This story’s reading became a miracle for me. Today of all days, preternaturally when I have been first enabled to read it, i.e. when our current world leaders in real-time have been meeting for the last few days (19 – 21 May) in a certain country and in a certain notable city in that country, a place specifically mentioned in this story, and when thinking of these leaders’ decisions there that could well lead to the sort of event that once happened to this city …. a sort of war for all of us that, by rights, would have been unheard of in the time and place of this compelling story, a story that holds the power of trinity and prophecy to which I have grown accustomed in Zelenyj.
The story must surely have been written long before the agenda for today’s meeting in real-time was set, let alone any planning for the meeting itself!
The story is about ancient Rome and the Emperor Hadrian, and he is in conversation about three sculptures supposedly sculpted in his honour, Lovecraftian to my inner eye but with deeper configurations that play with edges of the reading mind, and this conversation tells of their sculpting and what may lie within them…. Unmissable. And hugely ironic. More than just coincidence. Look at the author’s surname! A great story, even without these very possibly unintentional considerations!!
Published in Helion Science Fiction Magazine, Print Edition, Issue 3-4, May 2023. Editor:: Cornel Secu
The issue is being launched officially at the European Science Fiction Convention in Uppsala, Sweden in June 2023.
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The above review is part of my ‘Dessemination’ project here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2023/01/24/39772/
My previous reviews of Alexander Zelenyj: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tag/alexander-zelenyj/
The Des Lewis Gestalt Real-Time Reviews 
With sudden realisation of a very oblique but complementary connection here;