FORCES OF NATURE
AD 79 · THE BAY OF NAPLES
Pompeii is evacuated before Vesuvius
AD 79. For days the wells have been failing and the ground has been shivering, and Pompeii has learned to ignore both. In our timeline the town was still full when the sky came down. This is the timeline where somebody read the warnings out loud.
You are reading the timeline that almost was · notes marked THE RECORD are real history
AD 79 · THE LAST MORNING
The mountain had been talking for days. Wells failed in the upper town; dogs would not settle; small quakes rattled the garum jars. Pompeii had rebuilt itself from a great earthquake seventeen years before, and it shrugged: the ground in Campania always shivers. In our timeline the shrug was the whole story.
In the timeline recorded here, an old duumvir stands up in the forum while the paving is still trembling. He had lived through the year 62. He says the sentence that saves twenty thousand people: the mountain is not finished. Go to the sea.
Beat 1 of 7
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