Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2013 (31 page)

I sat down on my bed. "You know," I said. "When you were me, did you have some woman coming back from the future and giving you advice?"

"No," she said. "Or I never would have dated that stupid son of a bitch."

"Right," I said. "You got to
make your own goddamn mistakes
without some stranger from the future butting in. You know? If you'd had someone turning up and yelling 'oh, don't date that one! He'll give you an STD!' you might have wound up dating someone who was, oh, secretly gay—"

"Yeah, don't date Roger, either."

"I figured that one out for
myself,
thanks." I glared at her.

"Right. I should have remembered. Sorry."

"Look." I tried to calm myself down. "You seem like you'd really love to go to Berlin in 1989. You have a time machine, so
why don't you just go there?"

"Because," she said, through gritted teeth, "I can't go anywhere that's further than a quarter of a mile from
where you are.
Which in 1989 is
Northfield, Minnesota."

"Why do you have to stay so close to me?"

"Because that is
how it works.
The time travel, I mean."

"Oh," I said. I felt bad for a minute or two, and then I said, "Well, my point still stands. This is my life. I get to make my own mistakes. And I would like it if you'd stay out of them."

She stood up and walked to the door. Just before she left, she turned back. She looked like she was trying to hold back tears, but she smiled at me and said, "You're doing a good job of standing up for yourself. Try to use some of those assertiveness skills with Mom sometime. It would be good for both of you."

Erich Honecker was voted out of office by the Politburo on October 18th.

At that point, I started to think that maybe Crazy Meg was right.

You in the future, reading this, are probably thinking,
MAYBE
she was right?
MAYBE?
But you have to realize that what was about to happen wasn't nearly as clear in October of 1989. I'd signed up for German 1 on impulse (I hadn't said anything to Meg about that when she'd visited, because I was too pissed off about what she'd said about my boyfriend). We spent some time in class discussing current
events. On October 19th, one of my classmates said, "I can actually believe that the Berlin Wall is going to fall within my lifetime."

Within my lifetime.
Not, you know,
early next month.

Erich Honecker's resignation did not persuade me to run out and buy a ticket. I did go find out how much a ticket to Berlin would cost, but it was a lot more than I had in my bank account, and where the hell was I going to sleep once I got to Germany, anyway? The whole thing just seemed crazy once I was actually sitting in the travel agency office. I apologized for wasting the agent's time and left.

And then I went home and dumped Peter, because really, if Meg was right about Honecker, she was probably right about the STD.

On the first of November, I started watching for Meg, but she didn't come.

She didn't come on the second, either. I spent hours sitting around the student center, figuring that would make me easy to find. I tried the library. I tried the computer center, in case there was something about the time travel magic that meant she couldn't come to the same place twice.

Meg hadn't told me what time on the 9th the Wall was going to fall (and really, what did she mean,
fall?
It was a huge, solidly built, thoroughly reinforced wall; even an earthquake was unlikely to make much of a dent in it), but if I flew on the 7th, even with delays I ought to be there in time to see it. The 9th was going to be a Thursday, so I decided that it made sense to just stay until Sunday, the 12th.

I mean, that's what
would
make sense, if I went.

My parents expected me to call on Sundays. I could call them on the 4th and tell them that the 12th was going to be a really busy day for me and I might not call until late, or even Monday. They wouldn't even have to know I'd been to West Germany until I'd come back.

The cheapest way to get to Berlin turned out to be convoluted: I had to fly from Minneapolis to Newark, Newark to Rome, and then Rome to Berlin. "I'm going to think about it," I said.

The travel agent looked at me, disappointed. "You should know that this is a really good fare and it won't last long. If you think for more than an hour or two it will probably be gone. That's how international fares work."

"Oh," I said, daunted.

"The fare if you fly KLM is more than twice as much."

It was $557.35 once you'd added the taxes and fees and so on. That didn't seem cheap to me, but when I considered how much the Paris program had cost... "Can you tell me where the cheapest place is to stay in West Berlin?"

"There are youth hostels that charge about six dollars a night. In Deutsch Marks, of course. Have you ever traveled internationally before?"

"No."

"If you don't mind my asking, why are you so eager to go to West Berlin right now? There are many more beautiful cities in West Germany you could visit."

"I have a premonition that the Wall is going to fall next week," I said, wondering how crazy it would sound to say it out loud.

"Next
week?"
The travel agent raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. "Well, if you're right, that should be really exciting. If you're wrong... I don't think international travel is ever wasted." She smiled. "Do you want the ticket?"

Five hundred and fifty-seven dollars and thirty-five cents.
I swallowed hard, but what was stopping me wasn't really putting the charge on my credit card, it was explaining it to my parents later. I knew someone who had five hundred dollars of debt on her credit card just from impulse purchases at the Renaissance Festival. Someone
else who'd bought a computer. I'd asked around, you see, after that first abortive trip to the travel agency.

This is my life. Not my mother's.

I would have felt better if I could have gotten another pep talk from Meg. But I didn't see her outside the travel agency door, lurking. I was going to have to do this by myself.

I took a deep breath and put my credit card on the travel agent's desk. "Yes."

Meg turned up on the 5th.

"I brought money," she said. "You don't want to know what it took to get hold of a bunch of hundred-dollar bills that were printed in the 1980s, but I managed it."

"Awesome," I said. "I can deposit this in my bank account and use it to pay off my credit card bill when it comes."

She stood for a second like she hadn't quite heard me. "You're going to go?"

"I
bought my ticket."
I'd been carrying it with me (out of fear I'd somehow misplace it), and I pulled it out and laid it on the table. "I'm flying on the 7th. Good enough?"

Meg stared down at my ticket in disbelief. "You are
awesome,
Maggie!"

"Are you allowed to say that? If I'm actually you?"

She shook her head. "You are so much more awesome than I ever was."

"How much money is this?"

"It's a thousand dollars even."

"I'll be able to stay somewhere nicer than a youth hostel, then!"

"I have a neighborhood in mind, once we get to Berlin. I'll have to meet you there." She grinned. "I managed money, but coming up with a passport with a current picture and an acceptable expiry date would have been a lot more tricky. Have you figured out what you're going to tell Mom?"

"I'm not going to tell her until I get back. I told all my teachers I have a premonition that the Berlin Wall's going to fall, and I want to see it happen. If I'm right they'll all let me make up what I miss."

She grinned at me wildly, and handed me the money. "I'll see you in Berlin."

Meg found me as I waited for the U-Bahn—the West Berlin subway train. "Do you have a plan?" she asked.

"I have a guidebook," I said, showing it to her. "Do you have a suggestion?"

"Forty years from here I'd know right where to go. In 1989... Kreuzberg. That's the neighborhood near Checkpoint Charlie."

The streets of Kreuzberg didn't look like how I'd pictured West Germany. It was a poor neighborhood, with a huge population of immigrants. "Forty years from now, this is one of the trendiest neighborhoods in Berlin," she said.

I looked around. "Are you saying I should invest in real estate?"

She laughed. "Is it ethical to ask for investment advice from the future?"

"I don't know. It probably depends on how certain you are I'm heading to the same future you live in."

"Fair enough. Apple stock: buy in the early 1990s. It'll be cheap and everyone will tell you you're nuts. And then
stick with it.
It's not until the early 2000s it'll start bouncing back. Also, if you get a chance to invest in Google, do it. "

"Isn't Googol a one followed by a hundred zeros?"

"In 1989, yes." We stopped at a traffic light and I adjusted my backpack. "Of course, maybe I've stepped on a butterfly while I've been here and when you get to the future, everyone will use Amigas."

We found a clean, cheap hotel and checked in. "You can take a nap if you want," Meg said. "You'll be up all night on the 9th, so if you don't switch to German time it's probably just as well."

"Are you
kidding me?"
I said. "I'm in
West Germany
and you want me to take a
nap?
You'd probably have suggested I spend my layover in Rome napping, too."

"You had a layover in Rome?" she said, surprised.

"Yes, and I went and saw the Coliseum." I opened the dresser drawer and emptied most of my backpack into it, changed into a clean shirt, and then put my much-lighter backpack back on. Now that I'd committed to the adventure, instead of feeling terrified—as I'd expected—I was feeling
utterly exhilarated.
"West Berlin has sights. Do you want to come?"

"I have to," she said. "If you get more than a quarter mile from me I go back to the future."

I'll spare you the catalog of places I visited that day, except for one: the Wall. It was, Meg pointed out, our last chance to see it that way. There was a spot with an observation platform so we could look over, and Meg and I stared across the border.

The Wall was shocking to look at. On the western side, it was covered in graffiti. On the eastern side, the tall buildings near the Wall had their west-facing windows bricked over, to ensure that no one tried to jump to freedom. There had been huge protests in East Berlin for days, but nothing we could see from where we stood. When we passed Checkpoint Charlie, Meg prodded me to take a picture of the sign that said YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR. I could have gone to East Berlin—they would issue a visa for a quick trip quite readily—but Meg had no passport, so we didn't.

The evening of the 9
^th
, Meg was jumpy, and kept looking at her watch, like she thought the Wall might collapse while she wasn't paying attention. "They aren't actually going to tear it down for another week or two," she said. "Tonight's when the border opens."

Meg checked her watch again while we were eating dinner. "The news conference is happening about now," she remarked.

"Is this something we can watch?"

"No. It'll be aired on West German TV in a bit. Gunther Schabowski—the Politburo spokesman—is giving the conference. He's going to read a note he was handed earlier, which he didn't quite understand. It says revisions have been made to the travel laws that will make it possible for any citizen to exit at any border crossing. One of the journalists will ask him when this goes into effect and he will say 'immediately.' " She checked her watch again. "About an hour from now there will be wire stories saying that the Berlin Wall has been opened."

"Has it?"

"No. That will happen a little before midnight."

I looked out the window at the calm, chilly night, and wondered how dumb I'd feel about all this if she were wrong.

Back in our hotel room, we watched a soccer match. When it was done, the evening news came on. I couldn't follow it, but Meg translated: the lead story was about the news conference. They showed a clip of a man in a gray suit peering through glasses at a note, and then cut to images of the Wall, which still looked deserted. "This is how the East Berliners will hear about it," Meg said. "They're not supposed to watch the West German news, but everyone does anyway."

We put our coats back on and walked back to Checkpoint Charlie. West Berliners were gathering, though not many yet. From the east side, we could hear an announcement through a loudspeaker. The noise from the other side grew as the crowd swelled. There was chanting—
Open the gate, Open the gate.
No gunfire. Yet.

There was a sense of breathless anticipation among the West Germans, and more than a little fear, as the crowd on the other side grew. The East Berliners were
packed in against the gate, and if the guards opened fire it would be a bloodbath—the first casualties would be to bullets, the next casualties would be to the stampede.

Open the gate. Open the gate.

Beside me, Meg gripped my hand.

At 10:45, the East German border guards at the Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint gave up: they opened the gate, and let the East Berliners flood through. The other checkpoints followed suit within minutes.

Where you are, in the future, this isn't a surprise. Because November 9th, 1989, is for you the night the Wall came down. If you're my age, you watched the TV footage. If you're younger than me, you probably still watched the TV footage but you watched it on some archive, maybe on your pocket computer, maybe for history class.

I was there.

The first people through looked utterly stunned with disbelief. They'd been some of the first to the border crossing. If the guards had panicked and opened fire, they'd have died in a hail of bullets, unable to retreat because of the crowds behind them. They'd spent hours not knowing what was going to happen, and now—now they were grabbed in hugs and handshakes by West Germans who were crying with joy. They were handed glasses of champagne and mugs of beer and bouquets of flowers and West German money so that they could go buy their
own
beer and champagne and flowers.