“There’s so much death,” Felix lamented.
“It isn’t pretty,” his father sighed, “But it’s important to know the truth about ourselves. If we want to grasp humanity in all its dimensions, we have to see ourselves as we are, and not as we would like ourselves to be.”
“I suppose,” Felix said, with a lack of conviction. “I’m just glad I haven’t experienced this bloodshed for myself.”
He read how a fourth Roman army was mustered, a huge one under the command of Crassus. The slaves marched to the toe of Italy where they planned to hire boats and sail to Sicily. Unfortunately, these ships failed to appear and Crassus boxed them in with a wall that was eight feet tall and twelve miles long. Heavy fighting followed. While the slaves smashed the wall and forced their way north, thirty thousand souls were lost in the process. In a final battle by the Silarus River, Spartacus took a gamble and charged the Roman army: the odds were stacked against him, however, and the Romans cut his troops to pieces. The gladiator himself died in combat. The surviving slaves, six thousand men, were crucified by Crassus along the Appian Way, as a warning to all slaves that their attempts to revolt would be ruthlessly dealt with. And so ended the famous slave rebellion.
Felix paused. He was going to ask his father what he thought of Spartacus but, as he looked up from his book, his mouth dropped open. His father was … sleeping! What on earth …? Through all their many lessons together, not once had his father nodded off on the job. In fact, when Felix himself had been tempted to nap, how many times had he been told that their lessons were too precious to waste a single moment snoozing?
Felix blushed. His father was snoring. Closing his book, he climbed to his feet and tiptoed toward the start of the garden. His initial impulse had been to wake his father, but his face was pale and he looked exhausted and it seemed a good idea to let him sleep until supper.
He retreated to the staircase. As he climbed its steps, he thought about the people who had collapsed that day and how their prostrate forms resembled his father’s. Not that he was worried: if his father were sick, Mentor would have caught it.
A loud, raucous cawing broke in on his thoughts. Spinning about, he looked around him. What was that racket …? Oh!
A crow had alighted on the tree’s top branch. Its plumage was black as pitch and its beak looked sharp and menacing. Felix was amazed. Crows were rarely seen in the city — they had left when humans had started controlling the weather.
But there was something else. For a moment, he thought the air about his father had split in half, revealing a figure who looked … exactly like himself. He shook himself vigorously: no, the apparition was gone.
But the crow was still there. As if aware of Felix’s stare, it perched itself beside his father. “Aagh, aagh, aagh,” it cried, as if addressing him directly. A shiver ran down Felix’s spine. The crow was poised to his father’s right: according to Roman traditions, a sighting like this was a terrible sign.
“Go away!” Felix yelled.
“Aagh, aagh, aagh!” the crow continued.
“Go away!” he repeated, “Leave my father alone!”
“Aagh, aagh, aagh!” the crow called, more insistently than ever. Abandoning the bough, he alighted on his dad’s right shoulder. And still his father continued to sleep.
This was more than Felix could bear. Hurrying down the staircase, he rushed toward the tree. Observing his approach, the crow finally took wing. It circled the tree and cawed once or twice, as if deliberately insulting Felix further … unless it was warning him of trouble ahead. Tracing one last circle, the bird shot into the sky and, seconds later, was a point in the distance.
Although he didn’t believe in ghosts or superstitions, Felix had to concentrate to keep his legs from shaking.
When Felix awoke the next morning, his nervousness was gone. He’d slept like a log, it was beautiful outside, and the headlines on the news communicator spoke of sports, off-world projects, and upgrades to the weather template. There was no mention of people collapsing at random and that meant yesterday’s crisis had passed. He would have joked with Mentor had they not been studying physics together.
“Explain the importance of Johann Clavius.”
“He discovered the unified field equation in 2165.”
“Good. What else?”
“By using principles of hyper-spatial geometry, he proved three particles exist that can travel faster than the speed of light.”
“And what does this imply, theoretically, at least?”
“If these particles have the same magnetic spin, and are aligned along a certain vector path, their time coefficient can be transposed.”
“And?”
“Theoretically, they would vanish into the past.”
“And the equation for this process is …?”
“I … I … can’t remember.”
“Review it as you travel to Rome. And speaking of Rome, you have five minutes and fifteen seconds to catch the 8:36 shuttle.”
Felix rose from the table and walked by a scanner, being sure to expose his teeth to its rays. Grabbing a copy of Virgil’s Aeneid — whose contents he was trying to learn by heart — he approached the door to his father’s bedroom.
“I’m off!” he announced.
“Are you visiting the Forum?” his father asked.
“I think I’ll tour the Domus Aurea. But my shuttle’s leaving. I’ll see you later this afternoon. Dad? Did you hear me?”
“Yes,” his father spoke. “Have a great day, fili mi.”
“You, too. Bye.”
A minute later, Felix was exiting his building. He chuckled. His shuttle was leaving in ninety-three seconds yet he would catch it because there was hardly any lineup at the Portal. Was this his lucky day?
At Central Depot he was in such a rush that there wasn’t time to take in his surroundings. It was only when he’d clambered on board that he noticed the craft was strangely empty. Normally the aisles were packed with commuters, to the point where the auto-steward would have to guide him to a seat, whereas today less than half the g-pods were full. Was there a public holiday or something?
Unless ….
Before his thoughts could sour, Stephen Gowan waved him over. He was sitting at the front of the craft and the pod across from him happened to be vacant. Did he want to apologize for his brusqueness yesterday?
“Hello!” Felix greeted him, seating himself.
“It feels … busy,” Stephen said, with a look of confusion.
“Busy?” Felix laughed, mistaking his intention, “How can you say that when the shuttle’s half empty?”
“Is it cold in here?” Stephen asked. His hands were shaking slightly.
“It feels normal to me.”
He was going to ask Stephen where he worked in Rome, but his g-pod’s membrane closed and the floor vibrated — signs the shuttle had left its moorings. Activating an external monitor, he watched as a tractor beam steered them from the depot and lifted them above the downtown district. He glanced into the offices that drifted past.
“Felix,” Stephen gasped over his pod’s speaker, “Have you undergone ERR?”
“No. When the time came to decide, I opted out at my father’s suggestion.”