Alternative history is a science. Science is not about the past, but about the future. For it is impossible to discern the features of the future without understanding why our past and present turned out to be the way we know it, without analyzing all the possible, albeit unfulfilled, options for what has already happened. However, how to distinguish the possible from the impossible? What could have happened - from something that could not have happened under any circumstances? And here a game comes to the aid of the researcher of alternatives - a magical act at the intersection of knowledge and imagination, during which our contemporaries become historical characters, and fictional heroes from a magical land acquire the features of our contemporaries. And then the unfulfilled past suddenly imperceptibly becomes our present...