Chapter 2
Within 24 hours, Diana and I stepped into the arrivals hall of Rome Fiumicino Airport. How such a beautiful city such as Rome could have such a nondescript airport is beyond me. But it was hardly my concern. We sought a placard with our names upon it and soon found one held by a chap in his mid thirties. He was a solidly built man in his 30s with long, wavy black hair, a fashionable few days growth of beard and grey eyes behind a pair of granny glasses. We trotted over and introduced ourselves. His name was Umberto Placini and he was a professor at Sapienza University.
A little more trotting led us to a muddy Alfa Romeo SUV. Umberto charmingly opened the passenger side door for Debra, but left me to manage my own door. Fifteen minutes later and we were passing the Ostia Antica tourist park. In another couple of moments we came to a stop on a dirt road that bordered the tourist park. On the other side we saw the site. Rectangular holes had been dug into the ground. Poles around the perimeter held canvas awnings to protect both the dig and the diggers.
Umberto introduced us to a handful of young people who were all busy with trowels, brooms and notebooks. As usually happens in such introduction rounds, I promptly forgot everyone's name. Some detective, eh?
“This way,” he said, taking Debra by the arm. I knew she did not like to be touched and sensed rather than saw her cringe slightly, before putting on a polite smile. I followed them along the perimeter of a large tile floor that was peering out of the earth. Two students were brushing away the dirt while one kept up a fast monologue in Italian. At the far end of the floor was an alcove covered with translucent plastic sheeting. Umberto lifted it and revealed the reality of the image we had seen. Only partially dug out of the mud, we could see the shape of the camera partially imprinted in the mud. Nearby were what seemed to be small pieces of plastic and some scratched up but intact glass discs that had likely once formed a lens for the camera. That the camera looked ancient could not be doubted. But, it did not make sense.
“Could something in the soil or this space have caused the camera to age so fast?” Debra asked while I took a few pictures with my camera.
Umberto thought a moment. “No, I don't think so. As you see, there are some pots and ceramic shards that appear to have aged normally. If there was something in the soil, we would expect these things to have disintegrated completely or, at least, to a much greater degree than we see here.”
“Of course.”
“Professore!” shouted one of the women working nearby.
“Excuse me,” said Umberto as he walked to his student.
Meanwhile, Debra studied the camera. I intended to do the same, but was distracted by a woman working nearby who looked over at me and smiled. I smiled back and was considering a wink when Debra interrupted me.
“See these grey pieces? I think they are aluminium or some kind of steel. Normally, it decomposes in about 500 years and we can see this is mostly gone; it is more a discolouration in the dirt.”
“Yes,” I said, studying the residue more carefully.
“The thing is, there seems to be too much of it for just a camera. Look down below.”
Indeed, there was more of the grey discolouration further down in the alcove. “That is strange,” I said squatting down to look more carefully.
“Debra! Simon!” Umberto shouted. We looked over to see him on his knees and gesturing us to come over.
“Look here,” he said once we arrived. We crouched over and saw several shards of thin glass. Umberto, pulled a glove out of a pocket on his cargo trousers, put it on and gingerly picked up one of the shards. We looked at it.
“That looks too thin to be Roman,” said Debra.
“Indeed, it is too thin and flat for Roman or even medieval glass. It is also too clear.”
“Is it possible it is more modern glass that has somehow infested your site?”
Umberto thought for a moment. “It seems unlikely. But possible. I will ask crew later if anyone knows something about this, though...” He looked at the glass shard for a moment. “Hmm. It looks like it has been here some time.”
Debra stood stock still looking around her. I could almost see her brain ticking away. “Umberto, does Sapienza have equipment to test the age of this glass and the camera remains?” she asked.
“No, not really. We usually send stuff like this to Cambridge.”
“Could we take a piece of this glass and a piece of the camera remains to Cambridge? Tomorrow?”
He looked at Debra for a moment before replying. “Let us photograph everything first. Then I'll have Alicia prepare a couple of samples for you.”
“Alicia!” Umberto shouted.
A woman working at a long table looked up, shouted, “Si!” and ran over to Umberto.
Meanwhile, Debra said to me, “Simon, I want you to take the samples to Cambridge on the first available flight tomorrow. I have some crazy ideas and I need to make some phone calls to either tell me I am crazy or... Oh, probably I am crazy.”
“'Or?' Tell me, what are you thinking, Debra?” I asked, knowing she would never divulge her thoughts before they were fully formed. That we might have been dealing with time travel was obvious. I had known Debra long enough to know her brain was beyond that. And beyond mine. I had no idea what she was thinking.
“Not yet. Let me make some phone calls first.
To my mind, there seemed only three possibilities. In increasing unlikeliness, the first possibility was that someone aged an expensive, indestructible camera and some modern glass and hid bits of both on the site, perhaps as a hoax; probably as a hoax. But why? Why would someone ruin a €20,000 camera for a hoax? The second possibility is that something besides a camera made the impression in the mud and by coincidence, the result looks remarkably like a Hasselblad. And the glass pieces? They need not have anything to do with the apparent camera. But, it seemed unlikely that something over a thousand years old could look so like a Hasselblad. Moreover, the glass discs looked an awful lot like lens elements. What else, besides a Hasselblad and lens elements, could look so like a Hasselblad and lens elements? Did the Romans discover optics without us ever finding out? That did not seem likely. The third option involved time travel. That seemed impossible. And, even if someone could send a camera back in time to take pictures, why come to Ostia of all places? Sure, it was an important city, but surely Rome itself would have been more interesting. And if a camera was somehow sent back in time, why did those who sent it not retrieve it? There would be no point in sending a camera back in time unless you could at least retrieve the images. Had something gone wrong?
While these thoughts ran through my mind, I realised I was looking in the direction of the young woman who had smiled at me earlier and, without being aware of it, I was staring in her direction. I attempted an apologetic smile that I felt just looked awkward. Nevertheless, her eyes sparkled, she smiled and she blew a kiss at me. Then she got back to work.
Cuter than a calico kitten on Christmas day, I thought.
Back at the hotel, I rang Helena, our administrative wonder back at the office in Brussels. Within a half hour, she SMSed me a message confirming a flight to Heathrow at 10:20 the next morning and the reservation of a rental car. Then I showered, checked emails and met Debra at the hotel restaurant for dinner at eight. As is often the case at such eateries, the food was perfectly fine but far from impressive. As we sipped our aperitifs, I asked Debra about the phone calls.
“I got through to two of the people I wanted to speak to, but the most important, Paul Muyskens, a physicist at Leuven University who has written about creating temporary wormholes in spacetime, has disappeared. He went to a conference in Boston almost a year ago, quit his job by email and has not been heard from since.”
“Boston? Do, they still have science conferences in America?” I said, surprised. I thought they only did creationism these days.
“On the surface, yes. Since the civil war, there has been no budget for real science research and, of course, most of the best researchers came to Europe or went to Asia when it became clear the Evangelicals were winning. But; there is a semi-underground science movement in America. One thing they do is organise seemingly innocuous conferences with safe talks. But, everyone understands the real conversations happen discretely during coffee breaks and at the hotel bar.
I thought for a moment. “Okay, that makes a lot of sense. But, why would someone like him stay in America? Surely Leuven offers a better environment for physics research.”
“Someone in American must have given him an offer he couldn't refuse,” said Debra.
“What might that mean? Money? Women? Men? Blackmail?”
“That's a good question, especially as Muyskens seems to have disappeared. No one has heard from him since the end of the conference.”
“Has he got a family?”
“Recently divorced. No children.”
“Hmmm. That might explain things. Perhaps he met a nice American girl.”
“Perhaps,” said Debra. But, I could see she was doubtful.
After dinner, Debra went back to her room. I decided to have a cognac before heading up myself. As I sat sipping and pondering, a soft Italian accent said, “Hi there!”
I looked up to see the archaeologist, who had caught my attention at the dig, looking down at me with a smile that suggested I could get lucky tonight. At least, I hoped I was reading it correctly. I remember reading a while back that we menfolk tend to be overly optimistic in judging womenfolk's interest in us.
“Hi!” I said. “Will you join me for a drink?”
“You are very persuasive,” she replied, taking a seat across from me and ordering a glass of red wine.
Her name was Magdalena and she was a PhD student at the university. She had dark, curly hair that fell to her shoulders, a round face dominated by big green eyes and full lips that glistened as she smiled, and she smiled a lot as we talked. She wore jeans that showed off her legs and a baggy sweatshirt that hid her figure, but suggested that it would be worth uncovering. Her English was surprisingly fluent in spite of a heavy Italian accent.
“What do you think about the old camera?” I asked her, after our initial introductions.
“I don't really know. We don't have a lot of time to think during a dig. You have to be so meticulous when digging up pieces and labelling them that there is not a lot of time to think. It's only later, when you are going through the artefacts and try to – I think you say 'connect the dots' in English. That is when you think.
“But the other night, while I lie in my bed, I thought how marvellous it would be to be able to send a camera back in time to photograph a site when it was still alive. We could understand so much more that way.”
I confess, my thoughts initially focused to Magdalena lying in bed and I had to push them away, at least for a moment.
“Do you think something like that is – or rather will be – possible in the future?” I asked.
She thought for a moment. “No, I am not so sure. If future archaeologists could send cameras back in time, I think we would have found more of them in old ruins. We might even see them coming to our time to photograph us. I think one day in the far future, archaeologists will be interested in our time.”
I couldn't help but to glance around the room as she said this, which provoked a bust of laughter from Magdalena, who comically shaded her eyes with her hand and peered around the room too. As she did so, her other hand rested upon my arm and I felt a magical warmth spread from my arm.
After we stopped laughing, there was the awkward silence as we looked each other in the eyes just long enough for intimacy to grow. It is the sort of silence that is filled with a kiss or uncomfortable laughter; at least that is how I interpreted it.
But, I am not always the best reader of people, so I asked her, “may I kiss you?”
“Si,” she said.
So, I kissed her.
However, a couple can only take kissing so far in a hotel lobby, so after a few minutes kissing, we sat, holding hands in a silence that had lost its awkwardness and became filled with possibility. “Would you like to come to my room?” I asked her.
She smiled, “Yes, I would like to, but it is not a good idea. Not yet.”
“I am flying to London tomorrow,” I said.
“Oh, that is too bad. You will come back?”
“For, you, of course I will.”
“Then let us see where kisses take us the next time we meet.”
From the perspective of male desire, I was disappointed. But my rational brain was relieved. I did have a flight in the morning and preparations before leaving. And I liked Magdalena. A lot. And, I know from experience that if you have sex on the first encounter, there was unlikely to be a second encounter. I wanted to get to know her more than get laid.
“It is late,” she said, digging around in her purse until she found a name card which she handed to me.
“We will stay in touch?” she asked.
“Yes, I would like that very much.”
I walked her to the hotel door where she found a taxi. She gave me a warm kiss and a hug. “Until soon, Simon,” she said climbing into the back of the taxi. She blew me another kiss as the taxi pulled away. I caught it and put it to my lips.
That night, I dreamed of making love with her as time travellers from the future quietly filmed us.
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