I'm Hitler's girlfriend. Not Eva Braun, I'm still me, just female: thrown into the Nazi's inner circle like a goldfish in the shark tank.

So I try to slow down the Holocaust as long as I can, without losing what traces of influence I have--without getting myself killed as a traitor. I tell Adolf "You're a great man, but go slow with your program--don't get too extreme, or the people will turn on you. Remember, you've primed them to look for a scapegoat for all their troubles--it's the Jews now, but it could just as well become us." I may not be very effective, but this feels like the most I can do--weak, close to powerless, in a pack of mass murderers. The most I can do is sow doubt, and be seen as weak--no threat to anyone.

Then one day, I'm presented with an equation important in this alternate world--never mind why. 14 times 289 = x. Calculate in my head and immediately get the answer, 4046. And 13 times 289 = 3757. Both equations are still in my head when I wake.

And when I wake, I verify the sums--with a calculator, because AWAKE I'm much slower and less accurate. And I know why. There's an interfering voice saying "you can't do that, it's too hard!" When I consciously silence this voice, suddenly there's a burst of math speed and skill, and I can do these calculations in my head quickly and rather effortlessly.

That voice is the same one that looks at music scores and says "You can't read that, you can't play that!" and interferes with me TRYING to read it.

When I can. So... what else can I do?

NOTES

• Trapped among fascists: I just read Roald Dahl's Matilda, the tale of a child prodigy among tyrants.
• Hitler's gentle, helpless girlfriend = Miss Honey, Matilda's beloved teacher.
• Hitler = Miss Honey's fascist aunt, who killed her dad and makes the school a brutal work camp.
• Nazism = working myself to death, crushing my childlike side, just as Matilda's aunt tries to crush her.
• So this may be internal. I may get sick a lot on purpose, just to slow down the workaholic Nazi inside--because I don't have more effective tactics. I do feel helpless--can't just defeat my inner Nazi with mind-powers, like Matilda. Or can't I?
• Lightning calculation = in MATILDA, such a calculation made Miss Honey realize Matilda was a prodigy. I tend to forget, because my life right now doesn't require a lot of math, that I too was a math prodigy as a kid; still find math easy. Like Matilda, an abusive background makes me stay quiet, invisible, unambitious--my instinct's to lie low!
• A broader point--many dream researchers claim REM thought is too disordered for math or logic. "Numbers won't even stay stable from one minute to the next." Wrong, wrong, wrong. A dreaming mind can calculate--in my case, better than awake! If numbers shift on you, they do so to make a point. The researchers are mistaking signal for noise! Underestimating dreams.

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