The Lecture on Fate, I

The lecture hall always smelled of oil-lamps and wet wool. On certain days, the scent of old paper mixed in—a reminder that this place had aged more gracefully than the men inside it. I sat in the third row, slightly off-center, close enough to see the board, far enough to vanish among the others.

Dr Holtz paced the floor in slow arcs, dragging chalk across the slate with a rhythm I could set a watch to. Today's topic was familiar—determinism, again—but he spoke of it like it was something new.

"Free will," he said, "is the illusion the conscious mind requires to maintain identity."

He didn't say it like a warning. He said it like a fact.

The others scribbled away, eager to extract a thesis—worthy phrase. I pretended to write. Instead, I stared at the clock above the door.

Tick.

Tick.

Ticktick.

It stuttered.

I blinked, and it was steady again.

***

The rest of the lecture passed without incident. Or maybe it didn't. Maybe I'd missed something—drifting in and out of focus, lulled into the stillness by the cadence of Dr. Holtz's voice and the faint warmth rising through the old stone floor. The kind of warmth that crept in slowly, numbing thought before you realized it had taken root. By the time he closed his notes and dismissed the class, I wasn't sure how much I'd actually heard.

Outside, the gray Berlin sky had lowered itself like a lid. A biting wind chased loose leaves across the paving stones. I wrapped my coat tighter, stepping out into the cold with no particular destination in mind.

The streets near the university hadn't changed. Wrought-iron balconies hung like blackened lace above narrow cobblestone alleys. Students rushed past in layers of wool and scarves, clutching papers in gloved hands, ducking into narrow cafés that steamed at the windows. A dog barked from an upstairs flat. Somewhere, church bells rang the hour—one of them slightly off-beat, just enough to notice once you started listening.

I kept walking. Past the bookshop. Past the bakery with its fogged-up glass. Past a watchmaker's storefront, where the display was dim but the hands on one clock spun just a little faster than the rest. I watched it for a moment before turning away.

I reached the edge of the river without realizing it. The Spree moved slow and dark under the bridge, its surface rippling without cause. I stood there for a while, watching it move in no direction at all.

Eventually, I turned back toward Charlottenburg, no more certain of where I was going than when I'd started.

***

The next morning, I took breakfast in the student commons. The tea was thin, and the bread tough, but it gave me something to do with my hands.

Across from me sat Richter.

Erich Richter wasn't a friend, but he was familiar. Tall, sharp-featured, always carrying an extra volume he never opened. He had the air of someone who wanted to be known without needing anyone's approval. The sort who sharpened arguments for sport, but never raised his voice.

He was already halfway through his roll when he looked up at me.

"You look worse than usual," he said, not unkindly.

"I'll take that as a compliment,' I muttered.

"Something on your mind?"

I hesitated. Told myself not to speak. And then I did.

"Have you ever… noticed things? Repeating out of sync. Clocks ticking out of time, people blinking at the same moment."

He didn't laugh. That was why I spoke to him.

"You're not the first student to say something like that," he said, "not exactly. But strange perceptions. Patterns. Visions. You should talk to someone."

"A priest?" I offered, dry.

"No," he said. "There's a woman. Eberhardt. She practices privately near Tiergarten. Psychology. Dreams, nervous breakdowns, that sort of thing. It's quiet. Discreet."

"Psychology?"

"I know what you're thinking. But she doesn't work for any hospital. She sees professors. Writers. Half of the philosophy faculty consult her when they drink too much absinthe and start seeing ghosts."

"And what would I tell her?"

He shrugged. "That you're seeing things that don't make sense. That you're tired of pretending it's just fatigue. I'm not saying you're mad. I'm saying she might help you before you start to wonder if you are."

***

I didn't go that day.

I told myself I would, even went so far as to fold the card Richter had given me and place it in my coat pocket. But when I reached the tram stop, I kept walking. Past the line. Past the café. Past the opportunity.

Home was quiet. The kind of silence that felt placed, like a layer of dust someone had smoothed over everything. I lit a candle. It sputtered before catching, throwing shadows that danced too sharply across the walls.

I pulled a book from the shelf. Opened it. Turned pages without reading them. My eyes moved, but my thoughts stayed elsewhere—looping back to Richter's words, the flicker in the bakery window, the backwards-ticking clock.

Eventually I gave up. I put the book down and laid in the dark with the candle still burning. It felt better that way—less alone.

***

That night, I dreamt of a corridor.

Long, narrow, no doors. No windows. Just smooth walls and the sound of something ticking—not from a clock I could see, but from within the walls themselves. Muffled and constant. Too fast.

I walked and walked, but the corridor never ended. And behind me, I sensed something that matched my pace exactly. Always one step behind.

When I woke, my hands were trembling. The candle had burned out on its own.

***

The next morning, I found my journal open on the desk.

I didn't remember opening it.

But there it was—my own handwriting scrawled across a clean page.

Clara.

No explanation. No context. Just the name. Written with a hand I recognized and a purpose I didn't.

I stared at it for a long time.

It meant nothing to me.

And yet I didn't cross it out.

I closed the book and went to class.

***

Three days passed.

Each one folded into the next with a kind of quiet distortion—not enough to make me question my sanity, but enough to keep me from feeling steady.

On the first day, a student in my seminar asked the same question twice. Word for word. Same inflection. Same timing. No one reacted. The professor answered it both times as if it were new.

On the second, a sparrow flew into the lecture hall, gliding in from a window someone had forgotten to latch. It fluttered midair—no sound, no chaos—and then vanished before it ever reached the far wall. I blinked and it was gone, leaving nothing but the faint scent of dust and feathers.

On the third, I watched a clock in the hall outside the library strike eleven. An hour later, it struck eleven again. I asked someone nearby what time it was. They said twelve. But the clock insisted. It didn't tick—it jumped back. Just enough to notice. Just enough to question.

That night, I couldn't sleep. I listened to the walls, to the creaks of the building, to the faint murmur of pipes and distant footsteps. I stared at the ceiling and thought of narrow corridors and ticking buried in stone.

By the fourth morning, the weight in my chest had grown too heavy to ignore.

I stood at the tram stop, coat pulled tight against the cold. The air tasted like iron and coal. Everything felt sharp at the edges.

The conductor approached, wiping his gloves against his coat as he climbed up. I didn't know how long I'd been standing there before I spoke.

"How close can you take me to Tiergarten?"

He looked me over—more curious than suspicious. "You headed to the park?"

I hesitated, then shook my head. "To a doctor."

He raised an eyebrow but didn't press. Just gestured toward the nearest car. "Closest I can take you is the southern loop. From there, it's a long walk. Maybe an hour, hour and a half."

That sounded about right. Just far enough to reconsider. Not far enough to turn back.

The tram groaned. The doors opened.

And I stepped inside.