CHAPTER 2
DISAPPEARED
Night had enfolded the ancient landscape of Giza, and Stephan led the way through the compacted desert sand. He’d returned home after about two hours to find Oli, sitting in the same position, gazing out at the pyramids as the sun slipped behind the crimson outline of a distant mountain.
They approached the menacing shape of the pyramid of Khufu, some two million three hundred thousand blocks of stone, some weighing in at nine tons, piled one on top of another, the four sides of the pyramid aligned almost perfectly with the four points of the compass. Oli found that he was craning his neck more and more as they approached the entrance. The dark shape above was silhouetted in the minimal light that the half moon was providing. They climbed a hand-cut trail of steps to the entrance and in no time were standing in front of the dark hole that disappeared into the carved limestone.
“I hope you don’t suffer from claustrophobia,” said Stephan, with a knowing grin on his face. “This passage leads down to the unfinished chamber. It’s a hundred metres long and it was obviously designed with children in mind.”
Oli wasn’t aware of any phobias. He would quite literally have a go at anything. They descended into the heart of the pyramid with the beams of their torches dancing on the stone walls around them. The passage was just over a metre high and a metre wide. The slope was steep enough to make the act of walking upright slightly awkward, but Oli found that walking in a doubled-up position was nearly impossible. There were planks of wood on the floor with pieces of batten nailed across them to give the walker something on which to purchase. On several occasions, Oli nearly lost his footing and had to brace himself on the rope railings that ran down either side of the passage. The second time he did this he knocked his torch against the stone and it went out.
“Are you okay?” Stephan shouted, shining his torch up the tunnel to see Oli braced against the walls, shaking his torch with a movement of his wrist and pointing it at his face. It flashed into life again and he threw his head back and shut his eyes, blinded by the beam. This sharp movement caused him to lose his grip on the batten and he landed flat on his ass.
“Fine thanks,” he choked, pulling himself back to his feet and rubbing his aching rear.
Stephan turned, chuckling to himself and continued down. He had been down here many times and was well practiced in the technique and he was a good fifteen metres ahead of Oli.
“I’m just going to rest for a minute,” Oli said, as he steadied himself with his arms on the walls and his shoulders pressed against the ceiling. Stephan turned around to acknowledge him just in time to see Oli’s upper body disappear through the floor. It all happened too fast for Oli to scream, he just managed a sharp intake of breath and a stifled “Wha…”
Something very bizarre was happening. He could sense that he was falling. His arms and legs flailed around him seeking solid ground, but he failed to find anything solid under his feet or near his hands. He could see nothing but pitch black. He realised that he must have dropped his torch. He had no idea how fast he was falling, or if indeed he was falling. It seemed like a bottomless pit, but he couldn't feel any air rushing past him. The previous year, Oli had taken part in a tandem skydive for charity. He knew how a person was buffeted by the air when falling from a great height. This was not in any way similar to free falling. Eventually, after a period that seemed like minutes, but was in fact seconds, he relaxed, stopped his flailing arms and legs and just hung there, listening for any clues that would explain this most a-typical occurrence. There were no recognisable thoughts going through Oli’s head, just total confusion. His head darted from left to right, up and down in an attempt to see something other than the pitch black that surrounded him. He wasn’t falling. Of that, he was certain. He wasn’t bumping into rocks and being smashed to pieces. Also fairly certain. He wasn’t lying on the ground covered in huge rocks that were slowly expelling his final gasps of air. Totally certain about that one.
*
The hole in the floor of the passage had closed as soon as it had opened, leaving Stephan alone, open-mouthed, with the torch trembling in his hand. His immediate thought was that the tunnel had collapsed. But when the small amount of dust cleared, he realised that there was no hole and no debris. His mind was working in overdrive, organising the visual evidence into a completely incomprehensible mush. He hurried back up the tunnel to where Oli had been standing, dropped to his knees and began feverishly scraping the dust with both hands. The wooden boards were unbroken as they ran their course to the entrance above. He ran his hands down the corner between the wall and floor, looking for some sign of an opening, but there was nothing. The only evidence that Oli had ever been there was his inactive, shattered torch, the glass lens fanning out in ever decreasing fragments along the tunnel floor.
“Oli! Can you hear me?” he shouted, pausing for a few seconds to wait for the echo to fade. He waited a further few seconds for any reply, but none was forthcoming. No sound of stone hitting stone, and no Oli. What the hell was going on? One minute Oli had been there and the next he was gone. During Stephan’s time in Egypt, he had examined this tunnel in minute detail more times than he could begin to remember and had come to the conclusion that there were no doors, cracks or anything that could explain the incident that he had just witnessed. He froze to the spot, his head and eyes darting from side to side looking for an answer to the impossible riddle that had been set. He could feel a state of panic welling inside of him and the only thing that he could think of doing was to rush back to the surface and get help. He scrambled up the passageway on all fours, his legs slipping and his knees bashing against the wooden battens. He felt no pain as he removed a layer of flesh from his knees. On reaching the base of the stone steps, he tripped and fell face first into the sand of the plateau, picked himself up and ran.
*
Oli’s fall had only lasted about ten seconds, although the extreme level of weirdness had made it seem considerably longer. At the end of the fall he felt the same sensation as approaching your selected floor in an elevator. His feet gently touched down on solid ground. Or was metal? His legs gave way and with a bit of a thud he landed on his backside. Wherever he was, it was the darkest place he had ever not seen; and silent too. Everywhere has some kind of background noise, whether it’s the wind, birds, or traffic, but there was nothing. The only sound was his obviously accelerated breathing. He was also certain that he could hear his heart attempting to force its way out of his chest. He couldn’t make out any shapes or shades of grey. The faint movement of air that he had experienced in the passageway was also missing. He started looking round in all directions hoping for some clue to his whereabouts, but there was nothing. Placing his hands on the floor he felt cool metal, very smooth, like the door of a fridge. Oh bum he thought, I’ve left a pint of milk in the fridge. It’s gonna be walking and talking by the time I get home. The idea of Ed going anywhere near the fridge during his absence, was inconceivable.
He held the palm of his hand out flat as he thought he could feel rain. No he thought, not rain, it’s not wet, and besides, I’m in the desert under a pyramid. Was it the dust that had fallen into the hole with him, and was now settling? He decided to crawl a couple of metres to his left to avoid getting too much of the dust over him. He raised himself onto his hands and knees and started to crawl. There was a metallic thud as his head contacted a hollow metal case, and he decided to sit back and let the dust do its thing.
As he sat back, he caught sight of a faint red light in the corner of his eye. He turned his head so quickly that he jarred the muscles in his neck and had to bend his head down to rub the back of his neck with his hand. He slowly raised his eyes, still rubbing his neck and tried to focus in the direction from which the light had appeared. Two more lights had joined it, a yellow one and a green one. Traffic lights? He thought. He had no perspective of distance, or size for that matter. Then, next to the red light a row of smaller red lights appeared one after the other. He could now make out a faint hum interspersed with a random, almost imperceptible clicking noise. It immediately reminded him of the sound that his clunky old computer made when he turned it on. All his friends had the very latest in computer hardware but Oli had retained the same beaten up old Dell that he’d purchased from a friend, eight years before. It was probably up for an award by now for the most abused and antiquated PC in the whole of London, but it served Oli just fine.
More lights appeared next to the yellow and green ones and there was now enough of an ambient glow to enable him to make out that the lights were situated about five metres away from him and that they were raised about one metre from the floor.
He placed his hands on the floor and lifted himself onto his knees. Whether this was in readiness to run or to approach and examine the lights more closely, he wasn’t yet sure.
Run? He thought.
“Where to?” he replied to his thought. Darkness surrounded him and he certainly wasn’t ready for another clunk to his bonce. So inquisitiveness became the overriding drive and he tentatively approached the lights.
*
Stephan had reached the night watchmen’s office on the edge of the plateau. He probably broke several distance records in doing so and on entering the office bent over with his hands on his blood-stained knees. He reeled for a second as he examined the sand-encrusted seepage.
“I need…to use…your phone,” he gasped. He was rewarded with blank looks that would have taken both gold and silver in the first ever Olympic ‘Blank Look’ competition.
“There’s been an accident. Someone’s trapped in the pyramid!”
He reached inside his pocket for his pass and showed it to the two puzzled watchmen. They were sitting behind their desks, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. It was obvious from the mug stains on the desks and the overflowing ashtrays that this was how they passed the majority of their nights.
One of the men reached out and nonchalantly slid his phone across the desk towards Stephan, who hurriedly picked up the handset and dialled the number for the Director of Pyramid Studies. He was an old friend and Stephan knew that he would listen to his unbelievable tale with an open mind.
“Yes?” came the deep gravelly voice that Jaff had perfected over years of chain-smoking the strongest Egyptian, unfiltered death sticks.
“Jaff, its Stephan,” he croaked, desperately trying to catch his breath in the cigarette haze of the watchmen’s hut.
“There’s been an accident in Khufu. A friend of mine has disappeared through some kind of door into the pyramid. I know it sounds crazy, but you’ve got to come…and bring help.”
If anyone else called him Jaff to his face, they would find themselves on the wrong side of a shovel-sized fist. His name was Jaffreisie, but if it was possible for a man as hard-edged as Jaff to have a soft spot, then it was reserved for Stephan. He was of the opinion that his friend was nothing like the endless line of pompous English grave robbers with whom he’d had to deal for years.
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
“I mean disappeared, gone, nowhere to be seen. He was in the passage about fifteen metres behind me, heading for the lower chamber when the floor opened up, he fell in and it closed behind him.”
There were a few seconds of silence before Jaff's voice rattled the antique earpiece of the phone.
“Now I know you don’t do drugs and you don’t sound drunk, so I’d better come and see for myself. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Stephan put down the phone and pointed at the two guards.
“You two, come with me.”
He paused as they took another sip of coffee and simultaneously lit cigarettes, whilst contrarily staring at Stephan. They hadn’t understood a word of what he was saying on the phone. Just as well really, or they would have thought that he was just another crazy Englishman who’d had a little too much sun.
“Now!” shouted Stephan, gesturing with his hand towards the door. In unison the two men pushed back their chairs and followed Stephan outside where the remains of their World War Two American Jeep was parked.
*
Oli decided that curiosity might have ruined the cat’s day, but he just had to have a closer look at the light panel. He was cagily sliding one foot in front of the other, with his arms outstretched, waving from side to side like an out-of-control somnambulist, making a painfully slow advance towards the lights, when the whole room lit up. At first, the bright light dazzled him and he put his hand over his eyes. Slowly, he began to crack his fingers apart and for the first time, was able to make out the very strange environment in which he found himself. He was in a room, about the size of his living room, and just over three metres in height. The end of the room with the light panel was curved in all directions and the light panel was set into a concave, sloping desktop, constructed from shiny grey metal, with just a few lights occupying the central part of the desk. Above the desk, following the curve of the room was a giant, black, very blank screen. He twisted his head in a most unnatural manner to examine the rest of the room. The walls of the room were made from a lighter grey material with a matt finish. There was the outline of a closed door behind him. That was it! No furniture, windows, or any other feature. He looked up, wondering if he would see the tunnel that had transported him to this rather strange place, but if there had been a tunnel, it was concealed behind a closed door, the outline of which was barely visible. He spun back to face the direction of the curved desk. It had some symbols that he had never seen before printed across the top above the lights. Some of the lights were flashing and two rows of yellow lights at the top of the desk were slowly lighting up in opposite directions. The desk had three screens set into it protruding at an angle and there were two panels of buttons, one on either side of the desk, also with graphics that made no sense to him.
“Woaw!” said Oli.
“Hello Oli.”
The voice seemed to emanate from all around. It was soft, male and seemed somehow friendly, like a favourite uncle arriving with gifts for a birthday party. Still, Oli jumped and took a step back from the control desk.
“Who said that, and how do you know my name?”
“I am the ship, and I know you, better than you know yourself Oli.”
Now this is a bit odd, thought Oli. He had millions of questions all jostling for position to be first out of the mouth.
“Where’s my hat?”
“You weren’t wearing a hat Oli. Why don’t you sit down, try to relax and I will explain why you are here.”
With that, a small door slid open in the wall at the side of the control desk, causing Oli to run in the opposite direction for a couple of seconds before reaching the other side of the room. Oli wasn’t predisposed to unnecessary panic, after all, a level head was required to drop in on a thundering wall of water and ride it as far as it would allow, but he was really struggling to control his urge to go just a little bit loopy on this one.
He was half expecting a bizarre creature to emerge from the opening, but instead, a very comfortable-looking high-backed chair glided silently across the floor and came to rest in front of the curved desk. Oli cautiously approached the chair with an ever-increasing look of perplexity. The chair had no wheels, just a black rod extending to the floor and tapering to a single point. Oli wasn’t sure about sitting on it. Surly it couldn’t balance on such a tiny spike. He gave it a gentle shake, half expecting it to topple over. It felt solid, not even the slightest wobble. By this time, the entire desk had lit up. Strange symbols were scrolling through at great speed, apparently leaving the confines of the solid panel to hover a few centimetres above the shiny surface. He glanced at the unfeasible base of the chair, then back to the obviously, technologically advanced desk.
Would people who were clever enough to build this… whatever this is, make a chair that fell over every time someone sat on it?
He was beginning to understand that wherever he was, it was not anywhere built by people and was rapidly coming to the conclusion that if a race of beings from another planet, had built furniture that fell over every time someone sat on it, then they probably didn’t present much of a threat. He started giggling to himself at the idea of an invasion fleet coming in to land on Earth, but every time their ships encountered the sort of turbulence that he’d felt approaching Cairo airport, everyone inside fell over.
“Ahem,” the voice interjected.
Oli gingerly lowered himself into the grey padded material. The seat was firm, very stable and probably the most comfortable chair that he had ever sat on.
“Okay mister voice, my heartrate seems to have descended to a level where I’m no longer in danger of ditching. Let’s hear it.”
*
Stephan had returned to the passageway with the two guards. He located the spot where he had scraped away the dust with his hands and instructed the two men to search for any sign of a door. One of the men said to the other in Arabic, “I think the Englishman has been at the duty-free,” making a drinking motion with his hand. The other man laughed.
“I speak Arabic perfectly,” said Stephan, in perfect Arabic, “and if you want to continue getting paid to smoke and drink coffee every night, then I suggest that you help me.”
They both reluctantly dropped to their knees and began scraping away at the dust. Stephan worked his way down the passage and they moved in the opposite direction. Stephan shone his torch on the floor and noticed a scrape mark to one side of the passage. It travelled for about a metre and then stopped on the join between two blocks.
“This is it,” he said, “this is where he slid down into the hole.” The men came down and shone their torches on the floor.
“People slide down on their asses all the time,” said one man, just as Stephan looked up to see several torchlights sporadically illuminating the tunnel sides by the entrance.
“Stephan!” Jaff shouted, causing the entire pyramid to resonate.
“Down here. I’ve found something.”
It was starting to get a bit crowded in the limited space that the passage afforded. The two men had to squeeze past Stephan so that Jaff could get down to him. Stephan pointed at the mark in the dust and told them not to walk on it. Jaff approached Stephan with a sterner than usual look on his face and held out his hand. Although Stephan was familiar with the bone-crushing effect of Jaff’s handshake he accepted the friendly gesture. Every time Jaff greeted him in this way, Stephan would try and exert a little more pressure on Jaff’s hand, in a vain attempt to match the virility of his salutation, but he could never get anywhere near the vice-like grip that now imprisoned his right hand
“That’s where he slid down,” he winced, “this entire block must have upended and then closed again,”
“You do realise how completely crazy this sounds don’t you Stephan?” bellowed Jaff extending an arm and resting it on Stephan’s shoulder.
“I know what I saw. He disappeared into the floor,” replied Stephan, staring intently into Jaff’s dark, shark-like eyes.
Jaff paused for a few seconds, then said, “I’ve got some ultrasonic gear up top, not that we haven’t been over this whole area a thousand times before.”
With that he instructed two of his men to fetch the machine from the truck. They used ultrasonic to detect hidden chambers behind the stones. Some Egyptologists, convinced that the pyramids were hiding great treasures and secrets, wanted to dismantle the structures from the top down, but they had more chance of convincing Jaff to wear a mankini.
*
“Now Oli,” the voice said, “you must have a million questions you want to ask me. We can either sit here for a few days while I explain everything to you or I can simply transfer the relevant data to your brain. It’s up to you.”
“Can you…Can I…is it…you know, safe? Have you…you know, done it before?”
Oli was burbling quite badly now. He was generally game for anything, but this situation had gone seriously off-road.
“It’s perfectly safe Oli,” reassured the voice without a single indication of; actually I’ve never tried it before. “You won’t feel a thing.”
Oli thought about it for a few seconds and then agreed. With that, a small flap slid open on the control panel, and it was replaced from beneath with a tray containing a pair of snazzy-looking headphones. They were made of shiny silver metal with soft white pads on either end.
“I’ll need you to put these on Oli,” the voice said as the tray extended out from the panel towards Oli’s hand. He reached out and picked them up. They were impossibly light. They felt as though they would float away from his hand if he were to relax his grip for a second. He slipped them over his long matted hair and placed the white pads in his ears. Ok, he thought, so they probably were not designed with human ears in mind.
“Perfect fit,” Oli said with his hands outstretched, open palmed, as if admiring a new shirt.
“Almost perfect Oli,” said the voice. “The pads locate on your temples just in front of your ears.”
“Oh.”
Oli made the necessary adjustments and sat back in the chair. As he did so, he felt the back of the chair moving. In an instant it had formed an exact match to the shape of his back. Imagine if the beds are like this as well, he thought.
“They are Oli,” the ship offered by way of a response to the question that he’d never asked.
“Hold on,” exclaimed Oli, sounding slightly perturbed, “can you hear what I’m thinking!?”
Oli was a bit disgruntled by this. After all, it was his head and whatever went on in there was his business. Quite often, even he didn’t fully understand what was going on in there.
“I can get a rough outline of your thoughts from the room sensors, but when you wear the Neural Feed Set, I hear everything. I’m sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable Oli, but it’s only for a short time. I’ll try not to listen.”
“Now, are you sure this isn’t gonna hurt, ‘cause I’m not very good with things that…Woaw!”
Suddenly Oli knew everything, as though the memories had been in his head for a lifetime. He leant forward in the chair and slid the NFS headset out through the tangle of hair and placed it back on the control panel. He flopped back into the chair and sighed.
“Woaw,” he repeated.
*
The date was 50,000 BC, Earth time, and the Annenian mineral exploration ship Finders Keepers had been dispatched to an L-class planet in the system of Bartiss. The planet had already been explored and had been used on several occasions for Global Parties. The Annenians were particularly fond of packing a few thousand people off to a remote planet for a few weeks of self-indulgence, music, dancing and all the trimmings of a full-on, off-world party. The whereabouts of the parties were always kept secret until the last minute, not because of any law breaking or restrictive regime, but just because it was more fun that way. The Annenians knew all about fun. They were the most advanced life form in the explored sector of the galaxy, had no fears of invasion, hunger or illness and lived to have a good time. They’d stopped reproducing when their life expectancy became so long that there was no longer any point in propagation.
The giant transport ships that carried the partygoers to their destination would be in themselves venues for parties. Flying at many times the speed of light, they would sometimes travel for weeks to a planet with a suitable atmosphere, devoid of intelligent life, and party till they were bored. It was after one such party that had lasted for three weeks that the clean-up drone ship Skoupa was disposing of all the rubbish into the planet’s mantle. Whilst performing this fully automated task, it discovered a large deposit of Glurk, one of the most important elements in the construction of the Graviton Generators that provided the main propulsion for their ships. Finders Keepers was immediately sent to assess the level of the deposit. It was ascertained to be considerable, and so a mining expedition was planned.
Annenians were not the biggest fans of manual labour; there was no need for it. They had everything they required. If there was building work to be carried out or holes to be dug, they had drones that were more than happy to oblige. They harboured no ambitions to conquer worlds, and they had reached a point in space travel that satisfied all their imaginable needs. So when it came to the extremely manual task of mining, they usually employed the assistance of locals. In this case, the most intelligent creatures on the planet were sea dwellers; slightly less than useless for mining Glurk. So they had to employ the primitive humanoid species that were still hunting with stone tools and clumping each other over the head with lumps of wood. They did however, require the workers to be able to take instruction and work out the simplest of conundrums for themselves, so they genetically enhanced the creatures.
The scientist in charge of the operation, Dr Sha Haman, was so pleased with her work that she requested that the new creature be given a Class 2 status. This would mean that the Annenians would become responsible for the species’ growth and protection for its natural life, rather like a godparent. There had only ever been one other species with a Class 2 status and they had recently been wiped out when their star went Nova on them. So the Annenians had been searching for a new baby to adopt. The request was accepted, and the new species was named after Dr Haman.
It took a hundred and fifty of the planets years to mine the Glurk, during which time the Hamans were cared for, fed, and taught a few basic skills. The Hamans worked hard and were rewarded for their work. They learnt how to build weapons from bone, how to construct basic dwellings, and they were given a very simplistic appreciation of art. So when the last cup full of Glurk was lifted from the planet’s core, the Annenians packed away all traces of their visit and left, safe in the knowledge that they’d given the creatures an excellent boost towards their new lives.
They did pay regular visits to the planet to check up on the kids over the next 38,000 years, when they weren’t too busy having fun. They took great pleasure in making sure that the Hamans were developing well and not coming to any harm. The visiting Annenians would disguise themselves as Hamans and travel among the wandering tribes dropping hints about necessary skills, such as hunting, manufacturing of tools and clothes and of course, how to party. It never ceased to amaze the Annenians how much fun they could have with a piece of goatskin stretched over a hollowed-out log. They were very excited about the development of this new species. The Annenians had witnessed a strong desire to explore and expand in the Hamans’ psyche and over the millennia they watched them leave the confines of the large equatorial continent on which they had been found, to most habitable parts of the planet. The Hamans possessed a lust for discovery that had long since departed the Annenian psyche. They sent groups of scientists to record the Hamans’ attempts at crossing the continents. Occasionally they would lend a helping hand without revealing themselves or any of their technology. They instructed tribes in the construction of vessels that could carry them across the sea or guide them away from an impassable desert.
It was on one of these visits that a young scientist called Shtelar found a wounded parrot flapping around in circles on the ground, quite obviously distressed. It was a beautiful, green female Eclectus Parrot. She had a broken wing and was surely going to die. Shtelar had never seen anything as beautiful as this bird and immediately fell in love with it, and although Annenian law expressly forbade it, she decided to take it back to Annenia with her. She fixed its wing, placed it in suspended animation and hid it in her portable research lab. Shtelar managed to smuggle the parrot through the spaceport on Annenia with ease.
She lived in a little house on the edge of Lake Veanon, and the parrot quickly adapted to its new surroundings, perching on the veanonberry tree every night, eating the berries and relieving itself into the water below. During the investigations that were to follow, the Annenians surmised that it had taken two years for the parrot droppings to contaminate the entire lake. Lake Veanon was a feeder lake to several other lakes, which also became contaminated. All of the lakes ran into the vast ocean, which surrounded the single continent of Annia. All of the water on all of the space craft was taken from Annenia and reduced at the molecular level for transportation because Annenians refused to drink water from any other planet, so all the ships and hence all the colonies on faraway planets received the contaminated water. During the course of five years, every Annenian alive was unknowingly contaminated with the strange virus.
The first manifestation of the disease presented itself as forgetfulness. Thousands of Annenians were forgetting simple things such as where they’d parked, or how to get home. The enquiry revealed the alien ba