Redshift

Alexandria, Egypt - October 15, 30 BCE

“Stēthi entautha!” came the shout from down the stone hallway. It took a heart beat for the new translator device to translate the language, having to engage with the preset dictionary.

The inventor had promised over the next several years, artificial intelligence could make these into real-time translators, even accounting for slang and dialects. For now, he had to deal with slight delays.

The receiver was about the size of an old over-the-ear hearing aid, but Grady had reworked it—flattened the microphone and power pack into a prosthetic molded behind the ear. With a little color-match makeup, it blended well enough to pass a casual glance.

The output device was a different story. That was moved to a small pack worn under the clothing with a Bluetooth connection added on. The speaker would play the sound in such a way that as James whispered his reply in English, the voice heard would sound sufficiently human to trick someone not expecting a disembodied voice. Or so they hoped. The plan had been to just avoid making contact as always, but moving out of European historical areas had necessitated the possibility to speak to locals.

This was, however, not the kind of local James wanted to stop and talk to.

“‘Ei mē stēs, se apoktenō!’ came the shout again — louder now, the voice trembling not with fear but eagerness, as if the guard hoped James wouldn’t stop, just so he could have permission to be violent. If not you stop, I will kill you. Sometimes this stupid thing didn’t put it into normal speech. One of the promises for later.

I just need to get to a hide-away place and jump. James thought to himself, looking for open doors or…

James didn’t see the scribe step into the hallway. Plowing into the young boy knocked both of them over, and scattering dozens of papyri across the floor in a flurry of paper.

“Sorry” James said aloud, forgetting that the translator would repeat back the proper translation a beat later. He almost didn’t mouth the disembodied words in time.

The sudden onslaught of voices caused the translation to pause so James picked himself up and kept running, hoping that the papyri would at least slow down the guard.

At the end of the hallway there was a bronze brazier, burning brightly and casting light down the otherwise dim hallway. Here, the hallway split to the left and right.

Well, I’ve already made enough noise tonight. Might as well go all in. He thought to himself as he reached the brazier, grabbed it, and spilled the burning oil all over the floor behind him. He heard the guard’s shouts change tenor and purpose.

“Water! Get some water!” The translator played in his ear.

James skidded to a stop, looked around. No one was in this part of the hallway so no one could see him and the Anti-Chronometer device. He checked his note pad to make sure that his steps and directions were still safe. He was deep inside the palace, their first place to look, hoping that the tomb would have been here on the island. However, it did not seem as if Cleopatra was buried here and hopes that her tomb might lay on the mainland were more accurate. That’s where Celeste was looking, so all he needed to do was get to her and link up. Because of the attention he gathered here, he was going to go for a swim before coming back to get to Celeste. The notebook told him how far he’d have to swim from where he was to where he needed to be, within a safe margin for error; he wasn’t exactly counting his steps after the guard spotted him.

“Ten seconds, dear,” he said quietly, grinning before tapping return and falling into the harbor.

On the shore, Celeste was already moving through the marble statuary and colonnades of the Royal Quarter. Celeste remembered that even by the late 1800’s when she was in school, this part of Alexandria was more myth than memory, lost centuries ago beneath the Mediterranean. Yet here, in the flicker of torchlight, the beauty of the marble and the sculpted gods rivaled anything the modern world had built. San Francisco had tried to capture such majesty with the Palace of Fine Arts, but plaster and wood were no match for this — the real thing. She and James had visited that imitation on their honeymoon. She’d loved it then, though now, seeing the original, she knew why he’d called it a ghost of what once was.

As she followed the road deeper into the quarter, the grandeur began to fade. By the time she reached sight of the great mausoleum, the avenue had become ruin. Marble cracked, smoke clung to broken columns, and the air still smelled of oil and ash. The road ended in a small square where Roman legionaries milled about, conspicuously unarmed, while Greeks and Egyptians kept their distance, watching with wary eyes.

Across the square, a grand arch marked the start of a causeway to the tomb itself. Celeste slipped beneath it, her presence barely noticed among the locals.

The causeway was lined with sphinxes and Greek statues, their faces blackened by soot. Yet the tomb ahead gleamed pristine, as though untouched by war. Final touches had been laid after the chaos of Octavian’s invasion — after Actium, after Cleopatra’s death.

Celeste had expected something more Egyptian — the hidden chambers and painted corridors she’d seen in photographs of the desert tombs. Instead, the structure was elegant, almost Greek in its restraint. She’d have to ask James about that. Cleopatra was a Pharaoh, wasn’t she?

The gardens surrounding the tomb bore the same scars of battle as the rest of the palace grounds, yet the tomb itself had been spared. Its façade gleamed pale gold in the firelight, fresh-cut stone unmarred. Guards stood before its sealed doors. As much as she longed to go inside — to glimpse the resting place of these giants of history — she was here only to locate it, not disturb it.

She found an intact marble bench and sat. From beneath her dress she drew her notebook, noting her steps from the starting point to here, adding a few paces more to mark the location.

Footsteps echoed behind her. She slid the notebook back beneath her gown and glanced down at a fragment of shattered tile half-filled with stagnant rainwater.

“You’re late,” she whispered in English. She’d learned the sound of his gait — the rhythm of James moving quietly.

“How is it the women in my life always know I’m there before I’ve actually arrived?” he said with a soft chuckle.

“So that’s it, then?”

“Appears so.”

She looked up at the tomb — a stunning blend of Greek and Egyptian form. The sheer beauty of it caught her breath.

A shout came from the square, followed by the ordered thunder of boots. James turned. A column of legionaries marched forward, the Aquila held high, weapons glinting in the torchlight.

At their head walked a man who could be no other than Octavian — the future Augustus.

He was young, far too young to command an empire that would outlive them all. His armor was polished but unadorned, the crimson cloak drawn close against the harbor chill. He walked with the deliberate stride of one who had already won, and knew the world would make way for him. The soldiers flanking him were silent, their faces shadowed beneath their helmets. Only the soft clink of armor and the crunch of broken tile marked their passing.

Two legionaries split off as they neared, placing themselves between the column and where James and Celeste stood in the shadows.

Octavian’s face caught the torchlight — pale, severe, sharp-edged. The rumors had called him cold, calculating. But he looked neither cruel nor kind, only inevitable. He passed the guards at the tomb’s entrance without a word, laurel wreath in hand, and stopped before the sealed doors.

“We should go,” Celeste whispered as the two soldiers returned to their place in the column.

“I was thinking the same thing.” James pocketed the small camera he’d snuck out when he saw the future Emperor Augustus heading their way. He hoped that the furtive shot he’d taken, just one image of the man who would soon rule the known world, was clear.

They rose and left the gardens the way the guards had entered, trying to avoid both suspicion and any other historical figures that might show up. It was one thing to run into a random person or speak to a shop keep, or even get chased by an angry guard. For those, the sheer number of daily interactions meant any memory of James or Celeste would be lost in the chaff. But speaking to someone like Octavian could lead to any number of scenario where they would become part of the recorded history; a problem best left to Grady’s nightmares.

When they had arrived in Alexandria for this job, they had scoured the city looking for a place that they could travel to and from the past without being seen. That location had ended up being the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa. It was nearly an hour walk, but the site afforded them a place to visit in 2058 and not have too many people around in 30 BCE.

Plus, Grady could stick around and make sure that when they came back, no one would be around to notice the young man and woman had vanished and then magically blinked back into existence.

As they made their way through the city, the grandeur of the Royal Quarter first gave way to the real ancient city; the place where, during the day, shouting merchants and lumbering overloaded carts clogged the streets and the oppressive stench of humanity, fish, and refuse was ever present. Even in the evening, the Canopic Way buzzed with life beneath the October Mediterranean sky. Armed Roman legionaries stood watch, an occupying force trying to keep the powder keg from sparking. The collision of Greek architecture and Egyptian spirit reminded Celeste to ask a question that had been nagging her since they arrived.

“Why is there so much Greek things here?” She whispered. While they were both fairly sure their foreign tongue would go unnoticed for the most part, the game was still being played and attention was bad. “This is Egypt, but the sphinx and hieroglyphics seem secondary to the visions of Athens.”

“Oh, because that Egypt is older here than here is to us.” James said, realizing that they hadn’t talked about the history of this all, just the what and how of the Archivist’s job. “By this time, Cleopatra’s, like several generations back Macedonian grandfather, Ptolemy, had come over with Alexander the Great and been named its ruler after Alexander’s death.”

They made another turn, moving deeper into the residential area of the city. The lingering presence of the shops and ‘life’ of the city gave way to the true heartbeat of the city. Celeste felt the tension of the Royal Quarter bleed away as they entered the shopping district, but here she felt safe and relaxed for the first time since arriving. Even as the sun continued to set, children played in the streets.

“So what you’re telling me is that the school books were wrong?” She asked.

“Not so much wrong, as this,” James waved his hand the neighborhood but meaning the entire city. “This is not as sexy as King Tut and the pyramids.

“Who?” Celeste cocked her head, genuinely curious, but trying to use body language to remind James that some things she needed to be taught still. When Celeste had left San Francisco with James, after he’d saved her from being killed and forever changed her fate (and after he manipulated time to change his as well with a well timed brick throw), King Tutankhamun’s final resting place was still 16 years away from being discovered by Howard Carter. The fact that his tomb seemed largely spared from grave robbers was why the discovery moved the boy king from academic discussions to a household name in their future.

James finished explaining the story of Tutankhamun and his tomb’s discovery as they found themselves back at the rudimentary tomb they had arrived from 2058 in front of. In the future it was empty, the bones long since moved out of the niche; but today it was still occupied and fresh enough that the linen wrapped body still had a human shape.

In their search for the right place to travel, they had learned that this tomb was the best fit for their needs — a site that existed in both eras and offered enough privacy for James and Celeste to move between 30 BCE and 2058 without being seen. The chamber they used was among the earliest in the catacombs, its age lending it a kind of anonymity. It was basic and old, while the later tombs had intricate carvings and frescoes.

James traveled first by leaning over pretending to tie his shoe. Once he arrived, he placed the Anti-Chronometer on the ground and tapped return so that in ten seconds Celeste would have the device to use for her travel. Once it came back, Celeste would repeat the process, this time keeping the device with them. It was a clunky way of traveling, but if an observer thought he saw James one beat and gone the next, it would be more easily dismissed as a mistake than two people disappearing. To ensure an anonymous return, they would message Grady when ready and he would let them know if it was clear to travel. They had to move quickly because the drift would mean that they would be later returning than the 10 second automatic gap. Grady would wander around the catacombs and once he got the message, he’d go back to the starting point and message back.

The message came back quickly: “Clear”.

“Ready my dear?” James said gently grabbing Celeste’s hand.

“Always.” She said smiling, then looking over at the corpse in the wall next to them, shuddering. “Especially this time.”

They both crouched down as they arrived and James tapped the Return button. In a blink of an eye, the sounds of people talking returned as Grady’s presence and the corpses absence.

“Did you guys find it?” Grady said smiling. This was going to be the biggest archaeological find of the century. In 2024, a passageway had been theorized to be the hallway leading to the tomb, but its flooded state left little hope that anything would be found. Their mission was to confirm if accessing any site would be worth the immense effort of excavation.

“We did. It wasn’t on the island.” James said, still crouched pulling the tunic off and rushing into his cotton button up. Celeste had simply pulled a conservative pullover dress back over her replica ancient clothing.

“I found it near the harbor, built out into the water.” Celeste said standing up to help block James as he buttoned his shirt up. “It was an amazing structure.”

Grady quietly clapped in his excitement. This job was not a commission; it was a sale. Once they confirmed the approximate location, they would sell the GPS coordinates to the highest bidder. After the break James and Celeste took and just the costs incurred during the Epsilon Book job had left them needing an influx of cash. This would be that influx.

“Let’s get back to the hotel, you guys were gone for a while and I’m looking kind of weird just hanging around for so long.” Grady said looking back and forth. “We can map it out and if we can, we’ll get out to the spot as best we can tomorrow to get the GPS lock.”