A time-traveling art salvager tenders their resignation.
A submission to the Thursday Prompt writing group. This week's prompt was the word 'pass'.
Check out the group's user page here: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/thursdayprompt/
And the other stories generated from this prompt here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/23487607/

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Final Report Of Temporal Archivist VL-77Y
by DankeDonuts


If you were a time-travelling art historian who happened to be fluent in 20th Century German, where do you suppose you’d end up?

If you guessed the Weimar Republic, hobnobbing with the intellectual and artistic elite while looking for a chance to digi-scan a copy of Metropolis before it gets edited down -- thus rescuing five minutes of footage that will never be recovered any other way -- you’d be wrong. Because somebody already did that.

You’d also be wrong to imagine yourself strolling down East Berlin, covertly snapping holos of street art before the Stasi makes it disappear. Because someone else is going to do that. Ah, fun with temporal mechanics and verb tense!

No, you’d be stuffed into a Nazi officer’s uniform. One stuffed with fake IDs, passports, and assorted papers. Trying to save what can be saved without throwing any proverbial boots at any proverbial butterflies. Trying very hard not to think about the contents of any trains that pass by.

Seems there’s always plenty to do in that era. More treasures to be saved. Included with this speechfile are the time-space coordinates of a contraband depository fifteen kilometers north-west of Schliersee. As well as maps, time tables, more than enough information to get the pieces out. I can confirm the presence of Raphael’s Portrait Of A Young Man. Lots of other beautiful pieces, all catalogued, all worthy of reclamation. But of course that’s the golden goose. I’m sure the guys in Forgery already have a decoy ready to take its place in history’s ash heap.

Based on the records at my disposal, I estimate 38 hours local from my last insertion before the cache is destroyed.

I’ll debrief the retrieval team once I’m through quarantine. I’ll suppose I’ll have to lead them in. I mean, I do have to. It’s my face the guards know. But I am damn close to calling this the last one. Damn close. Talk the brass into transferring me to another era, or cash in an early retirement. I bet I’d look great in a toga.

I suppose everyone who does Third Reich jobs reaches this point. I suppose it why there’s always work left to do there.

I’ve seen too many trains.


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