"The Long View" By S. Andrew Swann
Maxim came to his decision on New Year's Eve 1991,
while he watched the last official State broadcast from
across the river. He hated the announcer's clipped
German. He could have listened to the English version if
he flipped a switch on the set. He didn't bother.
It was, perhaps, the thousandth time Maxim had heard
about the rising tide of democracy in the East. The last
wound from the war was about to be healed.

The fact that the announcer could say that , and say it with
a straight face, was what decided Maxim.

He turned off the set, left the university, and drove his
twenty-year-old BMW downtown. There he bought a
black-market .32 caliber revolver from a homeless man
with an eastern accent. The man wouldn't take his
Federal currency. Fortunately, Maxim had some hard
Japanese money.
                            ***
All one country now , Gregg thought as he paced back
and forth outside the TDP building, waiting for the
professor. Reunification was a surreal thought. The East
had been a separate place, apart from him. The East
was evil, repressive. They spoke a different language
there.

Now, suddenly, everything he had known in his life was
turned upside-down.

We're joining together. The Russians are falling apart.
Palestine is talking to the Jews. God, how the world
could change in two years .

Gregg was normally not this reflective. He was more
interested in the fabric of space-time than the fabric of
history. It was Professor Maxim who had him thinking
along these lines. Maxim himself was a little chunk of
history.

An anachronistic chunk.

The Federal University, within fifty kilometers of the
border, was supposed to be a pillar of cooperation
between East and West. Professor Maxim didn't belong
here. Maxim had been a refugee, a former political
prisoner, a reminder of history people were trying to
forget.

Gregg's breath fogged in the January air. Maxim was
History, Gregg was Physics. There really shouldn't have
been anything to draw them together.

Gregg looked at the TDP building.

Except for this , he thought.
                            ***
The graduate student's reaction to Maxim's plan was
©1995 by Steven Swiniarski, all rights reserved.