40. Berlin, 1989
“They can’t keep the wall much longer,” says the man near me at the bar.
They are not called taverns anymore, and they are not quite the same.
I woke up a year ago and am still learning much about the new world.
Very little changed decade to decade in the past. Since I’d buried myself, there’d been an explosion of innovation.
Television, radio, photography, telephones. I could turn on a television and watch something occurring across the world. I could get on a giant metal beast and travel by land in less time than a cart and buggy.
There are cars, aeroplanes, fast guns, denim pants.
Several wars, the latest of which led to a wall that cuts through Berlin. Berlin looks nothing like it did three hundred years before.
I knew I did not want to return to Paris, so I went east. I found trains and cars and moved with the humans across the continent of Europe.
The world I awoke in was nothing like the one I left.
Perhaps this is what kept me from dying. My plans were always delayed by some invention or discovery.
Once I understand how to travel by train, I will find a stake and drive it through my heart.
Once I fly in an aeroplane, I will compel a human to remove my head.
It took several months of constant feeding for my ability to coerce to return. I moved through the French countryside into Germany, killing and eating indiscriminately. Then I overheard someone mention the string of disappearances along the countryside, and I migrated to a larger city.
Berlin is divided by a wall that separates it into East and West. I’ve never seen something like it before. I long to investigate it, but that risks being shot. Not that it would kill me, but it would be suspicious if I walked away from that.
I learned of the wars that fed me. Battles happened in my field, the blood of the dead children the countries sent to fight for them keeping me alive.
I knew war. I was alive during the time of Roman conquest, of the rise of Christianity, of the countless left dead at the feet of others’ ambition.
But I did not understand the scale of a war with guns and bombs and aeroplanes.
No wonder the earth shook me awake. No wonder the blood was so despondent.
Humans moved forward in time but backward in civility.
“They’ve been saying that for years,” grumbles another man.
“Half a million people in Alexanderplatz is nothing to grumble at,” says the first. “And Honecker resigned.”
“So? They replace one man just so another can do the same thing,” the second scoffs.
“Hey! Turn up Tagesschau!” calls a man, pointing to the television. All the bars have them, though they typically play humorous TV shows. Sometimes they keep the news on, like now.
“This 9 November is a historic day. The GDR has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The gates in the Wall stand open wide,” the news anchor proclaims.
The bar erupts in too much noise, I have to leave.
I walk through the streets of West Berlin as the news spreads. All around me, the humans celebrate in the streets, raising their alcohol high into the air and cheering. It is hard not to become infected by their joy.
I sit atop a building near the wall, watching the crowds pulse and surge through the checkpoint. People dance in the street, others throw their arms around the humans they’d been separated from.
Would it last? Would it be as the man at the bar said, and nothing will change?
I could stay and watch.
Or I could move on.
I could do anything I wanted, and that was terrifying. Before, I would have to tiptoe around the suggestion of relocating. It had to be your idea, it had to be an area you found pleasing. There was much to maneuver when deciding where to go and why.
But you aren’t here. It is just me that needs convincing.
And that makes it all the harder.