The Last Roman (Praetorian Series - Book One) (21 page)

It may seem odd to think in such terms, but there is
a basic theoretical approach dealing with how and why we could
already have been here. However, the only answer I had left to go
on at this point was that we simply weren’t here, and that the blue
sphere opened some kind of inter-dimensional, time bending, “flux
capacitor” type portal that transported us here. If that was the
case, then it only confirmed my theory that whatever we do here
could impact the future. If there had been some indication that we
were here in our histories, all we would have to do is act natural,
knowing that things turned out in 2021 the way they did, despite
our presence.

By the time we reached the entrance, I’d just about
had enough of the subject. I’d always found the concept
interesting. Whenever a special on the subject was on TV, I made a
point to catch it. The formulas and science behind it went well
over my head, but the concepts and fundamentals always lined up
pretty easily. I always did enjoy those cheesy sci-fi movies as
well.

My sister had always been the real brains in the
family. Younger by only eighteen months, she had become more
successful than me the day she entered college. An aerospace
engineer, she had been one of the driving brains behind the new ion
propulsion engines NASA used to ferry equipment to the moon. The
new US-EU Joint Operation Moon Base, which she had helped establish
as the first woman to step foot on the moon, and one of the first
to go back since the last Apollo mission, could now receive
supplies from Earth in forty eight hours, as opposed to the seven
days it took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins in
1969.

Like I said, she was the successful one. I
remembered when she started getting her feet wet in the business,
and tried to explain the concept of the new engines to me. By the
time she used words like magnetoplasmadynamics, everything had gone
way over my head, and she had to settle with describing it as,
“Star Wars stuff.” That at least made some sense. The time travel
stuff came up occasionally but usually she’d just roll her eyes and
tell me to get my head out of the clouds.

I hadn’t seen her in person since my graduation day
from BUD/S a little more than three years ago, my time in the
service and her time in space keeping us apart.

Thinking about her sparked the first real revelation
that I may never actually return home. Besides my SEALs, there were
very few people left in my life I was close to, my father not even
included. My sister was one of the few real friends I had, and the
thought of never seeing her again finally hit me.

We really were stuck in ancient Rome.

I tried to push the frightening thought from my mind
as we exited the building. The first thing I noticed was that our
group was gone, and that our escort continued ushering us through
the Forum, hopefully to meet up with them. It would probably be
best to voice my concerns to Vincent before we regrouped.

“You did a good job with your Latin back there, sir.
You really fell into it.”

“You’re not the only one schooled in the subject,
Hunter. At the Vatican, I had many friends who were quite
proficient in Latin, and we enjoyed conversing in it. We weren’t
perfect, and we weren’t sure exactly how certain words sounded, but
we did our best. Listening to it here has allowed me to fill in the
gaps, making it easy to pick up.”

“Well, I’m pretty rusty, and I was barely following
the conversation. I guess we’ll all have to figure it out pretty
quickly. I feel bad for Helena, she’ll probably have the hardest
time of us all with German being so different. Then again, she’s
probably had a Latin lesson or two considering her education.”

“Probably, but I have a feeling you have something
else on your mind besides linguistics.”

The man was sharp, that’s for sure.

“Yes, sir. It’s just that I don’t think a weapons
demonstration is a good idea. In fact, it could be
devastating.”

“We need these people to trust us. We may need their
help to get home.”

“I know,” I replied, hoping this conversation wasn’t
automatically going to go unheard by him, “but I’m positive it may
change too much. The Romans will get too many ideas. You know how
clever they are. They’ll probably have primitive muskets in the
next decade.”

“They’d need gun powder for that,” he pointed
out.

“The Chinese have had it for centuries at this
point. The Romans aren’t unaware of their existence. All they’d
need to do is kill us and analyze our equipment, not to mention all
of the supplies buried with McDougal. I have no idea what those
people were doing in there, but if they were looking for a
treasure, I’d say they found one.”

“So what are you saying?” He asked, giving the
guards a paranoid glance, who for the time being seemed to be
ignoring us. “We should get our people and run?”

“Doing that would be fruitless at this point. They
don’t need us anymore. We’ve already shown them too much. That
flashlight was just the tip of the iceberg. They know we have
someone buried beneath the temple. All they need to do is go down
there and discover our gear. These people are very smart. They’ll
figure it out.”

“Then what should we do?”

“I have no fucking clue,” I said, my voice rising
slightly. One of the Praetorians looked at me suspiciously, but I
tried to ignore him. “I’m as in the dark here as you are. But I’ll
tell you this, I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll even be able to get
home.”

That caused Vincent to hesitate. “Care to explain
that one?”

“Look, as I’ve said, I’m no expert, but what I do
know is that through technological means, many scientists theorize
that it’s impossible to go back in time. For many reasons. Ever
heard of the Grandfather Paradox.”

“Passingly.”

“Well, say I was to go back in time and kill my
grandfather before he spawned my father, therefore eliminating my
chances in the gene pool.”

“Okay,” he said hesitantly.

“Well, the deal is, if I killed him, how is it that
I existed in the first place to go back in time to kill him? I
shouldn’t exist.”

“So, if you don’t exist, then you can’t go back in
time to kill your grandfather?”

“Right. That’s why it’s a paradox. It simply can’t
happen. It goes against the laws of time.”

“‘The laws of time’?”

“Yeah, well, that’s another problem. It’s called a
paradox because it goes against the ‘laws of time’, but the word
‘law’ is hardly appropriate. No one’s ever been able to prove
anything, so the term is actually horribly misleading,” I said,
chuckling at my own ridiculousness.

“But you just said this grandfather paradox doesn’t
even exist, because we have no idea how these, so called, ‘laws of
time’ work.”

“Well… kind of. It’s just one theory out of many.
The point is, from what scientists think they know, these paradoxes
do exist. Basically, physics and these so called “laws of time”
equate to one universal fact: time travel is impossible, because
anything done in the past, from an entity that does not belong in
the past, has the potential to change the past, which is
impossible.”

I took a deep breath, that mouthful of an
explanation taking a lot out of me. If only we had a DeLorean and a
suitcase full of plutonium, none of this would be an issue. I just
wish I’d spent more time talking with my genius sister about this
stuff. Maybe then we’d be a step closer to figuring this out.

“Then again,” I continued cautiously, “Einstein’s
general theory of relativity does allow for time travel. His math
states that it is possible, but again, no one really knows
anything. There’s no proven math with all the variables in the
universe involving time travel, and inevitably, that’s what you
need to do it, and math was never my best subject. Nor am I an
omniscient being with all the knowledge of the universe.

“Then there are those others who say that even if
you could travel back in time, it would be impossible to change
anything. Their theory revolves around the idea that fate’s grip on
reality is too strong, and that one way or another, things will
level out in the end, and nothing will change.”

“Destiny?”

“Call it what you like,” I said.

Whether it be fate, destiny, God’s will, or the
“laws of time,” what’s done in the past is done, and cannot be
changed. Yet, here we were, stuck in the past and in a timeline we
didn’t belong in, probably already changing history as we live and
breathe.

“So what about traveling forward in time?” Vincent
asked, keeping me focused. “Getting home?”

“Going into the future is a completely different
concept all together. Traveling forward in time is completely
possible. The means are extremely plausible, only not that easy to
replicate. The trick is speed.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the closer to the speed of light one travels,
the slower time moves around that person, relative to those on
planet Earth. In theory, if we took a ship and set a course to
orbit our solar system, continuously picking up speed towards the
speed of light, by the time a month was spent traveling in that
orbit, hundreds of years would have passed on Earth. I don’t know
the exact numbers, but that’s the gist of it. However, finding a
way to travel that fast, let alone survive it, is way beyond modern
technology.”

He waited for a few seconds, letting everything sink
in, before offering me a skeptical look.

“You learned all this from watching TV?”

I nodded. “Pretty much. I used to read a lot of
science fiction as a kid as well. I suggest checking out
The
Future War
. It should be available at your local library.”

Vincent snorted in amusement. “And they said the
youth of America was doomed generations ago. All right, pretend I
understand half of what you are saying. Why do you think we can’t
go back, besides not being able to travel fast enough?”

“Well, think about it. If it’s impossible to time
travel by any known technological means, the only other way I can
think of this happening is through… well… magic.”

“Be serious.”

“I am serious… I think. Tell me, how does a glowing
blue ball cause a temporal shift like the one we experienced? It
has to be magical. The way the ball felt in my hands... it didn’t
feel natural. Here’s another thing. When I first gazed through the
ball, I noticed there was a similar one in the hands of the men we
met in the cave. When we were transported, the ball I held came
with us. Did you notice if the men had one of their own?”

“One of them did have one, yes.”

“I thought so. If technology is the culprit, how
could one of these balls exist during the days of the Roman
Empire?”

“I’m completely lost.” He said with a scratch of his
head

I sighed. “Me too. I’m starting to confuse myself.
There is one thing I don’t get, though. How come when Abdullah held
the ball nothing happened, but when I touched it with my finger,
something happened?”

“Good question, but immaterial to our problem. The
questions should be whether any more of these balls exist at
all.”

“There very well may be a dozen of the damn things
in the future, but the one we used certainly isn’t where it was
anymore. If we tried to connect with any other sphere out there, we
could end up wherever and whenever that sphere is, not 2021. We
could end up anywhere in time. That’s what makes me think there are
only the two. If there were more, why did we connect to this one?
Why not all of them? Why did I only see images from this time, and
not images from 1453 or 2543 as well? Who knows when another
sphere, or this sphere, would have been found along the
timeline.”

“Hunter, you are thoroughly confusing me.”

I laughed. “I get that a lot. Here’s another wrench
to throw in the engine.” I waited, giving Vincent a chance to catch
up. “Are you ready for this? I think the ball we found is the same
exact one the Romans have. I don’t mean the same kind of object,
but the same ball.”

Vincent just stared at me as we continued to stroll
through the city. I thought I saw anger brewing in his expression,
but it was probably just utter confusion.

“I hate to sound like Santino here, but you’re
crazy.”

“I’m sorry. You have no idea how much I hate
sounding like a know-it-all, but I’m really just spit-balling here.
Look. Clearly the ritual being performed in the cave before we got
here happened in our history. We know that because we just dropped
into it an hour ago. It being history and all. But be that the
case, from our perspective in 2021, we all should have been in
those history books too, yet there is no record of us. Why not? Two
possibilities. As I said earlier, maybe we were here, but we just
died real quick. The cave may have collapsed killing all of us and
nobody thought twice about it. Think
Terminator
, just
without as much Arnold. We had to be here to fulfill some
predetermined roll we played here, namely to die.”

Vincent held up a hand. “Wait. What’s a
terminator?”

I looked at him whimsically. “Your favorite band is
the Beach Boys, but you’ve never heard of
Terminator
?”

“Just get to the point, Hunter.”

He’s no better than Helena!

“Fine. In any case, that theory doesn’t seem very
likely though, because our gear would have been found, leaving an
obvious record. So my theory is that when the ritual originally
took place an hour ago, the original before we got here, nothing
happened. The sphere was deemed useless. It was then packaged up as
a pretty trinket, and lost to the annals of history. It wasn’t
until a hapless soul such as myself found it in the future, and
activated it, did it do what it was supposed to do.”

“Which is what?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s enchanted… or whatever, to
open a one way trip through time to a prearranged destination. I
guess that would explain how we ended up in Rome. Not only does it
transport you through time, but through space as well. Think of it
this way. Imagine a rubber band. Now, grab it with both hands and
slowly stretch it out. Over time, it gets longer. It’s actually
moving through both time and space. Now, let go of one end, and it
will return to its original form. But instead of just moving
through space, like the rubber band, it moves back through time as
well, to when the stretching began. ”