“They still oppose us, they’re still our enemy.”
***
The thing about the game of time travel is that it presents you with a lot of information. You’ve no idea how much information you need to even begin to consider it. If it were as simple as inventing a machine and plugging in a date, it would be sheer chaos. And impossible to accomplish anything. The most basic rule is that it’s not just time that needs to be accounted for, but space as well. You need to know when and where you will end up. The universe is always on the move! And you have to do everything to keep up with it.
This is to say, I saw when Silik said that. I see everything. When you view every element of your life, of existence itself, as a variable in an equation, you are going to have to. You will have to see everything. Amateurs always underestimate this. They don’t appreciate the complexities.
The many agents in the so-called Temporal Cold War agree at least on this. This is not to say all the players do. Sometimes in order to get something accomplished you have to use the available resources. Such as the Cabal. Such as Silik.
***
This is to say he had no idea the role he played in thwarting me. I could not blame him for this. After all, I of all people know how this game works.
***
For me, it started before my birth. My father was a Romulan and my mother a Reman. I ended up looking like my father. I grew up incapable of reconciling my origins, for a simple reason: My father abandoned me as he had abandoned my mother.
If you know anything at all about the relationship of the two center worlds of the Romulan Star Empire, you will understand most of this already.
You will not know why my father did what he did. He did not rape her. He loved her. Perhaps this is a lie my mother chose to tell me, but I have always chosen to believe it, too.
No, he abandoned us out of naked political gain. This is the way of the Romulans. They will do anything, sacrifice anything, to advance their career objectives. They will always tell you how different they are from their Vulcan cousins, but they are driven by the same cold analysis of the world. They simply choose to exploit it with abandon, rather than study it endlessly. They are driven by the same arrogance.
He won a seat on the council, if that impresses you at all. It wasn’t satisfying for my mother, and it wasn’t for me.
***
To erase him from my history, from my very DNA, was delicate business. The one thing I will never be able to erase is his memory.
It was not as simple as erasing him from history. If I did that it was a paradox resolved only by my own elimination.
I debated many times with myself, how much I needed to tell my mother. I did not want to hurt her. I considered various alternate suitors, though she had remained faithful to him in their courtship. Obviously I favored Remans. I did not want to see my father in the mirror.
The riddle eluded me. I chose to practice dispassionately, in the affairs of others. I suppose I was somewhat ruthless in this regard. I did, however, affect what I could to benefit my Reman brothers, the imbalance that was hardly a balance at all, in the Empire. I pivoted roles to give advantage where I could, even though no Romulan would ever acknowledge my victories. I positioned a clone in ever more important circles. That one I was particularly proud of. He became praetor, but inevitably came to a bad end. He was not as precise in his machinations as I have tried to be.
As I grew bold, experienced, I saw how it might be done. Protected as I was in all the experience I had gained, the dark secrets of time travel and the host of those who truly understood it, even if in opposition to me, one day I was able to look in a mirror and see as close to a full Reman face as I had ever dared hope dream. I will not labor you with a litany of what needed doing, but the end result was, I had just one last move to make.
***
And I found myself trapped in the past, on the planet Earth, and involving myself in the business humans call World War Two. All I had to do was invent time travel again.
But it was not meant to be.
***
I am home again. I have my original face. I see my father in the mirror.
And one day, this will change. Forever. It will just take time.
