Earth, Too, Beau Johnson

We’d been waiting, both of us.  As we did, we had sex in every conceivable position we could think of, in every orifice exposed.   This is what you did when the world was on the ropes.  Once you procured enough food for the two of you to survive, that is.  Security comes into play as well---something strong which is as easily defended as it is to run from.  After that, well, what was there really?  Books, I suppose.  No computers though, not anymore.

It was a Friday when it happened, at just after six p.m.  One moment the sky is a clear and vivid blue; the next an infected bruise.  From out of the bruise comes a planet, and I cannot help but think of the womb.  I shudder as I watch the phenomenon, a chill running through the middle of me as darkness first falls then reigns.  Looking up, slack-jawed, I take in the planet which is all too similar to the one it now faces.  Random thoughts erupt in my head, a billion ideas I never come to voice.  I had the answer, however, and long before we were told the truth.

A parallel Earth, they said, in the weeks and months which followed---one that contained the same atmosphere as us, the same moon, each responsible for the initial quakes which rocked both planets those first few hours.  No shit, I thought, but this was before the war.  Quite efficiently, it sums up the human condition rather nicely---though ahead in mind, each of us always a step behind.  I mean, who of us cannot handle the truth once it is presented to us fully, with every angle bare?  The majority?  I cannot say, not for sure.  The minority sounds much more plausible.  What I believe is one step better.  Why Roswell?  What was the point?  The Endeavour Protocols?   Even the truth about the Oswald Principal proved more timid than devastating once it was allowed from the box; the only thing ever giving it power being their choice in choosing to keep it from us.  And all of these, each of them, are but drops in a bucket if you really wished to sort the mess.  And why?  Because ours has never been to question.  Fuck.  I could punch a wall.

“And you still think we can find them?”  That was Jenny, about a week after we’d met.  She was direct, no nonsense, and on about the other members of the resistance I’d been separated from.  It’s right, too, the way she is---the only attitude to have if you wanted to live.  At times she reminds me of a girl I dated in high school, but only in the way she looked; black hair just as dark, green eyes large and wide.  Their attitudes are what separated them, and for the better in Jenny’s case.  I honestly believe I would be dead now if not for meeting her.  

 “We’ll pick up the trail,” I say and pull her close.  “One more night here and then we move.  If I know Chuck, the breadcrumbs will be hard to miss.”  We were staying in a suburb, one of many I had squatted in since the war began.  This one was nicer than most, belonging to an older couple long since gone.  In the room was the bed on which we lay, a long short dresser with a mirror on top to the right.  To our left, tight against the wall, was a treadmill, dusted from lack of use. Beyond it stands another dresser which atop sits a TV.  The TV was dark, silent, and had been since our power had been taken away.  An Electro Magnetic Pulse was what they used, and they used it exactly when they said they would: twenty-four hours to the minute Hitler refused surrender.

She looks up at me then, runs a hand along five days’ worth of growth.  “We have to finish this,” she says and then straddles me.  I agree, and as she runs her hands through what hair I have left on top, I enter her.  Later, in another room, I find her crying in a chair in the dark, a lone candle by the door the only light to see.  Her legs are tucked up under her and the only clothes she wears is a red sweater she has stretched to cover her knees.  “I think I’m pregnant.”  Jenny says, and like the day the other Earth emerged, another billion ideas go off in my head.  I do not speak.  I only go to her and hold her and begin to cry myself.

A parallel Earth, yes, but an alternate one as well.  This is what they kept from us, prior to finding out for ourselves.  Where your Earth’s Allied Forces prevailed, ours did not.  With Normandy lost, Hitler continued his assault, the unthinkable occurring three years to the day our histories diverge; when the Reich managed to take it all.  Every Jew destroyed, he turned his attention to the black man and from there has ruled our planet as President for more than sixty years.  How?  As alternate as your planet is from us, we are the same in some respects to you.  With Hitler winning the war here, his scientists were free to continue their experiments in earnest.  Done, they gave him what he required to rule longer than even a God could comprehend.  And speaking of God, I’d like you to know I now believe he exists---and that he has the best damn sense of humour this side of Jersey!  I mean, take your President for example---Obama.  That shit is priceless!  And the Jewish contingent your world holds?  Can you imagine the little’s man face when he found those things out?  Oh, to be a fly on the wall then.

Not all of us conformed is what I’m saying; that pockets of us around the globe formed a resistance against his tyranny and had been fighting for equality since the second World War ended; my father before me and he before his.  Besides your President’s heritage, it is this which causes my belief; that we fought and fought and in the end were not left out to dry.  Your world, as inverted as it is to our own, coming as it did---this more than justifies what I’ve been taught.

“You ready?”  I ask, and Jenny looks to me from her horse.  She is wearing your colours; your red, white and blue.  Below her hips sit her guns, loaded and at hand.

“As I’ll ever be,” she says, and not for the first time.  It is a line of hers, and one I have come to know quite well.  The road to D.C. will be long, but from here it will be a straight shot into the heart of the city.  We hope to meet up with you there, and hopefully you will know us for who we are; that from our resistance to yours, we both want the very same thing.

Like a rabid dog, Hitler deserves to be put down, no matter what existence he resides in. I look forward to the ways your world will come to fuck him in the ass.