touched her link.
"Hi, Mom."
"Hi, baby. How are you?"
"I'm good." Cali nodded at Xanto when he gestured that he was leaving to give them some privacy. "How are you?"
"I happen to be in a particularly good mood," Dakota told her.
"Really? Do you want to go to visual?" Cali only asked since her mother had initiated the transmission as a link.
"Oh yes," was her immediate response, "if you have the time."
"I always have time for you, Mom." Cali picked up the glass of wine Xanto had poured for her earlier and settled down into one of her couches as her mother's image appeared before her, a beautiful smile on her lightly, glowing face.
Smiling back, Cali demanded, "Now tell."
"The final testing has been completed on the food replicator I designed."
Cali knew her mother had been a talented engineer back on Earth. It’s why she'd been allowed into Earth's early space exploration program. She could repair their ship if needed. But after her mom melded with the Paramount, her gift attained a whole new level. She was personally responsible for every technological advance that had come out of Wik Corp for the last eight hundred years. "And?"
"It works even better than I projected." Dakota clapped her hands together in excitement. "Oh, my Gods, Cali! Do you know what this means?! Children will no longer go hungry. Famine will never be a problem again."
"Congratulations, Mom. I know you've been working on that one for a long time." Cali wasn't going to burst her mom's bubble, reminding her Wik Corp would distribute the replicators and that the Paramount wasn't going to give them away. Her mother was just conveniently forgetting that.
"I have. It's always been a dream of mine to design something that makes a real difference in a being's life span."
"Mom, you've done that with every part you've designed. You've made space travel safer and faster for every being in the universe, not to mention the planetary atmosphere and water purifiers you invented. How many planets would now be uninhabitable without them? Including Earth."
"Beings can be so stupid and short-sighted sometimes," Dakota muttered, thinking how so many abused their planets.
"I know," Cali's thoughts were on Taarig and Jamis.
Dakota's eyes sharpened on her daughter. "Oh, I know that look. Tell me."
"Look?" Cali gave her a surprised look. "What look?"
"The look that tells me my baby is thinking about a male."
Sometimes Cali wondered if her mother hadn't developed telepathy after melding with the Paramount. Her mom always seemed to know what Cali thought, even though she blocked her mom. Maybe it was just a mom thing.
"It's nothing, Mom," Cali said, trying to downplay it.
"Why don't I believe that?"
"You should because th… he believes I'm Earthan," Cali silently cursed herself at the slip, hoping her mother wouldn't notice. She should have known better.
"You were going to say they," Dakota immediately pounced. "Are you considering a triad like your dad, father, and I have?"
"I will never be in a relationship with someone like my father!" the venom that filled those words was out of Cali's mouth before she could stop them. Cali didn't have to look at her mom's face to know how much hurt she'd just caused. "Mom…"
"I've never understood what caused you to turn against your father," Dakota said quietly. "You used to worship the ground he walked on. You hated it when he left, always wanted to know when he would be coming home and were the first one out the door to greet him, then it suddenly just stopped."
Cali found she couldn't respond because she remembered those days. She remembered how she thought her father could do no wrong. He'd throw her so high in the air that she felt she could touch the stars, but Cali was never scared because she trusted her father never to let her fall. He was the Paramount, after all, and he'd never let anything hurt the ones he loved. Then she learned that he would.
"I want to know why, California," her mom demanded.
"What does it matter? It can't be changed."
"It matters to me. I'm your mother, and I need to understand."
Cali closed her eyes, letting her head fall back on the couch. She'd been able to avoid this conversation for over two hundred and fifty years, and she would have avoided it today if she had just kept her mouth shut, but she was mentally tired from all the morphing. Now she just had to figure out how to tell her mother the truth without revealing everything she'd