Chapter 241: A new world and new cities

Kate loved her with an intensity that sometimes surprised her, even after all these years.

“You say that about every dig,” Kate pointed out.

“And you’re always right. They’re all important.”

“But this one—”

“Is different. I know.”

Kate reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Martha’s ear.

“You don’t have to convince me, Martha. You never do. When you get that look in your eyes, like you’re seeing something the rest of us can’t, I know you need to go. I just wish…”

She trailed off, but Martha heard the unspoken words. I wish you could stay. I wish we had more time together. I wish your work didn’t take you so far away.

“I wish that too,” Martha said softly.

“But you know I can’t ignore this. It’s like an itch in my brain. The data is all there, pointing to something extraordinary, and if I don’t investigate, someone else will. Someone who might not understand what they’re looking at, who might damage or destroy evidence before they realize its significance.”

Kate nodded, already accepting what she’d known from the moment she found Martha hunched over those maps.

“When do you leave?”

“Day after tomorrow. I need to finalize the equipment list today and brief the team tomorrow morning.”

“Then we have tonight,” Kate said.

She glanced at the clock on the wall—7:23 AM.

“I have three meetings this morning, but I can reschedule the afternoon. We could have lunch in the city and maybe walk through Meridian Gardens like we used to when we were dating?”

Martha smiled, feeling a warmth in her chest.

“I’d like that. Let me just finish these notes—”

“Now, Martha, finish them later. If you’re leaving in two days, I want to spend time with you before you disappear into that valley for two months.”

Kate’s tone was firm but affectionate. This was an old dance between them, Martha’s tendency to lose herself in work, Kate’s insistence on maintaining their relationship amid demanding careers.

Martha looked at the maps one more time, then carefully rolled them up and set them aside. “You’re right. Let me get changed.”

Twenty minutes later, they sat in Kate’s car as it pulled out of their driveway.

The vehicle was a sleek Kestrel-9, one of the luxury models produced by Ardan Motors, the company where Kate served as Chief Operations Officer.

Kate’s hands rested lightly on the steering wheel, though the car could drive itself if she activated the autonomous system.

She preferred manual control.

As they descended from Silverwood Heights toward the city proper, the landscape of their world unfolded around them.

Kharsen sprawled across the coastal plain like a living organism, its streets arranged in concentric circles around the central district where the Witch Council maintained its seat of government.

The city was home to four million people, making it the second-largest population center in Caildran, surpassed only by the southern capital of Breakswater.

The morning commute was in full swing.

Kate navigated through traffic that flowed with reasonable efficiency despite the volume. Most of the vehicles on the road were driven by women—heading to offices, factories, hospitals, government buildings, laboratories, and trading houses.

The city was already humming with activity, with purpose. Through the car windows, Martha watched the familiar landscape of her world pass by.

They drove past a public school where children were being dropped off by their fathers. Men stood in clusters near the entrance, chatting with each other while their daughters and sons ran toward the building.

A few mothers were present as well, professionals with demanding schedules who made time for the morning routine, but they were the minority.

In the present society, child-upbringing was primarily the domain of men. They were considered naturally better suited for it—more patient, more nurturing, and more attuned to the emotional needs of growing minds.

Martha had sometimes wondered about that cultural assumption.

Was it inherently true, or just a reflection of how society had organized itself?

She’d read anthropological studies from the University of Dhornhearst suggesting that gender roles were more malleable than most people assumed, that any individual, regardless of sex, could excel at any task given proper training and opportunity.

But those were academic debates.

The reality was that society—indeed, all seven Dominions—functioned on the principle of female leadership and male domesticity and had done so for as long as historical records existed.

They passed through the commercial district, where towers of steel and glass reached toward the sky.

Kate worked in one of these towers, though not the tallest.

Ardan Motors occupied floors twenty through thirty-five of the Maeridian Tower, a forty-story structure with a facade of dark glass that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.

As Chief Operations Officer, Kate oversaw a workforce of three thousand employees across six manufacturing facilities. Her days were filled with strategy meetings, supply chain management, labor negotiations, and the thousand small decisions that kept a major corporation running smoothly.

“What are you thinking about?” Kate asked, glancing over at Martha.

“The world,” Martha said.

“How we live. I was watching those fathers at the school and thinking about how different things might have been if history had gone another way.”

Kate smiled.

“Your parallel world theory again?”

“It’s not just a theory. The anthropological evidence suggests—”

“I know, I know. You’ve explained it to me a dozen times. Somewhere out there, maybe in another dimension or another timeline, there’s a world where men run governments and women stay home with children. It sounds exhausting and inefficient.”

Martha laughed.

“It would be different, certainly. Maybe not better or worse, just different. But yes, probably more chaotic. Men are generally less inclined toward hierarchical organization. They might have built a more egalitarian society, or possibly just spent more time fighting with each other.”

They turned onto Maeridian Boulevard, the main thoroughfare that ran through the heart of the city. Here, the sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians, mostly women in business attire moving with purposeful strides toward their destinations. Street vendors operated from small carts, selling breakfast pastries and coffee to commuters.

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