Interview with Rome II - Part 3 of 9

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 her interview into two parts. Here is the second half of Rome's interview, part 3 of 9.
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Perry: Obviously that didn’t happen. Or did it?
Rome: Goodness no, Rei convinced her that he had a better way.
Perry: How could he have known? Did he really have a better way?
Rome: Ultimately, yes. We actually accomplished two goals by extraditing the Darwin people to Helome. We made our planet here safer and they got the influx of genetic material they wanted.
Perry: But with the advent of the 25th chromosome, the Onsira threat has been eliminated.
Rome: True. But nobody knew it at the time. Plus, Virga found love for the first time in her life. A very strange concept for pure blood Vuduri. She’s always been grateful ever since. We’ve seen her several times since then along with her husband, Rei’s Captain Keller. And their children. They always receive us with a warm welcome.
Perry: Got it. It started out rough and ended well. What other times did you think you would fail?
Rome: Well, when the Darwin Virus Strain 5 exploded inside MINIMCOM, I thought we had lost our best friend forever. We didn’t. When Captain Keller kidnapped Aason and my mother, I was worried we wouldn’t be able to defeat them. When Dan Steele and David Troutman tried to blow us up, I was worried we wouldn’t be able to catch them. When Reema and the Onsiras took Aason and my parents hostage, I didn’t know if we would be able to rescue them.
Perry: There certainly have been a lot of kidnappings in your storied history. Why do you think that is?
Rome: That one is easy. It’s because love is the most powerful force in the universe. Threatening someone with harm to their families can get anyone to do anything, no matter how dastardly. It’s called extortion. Look what it did to the K’val. Molokai turned them into serial murderers because of their love for their families. That wasn’t their nature. After that was over, they became the most wonderful and caring of allies. Sh’ev is a dear, dear friend of Aason’s. And B’shev is one of Rory’s best friends.
Perry: I see what you mean. Our families are our single most irreplaceable commodity. I know I would do anything to protect my parents, my wife, my children.
Rome: Exactly.
Perry: In order to capture the would-be assassins and save your son, as I understand it, you had to become a mind-reader. Was that difficult for you?
(Rome laughs at a private joke.)
Rome: In the spectrum of the ways to communicate, it was actually fairly easy.
Perry: Can you elaborate?
Rome: Of course. I’ll give you a scale. Let’s call this (Rome waves her finger back and forth toward Perry and herself), you and I speaking to one another, let’s call that level 1. We can also communicate remotely, using electronic devices, let’s call that level 2. Anyway, because of OMCOM’s meddling, Rei, myself, my children, all acquired what Rei calls cellphones in the head.
Perry: I’m not familiar with that term, cellphone. What does it mean?
(Rome purses her lips)
Rome: Rei said back on his Earth, they had hand-held devices called cellphones… but I never really got a clear explanation of the derivation of that word. No matter. Let’s call that level 3. It’s still just EM-mediated speech. In our case, it just so happens that the electronics are built into our brains.
Perry: I understand. What is level 4?

Tomorrow, part 4