Welcome to the Eternal City: Meet Your Guides, Lucius and Maya

Your sneakers scuff against the cool marble floor of the Capitoline Museums’ Egyptian wing, and you pause in front of the glass case holding a cracked clay oil lamp, its soot-stained wick still curled exactly as it was when a Roman girl set it down 1,900 years ago. The guard at the front desk is scrolling on his phone, the room is empty except for a school group chattering in French two galleries over, and you notice the little wooden door tucked behind the display case—you swear it wasn’t there yesterday, and it’s painted the exact same faded blue as your grandma’s front door back home. You reach out, turn the brass knob that’s warm to the touch, and step through.

Your feet hit uneven cobblestones before you can process what’s happening, and you stagger forward, catching yourself on a rough wooden cart stacked with crates of olives. The air hits you first: sweet honey and burnt bread crust, sharp olive oil and the earthy tang of fresh turned grain, the faint flowery smell of violet perfume drifting from a passing noblewoman’

Your sneakers scuff against the cool marble floor of the Capitoline Museums’ Egyptian wing, and you pause in front of the glass case holding a cracked clay oil lamp, its soot-stained wick still curled exactly as it was when a Roman girl set it down 1,900 years ago. The guard at the front desk is scrolling on his phone, the room is empty except for a school group chattering in French two galleries over, and you notice the little wooden door tucked behind the display case—you swear it wasn’t there yesterday, and it’s painted the exact same faded blue as your grandma’s front door back home. You reach out, turn the brass knob that’s warm to the touch, and step through.

Your feet hit uneven cobblestones before you can process what’s happening, and you stagger forward, catching yourself on a rough wooden cart stacked with crates of olives. The air hits you first: sweet honey and burnt bread crust, sharp olive oil and the earthy tang of fresh turned grain, the faint flowery smell of violet perfume drifting from a passing noblewoman’s stained toga hem, and the sharp, tangy smell of pickled fish from a street vendor’s stall further down the lane. You blink, and the first thing you notice is the noise: a blacksmith’s hammer clanging three streets over, a group of kids yelling as they chase a stray dog, a man playing a tiny wooden flute outside a wine shop, and the distant roar of a crowd that sounds like it’s coming from a stadium you can’t see yet.

You’re standing on a narrow street lined with tall, rickety apartment buildings called *insulae*, their stucco walls stained brown from rain and covered in bright graffiti. One wall has a crudely drawn picture of Emperor Trajan wearing a laurel wreath, with the words “TRAJAN IS THE BEST CONQUEROR EVER!” scrawled underneath in red paint. The next wall has a silly doodle of a man in a toga being chased by a donkey, with the caption “NO MORE WINE TAXES!” written below it. Laundry hangs from wooden balconies overhead: linen tunics, wool blankets, and a tiny baby’s swaddle that’s fluttering in the warm breeze. The street is crowded: a man in a leather tunic pulls a donkey loaded with sacks of grain past you, a group of women carry clay jars on their heads as they chatter about the price of olives, and a little kid no older than five runs past chasing a chicken that’s pecking at crumbs on the ground.

You look down the street to your left, and you see a small bakery with a red wooden sign carved with a loaf of bread. A girl about your age stands in the open doorway, her hands covered in white flour, her light brown hair braided down her back with a sprig of dried rosemary tucked behind one ear. She’s wearing a rough brown linen tunic with a frayed wool apron tied around her waist, and she’s laughing as a plump gray goose waddles around her feet, pecking at crumbs that have fallen on the cobblestones. Her name is Maya, and she’s been helping her mother run this bakery in the Subura neighborhood ever since her father died two years ago. She’s just pulled a batch of honey oat loaves out of the wood-fired oven, and the smell of warm bread is so strong it makes your stomach growl.

To your right, a boy a year or two older than you comes tearing down the hill, his white wool toga flapping behind him, a purple stripe running down the edge of the fabric that marks him as the son of a wealthy senator. His name is Lucius, and he lives in a fancy villa on the Palatine Hill, the most prestigious hill in all of Rome, where the emperor’s palace and the homes of the richest families sit like a glittering crown above the rest of the city. He’s supposed to be at his rhetoric lesson ten minutes ago, and he’s already late, so he’s running as fast as his leather sandals will carry him, clutching a wax writing tablet in one hand and a half-eaten apple in the other. He’s so focused on not tripping over the cobblestones that he doesn’t see the stack of bread baskets Maya has set on the ground outside her bakery until he slams right into them.

The baskets go flying. Three honey oat loaves, a dozen sesame flatbreads, and a special honey cake Maya’s mom made for a rich customer on the Palatine tumble out onto the street, rolling into the gutter and under the hooves of the passing donkey. The gray goose, Pluck, lets out a loud, indignant squawk and flaps his wings so hard he knocks over a jar of honey that was sitting on the bakery step. Lucius skids to a stop, his face bright red, one of his sandals slipping off his foot and clattering against the cobblestones.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going!” Maya yells, putting her hands on her hips, flour dusting her cheeks like freckles. “Those loaves are for the Valerius family! They pay three times as much as regular customers for my mom’s bread, and now they’re all covered in donkey dust!”

“I’m so sorry!” Lucius says, scrambling to pick up the loaves, his purple toga hem dragging in the dirt. “I was running to get breakfast before my tutor yells at me, I didn’t see you! I’ll pay you back, I swear—my dad gives me a copper coin every day for snacks, I can give you all of it.”

You step forward to help pick up the flatbreads that have rolled under the cart, and Maya looks up at you, her eyes widening. She blinks a few times, like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. “Wait a minute,” she says, tilting her head. “You’re not from around here, are you? Those shoes you’re wearing—no one in Rome makes shoes like that, with the rubber soles and the laces. And that jacket! It’s made of fabric I’ve never seen before, it’s so smooth.”

Lucius stops picking up bread and stares at you too, his eyes going even wider. “Yeah! Those look like barbarian sandals, but way fancier. Are you a traveler from Greece? Or from Egypt? I’ve seen merchants from Egypt wear weird clothes, but never anyone with skin like yours. Are you a princess from some faraway kingdom?”

You shake your head, and you explain about the museum, the blue door, the oil lamp, and how you’re from the year 2024, more than 1,900 years in the future. Lucius snorts. “That’s a silly story. My brother tells me tales of faraway lands with winged horses and fire-breathing dragons, but time travel? That’s ridiculous.”

Maya nods, but she doesn’t look as sure as Lucius. She points at the zipper on your jacket. “I’ve never seen a piece of clothing that closes like that without buttons or pins. And your shoes—they don’t look like they’d hurt your feet even if you walked all the way from the Port of Ostia. Show us something from the future, if you’re telling the truth.”

You pull out your phone, the screen lighting up bright in the warm sunlight, and you open the photo gallery. The first photo you show them is of the Colosseum, taken last year when you visited Rome with your family. Lucius gasps so loud he drops the loaf of bread he was holding. “That’s the Fl

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