But Regina wasn’t just hopping around in time for kicks. She knew, or she thought she knew, that you can’t correct the past in order to correct the future; but what if that only applied to big changes? What if you could make little corrections to the past that would reshape the future—so long as whatever you were shaping wouldn’t change the course of history as we knew it? Reality was far too complex, and the reality we witness isn’t necessarily the ultimate reality; there’s a whole slew of other factors—and, she figured, small corrections in the past might not change the present, but perhaps they could affect the future—which was a conditional realm, and, as a conditional realm, it could be changed. Regina’s plan was to infiltrate Nazi Germany and enter Hitler’s body, which meant that her body wouldn’t be there—right? But she imagined that it was perfectly legal for her body to be there in the background, living a good life, and, in so doing, making it possible for Regina to enter Hitler’s body, even if she couldn’t control anything that went down in history.
So, Regina took her risperidone, and, as she did, she imagined herself in Hitler’s body, and that’s where she wound up. It’s important to remember, however, that Regina couldn’t change history—so she would be present when Hitler did what he’s infamous for doing, and there would be nothing she could do to stop it. She would, however, be privy to Hitler’s thoughts, and, when she returned to the present or tripped to the future, she’d be able to project Hitler’s thoughts (in his voice) in her mind—and her theory was that if she projected everything that Hitler was, she’d be privy to something that somebody very good was saying through the historical hub—so Hitler was kind of like an atemporal lighting rod, and, when lighting struck Regina channeled the thoughts and deeds of those in the future, directing atemporal traffic.
Mainly it was like being on The Price is Right, a gameshow in which those chosen from the audience bug out and rush the stage. She was the person behind the person that was bugging out, and, because she couldn’t do anything to stop herself from bugging out, she developed a theory that appearing on a game show—and being selected from the audience, was like somebody hotwired your car and was taking you for a joyride that was doomed to end in suicide and or prison. So you had to wonder: what happened to Regina if this person died? It was an unsettling thought, but Regina also knew that her body was there with her in the background, living a life in the background that Regina could be proud of—and, quite possibly, changing the course of the future—albeit in the background. Regina thought of it like swimming: she’d trip back inside Hitler’s body and hold her breath, and then she’d return, after a little bit, to the present, and breathe in. She found that she could hold her breath, or endure the wrath of Nazy Germany, for a long time.
The first thing she noticed about Hitler was that he didn’t think that Jewish people really existed; he thought they started out as white people with blond hair and blue eyes (at least as children), and they lived lives that were unworthy of the life that he, Hitler, lived. This led to a gradual transformation—an embodiment of the melting pot, where people became browner and browner until they were Jews. Not all Jews, of course, were brown, but in Hitler’s mind they were, or they soon would be, and so he hated them. They were responsible for his suffering, and the fatigue he felt, a fatigue that led to stimulants and, often enough, a lack of sleep. Sometimes he’d do nothing but sit and stew throughout the night—his doctor injected him with a combination of Pervitin, a methamphetamine based stimulant widely used in Nazi Germany, oxycodone, and cocaine.