Keys

'And you know nothing about the keys Mr Chaterlaine. Keeper of the keys.'

They were both starting to piss me off now. Nathan was grinning like a fat Cheshire cat.

'What the fuck are you talking about? Just spit it out fucker.'

'Remember that talk about the mobius strip? January 2005 in the Potters. Time, chopped, looped and intersecting? And all those nights on e, acid, whatever, when we spoke about the 8, a c-stream, a flawed loop?.

I wasn't going to like it.

'You've just come thorough a bruise my friend - remember school, remember chopping up the strip four or five times, think of the intersections, think about time, events, reasons why things happen. The bruises are where we exchange, the gates. I may be a irresponsible, drug taking, womanising prick to you but I've been doing this for 1000's of years. The world hasn't always existed in your bubble. Your bubble has existed in the world - briefly. I was mates with Khufu you know. He had a bad press but he was good value.'

'You met Cheops once, dickbrain. You got pissed at his post invasion banquet in Libya and then proceeded to vomit all over the captain of his royal army. And you tried to fuck two of his daughters. You only avoided a public stoning by jumping back to the 1980s. I lost you for almost an entire millenia.

Lauren obviously had not forgiven him for this monkey business.

Grip

'This is Guy. Strictly speaking cognomens aren't en vouge yet. But we're the elite here.'

It was Nathan

'M. Guida Pal. Cicero actually. Nova Roman you know.' The heavy gold bracelets spilling out from under his his thick hooded cloak said it all.

'I'm a guide too. That's what I've been doing for the last few years. Paving the way. There's a lot to talk about Jake.' Lauren looked guilty.

She handed me some wine. I gulped it. The mosaics were beautiful - Ancient Rome in Africa. Nathan, Guy, whatever his fucking name was, was watching me carefully. He couldn't stop himself from smiling.

'I've been waiting for this day for a long time' he grinned.

The full impact was starting to hit me. I was in another country, another time, in another body and the two people I thought I knew were giving me the distinct impression that what I knew was horseshit. This was nothing to do with drugs. This was serious. I finished the wine and demanded another.

Brown paper

Up Jack got and home did trot
As fast as he could caper
He went to bed
to mend his head
with vinegar and brown paper

I remember the smell of straw and animals. Background chatter and women crying. Laughing. Always laughing loud and at inappropriate moments. Panda called it 'pub laughing'. People were dying around me as I stumbled after Lauren. Shadowy characters, this was my dream.

I was dragged half-blind into a half-lit stone corridor that went down and down. The flicker of torches allowed the the odd glance to get my bearings. This was the underground connection between the amphitheatre and the main Roman villas in the the town. Smashed and rebuilt before Tiberius extended his rule into northern Africa. Somehow it made sense.