Table Of Contents

Preface – English
001 – Chapter 1
001 – Chapter 2

Credits

Fragment Earth

Earth photo courtesy of N.A.S.A..

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A Running Naked Production
Copyright © 2007-2011 by Robert Skyler
All Rights Reserved
Made in America

Third Edition – First Printing
001-3.1 – 2011-06-07

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Fragment Earth

Conception

Episode 001

S.S.H.U.T.

“Identifying Evil”

English Version

Summary

An epic adventure into madness, this series of short stories explores the chains that bind the human spirit to the repetition of survival.

~~~

History, written by the winner rarely records the events described as they truly took place. Sanitized and simplified is their lesson's loss to protect or condemn us?

At the end of World War II, besieged in his bunker, his fantasy crumbling around him, Hitler makes his escape. Southward he flies for one last chance, one final stand and one more lesson history forgot to teach us.

Preface – English

What if people could think for themselves? No, I don't mean rotating the ideas around – once washed, then repeated – to fit like so many chickens in a rotisserie. But every time reaching for that spark beyond their reaction by asking can, I do better than this? And then doing it. Can you imagine how dangerous that could be?

This is a voyage through the space between your ears; a vast untapped lonely chasm of nothingness kept company by only the echoes of once intelligent thought, now long since past its expiration date. A journey that asks how, instead of what and why, when okay would have done and if, where because was just nonsense obscuring a truth so personal it could never be understood again.

Fragment Earth is the trip of a lifetime… see you on the other ear.

001 – Chapter 1

Flight

– Nazi Germany, April 28, 1945 –
It is a child's fantasy, these past few weeks in Berlin. This I know to be true as I have yet to meet an adult who can make sense of what is happening, but we understand; it is a pretended fantasy come true and here we are at the heart of madness battling with guns and grenades against artillery attacks and bombing raids. In the ensuing phantasmagoric transformation of my reality, my duties as messenger – driving me to exciting new places that months and even weeks ago were just my neighborhood – keep me lucid enough to stave off the creeping insanity that owns everything around me.

I attended school for years in a building which stands behind me today as headquarters of a dream battle against evil. The general store I regularly fetched ice from for my mother now lies ahead of me, dark and glowing from the low clouds reflection of firelight through its missing roof, eerie shadows pulse out of its windows with each new explosion's flash from the horizon frightening me onward. These are the forges from which all nightmares spawn and I imagine they will remain so for all time, but even though I am only a child, every new breath I draw confirms I could still be this dream's master.

With messages secure in vest pocket, I push on with my mission to the Fuhrerbunker. Running alleyways to and through the park I had practiced this very game in summers past. Ducking down side streets from storefront to debris pile, there is no one to be seen these days and even fewer around this time of morning, except for us soldiers. At least I think it's morning.

The tank I eyed to hide behind following my next sprint was not there yesterday. Its lifeless hulk standing as high water mark of the last Red Army incursion shivers me onward, for its prime position is ideal cover on my current path. There is no front line – not anymore anyway – there is this street that alley, a bunker here, a breach in the wall there and only a child's imagination with which to navigate this battlefield.

“It cannot be,” the Russians have come this close, “and so recent,” I whisper as I lean up against the wheel of their smoldering tank. “You have to think on your feet to stay in this game,” I remind myself, “only the quick live to the end of the morning in my neighborhood.” Survival is as simple as seeing the brim on a helmet before that helmet sees you. “Each time we push them back, their fire melts us further away; everyone I know is dead,” myself reminds me, “there is something to be said for that.” I never deny myself the privilege of reveling in my own mortality.

***

Arriving at the Fuhrerbunker at last, I crawl up into the messenger's entrance; where after I find myself in the distantly familiar silence and security of the outer garden of the Reich's Chancellery. Slowing my pace, my breath catches up with me as cautiously I proceed into the main yard where the guard there, a dizzy statue of a man probably drunk again tries to stop me. I yell at him, “get your hands off me! This message is for the Fuhrer.” He does not let go. I repeat myself.

He pulls me in closer, covers my mouth and says, “Quiet!” As he looks around, “you are too late.” I am not too late. I am never late. “The Fuhrer is gone.”

“Gone?” I echo through his hand – the word everyone uses for dead these days, no one ever dies anymore they are just gone. “Gone?” I repeat now free to speak, “what do you mean?”

“No, no, not that kind of gone,” he replies pointing toward the sky, as his finger produces a tiny object, a light aircraft lifting up over the city. “Gone,” he says, “the Fuhrer has left. He's fled south to Bavaria.”

~~~

“I did not think I could get you out of there in time,” I shouted over the blaring engine as I turned to look into that still silent reflection of an empty face, staring down into the glowing ruins of our once thriving capital city, now crumbling under the heel of the advancing Red Army. Drawn into his reflection, I can see within those eyes the haunting lost lust of a thousand conquered conquerors; even in defeat this man is intoxicating. “You put up a bold fight,” I appeased my desire, “but you cannot blame yourself with this outcome. You made all the right moves at all the right times. The fates simply were not with you on this one.”

“I could have done better, Hanna,” shatters the silence of my rambling.

“Oh, Mein Fuhrer,” I went on, “could this have been any other way? You will still be triumphant in the end. I am certain of this,” I droll as a dip in the wings brings my action back to the controls. Am I still talking? He could not have known I was barely flying this aircraft to see me now. What was I saying? Does it matter? Is either of us listening?

“I did better, last time,” he interrupts with astonishing zeal, rocking forth and back in his seat as he turns toward me. But squinting my assistance to his continuation sees only failure's familiarity subdue his gaze back into the silent judgment of the German countryside streaming by below us, as we fly low through our safe corridor to the south held open at the cost of so many lives. Is he worth it? I wonder for the briefest of moments, but no answer comes and I would not want one if it did. It is not for me to ask such questions. The silence strikes me.

***

Arriving safely, landing like some dream's end, the drone of the motor I thought might have deafened me to anything the Fuhrer said as on our approach he murmurs something I do not understand, and dare not ask him to repeat. The jostling of rough turf under wheel awakens me. My heart beats again. An S.S. guard runs up to the aircraft's side and opens the door. Hitler turns to get out, but stops. He turns back, looks deep into my eyes – almost through me – and says, “forgive me.” I freeze as babble fills my throat but say nothing with a swallow as he leans to get out his last words, “I will do better next time.”

“I am certain you will, Mein Fuhrer!” I reply in a gush, or think I did. I cannot say for certain I said anything at all… maybe he did not either.

~~~

Shuffled into my waiting armored car, we sweep off through the countryside. “The latest reports anticipate the Red Army could be here at any moment of unexpected weakness,” says the accompanying S.S. Officer to Hitler, “there is not a second to be lost!”

Feeling this weight, I press on even faster toward the best kept secret of the war and the only salvation I imagine might save me, short of fleeing west to surrender to the American Army. No, behind the front line borders of our Third Reich lay my fate; where I had unwittingly aided in the enslavement of countless souls; whose creation I feared would soon see us joining them, in their shallow graves, down the long winding dirt road we drove to our destination: an insurmountable horror of defensive positions no rational army could breach, to guard a prize no rational man would refuse.

The future of the Third Reich and the victory Soviet Russia bled for lay within this mountain fortress of ours. Its external defenses sat at the ready as we, with the remnants of our elite S.S. troops behind us – having abandoned their Berlin defenses – flowed south, leaving Berlin to fall to the Red Army Supreme Commander Zhukov's disappointment at Hitler, not being found in its ruins. But seeing this deception – only after the fact – Zhukov, will turn his forces southward toward the only body of resistance remaining in Greater Germany… us.

001 – Chapter 2

Fight

Looking south into Czechoslovakia at the mountain which stands as one more tedious battle in a seemingly endless line of maneuvers between me and the end of this horrible war, I remind myself, “total victory has no exception.” Like the Battle for Berlin behind us this Bohemian Redoubt before me was to be solely the Red Armies prize and I its only western witness.

My division with the U.S. 1st Army to the west tugged at my fruitless desire as reluctantly I watched the approach of our allies' army. Not one of a tactical nature I had to admit. They did nothing covertly and I as liaison embedded with them, to coordinate the eventual meet up with our boys on the River Elbe back in Germany, could do nothing to prevent this.

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