Return Once More by Trisha Leigh Read Free Book Online Page A

letter, never setting a toe out of line. Maybe they had the right idea. Sometimes, in the present, I convinced myself to be more like them.
    The past, though, never failed to make me waver.
    The moments we captured, the special ones … people never saw them coming, never understood the impact of the seconds as they ticked past. The Historians did good work, and being a part of this Academy made me proud. I loved my parents and had watched my brother break their hearts, and I knew that Analeigh was right, that I should follow all the rules, not just the ones that didn’t interfere with my selfish desires.
    But I wanted to
live
moments, not just record them.
    Max sent over four strawberry cupcakes—he must have pulled my favorite from my bio-tat info—and the flickering candle and off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” by my friends made me forget about my family and my brother and following the rules, anchoring me here and now.
    But as I blew out the pink candle and licked away the creamy frosting, I wondered what he had looked like. Caesarion. What he’d liked to eat, whether he had ever fallen in love, what kind of mother Cleopatra had been … and I couldn’t help the little seed of sadness that took root in my heart at the realization that he could have died before he could celebrate his own seventeenth birthday.
    Before he’d really gotten to live at all.

Chapter Four
    The Archives were my favorite place inside the Academy, the spot that, more often than not, really made me feel at home. Long hallways sprouted from the massive main chamber and led to private viewing rooms, utilized by advanced reflectors who preferred seclusion. All of the rooms were typically quiet, even if several Historians were present at once. When we returned from trips, we analyzed and critiqued our recordings in here, individually and in group sessions. Reflection was a huge part of our jobs as Historians because without it, all we had were holo-files—essentially the same as reading history texts on Earth Before, but probably way more cool.
    Anyone could watch history. We trained to interpret and apply.
    There were fifteen eight-by-eight table comps surrounded by stools in the main room, where the walls were made of a hazy glass polymer. History, via recordings, twisted across the terrain of Earth Before on every one of them. On one wall, we watched the building of the Great Wall of China. On another, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. A third displayed the prisoners breaking free of the Bastille in Paris, but the images constantly changed. Regardless of what events played at any given time, it reminded me how much life has been lived up to now. The Archives brought humanity’s previous home alive even here, millions of miles and hundreds of years away.
    Colored dots spattered the thick glass floor, each representing a Historian. We were color-coded by year—fifth year was red. Certified Historians were gray and Elders were black. Some of us were out observing and recording; if I stepped on someone’s dot it would display his or her name, bio data, and current location.
    It comforted me to know that long after my time is complete, this room will still exist. In a way, so will I. Maybe one day there will be Historians traveling back to watch me.
    If I ever did anything worth recording.
    Normally, I’d be in here to study holo-files and expound on how they had, in my estimation, affected the eventual outcome of humanity. This wasn’t my scheduled period, though. I was supposed to be in Research figuring out what clothing we’d need for our upcoming observation—the trip to 1911 New York City was in a few days—but Analeigh had agreed to cover for me. She pretended to believe that I wanted to check on my Caesar recordings, to see how much trouble waited at my end-of-the-month evaluation, but she must have known it was about him.
    Caesarion.
    Not knowing anything