[Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 11:42 AM, 11th of March, 1929]
This place was one of those cities that made it remarkably easy to forget that you had any responsibilities.
I had spent most of the morning walking along one of the promenades, doing very little beyond looking at the ocean and occasionally stopping to appreciate the scenery.
Eventually I found myself outside a small café overlooking the water. I ordered something cold to drink and took a seat near the edge of the terrace. A few minutes later, the man I was expecting arrived.
He didn't sit down immediately. He walked past my table once, continued a short distance, turned around, and then came back. It was a ridiculous little performance. We weren't spies. Nobody was following us. There was no reason whatsoever for us to behave like we were exchanging military secrets.
Still, I suppose there was something satisfying about pretending. He pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down.
"So", I said, looking out toward the water rather than at him, "how was Santos?"
He smiled faintly before replying, "It went well. I have absolutely no idea how you knew that land would be valuable, but we're already trying to work out how we're going to purchase it without raising concerns."
"The initial survey confirmed enough to make us very interested. We're going to need a much more thorough investigation before we can say anything with certainty, but if your assumptions about the geology are correct…"
He stopped for a moment before asking, "Do you understand how important this could be?"
"I have a vague suspicion." I said bemusedly.
"Outside of Texas, the Americans don't have oil on anything approaching the same scale," I said nothing for a few moments before he continued, while becoming increasingly animated. "Brazil could have an enormous reserve sitting practically untouched. If the geology is what you believe it is, the Santos Basin could be extraordinarily valuable. We're talking about something that could fundamentally change Brazil's position in the oil market."
Of course I knew exactly why it mattered. And I already knew it would matter even more to Brazil than he currently understood.
The country was going to be hit brutally by the Great Depression. Commodity prices were going to collapse, export revenues were going to evaporate, and an economy dependent on agricultural exports was going to discover just how unpleasant it was when the rest of the world stopped buying.
Oil wouldn't magically fix all of that.
But having a potentially enormous domestic oil reserve was the sort of thing that could become extremely valuable once the world economy began falling apart.
Especially if Brazil could develop it itself. One of the primary things that had held Brazil back from mass industrialisation was domestic fuel reserves since until now the nation lacked sufficient coal deposits, and importing finished products was simply cheaper.
As I was pondering, he had let out a sigh and leaned back. He then said, "We're going back out there in about two weeks."
"Already?" I said, confused.
He nodded. "We're putting together proper exploration equipment. The initial survey was just that…a survey. We weren't equipped to actually determine fully what we're dealing with underground."
"We're going to need drilling equipment, geological sampling equipment, people who actually know what they're doing, and enough time to get a proper picture of the basin."
I then said, making sure to get this point across, "Just make sure you don't draw attention to yourselves."
"We've been careful." If he had been less polite, I would have just received an eyeroll
I then spoke to him, and he nodded. "Send the numbers back to London so I know how much we're expecting to need?"
"I'll have everything prepared and sent over." He said.
We sat quietly for a moment, looking out across the water. "After this I want you to be the director of a new company I'm forming. Try to see if anyone with you now wants a permanent job. Once you finish up the surveys and acquisitions over here in the next few years, I'll need you over in Aden."
"I see…" he said while thinking, "And would I be correct in assuming that wherever this place is you'll be sending us, that it by chance will also be undervalued?"
"Precisly." I smirked.
I was leaning against the balcony railing of our hotel room, looking out over Rio.
It was a clear night, the sort where the lights of the city seemed to stretch endlessly beneath you. I hadn't even bothered putting my prosthetic on. The balcony was close enough to the bed that I could manage the distance without it.
I had been standing there for long enough that I had stopped really seeing the city.
My mind was somewhere else.
I had glanced over at Kitty, her slow breathing on the bed. In honesty I had only come here because she was coming to negotiate an endorsement that a racing circuit wanted from her.
It was times like this when it was quiet that I found myself pondering.
I had been incredibly busy, negotiating futures contracts, consolidating investments and heavily modelling my businesses all in preparation for the depression. It was hard work, but I knew about a hundred thousand jobs relied on keeping those businesses afloat, probably exponentially more if you included the tertiary suppliers I would have to bail out.
But still, millions of people were going to become jobless, be made homeless, and be forced into destitution. There wasn't much I could do, though.
I only realised Kitty had woken up when I heard her quiet voice from the doorway. "I hate it when you're like this."
I blinked. For a moment I genuinely didn't understand what she'd said. I turned my head slightly. "Sorry, what?"
"I hate it when you're like this," she repeated now in a meeker tone. There was something about her expression that immediately made me stop. She had one hand resting against the doorframe, and she looked almost as though she regretted having started speaking. Her eyes were already wet, and she seemed to be fighting desperately to keep herself composed.
"I can't say this," she said quietly, taking in a breath to bolster herself briefly before she continued. "But I have to. I see it: that look in your eyes as well as that tensing in your back. When you don't seem to be here. You're standing in front of me, but you're not here. You're somewhere else, and I hate it."
She swallowed. "Not you. Not what you're doing. Not even the fact that you're not here with me. I hate the burden you have."
Her voice cracked slightly at her words, as she seemed to be fighting to put her feelings into them. What she said next sounded almost painful for her to say: "Sometimes part of me wishes you hadn't come back."
I felt something tighten in my chest.
"Because I see what it's done to you." She looked down, wiping at one eye with the back of her hand. "It breaks my heart."
I couldn't look at her properly. She took a breath and continued before she could lose the nerve. "I love you so much. I love everything you've done for me, and for Charlotte, and for all the people whose lives you've changed. I love you for that. I really do. But at the same time, I wish you didn't have to carry all of it."
She laughed weakly, though there wasn't anything funny about it. "I'm not saying you should stop. I'm not saying you should change what you're doing. You do more than any other man I have ever known would have done. Without you, I'd probably be married to some union boss and raising three children by now."
That actually made me look at her as she gave me the faintest smile. "You opened a world for me," she said. "A world I didn't even know existed. And I will always, always love you for that."
Her voice dropped again. "But I hate this part of you."
I stared at her.
"I hate what it's doing to you. And I hate myself for saying that because I know it's also one of the reasons I love you." She wiped another tear away. "I don't want you to stop being you. I just wish you being you didn't hurt you so much."
I stood there for several seconds since I didn't really know what to say. Eventually I looked back toward the city.
Kitty didn't interrupt what I said next.
"I don't know…a part of me feels guilty," I said. I rubbed a hand over my face.
"Fuck. I hate this."
Kitty stayed quiet.
"I don't wish it hadn't happened," I continued. "Because then I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be with you. I wouldn't be Charlotte's father. I wouldn't be the person I am now. I might not even have come back."
I looked down at the balcony. "And yes, I've thought about just not caring. But I can't."
"Yeah," she said softly. "I know."
She stepped closer.
"I know you can't." She rested her arms on the railing beside me. "That's just called being human."
I looked at her.
For a while, neither of us said anything.
The moon was bright enough that the whole balcony seemed faintly illuminated, and the city below us continued on without any particular interest in the two people standing above it.
"I think I've only really realised this recently," I said eventually. "What I'm doing is already past the point of trying to prevent things."
Kitty glanced at me but didn't interrupt.
"I won't be able to stop some of the major events. There are things I know are going to happen that I simply don't have the ability to prevent. Not completely, anyway."
I leaned back against the railing before continuing, "But I'm already past the point of just doing little things to make things better. Fixing what's in front of me. Making people's lives slightly easier. Building something useful because I can."
I looked toward the lights of Rio.
"Maybe part of me is selfish or, more so, terrified. Maybe part of it is that I don't want to give up this chance." Kitty's expression softened at my words.
"But the humanity I knew was so lost," I continued. "We were stagnating and didn't even realise it. We were getting closer and closer to running out of the easy resources. The easy energy. The easy materials. Everything that lets civilisation grow without having to fight for every fucking inch."
I paused.
"If we had failed…if something had gone catastrophically wrong and civilisation had collapsed and humanity had been forced to start again…I'm not convinced whatever came after us would ever have gotten as far as we did. Maybe they wouldn't even have gotten close."
I stared into the distance.
"And I think part of me is terrified that was always the case." I hesitated before continuing. "Or that somehow, by meddling with history, I'm causing that to happen sooner. So maybe part of me is…"
Kitty immediately turned toward me. "No."
I stopped.
She had moved closer.
"No," she repeated.
"Kitty…" I tried to say
But she interrupted. "You don't get to do that."
I blinked.
"You don't get to do that," she said again, elevating her voice. She was crying now, but she didn't seem to care. "You don't get to sit there and take everything I've just told you and turn it into another reason to hate yourself."
"I wasn't…" I tried to make an excuse.
"Yes, you were." I shut my mouth as she stepped directly in front of me. "You told me there are trillions of people who haven't even been born yet. Countless people. People who don't exist yet because they haven't had the chance to exist."
Her voice shook. "And I understand why that gives you this enormous weight on your shoulders. I understand why you think you have to carry all of it, and I'm not trying to say you don't have to either."
She reached for my hand as she lowered her voice back down, "But you don't get to tell yourself that you didn't do the right thing. You are doing the right thing."
"Kitty…"
"No." She squeezed my hand. "I'm begging you. Please. Stop it."
She took a shaky breath. "I just needed to tell you how I feel. That's all." Her eyes met mine. "It doesn't mean I think I'm right."
"I don't want you to stop," she whispered. "I don't want you to become someone else. I don't want the world to go back to what it was. I just…"
She looked away as she said, ever quieter now, "I wish saving everyone didn't cost you so much. That's what it is…a wish. Not something I expect to happen."
I didn't have an answer for that. So I didn't try to invent one. I simply squeezed her hand back and looked up at the moon with her.