Ashes of the Roman Empire

 

Prologue: The Descent

The year is 165 CE. Rome—the eternal city, bloated by victory and stretched thin by war—is about to bleed from within. Soldiers returning from the eastern campaigns carry not just tales of Parthia’s heat and blood, but something far worse: a sickness that shows no mercy. Within weeks, bodies are burning on every pyre, smoke coiling like lost prayers into the sky.

At the same time, a shimmer of light breaks through the fabric of time in a wheat field outside the Servian Wall. Two figures emerge, cloaked not in togas, but in silver-threaded cloaks that gleam under the Roman sun.

They are not gods, though they will be seen as such. They are scientists. Travelers. Messengers of mercy from the year 2473.

Part I: The Mission

Elias Marik and Dr. Ilena Vo—a historian and a biomedical engineer—have come with one goal: to alter the tide of the Antonine Plague. Their window is narrow. The death toll, unchecked, will spiral into millions, and with it the eventual weakening of Rome’s core: its army, its economy, its faith.

Ilena carries in her bio-case a synthesized antiviral serum derived from 26th-century immunogenetics, tailored from what modern analysis revealed was a mutated strain of variola major—smallpox.

They do not expect thanks. They expect to endure suspicion, resistance, perhaps death.

They do not expect Galen himself.

Part II: The Healer of Pergamon

In Rome’s heart, the famed physician Galen tends to patients with trembling hands and furrowed brow. He burns herbs and chants prayers, not from piety but desperation. Then come the two foreigners—speaking oddly-accented Latin and bearing a miraculous tincture that, when tested on a dying soldier, restores him to life within two days.

Galen is skeptical. He is also desperate.

Ilena introduces the concept of immunity, of disease vectors, of viral replication. Elias explains the future—partially, vaguely, cloaked in metaphor and prophecy.

They claim to be sent by a “greater Republic,” and Galen, ever the observer, notes their strange garb and luminous tablets that show stars in motion and blood cells dancing like spirits in oil.

But even as the miracle spreads, so does doubt.

Part III: The Collapse Within

Word travels faster than plague. The Senate suspects sorcery. Priests claim the gods are offended. When a prominent patrician’s son dies after treatment, riots erupt.

Elias is nearly stoned in the Forum. Ilena is accused of poisoning wells. They flee under Galen’s protection to the Temple of Asclepius, where a triage of the sick grows nightly.

Still, thousands are dying each day.

The serum must be synthesized anew, and their equipment is failing—time radiation degrading the stabilizers.

Ilena grows gaunt and hollow-eyed from overwork. Elias begins dreaming in Latin, haunted by visions of Rome’s fall, of streets empty and marble ruins swallowed by vines.

Part IV: The Emperor’s Hand

A summons from the Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, follows weeks later. He is worn and grieving, having lost his co-emperor, Lucius Verus, to the plague. Yet his mind is sharp.

Ilena presents the remaining vials to him, and Elias speaks of what will come—the dwindling legions, the crumbling borders, the fading of Roman light. Not as a threat, but as a truth. History’s cold breath down the back of time.

Marcus listens. And weeps.

He issues a decree: distribute the cure. Protect the healers. Silence the priests who sow fear.

Rome, at last, listens.

Part V: The Cost of Hope

The serum spreads. Ilena synthesizes a weakened form of the virus to train the immune systems of the uninfected—an early vaccine. The death toll plummets within weeks.

Galen records everything. His writings shift from mere observation to impassioned testimony: of time-walkers and a plague stayed by the hand of fate.

But then, tragedy strikes.

Ilena contracts a mutated form of the virus—one not seen in their databases. The serum fails her. Despite Elias’s pleas, despite Galen’s tears, she dies in a makeshift hospice, whispering through cracked lips, “Don’t let history forget us.”

Epilogue: Echoes in the Ashes

Elias activates the return protocol alone.

As he disappears in a flicker of light, Galen places Ilena’s ashes in a silver urn marked with her name in two scripts: Latin and the unrecognizable glyphs of the future.

History would still wound Rome. The empire would falter, not from plague—but from pride, ambition, and the weight of too many gods.

But it would not crumble. Not then.

In 2473, deep in the archives of Old Earth, a scroll encased in transparent foil reads:

“There came from the stars a woman with fire in her eyes and salvation in her touch. Rome owes her not just its life—but its soul. May we remember her when the stars go cold.”

Signed,
Galen of Pergamon.
166 CE.

 

M.D. Smith

M.D. Smith of Huntsville, Alabama, writer of over 350 flash stories, has published digitally in Frontier Times, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bewilderingstories.com, and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats.  https://mdsmithiv.com/