Prologue.
He had lived a thousand lives.He was a pig farmer; he was a merchant; he was a soldier, a nobleman and a poet. Sometimes he was tall, handsome and muscular; sometimes he was crippled from birth.
This time the cards weren't dealt in his favor. He wasn't the ruler of the United Kingdom of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, hero of the Second Battle of Hastings. He wasn't ship tycoon and philanthropist from Portland. He wasn't world's famous comedian. He was just Artie Simmons, pizza delivery guy. Nothing special, except for knowing what could have been.
.
Artie's musings ended when he fell off his bike. Scraping himself off the grass, Artie examined the bike and discovered a flat tire; two pizzas were damaged beyond repair.
Fired again, fired again, juggity-jig. Oh, well, I don't have to hurry back to Pizza King. I can as well enjoy the walk.
Artie walked along the quiet sidewalk. When he passed the Gupty house, he saw Tad and Tricia playing in the front yard. Artie remembered the world when two kids grew up and spent their whole lives fighting to replace the nuclear power plants with the alternative sources of energy. Tricia Gupty-Jackson was eighty years old when she succeeded - the last nuclear power plant in the world was shut down.
Seeing Mrs. Johanssen waiting for a bus, Artie smiled briefly, remembering another Iris Johanssen, with long dark hair and hourglass figure. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the remake of Gone with the Wind, but lost to Vivian Taylor.
Artie crossed Dega Street and barely escaped bumping into Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane. They smirked when he flinched away from them.
Artie wasn't scared by "Alien Love Goddesses". He was escaping from the multitude of possibilities radiating from the Dynamic Duo. The girls hadn't the slightest idea of how special they were. But Artie knew. He saw hundreds of the worlds, and every time Daria or Jane played an important role.
Artie closed his eyes to better see one of these worlds.
.
- He saw Leonardo da Vinci formulating nine core Principles of Magic in his journal;
- He saw the War of Enlightment between the society of mages and the church. Europe was torn apart by the wars; some rulers welcomed the mages with open arms, the others persecuted, tortured and killed mages in God's name;
- He saw Napoleon losing at Vaterloo because Emmanuel de Grouchy was misdirected by the illusionary army created by Prussian mages;
- He saw the assassination of Tsarevich Nicholas in Otsu and the beginning of First World War in 1892;
- He saw Hitler trying to open the gates for the Nameless Ones and unleash them on the unsuspecting world; Fuhrer was in the middle of ritual when General Friedrich Olbricht stabbed the madman in the back;
- He saw Japanese mages spilling their blood on Okinawa soil, sacrificing their lives to obliterate the Allied fleet. It was a Pyrrhic victory - too many mages had been lost to activate the deadly spell of Steel Typhoon. The Allies lost their fleet, but Japan was defenseless against aerial attacks;
- He saw Malcolm X in Dallas, creating powerful force field to shield John Kennedy from the bullets;
- He saw Tsar Alexander V marrying Princess Anne, the daughter of Elisabeth II;
- He saw Living Crescent crashing into the western side of Pentagon, the following war and the end of Ottoman Empire;
- He saw David Copperfield, the First Mage on Mars;
.
And he saw Daria Morgendorffer, two years younger than the girl he just met. Daria wasn't happy when Jake and Helen decided to sent their daughters to the summer camp. Little did they know that Camp Grizzly is going to be the turning point in Daria's life.
They didn't know. But Artie knew.