Dominik Mikulaschek (born in Linz in 1983) writes children's books that you start reading "just one chapter" of – and suddenly it's late. He loves puzzles that can actually be solved, rules that can be politely ignored (if necessary) and stories in which friendship is stronger than any clipboard. His adventures are exciting, but never too scary: they're about discovery, about sticking together – and about that tingly feeling when you realise: something's not right here... and we're the first to notice.
Dominik Mikulaschek
The headmaster is a doppelganger
Funny children's book for ages 8 and up | Agent vibes & fun
tredition GmbH
© 2026 Dominik Mikulaschek
Printing and distribution on behalf of the author:
tredition GmbH, Heinz–Beusen–Stieg 5, 22926 Ahrensburg, Germany
This work, including all parts thereof, is protected by copyright. The author is responsible for the content. Any use without his consent is prohibited. Publication and distribution are carried out on behalf of the author, who can be reached at: Dominik Mikulaschek, Holzwurmweg 5, 4040 Linz, Austria.
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Chapter 1 – The director says something impossible
Monday morning at Regelberg Primary School smelled, as always, of freshly mopped linoleum, sharpened pencils and a very special kind of doom and gloom that only appeared when the Office for Peace and Order (OPO) had been busy making new plans over the weekend. Milo Mertens pulled his satchel up a little higher and felt the familiar tingling in his fingertips that always warned him before something really strange happened. Right next to the main entrance, where the sign "Laughing only during the big break" usually hung, there was now a huge grey poster. In bold black letters it read: IDENTITY PEACE – Anyone who has doubts should fill out form D-OPP. Below it was a brand new stamp from the Department of Persons and Protocol. Milo stopped and frowned, while Fina Fuchs next to him had already pulled out her notebook. "Identity peace?" Milo muttered, watching Fina sketch the new sign with the precision of a secret agent. "People are patterns, Milo," Fina said without looking up from her notebook. "And when the office changes patterns, it usually means they're trying to hide something from us." At that moment, Turbo Tan shuffled over, trying to stuff a slice of bread and jam into his mouth without triggering the new warning light above the door. BEEP! The identity scanner above the frame immediately sounded the alarm, bathing Turbo's face in a nervous purple light. "Unauthorised crumb identity detected!" croaked a tinny voice from the loudspeaker. Turbo froze in mid-chew and looked like a statue that had had a very bad breakfast. "It's just me," mumbled Turbo as he tried to discreetly wipe the jam away with his sleeve. "Or at least I'm ninety-seven per cent sure it's me." Milo was about to reply when the large double doors to the director's office swung open and the director stepped out. But it wasn't the headmaster they knew at – at least, it didn't feel like it. He was wearing white cloth gloves that were so sparkling clean they almost hurt the eyes. His gaze wandered across the hallway as if he were asking every speck of dust for its ID card. Normally, he would have loudly complained that the satchels were not standing at an exact ninety-degree angle to the wall. Instead, he raised his hand and spoke in a tone as flat and dry as a three-hundred-year-old file. "Good morning, Year Four units," said the headmaster, looking right through Milo. "From now on, please exist quietly." Milo's mouth fell open. "Units?" he whispered to Fina. "Did he just seriously call us units?" Fina tapped her pen wildly, which was a sign of high alert in her mind. "Deviation detected," she muttered. "The real headmaster always says 'esteemed student body' when he wants to punish us particularly severely." Turbo, who had just recovered from his scanner shock, stepped forward and held up his lunch box. "Um, Headmaster?" he asked, flashing his widest Turbo grin. "Say: lunch break!" It was Turbo's ultimate test for all adults, because he believed that no one could say the word 'lunch break' without appearing hungry or at least a little human. The headmaster looked at Turbo as if he were a form that had ended up in the wrong filing cabinet. He adjusted his glasses, which today did not have a single fingerprint on them. "Negative feedback," the headmaster replied mechanically. "Energy intake takes place exclusively in the designated protocol window." Milo felt the ground beneath his feet briefly turn into marshmallows. Something was very wrong here. Not only was the headmaster speaking strangely, he seemed to be communicating in code. Right behind him appeared Inspector Ordnung, carrying a new sign under his arm. He looked surprisingly satisfied, which at school usually meant that the fun factor had just dropped to zero. He hammered the sign onto the door of the staff room with a heavy stapler, right next to . It read: THE DIRECTOR IS ALWAYS RIGHT. Milo looked at Fina, who was already starting her "headmaster list" in her head. "Fina, did you see that?" he whispered. "He's wearing gloves. In the classroom! Who wears gloves when they don't want to leave fingerprints?" Fina nodded seriously and made a note. "Clue number one: concealed extremity logging," she said quietly. "Milo, I think the impossible has happened. Not only did he say something wrong, he behaved as if he were a copy of himself that hadn't quite finished loading yet." At that moment, the school bell rang, sounding more like a warning buzz from a computer case today. The headmaster turned on his heel without another word and marched away at a brisk pace. Milo stared after him and felt the pressure in his stomach grow. The identity calm had only just begun, but Milo knew one thing for sure: if the headmaster was no longer himself, then the entire Regelberg Primary School was in danger of being replaced by a huge archive for forms. He looked at Turbo and Fina and knew that they no longer had time for applications. "We have to test him," Milo said firmly, gripping the straps of his satchel tightly. "If that's not our headmaster up there, then we have to find out where the real one is before Project Self-Affirmation wipes us all out."
Chapter 2 – Turbo whispers: "That's a foreign director!"
Milo pulled Fina and Turbo behind the large blue changing room wall in the gym, which stood in the hallway like a lifeline in a sea of grey filing cabinets. The whisper meter on the opposite wall was already trembling nervously and flashing a warning yellow light, but Milo didn't care at all at that moment. His heart was pounding like a stamp gone haywire, and questions rattled around in his head like marbles in a tin can. "Did you see that?" he whispered as quietly as possible, peeking cautiously around the corner of the wall. "The headmaster is wearing gloves. In the middle of the building. And he's talking as if he'd eaten a packet of dusty paragraphs for breakfast." Turbo, who was laboriously fishing the last remnants of his jam sandwich out of the corner of his mouth, nodded so vigorously that his ears wiggled. "That's not a headmaster, Milo," whispered Turbo in a voice that sounded as if he were revealing a state secret about the composition of gummy bears. "That's a foreign director. Clearly. Maybe a robot with a bad Wi-Fi connection or an alien who forgot how to use human faces." Fina rolled her eyes and opened her notebook, which she had already titled DIRECTOR ANOMALIES. "Humans are patterns, Turbo," she said in her matter-of-fact logical voice, which always reminded Milo a little of a very clever torch. "And this pattern here is completely wrong. The real headmaster always adjusts his glasses with his middle finger when he's angry. This one uses his thumb. Besides, he doesn't smell like the mint pastilles he usually devours by the boxful, but like..." Fina paused briefly and sniffed the air intently. "He smells like fresh printer's ink and very expensive hair gel." Milo watched as Inspector Order nailed a new notice to the bulletin board at the other end of the hallway. The poster read in huge letters: PROJECT SELF-AFFIRMATION – Identity is a duty, not an opinion. Below it was a small box that looked like the identity scanner above the entrance door. "The Office for Peace and Regulation is involved in this," Milo realised, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. "They're using the director to force us all into this 'identity tranquillity'. If no one asks questions about who is who anymore, then the Office can just do whatever it wants here." Turbo took a step forward and looked around the hallway suspiciously. "We have to test him," he demanded. "I'm telling you, the guy doesn't even know what a proper breakfast is. I'm going to confront him with the ultimate weapon." Milo looked at Turbo with concern. He knew what was coming. Turbo always had that look when he was about to thoroughly ignore a rule. At that moment, the headmaster – or what looked like the headmaster – marched down the hallway. His footsteps sounded hard and mechanical on the linoleum, like a stapler firing every second. He held a clipboard tightly and looked past each child as if they were just a distracting stain on his perfect protocol. "Watch out," hissed Fina, ducking lower behind the wall. "He's approaching Sector B." Turbo didn't wait. Before Milo could grab his sleeve, Turbo leapt out of their hiding place and landed right in front of the man's shiny shoes. The headmaster stopped so abruptly that his clipboard almost fell. He looked at Turbo with a gaze colder than the freezer in the canteen. "Unit Tan," the headmaster growled without removing his gloves. "Unplanned movement in the corridor. Violation of Movement Protocol 4-B. Justify your presence in this area." Turbo was not impressed. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and looked the headmaster straight in the lifeless eyes. "Headmaster," Turbo said loudly and clearly. "Say something spontaneous: lunch break!" Milo held his breath. Fina held her pen ready to write down the answer. It was the test of all tests. The real headmaster loved lunch breaks. Every year, he gave an impassioned speech about how a properly filled sandwich was the basis for a disciplined school career. The man in the hallway didn't move. His eyelids didn't even twitch. He just stared at Turbo as if he had just spoken in a language consisting entirely of error messages. "Lunch," the headmaster finally repeated, but the word sounded like a chemical formula for cleaning products coming out of his mouth. "A term with no administrative value. Return to class. Immediately." Turbo gasped and took a step back. "Hah!" he whispered to Milo and Fina as the headmaster simply walked past him as if nothing had happened. "Did you hear that? No sparkle in your eyes! No rumbling stomachs! No 'But only with cheese, Turbo'! That's a fake headmaster! An impostor! A file alien!" Milo watched as the man disappeared into the staff room without touching the door handle with his bare hand. "He's wearing gloves so he doesn't leave any traces," Milo whispered. "But why does he do that? If he's officially the headmaster, he's allowed to touch everything." Fina drew a thick red circle in her notebook. "Maybe his fingerprints don't match the school's databases," she guessed. "Or he's afraid we'll collect samples of his skin texture. We need evidence, Milo. Real, verifiable discrepancies. A 'lunchbox' test is not enough for Inspector Ordnung to justify an investigation." Milo nodded resolutely. He sensed that they had only just discovered the tip of a huge bureaucratic iceberg. Signs now hung everywhere in the hallway with the words: THE HEADTEACHER IS ALWAYS RIGHT. Anyone who disagrees will receive Form D-OPP. Milo looked at the identity scanner above the door to the staff room, which vibrated the air with a constant, deep hum. "We'll make a list," Milo said, looking at his friends. "Fina collects the facts. Turbo provides the distraction. And I'll find out what happens in the headmaster's office when the doors are closed." Turbo grinned and patted the bag in which a packet of crackers was still rustling. "Deal. But if he starts eating circuits for , I'm out." Milo smiled briefly, but then he saw Inspector Ordnung coming straight towards them, holding his clipboard like a weapon. The identity scanner's buzzing suddenly became much louder, and Milo sensed that the first clue to the real headmaster's identity was out there somewhere, hidden under a layer of grey make-up and gloves. At that moment, the door to the staff room opened again and the headmaster called out in a loud, tinny voice: "Any doubts about identity will result in immediate detention in the archive!" Milo knew that they now had to be faster than an official stamp in a nosedive.
Chapter 3 – Fina creates the "Director List"
