Time slipped away on the far side of the ocean.
November bled into December. Snow dusted the fields around the small Ohio town, and Karl found himself living a life that would have sounded like a drunken lie if he'd tried to describe it to anyone in Berlin.
By day, he watched the sky, haunted by the memory of his own mad leap from the cliff, wondering whether the brothers would ever write back.
By night, he sang.
It had started as a joke.
He'd followed the sound of a piano down an alley near the rail yard one evening and pushed through the swinging doors of a bar that smelled of tobacco smoke, spilled beer, and fried food. On a raised platform in the corner, a group of Black American musicians were playing something wild and alive — syncopated piano, jaunty rhythms, notes that jumped where a proper European melody would have walked.
"Ragtime," someone at the bar had called it.
"Sounds like that new jazzy noise," another had muttered.
To Karl's ears, it sounded like freedom with bad manners.
He bought a bottle, smiled his most disarming German smile, and somehow ended up at the band's table. His English was broken, their German nonexistent, but money, flattery, and his naturally ridiculous charisma did the rest.
One thing led to another, and before he knew it, he was standing beside the piano, belting out improvised lyrics in a surprisingly rich baritone:
> "I am a short man, from a far-off land,
with a big loud voice and very small hands—
if the Prince don't pay me, I'll join a cowboy band—
and still end up buying all the drinks…"
The bar roared with laughter.
Turned out that years of negotiating contracts, shouting over factory floors, and smiling politely at nobles had done something to his lungs. He could project. He could phrase. And he wasn't afraid to look ridiculous.
"Man's got a voice," the bandleader had said, eyebrows up.
From then on, the band would let him sing a few numbers each night.
They introduced him as:
> "Karl from Ger-many — the little man with the big noise."
The Eternal Guards took their proper role as bodyguards… and failed to stay in the background.
Gunther nearly got into a fistfight with a drunk who called Karl a "tiny Prussian rat." The drunk's friends joined. So did the Eternal Guards. Tables overturned. A chandelier swung. In the end, the band played louder, the bartender fired a shotgun into the ceiling, and somehow everyone went back to drinking.
Another evening, one of the Guards disappeared with a red-haired woman from the next town over and came back the following afternoon, dazed and smiling in a way that made Karl think he might have just created a future American with very German shoulders.
They visited a saloon with a back room for gambling where rough men played poker and lost wages in seconds. The Guards, used to strict Prussian order, simultaneously admired the freedom and considered the whole thing deeply irresponsible.
America, Karl decided, was a land where everything was too much:
Too loud,
too quick,
too careless,
too alive.
And through all of it, the color of skin mattered in ways that felt familiar and different at once. The Black musicians who welcomed him on stage were not allowed to sit at every table. Some patrons watched them with open suspicion. Others clapped hardest when the music soared.
Germany had its own cruelties. America had others.
Karl listened, learned, sang, and for a dangerous little while, almost forgot why he was there.
Then, one frosty morning in early December, someone pounded on his boarding house door.
He stumbled to open it in his nightshirt, hair sticking up.
A thin boy in an oversized cap stood there, nose red from the cold, holding out an envelope.
"Letter for you, mister," the boy said. "No name signed. Just 'For the German at the boarding house.' Paid in cash."
Karl tipped him, shut the door, and stared at the envelope.
No return address. No seal he recognised. Just his room number and a clumsy "To Mr. Karl" written on the front.
His fingers trembled slightly as he opened it.
Inside, a single sheet:
> Herr Bergmann,
Return to the site of your demonstration tomorrow at noon.
We wish to show you something that may interest you.
— An admirer of your courage
No signatures.
No initials.
The handwriting was neat. Smug, somehow, even in ink.
His heart thudded in his chest.
"They've come to some sort of decision," he muttered. "Either they're ready to sign… or they're about to show me something insane."
Gunther, who had been shaving in the tiny washroom, poked his head out, half his face still covered in soap.
"Good news, Herr Karl?"
Karl stared at the page.
"It's news," he said slowly. "Whether it's good or bad… that's what we're about to find out."
He folded the letter, slid it into his pocket, and looked out the frost-etched window toward the distant, snow-covered fields.
Tomorrow, back at the cliff, he would have his answer.
One way or another.
So with hope in his eyes, Karl awoke to the next day that was clear and bitterly cold. And before the sun had fully risen yet, he and the three Eternal Guards were already moving.
Ice glittered in the ruts along the dirt road as Karl clung to Gunther's back on their rented bicycle, the other two Eternal Guards pedaling alongside. Their breath steamed white in the morning air.
Today, all four of them were hopeful.
Hopeful this would be the day the brothers said yes.
Hopeful they could sign the papers, shake hands, and finally sail home.
They liked America, truly.
The loud music, the wild freedom, the strange food, the feeling that anything might happen at any moment — it was intoxicating.
But it wasn't home.
Home was Germany: families waiting, familiar streets, proper bread, and a future under a mad prince who dreamed of peace, clean air, and skies full of aircraft instead of smoke. Karl remembered Oskar's talk of a world where doors didn't need locks, where rivers were safe to drink from, where people travelled more by air than by road.
He had shared those dreams with the Guards during long evenings. Now, those dreams pedaled beside him toward the cliff.
They left the road and pushed the bicycles through the light snow covering the winter fields. The bare trees beneath the cliff rose ahead, their branches like black veins against a pale sky.
As they drew closer, Karl squinted upward.
Two figures stood at the cliff edge, dark against the sun.
At first it looked like they were just standing there in overcoats.
Then the shapes moved.
"…Are they wearing wings?" Karl croaked.
Gunther slowed.
The other two Guards stopped entirely.
At the top, Wilbur and Orville Wright were not dressed for a business meeting.
They were strapping themselves into enormous gliders.
Huge silk-and-muslin wings stretched wide from their shoulders, cloth pulled tight over wooden and bamboo spars, reinforced here and there with tape, wire, and optimism.
Each brother had his own suit. They stood shoulder to shoulder, harnesses cinched, arms linked as if daring the sky to pick between them.
Karl cupped his hands and shouted:
"HEY! What are you doing? Are you going to jump? We can talk first! About contracts! About Germany!"
The wind shredded his words, tossing them away.
The brothers looked down and waved cheerfully.
"Herr Bergmann!" Orville shouted. "Stand back and watch!"
"You Germans aren't the only ones who can fly!" Wilbur added, puffed with pride. "Tell your Prince American engineering refuses to be outdone!"
Karl stared, aghast.
"Don't do it from there!" he tried again. "Start from a hill! A small one!"
They couldn't hear him.
The Wrights raised their wings.
"Ready, brother?"
"Ready."
They ran.
They leapt.
For a heartbeat, Karl's stomach went weightless with them.
Then a gust of wind pressed under the wings—
—and they were flying.
Not gracefully.
Not as smoothly as Karl's own glide.
But undeniably, absolutely flying.
Two wide shapes carving away from the cliff, side by side.
Gunther let out an involuntary cheer.
"They fly!"
Karl couldn't help a brief, admiring grin.
"Of course they do," he said. "They're stubborn , crazy and brilliant Americans. It's a national disease."
The grin died quickly.
At first it looked glorious: the silk wings catching air, the brothers gliding outward, proud and straight-backed.
Then the gliders' noses dipped a little.
Then more.
Then a lot.
"They're descending too fast," Karl whispered. "Too much weight, not enough control. The gusts—"
The big wings wobbled.
A crosswind shoved them off course, driving them toward the patch of forest at the base of the drop. Up above, the brothers flailed for balance, trying to correct.
"PARACHUTES!" Karl shouted, though he knew they couldn't hear.
The brothers reached for their cords.
Two small parachutes made of what seemed like silk burst open from their chests—
—and almost immediately tangled together.
The canopies twisted into each other, lines knotting in a heartbeat. Drag pulled unevenly. One wing twisted, then the other, then both.
The whole contraption buckled.
They dropped.
Not in a smooth glide now, but in a lurching, tumbling fall straight toward the trees.
Branches cracked like gunshots as they smashed through the canopy. Silk tore. Wood splintered. Something heavy hit the frozen ground with a thud that made Karl's teeth ache.
"RUN!" he bellowed.
Gunther grabbed his arm and together they sprinted across the field. The other Guards crashed through brush and snow behind them, boots slipping on ice, hearts hammering.
They found the wreckage in a shallow hollow beyond the first line of trees.
One set of wings lay torn and crumpled, its wooden frame snapped.
Orville was beneath it, utterly still, his head at an angle that told Karl there was nothing anyone could do.
Wilbur lay a little farther on, half on his side, harness twisted, coat torn. A broken branch pinned him awkwardly; blood stained the snow beneath him.
His chest rose and fell in short, painful motions.
Karl dropped to his knees beside him.
"Wilbur! Wilbur, can you hear me?"
Wilbur's eyes fluttered open.
He saw Karl.
For a moment there was confusion.
Then recognition.
Then a flicker of something like bitter humour.
"…We made… the wrong assumptions…" he rasped.
Karl leaned closer to listen.
"We made it… too big. Wrong fabric… not tight enough… wing loading… we misjudged… gusts stronger than we thought…" The words came in ragged pieces. "Thought… we could… beat you. Beat your Prince."
His gaze shifted toward where Orville lay.
"…Sorry, brother…"
His chest hitched once.
Then stilled.
Silence pressed in around them.
Karl bowed his head, throat tight. He wanted to say that, well at least they died for science, but such words tasted like ash now.
Behind him, one Guard crossed himself. Another murmured a prayer in German. Gunther let out a long breath he hadn't realised he was holding.
"They were brave," Gunther said quietly. "Foolish… but brave. They loved the sky. And they died for it."
Karl didn't answer.
A voice inside him whispered: If I'd shared the real suit, would they be alive? Or would they simply have found a higher cliff?
He did not know.
What he did know was this:
If the local sheriff found a German Dwarf, a stranger with three enormous "bodyguards" standing over the bodies of two famous American inventors, questions would be asked. Awkward questions. Questions that might end in rope.
Slowly, Karl stood.
"We were never here," he said softly.
The Guards looked at him.
"Herr Karl…?" one began.
"We didn't meet them today," Karl said. "We never saw this. We know nothing. For their sake—and for ours."
They understood.
But walking away from men who had flown and fallen felt wrong.
"Wait," Karl added. "We can't just leave them like this."
With no shovels and the ground frozen hard, they did what they could. They cleared branches and stones, pulled the broken wing cloth over the two bodies, then piled snow, fallen limbs, and rocks to make two low cairns.
Karl snapped a pair of straight branches, lashed them into simple crosses with strips of torn harness, and planted one above each mound.
He stood there a long moment, cap in his hands.
"I'm sorry," he said at last, to the cold air, to the sky, to the brothers beneath the snow. "You were going to change the world."
Gunther, standing beside him, nodded slowly.
"Maybe they still will," he said. "In stories. In what we build next."
Karl drew a long breath.
"Oskar asked us to keep their research from falling into other hands," he said. "So… we'll need to visit the workshop. Burn any drawings and notes we find. Nothing more."
The Guards nodded.
They said a final few quiet words, turned their backs to the improvised graves, and made their way down toward the road.
The cliff, the trees, and the rough crosses behind them stood silent in the winter light.
It was, Karl knew, the end of something.
And the beginning of something else.
They left two small cairns of snow, stone, and broken branches behind them.
Two crosses made of snapped twigs.
Two men who tried to fly.
And a silence that felt heavier than the winter sky.
Karl pulled his coat tighter and turned toward the road.
"Lets go burn that research," he said quietly.
Gunther nodded once.
"For Prince Oskar."
"For Germany," another Guard added.
"For… not going to prison in America," the third muttered.
Karl did not disagree.
The workshop was not far — a long, low wood-plank barn on the edge of the property, half surrounded by frost-bitten fields and piles of scrap lumber. In the far corner, a small shed held bicycles, props, and what looked like the skeleton of a future glider.
It was still the early morning of a Sunday.
No farmhands.
No assistants.
Only the crunch of frost beneath boots and the occasional creak of old wood adjusting in the cold.
Gunther tested the barn door.
Locked.
He looked at Karl.
Karl looked at the lock.
Gunther kicked the door off its hinges.
"Subtle," Karl muttered.
"American wood stands no chance against my mighty force," Gunther replied proudly.
Inside, the barn was a different world entirely.
Drafting tables.
Blueprints pinned everywhere.
Stacks of notebooks.
A telegraph corner.
Prototype ribs for wings.
Sketches of tail-rudders and early canard concepts.
Experiments with three-axis control.
Aerodynamic scribbles.
A new bicycle-powered propeller rig.
Even rough drawings of machines that wouldn't be built until the 1910s or 1920s in real history.
Karl stopped in the center, lantern held high, heart sinking.
"This…" he whispered, "is a future."
Gunther raised an eyebrow. "A dangerous one?"
Karl grimaced. "In the wrong hands? Yes."
He leafed through a notebook, saw equations and diagrams far beyond anyone else in America except these two.
His stomach twisted.
"We didn't mean for this to happen," Karl murmured. "Not like this."
The Guards shared a silent glance.
They knew the truth:
Intentions didn't matter.
Consequences did.
Karl closed the notebook.
"Oskar said their knowledge cannot fall into enemy hands," he said quietly. "Especially if the United States ever stands against Germany."
He exhaled long and slow.
"I'm sorry, Wilbur. I'm sorry, Orville. Your work is brilliant. Too brilliant."
He nodded to the Guards.
"Find lantern oil."
They worked fast.
Blueprint stacks piled in the center of the barn.
Loose papers stuffed into crates.
Models and mock-ups placed atop scrap wood.
Karl took one last look at the brothers' life's work.
And he whispered — honestly, earnestly:
"You would have made the world fly."
Then he tipped the lantern.
Fire crawled across the paper.
Then raced.
Then roared.
Within moments the barn was a furnace.
Heat blasted them backward as they fled into the snow.
Behind them, flames consumed decades of future aviation in minutes.
Karl did not watch long.
He couldn't.
He turned away.
They moved quickly to the smaller outbuildings — a toolshed, a parts storage unit, another where early glider frames rested.
A few matches.
A splash of lantern oil.
Each went up more easily than the last.
Smoke smeared the sky behind them like a guilty signature.
Karl felt sick.
But he kept moving.
By the time they reached the road again, the barn was a collapsing inferno and the smaller structures were spitting sparks into the wind.
Gunther lifted Karl onto his back; the other two Guards mounted their bicycles.
A ridiculous, frantic procession in the freezing dawn.
"Pedal faster!" Karl shouted.
"I am pedaling!" one Guard shouted back.
Gunther simply grunted and peddled faster through the snow.
On the way they grabbed all their things from the hotel, and soon they reached the train station just as the early morning passenger train was blowing its whistle.
Karl bought four one-way tickets to New York with shaking hands.
All four men boarded without looking back.
Only once the train lurched forward did Karl finally sit, close his eyes, and breathe.
He felt hollow, sort of relieved, but really guilty, and also victorious in a way that haunted him.
He pressed a hand to his forehead.
"Damn, I hope Oskar isn't gonna get mad at me for this," he muttered.
Gunther sat beside him, staring out the window.
"Do you think America will suffer from this?" he asked.
Karl swallowed.
"Yes," he said honestly. "If what Oskar told me in private is true, then their aviation will be set back years. Maybe decades. If ever we face them in war… this may give us an advantage."
A long silence.
Then one Guard murmured, crossing himself:
"For science."
Karl groaned and pulled his hat over his face.
"Don't. Just don't."
Gunther patted his shoulder.
"At least," he said solemnly, "we buried them. They died as pioneers. And now we go home. I'm sure Jesus would understand."
Karl exhaled shakily.
"Yes," he whispered.
"We go home."
The train whistle echoed through the cold Ohio morning as the four Germans sped eastward — away from the ashes of genius, and toward a future that none of them could yet see.