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II. AIR MAIL
You almost throw the letter in the trash, but instead some instinct makes you leave it on your kitchen table. It looks like junk mail, until you look closer at the expensive stamps. It is more than just an advertisement for a strange new travel service. It contains a ticket to the past, along with a letter that invites you to become a rare traveler to ancient Rome in her Imperial age. The letter does not explain why you have been chosen, or how you will get there--that will be the job of Professor Luke Darwin. You will walk the streets of the capital of the late Classical World. Their world was so similar to ours, and yet totally different--close enough to reach, but never close enough to touch.
Great cities are not just destinations. They are layer cakes of time and culture, of centuries and the generations of humans who lived and passed into the Shades (that’s what you become if you are unlucky enough to become one of the unburied dead). Think of it this way: what do you mean by "a trip to New York?" Do you wish to visit the settlement of the Dutch Pietr Stuyvesant in the 1600s, or the genteel though goat-wandered capital of the United States in the late 1700s with its special slave cemeteries, or the smoky, riot-torn Victorian city that New York was during the Civil War, or perhaps the breathtaking Art Deco city of skyscrapers, streamlined aeroplanes, and luxury ocean liners during the 1930s? In barely four centuries, there have been dozens of New Yorks. The history of Rome stretches back many times that far. Rome is a historic supernova whose explosive force is still expanding in your Space Age world today. Her afterglow will dazzle future civilizations long after your age is but a dim memory. Which Rome are you going to visit? Be prepared, this journey will not be easy.
You almost forgot the letter, until Professor Darwin calls you late one night, awakening you from a deep sleep (almost like a dream), and you listen drowsily and resistantly. Something--maybe a spirit, a numa, prevents you from simply hanging up. You don’t realize it at this moment, but you are already hooked and on your way.
He asks--practically demands--that you come along on his great journey. But why? you ask as you become hypnotized and fall under the spell he weaves. Static crackles in your dazed ears like a tiny waterfall, and his words boom faintly through like distant blows heard through water. Because, he starts his explanation, and offers a laundry list of reasons--beginning with the fact that you are an intellectual, and you have qualifications he needs, and your relative was his dearest friend during their school days, and your teacher was his teacher, and so on--and ending with because.
You listen on the telephone while Professor Darwin speaks from far away and introduces himself as friend of a long-ago teacher you’d forgotten you had for an obscure language course. Beyond Luke Darwin’s words, on his end in modern Rome, you hear the hum of traffic in distant streets, the roar of a bus careening down a narrow street, the clatter of a distant church bell, and the flutter of doves’ wings on a sun-tinted cloudy evening sky. He speaks your language well, but with a faint Italian accent. He speaks not only your language, but your dialect and your nuances and your colloquialisms, and his voice is so soft and fatherly that you begin to trust him almost immediately. You are moved when he relates a few personal episodes from long ago at dinner, or a park, or the theater in the university where he taught as a young man. He tells you, plaintively, that it is urgent you join him. He will pay all expenses. You promise to think about it and call him back tomorrow.
During the next day, you make a few calls to verify that he is for real. After all, you are a practical person. You believe in the timeless Ronald Reagan maxim of "Trust, but verify." Crede sed verifice. You may learn a little Latin along the way to the Forum.
That evening, you sit by the window and think. A light rain falls. This is your here and now. This is the modern world in which you feel at home. You see a glistening wet street, cars parked along the curb, and an electric light half-hidden and cozy among trees. You hear a swish of tires on wet asphalt, the rattle of wind-nudged leaves, the rumble of a distant jet plane. You smell rain, grass, soil, a whiff of exhaust, a momentary hint of cologne as a man in a wide-brimmed hat passes below your window with his hands in his pockets. Savor your world and your time while you can, because soon all this will be merely a memory.
During the night, you have a disturbing dream. You are lost in a dark landscape, under dreary skies. The ground constantly quakes underfoot, and only the stone road on which you are walking among pillared ruins is stable. You are afraid to stumble onto either side of the road, where steam issues from volcanic vents while distant volcanoes growl. A strange figure is always following you--a man in a cloak; his features are lost in shadows under a wide-brimmed hat (petasus) with a round crown, and he carries a tall staff. No matter how fast you walk, he always keeps up with you some distance behind. You reach a place indoors where you lie down to sleep, and a beautiful young dark-haired woman with sunglasses on bends over you and strokes your hair. You are afraid, but the man in the wide hat only comes to the door. The woman strokes your hair once or twice more and then leaves with him, smiling broadly.
Next morning, after tossing and turning all night, you call Darwin to confirm that you will join him. Professor Darwin e-mails you a short laundry list of places you must visit in modern Rome in order to better understand what you will find in ancient Rome.
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