Free Aliomenti Saga 6: Stark Cataclysm by Alex Albrinck Page B

had tried, but the failure was evident in her mother’s strained and painful existence. She couldn’t understand Fil’s anger at their father, why he focused anger on an act she found heroic and even romantic.
    As she’d entered her teen years, her mother’s absence became a profound void in her life. Denied female role models who understand not just issues of maturation, but also the unique aspects of Alliance existence, she’d left home. Adam and Fil both loved her and cared for her, but they were men, and though they didn’t think her solution appropriate, they’d supported her from afar, keeping in touch via email. She’d traveled to the nearest Alliance safe house, and then moved to the port of South Beach and on to the Cavern. She’d been welcomed with open arms, found the female role models lacking at home, and regained the sprightly disposition that had waned in the years since her mother’s departure. It was a positive attitude her brother called “adorable,” a word that made her feel like she was still an eight-year-old girl in pigtails.
    She loved it.
    After she’d been living in the Cavern for several months, she realized the trap she’d set for herself, one Fil and Adam had warned about. Her long-term disappearance meant she’d be presumed dead in the human world, and a reappearance would raise awkward questions. With her isolation within the Alliance world set for decades, she chose to focus her energy on solving the most vexing problem facing them as they moved toward Will’s reappearance in the future.
    Time travel.
    It was the stuff of science fiction, of fantasy, of anything but reality. It was also critical to her very existence. If she, Fil, and Adam didn’t go back to that day in 2030 and extract her father from the clutches of the Hunters, nothing else would matter. If they were unable to return him to their starting point in 2219, nothing else would matter. If they were unable to get him back to the very beginning, back to 1018, then nothing else in this loop of time would matter. Everyone had done their part up until now. It was her turn.
    She had no idea where to start.
    She studied every type of theoretical physics, availing herself of online courses, lectures, and discussion groups. She posed as a reporter for a science magazine and interviewed dozens of theoretical physicists on the topic, asking them to provide their insights for an article about the physics of time travel and how they’d transport people back and forth through time. There was no consensus, nothing she could use, nothing that made obvious a solution to the problem.
    She’d finally located mathematical formula suggesting an answer to traveling through the fourth dimension—time—by bending the other dimensions in an enclosed space. It made little sense, but she’d built paper models and tried to understand the logic of the theory by demonstrating it to herself. She looked at formulas that had no answers she could compute, and others that made the time leap conceptually possible even while suggesting they’d never be able to execute that leap.
    Frustration was paramount. Napping seemed a better option.
    A knock startled her from her mental funk. She glanced in the direction of the sound. “Door’s open.”
    The handle turned and a man entered. “Sorry, I didn’t know this office was in use. I’ll get… wow, what’s that ?”
    He motioned toward the whiteboard, an old-fashioned relic in a place where three-dimensional modeling tools were common. “It’s a whiteboard. Two dimensions only.”
    He chuckled. “I know that.” He pointed to his graying hair, which carried a hint of the red of his youth. “I’ve been around long enough.”
    She smiled. “Many of our number have been around long enough to use papyrus and vellum.” She gave him a curious glance. “I hope I don’t sound rude for asking, but…”
    “Why do I look old?” He chuckled, then frowned. “That’s a complicated question. I