Nicholas’s voice cracked with a strain they all felt—364 days spent inside a 65-square-meter CTM, watching Empra come and go and grow from the belly out. Back issues of holo-paper zines and two hours a day on the walkabout machine could only do so much to ward off cabin fever. In fact, the sight of Rome spread below was one of the best Burg had seen the whole hashing year. From this elevation, the capital was a model maker’s dream—hills crowned with temples, Colosseum the size of a coin. The Ab Aeterno leveled above it, letting only a second pass before the city—and the time that held it— vanished. They’d peeled out of 95 AD, into the Grid. Darkness pressed against the vistaport, endless and eager.
The screams from the infirmary grew louder. Burg wanted to tell the Engineer to hurry up, but there was no point. The Grid was a timeless place. Clocks stopped and what you thought was a second could be an hour, a week, a year, a decade. He stared through the vistaport instead, willing the world’s capital to reappear in its twenty-fourth-century iteration. Rome had changed a good deal in the last two millennia: from dusty republic city to Caput Mundi to selfie-stick-wielding tourist destination to Novum Caput Mundi. The heart of the ancient world had risen to new, all-powerful heights. Its cityscape even resembled a crown. Zone 1—the Colosseum, the Vatican, countless basilicas and fountains and piazzas—sat at the center, the buildings of Old Rome protected by the Global Historic Preservation Act of 2237 AD. Modernity hemmed it in on all sides. Zone 2’s jutting skyline was bejeweled with neon adverts, hovercraft traffic dotting the slices of intervening sky. The centerpiece of Central was— without question—the tiered New Forum skyscraper designed by the famed architect Biruk Tekle. All 168 floors of the building were sheathed in gold glass. Six hundred senators worked inside these gilded walls, representing half as many global districts, headed by a dual consulate.
Earth’s capital was the seed of a million migraines, with its smog and tangled lights, but there was a pause every day when it transformed. Locals like Burg knew this as the “Flaming Hour,” when the setting sun caught pollution particles at just the right angle to spread orange bright into every corner of the evening. The city became fire itself, unmatched by anything in history. One world, one light. It was Rome ascended, forged from peace instead of war.
None of this materialized from the black. Nicholas stayed hunched over his screens, taking strings of numbers and crunching them into the precise result that would land the Ab Aeterno when they wanted: April 18, 2354 AD, 12:01 PM. One minute after their departure one year ago.
Burg sat down at his own station to disconnect Empra’s feed from his comm, but there was no need. Her shrieks had gone silent, a rougher, wordless cry taking their place.
Nicholas looked up at the sound, cheeks ashen. “Is that—”
It was. Newborn lungs drunk on their first swig of air. The cries kept on and the Engineer made the eight-pointed sign of a cross over his chest. Burg felt his own color draining while he looked toward the infirmary, then back to the dizzying dark of the Grid. As a time traveler, he was used to bending the laws of nature, sometimes all the way backward.
But this… a child born outside of time…
Such an event didn’t just distort the laws of nature.
It broke them.
Burg switched off the datastream and ran to the infirmary. It was a sight: Doc tending to Empra on the floor. Her stola had gone purple with bloodstains, and she could not stop crying as she rocked her child with med-patch-covered arms. The infant was already squirming, as if he was ready to fight something. His head bloomed full of dark curls.
Though Burg was a large tree trunk of a man—built for bar brawls and bouncer jobs—he was also very intuitive. He’d noted that Empra’s datastream lingered a bit too long on the gladiator with those same dark curls. He’d noticed how, at night, always hours before she returned to the Ab Aeterno, she would switch off the recording devices and mute her mic. He’d watched love like stars shine through her eyes—the kind of love she never shared with him. Or Doc. Or Nicholas. Or her ex-fiancé, Marin.
The Historian was watchful enough to pick out these things, smart enough to piece them together. Like all registered members of the Corps, Burg had memorized the Corps of Central Time Travelers’ Code of Conduct to the extent that he could recite it in reverse. When it came to this child’s father, Empra had gone well outside her jurisdiction, and if the Central authorities caught wind of her actions, there would be consequences. Ruthless ones, applied to mother and son alike.
Burg looked down at the baby—so breakably small in Empra’s arms—and swore he’d never tell. When the infant’s clear eyes latched onto his, the Historian went a step further, doing some calculations in his head. In order for Empra’s secret to stay a secret, there had to be bribery involved. Burg knew if he could get the right amount of credits to the right lab techs, then the child’s DNA tests could be fudged. Senators did this all the time to cover up unwanted paternity claims.
But the senators’ pockets were far deeper than Burg’s. He didn’t time travel for the money. No one did. Most of the Corps’ cash flow went to the mechanical side of things: fuel rods, CTM maintenance, server space to host the datastreams Recorders were collecting from all across time.
How many credits would it take to bribe the lab techs? A thousand? Five thousand? Maybe even more, to hide a misstep as large as this…
“Would you like to hold him?” Empra asked.
Burg nodded. How could he say no? The baby squirmed as he was transferred, curls tickling the inside of the Historian’s elbow. It was then that the bearish man decided to hash it all. What were numbers to a life? Whatever price it would take to keep this child alive… he’d pay it. There wasn’t much that could be done to cover up the birth outside of time. He just had to have faith that that anomaly would sort itself out.
Burg cradled the boy who should not have been—close as a heart—waiting through the timeless time-between-times for them to land.
PART I
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
— WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY “INVICTUS”
1
THE BOY WHO SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN
MAY 5, 2371
“STATE YOUR NAME.” THE MED-DROID’S AUTOMATED voice was cut clean, every syllable filed down to replicate a Central accent. Why machines needed accents, Far didn’t know. Maybe the programmers added this touch of humanity to put the med-droid’s patients at ease. The tactic had failed, though the robot couldn’t be faulted for Far’s discomfort. Sitting tail-naked on an examination tabletop wasn’t exactly Relaxation 101. The stainless steel surface was a few degrees shy of frosty, nipping places on his body where cold had no business going.
“Farway Gaius McCarthy,” he answered.
The med-droid recorded the reply, shifted into the next query. “State your date of birth.”