Chapter nine
The rest of the day was a spent traveling in the noisy uncomfortable flying machines of this era.
The first was extremely tiny and so noisy that we had to wear ear coverings. We flew to a larger flying center were we boarded another much larger flyer, it was quieter but had little space and only tiny windows to peer outside.
Shelley and I spent the long journey trying to learn each other’s languages, we had little success but I managed to glean that we were going to a large city named Seattle.
It was very dark when we finally arrived at Shelley’s home, she lived in three small rooms situated in a large building ten floors high.
I thought it would be very cramped so I used my bracelet to create an entrance to my quarters in the city of magic.
Shelley’s eyes opened wide with shock when she seen it. I conjured a large curtain to hide the opening in case of visitors.
And so I started my education of the future.
I asked Shelley to hire a tutor for me to learn English. We had been living together for almost two weeks and I had learned enough English to be able to function in the city on my own but was still not fluent.
I conjured a heavy gold ring for her to sell for us to have money, I actually just used sleight of hand to make it appear. I had piles of gold baubles studded with precious stones in my quarters. I had no use for them.
There were many pawn shops in Seattle so she would have little trouble selling more of my jewellery when we needed more money.
Shelley was going to a school of higher learning so I had much time by myself, I spent most of my days walking around observing the people of this strange city. There were many small cafes and bookstores so I would purchase a magazine and attempt to read it while sipping coffee.
The tutor Shelley hired appeared at my door the following Monday. He was a serious looking young man who was a graduate student from the same university Shelley was attending.
I had a gift for learning languages, possibly because I had spent so many years traveling the earth trying to confer with its many peoples.
I soon settled into a routine of life, learning English three days a week and exploring the city the other days.
In the following months I started purchasing many items for our small apartment and my own quarters. I had been able to conjure up the many identification papers a person needed in this age and was able to pawn my jewellery on my own for money.
I had also made up a fictitious back story to tell people in case of their curiosity, I was Kem Smith a foreign student from South Africa.
It seemed that the following months passed in a blur, after I had learned English I enrolled in basic physics and math courses at Shelley’s university. The courses were designed for people who lacked a high school education.
To say they were difficult was an understatement, the people that were in the course with me had no idea how much knowledge they already possessed, any one of them would have been great philosophers in my time.
I persevered and studied harder than I ever had in my life. I was able to master most of the concepts and even passed the grueling exams at the end of the course.
I had become a modern person, I could now function in this society. The things I had learned changed my sorcery immensely. I now knew how large the universe was and the basic physics and chemistry that made it function.
I had been awed to find out that men had finally traveled to the moon and walked on its surface.
I had tried and failed many times to do the same thing with sorcery. In my best effort I had only made it perhaps a third of the way, finally giving up because of blind fear and violent motion sickness.
I had a flurry of ideas of how to accomplish my original goal of travelling to the universes edge even though I now knew it had none.
I thought about preparing a large powerful ship full of the latest technology, I would then crew it with young brilliant minds from this era and journey to its farthest points.
Shelley and I were visited by Charlie and Mohammad twice. They had not stayed long for they were fearful that the authorities were watching them.
Charlie had been banned from digging in Egypt and had turned to teaching, he told me that my tomb had been pronounced an elaborate fake and had been dynamited to examine the insides.
They found nothing.
Mohammad was still working as a dig foreman for another archeologist. They gave me a parting gift on their last visit. It was a statue of a very young Nubian woman sitting on a chair.
It was me, Ahmes had had it made by a local artisan when I had first moved into his house. Hippo face must have thrown it down the toilet pit unintentionally preserving it.
“It was very hard to get, thank god it wasn’t a statue of a pharaoh,” Charlie said.
I turned it around in my hand. Was I ever this person? I had changed so much.
I thanked Charlie and Mohammad kissing them both on the cheek.
Shelley and I had gotten to be good friends in our year together, she had been studying ancient history at university and would sometimes ask me things about my era.
I was not much help, the courses she took concentrated mainly on the study of Kings and Queens using a minutia of ancient written material.
I knew reams about the day to day life of ordinary people but little about wars and the men who led the armies.
She asked me about the great pyramid on one occasion, I knew how they moved and cut the large stone blocks but I had lived millennia before it had been built.
“Why did they cut four shafts? And why do two of them stop before reaching the outside?”
“I don’t know,” I said frustrated, an idea suddenly popped into my head, “why don’t we ask the guy who built it.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes, I can.”
I hadn’t traveled back in time very much in my era, all I had found was very smelly groups of primitive people living a hard scrabble life. I hadn’t thought much about time travel after that, but now I was six thousand years in the future.
“Can you travel to the future too?” Shelley asked.
“I just did, unintentionally,” I laughed.
“Oh… right.”
“How do you avoid all the paradox’s when you go back?”
“Whenever you go back in time it starts another time line.”
“So it creates another universe?”
I suddenly realized she was on the verge of understanding one of the most important concepts of sorcery.
“No… it’s hard to explain… the… ah… magical energy swirls in a vortex…” I said.
Shelley narrowed her eyes at me in suspicion.
“I’m on to something there aren’t I,” she said.
“I have to go… I need to do some research to find out who the great pyramids architect was.” I hurriedly left for my quarters.
My quarters had changed quite a bit in the past year, I had purchased many types of new technology and was attempting to integrate them into my spells.
I had a small network of servers and computers as well as numerous monitors and power generation devices
It had been fiendishly difficult to figure out how these devices worked, they had seemingly been designed by people who purposely obfuscated their configuration and use.
I had made some headway though. I also had a high speed internet connection sitting on a large modern desk which had a comfy leather chair.
It took me almost no time to find the architect name and the years he lived, I then used a spell to search the past and find an instance where he was alone and could be talked to without interruption.
I changed into a dress from my own era, I also painted my face with kohl. I called for Shelley to come into my quarters.
Shelley and I used each other’s places as one, I had more room so we had put a large big screen TV and sofa in one of the rooms and watched programs together.
The city itself was now emp
ty, I had had a large group of servants who assisted me in my studies. I had sent them home with a year’s wages when I thought my death was imminent.
“Oh my god Kem, you look so different,” Shelley exclaimed as she walked in.
“I’m going to pretend to be a god, that way he’ll answer our questions faster.”
“Can I dress up to?”
“Sure, I have another dress that should fit you.”
Shelley looked ecstatic as I tugged the tight dress over her body, I then took out my cosmetics and painted her face.
She ran to the nearest mirror when I was finished, squealing with delight when she saw how she looked.
“We should go out on the town like this, it looks so cool,” she said.
I gave her some ancient jewellery to put on then quickly pinned her hair in an ancient style.
She ran back into her room then returned with a camera, she set it down on my desk set the timer then stood beside me and waited for the flash to go off.
She showed me the result on the camera’s LCD screen. I had to admit she was right we did look pretty cool.
“I guess we’re ready, “I said as I flicked a square on my bracelet launching us into the past.
We appeared in front of a desk behind which sat a very tired looking middle aged man.
“Behold Hemon, I am Kem, the great god Seshat’s chief inspector of buildings, bow to your master.”
I had purchased a Tesla coil and had been able to incorporate its man-made lightning strikes into my magic. I let a few bolts fly.
Hemon looked at me with an exasperated expression on his face then prostrated himself over his desk.
“Yes great Kem what is your bidding,” he said in an odd accent.
“Why are there two shafts that go nowhere in Khufu’s pyramid?”
I noticed Hemon’s jaw suddenly clench and a muscle start to tick in his face.
“Because great Khufu was not satisfied and the pyramid had to be redesigned.”
“In what way, speak freely Hemon you do not have to bow anymore.”
Hemon sat up and stared right at me, I could see anger in his expression, but I got the feeling it was not directed at myself.
“Khufu’s father Snefru had a perfectly good design for a pyramid, we had all the detailed plans and drawings, all I had to do was enlarge the base a bit to make Khufu’s higher. The construction went fabulously we were ahead of schedule and almost finished. The underground chamber still needed work and the casing stones had to be put on. Unfortunately that’s when Khufu suddenly came under the spell of a two bit moron, Dedi the magician. Things went downhill from that point on.”
“In what way,” I asked.
“He convinced Khufu that he should change the slope from forty three degrees to fifty one degrees to make it much higher, and to make another room as well, abandoning the underground chamber.”
“What about the shafts?”
“They weren’t needed for the lower chamber anymore, they were open to the sky at the old exterior of forty three degrees, since the sarcophagus was now to be moved to the new upper chamber we had to make new shafts to point to the proper stars. We just blocked over the lower ones.”
“I sense anger in your voice Hemon, why?”
“I’m an architect!” he yelled,” I didn’t want spend twenty years of my life organizing the piling of rocks. The fucking thing was done! Six maybe eight months to put the casing stones on and I could have started building something useful. Instead I spent ten more years working on it because of that idiot Dedi.”
“What do you think of Khafre? I asked, curious to hear what he would say about Khufu’s son.
Hemon’s face softened, “he’s a good boy, very sensible, I have drawn up plans for his tomb if he ever needs them.”
“Is it the same as Khufu’s?”
“I took out all the rooms and shafts, because of this its slope will be over fifty three degrees, I found a good spot to build it too, one that will give it almost twenty extra cubits of height. It will be higher than Khufu’s but use less stone.”
“So height is the important thing?”
Hemon looked at me like I was crazy, “of course.”
“Thank you great architect, you have answered our questions satisfactorily,” I looked at Shelley who had an expression of amazement frozen on her face.
I flipped a square on my bracelet activating a spell to send us back home. We reappeared in my quarters.
“Did you understand any of that?” I asked Shelley.
She had learned a large amount of ancient Egyptian just living with me.
“I think so, he had to rebuild it to make it bigger so they just covered up the first set of shafts because they weren’t needed anymore.”
Shelley walked back into her apartment then reappeared carrying a large coffee table book and a protractor.
She put the book down on my desk and opened it up to a large drawing of the great pyramids’ interior. She then used the protractor to measure the angle the first set of shafts stopped at.
“Forty three degrees plus or minus, I’d write a paper about it but I don’t have any proof,” she said.
“You could have Hemon give a presentation,” I said with a straight face.
“Sure, he could use PowerPoint and one of those laser pointy things.”
We both started laughing.
Shelley looked at me with a serious expression suddenly.
“How does magic work?”
“I can’t tell you… it’s very dangerous, I’ve almost died many times,” I replied.
“Are there others like you?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t met any,” I said.
I did have my suspicions though, I had read some interesting things in the newspapers.
“Have you trained anyone else?”
“When I thought I was going to die I gave all my notes to Senbi as well as a map to the city of magic.”
A curious thought suddenly crossed my mind.
“Let’s get changed, I want to check something out,” I said.
Shelley and I left my quarters dressed in jeans and t shirts. I had not walked around the city since I had moved in with Shelley.
The door to the stairs outside was covered in dust and it took both of us to move it, we walked down cautiously I carried a powerful flashlight.
The exterior door at the bottom of the stairs was even harder to open, I had to use a spell to force it open.
We walked out into bright sunshine. Six thousand years had not been kind to my city, some of the buildings had collapsed completely, others had been badly eroded by rain water.
“It was pristine when I was here,” Shelley said confused.
“The city exists in many different times.”
I walked quickly to the object of my curiosity a large badly corroded bronze door, again I needed a spell to open it.
We walked into a small hallway with three other doors, I almost ran down the corridor to the large room I knew to be at its end.
I emerged onto a set of stairs overlooking a room constructed entirely of marble, it had a large pattern made of inlaid with dark stone on the floor. I felt Shelley stop beside me.
“It looks like it was built yesterday,” Shelley said.
“It was,” I replied enigmatically.
I descended the stairs as I flipped the squares on my bracelet activating a hidden spell in the room. The sound of a trumpet suddenly blared out and then a sheet of papyrus appeared in the air.
I caught it as it floated down.
I looked at the writing on it.
“Oh my god!” I said as I stared at papyrus.
“What?” Shelley asked.
“There are over ten thousand worlds.”
“What do you mean?”
“This place is just a large spell, it is used to create places like my magic city. I designed it so that each world would be accessible through a door in a corridor.”
“There
are only four doors,” Shelley replied.
I used my bracelet to activate another spell.
I ran up the stairs and looked down the corridor, I saw doors as far as the eye could see.
“Oh, I see,” I heard Shelley say behind me,” what’s behind the doors?”
“Everything, its six thousand years of collective magic,” I replied.
“So there are many other sorcerers’ then.”
“We have to get out of here,” I felt panic rising in my chest.
“Kem what’s wrong? You look frightened.”
I walked back down the stairs flicking the squares on my bracelet, I made sure Shelley was following me.
“These sorcerers have had a six thousand year head start on me, they would be fantastically powerful,” I said.
“Magic isn’t static then, it changes.’
“It is as variable as the people who practise it.”
We climbed back up the stairs, we were back in my original corridor, I grabbed Shelley’s hand and quickly walked through the large bronze door leading back to the city.
I forced the door closed and then sealed it with magic.
“So much for that, “I said.
Shelley looked at me with a slight smile on her face, “you are much too curious a person not to go back and start looking behind those doors Kem.”
Sadly, Shelley was probably right.
We walked around the city some more, it had become quite beautiful in a way. The ruined buildings and crumbling statues looked very romantic.
“How did you build all this in just a few years,” Shelley asked.
“Magic, plus I had a lot of servants to help me. Most of the stuff here is the result of spells I was trying to perfect.”
“What about the dancing women made of broken pottery?”
“I’d forgotten about them. I just did that to see if I could, they had no practical purpose.”
“What was the warehouse full of stuff for?” Shelley asked trying to act nonchalant.
“You are a crafty one Shelley, I fear you will deduce my secrets before too long.”
“So a sorcerer needs a lot of crap to do magic.”
“Some spells do, others don’t,” I said.
“Would you mind if I walked around the city on my own sometimes.”
“No I wouldn’t mind, just stay away from the corridors of worlds,” I replied.
“You’re not worried I’ll find your spell books.”
“Some things are hidden in time as well as space,” I said smiling at her.
“What about Senbi, can you tell if he was ever here?”
I thought about the all the doors I had seen, “I’m pretty sure he and a lot of other people have been through here,” I thought for a moment, “leave a note on my desk when you’re in the city, and be careful, if you hear voices run.”
We kept walking for another half hour. I kept my eyes open for footprints and rocks or doors that had been recently disturbed. I saw nothing, it appeared that no one had been here for millennia.
We were back in front of the entrance leading to my quarters, I used my bracelet to renew the broken door. In a flash it looked newly built.
“I will put a sturdy lock on it later,” I said.
Shelley moved the door back and forth, she noticed it had no hinges and was just floating in air.
“Hinges hadn’t been invented yet, every door here is magic,” I said.
“So it’s a variation of your flying craft spell,” Shelley was watching me intently.
“Maybe… maybe not,” I said as enigmatically as I could.
We walked up the stairs to my quarters. I had made sure the door was closed tightly behind us.
I have found that when one is perfectly happy with the predictable routine of life the gods conspire amongst themselves to destroy your tranquility.
I was alone in Shelley’s apartment making breakfast when I heard a loud knock at the door.
I had modified the entrance to my quarters so that if I wanted too I could change its appearance to that of a large mirror imbedded into the wall.
I activated this feature as I walked towards the door to answer it.
I opened the door to see a tall thin middle aged man standing in the hall way. He wore a gray trench coat and his face sported a moustache and goatee.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Sorry to disturb you ma’am, I’m looking for someone named Kim or Kem.”
A feeling of danger suddenly rose in my chest.
“Um… I don’t know anybody with that name,” I said lying to him.
“That’s a beautiful bracelet you have there, is it antique?” He pointed to my wrist.
I subconsciously covered it with my other hand, “no I picked it up at a craft show.”
“I’m Sam,” he said reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a gold ring then held it in front of me on his palm, “I’m trying to find the original owner of this ring.”
I looked closely at the ring, I knew almost instantly it was one of the ones I had pawned.
“I’ve never seen it before, it looks kind of cheap,” I said.
“Actually it’s ancient Egyptian, we’ve had it examined by professionals.”
“Who are you?” I said suspiciously.
“Sam… Sam Clyver, I’m a detective with the Rand Corporation,” he whipped out a leather wallet then opened it showing some kind of government I.D.
“Well Sam, I have a lot to do so if you don’t mind…”I started to swing the door shut.
He put the ring back in his pocket and then pulled out a business card.
“Here’s my card, oh and by the way what’s your name.”
“Um… Shelley.” I said. I saw his eyes suddenly narrow.
I snatched the card from his hand as I swung the door shut.
I watched him through the peephole after I shut the door. He stood there for a few seconds deep in thought then turned and walked away.
My heart was beating wildly in my chest. I bolted the door shut then quickly ran back to my quarters. I used my high speed internet connection to find out what the Rand Corporation was.
It was some kind of think tank funded by the military.
My heart sank in my chest, I knew a little of the modern armies of today, that they used horrific weapons, the development of which was the impetus for a lot of modern scientific research.
Shelley had told me once that the military could not be trusted and operated in their own best interest sometimes.
I knew also that I had not fooled this Sam Clyver person. He seemed to possess a sinister intelligence.
I waited for Shelley to come home for lunch.
“What do you mean we have to leave?” Shelley said angrily.
“It’s not safe, they will be back soon probably with warrants for our arrest,” I replied.
“I can’t just give up my life, I still have four months left before I get my degree.”
“I’ll teach you magic.”
Shelley stared at me shocked expression on her face, “what about my friends, my family.”
“I’ll make a door to this world in one of the corridors, you’ll be able to come back” I replied.
“You said it would be dangerous to walk around the corridors.”
“You were right about me Shelley, I would have started examining them sooner or later so why not start now?”
“Ok… but you have to teach me everything… do you promise?”
“Let Sobek eat me alive if I’m lying.”
The End
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