2022 HISTORICAL FICTION SHORT STORY CHALLENGE WINNER

Prize: £1,000

Finalists:

EJ Ferguson - American Civil War

Bean Sawyer - World War II

Sophie Kirkham - World War II

Krystal Bernhardt - Vikings

Luke H. Edwards - Vikings

Creshea Hilton - Vikings

Sarah Haggett - American Civil War

Elizabeth Liang - World War II

Marie-Louise McGuinness - World War II

M.K. Sholund - The Roaring Twenties

Ben Wakefield - The Roaring Twenties

Simon Rowe - World War II

SZ Shao - Vikings

April White - World War II

James Hancock - Vikings

Maria Dean - World War II

Honourable Mentions:

The following are writers who just missed out on being named a finalist!

Alex Sultan, Harry Taverner, Christie Noble, Joanne Deluce, Maria Achihaitei, Grace G Moran, Charlene M. Boyce, Lisa Verdekal, Peter Collins, Florie Kong Win Chang, Sarah Haggett, Αγγελική Α, Sama Bakht, Lizzie Lamb, Adrienne Hertler, Esther Byrne, Emma Kriskinans, V.H Dawe, Susan Israel, Hassan A. J., Rachel Eirinberg, Chris Morris, Mandy Lange, Rowan Bowman, Mikayla Hill, Albert Hillen, Hazel Turner, Annie R. McEwen, Gracie Eland, Scott Fisher, Felipe Orlans, Fiona Ritchie Walker, Justin Rulton-Fox, Julie Potter, Sophia Patni, Nimisha Kantharia, JL Theoret, Anita Goodfellow, Maggie Rose, Elmira Olson, Helena Argyle, Christine Procter, K. Antonio, Lakshmy A Krishnan, Mary Daurio, Peter V. Hilton, Jo Clark, Heather Wolverton, Sarah Royston, L.M. Lydon, Rosie Cullen, Juliana Marino, Bernie McCarthy, DK Watkins, E.D. Human, Mark Barlex, Marian Brewis, Rebecca Adams, SL Kretschmer, Jane Thomas, Lauren Cuppy, Lisbeth Tull, Malcolm Todd, Wendy Markel, Claudia Swan, Brendon Herman, Emily Wilcox, Killian Levy, Hank Lawson, Megan Geiger, K.L. Vincent, Caroline Walling, Sara Fanella, Zahra Jessa, Bobbie Allen, Riaan Hofmeyr, Caroline Jenner, Elizabeth Napier, Raymie Martin, Alex Clare, Terri Mertz, N. W. Razzell, Sharon Hancock, Rosemary Lux, Sue Cook, Jo Dinage, Aidan James Hurren, Abigail Williams, Catherine Busch Eberle, Pippa Brush Chappell, Beatrice Hussain, Jan McEwan, Eleanor Mallinson, Shona-Ellen Barnett, Irem Yesildag, Melissa Mordi, K J Laye, Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos, Duncan Pickering-Polstra, Janet Doyle, Lisa Millard, Angela C. Young, Christopher Corbett, Frances Zelenka, Wanda Pierpoint, Debbie Wingate, Jane Cammack, Allan Gaw, Shaun David Crowdus, Hilary Ayshford, Tinamarie Cox, Amalie Trollhaugen Wad, Cheryl Milligan, Pauline Ludgate, Nicky Moxey, Jill Batty, K. L. Parry, Marie Eriksson, Jacqueline Stirrup, Dave Thrasher, Kim M. Russell, John H. Van Devender, Abigail F. Taylor, Mark Grant, Jay McKenzie, Rachel Fitch, Nelly Shulman, Natasja Rose, Deidra Whitt Lovegren, LC Fitz-Murt, Gavin O'Donnell, Oonagh McBride, Dave Hanson, Nina Schwarz, Olivia Todd, Rachel Carrington, Joe Durham, Tom Sheehan, Aziza Azura, Daniel Kay, Jan Sargeant, Peter Hankins, Deryn Pittar, Sulaiman Mulroy, Jacqui Seddon, Denarii Peters, MH Pitcher, Virginia Crow, Stella Klein.

and the winner is…

David Klotzkin

My Dear Albert

March 4, 1940

My Dear Albert,

I hope you are doing well in the United States, and that your work progresses.   Poor Herr Professor Doktor Heisenberg has no one to talk to, and wanders the halls in a funk.

I must tell you about two unexpected arrivals here at the Copenhagen Institute that the situation in Germany has forced on me.

I received a package from von Laue, small and extremely heavy. It held his Nobel prize medal, embossed with his name and Alfred Nobel’s silhouette. The Nazis took away his professorship and threw him out of the Prussian Academy of Sciences because of his opposition to the Nazis, and now von Laue fears they will take his medal and melt it down for gold.

James Franck’s medal from 1933 is still here in a drawer. The Nazis let him leave, but he couldn’t take his medal.  I am glad he could smuggle it here where it is safe. 

It feels very strange to hold two Nobel medals without having won any!

The second unexpected arrival came with a pounding on my door on a rainy night.

Do you recall my niece Maja, from my sister’s house in Berlin, who made you play Eine Kleine Nachmusik over and over again on your violin?  She’s a young lady now, studying at the University of Berlin, and it was her at my door, with a gawky young man on her arm.

I brought them inside.  I was astonished she’d managed to make it all the way to Denmark from Berlin, and a little frightened that she’d tried.  My sister hints she is part of a fifth column working against the National Socialists:  an admirable sentiment but terribly dangerous.

She introduced me to her young man.  “Uncle George,” she said.  “This is Peder.  He is a friend of mine from the university.”  Peder smiled bashfully.  “I know it is a great deal to ask, but I wonder – could he work here with you?”  Words tumbled from her.  “He’s attracted some attention at the University…”

I didn’t ask any questions.  The world is full of refugees these days, and here was another one.

“Guten Abend,” Peder said, with an atrocious Bavarian accent. I wished him a good evening in Danish, and he just looked at me blankly.

“What is your field?” I asked him in rusty German.

“Chemistry.”   I thought I could always use another lab assistant, and if he attended the University of Berlin, he could not be that bad. I agreed.

“Please write,” Maja said to Peder, and hugged him very tightly for a long time. 

So that is how I came into custody of two unexpected things; a Nobel prize medal that belonged to Max von Laue, and a gawky young man that seemed to belong to my headstrong niece.

I hope you are very well.  With things as they are, we are all grateful that you are there and not here.

Yours,

George

March 23, 1940

 My Dear Albert,

It’s very kind of you to say that I should be recognized with a Nobel for my own work. But my drawer is already full.  

Truthfully, I take most of my joy in the science itself – like a certain ex-patent clerk I remember, dear Albert. 

In any case, I can’t get any work done now; we all hear Hitler’s speeches on the shortwave, and we know he is thinking about our beautiful open-sea ports. 

On a more pleasant note, that gawky young man of my niece’s, Peder, is a delight.   I gave him a room in the basement with a desk.  He first put out Maja’s picture, and then started rummaging through the Institute closets looking for equipment.  If I understood what he says with my rusty German, he’s trying to generate free neutrons with some sort of catalyzed electric current reaction.  It seemed implausible to me, but I know little about nuclear chemistry.  He had success at the University of Berlin and is excited to continue here.

I went to the basement lab to see his setup.  There was an electrochemical cell, with one palladium electrode suspended in a solution of exotic salts.  The apparatus was contained in a temperature-controlled bath, and the neutron detector positioned a few centimeters from it.

At the moment, the detector clicked with its background frequency, a few times a minute.

Peder flipped a switch connecting the current to his electrodes which were submerged in liquid.   Immediately bubbles formed on the palladium electrode as the water was electrolyzed into oxygen and hydrogen.  The neutron detector clicked like a little telegraph, three or four clicks a second.

Electricity is not supposed to make neutrons.  I didn’t know what to make of this.  These were tiny voltages and currents as well.

“I got this to happen at the University of Berlin,” Peder said. “Maja said it was good for me to leave.   The Uranverein are interested in anything nuclear.” He frowned. “But I don’t know how the neutrons are being created.”

I knew about the German Unanverein, the Uranium Program.  They were trying to develop nuclear weapons.  I shuddered.  Maja is quite wise.

We spent some time looking for an experimental issue that could explain the neutron clicks, but didn’t see anything.  It’s so unusual that it’s almost certainly an experimental artifact.

Still, I fell asleep considering this result and its possible causes.

In your spare moments, when you are not devising gedankenexperiments to pick holes in our quantum theory, perhaps you could consider it.  If you like, I can send you detailed sketches of the experiment and our estimates of neutron generation rates.

Yours,

George

April 1st, 1940

My Dear Albert,

Of course I understand that you’re immersed in your own work, and you do not have time to spend thinking about this.  Still, I will take the liberty of keeping you up to date on our progress.

Peder is more than he appears.

Yesterday I received a visit from a blustering oaf from our Foreign Ministry office.  He didn’t introduce himself.  “Herr Doktor,” he said, “the German Foreign Office called.  They wanted to know if we’d employed a young man from the University of Berlin within the past month.”

I didn’t like his manner and said no.  I’d never formally put Peder on the payroll.

“It’s important to keep good relations with our German neighbors,” he said officiously.  “If he is here, they need him extradited.”

“There is no one like that working here,” I said, and got rid of him.

I would think the world, even this oaf, would have learned by now there is no point in placating Germany.   But I am afraid Peder’s work has come to the attention of the Unanverein.

I went down to Peder’s lab to warn him to stay out of sight.

He’d set up a second neutron detector, powered from a second battery.  Before I could speak, he said, “look at this,” and turned on the detectors.  They clicked together lazily, at the background frequency.  He turned on his apparatus, and the solution started to bubble. Both detectors rattled, like beans shaking in a jar.  “I’ve checked my connections three times and rebuilt my apparatus.  The detectors still click.” 

He shook his head, bewildered.

I know two ways to generate neutrons.  There is natural radiation from the light elements, like beryllium, but there is no beryllium in his experiment, and it would not be driven by electricity in any event.

The other way is inside a star.

I thought about the ordinary hydrogen to helium conversion, in stellar fusion.  The neutrons produced were extremely energetic.  The numbers are astonishing; a half-an-ounce of hydrogen converted to helium produces as much energy as in ten million gallons of gasoline.

That calculation is credited to you, dear Albert.

But there is no star in Peder’s cold basement room in the Copenhagen Institute.

In the end I came to no conclusion.  “Keep working on it,” I told Peder uncertainly.

I knew the process he’d used to prepare his electrodes was very complex.  I asked to look at his lab notebook.

He hung his head.  “I haven’t had a chance to write it up.  I’ll do it as soon as I can.”

Didn’t he understand? For science there has to be good records.  Else how could it be reproduced?

I told him to explain it to me, then and there, but however golden his hands were in the lab, his tongue was lead, and he stammered and blushed and fumbled in the explanation, and I did not understand some of his German nor he some of my Danish. In the end, he promised to write it down.

These results are astonishing.  If you were only here to see them, my dear Albert, and bring your remarkable insight…

It is such a pity that the war makes it unsafe for you to visit us at the Copenhagen Institute.

Yours,

George

April 3rd, 1940

My Dear Albert,

I must tell you something new in Peder’s work.

He’d told me he’d increased his neutron yields by a factor of ten. I went down to the basement laboratory to see. He’d set up an experiment with a rheostat to regulate the current into the electrode, and measure that effect on the neutron emission.

I watched with him, with a stopwatch and microphone, analyzing the volume of clicks and the current. The clicks roared like a waterfall.  He inched the rheostat forward, notch by notch, until the clatter from the detectors was deafening.  Then one notch more…

There was a flash of light, so bright; something picked me up and flung me into the cinderblock wall! My ears rang in my head.  The tempered glass vessel was shards along the floor, and the oak table on which the experiment had rested had split in two.  The palladium electrode had vaporized and was entirely gone.

Later I looked it up.  The melting point of palladium is over 1500 degrees.

All this, and the battery was as fresh as if it was new.

This is marvelous, mysterious, fantastic data.  After my ears stopped ringing I could not sleep for thinking about it.

Yours, 

George

April 5th, 1940

My Dear Albert,

It is chaos here.  Terrible things are happening.

The Germans announced they will invade Denmark, and demand our surrender.

The Institute and the country are in an uproar.  Their greedy lust for Ledensraum will destroy the world!   Should we fight?  Resistance will lead to nothing but our deaths, but what will the surrender lead to?

This is a golden age for science, and a terrible dark age for humanity.

Please, Albert – you have some influence with your government.   We must end this war quickly.  Plead with them to stop at nothing to bring this war to a quick conclusion.

Also, my sister in Berlin telegrammed that Maja has not come home from university for several days.  She’s frantic.

Yours,

George

April 7th, 1940

My Dear Albert,

I have calmed down after my letter yesterday.  I want to see what you think of the sudden energy release I described.  Science is a wonderful distraction from politics.

Peder had something new to show again.  “Come see.” His eyes gleamed. “I’ve fixed the control – there will be no explosion.”

He’d again revised his experimental apparatus.  On top of the electrochemical cell he’d put a steel cylinder, with a piston protruding from the end. A linkage joined the end of the piston to a rotating wheel.  

It took me a moment to see what he’d made.  “A steam engine!”

He flipped the switch, and current began to flow.  Less than a tenth of a Watt of electrical power, but the solution in the vessel immediately boiled.  Pressure rose and the piston jerked to a start.  Valves opened and closed and the wheel spun.  The shaft of the wheel was connected to an ergometer, and I saw, amazed, that it registered nearly a hundred horsepower.

A hundred horsepower from a few tenths of a Watt!

He grinned at me proudly.

“That’s – sensational,” I said.  He’d wired the output of the ergometer back to the battery, so the engine would recharge it, like an automobile alternator.  

“How long will it run?”  I asked

“I’ve run it for days.  I think – a while.”  I pressed him on the calculation.

“If it is actually fusing water hydrogen…”  Peder shrugged and let the sentence hang, but I could fill it in. 

 It could run for years.  Maybe centuries.  Does the sun run out of gas?           

 I sat down, overwhelmed with my thoughts. For a brief moment I was not thinking about the invasion at all.

 “I will write it up, quickly,” Peder said.  “I am putting the paper together and will send it to be published, next week.”

“No!” I exclaimed.  I said more gently.   “No paper. The Germans can’t have this.”   I imagined unstoppable Panzer tanks roaring across Russia, Nazi planes circling endlessly overhead without need for fuel.

Then another vision – the vaporized palladium electrode, the billowing steam, explosions. Incredible energy with such simple tools. 

Peder’s face fell in disappointment.  “Write it up, put it aside,” I said.  “After the war, we’ll publish.  You’ll get a Nobel prize for this.” 

Despite everything, I was happy walking back to my office. 

I know how Abraham felt when he saw the burning bush, and that it was not consumed!

Yours,

George

April 8th, 1940

My Dear Albert,

My sister telephoned.  Maja has been picked up by the Gestapo. My poor niece.  Peder still writes to her every day.

Please, thank God that you are in the United States.

Yours,

George

April 12th, 1940

My Dear Albert,

This letter must be short. Things have fallen apart around me.

I told Peder what happened to Maja.  His eyes teared up.  “I must go to her.”

“How can you help her?” I asked.  “You’ll just be arrested yourself.” There was no stopping him.  He said he would get in contact with his group when he got back to Berlin, and they would help him.  How? I wondered.

It would have been cruel to mention his work, how dangerous it would be if it fell into German hands.

In the end I gave him the name of someone I knew in Copenhagen who might make fake papers, and all the money I had, and he left, with his engine still running.

The German boats entered the harbor on April 9th, and we surrendered.  They promised to let us keep our King and local government.  Now soldiers with guns fill the streets while the people hide inside.  Panzers rolled over the topiary in our lovely Fælledparken.

Our wonderful, free Copenhagen, is no more.

I watched the soldiers from my office window. Then my telephone rang.  The soldiers were coming to the Institute.

So soon? Why?

I remembered the two Nobel prize medals in the drawer.  I had to dispose of them immediately.  I thought to hide them, or bury them, but there was no time.   I placed them in solutions of aqua regia, which dissolved the gold until they were just beakers filled with yellow-tinted liquid.   I put them on a high shelf amidst a dozen others. 

Someday the medals may be restored to their owners but those Nazis will never have them!

I had expected a few soldiers, but they’d sent dozens, led by a sneering Oberlieutenant.   The very first thing they asked was if I had anyone working here from the University of Berlin. Then they made me show them through every room of the building.

My heart was pounding when I showed them the chemical storage closet with the two unlabeled yellow-tinted beakers.  The Oberlietuenant sniffed and said, “You must label your chemicals.”  

The very last room I showed them was Peder’s lab.

The engine was still running, piston going in and out. Everything was as he left it.  The only thing he’d taken was Maja’s picture.

“What is this?” the Oberlieutenant asked, putting his hands on the steel cylinder.

“It’s a vacuum pump,” I told him.

“Shut it off,” he ordered.  “It’s loud.”

I cursed myself three times for not insisting Peder show me the nuances of the experiment.  I did not know how to close it down.  “The experiment requires it be on,” I said.

The Oberlieutenant gestured, and one of the soldiers shot the glass vessel with his rifle.   Imbecile!  The bullet hit the tempered glass and ricocheted off the concrete walls.  The vessel cracked and steam filled the lab; then the liquid spilled out, and the piston ground to a halt.  

Angry at not finding what he wanted, the Oberlieutenat took his own pistol and shot the broken engine again and again.

“Now it’s quiet,” he sneered, and waved us out of the room.  They left, and I returned to my office soaked in sweat. 

I wonder.  Did they come to our Institute only to look for Peder? 

Did they come to our country only to look for Peder, having finally, perhaps, fully appreciated his experiments?

It is possible.  I hope he is alright.

I hope Maja is alright.

I hope my sister is alright.

And I hope you are alright, my dear Albert.

Yours,

George

April 30th, 1940

My Dear Albert,

I was glad to receive your kind letters, and I appreciate help from your old colleagues at the University of Berlin in finding out what happened to Maja, my sister, and Peder.  We’ve heard nothing.

Peder’s engine is ruined.  There is no lab notebook or any notes in Peder’s desk.  The only thing I found was a half-written love letter to Maja, which I put aside for when I see either of them again.

I’ll have to wait for him to return to make any progress with his engine.

I must answer what you’d said in your letter. There is no possibility of ‘experimental error’, or ‘equipment malfunction’ or ‘incidental radioactive alloys’.  Whatever was in his solution and on his electrode generated one hundred horsepower for days running off a small battery, and exploded powerfully enough to split an oak table.  It vaporized palladium!

Certainly, our interpretation could be wrong.  I am as humble as any experimental scientist.  But the energy was released in these experiments, in these configurations. 

Better minds than mine (perhaps yours, dear Albert) should explore the cause, but you.  cannot deny that these results occurred.   I hope someday Peder will show you them himself.

I am done with research for a while.  I suspect the Copenhagen Institute will close down soon.  We cannot work with these Germans here.

Someday, I too will find my way to the United States so we can argue in person again!

Yours,

George

August 28th, 1946

My Dear Albert,

It is a pleasure to write you once again from the Copenhagen Institute!  I am beyond overjoyed the war is behind us. 

Herr Doktor Einstein, I and the world thank you for your efforts in persuading your country to pursue nuclear weapons.  It was a terrible expedient, but the alternative was worse.

But may these bombs never be used again!

I was pleased to find those two yellow beakers in which I’d dissolved the Nobel Prize medals still on the shelf.  I precipitated the gold out of the solution with ferrous sulfate, and sent the precipitated gold back to Sweden. There they will recast the Nobel prize medals for Max von Laue and James Franck.

I still don’t know what happened to Maja, or my sister, or Peder.

The Institute is like a tomb.  The hallways had an inch of dust and the labs were full of trash. 

Now that I am here again, I will try to understand Peder’s engine.

I don’t think I will succeed.

It will require a first-class mind, a genius, to figure this out. A mind like yours.

I know you’d been embroiled in your own work, and then you were distracted by the war.   Can you spare a few moments now for this topic?  The war is over, Peder is gone, and the problem is beyond me.

But not beyond you, dear Albert.

Yours,

George

September 3, 1954

My Dear Albert,

I hear that your health is not as good as it could be.  I wish you a speedy recovery.

Something quite odd happened to me.

For a long time, I’d thought my sister, my niece, and Peder had perished in the war.  I’d given up hope of finding them alive.  There was nothing left for me in Europe, so I’d finally moved to the United States.  Not, alas, near you, in gloomy New Jersey, but in sunny Santa Barbara, which has a wonderful climate.

Yesterday, I was at the supermarket, and a woman in line looked very familiar.  I stared and wondered if I’d known her in Denmark.  I followed her out to her car, and I saw how much she looked like my niece Maja.

“Maja?” I called.  She started to turn for a moment, and then stopped. “Maja?”

 “My name is Jessica,” she said, without looking at me, but I could hear her faint accent.

“It’s me – it’s George,” I told her. “Your uncle.”

Then she did look. I saw recognition in her eyes.  “Uncle George,” she whispered. 

She made as if to step towards me, but then she thought better of it and entered her car and drove away.

I could be mistaken, I suppose; but maybe I’m not.  Perhaps she and Peder survived the war, and now live here in the United States, under assumed names.  In hiding.  But why?

Here is what I think.

Some people – I hope, most people – would look at the limitless power of Peder’s neutron engine and see a marvelous thing, a thing that could replace all the gasoline cars and clean up the sooty air of Santa Barbara, as well as bring prosperity to the whole world.

Other people – very few, I pray – might imagine the vaporized palladium electrode, the flash of light, the split oak table, and see that as a marvelous thing, a slavering demon that would do their bidding, a weapon worse than the fission bombs dropped on Japan, accessible to anyone with a battery.

A weapon that could light a sun on any city, and burn it off the earth.

Is that why they’re hiding?

It’s possible.

Yours,

George

September 15, 1954

My Dear Albert,

I do realize that my last letter was filled with ‘fanciful speculation’. I don’t need you to tell me that.  I’m not senile yet.  

You’re right. The simplest explanation is that I saw someone who looked like my niece, who was nervous about a strange foreign man like myself, and drove away.

Nonetheless, let me take my speculation further.

I’ve wondered, in the fifteen years since I’ve told you about this, why you’ve never been interested in the prospect of limitless energy from this mysterious process, or the theory of how it works.   You have rousing discussions with all sorts of scientists about all sorts of physics.  This experimental result should have had you fascinated – yet it did not.  All I heard from you, in your letters, was talk of ‘experimental error’, and ‘accidental inclusion of radioactive isotopes’ and so forth.

I ask myself why a great mind like yours would show no curiosity, and the answer I’m led to is chilling.

You are not curious because – you already know.

There never was a mind like yours for deep physical insight. Is it possible when I told you of Peder’s results, you knew how they came about?

Is this correct, my dear Albert?

And if you understand that, did you understand how to release the energy all at once, rather than in an orderly stream?  Do you know how anyone with a battery can light a bomb a million times greater than that blown up over Hiroshima?

Do you feel that’s knowledge best kept hidden?

Am I correct, my dear Albert?

Yours,

George