Interview with Rome I - Part 6 of 17

As Steve Fisch and I get the scripts ready to sell Rome's Revolution as a streaming series, he asked me for a lot of background information that I did not have. So I took some time out to interview Rome and Rei. Rome was very talkative so I had to break up the interview into two parts. Rei was a bit more concise. So here is the first Rome interview, part 6 of 17.
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Perry: So what was it like growing up? With your Second Sight?
Rome: As a mosdurece, a half-blood, I was always looked down upon by my peers. However, even though I agreed to Second Sight, it controlled my emotions and memories but not my eye-hand coordination. So I was very skilled at certain athletic endeavors, like dadar-fo and that’s why I was eventually selected to become a data archivist. A person using Second Sight and only Second Sight would miss out on a lot of detail.
Perry: Were there any parts to your childhood that were happy?
Rome: Some. I loved my parents but wasn’t allowed to show it. I loved my Skodla and the sensation of holding him. He was funny. He would always follow me everywhere. When I went to school, he would follow me there and when I came out, he was still there, waiting and followed me home. He came when I called. He loved to sit on my lap. As I understand it, he wasn’t very cat-like. Most of his behaviors were more like those ascribed to dogs. But he was mine and no matter how my peers made fun of me, they couldn’t take that part away. Those two parts of my life, my parents and my cat, they made me happy. (Rome takes a halting breath) I just wish I could have expressed it more.
(Rome wipes a tear from her left eye)
Perry: What was your school like?
Rome: For a Vuduri, being hooked into the Overmind, you have access to more or less the entire accumulated knowledge of mankind. So there really wasn’t much in terms of learning facts, like we do here. It was more geared toward physical prowess. And like I said, I had exceptional eye-hand coordination. As part of our training, we had dadar-fo matches to measure our progress. My team almost always won. But as a mosdurece, there came a point where I was excluded, not because of my abilities but because of my background.
Perry: That’s terrible.
(Rome shrugs)
Rome: I suppose, from your perspective, I can see why. But for me, it was how life was. I had no choice but to accept it.
Perry: I can see that. (Looks down at his tablet) I know about the incident with your father. If it’s not too uncomfortable, can you discuss that for a bit?
(Rome sighs)
Rome: When I was 16, during our spring visit to Havei, my father went out on his mission and never came back.
Perry: But he is here today…
Rome: Yes. We found out much later that the Onsiras were in full-blown cleansing mode. They had every mandasurte ranked and my father ranked highly. They kidnapped him and his entire crew right off of their ship and whisked them away to here, Deucado, which was being run at a prison planet back then. But we didn’t know this at the time. They found the ship, empty. They searched at sea for 10 days but never found a single body. My father’s relatives had a memorial service for him, we couldn’t have a funeral. And that was that. My mother and I returned to I-cimaci and I never went back, well, at least for another 10 years.

Tomorrow, part 7