Rome-0 & Juliet
Chronicles of Expansion: Humanity’s (Accidental) Journey to the Edge of Space
Chapter 8 – Rome 0 & Juliet
Una Muerte Anunciada
Dreams of home again. She was fifteen, walking under the wooden pergola that led to the governor’s mansion. The cobblestone path, shaded by hundreds of priceless, unforgettable veraniegas, felt as familiar as the entrance to her own home. Not many others could walk the grounds freely. Even fewer had ever stepped inside, and no more than a handful were welcome into the living quarters. She was.
One foot in front of the other seems simple enough, so why did her body refuse to move forward? She tried walking first. That didn’t work. Running only made it worse, and the quicker her non-steps, the longer and deeper her path became. She saw fire in the sky. The veraniegas were burning. Cosmic nightmares festered in between the cobblestones under her feet, revealing the emptiness of deep space where there had once been dirt and familiarity. She was about to scream when a sweet, trusted voice brought her back.
We’d prefer if you don’t scream, Nona. Besides, you’ve already told us about the pergola a million times.
How about the fire, she thought. Have I told them about that? Did they just call me Nona? Such a beautiful, endearing word. Nona. Grandma. Abuela. No wonder she hadn’t forgot about it yet, like so many other words in what used to be an ample, well-polished vocabulary.
Old age is an inescapable bitch, no matter how long humans manage to live for. At over eight hundred years old, La Nona was the symbolic matriarch in a large group of deep space colonizers. Unlike a century or so earlier, she no longer presided over the colony. It was enough of a challenge trying to remember most of their names. Now, her feeble mind preferred the comforts of childhood, often seeking refuge in old memories, like waiting to be let inside the governor’s home.
Dreaming Conglomerate Dreams
Juliet was born on 388 SA in a small post-colonial base under the power-sphere of Earth 4. The last of eight children, she was surrendered to the local Conglomerate Population Control & Colonization office forty-eight hours later. Most colonizers stopped at 3 kids. Not her parents. Out of a primitive spiritual conviction to procreate, they didn’t mind spreading their seed far and wide through the Congs’ mighty hand. She never met them.
At five years old, Juliet was handpicked and sent out to an agricultural outpost on Crissan II. The second of three moons orbiting a rocky planet undergoing terraforming, her new home offered a welcome change of fortune. She was to be part of a group of children who would keep the local governor’s daughter company.
The daughter, an overfed, overprotected, chronically bored creature didn’t take to any of her guests at first. “They’re too ugly,” she told her father. “And almost the color of lentils.” Too bad the governor’s will wouldn’t bend, forcing his only child to choose between further boredom and what she considered substandard company. Thus, one by one, the children were spent, displaced, or eliminated. By the time Juliet stepped into the playroom, the place had become infamous, but as she would recount later in life, neither the room nor her host were as terrible as advertised.
As the two girls grew, they bonded over a lifelong dream to join the Congs, enroll in the Exodus Initiative, and explore the universe together. For the governor’s daughter, admission was guaranteed. After all, he was a war hero. For Juliet, the possibility of acceptance might as well have been null, except her friend refused to leave their home planet unaccompanied.
All Paths Lead to Rome 0
What came first, Exodus or humanity? That was question one of the inaugural exams at the academy. A trick question, of course. SA History Charts stated humanity began as a single, united front thanks to the Exodus Initiative. Never before had all nations of the old world come together. Whatever preceded us was something else. A primitive, malformed manifest destiny. A necessary evil out of which we were born.
Under shroud protocol, Juliet and her friend were on equal footing. The blood of heroes can only carry you so far, and bureaucratic love laid dead at the feet of true anonymity. This worked out great for Juliet, who excelled at Econ X courses and aced her Colony Management Simulation Exams. She was ready to prove her worth to the Conglomerate. Her friend, however, missed the perks of Crissantian high society and a life of gossip unavailable to young recruits.
The divergent destinies of these two young women were evident in every class. One had a future in Exodus. The other would return home in defeat. Not that the governor’s daughter minded going back to Crissan, a place of safety where luxury and her father’s iron grip on power formed the backbone of a happy life. She could always find new, better friends there. Friends whose interest didn’t extend beyond the comfort of their own atmosphere.
Juliet’s performance in economic exchange simulators earned her a seat on the Exodus 109, an exploratory mission that would go on to discover and terraform multiple uncharted planets. Thus, against all odds, hers turned into a life of adventure. From exploring the Toche-1 Belt and launching probes into dozens of spacetime anomalies to sitting at the council of Earth Beta-9 and helping found Rome 0, she had a million stories to share, and always did. All but one. The one in which she saw her home and family burn to the ground. She had kept that vision to herself for over six centuries. Now, with dementia setting in, the ominous prophecy popped up at a family dinner here and a gallery opening there. She couldn’t help it. Neither could her family when they finally had her committed and sent back to Crissan II. “It’s what’s best for you, Nona,” they told her. “We’ll come visit as soon as we can.” That’s the last memory she had of any of them.
For generations, Rome 0 flourished under the pragmatic, uneventful council of Juliet and a group of elders. It was their time to rest. Her crew’s performance had certainly exceeded any Exodus primary directive. After close to three hundred e-years together, they had taken care of everything from morning studies and local festivals to executions and war briefings. Not an easy life, but it had its perks. People listened to her back then. In fact, she’s the one who suggested naming their settlement after the famous poem Old Earth, a tale of ancient, mighty empires lost in time that she had read centuries earlier at the governor’s mansion.
Juliet – Agent of the Apocalypse
Crissan II changed during her absence. The tiny moon was now a booming port of commerce, with a year-round population of refugees and mercenaries from the endless civil war ravaging its home planet. Most natives lived in comfort outside the city limits. So did Juliet, at a small residence reserved for the system’s most illustrious citizens. There, she had to be reminded from time to time about the nuances and secrecy of shroud protocol, particularly since many of the home’s residents were her childhood friends. What was she supposed to talk about if not her own life and story? One of them, an old lady, even claimed to be the former governor’s daughter. The two women would spend hours staring at each other from across the room, wondering who they were and if they had ever met before.
With time, small, temporary truths made their way to her. Someone once said the governor’s mansion had been transformed into a museum honoring the Conglomerate’s victims. The victims of what, she wasn’t sure. People visiting the old lady always whispered, but Juliet could hear them discussing plans to leave for more sympathetic lands. Sympathetic to what, she didn’t know either. Then, suddenly, the visits stopped, and every conversation focused on the same topic, an impending cataclysm about to consume Crissan II. How strange, she thought, her eyes closing and her mind drifting away.
Dreams of home again. Burning skies. Darkness between cobblestones. The emptiness of space. Flakes of her skin peeling off in an unimaginable heat. She would wake up screaming. Sweating. Crying alone in a home that had grown quiet and dusty. Where did everyone go? Her new room had a beautiful terrace overlooking the valley below, but the city seemed different. When had Rome 0 gone so gray and lifeless, she wondered. Would she ever get another chance to visit Crissan II and the governor’s mansion? Each morning, the dreams turned darker and her screams louder at that waking hour. Soon, the visions shifted to an all-consuming fire, the sky bending onto itself and raining down upon her.
Unbeknown to Juliet, her high-pitched howls shook the fabric of spacetime and sent cobblestones flying in all directions to reveal… something she couldn’t quite grasp. The view from her balcony had changed. Below, Rome 0 stood in all its glory, about to succumb to the universe and be forgotten. There were people screaming and looking in terror towards the sky. Whenever she stopped shouting to let some air in, that world came to a halt, giving way to an empty home and the gray city in the valley. Her pain, and theirs, was becoming unbearable, even in the forgiving realm of dreams. What could possibly be burning beyond the clouds? Why were the homes, and vehicles, and people around her coming off the ground? Could she really be floating as well?
La Nona Juliet yearned for home and family. Life had taken her far away from both. Where was she now, and how could her surroundings feel so familiar and foreign at once? Why did her screams change the walls, and the view, and the people? What could only be a spacetime anomaly, now in the last stage of its approach, lit the whole sky. Her anguish seemed to transport it from one place to another. From one time to another. Then, a last second epiphany. It was up to her where the vision would come to fruition.
Would she die alone in an old world where veraniegas no longer flourished, or was Rome 0 about to fall?