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Their collective depression had not been alleviated by Romana’s departure,
but had only grown darker. She did what she promised, or at least so far.
When she made it through to the other side, she sent a message back through
the persistent bulk connection, assuring them that she was fine. And just
this morning, she sent another one, informing them that she would be leaving
Earth today. Later messages would have to come through the quantum network,
which took longer, and couldn’t be done in realtime at these distances; not
with the equipment her little ship had. It was equipped with everything she
needed, including a reframe engine, but it was nothing fancy.
As for the rest of them, they didn’t want to do anything. They tried to sulk
together, but they kept awkwardly locking eyes with each other. No one said
anything out loud, they just gradually started to go their separate ways.
Mateo didn’t know if they were occupying their minds with various
activities, or like him, they were just sitting there, stewing. Not even
Ramses was working, and he almost always had a project in his queue.
Speaking of queues, there was an off-world mission that they could have
taken, but no one was up for it, so they simply ignored it. It wasn’t the
right thing to do, per se, but the way they saw it, they were a bonus
addition for the galaxy. They were not officially responsible for helping
anyone. They had committed to no one.
After a few hours of this, Olimpia paged their communicators, which was just
a simple way to say, come here. It wasn’t the right protocol for an
emergency, so no one rushed to her location in the main lounge. When they
finally did show up one by one, she didn’t even look like she was waiting
for them. She was resting her temple on her fist, and staring blankly at the
floor. Only when the last of them, Angela arrived, did Olimpia perk up a
little. “I’m leaving too.”
“Like Romana?” Leona asked, panic in her eyes, but also patient caution.
“Yes, but I don’t intend on going anywhere besides Earth. I think I want to
revisit Sri Lanka; see what’s become of it. And...I wanna do it alone. I’m
not asking for a divorce, or anything. I need to clear my head. This place
reminds me of my...of Romy.”
“It’s okay,” Leona encouraged. “She saw you as a mother figure. You are
inarguably her stepmother. You can call her your daughter. I do.”
“I think that’s maybe changed,” Olimpia decided. “We have been through a lot
together, the seven of us. I used to think nothing could tear us apart. Now
I don’t know if anything can bring us back together. It’s not the only
reason I’m leaving, though.”
Leona stood and approached her wife. She leaned over and kissed her on the
lips. It wasn’t a mere peck, but it wasn’t passionate either. It was soft
and familiar; fitting for a goodbye. “I don’t want you to go, but I respect
your decision.” She inhaled. “Matt, would you like to say goodbye to your
wife?”
Mateo stood too. He exhaled. “I can’t respect this. When you break a pencil,
it becomes harder to write with. You don’t solve that by breaking it again.”
He walked out of the room. He couldn’t take another person leaving. Well, he
wouldn’t be able to stop it, but he at least didn’t have to watch it happen.
If he didn’t see her go through that slingportal, as far as he would know,
Olimpia was always just in a different room.
He suspected that he would regret his actions later, but he was not living
in the later. Now was now, and this was what he had to do to survive this.
As he was trying to sulk alone in his room, Leona walked in.
“Don’t say it,” he begged.
“You need to go fix this before you miss your chance,” Leona demanded.
“I meant what I said. When something is broken, don’t break it again,” he
argued.
“If you don’t go back out there before she leaves, you’re going to have to
repeat what you said to her to me. Do you understand me? This is a difficult
situation, and we all have different feelings about it. This is her way of
dealing with it.”
“Well, this is how I’m dealing with it,” Mateo reasoned. “Why should I
apologize for my reaction to her reaction? She should respect
me, and let me be.”
“She is,” Leona countered. “That’s why I’m in this room right now, and she’s
not.”
“What if she doesn’t come back, Leona? What if Romana doesn’t either? What
if this is the end of all of us?” He couldn’t even remember how long he had
been doing this, or how long he had known the people he loved, but he
couldn’t imagine an end to that. Not even death should have been able to
collapse the team, but here they were.
“Exactly,” Leona agreed. “What if she never comes back, and what if the
reason she never comes back is because you made her feel like it would be
bad if she did?”
“We made vows to each other, Lee. She’s breaking them.” Mateo sighed.
“No.” Leona shook her head. “You are.”
He sighed again. “You’re right. Goddammit.” He still didn’t move from his
bed.
“Get up. She’s packing light. She could leave at literally any second.”
Mateo went back out to the lounge, but Olimia wasn’t there, so he teleported
to the slingdrive lab. He didn’t see her there either, so he started
freaking out, but he knew what the machine looked like when it had recently
been used, and it had not recently been used. That was when he remembered
that they could locate each other.
Olimpia was with Ramses in the main hangar bay. They were just climbing down
the steps as the latter was finishing up explaining how to shift AI models
if something went wrong with the first. “The failsafes are foolproof, you’re
gonna be fine. Oh.”
“Sorry. Can I talk to my wife alone?” Mateo requested sheepishly.
“I just want to make sure the ship collapses into the right pocket
dimension,” Ramses said. “I have fixed the initial bugs by now, but I had
some issues with the earlier iterations of this technology, so now I always
quadruple check it.”
“I just tap right here?” Olimpia asked, mostly rhetorically. After receiving
a nod from Ramses, she tapped her interface. Her personal shuttlecraft
disappeared.
“Okay.” Ramses put on a special pair of glasses and sized Olimpia up like
the best friend character in a ‘90s romcom who didn’t have as much restraint
as the protagonist. “All right, it’s in there. You’re good to go.” He put
his glasses away and opened his arms.
The two of them hugged before Ramses left. Now it was only Mateo and
Olimpia.
“I made a huge mistake and reacted poorly. I’m sorry. I don’t want us to
part on bad terms,” Mateo said. “Do you have time to forgive me before you
step into that machine? And if not, can you delay departure, so we have more
time to talk?”
“We’ll be okay,” Olimpia said to him. “There’s nothing to forgive. I sprang
this on you. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I’ve not discussed
it. I still have family alive who I’ve not seen in centuries. I don’t know
where they are, but I’m gonna start there. The reason I didn’t bring it up
before is because I didn’t know if I wanted you to come. I want you to meet
them, but maybe we don’t overwhelm them? I will stay connected. I’m
not going just because of what happened with Romana. It’s bad timing.”
Mateo nodded. “Okay. Don’t forget that I love you, though. Our marital bed
will feel empty without you, even though Leona will be next to me too.”
“Well...keep it warm for me. I hope by the time I return, Romana has as
well.”
By the time Olimpia was even close to returning, Ramosus had been deserted.
