Doppelganger

Sandy Island

The Calderans were sweet romantic people. They sat in their huts and played their banjos and harmonicas. The Sandy Island inhabitants entertained themselves with simple things. Until one day the water came and the island began to sink, the engineers built high-rises and tunnels to the ocean floor to stabilize the island. The land on the surface was uninhabitable. Fifty years would pass then another fifty years; the water would rise ever higher.

It was the most beautiful place to live on Earth, and it frequently shifted in and out of time. The last time the island was seen on Earth was in 1989. It disappeared from the maps of the land dwellers, and the people of Sandy Island were glad. Sandy Island was made of cliffs, waterfalls, and grottos. The surface was covered with waterfalls. The Calderans created skyscrapers out of rock and titanium that stretched to the rocks below the land.

Some lived in high rises above the island that reached to the sky, while others lived in caves, caverns and grottos beneath the ground. The winds and the weather were harsh and unpredictable. It rained for days and weeks, when the Time Shift came, and they found themselves thrown into another land full of dry wastelands and barren deserts. It was only for a moment but it felt like a lifetime. The thirst hung in their mouths and they could not escape it. Some called it a curse, and tied them to this unique island nation. Some could not and would not leave. None ever tried to leave, for fear of what might happen.

There were stories of those who tried to leave their island country. Dried and brittle, skeletons were found on nearby islands. Their fate outside their world was the ever-yielding thirst. Scientists researched the animals of the sea to find a link that would help them weather the Time Shift that plagued their land and their people. The elite looked to the creatures of the island for immortality. The Nautalum invited the Calderans into their lives with open arms. Until one day, the cuddly race of sea creatures saw into the future how the Calderans would repay them. The Nautalum made the thirst part of them. So they would never forget. When the water came in full force, the Calderan scientists searched for another weapon, they devised one, time travel to control those fifty years, and they stood ready to use it.

The island was beginning to come into its own again. The views, the colors of the landscapes began the day and set the night. Humans were not allowed on the surface and that was all right. They watched from their high-rises and stone towers with pride. They tapped into a time when the colossal creatures roamed and dominated the earth’s waters.

Kristin woke that day and got out of bed with one of her usual headaches. She keeled over from a shooting pain in her neck and grabbed her chest. The young adult was too young for these night sweats. She fumbled for her pill case. It was a cocktail of herpes virus drugs, H pylori, Clamydia Puennoimae, the last dose. She leaned against a headboard made of shell, swallowed them with alkaline water. Her uncle, Trevor Grigori invented the cocktail made to reset the cardiovascular system. She hoped it was enough. The protocol was meant for people in their twenties in theory it would extend their lives to 100, but she like her father wanted more. There were other diseases still at large. Her father often competed with her uncle, it was the way of scientist, and why her people advanced so quickly. Today she would have a new vascular system that her father created and this nightmare would be past her.

Kristin flung the sheets from her clamshell bed and stood up to stroll out on the balcony. The sea air invigorated her, her people had a special connection to the ocean but it was slight. There was no way to know if it would work. Their plans to take cells from sea animals and fuse them with humans were a gamble, but it was one she had to take. Her father invented a bed that helped a little. Its clamshell properties slowed her metabolism at night mimicking a mollusk. It was too bad her father could not make money on his inventions, human testing was delayed and this frustrated him. Half of the doctors did not know what it was; the other half did not care. This was why in this world the scientists like her took the lead. One of the things her people did well was survive. This was her first life. She had a secret and immortality was the key.

Kristin looked at the orange tabby with bright orange eyes and wondered if her next life would be like his. Soon she would be like him with many lives. It could not come soon enough. He meowed and roamed aimlessly. He missed his sister who died last week she was sure of it. Her white cat with blue eyes died of FIP. Again, there was no cure; she was tired of these diseases with no cure within reach. She was sure Martha had left her one or more of her lives. Her headache subsided which it usually did when she woke. She walked toward the pool.

Kristin Grigori dove into the pool then slowly came to the top and sat in the shallow part. The twenty-three-year-old blonde-haired woman with brown eyes hoisted herself up and sat on the side of the pool. Her arm was still sore from the neuro cell treatment last week. Swirl the year old Orca soared out of the pool over her head raining water over her. Swirl floated back to the surface and glanced at her with a mischievous look in his eye. She was just fostering Swirl for a week to socialize him, he would go back to his mother soon her other companion, Jolly, was a Nautalum. A sea creature that sparkled of fluorescent lights floated to the surface. Jolly belly rolled and lit up the pool like a Christmas tree. Kristin smiled and laughed. Her phone rang and she walked over to pick it up off the couch outside the pool. She looked at the number, and it was her father. Dr. Grigori pressed the call button and held it out in front of her.

“Kristin? “Adam Grigori Asked.

“Yes,” She said.

“Are you sure about this? “Adam asked.

“Yes I’ll be there in a minute,” Kristin said to him.

“I’ll be here,” Adam ended and she hung up the phone. She remembered the tape but barely knew her mother yet she looked at the last tape of her as she lay dying in her bed. Kristin toyed with the note in her hand that came with the tape.

“This is why I left, “her mother wrote. Her mother lay motionless in the bed paralyzed. The young researcher winced at the sight of it, torn between pity and fear. This woman was her mother yet a stranger. Dr. Grigori softened; in medical school, she learned show compassion for any patient, even those she knew did not know, this was the case with her mother.

At first, she did not know what Natalie was referring too. Kristin was a little shocked then she looked very calm. Natalie was her best friend, but she told her half the story, she would be a water creature if they ever net again. Kristin heard a knock on the outside door and turned to sit on her couch. She stretched her neck to see. It was her friend Natalie. Kristin opened the door with a remote control and Natalie walked inside. “I came to say goodbye, wondering if you will know me when you come back, “she said.

Kristin rolled her eyes at Natalie. Amnesia was a side effect to the procedure. Kristin’s vascular system was going to be replaced with jellyfish materials to make new muscles, nerves, arteries and veins. Kristin moved slightly on the couch a bench made of stone above her small indoor pool from her high rise in one of those towers. Natalie moved to sit beside her. Kristin slid the key to her apartment. Natalie cringed. Kristin knew she would take care of her pets. “Think of it as a getaway …just in case, but I’ll be back,” Kristin said firmly as she sat boldly. Natalie could not have valuables in the sect, but she knew Natalie loved animals so this was the only logical and perfect option. The couch was carved into the wall, filled with cushions and softly lit. There was a tap that dripped water into the six-foot by five-foot pool. The young researcher was slow moving today and spent a long time thinking. All homes had indoor pools had saunas. Her people needed the water, to be near it, and to smell it. The healing steam rejuvenated her but not much.

She hugged her friend and a tear dropped from her eyes. She did not know what she would be like if she saw her again or if she would survive. “I told you not to say anything, “Kristin said as she looked at Natalie and slowly blinked, then looked down as she grabbed a towel from the chair next to her on her left.

“But why are you doing this?” Natalie stood in front of her then sat down in the chair next to her.

“I’ve got to do it, find a way around the Time Shift, the thirst we experience is too much,” Kristin said.

“I think it’s too dangerous. We promised them we would never interfere with their species in and out of time, “Natalie said and looked over at the Nautilus frolicking in Kristin’s pool. Both looked at the creature cautiously. They came from a time when the oceans were flooded of colossal creatures, the whales. The Nautilus was the futuristic cousin of the whale with ancestors that spread through life times.

Kristin did not think it understood. They were domesticated like dogs and cats, similar to the Orca; yet some Nautilus could understand language. The creatures helped the Calderans when they came out of the Time Shift and found themselves in a barren dry place in time. The Calderans promised not to disturb their ancestors in previous times.

Kristin smiled and touched her shoulder. Kristin was quiet, and then looked over at the Nautalum, then back at Natalie as if the young virologist was hiding something. Kristin slowly rubbed herself dry with the towel, looked at her friend, and smiled. Nicole wore a religious sari and pulled the sheer veil from her face. She had just joined her community sect. Nicole smiled back.

“We are one with the universe and to it we shall return one way or another, “Natalie said.

“Exactly,” Kristin replied and Natalie chuckled.

“My beliefs are against what you are doing, but I admire your bravery, just don’t get caught, you know our society is very strict,” Natalie said. She hugged her friend and a tear dropped from her eyes; she did not know what she would be like if she saw her again or if she would survive. Kristin was obsessed with living and this was the only way she could live.

“Don’t tell anybody about what I have told you,” Kristin said over her shoulder as she walked to her room. She listened while Natalie left then continued down the hall to her bedroom on the left. The view from her room was exquisite. The gate to the ocean was one of many; a thick shower fell off the rocks as if it were a door to the outside world. It fell on one of the only beaches left under the sherbet colored sky of the approaching dusk.

Cliffs with thick showers plunged fifty feet or more into a nearby pool. There were fluorescent lights behind it that sparkled like fireworks at night. In the daylight when lit, hints of pastel rainbows intermingled with the foam water. They dropped from one rock to another, and settled below in the nearest pond or lake. Lush green foliage and huge flowers of all varieties that loved the tropical weather flowed through out. The waterfalls were so beautiful and it was as if the cliffs carved into the rock, just to accommodate them. The water carved the rocks in their path. The water loved their island.

The land was just as productive and densely populated and the size of Manhattan in New York City. It was an illusion. The high rises were high tech and anchored to the island. The buildings in the ground under the island extended to the bottom of the ocean. Suites and apartments inch by inch occupied the land

Some Calderans moved below the island. They wanted to live and work below the earth and near to the sea. The tubes and highways that led to the bottom of the ocean floor were always so busy. There were cities built to extend to the ocean floor. The scientists and businesses retreated down below and made caverns and inter connecting grottos under the island. They were at one with the sea. Spaces were less expensive down below, but not easier to find. The less privileged occupied these spaces, without wealthy connections and government friends, working people, the nine to fivers and three to eleven and everyone in between. The Calderans had to adapt, the days of fishing and taro farming were gone. They had to learn new trades quickly, and leave the fishing to the birds on the surface.

The bright lights were always on and the city was always busy even in the wee hours of the night. The Calderans prospered since they left the surface and brought technology below, with the fish of the sea as their neighbors. The Calderans played with the mantas and the dolphins that tapped on their windows between work, breaks Mother Nature prevailed, and the endless landscapes flourished and grew on the surface. They could use as much technology as they wanted below the surface. The tubes built into the rock beneath the earth were used for cars and transports into the tunnels and traveled between the high-rise and the business district. They ascended to the bottom tunnels of many sizes that helped the elites speed from the high-rises down below. Five lanes of buses, cabs, and cars all raced to work amongst, neon lights, and vendors all lighting the way to the business district.

The engineers began where nature stopped, and where they stopped, nature started. Large brown and black cliffs stood littered with thin evergreens. The water splashed from one level to another on a large smooth shale patio. The island was made of large multileveled cliffs covered with water that poured below, from level to level. If you were lucky, enough to find yourself at the bottom there was always a rock or two to hopscotch to the top.

At first, they thought the eroded rocks were the end of them, but nature corrected itself building beautiful landscapes with this intruding water. There was never a drought or a famine because the water seeped its way into every crack and crevice commanding the surrounding flowers to blossom into one breathtaking color pallet after another. Thick white foamy water made its way through miles of thick ivy cluttered foliage. Densely populated jungles shadowed all sides of the island. Thick, white, and, grey clouds hung over head in front of three mountain ranges. The clouds plunged down to the roaring falls. The waters cut and shaped the rocks.

Nature carved, restructured, and constructed the island and they welcomed it. Some of the sights were so lovely they could not be the work of man, only nature, like the huge white limestone cave just southwest of the capital. Layers of a caved cavern suddenly dropped into a small blue pool, petite, intimate, below the first level. Like the dark brown shale layered cliff just north of the capital. Layers of rock with thin sliver of water twisted into streams below bounced off the rocks and then sped from that pool. Water meandered through another rocky path, before going to another pool. This was how they watched Mother Nature each day from their perch.

Kristin changed from her morning swimsuit to her work clothes for the day into steam punk office wear. She looked into her closet and saw her new skirt train. Kristin preferred a fishtail train with a double holster to hide her long handgun. She loved guns all kind but today was not the day for that, so she brushed past it to something else. Long sleeves, Long pants, long gloves, long skirts were normal, especially for professional women. All the doctors wore them to keep their inventions hidden close by within their vest, pockets, and ruffles. A valley surrounded it with green moss lined along the sides like wallpaper. Foamy water lined the entrance. Large boulders for hopscotch scattered within a cavern to a large cliff in the back that boasted of a large waterfall.

The valley opened with a large wall of boulders formed in the shape of a gate with two columns on either side. It was like a giant bathtub circular and isolated with water crept from a gorge above. The water fell inside the basin as if through a wide faucet. There was a huge hole in the center of the island at the bottom of a stream with multiple layers of water cascading into the large round crater. Many of the waterfalls dropped from one level to another. Most held beautiful settings on either side of the water bounced from rock to rock in the smooth red stone gorge on the other side. This place was like a playground slide, and most caves had an opening to just sit on the rocks and watch the water splash.

Dr. Grigori put her goggles in her top hat, and buttoned her white ruffled top and mid length ruffled skirt. She swung her vest around one arm then the other. The researcher looked at herself in the mirror pleased, and then put on one long leather glove and then the other. Then there was Green Valley in the north, where the sky was light blue filled with clouds like those that white cotton candy crowded upon one another, and the basin reflected perfectly the emerald green of the brush growing above it. A blue beam broke through the clouds and shined on the trees. A thirty-foot light brown cliff perched over a forest of dark evergreens on the left and one small waterfall with a lake on the right.

The young virologist grabbed her doctor’s bag beside her hand, turned, and walked steadily in mid high-heeled boots out to her dining room. She had an incredible view of Purple Valley. Purple Valley stretched across the southern region of their territory. Purple flowers covered it so small they looked like purple moss from above clinging to the cliffs on all angles. There was a small forest, still purple with large violet bushes, tress, and moss, overlooking a long blue lake that intermingling with light green brush and large boulders on the other side of the trees. The white light and blue water plunged into a valley that was the greenest of green. The water also reflected the same emerald hue.

Kristin rose to walk from her high-rise apartment to her car. There was one small mountain range and in the distance in the window of her apartment. Clouds smothered the sky, and the sun peeked through them in the upper right corner. A small army of trees stood just below the fluorescent white sphere green, grey and light blue. They meandered through a path of water that streamed against short grass that was at least four feet wide on either side. Large ferns grew on either side of several small hills made of rocky steps. The water rushed over them. The ferns and huge crimson wild flowers of at least three different varieties hung over the sides as onlookers greeted the flash floods absorbing the water. The whole scene harkened back to prehistoric landscapes. In fact, it seemed as if this island had been renewed millions of years ago, when the world was new, before man.

Kristin was getting ready to go to her father’s hospital. The virologist was trained as a doctor and easily the best and brightest of her class. She ran out on the platform right outside the window. Kristin stepped into her pod, hurled her brown doctor’s bag in the front seat, and locked the door.

The cars, trains, slid across ramps and tunnels powered by hydraulics. Kristin pulled out onto the rocky streets and steered the car down five stories to the underground garage leading to the tunnels. The female student spun out into the traffic and sped west to her father’s hospital. Kristin looked at her left arm, which was still red from the injections. Dr. Grigori smiled thinking to herself about her next treatment today and what it meant for her. Her people finally had the ability to move to the sea.

Kristin looked to her left at the pet shops that trained baby dolphins and baby whales for sale. The baby dolphin happily nodded its head, spoke to her through the window, and waved with its fin. Then she looked at the aquarium to her left of Nautalum. They resembled their ancestors the jellyfish, the sea star, manta, and sting rays, Their bodies were light blue, their fins, head and spinal cord covered with red, yellow, green, blue pink, orange, or white spots. There were five breeds of Nautalum, males and females. Kristin glanced at the people practicing Tai Chi in the water gardens. Her people could manipulate some time, but not all time and this was problematic. They were part of time, since the first Time Shift. The young virologist put the car in auto drive and flexed her fingers.

The researcher looked left to the religious district, at the temples with drive -through windows, as religion was fast food, but this was prevalent in her society. Kristin turned left off the next turn out of the tube, and sped her car up the hill to her father’s facility. She got out of the car, turned to whisper to the car so it automatically locked, then turned back over her shoulder on her stroll to the facility through the crowded underground parking lot. The buildings differed of course according to the wealth and status of the owners. All were high tech sparkling neon lights lit up the night, not that it mattered down below, the views from the windows were of the underwater world.

Her ancestors worshiped the God of the moon, but that was lost when the tides came. There were rumblings of the one God that were never realized: Yet there were a few statues of the one God, and cracked paintings of the moon goddess that washed up below. She looked out the window with longing. As a scientist, she did not have time for any of it. Now suddenly she had a few minutes. These headaches were intense. She was certain he was in the beginning of something. The doctors she knew ignored the beginning signs of illness. This is why she searched for a cure aimlessly.

The moon goddess was all over the city below. She was becoming more popular with the psychics and the new age crew. The relics found in the grottos made beautiful paintings that hung in their shops if nothing else. The one God, something rare that they could not see, intrigued the professional class. These educated people needed a challenge and loved puzzles. Then there were others like her who did not care at all.

Cracked paintings and a few statues littered the halls of one woman without arms and blue skin. The statute of the one God had no face at all. Every once and a while a new cave was found with one of these statues. It was always the same body and same pose. The blue woman was featured in paintings and ancient coins. She had blue skin and was set in a circle like an ancient coin. It was always the same picture. It was made of a purple ring with pink, yellow flowers with neon green leaves.

Kristin looked at them to her left. The corners of her mouth turned into a smile ecstatic that she would soon be one of the world’s first bipedal aquamarine mammals. She needed something to smile about. Beyond her sadness, she was an optimist and played her tragedy well. If this went well the weak cardiovascular system would be outdated. The young researcher inhaled deeply and was thrilled to see it and be a part of it. Kristin was so overjoyed when her father asked her to join the experiment. She was fresh out of medical school and wanted to devote her life to research.

Kristin opened the large stone door and walked inside she looked into her father’s near lab to see the sea cucumber sliced in half on the table and the starfish right beside it. The starfish was used for cell replication the other to replace the limbs and regenerate. Her father Adam Grigori seemed odd, but he was always odd. Dr. Adam Grigori worked on every major research project for decades. His work was legendary. The scientist learned to extract longevity from the sea creatures, and the power of all of the sea’s creatures that lived below their island. They kept this serum for themselves and were greedy; and gave their knowledge to the highest bidder. They would not share it with the rest of the population, the needy, and the desolate died as a result. Only the rich, the intelligent, and the elite survived. Her father was one of them, and he often sold his research to the highest bidder, and today was no different.

Then Kristin stopped to look at the crown jewel in the middle of the facility the vehicle for their departure. A rather large specimen of the medusa jellyfish pulsated in a tank in the center of the first room. The six-foot jellyfish had been modified of course, born and bred for this purpose. It flapped toward her as if looking at her, and she stared at its light peach glow under the skin. Then Kristin glanced at the deck, and to the pool running towards it. This was where they extracted the creatures from the ocean for the sole purpose of research, finding out what they could about them, and running experiments. It was illegal and treacherous what they were doing. They were breaking every law on the books since they met the Nautalum, an advanced sea animal’s species. There was an open door that Adam could not resist exploring.

Adam Grigori’s hospital was a series of underground grottos like most of the businesses in their world. The first room she came to was a waiting room, lit in orange and purple light emanating from one door near an entertainment monitor. Kristin walked into the room with her father. It resembled a massage room, and John Chamers ran up to her. He frequently described himself as her father’s new assistant; John Chamers was anything but young. The scruffy 40 –year- old, with a long ponytail spent the last ten years of his life working on this project with Adam Grigori and he looked like a man ten years older.

Dr. Grayson stuffed his hands in his pockets and assumed a wide stance as he peered over at her in the facility. Peter met Adam a few years ago when he was a young wild fortune hunter; Adam volunteered to send Peter to medical school after he worked for him for only a few months before Peter knew the true nature and goal of Adam’s work. Yet he thought he would play along with Adam. It would just make the quest to become a respectable citizen that much longer, and who could pass up a free medical degree. Yet there were still strings attached. Peter hoped he could turn them in his favor.

Adam invited Dr. Grayson to his lab; Peter looked around like a small puppy at home for the first time. Adam looked at Peter’s eyes as they glared with wonder. He walked around the glass of with beating heart. He knew this young organ specialist could help him get where he needed to be.

The heart was beating, but it was not timed. The organs must be spiritually tied to time to help the organs regenerate. When they slowed, stopped, death was at hand. All of the organs aged and aged the whole body. They were the key to life and death, and the key to life extension. They could look young on the outside, but the body still aged on the outside.

Peter slowly moved to the dissected heart on the table. It was the same as the heart the Inuit took out as a child and ate it. It made him flinch as a boy as it did now, but he knew he had to go on as he did then, Peter walked to the heart, and began to focus on how to repair and power an organ in and outside of the body. Dr. Grayson put on his thick-rimmed glasses and fumbled at the notes to his left. His vision was getting worse; he had to take this chance.

Peter was one of the best transplant doctors in the whole world. In those days, he could repair the child with a scalpel, and his wits. Time was not on his side this time. Yet he could not save himself, but Adam Grigori could. He looked up at Adam as he smirked. Dr. Grayson knew what he had to do. His temperament was low and his intellectual curiosity was gone, he had to do something. His eyes were dreary and shadowed.

Dr. Grayson walked closer to the specimen. He took out his scalpel, to the left of his hand. He held his right hand out in front of his face. It tremored only slightly, it was irregular, barely noticeable, but he noticed. The thought of what lie in front of him terrified him. In that moment he would do anything to stop what would come? Adam saw this look many times, recently in his daughter’s eyes, but she was braver than he was. Adam played upon these fears and crept closer. “Dr. Grayson, the minute your treatment is completed your DNA will be changed. We just have to construct the organs, try to focus,” Adam said. All Adam Grigori needed was the right timing and the right spark.

Peter Grayson cut the jellyfish open. He looked for the internal organs below the heart. Luckily, he had experience with dissecting animals as a child. He never killed one, his father did, but he did so today when he cut it open, but timing was everything. He found it. The stomach aorta. The life spark, the nerves to the organs along the valgus nerve curled up and started again, to a new beginning. The humans had one but once cut, it did not start again, it was fatal, but the jellyfish renewed. The whole animal coiled. He placed the squid like creature into the tank, and it started growing and living, yes beating again.

Father Time waited for no one. Peter had found it, the equilibrium of the heart. Adam snuck around the corner. Medicines were either too harsh or too light, surgery came too late, but Peter found the balance. Adam could not do this, he knew from now on, in all things this man would be the cure and answer to all his problems. Peter was the starter of the engine.

Peter looked over at the heart beating in the tank to the left, by itself. It fluttered of pink and blue neon elites, like a sea creature and an underwater string of lights outlined its muscles. Who knew what sea animal Adam Grigori had made it out of, but it did beat all its own, in the water, a new vascular heart and humanoid. Dr. Grayson leaned forward, the corners of his mouth turned into a smile. His sea blue eyes glistened with a slight tear from his muscular dystrophy. The neon lights bounced off his pupils. As a cardiologist, he was especially proud, beguiled by this work, and lucky to be a part of it.

Peter peered at Kristin slightly; he knew it was because of her youth. The Calderan society like all others was preoccupied by youth, they avoided age, and the aged unless they could learn something from it. Then they gravitated to youth again. Kristin took it as her job to always look good, to be calm and coy even when she was not interested, in the person, the details, or the outcome. The researcher was not exactly the best at her craft, but she knew how to get results and make her assets work for her. The public servant was also tenacious and would never stop.

“Kristin this is Dr. Peter Grayson, he is our tropical disease specialist, and “She heard someone say in the distance. She was nervous but tried to manage a smile. Her nerves and muscles operated on their own. She weakly looked at him, and speculated his age was around 35, yet he was beginning to show wear and tear beyond his years, with lines and shadowing around his eyes. He had a secret, much like herself.

“Why I didn’t know there was such a specialty, “she answered as if slightly jealous that he had been all over the world and she hadn’t been anywhere. She studied him as he walked to his locker, opened, took off his wind jacket, and hung it between the doctor’s coat and stethoscope. Peter pulled his swim trunks from the locker and tucked them under his arm. Kristin turned from him in an embarrassed manner when she saw him.

In equal measure, Peter was charming and breathtaking all at once. Dr. Grayson was both rugged and worldly. He always said the right things, she could tell. The minute he walked into any hospital, he had the patients and staff eating out of his hand. The blue -eyed brown- haired heartthrob was a scholar and the top of his class. He rejected several internships to work with Adam Grigori. Before taking the job, he often traveled the world as a traveling doctor, never taking time to settle down.

Peter’s work centered on infectious disease. Peter had been all over the world even before the Time Shift with his father the sea faring Captain. He learned medicine at sea and in the jungles before he worked at some of the most prestigious hospitals in Europe. Dr. Grayson taught medicine in China, worked at a women’s clinic in Africa here and there, vaccinated children in Bolivia, and then came back to the island to see all of its problems.

Nanotechnology was stable yet unpredictable. Cures for cancer and diabetes were still at large and Peter was the one, who could defeat them, yet he loved his people, and his heart ached at their plight. Those were the days before the first Time Shift when time flowed and now it was a burden. Yet here Peter was volunteering his body for advancements of medicine, Kristin had other motives yet one no less noble than the other depending on the perspective did. Peter studied different dialects of whale sounds and applied this further knowledge of linguistics. He was always one with the sea animals; he knew this would suit him well.

Kristin entered and walked past the tank where the medusa jellyfish was housed. It banged against the side. Kristin saw a line hanging from it. She paused for a moment. It could not be in pain, her father would not do such a thing. She looked down, continued to the next to the bio bed, and took off her robe slowly. Kristin reclined slowly on the bed wearing a wet suit and looked over at Peter in the adjacent bed. Adam filled the bio beds with water. They gulped then started to breath, and then he froze the water. Adam Grigori finished his last injection, on her first, then Peter.

Kristin rested on the biobed 12 next to Peter. Adam revived them with a current and warmed the water. Adam smiled looking at his little Frankenstein, his first creation, Kristin. Then he walked away taking off his gloves. He only wanted to be one with the sea, or so that was what he told her. She looked up to the ceiling of the room. Brilliant circles formed in her vision then her eyes rolled back in her head and her neck plunged back against the pillow. “What did you tell her? “John Chamers, Dr. Adam Grigori’s assistant asked Adam.

“She just thinks she is helping us, But we will soon see, it will take decades in fact to see if she will become, immortal, “Grigori answered. Chamers eyed them curiously wondering if everything was all right. He arched his eyebrow at Adam walking away. He was not surprised. Adam was not the type to try this ‘treatment’ on himself first and perhaps these young doctors could monitor themselves well enough. Chamers strolled to the other side of the room. As Kristin settled in on the bed, Adam walked to the terminal beside her.

“DNA sequencing re initiated,” the computer said. Adam saw the marker on the computer. Here DNA had been scanned two months earlier.

“What were the results? “ Adam asked.

“What?” she asked.

“You had a DNA scan back in March, “Adam replied.

“Oh they were inconclusive,” she said in a slurred speech pattern as she nodded her head from side to side. Adam noticed as he returned a gingered smile. The professor paused and lifted his chin to smile, and continued because he believed in his work. He turned back to the computer and busied himself. His faced looked worried but as a scientist, he knew this was his daughter’s best hope. Even in 2045, the brain was still a mystery to him, which was why his work was so important. It would revolutionize the small vessel, nerves, muscles that powered the organs. He had to admit his daughter had guts, He would not want to know, yet her mother’s side of the family was plagued with disabling neurological diseases.

As soon as Kristin walked into the room, there was Dr. Peter Grayson. Adam showed Kristin the latest newspaper, front-page photo, showing a doctor walking out of the courtroom in hand cuffs. Peter’s mother was a lawyer, but he decided to keep that to himself. Adam Grigori needed another doctor and a doctor he was. Peter’s eyes were blue like seawater. He had an exterior made of steel. He sat down in a massage chair across from her and squared his torso trying to relax his muscled arms.

“Where did he get them? “Peter asked. Dr. Grayson nodded over at the animals with a smile on his face and stretched out his muscled arm for his blood work.

“You know,” Chamers said to Peter.

Peter went to the treatment to cure an autoimmune disorder. His scledera affliction was fixed through surgery. Although he did have white patches on his arm as he looked at it. He looked over at Kristin on the table he assumed she was suffering more. “What cha in for?” he asked

“Oh this and that,” she said sleepily she said as she sighed. They just met he could not expect her to tell him her whole life’s story. She lightly smiled she did not know if she would see him again. She turned her head from back to the center and sighed deeply.

Chamers walked over to Peter with a hypodermic needle. Chamers smiled at Kristin and then retreated and hobbled close to Adam with his cane. Chamer’s disabilities depressed him so he shied away from others. Peter winced as the serum went into his arm. Peter frowned and thought of his life as a small boy. Peter knew the black market all too well. His father was a whaler and he lived amongst danger and espionage. His mother spent all of her time keeping and getting his father out of trouble and lawyers knew how to keep people out of trouble. He understood the trauma of living with idealistic bipolar parent, like Adam Grigori, in a dysfunctional family. He found a kindred spirit in Kristin Grigori in this brief time. In that moment he knew they could be mated forever He glanced, smiled, and returned the warm gesture, yet her mind seemed somewhere else. Then his head fell back into the chair into a dream.

Peter looked at the tank with the dolphins. His gaze centered on Adam’s creature that was a hybrid. It was born of a killer whale and the male sperm of a porpoise. Adam called it his one great creation and wanted to make many of them. It was half the size of a killer whale yet swirled grey and white. It looked at him with its cousins the dolphins. They were very intelligent. He only wondered what it was thinking. It held his gaze as he fell into a deep sleep.

It was his childhood it was a familiar place in Antarctica. It was a place in the north a hunting expedition with his father. Peter jolted at the horrible memory in the bed. The sun melted the sea ice just enough to find a bounty of seafood. Therefore, they dug below the ice. The place was dry with a ceiling on ice stronger than steel, and it was cold and frozen. Yet time was of the essence. They did not have long to gather as much shellfish as they could, before the sun came up. They hurried in the darkness like vampires racing against sunrise.

The small whale’s head into the bay, but are carefully heated them into small creeks between the ices. If they were lucky, they can capture two or three to sea farm and breed. His father made him practice. Peter went out very night in his canoe. He would out race and spear a whale until he has successful. Peter hated it, but it was what he was bred to do and they needed food tonight. One small whale could feed them for weeks or months.

A playful sea lion nose dove then belly upped to the surface. This reminded him of underground of home. Then there came the whales, they do not call them killers for nothing. It was kill if be killed out him. People seldom saw this, he looked I with awe and agony. He watched from the dock, and splashed his legs against the dock. A killer whale emerged gliding along the surf. They did not always kill for food, sometimes for sport. It was kill and eat out here, not time to waste. It did love to play with its kill, yet no other animal nearby to challenge It, this was the most dangerous predator n all the seas. Killer whales loved seals and played with them in life and death. It would go, and fed on to its meal against the strong tide. It played with its meal for miles, throwing it into water. Then it disappeared below water trying to distract the other whale.

A curtain of krill moved in unison beneath the ocean. He looked around and thought the other whales would be there soon. They loved krill. Instead he saw a giant whale shark, the opposite if its name, they were very gentile. He looked to the moon that was rising and just in view. It’s power almost at its height and would reach over the tides. It was very beautiful the way some of these animals opened and closed their tentacles like flowers. Yet they were hidden danger and they were very dangerous. They were twice the potency of the black widow.

The fish hid in caves from the whales. The sun woke the immortals that slumbered beneath the oceans for centuries or perhaps eons. It was the only thing powerful enough to do it. The penguins soared beneath the water as if flying in the sky. Their wings used the oceans as the air. Then they took to the ice walking with a hearty sway two by two. The baby polar bear watched its mom bludgeon the sea ice for fishing.

They studied these animals for years, especially those in blackened deep. The way they would lie in wait for days, adapt in minutes, and evolve or cease to envelope with decades in mind. The slowness of their pace strengthened their bodies, and it was the timing of their smallest movement that made them immortal. This was what Adam spent time looking for. Kristin looked at his name. “You are a Cavendish,” she said to him referring to the wealthiest family in Caldera.

“My mother was a Cavendish, she ran away to Mary my father, I only found this out recently,” He said. They all even had the sane look, she noticed, they were constantly in the news battling the government over their business interests. “She chose a poor life with my father, believe me we were very poor. Besides money cannot buy everything,” he continued. Although, he now knew why they always survived when they were at the end on their limit, his mother’s money. She turned her head. Her disdain for the very rich was apparent, just like her father, she could not hide it, yet her father was a hypocrite and would do a task with anyone to appease his interest. This man seemed nice enough, but she wondered what kind of deal he had.

Kristin watched Peter sleep then fell asleep with an IV in her arm looking at the animals both prehistoric and present, together in one time and place. Adam had the coelacanth, a living fossil that eluded extinction and change floated ever so peacefully. Adam extracted their DNA and kept them in a giant tank attempting to breed more and more of them, but it was difficult. Their longevity was legendary. Modern day retiles housed in a giant tank next to the coelacanth.

Adam Grigori looked deep in her eyes. Medicine was always hypocritical. She knew this. Take the treatment she might have headaches all her life. If she did not take the treatment, she will be left with strokes her whole life. Who knew if her tests were in the clear? His daughter was noble she beloved in science, medicine, and truth. Science at least held truth and hope; this is what he could do. As a scientist be knew the solution, take the risk at all cost this way when she died, she would be reborn. He welled up, put down the cryogenic chamber 20 minutes, and then the serum.

“My dear sweet daughter, you will move across time, you will be time, and there is no gravity in water,” he said too low for them to hear. They floated with their faces above water. He froze them in the water with one surge of cold air, to freeze their age. Then he sent the electrical current through their bodies, to ignite the serum. They had experimented for decades with the same electrical current. They used it to get grown organs to pump, now a vascular system. He was so pleased with himself he could barely move. He would surely be their hero.

Adam looked at Peter; he could not believe he came back. He thought back to when he first met him. Peter rushed into the nearby wing attached to Adam Grigori hospital to his assignment. This was where Adam first met the dashing intern. He remembered it as if it was yesterday. This was his last internship, yet he yearned for some other adventure. He looked at his hand, it shook, and beneath his sleeve, he was not sure how long he could hide these problems.

Adam Grigori caught his eye and disappeared. He had heard about the illustrious researcher who worked in labs by themselves and were so smart they talked to themselves half of the day. This was Adam Grigori. Peter did not think he would ever meet one, and he had heard of Grigori and his brilliant brother in whispering circles and cocktail parties. The doctors spent all of their time together as did the lawyers. Adam was a celebrity in the medical world because if his wild ideas, both were but it was rumored that Adam was the brains behind it all. Adam did not get that hospital he worked in by accident.

It was years ago when Peter looked to the small girl in front of him behind the glass. She was adorable, and sat calmly in her mother’s arms in a flowered dress. She was only 10 months old, with a small mitral valve problem. Her mother was so scared she could never tell when the little girl’s lips turned blue. She begged Peter for the operation. He wanted to wait until she was older, but decided to do it because of his worsening condition; this would have to be his last. Cardiac surgery only a few could do anyway because of its delicate nature. It was sad to leave something he loved so much, he had only just begun, he was angered as he turned and walked down the hall.

Yet Adam Grigori had his eye on Dr. Peter Grayson as well. His eyes followed him down the hall, as he slid from around the corner, he saw the tremor in his left hand, and it was ever so often under the skin. It could pass for anxiety, but a physician could see it, and more importantly, Peter knew it was there. However, what could it be? Dr. Grayson was already renowned in his field at a young age. Cardiologists were few in number especially on their small island and especially those that knew matters of the heart. Dr. Grayson, was an authority on artificial organs, maybe he could help him. Adam needed something to exchange, he had to know what Peter knew? What was wrong with him, he had to know? Adam snuck around the corner to the wing that many doctors used for their medical care. He went into the files and found Dr. Grayson’s next to his daughter’s file; he used her birthday to unlock it. Luckily, for him the codes for the firewalls were numbers plied to their generation. He figured it out and read it in awe. He would promise Dr. Grayson immortality in exchange for the last piece of his puzzle.

The process was intense and brutal. The electricity felt like a thousand stings, ten thousand strokes in lightening at the same time. Adam was missing one thing, an engineer. His plan was too much for the system the tanks exploded and the computers caught fire. Pictures and signs posted on their tanks. Tanks created an environment that tracked the process of all life evolving from the sea for the sole purpose of researching. The marine crocodiles rowed along the underwater trees, reached to the top of the water for the sky. Long lily pads as large as banana leaves stretched to the top of the tanks floating on the bright blue water. They lingered together in the same space, aquamarine animals from past, present, and the future. This was another violation of Calderan law and Chamers was always on edge for many reasons while he tended to them.

The Plesiosaurus resembled the Lockness. It would reside in the darkest depths of the sea, a colossal creature with small teeth, four fins, a propelled tail, and a grey body. Willows blew from side to side, on the skinny trees reminiscent of what was above on the island before it sank. The plants that could adapt, adapted easily to the water, devolving to the plants of prehistoric times, monstrous plants in height and stature, long short green bushes planted in the white sand.

The Lioplueurodons resembled a deep sea alligator, with sharp teeth, that were inches long, striped bodies, with the veracity of modern day shark, capable of growing up to fifty feet long. Moss covered rocks plains rough granite rocks, large green evergreen bases, multicolored and coral scattered across the scene like a wilderness inside a massive aquarium.

Xiphacictinus, large fish with incredibly long teeth soared along amongst large valleys of pebble. Large gardens grew underwater from base to the green foliage atop the highest branch on the foot tall tree. They grew like wild fire underwater in this futuristic world. Big floppy leaves above large mushrooms scattered around the bottom of the floor.

Ginsu sharks, the biggest predator, preyed on the other monsters, and looked like the modern sharks. Signs from a time before The Great Collapse were embedded into the grottos. The engineers built around the old convenient stores and gas stations with neon lights, thinking they would make great attractions, within the giant aquariums.

Mosasaurs, resembled the Lioplueurodons, but were larger with shorter teeth, and very long tail. Prehistoric turtles were as large as cars. Bright blue rainbow fish were used to feed the predators and inhabitants in the tanks near the facility. The unsuspecting fish dropped into the waters and glided in the tanks. Some people knew the animals were there, but many did not. If they did the animal activist would have shut Adam Grigori down by now. They signed confidentiality agreements and sworn never to breathe a word of what they saw. The grounds keepers knew the danger. Pericles was kept at the entrance of the underground pools in the facility near the exit to the ocean.

The Placodonts, turtles the size of a walruses, which ate from the bottom of the ocean floor were kept separately in the first tank. Adam Grigori was left alone. He was one of the engineers who saved them. The elite doctors of Caldera created systems that helped people stay and adapt to the land. For all they knew Adam was a hero. They gave him a key to the largest city in Calderon, and he had access, to celebrities, politicians alike. There were countless articles written about him and his work was legendary. He won every award Caldera had to offer him, but he wanted more. Two people knocked at the door. He left the aquariums and ran to the door in that direction.

“Who are they?” Adam asked in haste and fright scrambling out the door.

“Well, we have two problems. Some government representative is here, he wants the time travel research, and they insist it must be ready,” Chamers said. Chamers tugged at Adam Grigori as he walked into the direction of the representatives. Adam closed the door on the infirmary with the research participants and rushed to meet them.

“I just need more time, “Adam said.

“Professor, you don’t have any more time, “they said. He began to argue with them, but suddenly a large boom came from the tanks. Adam ran back to the tanks and Chamers followed him. “That’s what I was going to tell you, there is a strange virus, in the aquariums, “said John Chamers.

Peter and Kristin still convulsed from the treatment. Peter recovered more quickly and rolled off the bed. Kristin fell off the bio bed and onto her knees. She leaned forward and vomited on the floor in front of her. Water poured from every cell in her body. As if, she was disintegrating and coming alive again. It was just for a moment and then her skin tightened. Her eyes were blurry she could not see Peter. John brought Adam to the microscope. Adam saw the virus and looked up horrified. Then he ran back to the tanks again. The tanks exploded all over the facility one by one. Adam knew he could not contain those specimens, so he ran out of there as fast as he could. Adam tried to look for Kristin. The security measures activated.

Peter gathered the participants and rushed them into the elevators pushing the button catapulting them into the skyscrapers. The large heavy door automatically closed locking them in. Adam would not leave. The sprinklers went off and many of the security overrides locked the outside doors, in fact bolted them. The water swept Peter one-way, Adam the other, and Kristin was gone. The specimens could not get out into the city. The facility began to fill with water. Adam was playing Russian roulette when he experimented with them. He hoped the Calderans would not pay the price. He had one hope, the time sequencing, and his second discovery found within the sea creatures.

Then there was another explosion. Bacteria spread into the aquariums. The catalyst was one dirty coin that a sailor gave to Adam Grigori that dropped into the largest tank. The black amoeba that emerged was from either the past or the present and could easily live in either one as well was something very old, and very and dangerous. It would know the earth in each of its cycles year after year time after time. It began with the coral, and erosion sparked and spread faster than the rejuvenation process could match.

The amoeba worked its way through the tanks growing from the coral, and then skipping from animal to animal looking for a strong host. Surprisingly these baby paleo sea monsters had immune systems that were too delicate, for the virus. The amoeba became panicked swimming into the water. It adapted to air and water within a few seconds. It grew at an amazing rate, like an out of control sequence of the animals specimens in the lab in ten minutes. Their immune systems could support it; yet, it changed so quickly it could not be stopped. It morphed into an ameba intelligent learning at an incredible rate. Once it saw something it knew it, and within a minute, it began molding its tiny cells into a brain.

The virus was intelligent, it knew when and how to slow and vary its pace. It worked as a mind inside the animals it inhabited, for the animals had such simple minds, yet also the potential to live, like the algae and mollusk. Yet the virus grew too greedy. It wanted to be too big too fast, too much too soon, and it quickly killed the host. It jumped from animal to animal trying to take their forms, to become a predator, a parasite, and keep their bodies. Each animal died very quickly.

It was difficult to survive. The water was treated, and the viruses had been eradicated here for decades. The virus lost all sense of self. It suffocated, and could not reproduce easily. It was the only one of its kind that could feel this. It tried to call out amongst others like itself; the calls were mute and unresponsive. They were gone, dead, because they could not evolve. It was trapped within the tanks bumping giant the force field above the water in each one.

The force field was for the animal’s safety and assured nothing else would emerge. The virus made its way from cave to cave, from grotto to grotto, to animal-to-animal, until it reached the sea. It had the ability to change from a simple amoeba at will making it transparent as if jelly humanoid formed at will touch the glass as if trapped in a zoo.

So it became airborne and snaked its way through the air ducts. It would not look for any other animals; it just wanted to escape, to be outside near the ocean. It was like wildfire. One of the animals was sick then the others one by one and soon they all went wild shortly after that. The animals broke from their aquariums and flooded the hospital. The experiments were smashed and, the aquariums busted. Some of the animals broke free, and there was a fire. The whole facility was engulfed in flames.

Kristin came out of the infirmary just in time to see the chaos. Adam Grigori was heartbroken. The facility was on the brink of destruction yet he would not leave it. Water rushed round them, and then the current took Kristin into the current into the roaring waters. The whole grotto was made of earth colored cobblestone. The water lightly brushed over the stone as if it was a creek with running water. A Jacuzzi was to the left and a stone sauna to her right. The water was green, not blue like elsewhere. In fact, she wondered if this was the cause of the infection. Kristin looked at her skin and nothing happened. Indeed, she had not been transformed into a normal aquamarine mammal. She laughed at herself, but wondered if her father was all right. She was determined to make it back through the maze of caves, but the opening through which she had come was covered with large boulders.

Kristin emerged from a small light blue pond with a yellow hue in one of the intersecting rooms of the facility. It was all white stone as if carved in rock twenty feet tall. She surfaced from the water and climbed the steps out of the zigzag pool lit room above to the second story, with four windows directly in front of her. Her new X-ray vision lit up the water and was beginning to work not quite penetrating it. Ivy hung from the rock.

Kristin walked through an opening in the back to the left a smaller leading down into each one. The first copy stepped into the first pool she saw with low lights and swam to an opening to another room surfacing to a pool with two stone doors. The Grigori doppelganger got out of the pool and jumped through the door on the left to another cave. Kristin pushed through the water. She could not tell if the transformation was over, yet she felt somewhat stronger than before. She could feel the nerve impulses from all over her body, firing and powering her muscles. She tried to move the boulder twice her size, the pain was excruciating. She pulled back her arm, yet it worked. She saw she moved it an inch forward as shenursed her arm.

Kristin found herself looking at a pool to her right. That flowed down a hall made entirely of rock held by four-foot wide pillars holding up the shorter ceiling of a small cave at least six feet tall containing three pools intersecting by a small stone bridge. The entire cave was made of large red boulders each pool emanating blue light each room lit by a torch over prehistoric foliage.

The next one was unlike any other she had ever seen. It was made like an underwater aqueduct, with a large green pool, and five windows, which circled the round room, a fern in each window. They surrounded a square lap pool made of concrete perfectly cut and laid in large white blocks. There was a large blue mural on the ceiling above that resembled a cave painting. The huge cave was lit with one sliver of light that illuminated the whole cavern using her newfound aquatic lungs. Kristin climbed up the side of the wall. She hung on one rock and floated to another, then gained her footing on the side of the shore. Jagged grey and brown walls towered over the watering hole.

The brown cave was made of entirely small pebbles that sparkled like gold, and the water was emerald and turquoise. There was a large round opening that was lit at the end of the cave, Kristin ran down the hall decorated with shells. She entered a cave with an Olympic sized pool containing very blue water, so transparent she could see brightly lit cave at the bottom. Kristin ran to the end of the space, dove into the water, and then swam down into the cave. The researcher followed the large rocks to the top of the water. The walls were black and grey, lit by white light bounced off the water coloring it light blue. A brown pool covered with moss on the rocks, and surrounded on either side, climbing up the walls of the very tall rocks. Dim light from the blue water shined under the low ceiling. She jumped out and ran along the same cave traveling to a dirt road so slick it was like a black sandy beach. The blocks hid an opening to a fluorescent blue pool with light bouncing off the water.

The lower cave was lined with artificial light along the side of the water. The water was rippled as if it were part of the ocean. Kristin knew she was nearing the end. She breast stroked to the side and lifted her body up. The new doppelganger could see her veins glowing underneath the water. She tiptoed though a stone room with a bird bath in the middle of the low water dripping water onto the floor in the middle of the room. Murals were painted on the ceiling directly above a triangle for the door.

The water was ankle high, lit by a mysterious glow underneath the water that made the blue look light fluorescent. The walls were made of large stone pieced together as if a jigsaw puzzle, green and purple light shined from the wall. It was like a small maze as Kristin crept through it. Then there was another grotto but something was different. She came out of the water into an underground green-lit underground cave. Kristin fled into a path through one hole on one side then to another hole on another side. She floated to the stalactite cave were her father kept the animals.

Kristin hurried along the wooden bridge and broke her toenail. She cursed to herself. There was nothing Kristin valued more than her appearance. The first doppelganger watched as the toenail grew back for the first time seeing it grow back then she walked up the steps to the lamps onto the observation veranda. These animals were relatively benign, and clung to the floor. If not they would have made themselves known to her by now, but the animal were smart. An invisible force field covered the waters. The staff knew they could not play there. There was a purple-lit cave, with small stone seats just below the water. The bar was lit with lanterns, near two open windows, and then there was a stone rock to which patrons could cling on it and swam to the four-foot bar.

There was a bridge in front of large fire pits. Kristin ran around it and jumped into the water. She swam into an entrance behind the waterfall and surfaced through the small pool. There was a shower to her left and natural water, the researcher got out of there as quick as she could. Kristin ventured through one of the caves taking a torch with her along the way and ran through a path carved on the other side of the rock. Dr. Grigori sat for a minute to catch her breath next to an opening. Then finally, she met Peter. They hugged so glad to see each other.

Kristin and Peter took a moment to rest on the side of the pool. She looked at him deeply, his arms around her shoulders. “Why do you look at me like that as if you are looking for something? When you have me,” he said to her. She hugged him even closer. They plunged back into the water. They swam together through a cave lit within orange and yellow lights. They finally came to the surface, of a long pool, which doubled as a playground lit with white and purple lights trimmed with tropical ferns. Kristin saw trees in the distance. Evergreens colored black from the approaching night.

It would only last a year Adam Grigori told them. The real change happened when the doppelganger was born somewhere else in the world. It was stable, durable, and capable of adapting itself to human form and immune to all sickness. Peter and Kristin jumped into the pool at the docking bay. It was just the two of them, no sign of Sandy Island or anyone they knew. Kristin looked back; there was no sign of life. Even the tide-powered generators had stopped. She fell on her knees in the water again floating. It was natural to her, because she was an aquatic humanoid. They drifted along in the water for what seemed like years.

Kristin rolled repeatedly, then finally came to a stop, and looked up dazed as if a Mac truck, dazed, had hit her. The sun blurred, but what is this? Her marine eyes tried to adjust to the sunlight large pupils large like a fish. She struggled perching on her arms. However, where was Peter? She could not remember anything else and what she could remember was quickly fading. She touched her forehead and could feel a stream of blood, dripping from it. She narrowed her eyes, and then there was nothing.

Kristin opened her eyes and floated down to the bottom of the sea. The water danced around, so familiar to her yet unfamiliar. She saw the bright colored fish in the wide-open sea then she floated to the top. It was almost sunset and she marveled at the spectacular hues in nature. The glare in her eyes bounced off the speckled sky that changed at will.

Peter woke on one side of the beach in a remote region of Russia looking up at a sign that said seventy miles to St. Petersburg; Peter rose and staggered near the sign, memory wiped. The scene looked vaguely familiar, familiar enough so he kept drawing enough strength to walk upright. His new body was still a mystery to him. He could not remember a thing.

Meanwhile Kristin approached the canal from the west from the beach. Kristin floated for several miles, which she could easily do given her new body and physiology. Grigori doppelganger floated along the canal, climbed up the brick wall, and threw her over the railing. It was dusk and she looked up into the sky where dark blue clouds floated against a light blue sky. Kristin found she was a lifesaving siren. She pulled the men into the port to save them. They were about to plunge to their deaths and she sang them into port. She looked around the St. Petersburg landscape to see if anyone was looking then ran down the street. The first doppelganger was still wearing her tattered clothing from her time. Dr. Grigori ducked into an alley and saw carriages ride past her. She was a scientist not a historian, but she looked around the streets as she walked back and forth to the nearest boardinghouse.