The prologue begins with a quote by William Shakespeare: ‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here’’ as we see the boy from the previous episode (without blood on his face), riding his bike and taking the left path. He is passed by a VW Beetle police car driven by a young Egon Tiedemann. As they both arrive at the scene we are shown the bodies of two dead boys partially covered up in a sandpit. They are Erik and Yasin. This is not 1986 nor is it 2019 as the nuclear power plant has not yet been constructed. So, when is it?
We start with clocks as we see the stranger return to the horologist/author/scientist to continue their discussion. The Einstein-Rosen bridge is mentioned, and the author H.G.Tannhaus responds that this is the passage between the black hole, a white hole, and our space and time and we see Ulrich still following old Helge. He discovers a red cord attached to an ancient ring in the cave, whilst H.G. Tannhaus continues: that the human mind thinks only in pairs and opposites (dualism) and what if there were 3 dimensions not just up and down. Showing the stranger the triquetra symbol he suggests that there is also a centre. As Ulrich reaches the door and touches the inscription our author continues that Einstein and Rosen missed something and a wormhole could connect us with these 3 dimensions of past, present and future. Ulrich is through the doors and now at a familiar junction in the passageway but he chooses to go left whereas Jonas went right and ended up in 1986. So, when is Ulrich?
Next, we see the boy arrive home and a woman’s voice calls out: ‘‘Helge?’’ So, the boy is Helge and from the clothing we must be in the ‘50’s. His mother makes him undress in front of her. Something not right here. His father arrives home and Helge tells him that he has seen two dead boy’s bodies at the construction site. The father immediately walks out on hearing the news whilst his mother tells him the coins for Claudia are on the table.
The dead boys are undergoing an autopsy and the doctor believes the eyes were damaged by a phosphorous grenade and remarks to a young Tiedemann that the eardrums have been burst in both boys’ ears and that around each of their necks was a coin attached by red string with the date of each coin being 1986. To add to the strangeness their clothing was: ‘Made in China’. The police officers are bemused. Not as much as the doctor who is further bewildered by a winged unicorn tattooed on one of the boys. No surprise to us of course because their future is our past and present.
Helge rides his bike to the family lodge. Playing around he notices the open bunker door and heads inside where he finds pine cones to play with. As he looks around, on the wall are those two dates we saw the tattooed man write: 5.11.1953 and 9.11.1953. We jump forward and the stranger references the H.G. Tannhaus book which describes Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence and the universe repeating itself and lays his well-used copy on the desk. (The name of the publisher is Minotauros.) He mentions the same 33-year cycle that Charlotte told Ulrich about. H.G. responds that 33 is a significant number and not just in the cosmos; 33 miracles performed by Jesus; 33 litanies of the angels; 33 cantos in Dante’s purgatory (Divine Comedy); 33 in paradise. The stranger adds that this was the age the Antichrist would begin his rule and immediately we cut to Noah standing in front of the church as the bell tolls. He is holding a brown book with the triquetra symbol on it. We have seen this book before in Tronte’s nervous hands.
Tiedemann has a short conversation with the detective. He is wondering what makes a murderer? The detective declaims that they need to stop them when they are young, and it seems Tiedemann did later try and put this into effect with young Ulrich. Young Helge meets Ulrich who is perturbed by his old-fashioned clothing. Ulrich asks if the boy has seen an old man in pyjamas, the boy has not. Ulrich continues his search and at the crossroads a car stops and a lady in red asks him for directions. She introduces herself as Agnes Nielsen and her son Tronte. Ulrich is in as much shock as we are. It is not everyday you meet your grandmother when she is at an age younger than yourself. He pulls out his copy of H.G. Tannhaus and asks her what the year is? ‘‘1953’’ Agnes replies. Agnes is as bewildered as Ulrich, and then on cue the Voice interjects, asking us:if by meeting our father before we were born would this change events or is time a beast that cannot be slain? (Minotaur?)
The stranger back in 2019 asks H.G.(Wells?) to answer. As a scientist he answers that causal determinism doesn’t allow this. A is followed by B and B is followed by C. The arrow of time moves in only one direction: forward. True enough in Einstein’s relativistic universe (although time can be dilated) but in the quantum world things are very different. (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle; Schrodinger’s cat; Quantum entanglement). Furthermore, he is very contented with his time and place now, which seems at odds with having written a book about travelling in space and time.
Ulrich walks into the shop looking for the author of the book. A man appears and showing him the photo on the book asks if this is him. ‘‘No’’ he replies. Ulrich asks the year and the answer is the same. Back in the same shop in 2019 the stranger asks if 33 is the time difference between the planes of the 3-dimensional wormhole. Very possibly is H.G’s reply and then we are back in the same shop not 33 years earlier but 33+33= 66 years earlier in 1953 where we see young Ines and Ulrich’s mother walk into the shop to collect a watch for Ines father. The girls mention the discovery of the two dead boys and Ulrich reacts.
Bernd Doppler, Helge’s father is at the construction site giving a speech to persuade the council to permit its construction and tells Tiedemann that the dead boys are a conspiracy against the power plant. Agnes and Tronte are lodging with the Tiedemann’s and when walking their dog (Gretchen) it goes missing after Helge throws a stick into the caves. At the police station Ulrich enquires if his son Mikkel was one of the boys. Tiedemann is surprised that Ulrich believes Helge to be 70 and not the boy he is now.
The stranger asks H.G if time can be changed by us or God, or are we trapped in a deterministic universe (Free Will?). He answers that when in a wormhole a time loop exists such that we cannot know what is the past or the future, as no moment in time has any priority over any other
Ulrich is with young Helge and he now comprehends the truth. Helge asks if he has found who he was after, Ulrich answers ‘‘Yes’’ and shows him the red cord with the coin attached. He asks the boy if he killed the birds that are in his box and Helge says ‘‘No’’. It is an interrogation and the boy looks very uneasy now. Ulrich tries to explain that Helge will kill the two boys in the future and Ulrich must stop him now and grabs him, but Helge fights back and runs. Ulrich eventually catches him and brutally smashes the right-hand side of his head with a rock and drags the dead boy into the bunker.
To stop a future murder Ulrich has committed the exact same act. Justified or not? What chain of events could this act set in motion? Has Ulrich killed a future killer or created the very timeline he is trying to prevent?
The voice announces, to a shot of an old women in army surplus sitting in the bunker (full of weapons this time) with its wall of cord and photos that ‘Everything is connected to everything else’’ which H.G regards as, only a theory. The stranger then tells him his theory is true and that a wormhole exists in Winden and he is from the future. H.G. is unconvinced. He shows H.G. the time machine that allows him to travel 33 years forward and backwards in time and explains it is broken. He needs H.G to fix it so that he can destroy the wormhole. H.G. tells him to leave but the stranger pleads with him for help to close the ‘‘festering wound’’ echoing what Katherina said on the radio. As he leaves he warns of something ominous in the future.
H.G. removes a wooden box from a shelf and inside is another time machine, as we see his father find Ulrich’s smartphone and switch it on, as Ulrich, to the sound of a clock ticking kneels outside the bunker looking into the heart of darkness.
Marc Barham
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