2 My Arrival I awoke when someone kicked me. I sat up and looked around me, taking in my surroundings. I seemed to be on a ship. What was I doing on a ship, I wondered. Then I remembered the time machine. I looked around for it. It was lying on the deck a couple of feet away from me, but it was melted into a barely recognisable blob. I remembered how at first when Jack demonstrated it, it felt warm from the friction of it’s super-light-speed vibration. I guess the vibrations from such a long trip must have heated it up too much. Well, it looked like I was here to stay. Wherever “here” was. Ancient Rome, I knew that much, but where?. Nowhere near Rome itself. Out at sea somewhere. I guess Jack wasn’t kidding when he said the coordinates weren’t always right. Well, thank God for that “seeking the nearest solid surface thing. I looked up at the person who had kicked me earlier. He was wearing a red knee-length tunic, and had a sort of helmet on his head and held a spear in his hand. He shouted something at me in what sounded like Greek. I summoned up the little bit of Koine Greek that I knew. “Pou eimi?” I said (which means “Where am I?”). He laughed and said something I couldn’t understand. I heard laughter all around me. It was then that I noticed there were other similarly-dressed men surrounding me. I assumed them to be soldiers, but they didn’t look like the pictures of Roman soldiers that I had seen. The soldier who kicked me earlier jabbed at me with his spear and then grabbed my hair and pulled me to my feet. The front of my shirt felt wet. I looked down and saw that I was bleeding where he had jabbed me. He pushed me and he and the other soldiers pushed and kicked me to the back of the ship, under the poop-deck where about forty or fifty people were sitting. I saw that their feet were shackled to the benches. The soldier pushed me onto one of the benches and bent down and grabbed my ankle. I kicked at him, which led to a spear-jab from one of the other soldiers. He shacked my ankle to the bench, but left the other ankle free. Then he stood up and shouted something at me. He shouted at the other captives and they all looked away from him. Then he and the other soldiers stomped off. I looked around at the other captives. Most of them were blond haired, some with beards and all of them were dressed in leather pants and cloth shirts which were for the most part torn and blood-stained. Now I saw why the soldiers thought I was one of them, because I was wearing a shirt and pants like they were. A few of them were talking amongst themselves in a language I couldn’t identify. It appeared that I had landed on some sort of cargo ship, since I could see a lot of chests, trunks, etc stacked around the edges of the deck leaving the center open for the soldiers and sailors to move around. They were probably returning from some battle somewhere with a cargo of prisoners of war, of whom I was now one, and other war booty. What a choice of a place to land. On a ship! If I had landed on land, I could have had a chance to run and escape, especially if it had been in a city with lots of places to hide. But on a ship, where could I run to? Well, now I had to find a way to get out of the bind I was in. My thoughts were interrupted when one of the soldiers brought a couple of loaves of bread and a bucket of water. Each of us was given a piece torn off one of the loaves and a drink of water from a chipped clay cup that was in the bucket. Not exactly gourmet cuisine, but it was probably all slaves got to eat, and it was marginally better than starvation, which I figured was the only alternative to eating it, so I managed to choke it down despite not being hungry. Being hurtled through time and then deposited on an ancient Roman ship, and then roughed up by Roman soldiers and chained to a bench has a tendency to kill the appetite I guess. When it got dark several of the captives managed to doze off sitting up, but I found it impossible to sleep, which came as no surprise given the circumstances. And I don’t just mean the circumstances of what had happened to me today, but also the fact that I had never been on a ship before, and with the constant rocking and pitching of the ship, my stomach was letting me know in no uncertain terms that I was definitely not a seagoing sort of person. After a couple of hours I saw a light in the distance. The ship began sailing in the direction of the light. I couldn’t see what the source of the light was, but I assumed, by the fact that the sailors were not alarmed by it, and were in fact sailing towards it, that it was nothing to worry about, probably a lighthouse of some sort. Which meant that we were nearing the ship’s destination. Which meant that I’d finally be off this ship, for good or for bad, but whatever happened to me when I got off the ship, I guess it would be better than being on a ship and being seasick all the time. I tried to talk to the other captives, using my limited knowledge of Koine, and substituting Modern Greek words when I didn’t know the proper Koine words, to try to find out exactly where I was, where we were headed and what sort of fate awaited me when we got there, but none of them understood my hybrid Koine/Modern Greek, or if they did they didn’t want to talk to me. When daylight finally arrived I could see that the source of the light from the night before was a massive lighthouse, with a large square base and topped by a tower with the light in the top. There was a sharp glare coming from the top, like sunlight reflecting off of a smooth surface. We sailed past the lighthouse into a small bay and the ship stopped in fromt of a dock or pier of some sort. Several men came aboard and another man, whom I had seen earlier barking orders at the sailors, whom I now assumed to be the captain, began shouting at the men who came aboard. They began carrying the trunks, chests and other large boxes and bags that I mentioned earlier off the ship. The soldier I had seen earlier came over to us and yelled something at us which I didn’t understand. Judging by the puzzled expressions on the other captives’ faces it appeared they didn’t understand either. A couple of other soldiers came and unshackled us from the benches, and some other soldiers herded us into a group in the center of the deck. When the men I had seen earlier finished unloading the ship, we were then herded off the ship, under the watchful eyes of the spear-wielding soldiers. Once off the ship we were loaded into several wagons with benches along the two sides. A soldier climbed onto the wagon and sat on a seat at the rear. Then another man climbed into the driver seat at the front of the wagon. He was wearing a plain grey tunic and not a red one, so I assumed he was probably a civilian. Then we started moving. As we made our way along the city’s narrow winding streets, I could see several Roman style buildings, but we also passed an Egyptian temple, which gave me the suspicion that we were possibly in Egypt somewhere. My suspicion was bolstered by seeing a few sphinxes in front of some of the buildings. A big city in Egypt somewhere. Cairo, maybe? No, Cairo was built by the Muslims and wouldn’t exist for a few more centuries. Besides, this city was on the seacoast. From what I had read about ancient Egypt, I only knew of one city on the coast. Alexandria. And if this was Alexandria, then the lighthouse I had seen earlier must be the famous Pharos lighthouse, which we had learned in histoy class was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. So apparently I was in Roman Alexandria, being taken to God-knows-where with no idea what was going to happen to me when I got there. After a while we stopped in front (or in back, I wasn’t sure) of a large building. A soldier jumped off of one of the other wagons and banged on the door. After a few minutes it opened. The soldier said something I couldn’t hear to whoever it was that opened the door. He then shouted something in the direction of the wagons. The soldier that had been guarding us stood up and said something to us. He then jumped off the wagon and removed the tailgate then climbed back onto the wagon and shouted at us again. Another soldier began prodding the captives with his spear and we stood up then were herded off the wagon and into the open door. Once inside, we were herded across a large room, and down a set of steps to another open door. Once inside the second door, it was closed and locked from the outside. I looked around, trying to see in the dark. There was a barred window across the room. I stumbled over to it and looked outside. The street was even with the window. I could see some people walking past. A dog came running up to the window. Seeing me looking out, it growled at me and went on its way. When night finally came I sat down on the floor near the window and tried, without much success, to sleep. In the darkness I could hear something scampering around on the floor. Several somethings. Rats, I assumed. That made it all the harder to sleep. I hoped I wouldn’t be in this dungeon for very long. It was still dark outside early the next morning when the door opened. A man in a green tunic peered in the door and shouted something over his shoulder, and several men appeared. Two of them entered the dungeon and shouted something at us that I didn’t understand, and then began pushing us to the door. We were then herded up the stairs and back into the large room we had passed through the previous day. We were then herded into a corner where there was a large pile of something that appeared to be cloth, but it was hard to see in the dim light. It was then that I noticed the group of captives included about fifteen children that seemed to range in age from about three ot four to teenagers, some of whom were crying. The man in the green tunic said something and pointed at the pile on the floor. The captives looked at him with puzzled expressions, obviously not understanding what he was saying. Then a man in a toga that I had not noticed before came over and shouted something in another language I couldn’t understand . The captives slowly approached the pile which I now say was a pile of tunics. The captives began taking them off the pile. The man in the green toga saw me watching them and shouted something at me in Greek and pointed at the tunics. I slowly inched forward and took one. It was made of some sort of heavy material not unlike burlap. The other captives were changing into the tunics and I followed their example. The tunic was a couple of sizes too big and quite uncomfortable. Then we wre led to the other side of the room where there were several wooden benches. We sat down and a couple of men came over carrying a box. One of them took something out of the box. It was a pair of shackles. Then one by onethey began shackling our ankles. Then we were taken one by one to a table in the center of the room where the man in the toga whom I mentioned earlier was seated on a wooden crate. Each captive was taken individually up to the table, where the captive was questioned by the man in the toga. When my turn came he said something to me in the other language. “Ou noeto” (“I don’t understand”) I said. “Hellinisti ginoskeis?” (“Do you speak Greek?”) he said, surprised. “Mikra” (“A little”) I said. He worote some things down on a piece of papyrus about the size of a piece of typing paper. and then set it on a stack of other similar pieces of papyrus. When all of us had our turns, then we were returned to the dungeon.