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When the away team appeared on the Extremus scout ship, Mateo revealed that
he had a new plan, but that he didn’t want to put Ramses out. It would
require him to do extra work. The thing was, the people of Extremus knew
where they had gone. They had a record of it. This system looked just as
good as any, but Linwood wanted to be alone and hidden, which he
could not find here. It could only be found somewhere else, say maybe 707
light years away? Both Ramses and Romana agreed that it was a good idea. As
the Actilitca had explained, this scout ship didn’t have a reframe engine,
but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be retrofitted with one. In fact, as Ramses
inspected it, he discovered that it was specifically designed for one; it
had just never been built and installed. So they had kept most of the old
design, but had deliberately excluded the most valuable component. It was
none of their business, what had caused the Extremusians to do this. It just
needed to be corrected. Temporarily.
Ramses engaged his forge core, and programmed the scout to begin its journey
while they were out of the timestream for a year. Because of all the build
time, it had only managed to traverse about 300 light years, but that should
be enough. That was a greater distance than the current radius of the
interstellar colonization bubble. He would be off of everyone’s radar, all
the way out here, and safe. And if he wanted to pack up, and move out even
farther, that could help too. Once the scout arrived at the brand new
isolated system, it completed constructing his rotating habitat, and waited
for the team to return.
“All righty, then. Are we ready to wake him up?” Mateo asked, bending down
to unlock the stasis pod.
“Oh, hold on.” Romana changed her emergent nanites back into the sexy red
dress from before, and sat cross-legged on the scout ship’s command console.
“Okay, I’m ready,” she said once she had generated her holographic
microphone.
Mateo stood back up. “Why do you have to be so sexual around me? I know that
you’re an adult now, but do you have to be so...ugh!” he couldn’t think of
the word.
“It’s not sexual. I’m a lounge singer,” she defended.
“Lounge singers are sexy! That’s their whole thing!”
“Funny, I thought their thing was singing.”
“Your neckline practically goes all the way down to your belly button!”
Mateo complained.
“It’s an aesthetic,” she argued.
“We’re running out of daylight, people,” Ramses jumped in. He took it
upon himself to open the pod and let Linwood out.
Romana cleared her throat, and got back into position. “This next one’s for
the lovers. Linwood, welcome to your new home. At laaaaast...!” She went on
to sing part of the song before Mateo had had enough.
He threw up a holographic privacy partition in front of her, and focused on
Linwood. He could do nothing for the sound, but she didn’t keep going much
longer. “Your coin has been constructed. The rest of the habitat is
underway, but it already has two escape pods, so you should be all set to
move in. There’s a reason she called you a lover, though, and it’s not
because you love spin gravity.” He held up his arm to gesture to the side.
“We had something else created while you were asleep, which wasn’t
technically essential.
Linwood’s companion drifted in from the back of the scout.
“My love!” he exclaimed. He leapt into her arms like the climax of a romcom.
She held onto his waist and spun him around, and they kissed.
“Aww, old love,” Romana said, out from behind the partition, and back to
wearing her normal clothes again.
“Your other models are still in storage,” Ramses told him. “You can rebuild
them however you please.”
Linwood hopped back down to his own two feet, but continued to stare into
his companion’s eyes, having missed her deeply. Finally, he broke his gaze,
and looked over at Ramses. “Thank you.” He looked at the other two. “Thank
you all.” He stepped closer to the viewscreen where his habitat was rotating
inside of what may have been only a temporary comet. “I’m grateful to be
here. Could you tell me, what year is it?”
“It’s 2538,” Mateo answered, stepping over to look at the view as well.
“That’s fast,” Linwood. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about your fancy
faster-than-light drive. I obviously don’t know anything anyway, but there’s
no one else here! Just the way I like it.”
“Remember, you can’t change your mind,” Mateo warned him. It will take you
150,000 years to get back to civilization. By then, Project Stargate will
have reached this far, so you might wanna head out into the void.”
“That might be the plan,” Linwood said, nodding. “I won’t be telling you
that, though.”
“Of course,” Mateo replied. “This here region of space is yourn now.” He
made sure to make eye contact. “Don’t abuse the gift.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Linwood promised.
Mateo took a breath. “You can keep the scout—”
“But I’m removing the artificial gravity,” Ramses warned.
“That’s fine, I don’t need that,” Linwood said. He bounced his knees. “Yeah,
this is interesting, but I don’t care to keep it.”
They would have given him a tour of his new home, but it was designed
exactly like the old one. It had a lazy river running along the entire
circumference. Along it were his multiple sleeping spots, his little bamboo
forest, his garden, and all the other ecological areas. It looked like a
nice place to live, whether you were a hermit or not. There was more than
enough for one person, even along with his staff. It was only this large for
spin gravity to work without being nauseating. Linwood and his lover said
their goodbyes, and then went over to start their new lives. Ramses got to
work on uninstalling the transdimensional gravity generator, as well as the
reframe engine.
“What are ya gonna do with it?” Romana asked. “We can’t take it with us. I
assume it’s too heavy.”
“It’s too massive,” Ramses corrected. He was on his hands and knees,
digging up the components. “But you’re right, we can’t carry it away. I’m
gonna shoot it into the host star at reframe speeds. It’ll take about nine
hours.” He was answering, but clearly still depressed about his apparent
slingdrive shortcomings.
Romana seemed to pick up on this. “Ya know, the solution to your problem
is the problem, right?”
“What? I don’t—what do you mean?”
“I mean, the problem is the solution to itself,” she tried to reframe it.
“Yeah, I’m not following.”
Romana smiled at him. “Linwood Meyers is currently living at the farthest
extremes of the galaxy. He and his habitat are even farther out than the
Extremus. If the rest of our team were to attempt to travel
farther than this, your slingdrive would evidently just default them
right here.”
“Yeah, true,” Ramses agreed. “That’s what happened with the Extremus itself.
Very annoying, we had to come out here more slowly as a hack-job
workaround.”
She placed a hand on his shoulder. “What if you were trying to
find Linwood? You wouldn’t need to know where he was. You wouldn’t
have to calculate anything. You would just overshoot it, and let the machine
handle the navigation. So turn that into a strength. If your machine is
mapping technological establishments on the backend...then find a way to
generate that map on the frontend. It will tell you where everyone in the
universe lives. Even hermits.” She paused for effect. “Even Spiral Station.”
His eyes widened. He jumped up to his feet. “Oh my God! Romana, you genius!”
He pulled her into a hug, and shook her excitedly a little.
Romana was excited too. She held onto the hug, but then leaned her
head back to smile at him, after which she kissed him on the lips.
Ramses pulled away, not too quickly, as if disgusted, but not into it
either.
“I’m so sorry,” she apologized.
“It’s okay, it’s just...”
“I know.”
“I don’t really do that...”
“I know,” she repeated.
“With others.”
“Yes, I know. It was just a stupid thing. I’m a stupid, horny...stupid
girl.”
“Romy,” Ramses said as she was walking away humiliated.
That was when Romana noticed that her father was there, appearing to have
seen the whole thing. “I know. Too sexual. I don’t wanna hear it again.” She
brushed past him, back out towards the common area.
“I’ll talk to her,” Mateo assured Ramses. “It’s not about you. Go ahead and
strip the ship so we can get back to our family.” He went out to find his
daughter. She was hyperventilating on the bridge, likely having a panic
attack. “Ro.”
“I said I don’t wanna hear it.”
“I’m not gonna criticize you. I wanna help.”
“There’s nothing you can help with. I just need...” She trailed off, because
she didn’t know what she needed. “I need to—I need to scream!” And so she
did. She took a deep breath, and let it all out.
“Yeah!” Mateo encouraged. “There we go! That’s a good girl!”
Romana continued to scream until she ran out of breath, which was longer
than a normal human would last, due to her increased lung capacity. She
started to breathe heavily, but was no longer hyperventilating. “I really
needed that. I don’t know why, but I did.”
“I have an idea why,” Mateo said to her. “But first, I need a hug too.”
She was crying on his shoulder, still not knowing why she was so upset.
They let go. “Leona, Olimpia, and I are married. Angela and Marie are
sisters in a way that few in this universe probably understand, if anyone.
Holly Blue and Weaver don’t spend much time together, so they probably don’t
even get it. And Ramses? Ramses likes his team and his work, but he doesn’t
need that kind of deep connection. You, on the other hand, feel very deeply.
I’m not a psychologist, and I don’t know exactly what your life was like
before we met, but you’ve been jumping through time longer than even I have.
Your life has never had any permanence, which is why you have frequently
volunteered to pause your pattern. You crave stability, and I can’t give you
that. None of us can.”
“Are you saying that you want me to leave the team?”
“I absolutely don’t want you to do that, but that’s because I’m selfish. I
don’t want you to grow up without me. It might take you thousands of years
to be as old as I am now, but at least I would be there. I wasn’t before. I
missed so much of your life, and while I believe it would be temporally
unwise to go back in time to change that, I still kind of wish that I could.
And I agonize over that, because unlike other people, I actually could find
a way to change the past. Most people don’t have that kind of anxiety. All
they can do is surrender to, and accept, their reality. But if
you need to leave now, I don’t want you to stay because of me. Ramses
is not your future husband, and unfortunately, if you stay with us, no one
else is either. That’s why you’re so upset right now. Linwood Meyers is the
most misanthropic loner I have ever met, but even he found someone to
love, and he can’t live without her. Make that make sense.” He took a beat.
“If you need to find your Leona-slash-Olimpia, I can’t stand in your way
anymore. It’s hurting you too much, and that hurts me.”
Romana gazed up at him with a sort of eureka smile. She kept it on her face
as she looked over at the viewscreen, showing Linwood’s coin rotating twice
a minute in the middle distance inside this icy planetesimal. “Linwood’s
love,” she said cryptically. She stuffed her forehead into her father’s
chest and hugged him again. “I’ll be fine, dad. I know what I’m gonna do
now.” She pulled away, and lightened up brightly. “I’m gonna figure this
out. It’ll be gonna awesome!”
Mateo followed when she hopped back to the engineering section, where Ramses
was still working. “Sorry for the mix-up, ol’ chap. You’re like a brother to
me.” She patted him on the forehead.
“Romana, what’s going on? What did you figure out?” Mateo questioned.
“I’m goin’ out for a space-swim,” she said. “Let me know when it’s time to
leave.” As her nanites were forming a vacuum suit from her feet up, she blew
Ramses a mixed-signal kiss, and tipped backwards. Before she could land on
the floor, she disappeared.
Even when they were ready to go later today, and she came back in, she
refused to explain what her epiphany was. They would just have to wait and
see.
