MONKEY'S NEW MOON - RELOJANDO CRONICOS

I get off at the 897 AD subway station to a heavy thundershower, ready to hunt down a reckless temporal marauder, a high priest, and a well-dressed corpse. I pull my hat down over my head and tighten the coat around my waist. At customs they asked me if I have anything to declare. "I'm Marcus Tempus," I announce proudly. Then set the 38 Special that Fab finally agreed to sell me onto the counter. I declare it a paperweight and not a twentieth-century firearm. They believe me.

Reloj resembles Rome with its cobblestone streets and aqueducts, and I take a deep breath to enjoy the first fresh, radioactive-free air I've inhaled for months. Then I cough and plug my nose, as the stench of horse manure and sewage overwhelm me.

I go to the Clock Pub, looking for conversation, the kind with clues. Rumors of a bicycle plane seem to be true, but I'm not going to pedal across the Mediterranean. Hot air balloon turns out to be the best option. The inside track Marla gave me on the Zeplins would have been better, but they were stuck in a customs warehouse, probably waiting on a bribe. Regardless, a balloon is a better option than weeks on a sailing galley and horseback.

I use the time to buy some local merchant robes, one with a hooded cloak, and a pair of sandals, so I can blend in once I land in Italy. After a few days I'm already craving the comforts of post-apocalyptic 2100. At least they have indoor plumbing, electricity, and compact umbrellas. Sure, cancer rates are a lot higher but there's antibiotics, and you don't need to worry about a painful death just because your finger gets cut while hanging up your wet fedora on a rusty nail.

I consider a bathhouse to clean up before my trip to Rome but find myself feeling modest after years living in the future. Something I have to get over quickly if I'm to use the public toilet.

Finally, after a week of uncomfortable lodging and a harrowing trip floating over the ocean just ahead of a dark cyclone, I find myself in Rome once again. This time nearly a thousand years after I was born there and more than a thousand years before I last visited, while on holiday tour to see the newly minted ruins.

I start my work almost immediately. The dame let me keep the photo but I have little else to go on. I start at all the churches and monasteries, then make my way to the pubs and brothels. Looking for an odd man, a foreigner, strange ways, and long hair. He's impulsively violent and has strong body odor. Turns out I'm describing half the city.

Money was the only way to get answers. In my day a bag of salt might get the job done. That time was past, so lucky for me I brought rolls of copper and silver-plated zinc coins. I picked them up from some failed 21st century state. They are nearly as worthless now as they will be later, but no one wises on the plating. 

I pass by the Vatican gate. There's commotion, soldiers, blowing horns, and the chatter of gossip. I walk up to one of the guards.

    "Quid agitur?" I venture in my native latin.

    "Trial," mutters the guard.

    "Cuius?" I'd seen the photo but I still wasn't sure I was in the right timeline.

    "The Pope," coughs out the guard, fidgeting with his chainmail, looking away as if embarrassed. 

    "Quis auderet?" I already know, but I feel like I'm expected to ask.

    "Only his Holiness, the Pope."

    "Himself on trial?" Nemo iudex in causa sua.

    "No, the one before."

    "The dead Pope?"

    "The very same."

I have to wonder. Has the Shifter gone back in time and brought the former Pope with him or is he gonna take the current Pope back there? When the Vatican doors open a breeze of stench hits my nose and I know immediately the trial has nothing to do with time-travel. At least not in the conventional meaning of the term. It's no upending of fate derived from human contravention of nature via advanced technology. This is old fashioned human insanity derived from supernatural delusions of vain narcissistic megalomania.     

Still, that doesn't rule out this temporal nomad, who is likely behind the whole thing. Even by Roman-era standards of the day it's bizarre. At least the Pope wouldn't suffer. Not the dead one anyone. Who could say what his sitting Holiness is going through. This has to be the work of someone far more savage. From a much more ancient time. My client's boyfriend, no doubt. His name is Zog and I find him sparring in a courtyard by the Colosseum.

He's dressed sparsely in animal skins, mostly feline, and looks as if he spends time at the gym. Or breaking rocks with his bare hands. He has a wide low forehead and a flat nose. Shorter than I would have guessed but his broad shoulders are formidable. His thick long hair is tied up in a bun.

One of his guards sees me and reaches for his sword. I pull the revolver and fire a warning shot over his head, piercing a hole in a shield on the fence just behind him. Now I have everyone's attention.

    "Just here to talk," I say. "We have a mutual friend. She asked me to find you."

Zog turns out to be a lot more civilized than she gave him credit for. He invites me to a chalice of wine. Said if there was more time we might go to the arena and watch a lion feeding spectacle together. Of course we'd have to do it several hundreds years earlier because the current Colosseum is being looted for limestone, marble, and iron.

    "She doesn't want there to be any hard feelings," I lie, gulping down the wine. "And what's this about a trial of a dead man?" I'm not much for smalltalk and he's sliding a sharpening stone along the edge of a broadsword while we chat.

    "She pops out of shadows in every era, has a thing for costumes and drama, and hires a detective from the future to follow me, but somehow I'm the stalker?"

 Could be the translation collar but sounds like he has a point. "Who's idea was this with Formosus? Bit barbaric for 890 but guessing it might be normal for your HomeWhen."

"Temporal bigotry," he mutters. "My people are neanderthal, from before the time of writing, but we never dug up the dead."

Neanderthal is a familiar term but I know nothing of their cultural norms. I've been called one myself, though only by ex-girlfriends. 

"You're dressed in the skin of dead animals," I say, lighting my pipe.

"They're synthetic," he claims, petting the panther head covering half his chest. "It's a fashion craze in the 2190's."

 "You're here all the same. Can't be a coincidence."

   "This is but the beginning Shamus. A new temporal orthodoxy is in the forming. Carved up and pasted together, a collage of eras, events of my choosing."

    "Are you Protestant or something?"

    "A what?"

    "What do you have against the Church?"

    "I don't care about religion. It's the tyrants of history I'm after. Righting the wrongs. I'm going to bring them to trial, one at a time. For what those people did to mine. Subrogation I call it."

I have to admit, sounds like he and I are cut from the same cloth. Righting wrongs was something we pursued vigorously before Rome fell, but his methods might be a bit extreme. "What you're suggesting is impossible," I say, though without conviction. "Why not go to the future and make things better the old fashion way?"

 "To lay a new order, first I must sit in judgement on what came before. History is a string of tragedies, fraught with peril, for which no one is held to account. My history will be a just reign. Without moral hazard. The Synod is a nexus and will be a symbol to future generations. A new temporal order and I will rule it for all time." He finishes his sword sharpening exercise, which is a little too Freudian for my taste, and plants the weapon solidly into the sand, tip first.

 "I know a thing or two about rulers," I say, choosing my words carefully. "I even chatted with Marcus Aurelius once. He told me that empire, fame, and power could never make a man immortal. No matter how important, no matter how powerful, all of them die. All of them are forgotten. He said there's only one path to immortality."

    "What's that?" Asks Zog.

    "Write a self-help book."

He twists the sword in the sand and looks down as if he's seriously considering it. "You have to understand, history like reality can be whatever we want it to be. Think of all the genocides, the wars, all of it can be undone, with full indemnity." He makes a digging motion with the sword. As if he expects to uncover something beneath the sand, or stab some creature burrowing there, but the hole he digs is immediately refilled. His forehead creases in either determination or anger.

"In which timeline? Even if you change one there's a billion others that will remain the same, or be even worse. The Subway was supposed to unify us, give us a common ground. Sure, there are parallel lines which offer something flexible, etiam possibilitas quod erraverimus, but people still need to know they go from here to there without the stations changing all the time. Your Shifter powers threaten to leave us all stranded."

"So I guess you're not for justice," says Zog, yanking the sword out of the ground and sweeping it within inches of my pipe until it rests across his chest. His contemptuous smile blending with the shimmering reflection of the blade.

"There's a difference between justice and a show trial. Especially one with twisted evidence, or no evidence, or one that accuses some but not others. Not to mention charging the deceased. Wouldn't it be more just to get him when he's still alive?"

"You'll have to excuse me Detective Tempus, grace period is up, and we're out of time."

"Of course we are and nothing good is gonna come of it," I stammer.

He sheaths the sword on his back and then pulls on a raincoat. Probably polyester. "I mean the Synod starts soon, I'll be helping with the prosecution. You're welcome to join. Be a witness to history."

Tempus fugit.....I mutter to myself as I check my watch.

                                             &

The Vatican's great hall fills with dignitaries. Cardinals, bishops, priests, and princes from all over the kingdom arrive to witness the Pope's justice. The prior Pope sits on a throne. His nine-month-old rotting, horrid stench of decomposing flesh, propped up in the midst of witnesses and spectators. The aroma is like a vapor that reaches around your lungs and stomach, grabs hold, and lurches them up through your throat in a vomitus hacking lunge. It's all I can do to keep those vaporous hands from getting hold of my lunch and spilling it out on the pavement at my feet. The incense flaming around the defendant helps a little.

As the ceremony drags on and Zog whispers into Pope Stephen's ear, the accusations are read aloud. None of them seem that onerous, especially in the context of what others have done before and would certainly do later. I try to imagine how Gangis Khan might comport himself on the witness stand.

Still, Formosus doesn't utter any words in his own defense. And with the rotting flesh hanging from his jaw, maggots feasting on a chunk of cartilage barely holding onto his upper lip, and the yellowish bare cheekbones of his skull, smirking indignantly at the crowd, I have to admit, he does look guilty.

I suppose the judges agree because he's sentenced to be thrown into the river soon afterward. One of the charges he's convicted of is perjury, which seems a little odd, because in the short time I spent in his presence I never took him to be a liar. Wish I could say the same about the Shifter.

The procession proceeds from the great hall to the Tiber waterfront so we can all witness the punishment phase. Even to me, it's a gruesome sight. I spent five seasons on the crucifixion detail of the Roman legion, after all. Miles of roads and surrounding hills covered with the corpses of convicted criminals, all nailed to trees. But at least we never polluted the city's drinking water.

                                          &

I catch up with Zog the next day, holding my piece in the pocket of my coat, still not sure if he might decide I'm also a criminal of history.

    "What's next?" I ask.

    "For me or for you?"

"As far as I go, all I need is your word that you'll leave the dame alone. She didn't hire me to waste your time. As for you, you're free to do as you please, regardless of what I think about it. Head to the 1400's for the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch trials a couple hundred years after that. I'm sure you'll find some kindred spirits and followers there."

 "Come with me Shamus. Hunt history for justice. Pay its claims."

 "Fiat iustitia, ruat caelum? Thanks, but I'm not sure it's justice you're after. Sounds more like self-righteousness. One man's villain is another man's savior, and I'm busy enough reconciling my own past. Going after everyone else's would be a full-time job, even with a time machine."

"Suit yourself Tempus. Just don't get in my way. Our timelines cross again and I can't promise I'll be so nice."

 "Likewise," I say, turning the steel piece around in my palm. "And one more thing Zog," almost as an afterthought, as he's walking away. He stops and turns around. "Before you start ripping up train lines and tearing down fences, you might try to find out why they were put there in the first place. Non est ad astra mollis e terris via."

He nods, noncommittal, and then we part ways. My path is back to the future on the Subway and his is to whichever dimension might satisfy his craving for order and revenge. If that's what he's really after. His vehement protestations leave me in doubt. 

Regardless, I know there's a reward for me when I get to my new HomeWhen, but this experience leaves me itchy. Something about Zog's justice doesn't set well. History can be want we want, he says, but facts are facts, even if the context is in question. Or so I always thought. If I'm honest, justice for me has always gone to the highest bidder, but truth, that's a gem I value. More and more I'm thinking our paths will cross again. Coming from opposite directions on the same track, with an outcome I can't predict, but time will tell.