The Reluctant Executioner

Chapter 1: The Recruiter

A basement office that smells of burnt coffee and old paper. Blueprints pinned to every wall. A glass tank on the desk with a rabbit in it. The man in the chair behind the desk has not slept in two days.

Dr. Hart: You came. I didn’t think you’d come.

⟨Character 1⟩: You sent nine emails and a courier who touched my bell. Nobody touches my bell. What is this, a startup with no budget?

Dr. Hart: This is a time machine. The blueprints are behind my head. We need someone to travel to 1923 and kill Hitler.

⟨Character 1⟩: Kill Hitler. Save the Jews by killing one man with a mustache. That is the dumbest pitch I have heard since a boy asked me to invest in a talking dog.

Dr. Hart: It is not a pitch. It is a last resort. Every negotiation failed in the actual history we’re locked into. Millions die. Six million Jews alone.

⟨Character 1⟩: So build a bigger army. Build better weapons. Time travel sounds like a science fair trick.

Dr. Hart: The prototype is here. One seat. One jump. We have tested it on the rabbit, and now we will test it on you, if you sign.

⟨Character 1⟩: The rabbit is your test pilot. That is cute. That is really cute. Then let the rabbit go first.

Dr. Hart: It already went first. Three times. Each time it came back with a little patch of field dust on its fur. But the fourth time... Watch.

A hum fills the room. The rabbit in the tank shivers, then goes still. Its nose stops twitching. Dr. Hart opens the lid and touches fur that is now cold.

⟨Character 1⟩: That. That is why I never bought a pet. And you want me to sit in that tank with a rabbit-shaped hole where the safety should be.

Dr. Hart: The rabbit is dead because the field collapsed on a four-ounce body. A human body weighs more. I won’t lie. It’s a risk. But you don’t have friends, you don’t have anyone waiting up for you. That makes you the safest man on earth to lose.

⟨Character 1⟩: You checked. Of course you checked. You are not wrong. I sleep, I eat, I build websites, and I don’t want a single person at my funeral. Still not enough.

Dr. Hart: One more thing. The recording came from 1942. I want you to hear the voice that made me build this machine.

A scratchy tape plays. A baby cries, thin and high, then a woman’s voice in Yiddish whispers urgent words in the dark. The recording cuts off.

⟨Character 1⟩: Fine. Fine. I will go. But I am not wearing the goggles.And I want the rabbit’s fur to be a thing you fix. Not the war. The rabbit.

Dr. Hart: I’ll fix the rabbit. You fix 1923. Sign here.

At home, ⟨Character 1⟩ stands at the kitchen stove, his breath fogging the glass. He coughs, then straightens his back. He sets the timer for three in the morning, lies down on his sofa, and sleeps with the goggles on his chest.

Chapter 2: A New Page

Berlin, 1923. A beer hall packed with men in wet coats, cigarette smoke hanging under the lamps like fog. At the front, a small man with a mustache climbs onto a table and starts to shout.

⟨Character 1⟩: Five minutes of this and my ears will bleed. Great. The man sounds like a broken radio.

Hitler: We will sweep them out! The Jews are a poison in the blood of Germany!

⟨Character 1⟩: Big words. Small man. My gun has a clearer opinion than you do.

⟨Character 1⟩ shifts his chair. The pistol is cold against his ribs. He counts the guards: three by the door, two by the stage. He waits.

⟨Character 1⟩: When he comes down the aisle. Right there. Good angle. No one looks at the bald man from Bangalore.

Hitler steps down and pushes through the crowd. ⟨Character 1⟩ rises, pulls the pistol free under his coat, and clicks off the safety. The gun jams. He feels the slide stick like a locked door.

⟨Character 1⟩: No. No, come on. I cleaned you. I cleaned you twice.

A waiter carrying a tray of beer collides with ⟨Character 1⟩’s shoulder. ⟨Character 1⟩ crashes into a table. Steins topple. A man punches another man, then a chair flies, and the whole room turns into a soup of shouting, broken glass, and spilled beer.

Baker: Down! Everyone down! The brownshirts are swinging bottles, get the children under the bench!

Under the bench, a girl no older than 11 clutches a loaf of bread wrapped in cloth. Her mother crouches over her, and a small baby begins to wail. ⟨Character 1⟩ sees them.

⟨Character 1⟩: You three. Follow me. Back door, now, before the guards stop swinging and start looking.

Girl: They know our faces. They know my father’s shop. Why are you helping us?

⟨Character 1⟩: Because I am not a good man, but I am not that kind of man. Move.

He leads them through a reeking kitchen and out into a wet alley. Rain on cobblestones. The baby’s cry is the only loud thing left.

Baker: Thank you. God bless you. Take this bread. It is all I have right now.

⟨Character 1⟩: Keep your blessing. Bread I can use. My gun jammed. I will fix it. I will stay a few more days.

Girl: You are not from here. Why do you care what happens to us?

⟨Character 1⟩ looks at her small hands holding the cloth, then at the red brick wall of the beer hall, where the shouting goes on. Something in his chest feels like a page turning, slow and stiff, in a book he stopped reading years ago.

⟨Character 1⟩: I did not care an hour ago. Now I do. Go home. Bolt the door. I have a small man to catch.

Chapter 3: Cleanup

An attic room above a print shop. Late afternoon light through a dirty window. A desk, a chair, and a small man behind it signing papers. ⟨Character 1⟩ waits in the stairwell with a satchel against his chest.

⟨Character 1⟩: Two guards on the landing. One guard down the stairs. The satchel has a five second fuse. I have counted this eleven times and it still feels like a stupid idea.

He sets the satchel on the floor by the desk, pulls the cord, and runs. The blast takes the door off its hinges and throws him against the wall.

⟨Character 1⟩: The chair is empty. The chair is empty, where is he?

Hitler crawls from under the desk. His left arm hangs wrong, his hair is grey with plaster dust, and his mouth moves with no sound at all. He looks at ⟨Character 1⟩ and smiles, slow and patient, waiting.

⟨Character 1⟩: Can you hear me? Can you hear me? He can’t hear me. My ears are ringing too. What am I, a joke?

The stairwell is chaos. Smoke, screams, men stumbling blind. ⟨Character 1⟩ finds the baker’s father pinned under a fallen beam, and drags him free, and gets him three steps, and then the roof of the print shop comes down.

Baker: Not him! Get the girl, get the girl, leave me, I’m too old to run!

⟨Character 1⟩: No. I’m not leaving you here with this. Hold my coat, hold on.

The beam gives. It is quick. ⟨Character 1⟩ is left holding the baker’s hand, then not holding it.

⟨Character 1⟩: Oh. Oh, no. No, no, I was supposed to save you.

Girl: Papa! Where is my papa?

⟨Character 1⟩: He went back for the others. He was brave. Come. Come with me. The woods, then the river, then the boat. I promised him bread. I’ll get you the bread.

He leads eleven of them through the trees. And he does not look back at the burning print shop, and he does not sleep for two days.

⟨Character 1⟩: Well?

Dr. Hart: Hitler died in 1923, three months after your jump. Deaf and slow and dead. The camps never existed. The baker’s daughter is a widow with four children in Haifa. I checked.

⟨Character 1⟩: The baker is still dead. I did that. That is what it cost. I can live with it. I’m not sure I can be happy about it.

Dr. Hart: Most people can’t. That’s how I know you did it right.

At home, ⟨Character 1⟩ sets the blueprints on the kitchen table. He makes tea. He sits in the old chair by the stove, pulls his coat over his chest, and sleeps.