I aimed back at her and she still had her mouth open. “How…?” She started, her voice trailing off.
“I know it’s a lot to take in but there isn’t a super computer in the world that can do what your beautiful eyes do in a few fractured seconds. C’mon Pipe, smile. Whatever your doing when I push the button on top, you’ll be doing on this little screen back here.”
About half the words I had just used made zero sense to Piper, but she had sort of caught onto the idea. “What if I stand on my head?”
I wasn’t expecting this response. “Uh, yeah. I’m pretty confident that that falls under the ’whatever you do’ category I just mentioned…”
“Because Hazel and his stupid gang don’t believe I can- and I can, by the way- but when I try to do it in front of them I get nervous and fall down…” She was talking really fast but I was picking up what she was putting down.
“Piper, I think Thelma and I can give you a hand with your stage fright.”
She smiled big, showing her white teeth.
I must have seemed pretty stupid, just staring at her teeth like a openmouthed retard. I’m just saying, in any movie about the old school sword and shield days, they always give the female protagonist, or antagonist for that matter, perfectly white teeth even though we all know that they had zero help with keeping their teeth clean, right?
“Why are you looking at me that way?” Piper asked, breaking my concentration on my serious breakthrough.
I blinked and shook my head a little, “Sorry, Pipe. You just have really nice, uh, teeth.” I said, instantly feeling like a complete nerd.
“Thank you.” She said, nodding politely even though she was probably secretly thinking that, like I said, I was a nerd. “You have nice teeth, too.” She said.
“Thanks, sweetheart. The Colgate must be working.”
Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open, “You’ve been to the Coal Gate?” She asked this with a mixture of wonder and fear.
I frowned, “The what?”
“The Coal Gate.” She said, dropping her voice to a whisper and leaning in toward me. She smelled kind of sweet in a rugged warrior chic type way. “It is located north of here. The entrance is hidden but it is said to be the gateway to the underworld.”
Whoa. This chic was going way too fast. “Hold on a sec, Piper.” I started tapping at my glove’s screen, mumbling to myself about the date and location. The other nice feature about my glove was what I was doing then. I didn’t have Google- but there was enough information stored on the white glove to answer any question I needed answered.
I typed in the date and mentioned the Coal Gate and hit enter. In a few seconds I had my answer.
It said this:
The Coal Gate was said to be the entrance to Helheim, the realm of the underworld ruled by Hel, the daughter of the trickster god Loki and his wife Angrboda. This land of the dead is located in the lowest world in the Norse universe called Niflheim. It was said that no one could leave this place due the impassable river Gjoll that flows from the great spring of Hvergelmir that encircles Helheim. Not even the gods could leave upon entering.
It read on a little further, listing the admittance standards for Helheim, which consisted of dying any other way than on the battlefield. Man, these guys were hardcore. It also stated that just dying in battle wouldn’t give you a one way ticket to Valhalla, the Norse heaven. You had to die bravely, as well.
It also went on into a detailed description of Norse Valkyries, the female handmaids of Odin who flew over battles and hand picked random vikings who they fancied were fighting more courageous than the others. The men who drew first blood were especially given extra attention and a were a shoe-in for the heavenly afterlife if they were felled in battle later on and blah blah blah.
“Actually, Piper,” I said to her, closing out my search window. “Where I come from Colgate is the name of something that cleans our teeth.”
It took me a good ten minutes to convince her that, no, I had never been to Helheim and that I was really telling the truth about toothpaste. Just when I had finished up my lecture on Colgate we heard the great horn blow, indicating it was chowtime.
Oh well. I suppose I could finish sightseeing the next day. I still had a while before my college students back in Chicago had to turn in their mid-term exam papers so I was in no hurry to get back to the windy city.
Not that it mattered anyway considering I could just zip back to exactly when I left but, hey, it was still a vacation.
But another thing that I’ve learned in my travels is that making plans and time traveling mix about as good as oil and water.
Of course back then I had absolutely no idea that there was a completely insane psychopath bent on world domination and also the not-so-nice notion of killing me to get the gauntlet.
And even if I had known about him, I really wouldn’t have thought that he could've been able to travel through time, too.
No. I didn’t find that crazy revelation out for another two whole days. In actual time, though, because I stayed with the Vikings for a while before heading home.
So cut me a break, whoever you are. Because, like I jussaid, how the Helheim was I supposed to know?
Chapter 2
“So can anyone tell me where emperor Nero went wrong?” I asked the seventy-some odd students seated in the auditorium.
“You mean besides not dying as an infant?” Someone snickered from the top left of the cramped chairs. Daniel Radcliff, most likely, due to the cackles that his troupe always followed his semi-witty comments with.
And just in case you’ve forgotten already, there aren’t very many twenty-four year-olds teaching to college students. Or any other students, for that matter. Almost half of my class is made up of people between twenty to twenty-two. The rest being the kids who actually did good enough in high-school to make it to my classroom before their nineteenth birthday. I know. God bless America, right? Some kids actually did graduate. There also was the occasional thirty to forty-something men and women deciding to better their education later on in life. If I had to choose between these three classes of students and pick the hardest to teach to I would have to go with the older folks. Mainly because most of them aren’t keen about the idea of their professor being almost twenty years younger than them.
“Please bestow upon us your great knowledge on the death of infants, Danny.” I said, sweeping my hand over the class. “I’m sure the rest of your fellow Democrats would love to hear about it.” This brought laughter from most of the classroom. The ones who didn’t laugh I’m thinking were Democrats. Oops.
The best perks about being close to their age was being able to talk to them the way most teachers really want to talk to their students but don’t feel adequately young enough to do so. Not to mention the occasional date I allow myself from one of the fifty-four girls winking their heavily lashed eyes at me while holding up a sheet up paper with their cell number on it.
I leaned back in my desk chair, placing my laced fingers on top of my head and tried not to sigh. “Look, guys, we all know about Nero being this horrible emperor. But can anyone in this room please tell me at least one good thing that he did?”
I pointed to the first hand that went up.
“Mona, if you please.” I said to the bright eyed brunette sitting on the front row. She looked up from her notes frowning in thought.
“Well if he would have been proven guilty on setting Rome on fire then he would also be responsible for getting more land available to the southern farmers.” Mona said, adjusting her glasses.
I stood. Wow. I didn’t think she would’ve even thought of that. “That is, oddly enough, the most satisfying answer I have received all day. Thank you, Mona.”
Of course, being a history teacher with the ability to travel back in time, Nero had been one of the first of historical figures I had tracked down. I had already proven that he was, in fact, accountable for the great fire. Mona’s stating about Nero’s one good
accomplishment had been dead on. Had the fire not happened the fall of Rome would have happened almost two-hundred years earlier by my calculations than our records show.
Oh, and incidentally, Roman historian Edward Gibbon was right. It did happen in A.D. 476 just not on September fourth. It was sometime in late June.
Also I will never want to meet Nero again. Ever.
I talked on a few more minutes about how Rome was, even with all it’s wanton and bloodthirsty ways, one of the greatest civilizations to date. When the bell rang and everyone started standing I reminded them about an essay that was due by late next week and bid them all a warm journey home.
Most of the time I was the first to leave the classroom. Mainly because teacher paperwork is extremely boring to do at a desk. But at a coffee shop? Now that‘s a great place to do paper work. These were my thoughts when I climbed into my black Mercedes Benz. The SL class, by the way.
What? You think I’d have the ability to know what happens tomorrow and drive a busted Gremlin? I mean, I can see the winning lottery numbers today, go back to tomorrow and punch them in.
That’s just an example. I’ve actually only did that twice.
Knowing the end score of the Super Bowl is nice, too. Not to mention knowing what the weather in Australia is going to be like on the next day. Without going into too much detail let me let you know what my status to the world was at the time.
After I had had my glove for almost two months I had won the Illinois jack pot lottery, predicted a severe blizzard that hit early, even for Chicago, and had appeared on a live interview with CNN about my innate ability to somehow predict the future.
Graduating high-school at the age of twelve and entering college at fourteen-ish was the reason most people thought me awesomely successful. Prodigies get away with a lot more bizarre things than your average Joe. Such as fooling the entire world that I had enough gray matter in my brain to foretell the future.
I pulled onto the freeway and blew the horn at a Jeep that seemed to be having a Sunday drive on a dirt road while in the middle of a five lane highway on a Thursday. After a few minutes of speeding and cutting into traffic I turned on my exit. I decided that I wouldn’t stay at the small coffee shop long. Even though my three-storey Goliath house was basically right across the street, I really needed to hit the hay. I had a big day ahead of me tomorrow, this being the day I had been planning for the past month to make an expedition back to Rome. Not to see Nero, though. I’m thinking Nero’s father will be around five and a half when I go this time.
I parked my Mercedes and quickly ran to the coffee shop door with my briefcase in hand. Mikey’s Place was pretty much my favorite joint on this side of town and I confess that it was one of the reason I purchased the condo across the street. The first and foremost being that I was able to easily remodel the basement into a maximum security facility that housed my glove. But I’ll get to that in a bit.
“Good evening, all.” I called to the usual occupants that I saw basically every time I came here. I hung up my coat and scarf before breezing to my booth. I say my booth because that’s literally what it was. After moving in across the street I came to the coffee shop and told the owner that if he made sure that no one -and I mean no one- sat in the back corner I would personally give him two-thousand dollars a month in cash. I had thought about giving him a time frame as to when people could sit there and when they couldn’t, but figured that at two grand a month he could keep it free all day.
So after he had eagerly agreed, I had moved in an expensive leather booth to replace the old one and had even thrown in a chaise lounge to match because I got them on sale.
What? Billionaires can’t get good deals on furniture?
I walked back to my section and dropped my briefcase on the table. The owner, Mr. Hartz, had at first installed a curtain to keep people out but I had shut this down after a few visits. It was cool and all but completely defeated the purpose of going to a coffee shop.
I clicked open the black briefcase and pulled out my boring teacher papers. I tried not to groan as I flipped through them, trying to decide which one to tackle first when my coffee arrived.
“Two shots of espresso, two mint leaves, one sugar cube and three Reese’s Pieces.” The cute waitress said, setting my cup down. “Will that be all, Mr. Johnson?”
“Yeah.” I said, looking up from the lame spread sheet in my hand and noticing it was Charlie, my favorite waitress. I forgot I had been needing to talk to her. “Uh, no, wait.” I gestured to the booth opposite me. “could you join me for a second, Charlie?”
She sat and looked at me hopefully. “So what’s up?” She asked, letting one side of her mouth raise into a smile. Or was that a smirk?
I took a sip of my espresso first and had to resist the urge to let my eyes roll back in my head in ecstasy. Man, that stuff was good. It was on the menu for anyone else who wanted it. ‘Jericho’s Mix’ was what the sign read underneath it and the owner decided that it was worth almost twenty dollars a cup. I don’t know what was worse, him doing that, or people actually buying it.
I decided not to trademark the name because it was kind of cool, I guess, having a drink named after you and all.
“First, Charlie, I feel compelled to tell you that you’re about to receive a promotion.”
“Really?” She gasped. “When?”
“Two days from now the manager will obtain the flu and you will be runner up to take his spot while he’s out.”
She seemed to deflate. “Oh. But he’ll come back, right?”
“He will.” I said, taking another sip of my coffee. “But the owner will keep you on as manager. Especially after I tell him that the business seems to have improved under your guidance.”
Charlie beamed, eyes wide with shock, anticipation, and all the other ways people look when I reveal their future. “I’ve never… well, I mean- er…”
I smiled, “Heard about it. Thought about it. But never actually seen it.” I said, dropping my papers back into my briefcase and clamping it shut.
“Yeah, I guess.” She said, letting her eyes drop in embarrassment and hooking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. I watched her for a second when she raised her face back up. “And what, if I can ask, do you enjoy most about knowing the future of someone so clueless about it?” She asked, smiling and trying not to laugh-out-loud in excitement.
I finished my coffee, stood, and dropped a five-hundred dollar tip on the table. “Knowing.” I said, and then left.
Chapter 3
I dropped my bags, coats and my briefcase on the foyer floor. This was my ritual every time I stepped into my condo. “Hi, honey, I’m home!” I called cheerfully.
Evonne Mitchells, butler extraordinaire, appeared on the scene. A butler was one of the first things I added to the twelve-thousand square-foot condo that, as I like to look at it, was more of a mansion than a condo complete with a spiral staircase, tennis court and inside pool.
“Ah, Master Johnson. I trust you had a pleasant day?” He said, stooping to retrieve my coat.
“Let Louise get that, Mitch.” I said, “I need you in the basement stat.”
“I have given miss Louise the night off.” Evonne said, dropping my coat over his arms and straightening. “She had a hard cough and needed time to recuperate, sir.”
I nodded and picked up my backpack and briefcase I had just thrown down. “Billionaires having to pick their own luggage off the vestibule floor.” I shook my head, tsking. “What’s the world coming to, Mitch?” I asked, laughing.
“I am sure I do not know, sir,” he said.
“C’mon, Mitch, lighten up. We’ve got a lot of planning still left to do tonight.”
“Of course, sir,” Evonne said, “I took the liberty of having Owen pick up your favorite tacos from downtown LA and they are en route. The estimated time of arrival of your private jet is exactly thirty-eight minutes.”
“Awesome, Mitch. You’re the best butler-with-a-british-accent e
ver.” I said, patting him on the shoulder. Sushi tacos. No one did it better than downtown LA.
“I am flattered, Master Johnson.”
We deposited my coats and bags in the enormous closet to the left of the front door and headed into the enormous living room. Although when you own a house this huge, the area that is generally called the living room is actually the boasting room. The best view, fireplace, expensive furniture, water fountain with naked angels adorning it- you know the drill. The walls were also ladened with weapons from almost every age imaginable.
Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever even sat in the boasting room. But sitting would have to wait. “Any messages?” I asked as we crossed the fancy room to the door that led to the elevator.
“Yes sir. Mr. Gates called and asked if you could tell him if the weather tomorrow will be sufficient for a quick game of golf, sir. If not, he says he’d rather not worry about it.”
I nodded and opened the door. It led to a short hallway that eventually ended at the elevator that eventually went down five stories to the basement/lab. “Tell Bill that he’d better keep the clubs in the shed unless he wants to drive almost one-hundred miles to a cute little resort called the Cove where the weather isn’t horrible.”
“Of course, Master Johnson. Shall I call him now?”
I pushed the level five button. “That’s fine. Just get to the basement as soon as you can.” I checked my watch as the elevator dinged and the door slid open. “Actually scratch that. Don’t come down without my sushi tacos.” I stepped into the elevator and stood at attention, saluting the sixty-one year-old butler. “That’s an order, Captain.”
Evonne returned the salute. “At once, Master Johnson.”
Then the doors closed.
Evonne was a retired captain of the military that had gone secret service that had gone hitman that had finally gone butler. But aside from having such an awesome of a life as that, Evonne Mitchells had one specific characteristic that made him invaluable and irreplaceable in my eyes.
Jericho Johnson: The Gauntlet of Time Page 2