Page 32 of Alone With You in the Ether

“Do youwantto travel in time?”

A good question. “I think I’d mostly like to figure out how it would work, but I don’t expect to.”

“Kind of an odd fixation, isn’t it? If you never plan to use it.”

“Well, if I figured it out, then fine, maybe I’d use it. But—” He hesitated. “Well, there’s a reason mathematicians sort of stop at a certain point when developing theories,” he explained. “If there’s no capacity to understand the math moving forward, then there’s no reason trying to figure it out. We’d all just lose sleep over it, trying to sort out our own existence.”

“Butyou’rewillingly losing sleep over it,” she noted.

“I…” It was difficult to explain. “Yes, because—”

“Because if you don’t have something to figure out, then you have no reason to keep going?”

Or maybe it wasn’t that difficult to explain.

“Yeah,” he said. “Basically.”

She was quiet for a few beats of time.

“So this is how you did it,” she said.

“Did what?”

“Kept going. After… you know. What happened to you.”

“Ah.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to discuss it; other people tended to treat the resurrection of his mental stability as some sort of dramatic event, but for him, it was simply historical. “I guess.”

“No, it totally is. You gave yourself an impossible problem so you’d never be able to stop thinking about it. It’s brilliant, actually.” She sounded close to impressed. “Other people probably think it’s crazy, don’t they?”

“My dad sort of plays along. He doesn’t get it,” Aldo admitted, “but every day he asks me where in time we are. I make it up, obviously, and he pretends it’s new and interesting every time, but I think it’s his version of ‘how are you,’ basically. Checking in.”

She was quiet again.

“That’s sweet,” she said. “I like that.”

He wondered what expression she was wearing.

“Do you want to do something later?” she asked him, her tone shifting to something crystalline and urgent. “Or, I don’t know. Now, I guess.”

“I have something at seven,” he said, “but I guess if you wanted t-”

“What are you possibly doing at seven on a Sunday morning?”

You’re going to hate this, he thought, wincing a little.

“I’m going to church,” he admitted.

“What? No.” She sounded bewildered. “You’re religious? But—”

“Not really,” he said quickly. “Not at all, actually. But I used to go with my dad, and then it became a routine. I like the early masses because they’re quiet, and—”

“Mass. You’re Catholic?”

“Yes,” he said, wondering vaguely if her tone might mean she had some eccentric argument stored away for rebuttal to the essence of Catholicism; some opposition to the Medici family, maybe. Probably not, though, if she liked art. “But if you wanted to do something aft-”

“Can I come with you?”

He blinked, taken entirely by surprise. “Really?”

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