The Sky Above, the Rivers Below, Ch 13: Call to Return

Chronic, the great weaver of futures, became ferryman to their pasts. The Temporal Messaging Service delivered death notices, wedding invitations, and summons from dying matriarchs with the same impersonal efficiency it managed its stock exchanges.

The messages arrived within days of each other. Three families. Three summons.

Margaret's slate chimed-quiet, final. Formal script scrolled across the screen. Her Aunt Eleanor was dying. The last surviving sister, the matriarch of the dwindling Shepard line in Virginia. The dateline read Virginia, 1763. Below that, legal language about "unresolved matters concerning the Willow Creek estate."

Willow Creek. Margaret's stomach clenched. Generations of Shepards had grown rich there. The humid summers. The rigid social codes. The enslaved people whose labor had built it all. She set the slate down. Her hands were shaking.

Aunt Eleanor had shown her kindness once. Brief moments in a childhood otherwise choked by propriety. The thought of refusing never crossed her mind-not with inheritance at stake, not with family obligation written into the summons itself. Dying relatives demanded attendance. Even three centuries and Chronic's bureaucratic maze couldn't erase that rule.

Word spread through their small community of first-generation migrants. Sook-ja Kim appeared at Margaret's door, face flushed. Her niece in Joseon-Min-ji's favorite cousin-was getting married. A rare celebration. Sook-ja was already calculating what small savings she could spare for proper gifts. Her voice trembled when she spoke about taking Min-ji, about reconnecting her daughter to a heritage slipping away.

The Ahmed news came last. Sadder. More complicated. Jamila's beloved elder brother had died suddenly in 1690s Bombay. The funeral rites required family. Business matters needed settling. Margaret thought of Jamila, still frail from the illness that had nearly killed her, and felt her chest tighten. Imran would be torn apart. His guilt over his mother's decline, now this.

Margaret paced her apartment. The window-screen displayed its perfect, unchanging cityscape.

Bombay. Joseon. Virginia.

The past reaching out. Demanding its pound of flesh.

She pressed her forehead against the cool glass.

Just when we found our footing-fragile as it was-the old world calls us back.

***

If the emotional weight was heavy, the practical burden crushed them.

Temporal travel was not-whatever Chronic's glossy brochures suggested-a simple matter. No shimmering portals. Just meticulous control, staggering expense, invasive process.

Margaret spent hours in Chronic administrative offices. Digital forms. Biometric re-checks. "Temporal Re-entry Protocol" briefings delivered by earnest young officials who spoke of "cultural contamination risks" with clinical detachment. Elara oversaw their application, serene smile fixed in place. Every question felt like another turn of the screw.

"Of course, Chronic understands the importance of family connections across time levels, Mrs. Shepard." Elara's voice was synth-silk smooth during a particularly brutal session about "temporal displacement tariffs." "However, these journeys must be managed carefully. Data collection on long-term integration effects. Consider it a collaborative research opportunity."

Collaborative.

Margaret bit back a bitter laugh.

We're specimens. Returned to native environments for observation.

The costs mounted. Temporal navigation calculations. Paradox insurance-a particularly galling fee. Mandatory cultural de-assimilation modules. Bio-stasis transit pods to minimize physiological shock. Every line item felt like extortion.

The briefings were worse. Holographic instructors lectured them on "minimizing anachronistic contamination." Period-appropriate speech patterns. Avoiding discussions of future events. Behaving in ways that wouldn't "unduly disrupt established social norms."

For Margaret, this meant Virginia society. The suffocating manners. The coded language. The rigid expectations for women of her station. For Thomas, awkward sessions on performing the role of a 1760s gentleman-a role he'd barely lived before displacement and now felt utterly alien.

She watched Sook-ja fret over gift costs, over how Min-ji's modern education and outspoken nature would play in deeply conservative Joseon. She heard, through hushed confidences, about Jamila's agonizing decision-risk the journey or send Imran alone to face their family's grief.

Chronic's scrutiny intensified. This journey was another test. Another assessment of their "retained assimilation." Another opportunity to gather data, to mold them into compliant, productive, thoroughly integrated citizens.

One evening, Thomas stormed from a briefing. He paced their apartment like a caged animal.

"I'm not that man anymore!" His voice cracked. "Some obedient colonial boy? After everything we've seen? How can Chronic expect me to pretend?"

Margaret caught his arm. "They don't understand. They don't want to. But if we don't play along, we don't go."

He stopped pacing. "Is it really home, though? Is any place we go really home?"

She had no answer.

Sook-ja confided that she and Min-ji had argued. Min-ji had refused the de-assimilation modules outright. Called the procedure an "anachronistic joke."

"Sometimes I wonder if we did the right thing." Sook-ja's voice was barely audible. "Maybe we should have stayed. Built a life there. Maybe then Min-ji would feel connected to her heritage instead of fighting to keep it alive."

Margaret took her hand. The gesture felt inadequate. "We did this for them, Sook-ja. For their future. Even if we'll never be part of it."

"Will she ever belong here?" Sook-ja's eyes were wet. "I look at her sometimes and see a stranger."

"Thomas too." Margaret's throat tightened. "We've both lost children to the future."

They sat in silence.

"Still." Sook-ja's voice steadied. "This trip matters. Not just for family. For all of us. A chance to say goodbye properly to the lives we left."

Margaret nodded. She couldn't articulate the dread coiling in her chest. Virginia. The stifling manners. The class distinctions. The shadow of slavery hanging over everything. But she would go. The dutiful daughter she'd been raised to be would not refuse.

Time to pay the price.

***

The weeks before departure blurred together. Margaret watched the others, saw her own turmoil reflected and refracted in their preparations.

Sook-ja was a study in contrasts. One moment, face lit with girlish excitement as she wrapped traditional Korean silks and handmade norigae ornaments. She spoke of the Joseon countryside, the taste of well water, the local dialect. She slumped when she paused, as if her homesickness had taken on physical weight.

Margaret felt a sharp pang of envy. Sook-ja had strong bonds waiting. Real ties to home.

Then shadows would cross Sook-ja's face when she mentioned Min-ji.

"She's so modern now." Her voice dropped to a whisper during one tea session. "Her words sharp, her gaze direct. How will our relatives see her? Will they find her disrespectful? Will her very spirit offend them?"

The longing for home warred with fear of her daughter's alienation. New worry lines etched around Sook-ja's eyes.

The Ahmed household was worse. Jamila couldn't decide. Her physical recovery was slow, strength fragile. The thought of returning to seventeenth-century Bombay-basic sanitation, primitive medical understanding-terrified her. But grief for her brother, the pull of duty, was immense.

"She weeps for her brother," Sook-ja reported, eyes sympathetic. "Then weeps for fear of leaving Imran. He offers to go in her place, but she can't bear the thought of him facing it alone."

Margaret's packing became ritual. A sturdy dark traveling dress, suitable for 1763 Virginia. A worn Bible, pages thin from countless readings. A miniature portrait of her parents. Each item felt like a talisman against waiting ghosts.

She worried about Thomas. He'd grown quiet, withdrawn since that outburst. Hours in his room. The faint, sad tunes of his synth-lute drifting out, melodies that wept.

How would his gentle soul cope with the brutal truths of the colonial South? A place he knew only through her carefully edited memories and Chronic's sanitized lessons?

And me?

Margaret folded a lace collar that had belonged to her grandmother. Real link to the past she both dreaded and felt drawn toward.

Armed with hope that this time, its demons will have less power.

Chronic coordinated their departures with typical efficiency. The Ahmeds-or Imran alone, if Jamila couldn't travel-the Kims, and the Shepards would enter bio-stasis pods within the same twelve-hour cycle.

The eve of departure hung heavy.

Margaret found Sook-ja re-checking knots on her gift bundles, face a mask of forced calm.

"Ready?" The question felt too small.

Sook-ja looked up. Her eyes betrayed the anxiety her behavior tried to hide. "As ready as one can be to step back into a dream that's also a memory." She paused. "Jamila decided. Imran goes. Her heart is broken but her body too weak."

Margaret nodded. Sympathy for both mother and son. "He's a good boy."

Later, a message appeared on Margaret's slate. From Jamila, sent through Imran's account: "May your journey be safe, Margaret-ji, Sook-ja-ji. May you find what you seek. Our thoughts are with you."

The formality couldn't hide the tremor underneath. Mothers sending loved ones into the uncertain unknown.

They weren't the people who'd left those times fifteen years ago. The technology. The social norms. The constant pressure of fitting in. Everything had changed them. Their children were almost entirely products of this future, minds shaped by its wonders and alienations.

The de-assimilation briefings felt like flimsy costumes, inadequate disguises for souls fundamentally rewired.

As departure approached, Margaret stood by the window-screen. Thomas beside her, quiet, withdrawn. His gaze fixed on some distant point. His anxiety about returning to soil stained by their ancestors' actions was palpable.

Margaret felt bone-weary. Years of striving, fearing, trying to protect her son from a legacy determined to define him. But beneath exhaustion, a flicker of stubborn resolve remained.

This journey was necessary. They couldn't keep running. Perhaps by facing the past, by walking through its fires, they might find clarity.

The call to return was also a call to confront the full, complicated truth of their displaced lives. No turning back. Only the uncertain path ahead, leading directly into the heart of their own histories.

She pressed her palm against the cool glass of the window-screen, then turned to gather her Bible and the miniature portrait. Time to face the fire.

***