“If possible, we should take the people in there alive,” I said as we reached the door to the tower. Not surprisingly, it was locked. “Maybe the access code will work,” I said.

“Screw the code.” Carlos shot out the lock with a grenade, and then kicked the door open. We were greeted with an arrow. I spotted the shooter and downed him with a couple shots. We rushed up the stairs to the control room, and found a strange scene. A Pakistani man, presumably the double agent Ling had mentioned, was tied to a chair in front of a console. A Japanese man stood next to him. Dr. Paulus and two other whites were huddled at the main console. The giant 3-D computer display, with its wormlike image of the Earth’s trail through time and space, towered above them all. I had always found the computer display eerie. Now, it reminded me of our smallness in the scope of time: the whole of human history represented just a tiny fraction of an inch of that twisted trail. Yet, according to the theorists, what these few men were attempting could end eternity.

I kept my gun trained on the Japanese man. Carlos advanced toward Paulus and his two companions. I wondered if he would simply kill them and try to get information from the other two. Carlos did nothing of the sort. Instead, he said, in a cheerful but chilling tone, “G’day gentlemen. I’m Dr. Wrzniewski, and this is my friend, Ted Flockman. I heard you’re plannin’ to rewrite the history books. Seein’ as the new editions won’t include me, I have to make sure that your planned unhappenings don’t happen. So, I’d appreciate it if you all raised your hands. DROP THAT CHEESY PEN PISTOL! And step away from the console. Thank you.”

The operators had complied, but I didn’t believe for a moment that they were really giving up. There was a series of meaningful glances between Paulus and his loyal colleagues. The man on his right nodded visibly. I spoke to the Pakistani: “How do we stop the—?”

Before I could finish my question, the Pakistani blurted out, “First of all, don’t let them—” While I was distracted, the Japanese man drew a concealed sword and plunged it into the Pakistani’s neck. I shot him dead before he could come after me. Another man drew a miniature rail gun. At least, he was beginning to draw when Carlos blew his head off. There was a spray of crystal shards and electrical sparks as the metal arrows bored through the 3-D display. Paulus reached down the back of his wheelchair and pulled out a small rocket launcher. Before he could fire, Carlos rushed in, disarmed him and threw him out of his chair for good measure.

Meanwhile, the last terrorist standing lunged for a green button on the end of the console. I knocked him down with one shot, but he reached up to hit the button. I impulsively emptied the clip at him. He stopped moving, but his upraised arm remained hooked over the edge of the console. His finger was less than an inch from the green button.

I turned to look at Carlos. He was crouched next to Paulus. “Can we get any information out of him?” I asked.

“Definitely not.” The grinning physicist held a crushed capsule between his teeth. His teeth were stained blue, and his skin was already changing color to match. “Just goes to show: nobody kills Nazis like the Nazis themselves.”

I turned back to the console. Shimmers and distortions ran down the length of the 3-D display. Smoke and an occasional spark came from the bullet holes. The controls themselves had not been damaged by the gunfire, but the terrorists had done some careful sabotage. A number of buttons were no longer identifiable, because their labels had been painted over or scratched out. One large button had been ripped out. My gaze reached the large green button. It had seemed somehow familiar, and now I remembered what it was: the lockout button. The dead terrorists had truly done everything possible to prevent us from undoing their work.

“You’ve made a terrible mess of things, but you’re too late to make a difference. Our work was almost complete. The time bell, its occupants and its cargo will land in Russia, as planned, though it may land in 1940 or 1942, instead of 1941.” The new speaker was on the far side of the console; he must have dived to the floor when Carlos and I burst in. The man was none other than Julius Werner.

“Dr. Werner?” I gasped incredulously. “Don’t tell me you were helping them.”
“Do you think anyone would hope to change human history without my help?” Werner said as he came to our side of the console.

My mind still rebelled at the appalling reality. “But—you can’t be a neo-Nazi.”
Werner actually chuckled. “Of course I am not. And, please believe me, I never would have helped them if I thought they could actually save Nazi Germany.”

Carlos stared at Werner in incomprehension. His confusion quickly turned to rage. Even under his dark skin, I could see traces of red as he flushed with emotion. He yelled, “What the hell makes you think they can’t?”

“And what about the consequences?” I added. “Your changes will destroy all our lives. They might even threaten the universe itself!”

Werner chuckled again, this time rather nervously. “I understand that the original Nazis were doomed,” he said with utmost confidence. “Even if they had won, their empire would have quickly collapsed. Their fall was as natural and inevitable as that of an apple from a tree.”

“So why did you help the Ophites?” Carlos said coldly.
“Because I saw the positive changes the Ophites could bring about, and I hope you will appreciate them too. Think what history could have been like if, before being destroyed, the Nazis had taken the Soviet Union with them! Millions of lives would have been saved, and decades of misery, fear and oppression avoided. Think of it!”

Carlos sneered. I expected him to shoot, but instead he spoke: “You sound like a f*ing accountant. You act like life and death and freedom and tyranny were things you could tally up on a balance sheet. Well, there’s one thing you need to appreciate.” Now he roared: “MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS WERE UKRAINIAN JEWS!” Carlos shifted the rifle, so that the targeting laser shone right into Werner’s eye. “Now, either you start explainin’ how we can keep the Ophites her in the present, or your nose goes out you scalp.”

“I can honestly say that you can’t,” Werner said sternly. “There was an override button, but it would be useless now, even if I hadn’t disabled it. See that console, where the Pakistani is seated? If you look, you will see that the anti-matter generator has begun working. In about 3 minutes, it will have created enough anti-matter to power a temporal displacement. Once the anti-matter begins accumulating, the TDD no longer responds to the `abort’ button. If it did, the generator would backfire, and this facility—and possibly El Salvador—would be blown off the map.”

Carlos clearly didn’t believe him. There was a long, tense silence as they locked eyes. I finally broke the silence: “I think he’s telling the truth. Marcos said the same thing. So did Ling.” My mind raced. There had to be something we could do. One of the terrorists has given his life trying to lock down the console. That meant that there had to be something we could still do to foil the terrorists. But what?

Meanwhile, Carlos made his own decision “I’d rather blow myself up than let a crazy dictator overrun the world,” he said. He stepped over to the cylinder that held the molecular computer, and raised the grenade launcher. “This is what Ling intended. One shot, and all your work should go straight to…”

“NO!!!” Werner jumped between Carlos and the computer (as if his body were enough to stop a grenade). His eyes were wide with fear. He shouted in a shrill voice, and so quickly that his words almost slurred together. “You don’t know what you’re doing! Destroying the computer is the worst thing you possibly do!”

“Give me a worst-case scenario,” Carlos said.
“Worst case? Well, I suppose the worst thing that could possibly happen is that the TDD would create an artificial singularity that destroys the planet. And lots of other things could go wrong…”
“Sounds better than a universe-destroying paradox,” Carlos said. “Get out of the way now, or you’re gonna die.”

I pondered the console where the dead Pakistani was slumped. If I was interpreting it correctly, there was one minute left until the time bell would launch. Werner called out, “Ted! Don’t let him do this! He’s crazy!” I looked over my shoulder to see Carlos carefully aiming at the cylinder. My gaze turned to the main console.
“Carlos!” I shouted. “I know how to stop the Ophites!”

Carlos looked at me, but kept the launcher aimed squarely at the computer. I rushed to the main console and the particular panel where the three neo-Nazis had been clustered. The panel held a large keyboard, with a number of the keys rendered unidentifiable, and a screen full of arcane equations. I began pushing keys at random. The numbers, letters and symbols I typed appeared on a monitor next to the keys. “We can’t keep him in the present,” I explained breathlessly, “but we can keep him out of World War 2. If we just punch in some gibberish, we can throw the time bell off course.”

Werner suddenly rushed over. The suddenly athletic old man knocked me out of the way with a chop to the neck. I regained my balance in seconds, but not before Werner deleted the new line I had typed with a push of a single, blank button. As soon as he pushed it, he seemed to reconsider. “Wait a minute. The computer is programmed to filter out flawed equations. It would have simply ignored anything that you typed in.”

Carlos came up from behind and caught Werner in a chokehold. “That’s what I thought. But now that we know how to delete whole lines, we can really f* up the program.” He tossed Werner aside and began pushing the button. “Delete. Delete.” One equation after another vanished from the screen. Werner got up and tried to interfere, but I held him back. The other console showed twenty seconds until the launch. “Delete, delete, delete, delete,” Carlos taunted. “Hmm… delete, delete, delete, deeleeete…”

At that moment, the whole universe rumbled as the time bell launched.

We all became still. Carlos began to slump. The roar of the machinery quickly reached a crescendo, and then slowly died down. The screen printed, LAUNCH COMPLETE. I held Werner in front of the screen. “All right, it’s over. Can you tell when they landed?”

Werner squinted at the screen. “It looks like Carlos erased about 15 lines, which contained a lot of the fine tuning and some of the safety parameters. They should land in the twentieth century…” He sighed and shrugged. “Ballpark estimate, sometime between 1910 and 1970. They will have—have had a rough landing. The time bell may have exploded on impact.”
“I like that possibility,” Carlos said.

Werner shook his head grimly. “That’s not good at all. The bio-agent spores are not easily destroyed. An explosion could disperse them over a very large area. Many people might be killed. And, if those in authority recognized that they were bio-weapons, they would go to war with the presumed originator—say, the United States. Instead of prolonging World War 2, the Ophites could trigger World War 3.”

“The Ophites would do that themselves if they had the chance,” I said.
“I know,” Werner said in a hollow voice. He laughed bitterly. “How ironic! You two may have allowed them to wreak more havoc than they originally planned!”

Carlos turned to face Werner. “We’re not the one who let them loose in history with one of the deadliest weapons ever built,” he said in fury. He socked the older scientist across the jaw. “You’re the one who programmed the time machine. You’re the one who risked the whole universe for a better yesterday. Let ‘im go, Ted. I’m gonna waste him.”

I shook my head. “That won’t help. What’s done is done.” I had an uplifting thought. “Since we are still here, doesn’t that prove that they failed?”

“Not necessarily,” Werner said. “Our timeline may continue for as long as it takes him to complete his mission, then—poof!”

That seemed unlikely to me, but I wasn’t the one with multiple degrees in quantum mechanics. I was getting tired of the whole discussion. “I don’t care,” I said. “I just want to help Di.” I rushed out of the control room. Werner and Carlos followed. As I approached Dianna, she opened her eyes and mumbled my name. I fell to my knees beside her. “Dianna, we did it,” I whispered. “The time bell still launched, but it went to the wrong time.” I hope, I added silently.
Dianna smiled and nodded. Her eyes opened a little more. “Dr. Werner!” she exclaimed happily. “Were you helping us too?” There was a long, grave silence.

Dr. Werner broke it with a command: “We have to get her to the infirmary. Carry her!”

The Ophites had locked the doors to the corridor but I unlocked them with my key. My heart sank when we reached the infirmary. The neo-Nazis had plundered it before they left. The only remaining supplies were some bandages, a jar of painkillers, a surgical mask and a ruptured packet of blood that had been accidentally dropped on the floor. I was about to set Dianna down and perform some desperate first aid when I heard a series of crashes from the museum area. It sounded like low-velocity projectiles breaking the glass doors. I heard Carlos shout, “Tear gas!” There was a loud whirring and an even louder crash as some kind of vehicle smashed through the entrance, followed by a screech of brakes and a wooden crunch as the vehicle hit the pareiasaur.

Finally, there was crunching, thumping and shouting as men in heavy boots ran in after the vehicle. The Army of El Salvador had arrived. A mechanical voice shouted, “Ponga la pistola, por favor.” I heard Carlos drop the rifle.
Carlos sputtered a reply. “Me es, uh, Carlos Wrzniewski…uh…Ted, get out here! You know I can’t speak a word of Spanish!”
I set Dianna on the table and turned to go. I hesitated a moment, and then decided to take her with me. I walked back into the museum area with her in my arms. A dozen heavily armed men in combat exoskeletons and one tank-like Mitsubishi battle drone greeted me with silent stares. “Mi novia necesita un doctor!”

The mechanical drone pointed its guns at me. “Liberte el prisonero, por favor!” it said. It clearly thought I was holding Dianna hostage, and expected me to put her down. There was a dead neo-Nazi at my feet, and I wasn’t about to drop her on top of him. I stood in helpless indecision, while the machine said, “Liberte el prisonero, por favor, o tiraría!”

A soldier turned off the drone with a click of a remote. “Maquina estupida,” he said. He ordered his men, “Ayude la mujer.” While two other soldiers took Dianna from my arms, he spoke to me in English: “You are Ted Flockman?” I nodded. Several of the soldiers became visibly excited. For some time I had been a minor celebrity—now I would be really famous. I couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed. “What happened here?” the captain asked, with more than a trace of awe in his voice. He waved a hand at all the bodies. “Who were these people?”

“Some were part of a group of terrorists that hijacked a time machine. Others were Marxists trying to stop them.” Finally, I pointed to Werner. “He’s the only terrorist who surrendered. A few others may still be alive.”
The captain sent more soldiers to check on Dr. Marcos and the other Ophites. Then he asked, “Where did this time machine go?”

“It went to Russia,” Werner said. “They were supposed to arrive in 1941, but these two fouled up my calculations, so there’s no telling when they went to.”

Dr. Marcos turned out to be alive. She was carried out the front door. “We brought paramedics. We also brought someone to see you.” While we had been talking, an exotrooper had discretely left the museum. Now he came back, supporting a familiar redhead. I called Di’s name aloud and ran to her. She disengaged from the exotrooper and ran to me, or tried to. She staggered, and almost fell, but then recovered to meet me halfway. We embraced. Then, for the first time, I kissed her.

An exotrooper gently separated us. This time, Di did not protest. “She woke up an hour ago,” the captain said. “We brought her to help with the big Maquina. Our orders are to return her to the hospital as soon as the machine is secure. Hurry and you can go with her!” As I walked out, I was surrounded by soldiers demanding autographs. I barely got to the helicopter in time. By then, Di was asleep on a stretcher. I held her hand as the helicopter took off.

Dr. Marcos chuckled. “I bet you think you’ve won,” she said.
“The way I figure,” I said, trying to sound more cool and confident than I really felt, “your people must have failed. Otherwise, how could we be having this conversation?”

Marcos laughed. “It seems logical. I myself thought that this world might simply dissolve, after the Incarnate accomplished his mission,” she said. “But I understand the true nature of the universe. It is a fundamental truth that the world is little more than illusion to begin with—a crude effigy of the true world, cobbled together by Yaldabaoth. It is Yaldabaoth’s nature to cloud men’s minds. Even when his creation has been destroyed, it can live on as illusion in the minds of the unenlightened.”

I shook my head at her bitter outlook. It was hard to fathom how someone could be so hateful toward the world when there was so much good in it. I clasped Dianna’s hand. Her eyes fluttered. “Ted?” she said, sounding like a tired child.
“I’m here. Hush,” I told her. “You’re hurt. You need to rest.”

She persisted. “I just… wanted to tell you something,” she said, gazing steadily into my eyes. “I see it all clearly now. Everybody wonders what makes… everything happen, and whether it really makes any sense. But I see it now. It’s… it’s a Terrible Hand. Terrible, but beautiful and wonderful at the same time. It guides our fates, even if we can’t see it, even if we resist it. I see it… It’s beautiful… But it’s pointing the other way. I’m coming back, Ted. Back to you.” Then she closed her eyes. I held her hand tightly and wept for joy, thanking God for saving both our lives.

Six months have passed since that fateful day. Dianna has been out of the hospital for four and a half months. We got married the day she was released. She recovered from her head injury without going through any serious physical or mental problems. She still has several scars on her face, which makes her very self-conscious. I tell her she is still beautiful. Sometimes, I think she acts self-conscious just to hear me say that.

Carlos went through this whole ordeal seemingly unchanged. It turned out that during his sabbatical, he had taken a mail-order bride from the former Indonesia. As far as I can tell, he has been a faithful and caring husband, but he scrupulously avoids talking about her. He attended church with us several times, but soon dropped out. “I won’t say what you believe isn’t true,” he told me. “But I don’t feel ready to get involved in religion again.”

By telling international authorities everything he knows about the Aryan Ophites, Werner came out with nothing worse than a twenty-year prison sentence and the loss of his license to operate a TDD. Amazingly, the Association is still paying him as a consultant.

Three Ophites were found still alive in the facility, including Marcos. A survivor from Ling’s team was also found alive near the building. One Ophite later died of his wounds, while another committed suicide in the hospital. However, Marcos staged a remarkable recovery. Two days before she was to be transferred to a police facility, she and Ling’s comrade escaped from the hospital. I believe that she made a deal with Ling’s organization. This mysterious group has been investigated even more heavily than the Ophites, but no revelations had been forthcoming.

The TDD is currently off-line, but the time-travel business still looks very promising. The Association has replaced the 3-D display that Carlos shot up, and it’s taking bids on a new and improved control room door. (Carlos is opposed to the improvement.) Three new medics and some new field workers have been hired. Lou has been replaced by a former CIA agent. Carlos is very busy renovating the museum. Nearly half the exhibits were damaged in the gun battle, and several specimens were a total loss. We do have a new exhibit, however: Zarathustra’s bullet-riddled armor.

Of all the investigations being made in the aftermath of the Aryan Conspiracy, I have followed the search for the time bell most closely. The only tangible result of months of searching is a mass of heavy metal found at the bottom of a lake in Northern Russia. Some people believe that it is the remains of one of the posts on the corners of the time bell, but Werner doesn’t think so. Historical records indicate that the region around the lake was the scene of several plague outbreaks, but nothing conclusive has been established.

Sometimes, I still stay awake at night wondering what became of the time-traveling Ophites. At times, Werner’s theory seems far too plausible. Six years, or even sixteen, would not be enough to lay his ideas to rest. After all, it’s possible that the time bell landed twenty years early. Werner estimates that eleven Ophites made it aboard the time bell—more than enough to carry out their plan. If they arrived early, they could have settled down in some innocuous Russian village and waited for World War 2 to start. Intellectually, I know that it’s possible that those hateful men might change history and destroy my world, but I no longer seriously worry about it. I have already seen the Ophites brought down by the real God. I have faith that they will be similarly brought down in the past. When I stay awake at night, I now mostly wonder what unknown heroes had to finish the job I started.