piano player played as the diners enjoyed their lavish meals. The guests here, wherever it was, seemed to be an older, well-moneyed crowd and the ladies wore impressive jewelry.
An elderly couple drinking wine turned to Wayne. “Have a couple of these and you sure will, young fella,” the old gentleman said to Wayne.
“What?” Wayne mumbled, barely able to get the word out.
The old man raised his glass of wine to Wayne’s face.
“You tell him, George,” the woman giggled.
Wayne looked around and blinked slowly. He was sure this had to be some sort of hypnotic suggestion or hallucination.
Wayne went over to the piano player, “What are you doing here?” he asked him.
The piano man gave Wayne a funny look and responded, “Sir?”
Wayne turned around and bumped into a waiter holding a full tray of food. The tray tumbled out of his hands.
The waiter hurriedly cleaned everything up as Wayne fled.
Just outside the dining area, Wayne noticed a sign. It read: MARLO HENDERSON, 1937’S NEWEST SINGING SENSATION, WILL BE THE FEATURED PERFORMER ON THE NEXT VOYAGE OF THE HINDENBURG.
“Hindenburg!” Wayne exclaimed in shock. He ran over to a small round window and surveyed the view. There was nothing but water 10,000 feet below him. “I can’t fuckin’ believe this.”
A loudspeaker crackled, “This is Captain Moore speaking,” he said in a deep voice that most airline captains seem to possess. “Our estimated arrival time is ten minutes,” the captain continued. “We are ninety miles east of our landing site in beautiful Lakehurst, New Jersey. I’ll try and make it as smooth a landing as possible. Thank you for traveling on the Hindenburg.”
“Landing! The Hindenburg about to land!” Wayne was getting frantic. “This can’t be. Don’t they know this blimp’s going to explode? I’ve got to warn them.”
Noticing a steward, Wayne ran over to him.
“Look, man, this ship can't land,” Wayne ranted hysterically. “If it does, it’ll blow up. There’s a leak of hydrogen.”
The steward eyed Wayne from top to bottom and then asked him, “Sir, have you been drinking?”
“No, I have not been drinking,” Wayne snapped back. “Did you hear what I said? This. Ship. Must. Not. Land,” he panicked.
“There is nothing to worry about,” the steward countered. “Airship travel is the safest form of travel that there is.”
Wayne grabbed the steward and shook him, “Tell the captain. NOW! There is a hydrogen leak!”
“Sir, if you are not able to restrain yourself, I will have to call security.”
Wayne went to the window again and peered out. Land was fast approaching as the airship rapidly descended. Wayne started to sweat.
Wayne started to shake; he wasn’t ready to die.
He ran back over to the steward and yelled at him, “You must listen! Time is running out…this ship…”
A very powerful explosion rocked the ship. An instant later, a thin crackling noise sounded out and Wayne disappeared from where he was standing. As a spectacular fireball engulfed the airship, the Hindenburg faded into history.
Inside Dr. Hoffmann’s laboratory, Wayne reappeared in the time machine. “…THEY MUST NOT LAND…” Wayne yelled, but closed his mouth as he looked around and realized that he was not on the Hindenburg anymore.
“Ah, it worked exactly as I had planned,” Dr. Hoffmann exclaimed.
Wayne took a slow, long look around at his current surroundings, and wiped the dripping sweat off his face with his shirt. “I can’t get over what just happened,” he said wearily. “I thought I was on the Hindenburg and we, I mean, they, were about to land, and…”
“I know. The experiment was a success. A complete success,” Dr. Hoffmann stated.
Wayne climbed out of the time machine, feeling totally sapped of all his energy, as if he just run the New York City Marathon in record time. “Was that an hallucination?” he asked. “Or was I really there?”
Dr. Hoffmann started to write notes in her journal. “You were most certainly there. I purposely sent you back to that doomed airship to prove to you that, yes indeed, this is a time machine.”
“You had to send me to the Hindenburg? Couldn’t you have sent me to a ball game or something a little less dangerous? You know, if I was sitting in Yankee Stadium watching Babe Ruth hitting home runs out of the ballpark, I might have gotten the message.
Dr. Hoffmann put down her journal, “I did not think of that.”
“This is abso-fucking-lutley amazing, though,” Wayne said, getting some of his natural energy back. “You’re a genius, Dr. Hoffmann. Do you realize what this could mean? We could go back in time and meet some of the greatest minds of out time — Lincoln, Socrates, Julius Caesar, even Jimi Hendrix.”
“I have thought about that. Though not exactly those particular individuals.”
Wayne started to pace. “Hell, we could get rich, too. Go back and buy real estate at a fraction of what it’s worth today. The same thing with stocks,” Wayne said with a glow in his eyes.
“Wayne…”
“No, no, no, you didn’t merely build a time machine, what you really built was a money machine. This is better!”
“Wayne,” Dr. Hoffmann interrupted him.
“Yes?”
“It will not be used for that purpose.”
“It won’t?”
“No. I have other plans for its use. Can you be at my house tonight at eight o’clock?”
“Yeah, sure. But why?”
Dr. Hoffmann handed Wayne a piece of paper. “Here is the address.”
Dr. Hoffmann’s two-story brick house was in dire need of a paint job in a very middle class neighborhood. At five minutes of eight, Wayne knocked on the door. A few seconds later, he was invited inside.
The interior of the house was a mess. The furnishings, or what passed for furnishings, were so well worn and so outdated that they looked like they might have come from the set of a 1950’s television sitcom.
“Thank you for coming, Wayne. Please sit down,” Dr. Hoffmann instructed him.
Wayne was about to sit down in an easy chair when he noticed a thin, greenish substance on the seat. He carefully picked it up with his fingertips and saw what it really was-a moldy piece of salami. Wayne dropped the moldy piece of meat on the floor and sat down. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
“Did you know that I am German?” Dr. Hoffmann asked.
“You don’t have an accent.”
“I came to the United States when I was a small child.”
“Is this what you wanted to tell me?” Wayne said annoyed.
“Let me say what I have to.”
Dr. Hoffmann sat down on the couch across from Wayne silently for a few moments, deep in thought. “I was born in 1933 in a small village near Frankfurt,” she said softly. “By the time I was four, Adolf Hitler was in full control of Germany,” she continued, “ He controlled the government, the media, everything. My parents, being Jewish, had virtually no rights. My father was still able to run his small food market, though. He thought Hitler was simply another phase that Germany was going through and that he would soon be overthrown. He thought that Hitler’s talk of ridding Europe of all Jews was just posturing. But, just in case, he sent my brother and I here to live with our aunt. That was in 1937.”
Dr. Hoffmann picked up an old scrapbook that was laying on a small coffee table in front of her and started to flip through the yellowed pages.
She removed an aged looking letter from the scrapbook. “This is a letter that my father wrote to me shortly before my brother and I left Germany,” she said. “Dear Lisa,” she read from the letter, “You and your brother, Arnold, are about to embark on a journey. This journey will take the two of you to America, where you will be able to get a good education and live happily with your Aunt Rose until we can send for you. If something should ever
