Invictus

by Ryan Graudin

  There was one CTM the decay did not reach, for though Nicholas wasn’t a knee-jerk kind of guy, he found that—between Empra’s order to Get us the Hades out of here and the glitches on his screen and one year of cabin fever—he was all too happy to jump. The Ab Aeterno vanished from a vanishing sky, just as that vanishing vanished. At last, the Fade had reached what it had ravaged so many worlds for, sliding through stilled lips, seeking that final shudder of a heartbeat.

  Lock and key.

  Severance.

  The boy who should not have been became the boy who never was. No one blinked when the gladiator’s body disappeared. His fight, too, slipped from fifty thousand memories second by second as the unraveling stretched back. Not a soul noticed, for they were already placing their bets for the next battle.

  The games rolled on.

  Two thousand two hundred fifty-eight years later, a child was born.

  49

  TAMÁM SHUD

  THERE WAS AN END.

  There is a beginning.

  They’re one and the same.

  PART IV

  In my end is my beginning.

  —T. S. ELIOT

  “EAST COKER”

  50

  THE BOY WHO NEVER WAS

  APRIL 18, 2371

  PASSING OVER ZONE 1 WAS FAR’S favorite part of his Academy– home commute—the hoverbus always took the same preprogrammed path, slicing straight over Old Rome. Every morning and evening he stared through the window, picking out the monuments below. The Pantheon. St. Peter’s Basilica. The Fontana di Trevi. His chest twinged, as always, when they passed the Colosseum. Far never knew why he felt the way he did whenever he saw it—nostalgia and homesickness and wanderlust and none of the above. Something about the stones made it hard to look away.

  Gram seemed just as enthralled with the rainbow box he was twisting around in his hands. After arranging the colors into solid sides, he offered the puzzle to Far. “Wanna try?”

  “That way lies humiliation,” Far told him. “I don’t like humiliation.”

  His friend passed the cube over anyway. “Then hash it up, will you? If I do it myself, I’ll solve it too easily.”

  This, Far was happy to do. He twisted the little box at random, until it resembled Imogen on an oil-spill hair day. The hoverbus crossed into Zone 2—skyscraper forest—until Old Rome became a sliver in the rear window. Passengers drifted on and off at each stop, too consumed in their spheres of pop-up adverts and datastreams and Central News Tonight snippets to do anything more than swipe their palmdrives to pay the fare. Far knew almost all of them by sight, none by name. It made him eager to go to an era where strangers actually talked to each other.

  Today a true stranger boarded the hoverbus. The girl’s features were striking, not for any particular beauty, but for their starkness. She was as pale as a mist on the moors. Her hair was nearly as light, with the exception of her eyebrows, which had an almost scripted quality. It wasn’t until the newcomer winked that Far realized he’d been staring.

  He averted his gaze back to the puzzle—jumbled enough—and tossed the cube to Gram. “Hey, want to make a bet on what color my cousin’s hair will be tonight?”

  “That’s an unfair proposition.”

  “Not so! I haven’t seen it today.”

  “The odds favor you nonetheless, seeing as I’ve never met your cousin and only know of her behavioral patterns through your anecdotes.” Gram wasn’t even looking at the puzzle as he twisted it. Show-off. “It’s basic statistics.”

  Far snorted. “There’s nothing statistical about my family.”

  This was true. Though Imogen was unpredictable, it was his mother who was the real outlier. She and the rest of the Ab Aeterno’s crew not only made history when their time machine landed on April 18, 2354 AD, at 12:01 PM, but a scientific discovery as well. Empra McCarthy, Burgstrom Hammond, Nicholas Nylle, and Matthew “Doc” Hiott stepped off the Ab Aeterno to find themselves already waiting on the dock. Mirror doubles pulled from the glass, identical but for Empra’s bursting belly. Both crews were stunned. The Corps went into frantic lockdown mode, cross-examining the eight time travelers who should be four. Questions only led to more questions; neither set seemed to be a past or future version of the other. Each Ab Aeterno had just returned from 95 AD, but the nonpregnant crew only spent a few minutes in the year before abandoning the assignment. The reason? They’d been spooked to discover themselves already there. Far’s mother’s crew, ostensibly, who couldn’t seem to remember the final hours of their own mission. The mystery thickened when an investigative team tried traveling to the morning of December 31, 95 AD, only to find that their landing equations wouldn’t add up. Their time machine kept bouncing off the hours, as if that time did not exist….

  After countless interviews to rule out timeline crossings, datastream reviews, and blood tests, the Corps could only conclude that Far’s mother’s crew had changed history enough to create a parallel universe, which meant that when they traveled back to the future they arrived in a world where they already existed. Voilà! Two Empras! Two Burgs! Two Docs! Two Nicholases! A whole new branch of science! Bright minds flocked to the theory of a multiverse, both Ab Aeterno crews elevated to celebrity status in intellectual circles. Gram, who’d read every single one of Dr. Marcelo Ramírez’s papers on the subject, knew more about Far’s possible origins than he himself did.

  “I look forward to meeting them,” his friend said. “You sure they don’t mind me crashing your birthday dinner?”

  “It’s not crashing if you’re invited.”

  “A valid point.”

  “I make those sometimes.”

  The cube’s colors were back to their sides in thirty seconds. Gram returned it to Far: Mess up, solve, repeat. They spent the next few stops laughing over Instructor Marin’s latest assembly rant about not placing the Historians’ wardrobe mannequins in compromising positions. An advert for the Acidic Sisters’ June concert (FEATURING THEIR NEWEST HIT SINGLE “EVERYDAY PAST”! DON’T MISS IT, FARWAY!) popped up on Far’s interface. He X-ed it out before the tune turned into an earworm.

  “Our stop’s next,” he warned Gram. “Via Appia. Zone Three.”

  Far and his mother lived in a flat two buildings away. Burg’s name might as well have been on the address, too, for how often the Historian was there. He’d taken pains to make sure the living space had character, filling shelves with books, stocking the kitchen with appliances that would never be used. Far was pretty sure over half of the flat’s contents were contraband, though some of the old things were genuinely old—such as the stained glass window his mother had discovered in a Zone 2 antique shop. She’d used it to replace the vista in their dining room, where its colors glowed no matter the hour, thanks to a blazing advert on the opposite building.

  It was their own little McCarthy time capsule.

  Far opened the door—also antique, carved from cypress wood—to smells that must have cost a fortune. Meat, tomatoes, something bready. A banner had been strung over the window; rainbow light dappled its letters: HAPPY 17TH BIRTHDAY, FARWAY! The table beneath was set for eight. Mom, his mother’s double (affectionately known as Aunt E), Burg, Imogen, Aunt Isolde, Uncle Bert, Gram, himself. Every guest had a plate, but Far couldn’t shake the feeling that the number was off.

  “Nice place.” Gram surveyed the front room the way any Recorder-in-training might. “The vintage touch reminds me of a Sim.”

  “It’s what happens when you’re beset on all sides by Historians,” Far told him.

  “Surprise!” Imogen appeared in the kitchen doorway. Her hair was yellow today, scraped into a bun. Burg’s kitchen appliances were being put to use after all, as evidenced by the flour that avalanched down her apron. It created a faint cloud around Far when she hugged him.

  “This isn’t supposed to be a surprise party,” he protested.

  “The surprise is that you’ve made it to seventeen without any significant mishaps!” Imogen turned
to Gram and held out her hand. “Also, you. You’re a surprise.”

  “The name’s—”

  A shattering sound cut their introduction short. One of Burg’s carefully curated platters was on the floor, in pieces. Even more tragic were the cheeses that had fallen with it—manchego, gouda, cheddar—all over the place. Far’s mother stood above the mess. There was no flour on her face, but she looked as pale.

  “You… you’re Gram?” Her voice crackled. Intense. “Do you remember what happened that day?”

  His friend frowned. “I beg your pardon? What day?”

  Oooookay. Far had never seen his mother fritz out like this. He tried his best to make the encounter less awkward. “What’d I say, Gram? Your genius reputation precedes you. Gram, this is my mother.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. McCarthy.” Gram’s response was straight out of an Old World etiquette lesson. “You have a lovely home.”

  “Please, call me Empra. ‘Ms. McCarthy’ makes me feel so old—” His mother frowned. “Are you certain we haven’t met before?”

  Gram shook his head. “Maybe you’ve seen me around the Academy?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or Central News Tonight,” Far suggested, though he knew his mother rarely tuned into the show. “They did a profile on Gram a few months ago. He’s about to finish his second Academy track.”

  Imogen looked up from the floor, where she was saving as many cheese slices as she could in her makeshift apron pouch. “Your second? What’s the first?”

  “Engineer. I’ll be a Recorder next month, too, if all goes well in the final exam Sim. Historian is the only track that’s eluded me.” Gram bent down to help collect manchego slices.

  “You don’t want to be a Historian,” Imogen warned. “There are no jobs. Graduating with honors leaves you at the beck and call of Senate spouses who are in denial about their tag size. Okay pay, eternal boredom. The best thing I get out of it is this floor cheese.”

  Gram examined one of the pieces. “This stuff smells genuine.”

  “It is. A Senate wife who shall remain unnamed bribed me with her mysterious black market connection to get a peek at the CTM Churchill’s next expedition wardrobe. Er… pretend you didn’t hear any of that, Aunt Empra.”

  His mother’s eyes were dazed, misted. “Any of what?”

  “Exactly.” Imogen winked.

  Far didn’t think his mother was in on the joke. She should’ve called for the housekeeping droid by now. When he sidestepped the broken pieces and touched her on the arm, she jumped, mind a whole other world away. “Mom, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” For as long as Far could remember, his mother was a force to be reckoned with: independent, certain, never back down, laugh while you live. This answer was the opposite of that. It brought out her years—skip-forward silver hairs, solemn lines around her mouth.

  “Mom,” he prodded.

  She shook her head, stepped over the cheese, went into her bedroom, and shut the door. Imogen shot Far a what the hash just happened? look. He passed back a Hades if I know! shrug. Brusque exits and smashed plates were not a part of Empra McCarthy’s MO. Something had glitched, and Far wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. Maybe Burg could help, when he got here. Burg always helped.

  Ding! Imogen leaped to her feet at the timer, not accounting for her apron full of cheese. Every piece she’d rescued went flying again, double-floored. “Rat barf!”

  “Rats don’t barf,” Gram volunteered. “Their esophageal muscle isn’t strong enough to induce vomiting.”

  Far could have gone his entire life without knowing this. Imogen laughed at Gram’s fact, raised him one. “Did you know it wasn’t rats that spread the bubonic plague through Europe in the fourteenth century but gerbils?”

  Gram was fascinated. “Gerbils? Really?”

  “Fuzzy creatures,” Far muttered. “Can’t trust ’em.”

  “Guess I’ll have to cut rat barf from my rotation,” Imogen sighed. “A shame. I liked that one.”

  “Rat farts would work if you wanted your expletive to be more biologically accurate,” Gram told her.

  It struck Far that this conversation had happened before, but that was impossible. Imogen and Gram had never met. So why were they hitting it off so well talking about rodent flatulence?

  Ah, the universe’s mysteries…

  51

  THE ROOTS WE DID NOT CHOOSE…

  EMPRA McCARTHY SAT ON THE EDGE of her bed, attempting to fit her heart back inside her chest. One breath in, two beats out. Her pulse kept escaping, fluttering toward the kitchen. She’d heard plenty about Gram Wright over the past semester—stories Farway told during dinner about his new Sim study partner. The kid was not unlike her son: capable and restless, the kind of cadet who’d make his mark.

  Except, Gram already had.

  Empra was sure of it.

  She couldn’t remember meeting him, seventeen years and over two millennia ago, but there was footage in archive 12-A11B that proved otherwise. Farway’s friend had sat next to her on the fourth-tier benches of the Amphitheatrum Flavium, had spoken Gaius’s name, had… what? Her feed went dark soon after; next thing she remembered was holding a blue box the same way Burg held her: tight to the chest. Empra had no idea where the object was from, but she refused to let it go, for reasons her mind hadn’t been sharp enough to cut. She’d gripped the corners through labor, cradled its velvet alongside her newborn son. When the Corps officers arrived at the maternity ward to question Empra, she’d hidden the item inside her fist, continued hiding it—in word and deed—during every following interrogation to avoid confiscation. Empra had even kept it from herself—the double who shared her shock, along with her family, her fingerprints, her job, her ex-fiancé horror stories.

  Here she was, seventeen years later, holding the box again, fingers fitting into the grooves they’d created during childbirth. Had it really hurt so bad, to leave such deep marks? Memory was a fickle thing—erasing pain, branding the box’s contents into her brain. When Empra cracked the soundless hinges, she knew what she’d find, down to the letter’s letters.

  She unfolded the paper gently to spare its ever-tattering creases. Some plucky soul had taken a pen to the former cover of a Corps of Central Time Travelers’ Code of Conduct guidebook, lending the Cs a faint feline quality. The doodles went on—hearts and stars and widening gyres. A crescent moon. A flaming sun with a stick man inside, arms outstretched. None of these meant much to Empra, though she’d spent many hours studying them.

  The note on the other side was marginally less mysterious. Its handwriting wasn’t practiced enough to belong to a Recorder, building words too blocky and big. Sentences took up twice the space they needed: Empra—if you’re reading this, it means we’ve succeeded. Mostly. There’s not enough room on this page to explain, but all the answers are inside the chip. It holds your son’s past, and possibly his future, too. Give it to him on his seventeenth birthday.

  Here the author had run out of room, no end in sight: period, signature, or otherwise. The y simply leaped off the page, leaving Empra with the sensation that she’d been interrupted. Her train of thought picked up at the same place every read: Who’d written this? How could there be answers inside the chip, when it was incompatible with Central’s technology? Empra had approached dozens of programmers over the years, but none had been able to extract data from its circuits. How could her son have a past before his birth? Was it connected to the Ab Aeterno’s crew splitting the universe in two?

  If so… this box could be akin to Pandora’s. Better left shut.

  She wanted the best for Farway: the one thing in this world that kept her her, made in his father’s image, filled with her own wanderheart. As a child he’d watched her past expeditions with wide eyes, soaking in ancient cities, dinosaurs, volcanic eruptions, worlds unwired. He’d enrolled in the Academy because he wanted to make these adventures his own, and had worked his tail off to become class valedicto
rian. Rumor had it the Corps had already set aside his sergeant’s uniform, final exam Sim pending. The future ahead of him was bright enough.

  Why complicate it?

  It was an oft-thought cycle, one Empra had pondered this very morning. She’d stared at the bed she sat on now, looking over Farway’s birthday gifts, blue box in her hands, unable to let go. Maybe when Farway was eighteen or nineteen or never…

  But Gram’s reappearance, today of all days, had rattled her resolve.

  There were deeper things than fear at work.

  “What the Hades is going on, McCarthy?” Burg filled her doorway like he filled every doorway. He didn’t take pains to distinguish himself from his duplicate, the way the rest of the Ab Aeterno’s crew did through hairstyles and jewelry, but Empra always knew which Historian was hers. There was something about the way he softened around her, surly-old-man performance crumbling in the second act. “Your son’s worried, says you went white as a meal block in the kitchen. Feeling all right?”

  She felt on edge, sweat from her fingertips mussing the box’s velvet. “Burg, if you could choose to remember what happened to us the day we left ancient Rome, would you?”

  “I suppose so. Yeah.” The Historian was too burly for her bedroom, but he’d maneuvered it often enough to learn smallness. When he reached the bed, he picked up the letter to keep from crushing it. “A person’s got the right to know their history, don’t they?”

  The chip looked one sneeze away from disappearing, so Empra held her breath when she stared at it. Her heart slowed to real time. Farway’s past… If someone had gone to the trouble of putting it on a chip, it must have been worth saving. Handing this to her son would be no different from letting him watch her old datastreams. That was all futures were really—stories passed down, lived forward.

  History: The roots we did not choose.