"Please get to business," said Liao Cytheria. "I have a meeting in fifteen minutes."

He crossed one leg in coal black slacks over the other. The old woman wore white business attire.

The elderly woman behind the name tag on the desk that read Exequi Liao Cytheria. Yet he knew Exequi Liao Cytheria, and this aged, ancient, wizened person was not the woman he knew.

The woman he knew a hundred years from now would have her youth restored by a magic spell. 

Tilting his head slightly, he kept trying to find her. Wrinkles and grays seemed like an optical illusion, a temporary mirage placed over the Cytheria he knew. Unchanged dark irises, the blacks of her eyes, the clever glimmer in them. She was in there.

More and more recognizable facial features revealed themselves, but he had to search beyond a false facade placed over her skin, concealing the roundness of her cheeks with a crinkled paper sleeve. A paleness changed the look of her button nose, too. The skin on her hands, thin, flecked with age freckles.

Honestly, he just wasn't accustomed to seeing an aged person in the flesh.

In a hundred years most every immortal would have bought the eternal youth spell. No one would be elderly. Though it was so contradictory, in a hundred years Cytheria would be younger. The clever eyed woman would gleam radiantly, the rosy cheeks of an adolescent augmented by blush. Shining blackened hair reflecting light like yunzi stones would be contained by the same bun worn by this white haired elder.

Today the spell didn't exist except as a secret, a rumor, and in Cytheria's case in particular, a promise.

Cristo answered her, "We spoke last night after the masquerade. I said I was a financial seer."

"You said you were a financial seer." Nothing got past her.

Speaking again, she confirmed that her voice remained smooth and full, not a crack in its musicality.

"That's not exactly the case. The service I offer is a little different. It still contains a vision, yet one unrelated to financial affairs — or at least, related only indirectly." He paused to let her wonder what he was offering.

Behind her back and that of a looming desk chair, a precipice dropped a thousand feet. At the center of the skyline, literally soaring above downtown, they floated above dozens of skyscrapers. The view never ceased to shock — not for those with a slight fear of precipices, at least.

He continued, "You're aware of black market magic use, and even the black market development of magical advancements?"

He knew this elder did, because Cytheria told him she did. Answering only with a slight narrowing of the eyes, Cytheria listened.

"You know that it's possible to see through time. As an executive of the company that invented magic, you must be able to imagine how an innate future telling ability granted to few by the stars can be developed, through trial, error, research and development, into an exact science." The body language identical to that of his Cytheria turned the looming magic-cast chair into a throne, its back slightly translucent so that the view of the cityscape began where her shoulder ended. A greater image of her power Cristo couldn't imagine, complete with her regal posture.

After those words lingered, he had only two more to add. "It has."

While she screened him with patient dark eyes, she did have an authoritarian clock ruling this conversation, and she moved forward with little caution. "I have heard rumors. Whispers of intentional, controlled and reproducible forays through time. Constellation does not develop such magical advancements for a reason, Mr. Somnare."

"You seemed open to letting me tell the future for you when I presented myself as a financial seer, Exequi."

"Maybe I thought you meant that metaphorically."

That line made him hesitate.

Even if he knew she would want access to the foresight of a future teller, she might still want him to at least pretend to dance around the illegality of it.

Before he could glance warily at his watch (his next subtle play), she asked, "Have you come to offer an illegal service under prohibition by this company?"

Cristo put his hands up, as if surrendering to an authority. "Yes," he said with a grin she wouldn't be expecting, "But before you get angry, I'm only approaching you for two reasons. First, I came across a vision you need to see. Second, your amenability last night worried me, and I think you might be at risk of getting taken in by frauds."

A slight twinkle and a pursing of her lips revealed an amusement she was trying to squash. "Maybe I was merely being polite, sensing the quickest way out of an unsolicited conversation."

"Maybe." He leaned toward her, keeping the charm coming. "I sense that you're feeling uncertain about the future direction of the company, and you're looking for answers anywhere."

"About those frauds," she said. She was as foolproof as he expected, and it was lucky he had a lot of truth to tell her. It made it easier to lie.

"I understand your suspicion. Trust is the key to this entire profession. To be honest, I've been doing this for a long time, and I have just as much reason to be suspicious of you. You see," he paused, recrossed his legs the other way, "I don't get paid very well for bad news. Most customers don't believe what they don't want to hear, and some of them chase me out calling me a hack."

"How much do you usually charge for good news?" she asked.

It wasn't money he wanted — only to be convincing, and then forgotten. "I came here due to the importance of this vision, not just to your future, but to the empire, and it's more important to me that you believe me than pay me. Soliara's future looks . . . dark. Literally. I see lights going out and a city shrinking, and a fraction of the populace losing certain comforts. For some, a poverty will come that this empire hasn't seen in centuries. And for some reason, you will enable it. I see a confrontation over the company's future, and I know that you sense the hypocrisy, how a drastic and sudden change in the rules under the guise of safety and caution would restrict not the speed of magical possibilities but the people who have access to them — the question of which faction of the population will have access to modern comforts and which will pay extortionate prices for basic needs."

Eventually her face began to reflect the darkness of the subject of conversation and became all storm clouds. "How can you prove that you aren't lying?"

"Because I'm not going to tell you the future. I'm going to show it to you."

It was a classic line out of a story.

When Cytheria's head tilted, he couldn't tell whether it was in scrutiny or in reaction to the cliche. Those eyes narrowed. And then, in a moment that would reveal whether or not he had persuaded her to trust him, he asked her to close her eyes.

She did.

Concealed from her sight, Cristo drew his gnomon from the fitted sheath pocket in his suit jacket. That was why he had her close her eyes; he wasn't allowed to show it to anyone.

Ironically, what he was doing was not at all illegal. Memory transferral remained completely within the law, so long as it was consensual. It wasn't the future he transferred to her mind, it was someone's past. A combination of Liao Cytheria's memories and those of a few other donors. Connecting them, cutting, pasting and editing the frames, could be wildly inaccurate, a total manipulation of the truth, but his team assured him that the vision he was about to transfer to Cytheria's mind wasn't an illusion. It really happened, and it was as close to reality as those who experienced it could get.

Though the emotional strings pulled were methodical, manipulative, and crafty.

Behind her closed eyes, she would see a funeral now. Two open caskets in a predictably grayscale service; two bodies easily identifiable, particularly to a mother's eyes. Liao Tian and Liao Terra, her son and daughter. Both young. Not eternal youth young, but their bodies had been stopped in time the moment they became immortal. So tragic that they didn't get to live a long, full, eternal life — and immortals could be a little entitled about living forever.

Cytheria would see herself in the front row. As if she did, she frowned where she sat in her desk chair, eyes shut. She would see how she was returned to her former beauty, truly regal in black mourning dress.

No voice would explain to her why she didn't cry, but Cristo could hear one in his head. "I felt too guilt-ridden to allow myself the relief of grief," the Cytheria he knew had said.

No one could tell the observer either that she would burn and boil in anger while she sat straight backed and refusing to look away, so she might not understand yet. All she could see was her son Tian and daughter Terra, lifeless, ready to be returned to the ground, and then the vision would flick over like a story being told out of order on a link movie, to a different scene. A new vision, set in an office, one in the cover of black night, and high up like hers. It's a silent night except for the shouting, as the two children staged their confrontation, one Stephen Potestas would describe as "immensely brave and fatally stupid."

The siblings hollered about hypocrisies and that something was not right. The details Cytheria would be familiar with. She knows all about that, and she senses how a quota on magic licensing will serve only the purpose of creating a hierarchy. That's what Tian and Terra screamed about. It wasn't the only method put in play. There would also be heightened restrictions on how businesses use magic, higher bars to admittance to magicians college, and tiered magic routers prohibiting certain spells to certain ranks of people.

Another person was present. The woman who donated the memory — remaining surprisingly silent. Seated almost in the background, open toed flats dangling as she perched on a chair almost in the background, Candra Satiri observed, but that was all it would take for Cytheria to consider her an accomplice when . . .

Tian and Terra threatened to expose everything they knew about this hypocritical movement, unless—

Only they have no leverage to gain anything because all the man must do to remove two inconvenient protestors from this world is to whisper a thought directly to the stars, and the stars do his bidding. It would even look like an accident.

It's even humane.

The faces in the coffin felt no pain, and show no trauma. There's no wound. In the open caskets, Tian and Terra look peaceful.

From Candra, the rebellion had also gained the memory of the conversation she and Cytheria would have later today. To keep it light, the rebels only included a few moments. A few lines. What Candra didn't tell Cytheria was that the eternal youth spell she had traded the future away for would be for sale to every Constellation customer within half a century.

The blink of an eye, to one with an eternal life span.

But she did say, "I know how long you have wanted this, and you're going to love it."

When Cytheria blinked open her eyes, they swole up, and she was shaking. "How do I stop. . ." She trailed off. She trailed off because she knew.

What Cristo imagined next was far different from what happened. What could be expected of a powerful elite accused of wrongdoing, confronted with a threat to the lives of her children. He pictured tears storming past that storm cloud facade and crackling into an infuriated lighting gale of denial. Shouting, "This is an illusion. It's fake. I'm not paying for this, get out of my office!" She would stand and tower over him where he sat, even though she was no taller than five foot five.

Instead, she took a deep breath and said, "I will heed your warning."

Beyond the lip of her desk, Cristo concealed the gnomon in his hand. He said, "Will you vote for Gaia Solin?"

All he needed her to say was "Yes," and he would have her will.

If she didn't, he would need to proceed with Stephen's plan.

Instead, she said again, "I will heed your warning." Before she disappeared through a link, she told the door to open for him.

Thank you for reading! If you're enjoying the story, please leave a star for me, and let me know what you think. What do you think Cytheria plans to do? Will she take the vision as a sign that she should not give in to bribery, or will she try to avoid that fate another way?