"How..."
Paul stood up, tilting his head slightly.
"How do you know that name?"
Einstein only smiled, saying nothing.
Paul stepped forward and grabbed him by the collar of his worn shirt, pulling him close.
"Tell me, Albert Einstein. How do you know my true name?"
"All because of coincidence..." Einstein sighed quietly.
Night of Broken Crystals
"We are here because we have to change something, Paul." Werner's voice was sharp.
"You are right, you are right," Paul said, raising his own voice to match. "But if we act too hastily, we will fail. Without a doubt. That is what I need you to understand."
Werner shook his head slowly.
"Werner." Paul grabbed him by both shoulders. "Listen to me—"
They continued, neither of them noticing that the door behind them had drifted open. Just a small gap. Just enough.
Behind it, Einstein stood completely still, his mind working in silence.
Present
"Both of you," Einstein said. "Both of you are from the future. Werner told me as well."
Paul massaged his forehead slowly.
This just became a great deal more complicated.
A silence stretched between them. A long one.
"You asked me," Paul said finally. "So I will answer."
He raised his chin.
"Yes." A single nod.
"I am from the future. Werner is too."
Einstein nodded, not an ounce of surprise on his face.
Paul's voice hardened.
"But do not speak as though everything is already within your grasp. You know nothing, Albert Einstein."
He stepped back, turning away.
"Nothing of Werner. Nothing of me. Nothing of what is still to come."
He turned around.
"If you were in my position, you would do exactly as I have done."
"What if I told you that the weapon you fear so much is not a question of if? In the future one button could indeed destroy it. The world."
"It is a question of who."
A pause.
"Me."
Paul pointed at himself.
Einstein was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice carried no anger. Only something heavier.
"You have been playing with this world, Jaeger. Toying with it." He shook his head slowly.
"And you, do not speak to me of inevitability. You, with knowledge no human being was ever meant to carry, could have altered all of this. Every single part of it. No war, no pain."
He looked at Paul with eyes that had spent a lifetime searching for truth.
"Instead, you chose to use it."
"I did. And I would again. Because for me it is inevitable."
"Albert."
"In the end, both of us pursue a single goal."
"Peace."
Paul looked to the side for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts.
"Our methods, perhaps even our philosophies, are different."
"While you believe the world needs a hero to achieve peace, I believe it needs a villain. Someone willing to do what no one else can. Someone whose power is so vast that all conflict simply stops."
"I believe all humans are initially evil."
Einstein met Paul's eyes once more, stroking his beard.
"You are not."
"Not inheritly evil."
"You are an actor who has sunk so deep into his role that he became it. A human who took on a weight so heavy that it broke him."
Paul widened his eyes once more.
A pause.
A long one.
The longest one.
...
"You are right."
Paul's demenor changed completely. A sudden shift.
"The audience was so harsh. I had to," he whispered. His voice cracked, thin, like something fragile breaking.
Slowly, he lowered himself back onto the sofa. His body slumped.
Einstein's eyes narrowed. Yet his body eased slightly.
"The Project will finish either way, just as you said. It is an inevitability."
"Why do you need me? Only to hasten the process?"
Paul blinked. For a brief moment, time itself seemed to slow.
A distant memory surfaced in Paul's mind, distant yet sharp.
A cold white room. A single small window. Emotionless fluorescent lamps hanging from the ceiling.
They had a peculiar sound to them. A weird buzzing.
A large mirror was fixed to the wall.
In the reflection stared a pair of piercing blue eyes. They looked smaller in that reflection. Just like the fragile frame surrounding them.
It was a small boy.
Aged perhaps ten.
The boy slowly averted his gaze from the mirror and looked forward again.
"Frau Jaeger, please sit."
A woman, still relatively young, with dark brown hair sat beside the boy, tightly folding her hands in her lap.
"Frau Jaeger..."
The man in the white clinical coat adjusted his glasses. A stethoscope hung around his neck as his cold gaze scanned the paper in front of him once more.
He paused for a long moment, then spoke with worry.
"Your son possesses an exceptionally high intellect. We are talking about the top percentile."
"His cognitive abilities are...remarkable."
The doctor leaned back slightly.
"However, there are... deficits in emotional processing and empathy."
"Are you telling me my son has no feelings?!" Frau Jaeger stood up, her voice filled with anger.
"Please calm yourself."
"He does have feelings, though weaker than most. The tests indicate narcissistic and manipulative tendencies."
Frau Jaeger looked at the doctor, then at her son, before turning back to him.
"We are finished here."
"Come, Paul."
She grabbed him by the arm and led him toward the door.
"Frau Jaeger, please wait!"
The doctor stood up.
"We can help your son."
"He doesn't need your help." Her voice sharpened. "He is perfectly normal."
The doctor met Paul's piercing eyes one last time before the door was shut.
A shiver coiled down the man spine.
Present
Paul tilted his head. Just slightly. A movement so subtle most would have missed it. Yet it was there.
"And that was exactly what the smartest man in the world failed to understand."
Paul turned back to Einstein, suddenly with a broken gaze.
"I need someone who still remembers why it should never be used. Someone who can contain it."
"Why?"Einstein asked, his eyes wide open.
Paul looked at his hand for a moment, narrowing his eyes and pressing his lips together.
"Because I do not trust myself."
Then both men looked at one another. Einstein deep in thought and seemingly moved.
Paul tilted his head once more, just as before.
Slowly, the apparent sadness vanished from his face.
Ironic is it not?
The greatest minds often fail where ordinary men succeed.
Emotion.
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