Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome (70 page)

She leaned her head down and kissed my forearm before lifting it to look at me, her lips still puckered.  I leaned down and kissed her gently, not wanting to disturb the tenuous situation below, and pulled away.

Helena smiled and looked down again.

Precious time, as it never ceased to do, passed.

“Penelope,” Helena finally whispered, her eyes still on the baby.  She lifted her head, her eyes never happier, and smiled.  “It’s perfect.”

The En…

…d?

But why does it have to end here?  Why does it have to be over?  Do people simply up and vanish when certain chapters in their lives come to a close?  Do individuals cease to exist when nothing of interest happens to them?  When they’re old and boring?  The simple answer to these questions is: no. 

We persist.  We live.  We find new adventures to go on and new stories to weave.

And such is the case with me.

My story isn’t over.  There’s still more to tell. 

Far more…

I guess now should be a good time to clarify that this isn’t Jacob Hunter, nor Diana, but Edward Crichton.  No, I haven’t implanted myself into my own story – not really, anyway – but this is where I normally add my
Note from the Author
section, so bear with me for a moment.  I intend to do something special here.  It’s not unique or particularly ground breaking, but it’s different and will add something to the story that I think most of you will appreciate.

That is, if you choose to continue reading.

You see, you don’t need to go any further.  Let me emphasize this here: my Praetorian Series has come to an end.  It’s over.  It certainly was a long journey (this book especially), and I’m happy with where it ended.  Jacob’s time in Rome is over, and I’m pretty sure he’s quite content with that as well.  The story is complete, the characters have found some semblance of peace and happiness, and all seems right with the world.

But there’s more.

There’s always more

The Praetorian Series may be over, but these characters still have more to experience.

So, if you’ve read this far, allow me to take a moment to thank you again.  Thanks for hanging on till the end.  I hope you enjoyed it.  But… if you didn’t enjoy it or feel unfulfilled, feel free to close your book or shut down your e-reader now.  If you have no intention of ever reading another Edward Crichton novel or have absolutely come to hate me or these characters, then please see yourself out.  Please understand, I am not bitter.  Everyone has their own unique tastes, thoughts, and opinions, and you’re certainly entitled to your own, even if they lead you to dislike my work. 

However, if it’s all the same to you, let’s just part ways now and move on.

There’s nothing for you here.

On the other hand, if you’re still with me here, please continue reading.  If you plan to read future stories that I write or if there are still lingering questions about this one that tickle the back of your mind… maybe you should keep on going.  Or not.  Perhaps you love happy endings and want to simply leave well enough alone.  That’s completely understandable too.  It isn’t easy venturing into the unknown, and that’s certainly what this is.  I left things pretty happy up there, but things may change in the pages below.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but allow me to present to you another book series as an example of what I’m trying to do.

A popular author I won’t name (as knowing may be a spoiler in of itself) once wrote a sprawling epic series of novels that took readers on a fantastic, mind-boggling journey filled with all kinds of high strangeness.  It’s one of my favorites.  Always will be.  But at the end of his final book, he offered his readers a choice: accept the ending as is, an ending that was fulfilling, heartfelt, complete, and the ending he too would have chosen.  Or, the reader could read on.  It was meant as a challenge, and the author was quite forthcoming that to continue reading was to do so at our own peril.

Against my better judgment, I’d read on, curiosity as much my bane as it is Jacob’s.

And the “ending” had frustrated me to no end.  Not because it was bad but simply because of its implications.

And it still gets to me.

I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from this writer, in the sense of scope I hope to attain with my work and plain old motivation, and I want to try something similar here.  Rest assured, if you’re familiar with the author and book series I’m referring to, don’t worry, what’s to follow isn’t nearly so exasperating or frustrating, but it may serve to annoy some – but only a little. 

Let’s offer a minor spoiler.

Jacob, Helena, Santino, and all the others are in semi-retirement.  My next novel will not feature them.  Nor the one after that.  In fact, I have no idea when or where or how they’ll show up next.  But they will.  As the Praetorian Series grew and grew, I started getting all kinds of crazy ideas, most of which are revealed through the endless half-truths and naughty nuggets of information left behind by Faustulus/Tim/Merlin throughout the last two books.

And these little plot details haven’t been contained to my Praetorian Series alone.  For those of you who have read my Sci-Fi novel
Starfarer: Rendezvous with Destiny
, you may have noticed at least one or two rather blatant call backs to my Praetorian books, as well as a few other nuanced and, in some ways, crucial similarities and/or references that are meant, quite simply, to tie the stories together… to tie the
universes
together.  I won’t explain how or why (at least not yet), but let’s just leave it at this: everything I have written and will ever write is connected and can (or has) influenced other material I’ve written. 

It’s all connected.

This may be another hint as to who that popular author above may be, but I can live with that.

Please note, I’m
not
trying to pressure you to buy more of my books here.  As I said, the Praetorian Series is complete and you in no way need to read any of my other work to understand anything about it.  But if you’re curious about delving into more of the story, you may want to pick up Starfarer along with its sequel (my next project) and other future stories I have coming down the pipeline. 

Will some view this as a nefarious scheme to sell more books?  Undoubtedly.  Haters – as the most profound poets of our age often say – gonna hate.  But this idea is more than just that.  It’s a way to expand on a concept I find truly fascinating and create an all-encompassing universe where pretty much anything could happen… and also for people to become reacquainted with interesting plot details left hanging and, potentially, allow for beloved characters to return without milking a particular series to death.

So let’s start here.

If you’d like a little peak into Jacob’s continued life or if you’re curious about just what the hell I’m talking about, feel free to read on.  If not,
arrivederci
to you.  Ta ta.  Been good knowing ya.  Enjoy the greener pastures on the other side.  Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.

All joking aside, again, to all of you, thank you so much for reading.  Writing this series has been a long, stressful, and
amazing
experience for me.  To those of you who have reached out to me over the years, offering a kind word, encouragement, or just a simple congratulations on becoming a father recently, I can’t begin to thank you enough.  Feel free to send more!

Oh, and before I forget, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and like me on Facebook and all that jazz.  I’m not the best blogger out there, but if you’re looking for more information in the days to come about me or my work (or love seeing
cute
baby pictures), those social media sites will become your newest and bestest BFFs.

So, if you’re still with me, and I hope you are after all these tens of thousands of words that probably seem to go on and on, let me invite you to read a few thousand more.  The book you have just read may be over, complete, finished… so consider what’s to follow dessert, no more than a cupcake’s worth.  Take your time; there’s no rush.  The written word isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and neither am I.  There’s still so much more to write and so many more stories to tell.  And I couldn’t imagine doing anything more enjoyable and rewarding.

Well… besides raising my son, of course, but he’s got to sleep sometimes and a dad’s got to stay busy…

XIII

Academia

December, 2029 A.D.

Washington D.C., USA

Winter had come early to our nation’s capital this year, although it wasn’t as disastrous as it had been last year when a blanket of snow had given the students a week off for Thanksgiving and had nearly cancelled finals leading into the holiday break.  Luckily, the faculty this year had been spared the tumultuous run around of having to condense weeks’ worth of lesson plans into only a few days in order to finish out the semester on time.  This year, academic life at Georgetown University had rolled on nearly unabated, the steady trickle of snowfall over the past two weeks acting as little more than an irritation, leaving the campus cold, fatigued, morbid, and ready for spring already.

I was certain I hated it more than anyone else.  Not because of the frigid walks from the parking lot to my building, or because I had to dig my car out of the snow every morning, or because every human being drove like idiots when the roads were just slightly wet or just barely kissed by snow, but because of the memories it recalled.

The worst of memories.

But despite the deep emotions I normally felt during these melancholic, wintry days, I chuckled as I stood propped against the lone window in my office with a forearm placed against its sill.  It still seemed odd that road conditions and fellow drivers were among the foremost annoyances in my life these days.  Five years hadn’t dulled the emotions I felt when thinking about the seven or so that had preceded these restive days, but it certainly had pushed them further and further into the back of my mind.  It was the snow, however, that always brought back the memories.  Memories of a burnt village, war, and the body of man lying on the ground, light snowflakes beginning to collect on his cooling skin.

I shut my eyes but then quickly opened them, forcing myself to watch the last few students crossing the frozen tundra that was Healy Lawn as they joyfully celebrated the end of finals and the beginning of a much needed vacation.  I even smiled as a group of youths leapt to the ground to create snow angels, only to destroy them as they hastily rose to their feet.  They scattered into the night and out of view, and I let out a deep breath as I returned to my desk against the opposite wall.

Plopping myself down painfully, my left leg always acting up during the cold months of winter, I fell into my uncomfortable and squeaky chair that I had to have replaced over the break.  Settled, I reached down into a drawer near my feet and retrieved the bottle of Jameson I kept hidden there for special occasions, along with a glass.  Pouring myself a few neat fingers, I returned the bottle, suffered through an ear shattering squeal as I leaned back in my chair, and took a sip as I admired my office that was already cluttered after only a semester in residence.

I’d made it a personal mission of mine to collect interesting knickknacks, tasteful antiques, rare books, and classically themed artwork the minute I’d returned to school in pursuit of my PhD.  I thought I’d done a pretty good job despite the accelerated nature of the program I’d been through, but a hoarder’s work was never really done. 

As for my ever elusive Classics PhD, I’d attained that sucker in less than five years, a feat that took many upward of a decade.  It had certainly helped that I, as far as I knew, understood Latin just as proficiently as anybody on the planet, and could speak circles around even the most ancient of professors, with a real knack for dialects too. 

Finding a program hadn’t even been difficult, although I was fairly certain former Navy officers who had served in the vaunted Navy SEAL program with a personal recommendation letter from the pope weren’t exactly applying to PhD programs in droves, let alone in the Classics.

But I could be wrong.

I’d tested out of most classes, breezed through others, had grudgingly picked up Greek again, and had started working on my dissertation basically right out of the gates.  And like finding a program, finding a dissertation advisor hadn’t been particularly difficult either; mine having been so eager to work with me because he’d been more interested in my participation in the war and where all my scars had come from than my dissertation topic itself.  In the end, even finding a post at Georgetown on a tenure track hadn’t been overly difficult, although maybe I had all my Jesuit schooling in the past to thank for that.

But even with the relative ease of my academic career so far, it wasn’t exactly as though the last few years of my life had been easy breezy.  In fact, they’d been among the hardest of my life, but for reasons completely unrelated to academia.

I smiled and took another sip of my whiskey before placing the glass atop a coaster, tapping the glass pane that was my desk twice in quick succession, activating a second pane on the wall that was nearly as large as the desk itself.  My “computer” interface sprang to life and I immediately used the input station that was my desk to call up my courses page on the screen before me, and confirmed that each of my students had in fact deposited their final exams into my inbox.  They were all there, all ninety or so exams, and my stomach sank at the thought of having to grade them all.  Luckily, I’d already busted my ass to get half of them done as they’d trickled in throughout the week, but I was in for a bit of a crunch this weekend as I hustled to get the rest completed before grades were due next Wednesday.

I swiped a hand across the glass and shooed the annoying screen away and called up my personal email account, the same one I’d had for over thirty years.  Interestingly, of everything in my life, it was the one thing that had persisted the longest, and had been there waiting for me like a loyal dog when I’d returned from my adventures in the past.  It had been a pain in the ass to clean out my inbox inundated with over four years of mail, but it had been an interesting experience all the same. 

Scanning the dozens of messages contained within my inbox now, most of them junk, I found one in particular from an old friend that had the subject line:
Thought you could use this.

I took a deep breath in preparation for what it could possibly be, and forced myself to open the email.  There was a quick message followed by a picture of a square play mat meant for a baby with all kinds of colorful contraptions dangling from a pair of bent bars that interlocked at their centers.  The message was short and sweet:

Hunter,

Thought you might need this.  I haven’t a bloody clue when it’ll arrive, but when I saw that it’s an
Infantino
brand, I couldn’t help but buy it.  I mean…
Infantino? 
How perfect is that?  Infant.  Santino.  It works on so many levels.  Maybe I should have bought it for him…

Cheers,

Wang

I smiled at the message as I deleted it, knowing quite well that such a device was already outdated – although there was always the
next
kid.  I hadn’t seen Wang very much in the past few years, Santino either for that matter, but we’d stayed in close contact.  They were both still with the military, doing things even I couldn’t know about, but with the war coming closer and closer to a complete close, I couldn’t imagine what they could possibly be doing.

Probably liaising with the Chinese who’d come out ahead of just about everybody.

But I wouldn’t let myself grow distracted with all that.  The last thing I wanted to think about was war or battles or fighting in general.  I’d come to find peace, surrounded with my books, houseplants, and intellectual pursuits, exactly as I’d intended.  After my discharge from the military, I’d had numerous job opportunities from private security firms or even military schools looking for my time.  I’d turned them all down.  I hadn’t even written for something like
Soldier of Fortune
magazine, even though the editor, an old friend of an old SEAL buddy of mine, had asked me to write an article on my thoughts concerning the new SR-25 model just being rolled off the line.

I simply wanted nothing to do with that world anymore.  I didn’t frequent bars populated with active servicemen and women or veterans – and there were certainly plenty in the area – nor did I visit news sites or blogs that detailed insider military operations or updated those of us out the military on new and fancy tech, gear, and kit.  I didn’t dislike the military or those who identified with it so much; it’s just that I simply didn’t want anything to do with it anymore.

I was finished with being the man of action.

I was fully happy just being a regular guy.

Nothing more than a professor and a…

“Daddy!”

I turned in my chair, forcing myself to ignore its ear shattering squeak, just in time to intercept a sprinting bundle of chub and bone and precocious brain matter that was already flying through the air.  I was nearly thrown to the ground when the body of a small child came plummeting out of the air and into my arms, but my reflexes were sharp, and this particular girl knew that all too well.  Catching her was effortless when I had time to react, and I was used to these little ambushes by now, so even though she’d caught me unprepared, I was still ready for her.

I caught her around her midsection and utilized the leverage gained from such a hold to my advantage, and lifted her straight into the air, delighted at the tiny squeals of pleasure coming from her as I threw her up and down.

“Hey, baby,” I said, lowering her to my lap so that I could let her give me an enormous hug that I savored as though it was my last.  “How’s my little girl doing?”

“Good, daddy!”  She exclaimed happily as she hopped off my lap to explore my office.  She’d only been here a few times and she loved looking at all the interesting things scattered around, along with the ferns and plants I had that dominated much of the room’s free space.

I smiled at her curious mind, but as I watched her, I once again renewed my vow to make sure she never let it get her into trouble.

“How was school, Penny-dear?”  I asked.

“Fun!  Mommy picked me up…”

I winced, realization of how she’d gotten here setting in.  I swiveled in my chair again and looked back at the doorway, and saw Helena standing there against the doorframe, her arms crossed against her chest, her mouth turned downward in a frown.  She looked mean, scary, and imposing in her heavy winter jacket and thigh high snow boots.

“Oh…” I started with an innocent smile.  “Hi.”

She raised her eyebrows at me.  “Penelope isn’t the only one you forgot…”

“Oh, shit!” I exclaimed, only to have Helena raise an eyebrow at me in annoyance.  I looked back at Penelope and smiled.  “I mean… oh, shitake mushrooms!  I know how much you love them, honey.”

Penelope looked back up at her mother and beamed at her.  “I do love shit, mommy.”

Helena glared at me, although her mouth seemed to be suppressing a smile, but she covered her inability to hide the fact that she wasn’t actually annoyed at me by opening her mouth to speak.  “How could you forget to pick Vincent up from day care today, Jacob?  You know I had a final to proctor.  I told you a dozen times and it was in your itinerary.  How am I going to really dive into my dissertation next year if you forget simple things like picking up your eight month old?”

I shrugged.  “Sorry, Helena.  Guess I got a little lost in my own mind today.”

Helena glanced out the window worriedly.  We’d been together for well over a decade now, and we’d been settled in D.C. for a third of that time.  She’d picked up how much the snow affected me long ago.  Reading my feelings wasn’t particularly hard, especially for her, but even the most unobservant individuals would have no trouble picking up on it.

Penelope, kneeling beside a low table that held my old chess set, the one my mother and I used to play with, held up the set’s two kings – The Dragon and King Arthur – and looked up as she was in the midst of crashing them together.  “It’s the snow, mommy.  Daddy hates the snow.  I don’t like it either.”

“Nobody likes the snow, baby,” Helena said but her voice wasn’t condescending in the least, just motherly, and Penelope went back to her imaginary pretend land of heroes and monsters.  I, however, could read the scorn in Helena’s voice as she turned back to me.  “It’s been snowing for weeks, Jacob.  Why now?”

I looked at the ground and shook my head.

“Today just feels like a bad day, Helena,” I said.  “Couldn’t explain it even if I tried.”

She blinked and stared at me, her expression often appearing just as it did now.

Worried.

She sighed to cover her appearance and stepped forward to scoop little Penelope up into her arms.  Both mother and daughter were spitting images of each other, Penelope inheriting Helena’s long, thick, black hair, darker skin tone, and sharp facial features, but her gray eyes were all mine.  In a way, the color of her eyes troubled me, a constant reminder that she too probably possessed whatever genes or genetic predisposition I had to control the orbs, but they’d been so far removed from my mind since they’d disappeared that I was rarely troubled when I took note of her eye color.

Although, I was now for some reason.

Helena, as perfect as she’d been before Merlin’s elixir and just as strong as she’d become after, cradled Penelope in her right arm and tickled her beneath her daughter’s thick coat.  Penelope giggled and squealed in delight, and I was reminded of how lucky I was that she was such a happy child.  She’d rarely cried as a baby and had always seemed joyful at just being alive.  She was always curious to learn new things as well, and that predisposition had continued as she’d grown.  Rarely did we need to discipline her and never had she done anything to truly draw my ire.