by Scott Baker
The professor sat across from the pontiff patiently with a reassuring smile. The old man’s face stared straight ahead. When he spoke, it was a simple phrase that belied the monumental process that had led him to the decision.
‘I … I believe.’ The Pope reached forward and signed the document on the small oak table before him.
CHAPTER 20
Shaun Strickland was cold. The rain had brought with it a bitter breeze that cut to the bone. The streetlight above him flickered intermittently, making it hard to read, but none of this moved him. He was too engrossed and confused by the line he had just re-read several times: ‘The feeling is not one I can easily describe for you, Shaun.’
There was more truth in that line than the writer could have imagined as he penned the words. The feeling of reading something Shaun knew to be vastly old, something he knew to be important, and seeing his name – the sickness he had suppressed until now manifested itself in the form of a recycled turkey-and-cranberry sandwich, which he vomited on his shirt.
He was utterly exhausted, in pain, and heartbroken. He was sure that his mind was playing tricks on him, and yet he could not stop reading.
I pulled on the string that dangled half-in, half-out of my body. The feeling was like having someone else control your muscles; like having your hamstring cramp halfway but never quite cease up. To try to describe the pain is futile. Needless to say, I blacked out.
When I woke I did not know how much time had passed. The first thing I felt was that same excruciating pain. I looked down to see a small cylinder of shining metal hanging halfway out of the open wound in my hip. The top of the cylinder had a small wire string attached to it, the other end of which was wrapped around the fingers of my right hand. I breathed and remembered.
I pulled some more and the object slid. The blood that had already caked around the opening of the wound peeled away, and as I pulled again fresh blood started to weep out of the cut, providing the lubrication I needed. With one final yank, I pulled the bar of metal clear out of my leg.
I immediately re-dressed my wound, applying pressure to stop the bleeding, then sat back, dizzy. The length of my palm, I turned the metal bar over in my hand. I was examining the cylinder when suddenly my eyelids flickered and I fell back.
I felt an explosion in my head. A bolt of pain shot just behind my right eye, then another down near the base of my skull, accompanied by a flash of white light in my mind. Then again, and again. Explosions went off in my brain like the fireworks of a New Year’s celebration.
I screamed the scream of a man in terror, but it was pain, not fear, that forced the sound from me. I thrashed about the cell, holding my head and lashing out at nothingness all around me. I spun and swirled and swung at the air, kicked at the walls, rammed the door, all the while vaguely aware of a biting sensation on the flesh of my palm.
Then it stopped. I fell, exhausted and breathing heavily. Through tears I stared again at my hand, at the object I held, and quite suddenly, I knew what it was. I knew more than this, though. I knew—
‘My name is Graeme Fontéyne,’ I said.
‘My name is Graeme Fontéyne,’ I repeated.
‘My name is Graeme Fontéyne.’ The words came out, as if trying to convince me. I stopped and stared at the object. About five inches long and as thick as my finger, it was covered with indentations and markings, as if it were made of several sections joined together. There were small rectangles along its surface that seemed to glow of their own accord.
‘This is a camera,’ I said aloud. ‘This is a camera,’ I repeated. What is a camera? I heard a distant part of my brain respond. You are Saul, slave and gladiator.
‘No, I am Graeme Fontéyne, Officer X7 in The Journalist Project,’ I said aloud. I was confused. Like a dream you think is real but when you wake, the emotions of the dream remain. That is how I felt, stuck inside this lucid dream, unable to wake from either reality.
I was overcome with confusion. For more than a month I had struggled to find a sense of identity. I had searched for information about who I was and where I came from. I had started to develop a new sense of these things based on my experiences, and to now have that all blown away was difficult to accept.
I shall repeat myself: the human mind is not designed to exist in two places in time. I am Saul the gladiator. I am Officer X7. I was born in 1975. I live in a world ruled by Caesar.
I fell, clutching at my head, trying to dig out the images that were flashing through it. Cities, machines, people. Sounds of a world yet to come flooded my mind, memories or hallucinations, I could not tell. And then I stared once more at my hand. This was tangible, this was real. This thing I had dug out of my body was what I clung to.
As I sat in agony and utter confusion, I heard footsteps. My screams had been heard. I hid the device in my clothing and lowered myself onto the bench. It was the caretaker, the man who saw to my battle wounds. He looked through the barred wall of my cell, concerned.
‘Ah, Saul,’ he said as he saw the blood weeping from my leg, ‘I told them I should have taken care of it properly the first time, that the wound would reopen if you knocked it in your sleep.’
I lay back on the bench. I heard the sounds of the cell door opening as I faded into blackness again.
I awoke some time later. My wound was sutured, held together by thin twine, and dressed. I looked around me and saw that I was not in my cell. There were no bars in this room. Had I been dreaming?
‘Again, you are awake. You sleep a lot, white skin.’ The voice came from behind me. I sat up and turned. It was the same dark-skinned man who had been with me when I was blindfolded, who had fought me in the pit. I was alert instantly.
‘Malbool?’ I asked.
‘It would seem our master would have us together at every opportunity,’ he said in his deep African voice. ‘Just yesterday we were fighting to the death, and now we are to sleep in the same room.’
‘Our master?’ I asked. ‘Tiberius is also your owner?’
‘He is.’
‘Then why would he have us fight to the death?’
‘I do not know, but it was not to the death, was it? Why did you disobey the rules of combat?’
‘I did not want to kill you. You were beaten, you were no longer a threat to me, and the fight was over. I do not kill a man who is helpless,’ I stated simply. ‘What is this place?’
‘You have impressed our master,’ Malbool said sitting up, groaning as he did, obviously still nursing his injured ribs. ‘He has made you a gladiator in full. These are the stables for warriors in his school. Tiberius has a ludus of more than twenty gladiators. Only two of them are auctorati, like the man you fought, Samuel. He was a Thracian and proud, but like all volunteer gladiators he fights only once or twice a year and so is unaccustomed to the level of stamina needed to fight every few weeks. He was not one of our troupe, but men like him are becoming more common.’
‘Men like him?’
‘Men who fight of their own free will, for the glory or pride or whatever it is they think they will receive in battle. Most of us fight because we have no choice.’
‘How long have you been doing this?’ I asked.
‘I have been a gladiator for one full day! You were my first match, and by your good graces, I shall live to see another.’
He saw the next question in my eyes. ‘My old master had a ludus of his own, and when he chose to oversee the games he allowed me to attend. One of my main tasks was to tend to the gladiators and take care of their weapons. I spent a lot of time at the school and learned from them. Obviously not enough,’ he said sitting back with his hand to his rib.
‘How do I get free?’ I asked.
‘Free?’ Malbool found the question amusing, his big white teeth accentuated by the darkness of his face. ‘My friend, there are two ways to be free. The easiest is to fall on someone’s spear. But more likely you will fight as a gladiator as long as you survive from one week to the next. Eventually, you ma
y reach your retirement and be accepted as a slave or set free, depending on your master’s wishes.’
‘We fight every week?’
‘No, you train every day, contests are held every week, but you can expect to fight about twice a month. There are games every month or so all around the country, but there are only two main festivals a year in the Coliseum.’
I raised an eyebrow.
‘If you are entered in the summer or winter festival you will fight several one-on-one matches. Or you can opt to fight in the Royåle, and if you defeat every man who is before you, then and only then can you earn your freedom. It is then at the behest of the crowd and ultimately Caesar himself.’
‘Julius Caesar?’
Malbool’s eyes narrowed. ‘Not unless he has found some way to return from his grave. No, it is Nero; Tiberius Claudius Nero is called Caesar now. The title is passed down.’
‘What is this Royåle?’ I asked as I absorbed the information.
‘It is a contest of almost-certain death. One hundred men enter the arena all at once, gladiators of every type, from every troupe in the Empire. They all fight. There is no time limit and just one rule: one hundred enter, one survives.’
‘All the others die?’ I was shocked.
Malbool nodded grimly. ‘All the others die. You have to survive a battle with one, two, or ten at a time, then move on. The stream of enemies is endless. The chances of surviving the event are of course remote, but the chances of surviving the event intact enough to make your newfound freedom worthwhile? None. No man has yet survived the Royåle to stand before Caesar and ask for his freedom. Usually men are strewn around the arena, and referees have to walk around for hours waiting for them to die to declare the winner.’
The thought horrified me and added to the multitude of ideas and images swimming in my mind. ‘I see,’ I said, my hand feeling into my tunic to wrap around the hidden device. ‘Is there a place to go to relieve myself here?’
‘Ha! It is on the right. In the morning I shall show you the school. We are free to walk around this area. They do not lock these doors at night, but we stay within the confines of the living quarters. There are three other rooms on this level, but the men are asleep, so go quietly.’
I limped along following Malbool’s directions. All I could think about was the object now curled in my hand. I snuck past the rooms housing the sleeping men. I guessed that it was late, but after sleeping for hours I needed no more rest. What I needed were answers.
I slid around a corner and sank to the ground. I stared at it, this thing of silver, and like a tidal wave it all hit me. I knew. I knew everything. In my sleep I must have absorbed the information. I knew who I was, I knew when I was, and most importantly of all, I knew what I had to do.
CHAPTER 21
I stared at the device in my hands. Its blue lights softly illuminated the stone walls and earthen floor. It gave my skin an incandescence all its own. Then I saw something on my skin. A marking on my inner forearm. I moved the blue light of the cylinder away and looked at my arm in the dim torchlight. Nothing; my skin was clear and clean. I moved the blue light back and re-examined my forearm. There it was, imprinted faintly but clearly: ‘X7’. My mind flashed back to when I had received that mark.
It was at The Facility. A small room. Twelve men. It was the only time I had come face to face with the others all at once. I stretched my right arm out into a small cradle, as did the other men lined up beside me; the other officers. Once my forearm was in, the top of the cradle folded down and I felt a moment’s icy chill on my flesh. With a hiss, the cradle opened and I raised my arm out of the unit.
Under the incandescent blue light the mark was clear: X7.
Officer X7 in The Journalist Project. And here I was. It had worked. My God, it had worked and here I was. Numb fingers pressed against my temples as the gravity of it all hit me.
I was part of the most secret and important project ever undertaken by humankind. The details were so closely guarded by those in control that I had only been given enough information to complete my own mission, and I knew relatively little about the project as a whole, save for its main purpose and the extensive training I had to undertake in preparation. The training was intended to prepare me for a life lived out in history, nearly two thousand years before I was born.
I closed my eyes and allowed the memories to flood in. While serving in Iraq, I was recruited into the project. My training had been extensive. It had lasted six years, which, considering what I was hoping to accomplish, was not a lot of time. I was taught to survive and I was taught how to fade into the shadows of the society I was to enter. Fine job I was doing with that! I was schooled in languages and dialects of the time. Aramaic, Hebrew, Roman, Samaritan. Just a few years to learn. How had they done it? The technology.
The Facility took us in and trained our conscious mind while we were awake, but also trained our subconscious mind while we were asleep.
A port had been fixed to my hypothalamus, that most primitive part of the brain, and through this port the seemingly autonomous processes of my body were fine-tuned. My heartbeat, my breathing, my hormonal secretion. All this was tapped into, altered and then refed to me, giving my body access to the full potential of its physical capabilities, far beyond what is possible through conscious physical training alone. Other areas of my brain were also amplified, particularly those regulating coordination and information absorption. My ability to learn increased ten-fold, and the short time it took to learn new skills was incomprehensible.
I had my martial skills increased both through traditional methods and image-enhanced learning as I slept. My body trained itself and my reflexes were honed to a point that the time it took me to react to stimuli was imperceptible. I moved as if I could read the future. Mentally I was fed all known information about the time period I was to exist in. I was taught the known customs, the languages, the culture. I was taught history. I was taught more than an unaided brain could assimilate within the time I had. Most importantly, I was taught the one unbreakable rule – The Rule of Knowledge: we could not change something we knew to have happened. Then, I was sent back.
I did not know much about the process itself. The theory was explained to me in terms I could grasp, but all I really knew was that it was a one-way trip, and although I was being sent back with another agent, neither of us knew the other’s identity or instructions … all I knew was my mission.
My mission. Oh God, my mission! We each had our mission. There were eleven others, but I didn’t know to whom they had been assigned. All I knew was my own assignment: I was to collect important historical data. Documents, books, items of interest.
I had been given specific targets to track down, but also had to take opportunities and retrieve objects of interest along the way. Then there was something else. The one thing for which I had prepared for six years. I was to conduct the interview.
The interview was deemed by The Facility to be the absolute priority. It was the reason for the whole project, so I had been told, and as I stared at this object in my hands, turning it over and over, I thought about what I had to do. I was to find, wherever he was in the world, whenever he was to appear in time, a man. I had to find and record a video interview with Joshua of Galilee. I was to interview the man they called Jesus.
CHAPTER 22
The rain beat down on cement and formed uncaring pools. The reflection of the dawn gave life to the droplets as they traced their way over Shaun’s face. He lay curled in a ball at the bottom of the underpass, the exhaustion of the previous night having finally overtaken him.
The first throngs of morning traffic buzzed overhead, but the sound could not penetrate the world of hazy shadows his mind had receded into – not the traffic, not the rain, not even the sound of a police siren as it blared across the bridge above his head, searching for the fugitive who had escaped from the state hospital late the previous night.
When he woke, Shaun could not tell how long
he had been asleep. It was a familiar sound that woke him. His mind created a scenario to cope with what was happening.
In it, he was busy writing at his desk. He was on the verge of something brilliant, his train of thought following through to near its conclusion. Then the phone rang.
‘Lauren, can you get that?’ he called out from his study. There was no answer. The phone kept ringing.
‘Lauren! Can you get that? I’m really busy right now.’ She still didn’t answer. He was so close, he could not stop his work now. What was she doing?
The phone rang on.
‘Lauren, can you get that!’ he yelled louder.
Finally she replied. ‘Sorry, I can’t, baby. I’m dead.’
Shaun sat up. The phone was still ringing. What had she said? The phone rang on. What phone? He was so confused. The phone ring was real. He suddenly became alert. The buzzing was coming from his jacket’s outer pocket. His cell. He had forgotten all about it, but now it was ringing. Cold, numb fingers fumbled for the phone, pulling it out just as the sound ceased. Shaun looked at the screen: ‘1 missed call’.
It was ten to six in the morning.
No caller ID.
Who calls at that time? Shaun’s brain asked. But another question invaded his mind before he had a chance to search for possible answers. What had happened in his dream? What excuse had Lauren given for not making it to the phone? Because she was what? Because she was dead.
Then it hit him like a kick to the stomach: she was dead. Like any trauma, the torture of it was not that it had happened once, but that it happened again every time he stopped thinking about it and remembered. Lauren was—
The phone rang again, its shrill pulse cutting into the early morning and pulling Shaun back to the moment. He stared at the screen. No caller ID. Who was calling his phone from a silent number before six in the morning? One way to find out.
BLEEP.
‘Hello?’ Shaun answered tentatively. Silence.