No one had seen. Which was good, it would have been hard to explain how they got on board without tickets, toting late 21st century military hardware. Jared did not want to have to back up and have this conversation twice.

Anne had regained the weapon but not her composure, "For God’s sake, Jared! Why?!?"

His mouth twisted unnaturally as if it was hard to make the sounds. He finally spit out the name, "Johann Wiler."

"Who?"

"The devil. The rightful heir to the Third Reich."

She stared at him, speechless.

"He’s out there right now. A young carpenter’s apprentice in Bonn. He’s just as ambitious as Hitler, four times as brilliant, and not one tenth as crazy. He’s ruthless, meticulous, and cold, and he does not make mistakes, Anne.

"Without intervention, Wiler joins the Nazi party a year later than Hitler would have, but he consolidates it’s power twice as fast. He never goes to prison, just straight to the power center of Germany. World War two isn’t even close to being the war you remember.

"Wiler convinces Emperor Hirohito not to attack Pearl Harbor, and America stays out of the war for five years longer because of it. When Wiler opens the blitz in 1939, they rage quickly across Western Europe. But unlike Hitler, he doesn’t hesitate to invade Britain. They hold out no longer than six months into the war. After he finishes off Africa, he turns on Russia, and this time it’s a one front war. Russian casualties are in the hundreds of millions.

"Wiler’s Germany makes an ally out of the Ukrainians early on, and instead of death camps, he gives them weapons and turns them loose on the Russians. Together, they take Leningrad the first summer, and they advance all the way to Irkutsk by the middle of the next year. Meanwhile, Japan gets everything from Mongolia to India, and Italy brutally conquers the Middle East.

By the time the United States finally declares war on the axis, they are virtually alone. The U.S. struggles vainly to bomb Europe from Iceland, but there are jet fighters, used as interceptor groups protecting the whole of Europe. And by then, the Mannheim project is complete, the German atomic bomb. Two years later, after a bombing campaign that results in the loss of thirty million American and Canadian lives, the west capitulates. It’s the beginning of the longest Dark Age in human history."

Jared turned sorrowful, haunted eyes on Anne, "Hitler tries to exterminate what he sees as lesser people. Wiler succeeds. Hitler kills millions, but Wiler kills billions. Human dignity is scarred forever by what is done. He sets back the climb toward the Temporal Continuum by several thousand years."

A finely dressed waiter passed and took their glasses. As he replaced them with full ones, he noticed how pale the two were.

"Excuse me, madam. Are you quite all right?"

Anne smiled thinly, "We’re just cold, thank you."

The waiter turned to Jared, "And is there anything else I can bring you, uh, I’m sorry, sir, but who are you?"

For a moment, Jared’s mood lifted. That old knowing smile was back, lighting up his face.

As the waiter moved on, he confided in Anne, "I don’t know why, but this happens to me every time I jump. They always ask." He grinned, "I’ve checked around. I’m the only one it happens to every time. The first time it happened, I almost jumped out of my skin."

She was still reeling from the blow he had dealt her, and not receptive to the oddity, "So, you replaced one lunatic for a slightly less talented one."