After about a weeks at La Paz University Hospital, I am now returning to Augustopolis with the Imperial Guard on the emperor's plane.
During that week that I was in the hospital, I saw that most of the heads of state were the same as in the timeline that was in the 21st century, the President of the United States is Barack Obama, France's is François Hollande, Russia's continues to be Putin, China with Xi Jinping, the only big difference is that the presidents who should be from Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil do not exist or are in their countries of origin, Dilma Rousseff is a MEP for the Bulgarian socialist party, Evo Morales is a casino owner in La Paz, Pepe Mujica is a farmer who recently became famous for a meteor falling on his farm in the city of Montevideo, while the respective leaders of Uruguay, Paraguay and Peru in 2015 have no news about them, perhaps they are only ordinary people like Evo Morales and Pepe Mujica in this world, the only exception is Dilma Rousseff who is a MEP for the Bulgarian socialist party.
Well, Titus IV's government is much better than those of the respective presidents of Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Until then, criticism of the government of Titus IV was more external than internal, cities like Lima have an HDI of 0.799 while Augustopolis has an HDI of around 0.960, practically what Rio de Janeiro should have,It has the HDI of a Nordic country, I don't know what they did but from what I remember from the other timeline, Rio de Janeiro was a decadent city taken over by factions, when Brazil collapsed in 2027, factions divided the city into several micro-regions, and around 20 million Brazilians fled their former country. Apparently, Augustopolis is governed by competent administrators, which is a good thing.
Inside the plane were the Ministers of Industry and Science, Paulus Magnus Favarus and Licinius Caius Marcus, Besides them were the Imperial Guard and some senators, I stayed in the imperial room together with Emperor Titus IV and only a few people were missing to get on the plane to take off from Madrid to Augustopolis.
It was 5:30 pm when a flight attendant arrived in the imperial room and she said:
"Emperor Titus IV and Crown Prince Commodus, the last remaining, have just boarded the plane."
Emperor Titus IV was receiving reports from the other ministers who were in the Tropical Roman Empire via WhatsApp, so he stopped looking at his smartphone and gestured to the flight attendant:
"You can go back to your seat, I'll tell the pilot to authorize your departure from here and return to Augustopolis."
The flight attendant left the imperial room and Titus IV went to the cockpit to tell the pilots to launch a flight to Augustopolis.
I then saw some very eye-catching film covers, one of which was The Twilight War from 1964, which had the face of the Eastern Roman Emperor Heraclius on the cover, of the Sassanid Shah Khosrau II and in the background Khalid Ibn Walid, until then no one in my timeline had made a film about this event.
I took the Blu-ray DVD and put it in the home theater and waited for the movie to start, I was curious to know how they portrayed such a war that marked the end of Late Antiquity and actually started the Middle Ages.
Emperor Titus IV returned from the cabin and saw the film begin in its opening moments and he asked me:
"Are you going to watch this movie Titus Commodus Augustus? Since when do you like long movies? The Twilight War is four and a half hours long; the theatrical version was four hours long, you yourself considered this film very "boring" and that you would rather watch it Hollywood superhero movies, what happened to make you change so suddenly?"
Yes, an heir to the Roman-tropical throne watched superhero movies, something that showed very well the frenzy that was in the late 90s until the end of the 2010s, even an elite young man watched these movies, but I knew that the saturation of superhero movies would come whether from Marvel or DC, so I was more interested in this movie, so I replied:
" Oh Grandpa, the trip from Madrid to Augustopolis will last a few hours and I intend to watch this film in its entirety."
Emperor Titus IV sat down next to me, laughed, and said:
"Good my grandson, you are enjoying the Roman-tropical cinema that is famous for its historical preciosity, our films show history with precision and not with historical inaccuracies."
So Emperor Titus IV and I went to see the Twilight War, the first thirty minutes are about Heraclius' rebellion that defeats the incompetent and dictatorial of the Eastern Roman Emperor Phocas and becomes Eastern Roman Emperor, as well as being the first to use the title Basileus instead of Imperator or Augustus like the previous emperors and the reaction of the Sassanid Empire with the death of Emperor Phocas and the tensions that only increased. From the first hour to the second was how each empire dealt with other threats, in the Eastern Roman Empire the Lombards and Slavs were shown in battles in Italy and the Balkans, In the Sassanid Empire, there were Turkic tribes in the Caucasus and the Arab warriors of the Arabian Peninsula under the command of Khalid Ibn Walid and the Prophet Muhammad who never appears but his voice is only heard in Arabic. In the third and fourth hours, they show the worn-out empires with an absurd population decline and after more than seven centuries of war, the Treaty of Nineveh is signed in 628 AD, marking the official end of the war and in the last twenty minutes Khalid appears as "The Sword of Allah" and shows battles such as Yarmouk and Ctesiphon, in the end the film ends with a message "May the world never suffer another Twilight War" and the film credits roll.
It was 10:00 pm and there were still a few to go before arriving in Augustopolis, so I grabbed some Blu-ray DVDs and went to watch the film about Flavius Aetius and in the middle of the film I ended up falling asleep.