Date: May 25th 2012

Location: Athens Harbor

Mission: Locate, secure, debrief, examine and transport Aristotle to the 21st Century

Operational window: 323 B.C., mid-June [Death of Alexander] to December [possible onset of Aristotle’s terminal illness]

Team: Arlene, leader; Sebastian, translator; Selene, security

Access device: 4th Loop Capacitator

Arlene was nervously eager to deploy, and glad they would be doing it on dry land, not from a pitching zodiac like the other teams. It would be a nighttime op near Marathon only a day’s march from Athens. It was the end of May 2012; the later part of spring. A date of the month was not as important to them as the portion of a season. How the capacitators vectored into the past was a mystery to the time-jumpers. However, some parameters were understood by The Service operatives.

Hell, at least in the military we were briefed on our technology packages. This is unnerving. I might as well be a witch with a broomstick!

What was known was that a time-jumper could only count on arriving within the same season as the season of the year he or she had just left. From their slight empirical data—primarily involving interviews with the time-jumpers among them—it appeared that a time-jumper could count on coming in within a month of the time of departure. She had been lucky enough to be on intimate terms with their most experienced time-traveler, Jay Bracken, but had been able to glean few wide-perspective insights from the man.

Just my luck, I finally find a god-like lover and he has the articulation of an 8th-grader. He might not be as stupid as he lets on, but he could care less about the time-of-year, the year, or even the time-of-day.

How am I ever going to find a decent man who can satisfy me sexually and intellectually?

Hey, just shack-up with Charlie and Jay. That will cover meaningful conversation and meaningless sex.

You slut!

What’s a girl to do?

Try concentrating on the op!

It was May 25th, the later-half of spring. Alexander would die on June 13th 323 B.C., the very end of spring, or so the historians would have them believe. The fact was that the ancient Greeks used numerous different calendars. So any modern translation of an ancient date pulled from literature was likely as not to be wrong. Biblical scholars and historians continued to disagree on the birth year of Jesus of Nazareth, possibly the greatest person-of-interest in human history.

Charlie—sorry, Professor Robinson—was far more confident about the year and season of Alexander’s death. We should hit our window anywhere from a month early to just into the political shit-storm.

They had to go now in case they overshot. Making a targeted time jump was about as precise as an artillery strike with a black powder smoothbore cannon, without the luxury of walking in rounds onto the target—like playing yard darts with your drunken grandparents.

Even then they might be too late. News would have reached Athens before the end of June by way of the Persian Post Road, which was the Pony Express of its day. Athens might receive word as soon as June 20th.

This can go wrong in so many ways.

Her mission was to contact and examine Aristotle to see if he could handle time-travel, and, if so, egress with him in an unobtrusive manner. If he could not handle time-travel, or refused to leave his time-of-origin, he was to be interviewed and harvested for DNA and semen samples.

There team had discussed the death of Aristotle at length. There was surprisingly little detail available from the extant ancient sources concerning his passing. It was known that upon the news of Alexander’s death reaching Athens, where Aristotle, a resident alien and former tutor of Alexander taught at the Lyceum, that the Athenian Assembly passed a death sentence on the old philosopher. Aristotle fled to his in-laws’ estates on the nearby island of Euboea where he made out his famously generous will. By the end of 322 he was dead [according to most sources], supposedly of a stomach complaint. It was a murky episode overshadowed by the dynastic wars that had ignited with the passing of Alexander. There was not even a reasonable indication of what month in 322 was Aristotle’s last, and some suspected late 323.

When did you die Ari?

You have a pet name for him already?

Really, how many people do you speak to on a day-to-day basis who have a four-syllable name?

I wonder if his contemporaries even called him Aristotle?

Good morning Best-purpose—yeah right!

Somebody was calling him something more intimate.

We will find out soon enough.

The entire team had agreed that, with poison by suicide being the way ancient intellectuals were done away with, that the last acts of Aristotle reeked of coerced suicide. Or he might have been poisoned by relatives. Whatever the case Chalcis on Euboea was a deathtrap for the old man as surely as was Athens. Exile on Euboea would be to Aristotle what exile on Saint Helena had been to Napoleon, a place where he could be poisoned by his enemies or friends, precisely as the Corsican tyrant had been done away with by his doctor, who diagnosed him with stomach cancer—and the world bought it.

Surely your interview will suggest a course of evasive action. We are time-looping and are sworn not to make a ripple in Time. Aristotle needs to fade away quietly, not be snatched by Athena before witnesses educated enough to write about it! The whole society was going secular at city level. An unexplainable public act with supernatural overtones could cause a theological shift.

That breeze feels good; the warm night air blowing off the Acropolis. I wonder if Aristotle is experiencing a like sensation just now—then—when—oh my, it’s mind boggling! It’s a shame Jay isn’t here.

She was standing on the bridge of the yacht, leaning against the rail, as she gazed up into modern Athens. Tonight was her last night of contemplation. Tomorrow night she would vanish into the past with Selene and Sebastian.

We’re a good team with good period covers. We should do well. At least I’m not with Eddie and Jay chasing some Neanderthal kid across a frozen world.