Editing City Series:Volume5b Chapter14 (section)

===Rose Francisca’s Journal===

The two of them arrived just now, so I am writing this in the hidden room I fixed up in a hurry. The room contains my Correcteur supplies, my personal prophecy calendar I began making on August 6, 1943, this journal, and the Correcteur emblem necessary for the ceremony that will allow me to leave behind my memories when I die. I cannot let them see any of that if I am to play the ignorant mother.

I found they had arrived when I returned from one of my usual house calls. They are sleeping in the shed. Based on how filthy their shoes are, they must have walked the unfamiliar mountain road to reach the village.

I could immediately tell which one was Beretta. She looks a lot like I used to. My daughter has brown hair like him, but this Beretta has blonde hair like I used to. And she has a habit of holding onto things in her sleep like my daughter and I both have.

The other girl has evolved surprisingly far.

Dealing with them is not looking easy.

When I first speak with them, should I play it nonchalant or should I scold her as my delinquent daughter? Thinking about all this is reminding me of my college days. I learned medicine in Paris and acted in the school festival play. Come to think of it, I met him and Monsieur Guilliaum in the library there. I was a new intern and they were soldiers facing a coming war.

How many years ago was that? With 25 extra years of memories added on, I am actually 22 years older than Monsieur Guilliaum who was 3 years older than me at the time.

Will I perform that ceremony again this year? Will I use that Correcteur technique to die before the Primitif, stop the movement of my Formules, and pass my memories on to my next iteration? If I do that, it means I do not believe in those girls sleeping in my shed.

But I also feel like death is a form of atonement for me.

This is a serious transgression.

My daughter outside this world will be erased by that girl.

I am also worried about Monsieur Guilliaum.

I know what will happen when the Resistance has its uprising in Paris. I know it will happen on August 1 and that the Resistance will lose.

I did not tell him that because the Resistance’s defeat is necessary for the Beretta sleeping in my shed. She learns what it means to protect people during that doomed uprising, not here in Bourgogne. And through that, she will want to liberate France.

But I have not told Monsieur Guilliaum any of this.

Everything is following my prophecies. But there are people who will push back if I force those prophecies onto them. Monsieur Guilliaum is that sort of person.

I must guide things so my prophecies do not fall apart.

I know they face certain defeat, but I must not tell them so. I will pass on the prophecies that will aid the liberation of France, but I will not pass on the ones that will not. Even when I know staying silent will lead to a great many victims.

Does it make me a weak person to feel guilt over this?

The coming days are sure to be taxing. I need to think of that pain as atonement and remain cheerful.

Tonight, I will double check my prophecies and then go to sleep. Even if these prophecies are really just a collection of fragments gathered from the glimpses of the future I read from the Formules of time, the former history I learned from M. Schrier, and the memories I received from my previous iteration.