She’s My Cousin
by Silvia Hines
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
A Century Earlier
Though I’d never been to Paris, I’d always imagined it to be more like an Impressionist painting than a real city. I felt that way the moment I alighted from my travel mat near one of the beautiful bridges over the Seine, as had been programmed for my trip. I could see the arches and stained glass of the famous cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris from here and felt relief at this initial success.
But there was no time to enjoy or reflect on the gorgeous amber-tinted Seine, the majesty of the bridges, or the way the light hit the slow-moving water. I had an agenda. I had to make my way to a particular café on the Left Bank where I hoped to find the small group of brave resistors I was seeking; then, I needed to find Rosa and somehow obtain a sample of her DNA.
As I walked in the direction of my destination, remembering to look purposeful, as though on my way to the market, I fingered the contents of the large pocket of my loose-fitting, print dress: a purse containing more than enough franc coins to survive for a week, my forged identity papers, a DNA kit, and the latest model nano camera, which would allow me to take pictures without removing the tiny device from my pocket. Finally, there was the photo of herself that my daughter Hillary had thrust into my hand when I departed. She must have thought it would comfort me to have her picture with me.
I followed the directions to the 4th arrondissement, which I’d committed to memory, and found the designated café rather easily. There was a poster hanging in the large front window that matched what we’d discovered through an intensive search: a scene depicting well-dressed Parisian women sitting at an outdoor table and smiling broadly, as though there were no war or occupation in evidence.
I entered the café and seated myself at a tiny, round oak table as far as possible from a group of uniformed men sipping coffee and conversing in German. When I noted they were wearing those grayish green Nazi outfits with the abhorrent swastika arm bands, I knew I should feel extreme hatred and fear, but I didn’t. The Anti-Angst was working.
When I tried to order coffee, the waitress said there was none and gave me a look that made me feel like an idiot. When I told her I could smell coffee, she added the words “for ordinary people” and gestured to the table of heinous men. How could I have forgotten the shortage of coffee I was to encounter and the various substitutes that were being used: chicory, acorns? I’d have to be more careful to avoid suspicion. I sipped the ersatz coffee I was offered and looked around.
At a table situated midway between mine and that of the uniformed men, only partially obscured by a large ficus plant, two women were talking quietly in French, both appearing to be in their twenties. I could hear well enough to realize some of their conversation was in a code of sorts. I waited patiently, and after about an hour the women rose to leave, waving at the uniformed men and smiling in a flirtatious way that I could easily see was false. I followed these women out the door and quietly approached them at a corner about halfway down the block.
Events happened quickly after this point and my memory for detail is shaky, as I was warned it would be. I was able to speak to the women about the resistance network by saying I was sent by some women I had met, offering two names we had uncovered in our research.
Still, the women refused to lead me to Rosa at first, saying Rosa was too busy to see anyone other than members of the network and new recruits. Since I hadn’t prepared a good reason for requesting a meeting with Rosa, I said I was indeed a potential recruit... if they would have me, I added, modestly. After some questioning, I convinced the women I was serious enough at least to merit an initial meeting with Rosa.
The next day, I walked into the room in which Rosa was to interview me and gulped. I knew for sure this person was my forebear, my cousin, and felt an immediate kinship with her. I was so busy checking out the shape of Rosa’s jawline that I didn’t at first notice her head of copious dark red curls, the other familiar trait.
When I announced my intention to join the network, Rosa clearly was skeptical. She said I seemed more like a member of the bourgeoisie, as she herself might have been before the war started, not like someone who could work for the Résistance, risking her life every day. It took the remainder of the interview time allotted, one hour, for me to convince Rosa to give me a chance at least to begin the training.
She may have been correct in her initial assessment of me, but I had the advantage of a substantial amount of specific information garnered, both in researching for my book and preparing for this trip, regarding the life of underground resistance workers of the time.
It turned out Rosa was a chain smoker, so it was easy for me to pocket a butt she’d discarded when she left the room for a moment. I debated within myself whether I might tell Rosa of the dangers of smoking cigarettes. I didn’t want Rosa to suffer from the yet undiscovered effects of cigarette smoking. But I knew anything I said along those lines would qualify as an act that could change the future and was therefore forbidden. I decided to follow the rules... at least for now.
* * *
Archives of Astrotranscendentalist Trips
Trip # 691, March 6, 2055
Alert: This trip involved an unauthorized act that may have consequences for future events and will result in a temporary injunction against future trips as well as a permanent injunction for the traveler involved, Ms. Susan Miller of Quincy, Massachusetts. The procedure for screening participants will be re-evaluated. Following is a transcript of the debriefing interview held with Ms. Miller:
Interviewer: You were told not to pull the alternate universe cord unless your life was clearly in danger. Yet you used it?
Susan Miller: Yes, I did. Rather, I tried to pull the cord, although I don’t believe it worked. I think I did the correct lucid meditation as I was taught to, but I didn’t feel the powerful shift that was supposed to result.
Interviewer: We concur that your effort did not work. But let’s go back, please. So you say you found this relative you were seeking?
SM: Yes, I did.
Interviewer: And what transpired between the two of you?
SM: She recruited me for the resistance group she led. It was the only way I could get to talk with her, the only way I could even get into the same room with her. It seemed safe enough. She told me I would be going for extensive training, and after that doing nothing especially heroic. I would simply pass messages to couriers and relay communications by radio, maybe assist the artists who were engaging in forging papers. No dynamiting bridges, no supplying guns to the partisans... Am I talking too much?
Interviewer: Please clarify. What exactly inspired you to pull the alternate universe cord despite the fact that your life was not in danger?
SM: Rosa Weil was my cousin. I felt an intimacy with her in just the few days I was with her. She was beautiful, and she looked so much like my daughter. Look, here’s a photo of Hillary, and here’s a photo of the person called Rosa; I took it with the nano camera I carried on the trip. You see? I knew she was my cousin without needing the DNA sample.
Interviewer: Please get to the point, Ms. Miller
SM: So I knew she was slated to be executed for her work in the Resistance. And I knew where and when that execution was to be. She was my cousin, and I could save her life! How could I not save my cousin’s life? She was a great and courageous woman, and I believed she should not be doomed. I thought if she lived, her work might cause the war to be over sooner and many lives might be saved. So before I departed, I left her a note.
Interviewer: And exactly what did this note say?
SM pulls an index card from her pocket and proceeds to read: “I have to leave now. I promise this won’t last forever, less than a year until it’s all over. Please stay away from the entire Left Bank during the month of January. Get as far away as you can. I can’t tell you why I’m saying this.”
* * *
Re-entry
Once the interrogation was complete, going back to my ordinary life went more smoothly than I’d expected. I was chastised for leaving the note for Rosa but, since such an act is not on the criminal code, I was allowed to go home and resume my normal life.
There was some muttering by the interrogator that I was lucky I hadn’t caused calamitous change in the structure of the earth, at least none that seemed apparent at this time. I was told that researchers were now hard at work to perfect the process of opening the cord to an alternate universe and then returning to the home universe. My interrogator added, as though an afterthought, that there was a new programmer at work on this project who seemed to be ingenious at solving the most intricate of technical problems.
I continued doing the work I love at the library, though various people, including Bob, had predicted that I wouldn’t last long at that job now that I’d done the astrotrans. But it turned out I’d been working there because I was happy with my work; I loved it, not because I was afraid of change.
Bob continued his family history searches, explaining that the AI programs were always opening new avenues of data, but I didn’t really understand what more could be gained. This would have been the end of the story had Bob not phoned me one evening to tell me of a perplexing finding.
“Don’t know how I missed this before,” he said, “but there I was in the same databank related to our family I’d gone through many times, and I found a record of a child born in the year 1955 to a Rosa Weil Goodman; the child’s name was Lucy Goodman. I searched going forward and found that this Lucy Goodman had a son born in 1990, Troy Goodman, and that Troy was the father of a son born in 2025, a Lester Goodman.
“Since Lester would now be in his thirties, I searched the current databank and found him to be a programmer working in the new Transcendentalism Trip Office. And, get this,” he added with excitement in his voice, “Lester is the director of a research team working on perfecting the function of the alternate universe lever!”
Could it be? Bob and I traveled once more to the trip office in the capital and made an appointment to meet with Lester Goodman, identifying ourselves with false names. Lester turned out to be a jovial, welcoming sort, whose head of red curls shook when he talked. He asked us when we wanted to make our trip. When we said we weren’t interested in traveling, he smiled, handed us a brochure, and assured us that reading this would change our minds.
We said we wanted to know more about his work on the alternate universe cord. He told us about a recent trip in which a woman went back to WW II Paris and had attempted, unsuccessfully, to pull the cord, which she’d felt she needed to do after performing an unauthorized act that could have had disastrous results.
His voice dropped to a whisper. “You’ve probably heard about this from the newsfeeds so there’s no need for secrecy. I might as well tell you. She left a note for someone she encountered warning of their impending death.”
“Really?” I said, my eyes wide.
“But you needn’t worry about that,” he added. “We were lucky nothing happened — the world was lucky — and now we’re going to ensure that, in a similar situation, the cord will always work, making the trips safer than ever.”
“Did anything unexpected at all happen as a result of that person’s trip?” I persisted. “Or rather, was there any effect of any kind: good, bad, or neutral?”
Lester insisted that nothing of import had resulted from the “ignorant woman’s” interference. Maybe some insignificant events we don’t know about yet, he conceded. He laughed heartily when he told us this, and it came as no surprise to either Bob or me that Lester’s prominent jawbone, which we’d noticed when we first walked into his office, became even more pronounced with his burst of energetic laughter.
Copyright © 2025 by Silvia Hines
