Mateo couldn’t move as he was staring up at this young woman who was
standing over him, claiming to be his daughter. She looked like a cross
between himself and someone in the Nieman family, but he couldn’t run a DNA
test just with his eyes. This could be anyone pretending to be a relative
for some personal agenda. A cabal may have cast her for the role
specifically because she resembled what Romana was expected to grow up to
look like. Trust, but verify was the first thing running through his
head.
She seemed to be figuring what he was thinking. “You don’t have to believe
me. We’ll know soon enough, but first, warm up by the fire. I would like to
spend some time alone with my father before we involve the rest of the
team.”
Mateo stood up, walked a couple meters away, and sat back down on the rocks
to let the heat begin to dry his clothes. He watched the waves splash
against the shore, always just out of reach, even with the wind. He wanted
to stand yet again, and take her into a big hug, but assuming she was
telling the truth, she still didn’t know this man. He was a famous person to
her, but more of an idea than a real person. Her impressions would have been
built from anecdotes and rumors. Like all his other children, he never got
the chance to raise her. Who would he father but fail next?
“You’re not a failure,” Romana assured him.
“Can you turn it off, the mind-reading?”
“Yes, I just...couldn’t help myself. I’ve been waiting for this day for a
very long time.” She shakes her head. “So long.”
“Why wait? Were you stuck in a time bubble, or the past?”
“I was in the past,” she began to explain, “but I wasn’t stuck. We went
there on purpose. Well, I didn’t have any say; I was only a baby. That’s
just where I grew up.”
“Karla left us a message on the mirror,” Mateo said. “She told us to not
contact her; to maintain radio silence until things were safe. We respected
that. We didn’t even talk about it amongst ourselves. I don’t think I ever
mentioned it to Marie.”
“It’s because we were unreachable,” Romana clarified. “Those mirrors
couldn’t bridge two points in time, only space.”
“I’ve been at this for several years. If I hadn’t gotten stuck in those time
bubbles, and fallen out of my pattern occasionally, it would not have even
been two years. If you’ve grown up like this, just as Dubra did,
you’ve been doing it for longer than me.”
“Thousands of real years,” Romana confirmed. I was there, in the cemetery. I
saw your first jump. I even saw you come back a year later.”
“Wouldn’t we have jumped at the same time?” Mateo asked.
“I can adjust the departure time by a few minutes, like if I’m in the middle
of a conversation, or if I’m ready to leave early.”
“How were you there at any rate? It was the wrong timeline.”
“I’ve mostly been living in the Third Rail, which allowed me to enter any
timeline I wanted whenever I went back to the main sequence.”
“How is that possible? The Third Rail suppressed powers and patterns.”
“Not for me. I’m a lot like you, but not completely. My temporal metabolism
is slightly different. Half of my genes are from the Niemans, and I was
carried by many mothers. We call it a mutation.”
“Where’s your real mother, Karla?”
“I’m not ready to talk about her yet. I can tell you about my grandmother,
though, Tyra. You met her when she was old. In a different cemetery?”
Mateo thought back to what she might have been talking about. If it was in
the Third Rail, then she must be referring to the time when Mateo needed to
get away from the group, and decided to take a drive back towards that
reality’s version of Topeka. “She said her name was Tallulah, but it always
seemed like a lie.”
Romana smiled. “Yeah, she didn’t want to mess with your future. She was
visiting her husband, and had no clue that you would show up. Both of them
took the serum to be on my pattern. Then they both died, and I left the
reality to...visit my past; see where I came from. I’ve watched you a lot,
from the shadows, across multiple timelines.”
“I’m not proud of everything I’ve done.”
“Neither am I,” she replied.
They were silent for a few moments, both watching the wrathful ocean crash
into the distant cliffs. “I would love to know your intentions,” he finally
mustered the courage to say. “Are you staying, or is this just...a gift that
you’re about to take away so you can live your own life?”
“I thought about coming to you sooner, like right after you met Baby!Me. But
there are people who don’t need to know what happened during my first year
on Dardius. I decided to end up here a bit early, so I could make a home for
us all. Here’s a hint, it’s not under Castledome. It’s much prettier, and
it’s not on the map. I was hoping that...that you could—I know you’ve missed
so much, and maybe you just wanna...”
“I don’t wanna let you go. We’ve never really had a home, especially not me
after I accidentally erased myself from history. I just keep running around
the multiverse. I did wonder if this could be a place where we could put
down roots when I first saw these domes. I didn’t know what was going on, or
who was in charge, but it felt like we belonged here. Now that we have the
slingdrive, we can commute anywhere we want, but return home at the end of
the day. I don’t know that I want you going out there, even though I’m sure
you’ve seen some stuff already, but...”
She placed a hand on his. “We can make up for lost time. We don’t have to
make any decisions right away. I don’t need to join the team if you don’t
want me to. I just want a family. I haven’t been alone my whole life, but
it’s been lonely in recent days.”
“I’m sorry, I left. I don’t know what they told you—”
“I don’t blame you for that. I know that you had to protect me...from
yourselves. That was the bravest choice I’ve ever heard of anyone making. I
don’t know that I could have done it. I waited this long because I wanted
you to be able to take me seriously. I would have waited longer, until I was
an actual adult, but paradoxically, I also want you to still see me as a
child. Does that make sense?”
“It makes perfect sense,” he promised. He spread his arms open, letting the
blanket fall down behind him as he pulled her into a bear hug. “I’m sorry I
wasn’t there. I thought we would have more time. I thought the threats would
have disappeared in a few hundred years, and you would still be a wee baby
girl.”
“It’s okay. It’s no one’s fault,” she said as she was gently separating
herself. “Except for Oaksent. He started to look for me. He dismantled the
LIR Towers piece by piece during our interim year so my mother, Auntie
Constance, and I wouldn’t have a safe place to land.”
Mateo stopped himself from getting too worked up about that. “What of
Silenus?”
“Silenus made the same sacrifice that you did. He drew them away.”
Mateo nodded reverently, but didn’t press the issue. He instead changed the
subject. “Well, could I see this dome that you apparently built for us?”
“It’s not quite ready yet,” she answered, equal parts embarrassed and
excited. “The automators are still putting on the finishing touches. I was
going to wait a year to introduce myself, but then you teleported to the
North Pole Ocean, and I felt like I needed to help. You could have called
for anyone, but they’re busy, and...”
“I appreciate it,” he said. “I’m glad for this extra time.”
“Matt, where are you?” Leona asked through comms.
“I’m alone for the day. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he responded to her.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I’m in Ancient Rome,” he lied. “All these white pillars and shit.”
Leona took a beat. “Fair enough.”
Romana smiled, then placed her hand on his shoulder. They were suddenly
sitting on a stone staircase. All around them looked like Ancient Rome, with
all these white pillars and shit. “Now you’re not lying.”
“You can teleport? Is that innate, or was your substrate upgraded?”
Her smile grew twice as big. “I didn’t teleport. I just made you do
it.”
“So you’re a metachooser.”
“No. I’m just Romana.” She stood up, and stole his hand from him before
running down the steps. “Come on!”
They ran down to the street, and between the buildings. They winded through
the alleyways, Mateo having no clue where they were going, until he saw it.
It was a replica of the Colosseum, just like the one Saga and Vearden were
forced to build on Tribulation Island. Romana led him through the entrance,
and onto the main grounds. “Maybe you could do it here. For the symmetry.”
“Do what here?” he asked.
“Get remarried?”
“To who?” He was offended.
“To Leona, silly. You were forced to do it last time. You should do it
again, but for yourselves.”
“If we ever renew our vows,” Mateo began, “this is the last place we would
do it.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
She teleported them away, or rather she made him do it. They were now
standing on Ayers Rock, or this world’s version of it, anyway. Could every
geographical and cultural location on Earth be found here somewhere? “What
about here?” she offered.
“Do you know my personal history with this place?”
“Good point again,” Romana said. She took him to several other domes, each
one either designed to resemble an important spot from Mateo’s past, or
which incidentally reminded him of somewhere important. They settled on a
desert, which boasted the most magical of starry holograms above. They slept
out under the stars that night, and jumped forward together come midnight
central. Only then was she ready to meet the rest of the group.
“Who’s this?” Leona asked upon seeing her.
Mateo could not read his wife’s mind, but he did feel a hint of jealousy
from her, and it triggered painful flashbacks to his history with Cassidy
Long. He met her in much a similar way, alone and on a world that everyone
believed to be otherwise uninhabited, yet ready for a population. He needed
to clarify the truth right away. “Gang, please allow me to introduce you to
my daughter, Romana Nieman.”
Leona’s eyes lit up at the revelation. “Oh. Oh, dear.” She reached over and
wrapped her arms around Romana’s shoulders. “I am so happy to meet you.”
“They grow up so fast,” Ramses joked.
The rest of the team began to exchange hugs with her as well, and welcome
her to the party. She caught them up on her life between being a baby on
Dardius, and her arrival to Castledome, but she left out some of the less
fun developments, such as the deaths and sacrifices. Mateo still didn’t know
everything himself, but now they had time to get to know each other. Once
the pleasantries were dying down, Ramses clapped his hands together. “Well,
I was going to announce that we were ready to establish our spatio-temporal
tethers, but the machine will need to be recalibrated for the additional
member. I wouldn’t exactly call this a one time thing, but if someone new
needs to be added later, we would have to sever the original links, and
start all over again. Which is fine, so if, Romana, you’re not quite ready
to commit...”
“I’m ready. What does it entail, though? Can we never be apart from each
other?”
“No, we can,” Ramses clarified. “Here are the properties. We will always
know two things about each other. We will always be aware of where we are at
this very moment, and we will know where we are according to our shared time
gaps. To put it another way, if one of us uses the slingdrive to travel to
the Andromeda Galaxy, we’ll all be aware that they’re there right now. If
someone instead jumps back to the year 1845, we’ll sense them there based on
how long it’s been for us, and for them. So if they stay in 1845 for three
days, and then travel to, say, 2024, we’ll know that, but it will take us
three of our own days to find out, even though both are in the past anyway.
Make sense?”
They all nodded.
“Will we be able to reunite with each other in such a case?” Olimpia
pressed.
“Possibly,” Ramses admitted. “The tether keeps us in lock-step, but it’s not
powerful enough on its own to allow cross-travel. We would need some other
way. We would need a second slingdrive, or a sufficiently powerful traveler.
But would still be the navigators.”
“Got it,” Angela decided. “Anything else we should know?”
He waited an uncomfortably long time to respond. “There’s a chance that
something will be screwy when the machine is activated. I’m confident that
it will work, but in order to power the Livewire in the first place, I had
to tap into our quintessence reserves. There’s a chance that we’ll be
scattered to the winds, and our first mission will involve finding each
other again. Someone will have to use the Ambassador to do that, and I might
not be the one closest to it.”
“Why would anyone necessarily be close to it,” Marie questioned. “What if we
all end up distant from it?”
“The ship is part of the link,” Ramses said. “At least one of us will
experience a strong tether to it.” He presented some e-paper. “You’ll all
need a copy of the operator’s manual. It’s obviously mostly automated, but
you’ll still need to handle some things.”
They continued to discuss the dangers associated with the Livewire tether,
but ultimately decided that it was worth the risk to never be truly parted
from each other ever again. Ramses activated the linking machine. Nearly
everyone managed to stay right on this ship; all except Romana. And for some
reason, they couldn’t sense her.
