Apparatus 33 by Lawston Pettymore (bearly read books TXT) 📕

“Then Mengele was right.”

Exodus Germania

During the first twenty years of Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, over 20,000 East Germans managed to slither past GDU outposts and through Stasi fingers to begin a new life in the so-called Free World.

The primary motivation for risking death or imprisonment was hunger and warmth, the result of the logistical and supply chain disaster of collectivizing small farms and family vegetable plots in the Soviet occupied zone. The failure of the 1953 East German uprising against quotas involving as many as one million citizens, eventually suppressed by the same T34 tanks that dismantled the Reich nearly a decade earlier and would be celebrated as a holiday in West Germany for the next three decades. Early defections were simple, merely stepping across a line on the ground where their villages bordered western countries.

When the drain of workers became impossible to ignore, countermeasures were installed for each wave and style of emigration. When the State recorded 43 citizens immolated in the minefields, fences were fortified with razor wire and electrification, a counter measure that claimed another 20 victims.

As these layers of counter measures became increasingly brutal, so did the ingenuity of the escapees. A circus performer strung a wire over the Berlin portion of the wall using a bow and arrow. Sympathetic helpers on the west side pulled their end of the wire to retrieve the end of a cable, which they secured tightly to a building a meter or so on the western side of the wall, allowing the performer to walk casually across the cable to freedom while entertaining the crowd below. His idea was successfully copied by 24 others, until frustrated GDU border guards, under orders, began shooting for effect. Not wishing to further test the border guards’ willingness to shoot their own countrymen, the State ordered all buildings along on the East side border, already desperate for residential living quarters, condemned, prompting a visit from the US president to the western side where he declared himself a fellow Berliner, or, a type of sausage, depending on who was translating his attempt to speak German with a dense New England accent.

The declaration was broadcasted worldwide via the newly invented television communication satellite, to the extreme annoyance of Moscow, and to the encouragement of those brave enough in the East to continue their defection plans.

Subsequently, two escapees flew across the barriers with hang gliders, and another in a homemade hot air balloon made from parachutes. In retaliation, guard towers were placed along the border, including the eastern banks of the River Spree, equipped with lights to guide the Czech air force to shoot down anyone who attempted to replicate these early successes.

Even so, attempts by air, by river, by land, continued.

Mistaken Indemnity

Rounding the familiar corner quickly without looking, Nicolaus ran into the line of strangers forming outside the Embassy commissary. In his years of working here enjoying as his morning routine a cup of tea, served Soviet style in cut crystal glass cradled in a nickel-plated holder and handle, he had never seen every table occupied. Soviet Army officers and apparatchik in suits talking in hushed tones in the hallway waiting their turn, surely the largest gathering of Russians outside of Red Square.

Making his apologies, Nicolaus left the Embassy for less crowded venue. He took the tram to the Ministry of Information and Stasi headquarters, only to find similar crowds. Russians were positively swarming over every collection of documents and archives in East Germany, looking for something.

He knew better than to show too much interest, but his curiosity overcame his initial caution. He dropped some harmless hints with a colleague working with the Soviets who would cherish the moment he was in on a secret not available to Nicolaus, infamous for knowing all secrets worth knowing, more than he would cherish denouncing him.

As Nicolaus anticipated with clinched teeth and forced smile, his colleague savored the moment a bit, then, with aggravating smugness, revealed only enough to taunt Nicolaus. The Russian Army found something disturbing in the Polish forest near the town of Debica, he explained with intentional mystery. In fact, he continued, it was the reason for the closing the borders, the increased fortifications on the frontiers, and the wall being built around the city of West Berlin. The Soviets want persons of interest to remain within easy reach. Beyond this, he warned Nicolaus, better not to ask any more questions.

At the mention of Debica, Nicolaus had nothing but more questions, but he could not tolerate the cost in condescension. His choice was to forget the whole thing, or somehow insert himself at a right angle.

With this information, Nicolaus made sense of what he saw at the archives. The Soviets were searching War records for any entry mentioning key words, ‘Debica’ being one of them. Only the Soviets knew what other words or cross references were on their shopping list.

The Ministry’s archive card catalog was immense, consisting of over 60 million separate index cards. Assuming only 30-seconds per card with no cross-references, scanning all these records by a room of officers working day and night, Nicolaus calculated a work effort lasting nearly 40 years.

Having already performed this basic arithmetic themselves, the Soviets came prepared with a machine they have smuggled in from America similar in size and shape to a large farm tractor without wheels, banned for export outside of the US. The machine could mechanically feed records from a two-meter-tall stack, scan it for arbitrary key words and phrases, comparing hits to memorized relationships, at the rate of 800 cards per minute. The entire archives in East Germany could be processed by this single machine in two months, with zero errors or oversights, compared to 40 years by humans. Those crazy Americans.

Finding where the Soviets had installed the machine was easy. One need only follow the Army privates hauling stacks of cards parading up to Room 88 of the 14th floor, which, of course was really the 13th floor. Superstitions