The Secret History of Another Rome: Millenium 3 CE Book One

Ranulf had awakened from a dream of when he was a child named Octavian. After managing to dress, he sat at the edge of his bed confused and concerned. The disarranged present invaded his thoughts.

Cannot happen. Will not happen. Must not happen. Has happened.

He focused on the colors of the wood grain of the post on the right corner of the footboard as his mind settled in this moment.

What will happen?

The door opened. Time, Excellency.

Yes, thank you. The weary man could not help but ask his Chamberlain, How is it today?

The lost have gathered, replied Tomas enigmatically.

The forty-two-year-old bearded man, formally Alexandros XI Heraclitus, Supreme Pontiff of the Empire of Rome at Alexandria, looked toward the younger man at the door. Tomas had been in his service for eleven years or so, tumultuous years. As Chamberlain for the last six, he rode the storms with equanimity and poise, running the household and completing every task. Young as he was given his years in the Pontifical Household, the twenty-nine-year-old was a model servant, unobtrusive, unflappable and unfailing. A model that was aside from his habit of offering impenetrable replies to the simplest questions. At least they weren’t the platitudes Ranulf disliked so. Besides, the Pontiff was accustomed to opaque responses and known to respond obliquely himself.

The leader of the Empire was above-average in height with a slender waist rising to broad shoulders burdened by the days ahead and behind. Ranulf had what might be called a strong face if he had been a warrior, handsome in a hyper-masculine way. His physical health from daily exercise gave his skin the appearance of glowing from within even while his dry, gray-blue eyes and constantly parted lips gave his face the appearance his soul was ready to depart.

Bowing his head of shoulder-length, thinning bronze hair, Ranulf gripped the wood and raised himself. His normally inquisitive eyes were oddly bereft of activity.

So, we begin.

Ranulf brushed back his long, off-white robe on either side as he crossed the room, revealing a knee-length, scarlet tunic underneath and a leather belt cinched across his flat stomach to keep the linen from billowing. He reached the doorway without pause, passed Tomas standing just outside the room, and walked steadily down the hall to the oval room at the end. The Chamberlain slipped into the bedchamber his master had just left, eager to attend to the housekeeping duties he completed in the absence of other staff, the same duties he knew so well from performing them for five years before being promoted.

The opening in the far wall of the oval room at the end of the hall was filled with hazy, golden light. Ranulf strode forward to the rail of the south-facing balcony in the great tower he had caused to be built a decade before. He stood, observing the city now fed by sand.

When they first moved to the tower, Tomas joined his master on this balcony for a moment. The Pontiff was in a dark mood then, too. It is quite a drop.

I would say.

Do you know how far?

No, Sir, I am not that familiar with the plans yet.

This balcony is 425 meters above the ground.

Impressive.

Particularly if one landed on his back.

Excellency!

Oh, it was just a thought. Since we will be living here, I recommend you read works on monumental architecture and buildings of the past.

All knowledge comes from history, Excellency.

"Yes. The third principle. You don’t plan to become one of them, do you, Tomas?"

No, Sir. I am content to be employed in your service rather than serve the Library.

Good man.

Standing on the same balcony two years later, Ranulf scanned the muddled view. The sun, high and obscure, ate at the circling particles in the air.

What has happened? he asked, directing his question to the city below.

No one answered.

What brought us here?

They had gone.

What have I done?

Do not project or reflect. Stay in the present no matter how difficult it appears. The moment is perfect and infinite.

The voice was merely an echo of the mysterious man who came to him when he reflected on the circles and stars of the floor in the Great Hall. Ranulf needed his counsel again, but the Great Hall was in the Library complex on the far side of the city. There were others, many, different voices almost every time. They came and went from that room paneled in amber whenever he needed them. They called themselves Immortals. Ranulf knew they were not of his time but had always been there, waiting to be summoned. His last visit from an Immortal in the Great Hall prompted him to move to the New Tower with his second Heir.

Ranulf was well accustomed to the presence of these enigmatic travelers. Before that last visit, Alexandria was in turmoil, the peddlers unwilling to leave their carts out as they always had, the citizens expecting the rumored onslaught, no business more important than finding shelter. Thousands headed by land to the northeast, seeking new lives in the Lebanon Mountains, the Caucasus or even the Urals and Carpathians. Tens of thousands had taken ship north and west across the sea to the provinces in Europe. Almost half of the city’s population had fled, escaping from rumors with no substance.

The Pontiff sought guidance in the Great Hall then. Ranulf’s eyes looked up from the floor of the Great Hall as he turned to the dim figure.

The answer is yes.

I did not ask.

You will have safe passage and you will be secure at your destination.

I should not leave.

Should? Who taught you this word?

Ranulf smiled a half-smile, cocking his head to the left as he did so. They are no better than the Librarians, he thought, always correcting him as though he never had the right answer. Ranulf looked up to the dome of the room, the deep azure paint made from powdered lapis lazuli barely visible in the weak light reaching it, barely visible like the visitor.

My task is not finished.

Task, task, task. You have a task and that is to live as the person you are.

Who I am is one who has been taught much and learned little. I am one who remains.

A martyr? the female voice suggested.

Ranulf had read about those who sacrificed themselves for faith or principle. He was not one of them. He had no faith, unlike the Ritualists or Deists with higher powers they chose to call God, the polytheists and animists spread thinly across the tropics who worshipped pantheons or spirits. The Gaean Ceresians with their Earth Mother cult gave him no comfort despite having been born a Ceresian himself and legally still a citizen of that confederation. The Pontiff no longer even shared the faith in science and history required of him in his roles as Protector of the Library and Arbiter of History.

He certainly had principles, too many to name, all gradually fed to him by his Librarian tutors until they replaced the bones, sinews, blood and muscles of his body. He was a man of principle. Principles and precepts. Or was he?

No, not a martyr. I am a bulwark against the sands.

How poetical of you. How very self-indulgent. It is time for you to go if there is going to be any more time for you to stay. The Immortal’s voice changed from sarcasm to maternal plea as she spoke.

Ranulf thought of his own mother, destined to be alone once her child had been chosen and prepared. His mother had lived in physical comfort, yet gave up everything, her son and homeland, because she chose to do so. She gave her life long before she died, because she gave her son. He could not leave what he had created as she had done.

Go without me.

Go without us. She will be there.

The insubstantial figure faded in the half-light of the room, appearing to walk away while not moving a step. The words pounded against his temples. Doing as she said would require that he no longer could access their wisdom, such as it was. Delphic oracles each one, they made sense only when they desired, not when sense was needed. The she this Immortal spoke of was not old enough to have experienced as much as his visitors in the Great Hall. She was wise beyond her years and a pleasant companion, but she was no substitute for the many voices that visited him in that chamber no matter how puzzling their directives.

I have decided, because you decided for me. His voice echoed in the empty space of the Great Hall but he knew they heard him. They were there always and always had been there.

On rare occasion, an Immortal let slip a hint, like the first one he met who later referred to himself as Laozi. Hints like that led to improbable conclusions every time. It was 341 ACE. Ranulf had calculated that the Time Between had lasted 217 years. The Common Era ended in 2123. That made the current year 2681 CE. If Laozi lived, and that was open to considerable debate, he was said to have been born around 600 BCE and disappeared on his journey west around 530 BCE. The Old One looked old indeed from what Ranulf could see of him, definitely over seventy, but not over three and a quarter millennia old.

Unfortunately, the Arbiter of History, charged with affirming the facts of the past, never investigated his obfuscating visitors further, not even to determine what an ancient Chinese man, or any Chinese man, might look like. The Empire had no diplomatic relations or contacts with eastern or southeastern Asia; that huge landmass remained largely unpopulated after the devastation of the Collapse and the anarchy of the Time Between. Aside from nomads in the north and some scattered villages in the mountains far from the typhoon-ravaged coasts, the old states of Asia beyond the Indus and Himalayas had not been resettled. China and India were merely lessons of the mistakes made in the last century of the Common Era. The DNA of the billions who once came from those countries had been largely lost. Survivors among the diaspora of those nations, those not murdered in the retributive pogroms that targeted all Asians for their role in the Collapse, had, like most remaining peoples, intermarried and diluted the genetic characteristics that identified them as distinct phenotypes.

Somewhere in the Library was the answer to the inexplicable Immortals. The Library held all the answers. Ranulf himself had found answers there to questions that no one, not even he, was supposed to ask. Yes, his curiosity led him in many directions, so many he could never put everything together and understand.

Now, Ranulf was far from the Library, an exile in the New Tower built over the remains of the much earlier tower, the Lighthouse of Pharos, at the end of a long mole stretching deep into the harbor. Ranulf was left with the echo of the Old One’s presence and the memory of that last encounter. What point was there to look for information now?

The Pontiff thought about the many moments that had constituted his life up to this present moment. He reflected on how he had reached this point. More echoes. His earliest days were a blur of greens, blues and yellows. Ranulf had no tangible recollections of the time before he was five. He remembered his mother’s face on her bier, how he would never see her smile again, never talk with her in the gardens again, never hear her laughter again. She was removed from him two years before that long ago moment. Ranulf had time to forget the wonderful times he had with her only to have them rush back to him when she died. It was hard to realize she was really only a girl and young woman her entire life. Ranulf was almost a decade older now than she was when she died.

Ranulf gazed on the sandstorm engulfing the city below and beyond. Oh, the extremes the Librarians would go to maintain their grasp on the Empire.

How long had it been since he first understood that the Librarians never told the whole truth, never wanted to part with all of the knowledge they stored? Yes, he learned this lesson from his last two principal tutors. As trustworthy as his new instructors were, Ranulf found they hid facts from him, too. Always revealing just enough, never providing a complete answer. Yet, no, there were moments when, perhaps finding no way to be inscrutable, they spoke fully and without hesitation. Ranulf recalled such a moment.

You know as well as I that wisdom brings sadness. Knowledge of the world and its intricacies reveals a truth that is not easy to accept. Yet once you have acquired that knowledge, your every thought and action is measured against it. The truth will make you a bondservant, demanding that you attend to it. You suffer when you act in truth and when you do not.

You are correct to a point, Myrmidon responded. You forget the beauty of truth. Wisdom can bring serenity. Truth can liberate. It is a matter of perspective, but then, everything is. You decide your orientation. The cosmos gave you that gift for its selfish reasons. Enjoy the gift in the brief time you have.

That echo. Do not project or reflect. Stay in the moment. The moment is perfect and infinite.

Yes, the Immortals were much like the Librarians with their aphorisms, but the Pontiff found them more reassuring, more affirming than anything the Librarians offered. Those meetings comforted him in the many moments in which he was alone, when no one was there to share his life. Now Ranulf was alone again, his child and her mother gone, his consorts dismissed, the Librarians removed from his presence unless he called one. No more meetings with the Council, Governors or Ambassadors. He was as alone as he had been as a child, when he had no playmates save Issachar and his mother. Now, he was a middle-aged adult alone on the balcony of the tower he caused to be built, absorbing the deteriorating condition of the city that stretched before him, a wasting landscape.

All of those moments, universe upon universe, built and fallen, born and dead came tumbling forward, arrows scattering at an illusory enemy. No, history was the enemy, Ranulf the target. Time, that dimension with no substance, was the foe. The arrows came from the past trying to hit their mark, trying to cut the immediate moment down with failures, mistakes, regrets and resentments. The memories of almost forty years, back to his earliest consciousness, moments of the first half of a life, flooded his mind with fury and torment, bitter reminders of opportunities lost and dreams ended. He had been taught much and understood nothing.

The many universes that preceded this universe descended now on the man on a balcony overlooking the capital of the most recent empire in a long history of empires. The many moments that preceded this moment returned to Ranulf unordered and raw as he looked out on Alexandria from his refuge, fleeing an unrequited life he could not bring himself to leave. There was no room for tomorrow while all these yesterdays raged in this moment now.

The Eighth Moment

The ancient Egyptians felt a special kinship with the natural world even though their thoughts turned often to the afterlife and whether they had prepared properly for their final journey. Their reverence of nature extended to the use of many images of living creatures in their writing system, gods who had the heads of animals, and even worship of cats.

May I have a pet? the bronze-haired, eight-year-old student asked the instructor.

No, Sir. You may not.

Why?

Like many eight-year-olds, Octavian’s favorite query was why, particularly since it annoyed his tutor, Diogenes.

Pet implies enslavement or, at the very least, dependency. Animals are not our slaves and their welfare should not be dependent on our inclinations.

"I had a pet before I came here. A cat, in fact. Felis catus."

I am surprised you remember the cat, but pleased you remember the proper taxonomic name.

The boy looked down briefly at his scarlet tunic made of fine linen. I don’t remember much, but I remember my cat, he said, looking up again with steel-colored, inquisitive eyes. He was spotted, so that’s what I named him, Spot. I was only three or four years old. I could probably choose a better name now.

From what I understand, domestic cats often act as though they are the master and not the pet.

Haven’t you ever had a cat?

I have seen them in the alleys in the city. A few have managed to enter the grounds of the Library. They are welcomed since they kill rodents that might otherwise cause harm to the food stores and spread disease. Unfortunately, they also kill birds and butterflies. You will learn eventually how bubonic plague spread even further and faster in Europe beginning in the mid-1300s of the Common Era due to superstitions about cats being the accomplices of witches. The people killed cats for that reason, leading to an increase in rodents carrying the infection.

After only two months of study with him, Octavian was used to his tutor using words that had yet to enter the boy’s growing vocabulary. Bubonic sounded technical and technology is good even if the Empire didn’t use it much. Plague, however, sounded bad. It would help if Diogenes explained what they meant or at least wrote some of them on the board to allow Octavian to copy them for future study. However, what the Heir really could not stand was his teacher’s indirection, never really answering the question posed. So he persisted.

You never had a cat?

As I said, ownership of a pet implies enslavement and we are a free society. One thing you must learn about principles and precepts is that they apply universally or they are empty.

But if cats do not consider themselves owned, how can they be enslaved?

I originally said, ‘or dependency.’ Dependency is just as bad as enslavement. It is only a milder form of ownership, but ownership nonetheless. Application of principles and precepts extends to every form the issue takes, no matter how insubstantial it may seem.

Insub-what? Good old Dio might just as well be speaking Urdu or Russian instead of Arabic. Oh, well. Octavian certainly understood the first part.

Aren’t the servants in the Pontiff’s Residence dependent? Isn’t Issachar dependent?

No. They are free to find other forms of employment. Indeed, the Empire is noted for providing all the essential needs for each citizen so he or she need not worry about housing, clothing, healthcare, food or education. All citizens enjoy the freedom to pursue employment that best suits their abilities and interests. Besides, it is a great honor to serve in the Pontiff’s Residence or the Library complex at large. We provide so well for our people that they do not hesitate to want to give back to the state in some capacity. There are always more candidates than positions available in the Library complex.

"But citizens aren’t children like me. You say we provide for them. Aren’t they dependent on the Empire?

Diogenes’ continued magisterial tone indicated he was not pleased his lesson plan had been thoroughly diverted thanks to his ever-curious pupil. The citizens are not dependent. They are the Empire. Their productive capacity provides the wealth that allows the state to fulfill their needs. It is a fair exchange. Given the open-ended opportunities available to all citizens, everyone contributes to his or her full potential. We are a balanced society in which all roles are filled. Everyone finds work of his or her choosing.

I didn’t choose to be the Heir to the Supreme Pontiff.

The instructor shook his head, more from disgust with himself for opening the door to what was becoming an unpleasant conversation than in response to the child’s statement. The movement tossled his shoulder-length gray hair and accentuated his hunched posture.

No, you did not.

Why?

Diogenes pushed his round spectacles back on his aquiline nose until the tops touched his full eyebrows as he thought for a moment. He could explain about the treaty with the Boudiccans and the unique tribute they pay as required, an Heir to be provided four years after the enthronement of a new Supreme Pontiff. He could explain that citizens were incapable of procreation, that only the Heir and Supreme Pontiff were able to sire children but not permitted to do so. He could explain how overpopulation and competition for resources led to war, anarchy, the end of the Common Era, and over two centuries without history. That led to the determination at its foundation when the Time Between was finally over that the Empire would never permit its population to exceed its resources.

Diogenes had sworn never to simplify his lessons, admonished by his superior, Melkior, the Observer of Training, to always speak to the Heir as though Octavian was an adult. But the instructor was a Librarian, trained to provide a truth, accurate as far as it went. Diogenes chose his words more carefully this time. Sir, you and the Supreme Pontiff are unique in the Empire. He is the Leader of the Empire, Protector of the Library and Arbiter of History. You are his Heir. All Pontiffs, and therefore all Heirs, are not citizens of the Empire as a matter of law or fact. Your mother chose for you when she chose to come here. As you might know from your memories of living elsewhere and being brought to Alexandria with your mother three years ago, you were not born in the Empire, but unlike the citizens of the Empire, you did not choose to emigrate.

Emigrate?

Move from one state to another.

Oh. It was much easier to ask about a word when it was the last word the tutor spoke.

Individuals choose to become citizens voluntarily, usually in their late teens, about ten years older than you are now. They arrive in the Empire from all over the globe, even sometimes the Unorganized Territories, ready and willing to contribute to their new homeland’s well-being and accept our faith in exchange for receiving the basic needs of life and the security and freedom of living under a stable and strong government. You, and the Supreme Pontiff when he was Heir, did not make that choice. You were chosen.

Why?

Why were you chosen or why is the Heir chosen?

Octavian thought for a moment. Normally, he never hesitated to answer or ask a question. He spoke as soon as the thought came. This decision seemed too important.

Both.

The Heir is chosen because that is the law. You were chosen in fulfillment of that law. Why you and not some other boy, I do not know.

Boy? Girls can’t be the Heir?

No. Females cannot be Supreme Pontiff, Librarians or Library employees.

Why?

Principles and precepts. It is the law and our tradition.

Octavian was deeply dissatisfied with that response, with all of the responses. Diogenes probably knew how he was chosen if not why him in particular. He wanted to ask why excluding girls was a principle or precept. What is the law and who decides? Why was anything a principle or precept? Unfortunately, his tutor had said the law and our tradition with great finality, indicating the discussion was over.

I still want another cat.

What we want and what we get are always at odds. At present, what we should both want is to return to the history of this region of the world. As I said earlier, while Alexandria is less than three millennia old, Egypt is one of the birthplaces of civilization, with a historical record going back twice as long. I will bring up that history on the board and we will discuss what you have learned from your readings.

Diogenes turned to the display. Octavian started to think of ways to trap one of the cats that stole into the complex. He was beginning to dislike history, that central feature of dogma, already. Learning history interfered with learning the things he really wished to learn.

Octavian had been taught to read and write and do basic arithmetic by his mother. She began by reading to him and playing counting games with him before they left Ceresia. While she taught him her native languages of English and Spanish, an older woman taught them both Arabic. He was easily following along and sounding out words from the texts in all three languages by the time they moved to Alexandria. He spent many hours reading, doing math problems and working on his penmanship in a study near their apartments in the annex east of the Pontiff’s Residence. Mother was always there to look over his work. However, after two years, he saw much less of his mother. She was moved to other apartments nearby.

A Librarian moved into her bedroom, taking over his schooling, giving him assignments and grading his work. This was the very first tutor provided for him, one he couldn’t remember at all when he was older. After his studies ended each day, he and his mother would eat their evening meal, just the two of them in his rooms, and discuss what they had done that day.

Octavian was excited about everything he was learning since it was always new, but he was bored by the curriculum because it included so