"Shoot, John, what is that now, three times?" From his bed where he crumpled sheets of notebook paper, Edmund regarded his younger brother with a smirk. "Don't you think you should move on?"

"No, Eddie," John said, lifting his wide eyes from the pages from On National Socialism's Hold of Europe. "It's interesting. You said so yourself."

"Yeah," Edmund said, tossing a crumpled paper-ball into the wastebasket in the corner of the bedroom. "But there are plenty of interesting books out there. Why should you confine yourself to the same one over and over again?"

John shook his head. His brother didn't understand what a magnitude of power pulsed within the pages of this book. Never before had John been so entranced, so spellbound by black-and-white letters on a page. But they weren't just any letters, they were those who wrote the future, who molded the present to fit their design. It was happening in Germany already. The Chancellor Adolf Hitler was enacting National Socialism law after law. The book would be alive before he knew it.

Edmund made to get up, but collapsed beside his bed as soon as his feet hit the floor. Instantly John was at his side, picking his brother up gently by the elbows.

"Are you hurt?" he asked softly.

Edmund shook his head, spittle dribbling down his chin. John wiped it with the sleeve of his own shirt. "You're drooling, Eddie."

"Mama said I should be getting better if I rested." Edmund shook his head, laughing bitterly. "I've been doing nothing but laying in bed, and look at me! I can't even stand, Johnny."

His blue eyes melted to watery mush. "I can't even control my own body anymore."

John helped his brother back into bed, muscles sagging with the weight of his brother's despair. "That's what's in the book, Eddie. National Socialists, they prize science! They'll find a cure, they'll put an end to all suffering-"

"Aw, shut up, would you!"

Edmund twisted away from John so that he faced the wall. His shoulders bristled with the electricity of anger. John knew when he wasn't wanted, and so biting his lips, already salty with tears, he clasped his book to his heart and ran downstairs, out the door, and as far as he could.

Two Wehrmacht soldiers reclined at their post, knowing that it was only a matter of days before they would be relieved of their watch forevermore. The foamy explosions of mines in the bay below them was like a lullaby. The taller one's eyes fluttered, heavy with sleep.

His companion roused him by the shoulder. "Alfred, What do you make of that?"

Approaching the two soldiers with a sodden and lethargic step was a small horde of Americans, laden with packs and coats and guns looted from bodies. A breath of wind could topple them all like dominoes, but steadily they marched ahead like slaves to the gallows.

Alfred raised his gun, but his companion pushed it back down. "Don't shoot. Their hands are up. Let's see what they want."

The Wehrmacht soldiers waited as the Americans drew closer and closer. At last they came before the Germans, a few falling to their knees in the mud. Alfred prodded their captain, a man with a sharp face mangled with cuts, with the tip of his rifle.

"Was ist los?" Alfred asked him. "Why have you come this way?"

To Alfred's surprise, the captain replied in strangled but intelligible German. "Ich heisse Smith, Captain of the United States Army. I wish to surrender to you."

"Are these your orders, Smith?"

"Precisely the opposite."

Smiling, Alfred dropped his gun and stuck a cigarette between his rotted teeth. He nodded to the captain and his men. "Come with me."