According to my fuzzy recollection of Caesarion, he had been erased before being allowed to have any impact on the world, good or bad. Dying young was his contribution, in a way, but a small one. Not something to intrigue a Historian. Unless she happened to be his True.
I sat down in one of the smaller alcoves, one tucked away from the main entrance. The glass polymer benches, tables, and fluid screens made these spaces cold, and I tugged a heavy brown sweater tighter around my shoulders. It was one of the few items that belonged to me—a gift from my brother, a treasure from Palenque, the planet set up for agriculture and food production. It bore no Historian symbol, and wrapped inside it, I felt like simple Kaia Vespasian. It was nice. Historian apprentice Kaia felt pressure to uphold the image of her grandfather, not to mention of this Academy, one of the most respected in the System. Daughter Kaia felt as though putting one toe out of line would break her parents’ hearts all over again. But no one expected anything of plain Kaia. She could spend the afternoon getting to know the boy who, in a different world, might have loved her.
I slid a finger across the screen embedded in the tabletop, pressing the tattoo on my wrist flat against the chilly surface to gain access to the holo-files. It meant my movements could be tracked, but wanting to know about my True wasn’t so weird. Sure, I should have been in Research, but the Elders largely trusted us. They didn’t check our movements unless they had a reason, and the Guide made everyone aware of the consequences of committing infractions, big and small.
A stern talking-to or even a week of menial duties seemed a small enough price for learning more about Caesarion.
Using the tip of my index finger, I tapped The West and scrolled over thousands of years of human history. Back through the wars, disease, and devastating overpopulation at the end of our time on Earth Before. Past the massive advances in science and technology, the intolerance, the hatred, more wars. Steps forward in human rights, leaps backward. Through the revolution that nearly destroyed France, and the one that birthed the United States. I swept past the Crusades and through the Middle Ages—my least favorite time to visit—and finally landed in ancient Rome, where the flashing screens slowed under my touch.
Caesarion’s parents were often observed and recorded, which translated to easily located in the database. My True had never had the chance to see whether or not he could make a mark of his own. Instead, his death fell under the too crowded category of collateral damage.
Necessary tragedy.
The scant information in the Archives frustrated me. He’d been born to Cleopatra and Julius Caesar during their love affair, which preceded her more infamous tryst with Marc Antony by several years. When Octavian took the helm of the strongest city in the world after the event we witnessed a few days ago in Rome, he needed to ensure no one existed who could challenge his tenuous claim to the throne.
After all, he was only the adopted son of Julius Caesar. One from his direct bloodline could have posed a legitimate threat. After studying humanity for the past seven years, the reasoning made intellectual sense to me. It didn’t make it hurt less, or make it any more fair, that a power-hungry jackass had murdered a young man simply to eliminate the threat he might have represented.
Then again, kids younger than Caesarion had died for a whole lot less.
The only Archived observation of him had been recorded the day he was born. I pressed the play icon and rested my chin in my palm, elbow on the edge of the table as the holo-images flickered to life. My dark hair fell around my neck and shoulders, keeping me warm as the hard profile of Julius Caesar solidified. Now that I’d seen him in person he was easy enough to identify, though his charisma didn’t translate with as much clarity in the holo. An unexpected pang of sadness thrummed in my middle at the sight of him like this, alive and happy, after the way we saw him last.
He strode into an opulent bedchamber. Purple and gold silks draped the windows, and matching linens lay rumpled atop the giant bed. Soft yellow paint splashed the walls. Ornate tile slapped under his sandals as he made his way to the bed where a woman held a newborn baby wrapped in cloth. Dark hair stuck to her tanned forehead. Bright lights twinkled in her night-sky eyes as she tore her gaze from her son and looked up at the man who’d helped create him.
Until now, I’d only read text Archives about Cleopatra, and her ordinary features took me by surprise. She had a quality about her though, that was similar to Caesar’s. A magnetism, something that drew me to her face, in fear that the tiniest nuance of her thoughts might escape my notice.
“It’s a boy,” she whispered in Greek as he sat beside her on the lush bedding.
His eyes went wide with a difficult-to-describe expression—a jumble of disbelief and pride, love and fear. He ran a gentle hand over Cleopatra’s head, smoothing back her hair, then reached for the baby. She handed the boy over, and Caesar held him up until he squirmed and started to bawl, inspecting this little person for flaws, perhaps, or maybe just in awe—it was hard to tell. I’d have to reflect many more times to guess the emotions crisscrossing his ruddy cheeks and flashing through his dark eyes.
I could have reflected on them both for hours.
The baby—my Caesarion—favored his mother. He had a shock of obsidian hair and his skin shaded darker than his father’s. Sharp disappointment twisted my heart. His adult face, his voice, his countenance, would remain mysteries.
I wondered how this memory had been recorded. There had been slaves or midwives in the room, perhaps, for a Historian to blend among. I’d heard the Technologies Academy was developing invisibility clothing similar to what they’d created for our glasses. After they perfected it, Historians would be able to access more intimate moments in the past, moments that had been forever hidden from the public.
The recording ended as Caesar laid the baby in a bassinet beside the bed and stretched out next to his lover. I assumed whoever had been in the room had been dismissed at that point, and the final image was of the Roman and the Greek, their arms wrapped around each other as what looked like early-evening sun streaked through the windows and bathed them in golden light.
I stood and stretched, giving the recording a flick with my fingertip that sent it back to its place in the Archives. Impatience tickled my limbs, an itching desire to do something—to move, to run—but there was nothing to do. No one could save a single member of that family from their collective fate. The hardest stories for me were always the ones that ended in tragedy. To stand in their presence, hear their breaths and their heartbeats and know they’d be silenced too soon.
But everyone I observed had already died. Some of them made me more melancholy than others, and Caesarion perhaps more so than any other, now that I was aware of our connection through time. It seemed natural to hope that someone who would have loved me would have lived a rich, full life.
But maybe he had. It would make me feel better to know what his life had been like as a teenager—that he’d been happy before his adopted brother stole his future. The image of Jonah’s cuff danced in my mind, a temptation that quickened my breath.
I could find out. Just observe Caesarion. Not talk to him, of course, but to know what he was like, how his life felt while he’d lived it, might be worth a sanction.
The rules about contact had the stiffest penalties, and altering the past in even the smallest capacity could mean repeating a year, being assigned a specialty no one else wanted, or maybe even exile. But an apprentice traveling alone wasn’t even listed as an infraction in the Guide, since we didn’t own our own cuffs. So it wouldn’t break any rules.