“This is all my fault!” Jess sobbed
“I caused all that train fuss
A change I made to Cloud’s ID’s
What set them on to us”

Cloud sighed, let Tifa console
Barret stifled a groan
All of them were thinking:
“Oh right. Jess. We should have known”

“Sorry,” Jess choked. “This mission
I did not want to blow
See, I—” but Cloud stopped her
“No thanks. I don’t want to know”

Soon they tracked down Wedge and Biggs
Said, “We’ll leave Jess to you”
Maybe not the best choice?
They had better things to do

That problem taken care of
They promptly resumed their route
But when they fin’lly reached the core
Cloud started freaking out

As Cloud fainted, Barret asked
“Man, what’s wrong with this guy?
Is he sick or something?”
Tifa said, “Wish I knew why”

This week’s puzzle:

A poor joke-teller travels the world looking for something that was taken from him, but he never asks people for help. Meanwhile, his son joins a rebellious gang and is nearly killed when a sabotage plan goes horribly wrong.

Last week’s puzzle:

A businessman gets held up on a trip when his customers insist that he stay longer. He ends up leaving something behind, and an old friend goes to pick it up, but by the time the friend comes back he’s already got a replacement.

And the answer is . . . ▼

They once traveled in flocks a mile wide
No one thought their numbers could subside
Soon there were all too few
In an Ohio zoo
Martha, the passenger pigeon, died

Their descent from the Palatine Hill was much less rapid than their climb.  Matthew thought it was ironic that when he had been leading, they charged up the hill like they were being chased by the hounds of Hell, and when he was following Jack, they moved at a gentle pace.  Then, just like everyone else who is too smart for his own good, he started to wonder if this was actually ironic or just one of those things that seemed like irony but that smart-alecks will tell you is just a coincidence or something like that.

Matthew did not have to spend any time figuring out why they were moving so slowly under Jack’s direction, because that was perfectly obvious: he was looking for the cave.  Matthew did, however, start to worry that his diversionary tactic may have worked a little too well.  His friend had hardly spoken since they decided, after fifteen minutes of arguing, that the ruins of the arena or garden or whatever it was had nothing at all to do with the Lupercal.  Matthew was sure that his friend would not find anything, because experts had tried for centuries and failed (and because his friend spent much of his time looking in places where one would be unlikely to find a cave, such as between blades of grass).  He was also sure that Jack would have no idea what to do even if he found it, because his friend knew as much about spelunking as he did about radiology.  Still, the fact that he kept looking so intently was unnerving.

Matthew was never able to decide for sure if his thought was ironic or not, because he was interrupted by a sudden command from his friend.  “Hey, look over there!” Jack said, pointing ahead of them at a long depression in the earth.  “I bet that could be—”

“It is not the Lupercal,” Matthew said forcefully.  He didn’t know whether to grin or groan.  At least they were getting a chance to see another one of the sites he had wanted to visit.  “This is the Circus Maximus.”

“Are you sure?” Jack asked.  “It doesn’t look like a circus.  There’s only the one ring, see?  Circuses have three.”

“That’s not what ‘circus’ means,” Matthew said with a sigh.

“No, I’m pretty sure that it is.  I’ve been to plenty of circuses before, and—”

“I mean, that’s not what ‘circus’ means in Latin.  It’s a race track.  Can’t you tell by the fact that it’s a big oval with raised areas on the sides for seats?  Think of it like the English word ‘circuit,’ not ‘circus.’”

Matthew felt that this explanation would have been completely satisfactory to any normal person, but he saw that his friend remained unsatisfied.  “Look, you know the part in Ben-Hur with the chariot race?”

Jack’s eyes lit up.  “Oh yeah!  Messala was riding a Greek chariot,” he added pointlessly.

“Yes, well, that was a circus.”  This seemed to shut Jack up for a while; presumably he was busy thinking about various other scenes from the movie.  Matthew took the chance to call up in his head scenes from history, trying to imagine what an actual chariot race would have looked like, as opposed to the over-dramatized Hollywood version.  He imagined the crowds in the now non-existent stands, cheering, booing, some of them even throwing things; this was long before the days when an event would be brought to a total halt simply because an errant beach ball bounced its way onto the field.

“So why is it called the Circus Maximus?” Jack asked, when he had finished his internal review of the epic.  Only Jack could manage to compress a three-and-a-half-hour movie into a few minutes.

Matthew opened his eyes.  Was his friend’s grasp of foreign language really so bad that he could not even recognize simple cognates?  “It’s because it was so big.  You know, like ‘maximum?’”

Jack frowned.  “It doesn’t look that big.  I bet the Indianapolis Speedway is at least twice as big as this thing.”

Matthew cringed at the thought that someone could compare ancient Roman chariot racing to modern NASCAR.  The comparison was perfectly apt, but it still made him shudder.  “It was big for back then,” he muttered, knowing that his friend was unlikely to accept such an excuse.

“So you say that Ben-Hur was here?” Jack said after a minute or two of silent thought.

Matthew had not said that, and if he had it would have been utter foolishness.  The chariot race in the movie took place in Judea, not Rome, and the character of Judah Ben-Hur was entirely fictional anyway.  But Matthew was still somewhat tired out from his earlier panicked running, so he did not have the energy to explain this to his friend.  “Sure.”

“And Ben-Hur was friends with Jesus Christ,” Jack continued.  Matthew recognized the look on his face: he was putting things together like a child determined to get pieces to fit into his jigsaw puzzle no matter what their shape.  “And we’re near the birthplace of the founder of Rome, where the headquarters of the Catholic Church is located.”

“Didn’t I already say that this isn’t the cave?” Matthew protested.  “And the Lupercal isn’t the birthplace of Romulus and Remus anyway; it’s where they were cared for by a wolf.”

“So it was still important to them.  And even if we’re not right by this cave, it must be close.  That’s the hill right over there, isn’t it?  He could have easily made a stop there before the race, pretending he just wanted a better view.”

Matthew sighed.  “So where are you going with this?” he asked wearily.  Knowing his friend, not even the sky was the limit.  Aliens featured frequently in Jack’s conspiracy theories.

“I’m not sure . . . yet.  But there’s definitely something here.  Something big.  Something . . . maximus.”  Jack grinned at his little joke; Matthew thought he might cry.

Through the shaft the party squirmed
Twisted torso and limb
Cloud wished instead of Barret
He’d Tifa in front of him

On a catwalk Cloud saw Jess
Her face was streaked with tear
“Oh,” he said, quite callously
“Uh, why are you still here?”

This week’s puzzle:

A businessman gets held up on a trip when his customers insist that he stay longer. He ends up leaving something behind, and an old friend goes to pick it up, but by the time the friend comes back he’s already got a replacement.

Last week’s puzzle:

A person concerned with time and a person concerned with mass become engaged in a problem of creation. They worry when a model parallel to theirs begins to collapse, but in the end, despite expectations, their experiment is a success.

And the answer is . . . ▼

For Ike, ’twas not a priority
But the French’d not go on ’til ’twas free
The tanks kept changing route
But could not be kept out
And the Nazis surrendered Paris

(NOTE: the final word of the final line should be read “Paree,” the way it is pronounced by speakers of French and pretentious speakers of English. “Route” may be pronounced however you wish, so long as it rhymes with “out.”)

Matthew was annoyed.  He was annoyed at the figure in gray for distracting him, but he was more annoyed with himself for allowing this mysterious stalker to distract him.  He was in Rome, walking across the top of the Palatine Hill, and all he could think about was some crazy person that was following him for an unknown reason (ordinarily all he had to worry about was Jack, a crazy person who followed him primarily out of force of habit, as far as Matthew could tell).  He was walking through the ruins of the house of Augustus, or possibly Domitian, and he couldn’t appreciate it.  He couldn’t even remember which house it was.

“Hey, what are you looking for?”

At that moment, however, he was mainly annoyed at Jack for noticing how distracted he was.

“I’m not looking for anyo-anything in particular,” Matthew replied, doing his best to sound calm.  “I’m just looking at the ruins around us.  That’s what you’re supposed to do when you visit monuments and other attractions—you look at them.  Did you expect me to spend the whole time on the hill with my eyes pointed down at my feet?”

Jack shook his head.  “No, you’re looking for something specific.  I can tell.”  Matthew had little doubt that his friend would be able to recognize the attitude of someone searching for some particular detail, because it was the attitude that his friend always adopted whenever they went somewhere.  Matthew had no idea what Jack was looking for, though he had always assumed that it was occult symbols or ambigrams or some other ridiculous “clue” to the ancient, international conspiracy he liked to go on about.

Unfortunately, Jack was right.  Matthew wasn’t just taking in the sights; he was looking for the gray-clad figure, but he still did not feel comfortable explaining that to him.  He told himself that his reluctance to share his concerns was a safety precaution, protecting innocent bystanders from his inevitable overreaction.  It was not, Matthew insisted, out of fear that his friend would think he was losing his mind.  Considering Jack, Matthew wasn’t even sure whether being thought insane would be a good thing or a bad thing.

Being harassed by Jack at least kept the thoughts of the figure in gray from dominating Matthew’s mind, which allowed him to remember a few things about their current location and come up with a plausible excuse.  “I’m looking for the cave,” he said.

“The cave?” Jack asked.  Matthew tried to keep from grinning at the glint in his friend’s eyes.  He doubted that he could have picked anything more likely to intrigue him.

Matthew nodded, working to maintain a serious face.  “It’s called the Lupercal.  According to legend, it’s the cave where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf.”  Matthew was surprised to see the light on his friend’s face fade into a confused frown.  “You . . . you do know who Romulus and Remus are, right?”

“Who?” Jack asked.  “I thought they were planets.”

Matthew sighed.  It had always been both disappointing and perplexing to him that his friend knew so much more about the history of various fictional universes than he did about his own.  “They’re the mythological founders of Rome,” he explained, “although some historians believe that Romulus at least may have been an actual historical figure.  They were two brothers abandoned by the river as infants.  They were found by a she-wolf and raised here, in a cave in the Palatine Hill.”

The light returned to Jack’s eyes.  “A cradle of kings . . .”

“Well, one king, anyway.”  Jack looked puzzled again.  “Romulus killed his brother in a dispute.  That’s why the city of Rome is named after him.”

“That’s good, I guess,” Jack said, nodding sagely.  Now it was Matthew’s turn to look puzzled.  “I mean, if the other brother had won, then the city would have been named Reme, wouldn’t it?  That would have been terrible!”

“Uhh, right . . .”

“So where is it?” Jack asked.

“No one knows.  I don’t think there is any way to know for sure about something so tied up with mythology.  They found something a few years back that they claimed was the Lupercal, but some people disputed it.”

“The mystery remains,” Jack said solemnly, leaning on a nearby railing and staring out at the ruins.  “Hey, do you think this could be it?”

“What?”

“This, right here!” Jack said excitedly, pointing at the lowered area in front of them.

Matthew stared at his friend.  Was there nothing he couldn’t get wrong?  “You do know what a cave is, right?” he asked.  “Caves have ceilings.”

“But this is an ancient cave,” Jack pointed out.  “Maybe the roof eroded away over the centuries and now it’s open to the air.”

Matthew had no counter to this argument.  Any science above about the eighth-grade level was beyond him.  Fortunately, he had another perfectly good objection.  “The walls are clearly man-made.  This isn’t a cave—it’s the ruins of a brick building.  It looks like it might have been an arena or a race track of some sort.”

“But Romulus and Remus were the founders of Rome,” said Jack, refusing to be put off his idea.  “They were powerful men.  You think they’d let the cave they grew up in stay as just a simple cave?  They probably went back later to fancy up the place.  Or at least Romulus did.  You said this was Palace Hill, right?  So he came back and turned it into a palace.”

“It is not a cave,” Matthew insisted.  “And it never was.  We’re on top of the hill, not down in it.”

“How can you be so sure?” Jack asked playfully.  “I don’t think you can say that without going down there to check.”

“Forget it,” Matthew said wearily.  “I’ve jumped down into enough off-limits pits for one day.”

Jack grinned.  “I thought you said you were pushed.”

“Right.  I was pushed.”

A minute later Cloud came to
The train was now long gone
Barret groaned. “You still out cold?
Get up! Time to move on”

“How’re you doing?” Tifa asked
“Your head looks pretty lumped”
Cloud stood up, moaned, brushed himself
“If someone asks, I jumped”

“Reactor’s this way,” Barret claimed
He quickly took the reins
Cloud was busy looking out
For any other trains

They traveled down the dark, damp path
And many tracks they crossed
Until Barret admitted
“Uhh . . . I think we might be lost

“These bars ain’t s’posed to be here!
Now we can’t get to our goal!”
“Well,” said Cloud, “down here I see
A service access hole”

“No way!” said Barret. “I can’t fit
Into that tiny rut!”
But he could see no other way
So he sucked in his gut

This week’s puzzle:

A person concerned with time and a person concerned with mass become engaged in a problem of creation. They worry when a model parallel to theirs begins to collapse, but in the end, despite expectations, their experiment is a success.

Last week’s puzzle:

Two disfigured men try to make the world understand the full meaning of their injuries. A lawless man knocks both of them out of buildings.

And the answer is . . . ▼