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No one chased the team as they fled the city, probably because they hadn’t
done anything wrong, so the locals had no reason to try to apprehend them.
Most of the team didn’t even know why they were running. They just trusted
that Leona had good reason to order them to. She had to remind them to slow
down, though, because their bodies moved too fast. They were supposed to be
normal humans who were born a few decades ago, and would die several more
decades from now. Finally, when they were out of the city limits, and safe
within the coverage of the trees, they were able to stop. “Rambo, you
understand what’s going on?” Leona asked him.
“I have an idea. Fascinating development. I need to get my hands on the
slingdrives, so I can figure out why we’re off the mark. Proxima Centauri is
close to Sol, but it’s not Sol. We also jumped to our next year too early”
“No, I mean, with the people in this dome. Do you understand why we ran?”
“Oh, of course I do. The Oblivios.”
“Then please go check the perimeter. Do it quietly. There could be campers
or homesteaders, or just hikers. I’ll explain what happened to everyone
else. I’m not sure if they’ve ever heard of Oblivios.”
“On it, boss.” Ramses left.
Leona caught her breath so she could think more clearly. “Okay. Oblivios.
They came to this planet with the intention of living a more simple life,
with very primitive technology. It’s like Castlebourne’s Dome for Pioneers,
but for real.”
“They don’t look like pioneers,” Angela pointed out.
“That was 300 years ago. The reason they’re called Oblivios is because they
had their minds wiped. The first generations didn’t remember advanced
technology. They didn’t even know that they were in a dome, so they didn’t
pass stories onto their children. Most of the criticisms of the project were
about how they would eventually end up like this. You can’t stop progress.
Since whatever dogma they had against tech was lost to them, they couldn’t
instill such values into their descendants, so those descendants kept trying
to make their lives better.” She pointed back in the direction of the city.
“This is where that leads.”
“You’re gonna wanna see this, sir,” Ramses said through comms.
“If you see people, don’t talk to yourself.”
“I’m sure they’ve developed short-range wireless by now. There’s something
I don’t think they’ve made yet, though, and I’m looking right at it.”
“Be right there,” Leona responded.
The group walked over to Ramses’ location, and before they caught up, saw
what he was referring to. A gargantuan tower rose up into the sky, and
disappeared above the clouds. The city they came from was advanced, but not
like this. It took the kind of megaengineering that the hosts needed to
build the domes themselves. It was hard to tell, but it might have risen all
the way up to the ceiling. It might have been structurally necessary,
since this dome was so much older than the ones on Castlebourne, but
probably not.
Leona tilted her head. “That looks familiar to me. Why does it look familiar?”
“We’ve seen towers before,” Mateo pointed out.
“Yeah...” Leona wasn’t so sure. It was of plain design, but not generic.
“There’s no one around,” Ramses informs them. “Let’s just jump over to
the base, and see what’s up with it.”
Leona was hesitant, but she looked around too, and checked her lifesigns
detector. They were calibrated for human life, and sufficiently related
cousin species, so they should be pretty accurate in a world that didn’t
have transhumanism yet, but there was no way to be sure. They weren’t even
worried about naked eyes anyway, but surveillance. “Okay, fine. Let’s just
slip back into the trees first.”
They hid away, and then teleported to the tower. As soon as they appeared, a
door opened up, likely via motion sensor. They all stepped into the
elevator, and let it take them all the way up to the top, which yes, was
right there at the dome’s zenith. A woman greeted them when the doors
opened. “Greetings, travelers. I saw you teleport in. My name is Aeterna
Valeria. I run this joint.”
“The tower, or the dome?” Mateo asks.
“Both, I guess.”
“You’re related to Tertius Valerius,” Marie guessed.
“Yeah, he, uhh...he was my father.”
“We just saw him not too long ago,” Romana explained. “He’s still alive.”
“I don’t really see it that way. It’s been something like two hundred years
for me.”
There was an awkward pause in the conversation, which Leona needed to break.
“So...report?”
“Yeah, we’ll get to that. Are you hungry? I have a synthy. It takes a few
hours, but I’ve already synthesized some mashed potatoes and green beans for
myself, if you’re interested in joining me. I like leftovers, so I always
make extra.”
None of them was hungry, but they agreed to eat to be polite. It was good,
and interesting to go back to regular food, instead of just programmable
dayfruit or dayfruit smoothie. Leona needed to break the silence again while
they were eating. “The people down there. What do they think of this tower?”
“They can’t see it,” Aeterna began to explain. “I have my father’s powers. I
make them forget. I make them forget the tower at the same time they’re
looking at it. It’s not technically invisible, but effectively so. I
exempted you from it when you showed up.”
“Did you notice that they have moved past their original mandate?” Marie
pressed.
Aeterna rolled her eyes. “Of course they did. We knew it was gonna happen.
Our key contact died, but before she did, she and my father would fight all
the time about keeping the dream alive. He said he promised he would erase
people’s memories, but that he wouldn’t govern their thoughts. If someone
came up with the lightbulb, they could have a freakin’ lightbulb. So that’s
what they did, and they kept doing it, and now they’re here.”
“They said something about tunnels,” Mateo brought up.
“Yeah, they interact with the other domes,” Aeterna confirmed.
“How does that work?” Romana questioned.
“The others are pretty good about it. They don’t understand the technology,
and they certainly don’t know that there’s a pretty girl up in this tower
with magical memory powers, but they play their parts. Most of the nearby
domes were also once intentionally primitive, though with no one like me.
The Oblivios don’t really get how the dome works, but they know that they
can’t go outside. They used drones to find the wall a long time ago, in
defiance of the sonic deterrents, and for some reason, they didn’t freak out
about it. It looked like a barren wasteland, and it made them sick, but they
saw through the ruse anyway, and now they’re about to figure out the whole
thing. The weird part about it is that they simply accepted that this was
how their little pocket of the universe functioned. I was expecting riots,
but everyone’s okay. It’s crazy really; a fascinating social experiment, I’m
sure.”
“If they know they’re in a dome, why are you still here?”
“They know they’re in a dome because the data told them so. The drones kept
crashing into the holographic walls, and I can wipe their memories of it all
I want, but they’re gonna look back at that data, and it’s going to
challenge their beliefs. So yeah, I gave up. But they still can’t see the
tower. I’m still making them forget that they’re looking at a superscraper
in the middle of it all. It’s limited in area, so it’s easier. They’re not
looking for it, whereas they were looking for a way through the
wasteland.”
“You ever thought about just stopping?” Romana offered.
Aeterna consulted her watch. “Yeah, won’t be long now.”
“What do you mean?” Mateo asked.
“The planet is going through a period of instability,” Aeterna went on.
“Back on Earth, technologies like LiDAR were inevitable. Earth is too big,
and you gotta navigate it. It’s easier to let computers do it for you. Here,
in this cramped space, they didn’t need it. Human-driven cars are fine. You
never have to go very far.”
“The tremors finally gave them a reason,” Leona realized.
“Bingo. Necessity being the mother of invention, it was suddenly absolutely
necessary that they build sensor arrays to measure the world around them.
Weather, for the most part, can be controlled in here, but we can’t stop the
ground from shaking. They feel it just like everyone in all the other domes
does.”
Ramses nodded. “And as soon as they turn on one of these sensor arrays, it’s
going to pick up on the tower that humans keep forgetting, even when a
camera records video of it, and plays it back later.”
Aeterna nodded back. “I won’t be able to combat that. And honestly, I
shouldn’t try. The tower was a dumb idea that my father had, and I stuck
around because once it was built, it couldn’t be dismantled, or it would
ruin everything. They thought that someone with our power would have to stay
here forever to keep it working, but the scope of this place is not
limitless. They were always going to find the wall, and the data from their
geological surveys would always contradict their perceptions. The ancestors
thought, if they just went back to the way things were, they would stay that
way. But that’s not what happened before, or they wouldn’t have needed to
leave Earth to reclaim that way of life in the first place. So
shortsighted.”
“Why did Tertius leave? He didn’t even tell us that he had a daughter,”
Mateo said, worried about how she would react.
“Well, he gave up on the Oblivios a long time ago. I don’t know why I’ve
been holding on. I suppose in rebellion to him. I told him, if he left, he
couldn’t come back. He has respected that, which I appreciate.”
“It might not have been as long for him as it’s been for you,” Leona
reminded her. “I didn’t get the sense that it had been a full 300 years
since he last saw me.”
Aeterna shrugged. “Whatever.”
“What if...” Romana began. “What if you did see him again? Would you be
mad?”
Aeterna considered the question. “A year ago, I might have been, but as I
said, this is all ending anyway, so it would be fine. I’m not gonna break
down crying, and hug my daddy, but we wouldn’t fight. Well. I wouldn’t
pick a fight. Let’s just say that.”
Romana accepted this answer, and decided that this somehow translated to her
taking a matchstick out of her breast pocket, and setting it down on the
table ceremoniously.
“What’s that?” Mateo asked.
“It’s a muster match. Light it, and Tertius Valerius will appear.”
“He gave this to you?” Mateo pushed harder. “Why would he do that? Did he
know that we would end up here? Did you?”
“Of course she did,” Ramses deduced. “She brought us here.”
Romana’s demeanor didn’t change. She remained cool. “I spend more time in
the timeline. I get to know people. He asked me to come here. He said that
anytime would be all right, but he clearly really wanted it to happen by
2525, so I’m glad we got a move on with it.”
“I don’t like that you did that,” Ramses admitted. “I don’t like that you
messed with my slingdrive.”
“I don’t like that you lied to me,” Mateo added.
“This is between a father and his daughter, but a different father
and daughter,” Romana defended. She redirected her attention to Aeterna. “He
asked me not to light it. He said that you have to do it, so it’s up to you
if it gets lit at all. He did want to be here with you when the tower
becomes detectable, but he understands if you’re not ready, and will accept
it if you never are.”
Aeterna stared at the match for a moment before picking it up. She held it
between her thumb and forefinger for another moment, until slipping the
other end between the thumb and forefinger of her other hand. She was
about to break it, or was at least contemplating it. No one knew what was
going through her head, but it looked like an internal debate as her
nostrils flared, and her lips moved, suggestive of the words that she was
thinking of. At last, she let go of the match with one hand, and scraped the
head against the wooden table. A flame burst out of it. It looked like any
normal lit match.
For a second, nothing happened, then a smoke portal appeared a couple of
meters away. When the smoke cleared, Tertius was standing there. He smiled
kindly at his daughter, barely registering that there were other people in
the room. They just regarded each other, her not being able to move, and him
not wanting to make the first move. Suddenly, Aeterna burst into
tears, and ran over to hug her dad.
