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 ever.” 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.
An unreasonable love of history.
The weekly combat/weapons training that had begun since his arrival was also fun. It’s kind of cool to have your teacher refer to you as ‘Master Johnson‘.
He was also one of the two people from the 21st century that knew about my knack for traveling back in time. Tonight was extremely special for Evonne, though. He didn’t know it yet but I had finely decided to ask him to join me again on my upcoming voyage.
He'd came with me only once before when I'd went to see Nero and, I've got to be honest, that little venture didn't end well.
The elevator dinged again and the door opened to a ten foot hall. The floor, walls and ceiling were all made from chrome steel. At the end of the short hall was yet another door that required my hand impression, retinal scan and voice recognition for access. After slapping my hand on the scanner, widening my right eye and saying my name, the one foot thick steel door slowly opened from the ground up.
I walked in and clapped my hands three times fast.
The lab, or man cave, as I called it for Evonne’s benefit, who didn’t exactly understand the term, or chose not to express that he did, was where I spent most of my time in the house. Upon my clapping the enormous room lit up with white lights.
“Welcome, Jericho Johnson.” A female computer voice announced when I entered. As much as I like to say that I had an awesome computer that I could talk to and would do all my paperwork for me- that would be a lie. I had the female computer greeting installed with the lab. I mean, why not, right?
Inlaid in the walls were some of the most state-of-the-art touch screen monitors to date. Right now each one of the six foot tall by ten foot wide screens were all filled to the brim with my Rome information. The first had longitudes and latitudes and some of the most accurate maps I could find of A.D. 97 Rome. The second had names of famous structures, places and people of that particular date.
The tops of most of the tables in the room were the same touch screen monitors, just laying down. These were easier to access so were employed in basically all my studies. The tables that weren’t boasting the touch screen top were located at the back wall and were all overflowing with armor and weapons from at least twelve different eras. I approached these and selected my latest edition. The double-bladed axe that Bjourn the Berserker had his best blacksmiths craft for me before my departure yesterday.
I swung it around a few minutes when I heard Evonne’s voice buzz over the speakers. “I am here, Master Johnson, and I have your sushi tacos.”
“Admit guest.” I said and the steel door slid open. Evonne stepped in with a tray held high. He brought it over to the table with a three-dimensional map of the entire city of Rome glowing green from the monitor and set it right on the coliseum.
“Your tacos and the morning newspaper, If you have not seen it, sir.” He said
Evonne only brought me the paper if it had something about me in it. This was the custom he had adopted on his own and I must say, it was fantastic. Early on I had made it a point not to read about myself in the paper. Chicago had a bad habit of boasting to the world that the awesome future-telling genius Jericho Johnson lived in their city limits.
But if I had never started reading about all the conspiracy theories around my persona that the newspaper folks liked to think they knew about me, then I wouldn’t have had all the laughs that I get out of reading them.
But tonight was different.
“So what is it this time?” I asked, starting on the sushi tacos. “I sacrifice virgins to obtain my sophisticated premonition?”
Evonne held up the paper. “Something like that.”
The front page was of me and five of my students, conveniently all girls, at a local restaurant. We seemed to be laughing and one girl had her arm linked dangerously through mine.
I swallowed my bite and took another crunchy chomp on my taco. “It was like a field trip of sorts.” I said through a mouthful of sushi and corn chips.
“Of sorts?” Evonne asked, raising an eyebrow. “To Denny’s.”
I swallowed again and leveled a finger at him. “Don’t forget your place, butler. I will, like, fire you in a split second.”
“No you won’t.” Evonne said and smiled for the first time that evening. “Who else would put up with your eccentricities, Master Johnson?
I finished my first taco and started on the second. “You’re right. So it would be a shame to lose you, Mitch.” I laughed.
We both chuckled for
a second then Evonne became serious. “But really, sir… your students? It just does not look… proper.”
“What?” I asked around my last bite of awesome deliciousness. “It wasn’t anything, honestly, man.” I held up my hands in surrender. “Strictly schoolwork stuff. So what’s the headline say?”
Evonne scanned it with an uninterested glance. “Something about a prophet-pimp from Chicago… oh and they mention your familiarity with Mr. Gates, sir.”
I stood, shaking my head. “Dude, this town sucks, Mitch. Is there no decency?”
“In America? No, sir.” Evonne decided to throw in.
I moved the tray off the three-dimensional map, watching the coliseum phase back into life again. “Yes. We’ll have to see if the Romans were anymore decent.”
But as I looked at the coliseum, the most infamous thing about the said Romans, I knew that the answer to their decency was no.
“To work, then.” Evonne said to me, taking off his long tailed coat and rolling up his sleeves.
After a few hours of sifting through all the information we had about A.D. 97, Evonne proposed the brilliant idea of going back to A.D. 98 instead. “Cornelius Tacitus, Roman historian and senator, finished two whole books that year, Master Johnson. And Emperor Nerva died and was succeeded by Trajan.”
“Are the books obtainable?” I asked.
“Possibly. And the celebration for a new emperor would not be one to miss, sir.” He said, swiping his hand over the screen to scroll through his list of events. “Trajan also went to Germania the same year and defeated the Bructeri, returning as a hero. What a busy little emperor. Yet another glorious celebration…”
I had mapped out my landing spot in the city, choosing some grassy flats on the outskirts. What? Did you think I would blindly appear somewhere in the great city of Rome? No. Not a good idea. My glove was able to just land me anywhere but would land me in exact places when the correct longitudes/latitudes were punched in. “We’ll only need a moment or two with the books. Just make sure we have a digital camera.” I said this purposely and watched Evonne’s reaction.
He had his back to me but turned his head slightly. “Master Johnson, did you say we?”
I smiled and walked to his table. “I did indeed, Mitch.” I slapped him gently on the shoulder, “I need a hand on this one and, who knows, maybe we’ll get to use all that combat training you’ve been pouring into my head again.”
He nodded simply, as if I had just asked him to ride with me across town instead of time and space. Then he added, “I hope we do not have to use any combat training whatsoever, Master Johnson. Rome is not the best place to have a good knowledge of such things, sir, and after Nero...”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember Nero.”
I walked to the bulletproof glass case that held my white metallic glove, spinning on a turnstile like a show car. “Well then,” I said, taking the glove out and slipping in on my right hand, wincing a little as the tiny jolt of electricity hummed on the veins in my wrist. Within a few seconds my heart rate and temperature appeared on the screen. “We’ll just have to nip that it the bud, now won’t we?” I said, pointing a ridiculously sharp finger at the coliseum.
Chapter 4