by The Eurostar
The ferryboat struggled along the great waves of the Northern Sea, heading to the island of Helgoland, not far from the coast of Germany, just south of the Denmark border.
It was a tempest out there, and all the passengers hid inside the cabin, watching a World Championship soccer match on the little television, managing to recognize the forms of the players in the confused noise.
All passengers were watching except one, a tall woman wrapped in an ice-white trench coat who stood firmly on the deck in the middle of the strong wind and rain, while a flock of gulls danced over the ocean.
On her passport was the name Sonja Ljzavet, which she had thought to be her own for fourteen years, but which turned out to be nothing more than a lie. She now knew. She had died, yet she lived. She remembered the blue glow and the smile of a friend on which she had spied for months.
Now the time of lies had ended. She was an intruder here. This was not her home. This was not her own planet, nor even her universe. She was from Earth, but a different Earth. And her only hopes were pinned on an old man whom she was not even sure existed in this parallel dimension, the man for whom she was working on the other Earth. Grandpa Eyebrows, as she used to call him, although he was only her employer, and no relationship existed between the two.
The place was identical. The harbor, the fishing village, the path to the thirteenth-century mansion up the hill. Even the two Dalmatians playing in the garden were identical. The only visible differences were the roses. Here they were pink, there they were yellow.
Just as she headed directly to the main entrance, a familiar voice called her from behind a screen of perennial plants. "Nadia, I was waiting for you. Come here, baby!"
"Grandpa?" whispered Nadia Vassiljev, formerly called Sonja Ljzavet. The man standing on the lawn was the exact copy of the one she knew: short, exceptionally well-built, bald and with big, prominent bony eyebrows.
"You've healed perfectly, I see."
"But... how can you know me?"
"Ah, now I see... you think I am a parallel version of the old man you knew? No, I am the original, my dear, the one and only."
"Have you traveled here, too? So you know a way to go back?" asked the woman.
The expression on the old man became sad. "No, my dear. Yes, I know how to cross dimensions, but your world is no more."
"What? What do you mean?"
"The Earth you come from doesn't exist any more. The Cloaks managed to disperse all my Encyclopedists across many different universes, and the Hoods sent killers to follow and kill all of you. Meanwhile, the invasion had begun... all screwed up... and now all of Earth lies under a thick layer of ice, no place for humans or lizards alike. I am sorry."
The woman is frozen in place, unable even to shed tears.
"I have a mission for you, Nadia..."