Tobias Weiss.

Chapter 20

© 2014 by tore56789 (GOS) All rights reserved.

He never knew where the full consciousness went?  Or if it returned when he left the host?  Or if the person just existed afterwards, like half a gloveless puppet, having no fully cognate driver at the controls? 

As pondering out things was never a thing he was good at, he had long ago given up wondering about such matters.  But somehow he even doubted if Mr Albert Einstein could have answered such questions.  And would have very quickly too drawn to the same conclusion.  That the only way to undo the damage that was done.  Was to kill the one person responsible, before he invented the weapon –if unintentionally, that was to cause all the death.  No doubt, Einstein wouldn’t have believed such a weapon was possible.  Even though, could understand why, been only too well aware of man’s greed -even from his own understanding of the Nazis.  As their cruelty and politics, and belief they were a super race –if not God-like, had forced him to leave Germany.  

He would have seen too the major setbacks of atomic weapons were the devastation they caused.  And how sterile logical it would be, if only you had to remove human bodies afterwards; once you occupied a country. Letting everything else unharmed.  Right down to livestock, even the cuddly moggy, resting on some settee in some sitting room in some home, or Rover, the pet spaniel, napping in a basket in some kitchen.       

But what he would never understand, Tobias believed in a million years, was the pain he felt seeing his whole family dying before him.  And then lying dead flopped down on a kitchen table –as he strangely lingered there like a ghost, fading away by the second, unable to touch them, because his body had amazingly become out of phase with that time. 

That was how it had seemed to him anyhow, moments before in light conversation, his wife passing some platter of food to his sons.  And then everyone falling down dead onto the table, and his wife hitting her head with such force, he saw blood oozing out of her nose, before he had been pulled from that time altogether.       

But then he thought, as Mr Albert Einstein was a scientist, and a pacifist by his nature, he reckoned he would no doubt have preferred to re-educate this person –he had tried several times to kill.  By sitting him down, and talking with him, and trying to make him see sense, that all good is eventually turned to evil in the end by mankind.  Like his equation, that led Julius Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists in the New Mexico desert, to make an atomic bomb, under the Manhattan Project, which took hundreds of thousands of lives afterwards, when they were dropped on Japanese cities: Devastations, that the Great Man himself, hadn’t wished.

Getting out from the carriage, a man, twenties, offered his hand, which he accepted, to assist the woman onto the platform.  Down on the platform, he thanked him with a smile, and then enquired, “Where can I find the nearest taxi rank?”

“I’m going that way. I can point you, if you like,” the smile came at her, through handsome features behind shades.

On auto, he left the woman use her charm.  Hoping he hadn’t misread her.  And she wasn’t secretly a serial killer, with that revolver loaded and ready for action in her bag.  The man smiled, and tried to make small talk as they walked. 

Listening, he pitied women what they had to put up with, from the opposite sex.  Having tuned out after they walked away from the platform, he only picked up pieces of what the man was saying, as he tried to come on nice to her.  Like he was visiting friends?  And his job was a journalist back in New York, with his main aim to win a Pulitzer.  As he believed this definitely was in his future.   He knew the woman was smiling, listening, as he the driver was thinking – If only you knew sunshine, of the story you were walking next to right now.  That alone would win you the Pulitzer of Pulitzers.   He wasn’t sure if the smile –on auto, was the woman having part awareness of his thoughts –which meant some dormant consciousness of hers still perceived him.  But to the greater part was compacted and stored away.  Like how seldom used files are on a computer –till he evacuated the driving seat.   

The man felt jilted, when he told him, "No thanks," when he wanted to share a cab.  And he watched him afterwards, head lowered, walking towards another.