Professor Chet Baker leans forward and peers through the magnifying glass at the worn pages of the ancient manuscript, slowly making out the faded Greek words. As he reads, a story unfolds that transports him back twenty-three hundred years to the palace of Alexander, King of Macedonia, who is preparing to invade Persia and regions beyond.
Immersed in the details of Alexander’s campaign, he reads through the night, lost in the glorious battles and the triumphant march of Alexander’s armies across the known world.
By dawn’s early light, the last words whisk him from the ancient world back to the present day—to his stark little study where his time travel adventure began.
Back to the intolerably dull life of a small-town college history professor. Daily lectures. Indifferent students. Piles of ungraded papers. Department meetings. Emails.
He leans back in his plush leather chair and sighs.
“If only I had been born in another time. Any time but now.”
