Two more weeks, and school was out forever—or for the summer, anyway. Senioritis ran rampant, even among my juniors. My fifth-hour mythology class surged into the room, half of them still logy from lunch, the other half jittery from a junk food sugar high. Three or four checked the grades posted on the back bulletin board to see how they’d done on the unit test, while two juniors recounted a play from the previous day’s baseball game. A normal day, except for the large box sitting on my table at the front of the room. Several of my students eyed the box warily. We had just finished the unit on Norse mythology and they had done everything from figuring out what Odin would buy the other Aesir for Yuletide to writing tabloid newspaper articles about Loki’s exploits. I have a reputation around the school for being a little odd, so a box on my table could mean anything.

When the class had settled into their seats, I held up my hands for quiet.

“Good morning,” I said, though it was well into afternoon. “I want to welcome my world-famous colleagues to our tenth annual conference on world mythology. This year, as I’m sure you all heard, we have the privilege of examining for the first time a cache of materials from the twentieth century. They were discovered in the ruins of a city once called Troy in a state called Michigan and are in excellent shape. Since the Great Disaster  …