1200 words

[Title Undecided]

Even before the assassination attempt, the day had been going badly for me. My mistress left me a hysterical message informing me that she was pregnant. My wife intercepted the message. She (my wife, not my mistress) began to throw such a fit that she made our son cry, and I had to grab her by the hair and smash her face into the wall just to knock the silence back into her. After that she huddled in the corner of the kitchen, holding our son, both of them whimpering and giving me looks to make me feel guilty. I stormed out of the apartment, cursing all women.

That's when the assassins attacked.

A team of men and women, swathed in black and armed with riffles of a bizarre design, poured out of a windowless vehicle of rhinos aurous proportions. With a swiftness born of purpose and skill, they surrounded me and began to shoot. Although I had fought the French in the Great War, I was completely unprepared for this assault in the middle of an urban neighborhood during a time of peace.

I would have died. But another man shoved me to the ground and flung up some sort of energy shield (so I surmised from the sparks that annihilated the bullets at a set distance from us) between the assailants and us. He now began to return fire. Others, operating from positions out of my view, also began to harass the men and women in black. The assassins appeared to have no shield comparable to that erected by my guardian. They shouted to one another in dismay before pouring back into their metal behemoth.

The man at my side spoke into a wire protruding from his sunglasses. Another car, as sleek as the first was bulky, sped after the assassins.

"What was that about?" I stood and brushed smut off of my trousers. A part of me had already half-guessed; for there is no technology such as that in the 1930s of this world.

"You are familiar with the fact that there are other histories, parallel to our own?"

"Yes, of course," I said, my guess confirmed. Travel between them was, of course, strictly regulated. "But what has that to do with me? Why were those madmen attempting to kill me?"

"Those people either do not understand the parallel worlds or they willfully ignore how the multiverse works. They think that by coming here and killing you, they can change their own world. They can't, of course. But fools will try. My job is to see that people like you are protected."

I reddened, realizing that I had quite forgotten to thank him for his timely intervention. "And I am grateful," I said hastily. "Although bewildered. Why would they think that by killing an insignificant schoolteacher they would change the world? Unless it is because of one of my children..."

"Individuals have different destinies in different histories," he said. "For most people, that might be only the difference between being a teacher in this life and an artist in another. You once wanted to be an artist, didn't you?"

"Was I a famous artist in some other history?" I asked, flattered, for a part of me has always suspected that if I had simply had the chance I could have been a master painter. If my father had only supported me, instead of belittling and opposing me...

"I wouldn't know," he said shortly. Surely he did not need to be so adamant about it. "More to the point are the timelines in which you went into politics. Are you familiar with DeGaulle?"

I frowned in distaste. "The dictator of the French Empire. The butcher of Africa."

"In this history, yes. But in other histories, he's a normal, respectable citizen. Now say that someone from your world decided that millions of lives could be saved by assassinating DeGaulle before he ever began his career of world domination. Since you can't travel into you own past, they would have to travel to the universe next door and try to kill him in his childhood. But in that history, there is no French Empire, no world wars -- at least, not started by the French." He glanced at me ironically, as if there were a subtext he chose not to share. "And so even if he enters politics, DeGaulle can never become a dictator or the butcher of Africa."

"But if he is evil here, wouldn't he also be evil over there? The only difference being that over there history never gave him an opportunity to show his true colors."

He gave me so a keen look it made me shiver; then he glanced away. "A man who chooses evil in one timeline can choose good in another."

I knew I should leave it well enough alone, but there has always been a devil in me to stir up trouble. "Surely the one who is 'good' merely from a lack of opportunity to cause harm is not the same one who does good of his own free will even in the face of temptation."

"Either way, he doesn't deserve to die for the sins of another self," he retorted stiffly. "Even if that other self is an evil genius."

"I agree he should not be killed, not because he does not share the same essence as his other self but for the very opposite reason! After all, if a man is an evil genius, is not the fact that he is a genius more important than that he is evil?" I made a grand gesture in my enthusiasm. "Who are those miscreants to cast stones? Only great men incur great hatred, but are great men to be judged by the same standards as peons?"

I laughed at his expression. "Regretting you decision to save me? Now, now, my friend--" It was on the tip of my tongue to invite him up to my apartment. I admit it. The thought that another self of mine was a great man, even a great scoundrel, filled me with unspeakable glee. "My friend -- I forgot to ask your name."

"Jacob Abrams."

"Ah." I reconsidered my invitation. I'm not anti-Semitic myself, of course, but it's a conservative neighborhood. Instead, with a slightly forced smile, I shook his hand.

"Well, thank you once again, for saving my life. I must be getting back to my wife or she'll accuse me of sneaking down for a drink with the boys. I don't know about my other self, but in this life, I am sorely henpecked. Don't take it amiss if I say that I hope we will not meet again."

His smile struck me as slightly cynical. "It's one hope we share."

For a long time I could not help but fantasize about my other self, the one who had inspired so many assassination attempts. But, as the marrano had said, that other self was not me, and it was as futile to speculate about that alternate Pablo Ruiz y Picasso as it was to fret over other equally bizarre timelines in which perhaps Carlos Hernandez had never invented the light bulb or Spain had lost the War of 1597.