Stadtpark was empty at night. I stood in front of Carl Kundmann's famous Franz Schubert statue. I put my gun to the statue's forehead and squeezed the trigger.
The top part of the statue exploded, sending chunks of stone everywhere. I had just destroyed one of the most famous Viennese landmarks.
This was both good news and bad news.
The good news was that I could affect the past. I might actually succeed in my mission.
The bad news was that they could affect the past. They could actually kill my ancestors if they so chose.
I put a checkmark next to the first item on my todo-list: Figure out how time travel works.
"Sorry, but I'm not looking for an apprentice," said the butcher.
"That's alright. You don't have to pay me or feed me or house me. I just want to spend a day working for you," I said, in broken German.
He asked me a few more questions before apparently being satisfied that I wasn't a thief or a con artist. He then sent me into a back room with a live pig.
The pig was docile. I knelt down and set the knife aside. I looked into the pig's eyes for several seconds, trying but failing to empathize with it. I tried my best to anthropomorphize it, to pretend it had a family, hopes, and dreams, but I couldn't bring myself to think of it as anything but a pig.
I picked up the knife again and slit the pigs throat. I held down the pig's body as the life slipped out of him.
It had felt a lot more mechanical than I'd expected. I still wasn't confident that I was ready to kill a human, but I checked off the next item on my list anyways: Learn how to kill.
I felt like I'd visited every flophouse along the Danube before finding him. He was a lot shorter than I'd anticipated. He looked gaunt, as if he hadn't eaten a proper meal in months.
"Adolf Hitler?" I asked.
"Yes?" he said.
I frowned and shifted my eyes to focus on a spot on the wall behind him. He noticed and looked back to see what I was looking at. I pulled out my gun and shot him in the gut. He crumpled to the ground almost immediately and started gasping, clutching his stomach.
I would have put another couple bullets in him to finish him off, but my modern firearm wasn't something I could get more ammunition for. Instead, I stomped on his face repeatedly until he stopped moving. I then used the knife I'd stolen from the butcher to slit his throat, for good measure.
I put another checkbox on my list.
The next two items on my list weren't much more difficult than Hitler had been. But it's been over a week since Trotsky died, and I'm still stuck here in 1913 Vienna. I have no idea how I'm going to complete the last item on my checklist: Get back home.