Authors: Jade Allen
"Do you ever stop?"
Ethan stepped through
the canvas flap to the tent and slid a plate of food onto the table in front of
Liora. She barely glanced up, continuing to scrutinize the pages of notes
spread across the surface of the rickety card table and compare them to a book
open on her lap even as she reached forward to rip off a chunk of the flat
bread and fold it into her mouth.
After a few chews, she
looked up at Ethan with an intense expression that belied the exhaustion behind
her eyes. She swallowed the bite of bread and reached for her canteen.
"I can't,"
she replied, taking a long sip and setting the canteen aside again. "I am
positive I'm onto something. I just have to figure out what it is."
"What you are
onto is the beginning of delirium," Ethan said, trying to scoop the notes
up into a stack but she stopped him by slamming her hand flat onto the papers.
"I know I'm
right, Ethan. Just look. Look at these sketches I made of the new hieroglyphics
we found in the pyramid," she held one of the pages of notes out to him,
"Now look at the key from what we know about the language from the time
that particular pyramid was built. There are at least six distinct hieroglyphs
that aren't in the key and that haven't shown up anywhere else."
"That doesn't
mean anything, Liora."
"Of course it
does," she said, dropping the page back down to the table and turning back
to the book in her lap.
Ethan sat down in the
chair beside her, careful to tuck his gangly body sideways so that his knees
didn't hit the side of the table and send all of her work onto the tarp beneath
them. He reached up and moved the camping lantern she was using for light a bit
further away from him and rested a hand on the table.
"Liora, you're an
Egyptologist. You've been studying the culture for years. That means you know
that we didn't just suddenly stumble on a completed key that was like 'Hey,
this is our complete written language from the time'. It took extensive
studying and investigation to piece together the language and we're still
finding ways that it evolved. Just because you found a few hieroglyphs that
don't fit into our current understanding of the language doesn't mean that it
confirms your theories."
Liora sighed. She had
heard all of this so many times before. Ever since she started deeply investigating
the link between extraterrestrials and ancient Egyptian culture she had been
subjected to a seemingly never-ending onslaught of conversations with
colleagues that always balanced somewhere between artificially perky pep talk
and condescending mockery. It didn't matter what any of them said, though. Her
research was thorough and intensive, and what she found made far more sense to
her than some of the explanations other researchers gave.
She picked up the
sketches she had made again and stared at the series of markings. As always,
her eyes were drawn immediately to two markings that appeared among a block of
easily translated hieroglyphics in several places throughout the pyramid. The
first of these markings featured interlocking circles, one beneath and to the
diagonal of the first. The second looked like a crude pair of hands, wrists
touching and fingers turned away from each other, cradling a tiny pyramid of
slightly wider and deeper dimensions of the one they explored.
These two markings
were the first anomalies Liora had noticed in her investigation of the writings
within the recently-discovered pyramids, and the ones that excited her the most
when she looked at them. They were nothing like any of the accepted and
translated hieroglyphs, and they convinced her that she had discovered a
secondary language not written by the human ancient Egyptians, but by
extraterrestrial visitors who had come to Earth and shared their technology and
culture with the people they encountered.
"It will be
sunrise soon and you'll have to start a whole new day of your actual
work," Ethan told her, "Don't you think you can at least get a little
bit of sleep? I'm really worried about you."
Liora nodded and
pushed back from the table, putting the heavy book on top of her notes in case
a breeze stirred up. She took the plate of food Ethan had saved her from dinner
and stepped out of the tent to breathe in some fresh air. The sky was massive
and clear above her and she stared up at it as she finished eating.
"Don't you ever wonder,
Ethan?"
"Wonder
what?" Ethan asked, his voice sounding strained as he tried to speak
through a yawn.
"Why there are so
many planets and stars just in this galaxy alone if we are the only creatures
in it? It just doesn't make any sense that there is this expansive universe
around us and somehow this is the only planet that got any living creatures on
it."
Ethan sighed and
joined her gaze up at the sky.
"I don't know,
Liora. I honestly never really stopped to think about it."
"You should. What
if everything that we think we know about the history of the world and all of
the cultures in it is wrong? There is so much technology and architecture and
signs of cultural interactions that just cannot be explained by our current
understandings of the world, but people just ignore it. If more people would
choose to be open-minded and look beyond what is spoon-fed from generation to
generation maybe we would discover that there is a whole bigger existence out
there that is inextricably tied to our history and is the key to our
future."
Liora felt Ethan rub
her back and without another word he ducked into his tent and zipped the flap
closed. She stayed outside a few minutes longer, pondering the stars above her
and the shadow of the pyramid where her tent sat. Finally she felt the ache in
the back of her eyes and knew she needed to rest. She placed the plate on the
table set in the center of the ring of tents and climbed back into hers,
zipping the flap closed and falling back onto her sleeping bag without even bothering
to remove her boots.
****
Liora had only been
asleep for a few hours when the sounds of other members of the dig team
preparing for breakfast woke her. She resisted the feeling of consciousness for
as long as she could, feeling the heaviness and exhaustion of her body now even
more than she did before she went to sleep. Finally she couldn’t resist it any
longer and she groaned, dragging herself out of the tent and immediately over
to the outdoor shower set up behind the main tent.
This was not her favorite
part of her job. She loved the feeling of stepping into a room no other human
had touched for thousands of years and brushing away the dust, coaxing out the
secrets held just beneath the surface. What she didn't love was the days spent
sleeping in tents, the oppressive, burning heat, and not seeing a bathtub for
the entire length of the dig.
The water broke
through the haze of sleepiness and washed away the fine layer of dirt that
always seemed to cover her when she was working. When she felt like a person
again, Liora dressed and joined Ethan at the long table in the center of camp
to choke down breakfast and swallow two cups of black coffee.
Twenty minutes later
they were climbing down into the pyramid and the combination of carb-laden flat
bread and caffeine had kicked in so that she moved confidently along the tight
corridors to the section they had just had the opportunity to enter the day
before. Impatient as usual, she didn't bother to wait for the crew behind her
to set up the floodlight that would illuminate the work area ahead of her and
instead held a lantern up to splash light on the path at her feet and penetrate
the intense, almost tangible darkness that filled the chamber.
The incredible
darkness was one of the most terrifying elements of her explorations. This was
a darkness unlike any other, so deep it was almost as if the ancient people who
closed the chamber thousands of years before had trapped the night within it.
Liora took several
strides into the chamber until she felt like she was near the place she had
been the night before when they had to stop their research. She held the
lantern up so it glowed across the wall and made the hieroglyphics visible in
the aged stone. The stone had a finely grained texture beneath her fingertips
as she traced the shape of the symbols etched into the wall, translating the
message in her mind as she went.
The space around her
suddenly lit up as the crew managed to get the floodlight in place and direct
it into the chamber. Ethan came up beside her and she saw him running his eyes
along the hieroglyphics.
"They tell about
when the pyramid was built. This section," she said, running her hand
along a series of hieroglyphs, "says that this pyramid was meant as a
monument to cooperation and civility among strangers."
"What does that
mean?" Ethan asked, glaring at the symbols as if convinced that they
didn't actually say what Liora said they did.
"You know what I
think it means," she said softly, "Look."
She pointed out one of
the markings that did not fit with the other hieroglyphs. It was positioned
slightly to the side and beneath the rest of the symbols like a signature or
footnote to the message. Liora touched it carefully, feeling an inexplicable
connection to the marking.
"I don't see any
other entrances," Ethan said, gazing around the chamber, "This must
be the end of that corridor."
"Maybe,"
Liora said.
She continued along
the wall, following the hieroglyphics as she walked. When she reached the
corner, she found that the symbols seemed to disappear into the seam of the two
walls, breaking off in the middle of a phrase and picking up on the other wall
in the middle of another thought. She took a few steps back and followed the
symbols again, taking note of the symbols that didn't fit in with the others
and translating as she went to try to understand the odd separation of the two
phrases. Her fingers touched the final symbol at the seam and she felt the wall
give slightly.
Liora withdrew her
hand sharply. During her career she had learned that stones within a pyramid
suddenly moving often had devastating results and she braced herself. When
several seconds passed without anything happening, she cautiously raised her
hand and applied pressure to the symbol again. A section of the wall shifted
and she was able to push it completely out of the wall. She glanced back at the
rest of the crew, but none seemed to notice her and she stepped forward through
the false wall and into the space beyond.
The false wall slid
closed behind her and Liora raised her lantern to illuminate the newly
discovered chamber. It was a small space, no larger than a walk-in closet. It
was the smallest chamber Liora had ever seen within a pyramid and panic started
to rise in her chest as she realized that the purpose of such a chamber was
probably to trap those trying to compromise the pyramid. She lifted her hand to
the wall beside her and felt the deep grooves of hieroglyphs beneath her
fingers.
Liora illuminated the
wall with her lantern and found the surface covered with scattered symbols.
Some seemed to stand independently of the others, while others were clustered
together like sentences.
These carvings looked
newer and more precise than the others she had studied, almost as though they
had been carved only recently. She didn't recognize them as the language she
had been translating in the larger chamber and the longer she looked, the more
she noticed the six unusual symbols she had shown Ethan. A new one stood out to
her and she felt compelled to touch it, drawn to it with an even stronger
appeal than the interlocking circles that had entranced her since she first
discovered them.
As soon as her
fingertips rested on the symbol she saw a flash of blinding light and felt her
body lifted from the floor. An intense pull within her made her feel as though
she were being sucked toward the wall in front of her and she prepared for
impact, but it never came. Nearly as quickly as the sensation came, it ended
and she hit the ground. She had dropped her lantern, but the darkness around her
was not as deep as it had been only moments before. Ahead of her was a narrow
corridor and beyond it, the bright flare of sunlight.
****
Liora climbed to her
feet carefully, wincing at a sharp pain through her hip from the impact with
the stone floor. She looked around and found that she stood in a chamber nearly
the same size as the one she had discovered in the pyramid, but the air was
fresher with the movement of the breeze coming in from outside and only shadowy
thanks to the sunlight that could come through the door only a few yards away.
She pressed her hands
to the walls around her, feeling the hieroglyphics engraved beneath, but the
stone didn't give. There were no other doors, no way to leave the chamber but
the hallway. Realizing she had no choice, she swallowed the fear building in
her throat and started down the corridor toward the glare of the sunlight.
She stepped out into
surroundings so lush it felt as though she had walked into a tropical jungle.
Vibrantly green plants grew up around the base of the building she stepped out
of and created a thick, springy carpet beneath her feet. Liora walked forward a
few feet and then turned around to see the building she had just left. It
looked like a smaller version of the pyramid she had been researching and the
image of the unexplained hieroglyph of the hands cradling the pyramid appeared
in her mind.
Behind her she heard a
snap like a twig breaking and she spun around. The world around her was serene
and after a moment, the frantic pounding of her heart calmed. She turned back
to the pyramid and noticed a large engraving beside the sharply rectangular
opening she had exited. It closely resembled the symbol of the hands and the
pyramid, but the pyramid cupped in the palms had the slimmer, sharper
dimensions of the pyramid she had been exploring.
"They're
connected," she whispered to herself, the astonishing realization hitting
her so suddenly she couldn't hold it inside.
"Who are
you?"
The sound of a deep,
rumbling voice behind her startled her, and Liora turned so quickly she almost
stumbled backwards. A man stood several yards away at the edge of a thicket of
dense trees, poised on top of a moss-covered boulder so he loomed above her.
Her breath caught in her throat as she looked at him, stunned in place by
impossibly blue eyes that seemed to pierce through her.
He jumped down from
the boulder, landing in a crouched position that made the muscles beneath the
bare skin of his back tense and shift. Liora's mouth watered and she felt her
belly tighten as he rose slowly to his feet and took a step toward her.
"Who are
you?" he repeated.
His voice was like the
roll of thunder just as the air heats up right before a storm begins. He took
another step toward her, staring at her with unwavering intensity.
"Liora," she
replied, her voice coming out softer than she had intended.
"How did you get
here?" he demanded.
He had stopped
approaching and Liora felt a flicker of disappointment, wishing he would come
closer so she could get a better look at his eyes. She struggled to come up
with the words to respond, but even she wasn't sure how she had gotten where
she was.
"I came through
that building," she said, gesturing behind her.
"That's
impossible. How did you get here?"
A spark of frustrated
anger joined the combination of fear and excitement roiling through her. She
gestured at the building again.
"Apparently it's
not impossible because that is exactly what happened. I was researching a
pyramid in Egypt, I found a false wall, I stepped through it, I touched some
hieroglyphics, and now I'm here."
It all came out of her
in a rush as she went step by step telling him how she arrived in the new
place, trying to clarify it for herself at the same time.
"I told you, that
is impossible," he said harshly, rushing past her so that he could walk
into the building.
She followed him
toward the building but stopped just outside, afraid that if she entered she
would end up back in the pyramid, and she wasn't ready to leave this beautiful
place, or the equally beautiful man, quite yet. He stalked down the corridor
into the chamber and flattened his palms on the walls as she had, pressing into
the stone and turning several times to touch different areas of the walls.
After several moments, he strode back toward her with such power Liora stepped
back to create more space for him.
"I don't
understand," he said, the low tone of his voice saying he spoke more to
himself than to her.
He looked sharply at
her and closed the space between them with one long step, forcing her back
against the stone side of what she realized now was a small, single-chamber
pyramid. His body didn't touch hers, but was only inches away, the warmth
radiating toward her so she felt it heating her skin almost painfully. Her eyes
met his and the boldness of the color along with the seething heat of his skin
told her that he was not human.
"Where are
we?" she whispered.
"You mean you
don't know?" he asked, his voice dropping to nearly match hers.
"No."
"What are you
doing here?"
"I told you, I
was studying a pyramid. I'm an Egyptologist."
"But you don't
know where you are?"
"No."
"We are at the
center of Orion's belt."
Liora narrowed her
eyes quizzically at him.
"The center of
Orion's belt is a star."
The man scoffed.
"Is that what you
think?"
Despite the desire
building in her stomach, Liora felt the anger increasing at the man's
arrogance.
"What are
you?"
"I suppose you
could call me a researcher, too, and right now I want to know how you got here
and why you are here."
Liora opened her mouth
to respond when another voice from close to the trees broke through the thick
tension that had formed between them. The man stepped away from her and Liora
felt relief as the cooler air soothed the slight sting from the heat pulsating
from his body.
"Leave her
alone," the female voice said.
Liora looked around
the man to see a tall, willowy woman standing in the same place the man had
been standing when she first saw him. She had a soft smile on her lips and her
voice held a hint of laughter despite the chastising words.
"She's a
stranger, Akusaa."
"Only until we
get to know her."