| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash |
Olimpia was back on Earth and back in Sri Lanka. With all the confusing time
travel, she couldn’t remember how long it had been, but the last time she
was home was centuries ago. When she was a child, she developed her echo
affliction. Everything she said was copied and sent fractions of a second
into the future. She couldn’t stop it. Her family was bewildered and scared.
They had no context for it. Their best guess was that she had two sets of
vocal cords, or that they could somehow vibrate two different sounds at the
same time. They didn’t know, but the doctors did. They knew that she was a
perfectly normal human, biologically speaking. There was no explanation for
her voice.
Her parents didn’t demand that she stop speaking, but they definitely
encouraged it. They learned and taught her sign language, and actively used
that to communicate with her. Again, they didn’t force her to keep quiet,
but whenever she asked a question, if she didn’t use her hands, they still
would in response. She became self-conscious about it to the point where she
eventually gave up and gave in. She became a full-time signer. She wasn’t
fully mute, but she didn’t want to make people feel uncomfortable.
She was an excellent student, and probably could have gone on to a higher
education institution. She maybe could have become as smart as Leona, or
even Ramses, but she chose not to. When she was sixteen years old, she
emancipated herself through the courts, left home, and left the country. Her
parents didn’t beg her to stay, but they weren’t happy for her either. They
just...basically said, “okay” and that was the last time she saw them. She
lived alone for years as she wandered the world.
By then, national borders had become more of logistical zones for
administrative maintenance rather than divisions. If you lived in Ethiopia,
it was probably because that was where your progenitors lived, and there was
no reason to leave, because there were no fewer opportunities there than
anywhere else. People stopped moving and traveling for the most part,
because if they wanted to join a community on the other side of the world,
they could do it through telepresence or VR. Olimpia only kept moving around
because her upbringing turned her into a loner. She could have been happy in
a simulated world, where her echoism couldn’t follow. But she had to get
away from Sri Lanka, and once she did that, nowhere else felt like home
either, so she kept going.
Sri Lanka was empty now. According to the data, only a few thousand people
still lived here, in its one remaining arcological megastructure tower. It
would be so unlikely that anyone in her family was still around. She would
have to find them elsewhere, if they were still alive. They weren’t even
necessarily on Earth. The global population had been dwindling for decades.
Everyone was apparently moving to Castlebourne and Varkas Reflex. Even so,
it was the right move, coming back. It was at least cathartic.
A man walked up from behind her. “She doesn’t know how she’s meant to feel
about it. On the one hand, it’s clearly sad. It’s the end of an era, and it
won’t be the last one. It is a pretty big one, though. Humans have always
been on Earth. The idea that it may one day just be empty again is pretty
surreal. But also beautiful and poetic. A safe haven for wildlife. It’s
fitting, it should end like this. The planet is closing its loop.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know you. If you could stop reading my mind, that
would be great,” Olimpia requested. She didn’t want to be rude, but she was
annoyed and nervous.
The man smiled and nodded. “The man smiled and nodded. He wasn’t really
reading her mind. It was more like he was channeling her thoughts. He
couldn’t help himself. It was his curse, just as Olimpia’s curse was to
echo. She had somehow been cured, though, and her brother, Delfinus, was
extremely interested in learning how.”
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