Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 130081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Sonya shook her head in bewilderment. She had never been to any of those places! How could he have pictures of the two of them together that she didn’t remember taking? What the Hell was going on here?
Then the strangest holo of all popped up on the little silver projector—it was a picture of Davrik wearing a tux while Sonya herself was dressed in an absolutely gorgeous, frothy white wedding gown. The two of them were staring into each other’s eyes and smiling—the glow of true love on their faces.
But again, Sonya had never taken such a picture—she had never been married. She’d had a few failed relationships before the Scourge invasion, but mostly she buried herself in her work. So how was this possible? Not only was it confusing, it was deeply creepy to think that the big Kindred had somehow gotten pictures of her in all these situations she had never even been in. She—
“Sonya? What are you… Shit.”
Sonya looked away from the holo projector to see Davrik standing in the doorway, frowning unhappily.
“Davrik, what is this?” she asked, holding out her hand with the holo projector, which was still cycling through impossible pictures—there seemed to be hundreds of them. “How did you get these?” she demanded, when he didn’t answer. “Is this some kind of photo-manipulation or what?”
“No, no—it’s nothing like that.” He sighed and ran a hand through his thick black hair. “All those holos are genuine, baby girl. Where did you find the projector?”
“In this book, uh, Pride and Prejudice,” Sonya said, nodding at the book which she had laid on the top of the bookcase to examine the holo coin. “I’d never heard of it so I opened it up and this fell out.”
“You’ve never heard of Pride and Prejudice?” He frowned. “But that’s your favorite book! Or one of them, anyway.”
“How could it be when I’ve never heard of it? Davrik, what is going on here?” Sonya demanded, feeling shaky.
“There must not have been a Jane Austen in this universe,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“In this universe?” Sonya exclaimed. He was beginning to sound like a crazy person and she was stuck alone in a spaceship with him! Not only that but he was almost twice as tall as she was and immensely muscular—if he turned out to be some freaky serial killer, she was done for! There was no way she could fight him off and she didn’t know this ship well enough to be able to hide anywhere…
Davrik must have seen her growing panic because he quickly shook his head.
“No, no, baby girl—don’t get upset. I promise there’s a rational explanation for all of this.”
“Then you better whip it out quick,” Sonya said in a shaky voice. “Because this is some crazy sounding shit!”
“I know, I know…” He sighed and raked a hand through his hair again. “Look, I was going to explain all this once we got back to the Kindred Mother Ship, but I think we need to talk about it now. All right?”
Sonya nodded warily.
“I’m listening.”
“First I need to get something to show you. Wait just one minute.”
He went back to the front of the ship and Sonya wondered if she ought to try and hide. But before she could find a good place, he was back. In one large hand he had something that looked like an ancient black and white Rubik’s Cube.
“What’s that?” Sonya asked flatly. She was still holding the holo coin which kept showing her images of herself and Davrik in situations she’d never been in.
“This is the Far Box—a device that enables you to cross into different parallel universes in the Multiverse,” Davrik explained. He went and sat on the couch, still holding the black and white cube carefully in one large hand.
“Wait—you’re kidding, right?” Sonya took a wary step towards him. “Are you trying to tell me you came from a whole other universe?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “I came here to find you, baby girl. To find what I lost.”
“What you lost? So…this isn’t me?” She nodded at the pictures the holo coin was still showing.
“It is…and it isn’t,” Davrik said heavily. “That’s the Sonya from my universe—the woman I loved and married and Bonded with. Then, five years ago, there was a…a shuttle crash.” He swallowed hard and a look of pain came over his face. “My Sonya died in that crash—I felt her light go out here…” He clenched a fist to his heart. “But I couldn’t get to her, couldn’t save her.”
“So…the other me—the Sonya from your universe is…is dead?” Sonya asked faintly. This got stranger and stranger and yet she had no urge to disbelieve him. The sincerity and pain on his face were all too real.
“She died in every universe but this one,” Davrik told her. “Only in this one universe in all the myriad of parallel universes did she—you—survive. I think it’s because this is the only universe where the Scourge took over Earth and the Kindred only came later. In every other universe you Bonded with a version of me and were killed in that shuttle crash.”