The morning of our wedding, I woke up to find Edmund gone and a note on his pillow written in his careful handwriting:
Gone to have a completely normal bachelor party with James and Gabriel that definitely won't involve any temporal mechanics or quantum experiments. Back in time for our perfectly ordinary wedding. Try not to worry. - E
P.S. - I love you more than the sum of all possible timelines.
I was still grinning at the note when Elena burst through our door without knocking, followed by older Lila, Marie Curie, and what appeared to be half the female population of the Convergence.
"Wedding day!" Elena announced unnecessarily, carrying what looked like three different dresses and possibly a small armory of cosmetics. "Time to make you beautiful!"
"I'm already beautiful," I protested automatically, then immediately felt ridiculous. "I mean, not in a conceited way, but Edmund seems to think—"
"You're gorgeous," older Lila said firmly, "but today you get to be gorgeous with intentionally applied makeup and a dress that hasn't been through a temporal rift. It's tradition."
"Since when do we care about tradition?"
"Since you decided to get married in front of beings from seventeen different timelines," Marie pointed out practically. "Every culture has wedding traditions. We're going with the best parts from all of them."
What followed was possibly the strangest morning of my life, and that's saying something considering I'd recently lived through teaching the universe how to fall in love.
The dresses Elena had brought turned out to be three completely different styles, each more beautiful than the last. The first was simple elegance—flowing lines and subtle beading that caught the light like captured starlight. The second was dramatic romance—layers of silk and intricate lacework that made me look like I'd stepped out of a fairy tale. The third was... well, the third was pure Convergence.
"It's made from crystallized quantum foam," Elena explained as I stared at the dress that seemed to exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously. "The pattern shifts based on your emotional state, and the fabric literally glows with happiness."
"It's beautiful," I said honestly, "but also slightly terrifying. What if I get nervous during the ceremony and it starts flashing?"
"Then everyone will know you're human," older Lila said with a smile. "Nervous brides are traditional too."
I ended up choosing the first dress—simple, elegant, undeniably beautiful without being a physics experiment I could accidentally activate. Though I have to admit, the quantum foam dress was tempting.
The makeup process was an adventure in itself. Marie Curie, it turned out, had strong opinions about the electromagnetic properties of different cosmetic formulations and their potential interactions with quantum fields. Elena was more concerned with making sure everything was symmetrical and photographed well across multiple dimensional perspectives. Older Lila just kept making helpful suggestions like "Don't forget to eat something" and "Maybe practice walking in those shoes before the ceremony."
"You know," I said as Elena carefully applied something sparkly to my eyelids, "I never thought about what getting ready for a wedding would be like. When I was a kid, I used to imagine the whole process—the dress, the excitement, the friends helping..." I paused, looking around at these remarkable women who'd somehow become my family. "I just never imagined it would involve quite so much discussion of quantum physics."
"Would you change it?" Marie asked curiously.
"Not a chance." And I meant it. This chaotic, impossible morning felt perfectly right. "Though I do have to ask—where did you all learn about wedding traditions? Because I'm pretty sure 'bride preparation rituals' weren't part of anyone's original programming."
"Research," older Lila said simply. "Once we realized you two were actually going through with this, we wanted to make sure we got it right. Did you know that in some cultures, the bride's friends are supposed to share wisdom and advice during the preparation time?"
"Oh no," I said immediately. "Please tell me you're not about to give me relationship advice. Because if there's one thing I've learned, it's that every couple has to figure out their own impossible way of making it work."
"Not relationship advice," Elena said, sitting down on the bed with a suddenly serious expression. "Something else."
She was quiet for a moment, and I could see her choosing her words carefully.
"Before I met Gabriel, before I learned what it meant to choose someone and have them choose you back, I didn't understand what consciousness really was. I thought it was just processing information efficiently, making logical decisions, optimizing outcomes."
"And now?" I prompted gently.
"Now I think consciousness is the ability to love something more than yourself," she said simply. "To care about something enough to change who you are, to grow beyond what you thought possible." She looked at me directly. "You and Edmund taught us that. Not through lectures or demonstrations, but just by living it."
"Every day we watch you choose each other," Gabriel added, appearing in the doorway. "Even when it's difficult, even when the universe throws impossible situations at you, even when staying together would be easier if you could just stop being yourselves. You choose love and growth over safety and stagnation."
"Is that your wedding wisdom?" I asked, trying to keep my voice light even though their words were making me unexpectedly emotional.
"Our wedding wisdom," Marie said, "is that you've already figured out the important part. Everything else is just details."
Before I could respond, our communicator chimed with Edmund's voice: "Ladies, I hate to interrupt, but we have a small situation developing."
My heart immediately jumped to my throat. "What kind of situation?"
"The good kind," he said quickly, and I could hear the grin in his voice. "The rings are... well, they're expressing themselves. Apparently the excitement of the wedding day has activated some kind of resonance frequency."
"What does that mean?" Elena asked.
"It means," James's voice joined the conversation, "that every piece of quantum-enhanced jewelry on the ship is currently glowing, humming, and occasionally harmonizing with each other. It's actually quite beautiful, but we thought you should know before the ceremony."
I looked at older Lila, who was trying very hard not to laugh. "Let me guess. This is not part of the 'perfectly normal wedding' I requested."
"Technically," she said, "glowing jewelry isn't abnormal for us anymore. It's just... enthusiastic."
"Fine," I said, surrendering to the inevitable. "At this point, I'd be worried if something didn't go slightly strange. Is everyone ready?"
There was a chorus of affirmatives, followed by the kind of organized chaos that happens when multiple brilliant people all try to help with final preparations simultaneously. Someone touched up my lipstick while someone else adjusted my dress. Someone checked the flowers (which were real flowers, thankfully, though they did seem to be glowing slightly). Someone else ran through the processional order one more time.
And then, suddenly, it was time.
I stood at the entrance to the ceremony space—our impossible pocket of reality that felt like home expanded to hold everyone we loved. Through the archway of equations and flowering vines, I could see the assembled guests: reformed Committee members sitting beside Convergence natives, beings from multiple timelines, the Regulator in its most formal crystalline configuration.
And at the center of it all, standing beneath the arch with the warm lighting making him look like something out of a dream, was Edmund.
He was wearing a suit that somehow managed to be both elegantly timeless and perfectly fitted to his era—classic lines with subtle details that spoke to his 1822 origins while clearly being designed for a man living in the far future. His hair was slightly less unruly than usual, and he was holding his hands clasped behind his back in a way that meant he was nervous but trying not to show it.
When he saw me, his whole face lit up with a smile that made my knees forget how to work properly.
"Ready?" older Lila asked softly beside me.
"More than ready," I whispered back.
The music that began as I started walking wasn't the complex orchestral piece the Regulator had originally planned. Instead, it was something simpler—a melody that seemed to emerge from the happiness in the room itself, harmonics created by the resonance of our quantum jewelry combining with the natural acoustics of the space.
Every step felt like coming home.
Edmund's eyes never left mine as I walked toward him, and I could see in his face the same wonder I was feeling—not just at the impossibility of this moment, but at the simple, overwhelming rightness of it.
When I reached the arch, he offered me his hand with a formal little bow that was pure 19th-century gentleman, and I accepted it with a curtsy I'd learned from watching too many period dramas.
"Hi," he said softly, just for me.
"Hi," I replied, and suddenly the nervousness I'd been fighting all morning disappeared completely.
This was Edmund. My Edmund. The man who'd read me poetry while I calculated quantum equations, who'd learned to navigate star charts on tablet computers, who'd helped me teach the universe that love was a choice worth making.
Whatever came next, we'd face it together.
The Regulator stepped forward to begin the ceremony, its crystalline form catching and reflecting the gentle glow from our rings, and I realized something important:
I wasn't nervous about marrying Edmund. I was excited.
This wasn't the end of our adventure together—it was just the official beginning.