Earth. If either is the case, I suspect he has come to observe how you are bending the laws of time.”

“So you think he may simply be curious?” Freja asked.

“Or might he have evil intentions?” Anna added, suddenly appearing quite anxious.

But Neils had no ready answer for them. “We have no way of knowing, do we? That is why we must observe the fellow, and then, perhaps, we may be able to approach him, and even speak to him.”

“Do you think that wise?” Anna sighed.

“Wise?” Neils said. “No, not at all. I do feel that all this is inevitable, that we are now on a course established by others, so we are pawns on a board we know nothing about.” He stopped and thought a moment, then shook his head slowly as he smiled inwardly. “But do you know… there are times when even a pawn might trap a king?”

+++++

She lived near the railway station in the Osterport, so usually walked along the Groningen past the old fortress, the Kastellet, on her way to the Bohr residence. 

But not this afternoon.

On Friday afternoons the Bohr children usually walked home from the family’s synagogue, located on Ole Suhrs Gade, by walking along the Sølvgade towards the harbor. The previous two Fridays the old man had appeared and had followed them home, and it was Anna’s intent to trap him as he walked past the Marmorkircken. Neils would walk along the massive building’s south side, then past the colonnaded steps on the east side. When the old man walked past this colonnade, Anna would jump out and confront him, holding him if necessary until Neils could join her in restraining the old man.

She arrived earlier than she had planned so stepped inside the huge domed Lutheran church. In plan, the church was little more than a cylinder topped by a massive dome, and with little more than curved walls under the dome, the interior looked truncated. Yet she suspected the architect’s vision was that all eyes would go to the soaring dome, to the twelve Biblical stories painted there, so she could see the point. The light pouring in through the central lantern high above did indeed seem heavenly, yet once again she felt little more than annoyed at the crass attempt to manipulate.  And in the end, the space seemed cold and uninviting to her, so she retreated outside to the steps to wait for Neils and Freja.

She had not considered that their other siblings would be walking with them, and when Freja passed Anna also saw her sister Jenny, and as Niels walked by she immediately saw his precocious little brother Harald. She kept out of sight as they walked by, then, as they turned onto the Frederiksgade, the old man walked past and she sprung down the steps, reaching him in just a few long strides.

He turned to face her before she had closed the distance between them, and the Old Man held out his walking cane, placing it between them as she reached out for him.

Instinctively she reached out for the staff and grabbed hold.

And in that instant Time stopped.

She saw herself surrounded by shimmering blue as her field of view imploded into brightest sunshine. In the next instant she recognized the field full of wildflowers outside of Königsberg that she had visited as a child, but no gentle breezes caressed her skin. This was not real, she told herself as the tried to turn and look at the sea…

And panic set-in when she realized Time itself had stopped.

Then she felt a presence, something unlike anything she had ever felt before.

The Old Man walked into her field of view, but he was not alone.

Soon she was surrounded by several creatures, and they were talking, or at least she thought they were talking. Then it felt like they were arguing – about her!

Two of the creatures were tall feathered things, half human and half owl, and one was pink, the other blue. There was a short, squat gray blob that had tentacled hands and reminded her of cow manure lying flat in a field, and this creature was gesticulating at her, its voice a menacing collection of clicks and growls that almost sounded like rocks tumbling down a hillside.

And then there was the white man – who was not a man. He was too tall to be human, his skin pure white, so too white to be human, yet in almost every other regard he looked human. He looked like a statue, like something Michelangelo had formed out of the purest white marble, yet she saw not one hair on this creature’s body – but the strangest thing was his eyes, which were black. As impenetrably black as the darkest night. And this creature was standing well away from the other two types – as if watching, and judging, their behavior.

So she decided to watch this one.

Then she felt a presence in her mind. Indistinct, certainly, but definitely there.

‘You cannot hear their thoughts?’ the presence asked – just as the white creature turned and looked at her.

“No,” she said.

And on hearing that the other three stopping jabbering and turned and looked at her too.

And a cacophonous barrage of questions and accusations hit her – simultaneously.

– ‘Can you hear me?’

– ‘She’s listening to us!’

– ‘Of course she is! Wouldn’t you?’

But she soon felt overwhelmed by these streams of thought cascading through her mind – but then the first voice returned, now more clearly defined than the others. ‘You may filter these other voices out; focus on one. Mine, if you like.’

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Pak.’

‘Who are the others?’

‘They are deciding your fate.’

‘My fate? What have I done to them?’

‘I am sorry. I was incorrect in my choice of words. They are deciding humanity’s fate.’

‘Why are they examining me like this?’

‘Because you were one of the first. The first to manipulate time.’

‘And this is a problem?’

‘Not so much now as only a few have the ability, but in a hundred of your years, in your future even more will have the ability, and then trouble will begin.’

‘Trouble? What does that mean?’

‘Your descendants may alter the fabric of reality. The universe will be reordered. Established continuities will be destroyed, so several civilizations have gathered to observe, and to decide.’

‘Can you detect when I move through time?’

‘Oh, yes. Quickly. We observe in order to mitigate damage.’

‘The Old Man? Does he follow me for that reason?’

“What old man? I am unfamiliar.’

The others had stopped talking as soon as she had mentioned the Old Man, and now it appeared that they were flummoxed.

‘Who is this old man?’ the pink owl creature said to Pak. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘Do not involve us in your disputes,” Pak said clearly, and she heard real menace in this thought. ‘We have always been impartial concerning this race,’ he added with a sneer of contempt.

‘You are impartial when it suits you,’ the manure creature snarled. ‘Your thoughts betray your motives, and we have taken note of your hollow neutrality more than once. You will deceive us no more.’

And with that declaration the squat brown creature disappeared.

The blue owl departed almost as quickly.

Yet the pink owl remained, and now it walked over to Anna.

‘This old man,’ the pink owl said to her – and when she came through now she was very clearly female – ‘may not be trusted. His motives are personal.’

‘You know him?’ Anna asked.

‘I do.’

‘So, you lied to the others?’

‘We need time. Many forces are converging. Some are hostile to your survival.’

‘But you are not?’ Anna asked, now even more concerned.

‘We are not,’ she added, ‘but in your future, two internal factions will struggle for supremacy. One faction is quite dangerous, while one may yet prove beneficial to the future. Because of the evolving implications we have uncovered, this struggle between factions has come to the attention of many nearby civilizations. There is one very dangerous civilization, and they are far away. But I must tell you that in my time they are approaching your planet. The browns, the low creature you just observed, are trying to impress this group by exterminating all life on your planet before they arrive. We are trying to stop, hopefully without resorting to open warfare, yet we alone cannot fight these combined groups. We have neither the strength of arms nor the numbers needed to insure a positive outcome.’

‘Why did you bring me here?’

‘We identified you as one of the first humans able to travel using harmonic entanglement, and we have found that people with such abilities are often drawn to one another. By following you, I have two assume the old man is locating people with the same abilities, but we do not know who he is or who he is working for. We have left him alone for now, and prefer to monitor his activities rather than confront him. This may change soon.’

‘Why are you telling me this now?’ she asked, aware he was still avoiding her question.

‘It might be better for the children you teach if you were to stop seeing them. You are drawing attention to them, and that might compromise their safety.’

‘From that brown creature? From his people?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are there others who might pose a risk to them?’

‘Yes. There is one other race monitoring your activities. You must not anger them,’ the owl sighed gravely.

“How might I do that?”

“They dwell in the sea, and their interests lie with other creatures found in the sea, but even so, you must never interfere with them.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You must take great care if a sea creature approaches you.”

“You are confusing me. Why would a sea creature approach me?”

“There are some who might try to teach you.”

“Teach me? Teach me what?”

“You will know.”

Anna sighed, exasperated. “But you just told me not to interact with sea creatures? Why would I even…?”

“Once again, you should take great care if you chose interaction.”

“I’m still do not understand what you are trying to tell me.”

“Should an interaction take place, do not attempt a temporal shift, even if the creature asks you to. And should you give in to the creatures pleas, take care if an unknown creature approaches, something which to you will appear quite dangerous, almost evil, for if such a creature appears, you, or those around you, will not have long to live.”

In the next instant Anna was on the steps of the Marmorkircken, reaching out for the Old Man’s staff – but he was nowhere to be found.

Yet Neils and Freja arrived at exactly the same moment, and they recoiled in horror when they realized the Old Man had simply disappeared just as they were reaching out to take hold of his cape. Neils shuddered to a stop and his head snapped around, trying to catch sight of a man fleeing through the crowds on the sidewalk, but he gave up and turned his full attention to Anna.

“You had him!” Neils growled. “I saw it with my eyes! You had his cane in hand…”

“But just then…that was when he struck the pavement with his cane,” Freja added. “He disappeared in that moment, just when the staff hit the stone.”

“We must leave this place,” Anna whispered, interrupting them. “Now! Something has happened, and we must go somewhere private so we may talk.”

+++++

“What do you mean you were gone for a long time?” Neils asked, disbelieving what Anna had related of her recent experience – so far.

“I returned to Königsberg, to the fields where I played as a child, and I don’t know how long I was gone but long enough to listen to three creatures arguing about the annihilation of all we know.”

“Creatures? What creatures?” Neils scoffed.

“I spoke with an owl, a pink owl. Very tall…why are you looking at me like that…?”

“You should listen to yourself, Miss Kant. In a field, talking to a giant pink owl about the end of the world. And there were other creatures there with you? Who were these creatures? Where did they come from? Do you know?”

Anna shook her head. “No, of course not, but I saw them. It is either that, or I entered into some kind of a dream.”

“But you were never gone from us? How could you have been gone for so long?”

“The owl mentioned harmonic entanglement. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Entanglement?” Neils Bohr asked reflexively. “Harmonic entanglement? Did the creature use these exact words?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

Neils sat and looked out the window, through the stained-glass windows across the way, and at the pipes of the massive organ within the cathedral next door. ‘So,’ he thought, ‘these are the words that describe the phenomenon. But…how does it work? And what does entanglement have to do with time travel?’

“Neils?” Freja sighed. “I know that look. What are you thinking?”

“Anna, what was that piece of music you played? With the passage of deep lows?”

“The Schubert piece? Ah, it is Der Doppelgänger, from the Schwanengesang.”

“What is it about? The music, I mean?”

“It opens in three-part AA’B form…”

“No, no! What is the story the music is trying to tell us?”

“Ah, yes…the Schwanengesang is a collection of 14 songs, the music written by Franz Schubert, but he found his way in the written word. You of course know what a Doppelgänger is, do you not?”

“Isn’t it a double of a living person, usually a supernatural being who haunts the doubled person?”

“Close enough, yes. Well, Schubert was a composer of the Romantic era, and such compositions rejected classical structures. Generally, the Romantics, whether in Music, Painting, or in Literature, tried to develop intense personal expression, the most intense emotions, and the expression of individualism and imagination over the collectivism found in earlier classical works. Think Beethoven and his soaring Ode to Joy, because this work is a rousing expression of the collective Will, whereas Schubert offers us the recollections of a lonely man in the middle of a dark night. The music opens slowly, in the lowest register, the motif – the stark B minor sequence you are referring to – is intensely emotional, if lonely, and it describes a man almost haunted by grief. This man is walking down a street well known to him, as he is walking towards the house where his true love once lived. In the original story, by Heinrich Heine, we learn that she has left the city and that the man is in overwhelming emotional distress, but as he comes to the house he is shocked to see another man standing in front of her house. He watches the other man for some time and recognizes the other man’s pain, the wringing hands, the downturned head. But then, in a rush of sudden awareness he realizes that the man is in fact himself. He is seeing his double, his doppelgänger, and Heine wrote: “You were so caught up in your own volition That you never noticed your world turning into a gray and twisted version of its former self.” In German literature, the doppelgänger is often employed as an omen of death, or a reflection of imminent mental collapse, but in Heine’s poem the man is confronting the demon-haunted dark half of his inner self, what the reader might understand as the half that drove this woman away, so the story has becomes a Liebesleid, a story of grieving for a love lost. Butt then, the sudden appearance of the doppelgänger blurs the lines between life and death. Heine wrote: “I shudder when I see his face – the moon shows me my own form.” Do you understand the context now? The moon, the man’s skin glowing in the moonlight? Moonlight, pale and cold, deathly?”

“Yes,” Neils said, nodding, “I think I understand. Would you be so kind as to play it for me?”

“Freja? Do you recall the piece?”

“I will need the music, but yes, I think I can play it.”

“Good,” Anna said, standing. “Well then, shall we go to the piano?”

+++++

And moments after Freja began playing the piece, with Anna and her brother placing their hands on her shoulder, they were back in Königsberg watching Anna watch the gathering of creatures – yet they remained unseen by the others. And it was obvious that Anna was having her own ‘doppelgänger’ moment – standing there once again, watching herself while she was watching the creatures in stunned silence. Neils thought it was like looking down a hall of mirrors.

But soon enough Neils was focused on the aliens, if that was indeed what they really were, and what they seemed to be saying. He was listening – but, no! He didn’t hear anything, at least not a single spoken word, yet he was indeed hearing their conversation. Whatever it was these creatures thought came through to him directly – yet he heard their voices as doppelgängers of his own, as if his own mind was speaking all their words. 

‘That means words represent ideas and these ideas are being translated internally, so that means their thoughts are transmitted telepathically.’

And that alone was disconcerting enough, yet the subject matter under discussion was sobering, and devastatingly so. If their words were to be believed, humanity was being judged by not one of these creatures, but all three. And more civilizations, some not currently here, were doing the same thing.

‘But why? Why judge us? Have we done something wrong?’

But then the tall white creature reacted to his question and turned towards Neils, but it was obvious the creature couldn’t see anything amiss. Then he turned to the others and spoke.

“We are being observed,” the creature said.

The pink owl whipped around and stared directly at Neils, then advanced towards him.

A split second later they were at the piano, and all three were quite shaken up.

“What happened? Who were those animals?” Freja cried, clearly petrified by the experience.

“I asked myself a question,” Neils sighed. “And I didn’t take into account that the creatures were communicating telepathically. So, quite obviously, they could hear my thoughts, too…”

And a split second later a translucent blue sphere no larger than a child’s ball appeared above the piano, yet the enormously tall pink creature from the field stood within, still staring at Neils. The sphere hovered there for perhaps half a minute then it winked out and was gone.

‘Was the creature within the sphere real, or a sort of simulacrum of the other?’ Neils wondered. Whatever it was, it now knew exactly where he and his sister lived, in both time and space. 

Which meant this creature could find them, could come and go at will…

‘So? What does it want? Why did it come?’

But then Neils looked at his sister, for she had grown still. Her skin was purest white, and she was no longer breathing.

© 2025 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, plain and simple. Thanks for dropping by. See you next time.