Multiversum by Leonardo Patrignani

Author:Leonardo Patrignani
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: JUV000000, JUV053000, JUV046000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2014-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

24

Alex looked around.

He was in the middle of the street, in a semi-abandoned plaza not unlike the one that had been turned into a city-run basketball court back in his own world. Every now and then, he’d arrange to meet some guys from other classes and play a few games there, even though his coach had forbidden them to play casually around town — he was afraid that one of his valuable players would come limping back with an injury that would sideline him for the rest of the season.

Alex looked down and examined his body.

He was wearing a pair of jeans and a torn shirt. He ran a hand over the back of his head and realised it had been shaven clean. He pulled a wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. In it were some banknotes that looked completely unfamiliar to him and an assortment of papers. He saw his own picture on an ID card and, under it, the name Karl Weser.

Dazed and baffled, he instinctively started to try gleaning some information about his alternative life, the way he had in the locker room. As he was straining to do so, he started walking. He turned down one street and saw that in the distance it ran under an overpass. As far as he could see in every direction, there were piles of rubble, giving the impression that a bomb had just gone off. Alex also noticed smoke rising from fissures in the ground, as if the asphalt had cracked in the aftermath of a violent earthquake. In the distance, he could see parked cars going up in flames.

This looks like my city … but what’s happened to it?

Alex started to remember something about his alternative identity. All at once, a jumble of information surfaced: a civil war of some kind, armed clashes in the streets, bomb attacks, and wholesale massacres. He remembered a Milan in the throes of a fully-fledged uprising that had thrown the city into disarray and undermined the authorities, with assassinations of leading political figures. As he walked towards the overpass, he remembered that, in Rome, the Vatican City had been burned. What he had learned about this world over the past few minutes was shocking, to say the least. He wanted to run away, but where would he go? Suddenly, he heard voices, far behind him but growing louder.

They were shouting and screaming. Alex turned around but there wasn’t a soul in sight. A blanket of smoke blocked his view. All he could see clearly was the bridge behind him: it reminded him very strongly of the overpass at Milan’s Lambrate station.

When he was finally able to make out the figures of a few people, he froze in his tracks. He felt as if his blood had stopped flowing.

A horde of people was marching straight towards him. They were wearing hooded black outfits and carrying weapons of all sorts: rifles, clubs, pistols. Every one of them had managed to lay their hands on something.

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