Pyramids

The tour bus clanked slowly to a stop, squeezing in between two massive American-owned monstrosities, and disgorged us unceremoniously into the stinking Cairo heat. And by ‘stinking Cairo heat’, I mean both stinking and Cairo literally. The pyramids aren’t nearly as far away as you think they are. There’s practically a KFC right next door.

As we trek up towards the vague triangular outlines in the smog, our cut-rate tour guide launches unenthusiastically into his spiel.

“Everyone has a different theory about who built the pyramids-”

Oh god, here we go.

“-and why. Many people feel that the pyramids have some kind of spiritual connection. Indeed, this is exactly what the ancient Egyptians felt. To them, the pyramid was like a beacon, pointing the way to the heavens...”

You know, I’m pretty sure most of the supposed “science” of Egyptology is made up. Most likely, on the spot. Anything to keep the paying tourists happy. And it’s not like we’ve got any way of fact-checking them-

I’m jolted out of my internal monologue by my sister’s elbow.

“Ow.”

“Pay attention, Louie, we’ve paid for this.”

“It’s all a load of crap”, I hissed back.

My sister’s a total sucker for all that mystical crap. That’s the reason I’m here against my will. I’m a marine biologist. I’m into science and rationality and so on and so forth, but more importantly, I’d rather be scuba diving on the Red sea right now. But no.

“...and maybe even extraterrestrial involvement.”

An appropriately impressed ‘ooh’, came up from the crowd, as if they hadn’t heard the ‘aliens built it’ trotted out a hundred times before.

We pushed our way past the hordes of locals trying to flog miniature plastic pyramids and prints of dubious-looking animal-headed gods. I tightened the straps on my backpack a little. It’s got a few hundred bucks worth of sensing equipment in it. Geiger counters, electric field detectors. A stethoscope. I borrowed most of it from mates. The plan is that when my sister inevitably ‘feels a presence’, I switch on all the sensing equipment, and make her prove it.

What? She has her fun, I have mine.

We finally got past the scalpers and hit the queue for the pyramids proper. The guide starts on some trivia dump about how they’re being ‘conserved’ (also known as ‘rebuilt using concrete blocks’). I’d long since stopped paying attention. As much as I hated the mystic bullshit, The question was a sticky one. Why would you build a massive geometrical stone structure for one dead guy? The nihilist in me put it down to trying to keep the masses employed and the economy moving. Like economic stimulus, but in a desert, miles from anywhere.


We hit the front of the queue surprisingly quickly. If there’s one thing the locals really were efficient about, it was pumping people through their ancient ruins as quickly as they possibly could. My sister giggled excitedly as we made our way, stooped all the way over.

“Ooh, Louis. Can’t you feel it?”

“Nope. Not a thing,” I said, squeezing against a wall to let a German couple past on their way back up.

“Well, you should try being more open minded.”

“You should try just occasionally looking at the abundance of evidence in front of you.”

“I’ve got evidence! I can feel... something.” she finished lamely.

“Right. And Newton went on ‘feelings’, did he?”

We bickered like this the rest of the way down into the chamber. Here’s something they don’t tell you about the Pyramids: there’s absolutely squat down there. No writing on the wall, no carvings, no nothing. Just an empty room and a big-ass coffin. A coffin my sister was now lying in. This was my chance.

“I can feel the energy,” her voice echoed from across the room.

“Oh yeah? What kind of energy? Kinetic or potential?”

“Shut up.”

And then, at the back of my head, something clicked. Stupid brain, thinking in metaphors-

Then something clicked again.

Hold on a sec. That was an actual physical click. I unslung my bag from my shoulder and scuffled around, coming up with my borrowed antique of a geiger counter.

Click.

Huh.

I started waving it around the room. The closer I got to the giant sarcophagus, the stronger and more frequent the clicks. I did a quick survey of the room. The coffin was the only thing in here. On a hunch, I threw the counter into the coffin.

“Ouch! What the hell is this?” My sister stood up, holding the counter, which was now emitting a dull roar.

“You need to get out of there. Now.”

“What?”

“I mean. Um. I’m claustrophobic. Can we go?”

She sighed, and swung her leg over the side of the coffin. I breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever had been kept in that coffin was spitting out vast quantities of ionising radiation. I wanted out.

I headed back up the shaft as quickly as I damn well could, ignoring the sighs and eye rolls from behind me. My mind was fizzing as much as my geiger counter had a few minutes ago. What on earth could cause that sort of a reaction in an ancient monument? I was baffled, and more than a bit scared. I spent the rest of the site tour in a bit of a stupor, flicking back through the readings, over and over, wondering if they had been real, and if they were... why?

It wasn’t until we were back on the bus that it clicked. A metaphorical click this time. And the worst part was how much sense it made. A giant imposing structure. Hidden entrance. Thousands of tonnes of stone. In the middle of the desert.

Imposing. Secure. Shielded. Remote.

Which left me with an impossible question in response to my impossible conclusion:

Why the hell would the Ancient Egyptians have needed to store nuclear waste?

The Pentagon

September 11, 1941. Midnight.

A titanic crash echoed through the virgin Pennsylvanian forest. Zombie Abraham Lincoln straightened his hat and holstered his revolver with a steely glint in his eye.

“Ooh, boy. She’s angry alright. We’re going to need something a mite bigger this time around.”
He motioned to the man next to him.
“Ronald... bring me Tabitha.”

Ronald Reagan gave a curt nod and sprinted into the darkness. Lincoln stood in the clearing, stock still, and silent. He was good at standing still. It was one of many advantages of being undead. The unholy symbol draped around his neck pulsed with an unearthly light, drawing the creature closer, like bait in a trap. Exactly like bait in a trap, since it was, in fact, the bait in a trap.

Any second now...

The trees in front of him exploded into splinters, and from a hundred feet in the air there was a tremendous roar. Lincoln stood his ground, drawing both this silver revolvers and emptying twelve alchemical iron rounds into the beast’s towering form. The creature roared, less with pain than with annoyance. He placed his hand on the thousand-year-old katana on his back. If Reagan didn’t hurry, he was going to have to get medieval-Japan on its reptillian behind, and that would just ruin his suit.

“Abraham!” came the shout from across the clearing. In the split second it took Lincoln to glance his way, the beast struck, swiping at him with a claw the size of a stagecoach, sending him flying into the air. As he came down, he drew the katana and, performing a perfect backflip, landed on the beast’s scaly head

“NOW, REAGAN!”, he roared, as he brought the blade down ineffectually against the enormous skull. On the ground, Ronald Reagan let out an animal yell, which was only marginally less terrifying than the whine of Tabitha, Lincoln’s vorpal minigun, spinning up to four hundred thousand RPM. In a blaze of eldrich energy, Reagan opened fire.

The effect was almost instantaneous. One of the creature’s seven limbs was liquified to a gooey paste of bone and sinew. With a screech of genuine pain this time, the creature thrashed its thousand ton mass from left to right, leaving Lincoln clinging to the handle of the katana, whose steel blade embedded in the creature’s skull was the only thing preventing him from being thrown to his re-demise. “AGAIN! HAVE AT HER!”, he bellowed.

Reagan’s second burst of sustained fire struck true. Half a million shards of depleted Neptunium bored a perfectly cylindrical hole in the creature’s chest. With a quiet groan, it keeled ponderously over and landed on the ground with a ground-cracking crash. Lincoln stepped calmly off the beast’s head, wiping the viscera from his katana. “That won’t stop it for long. We need the containment field ready, as soon as possible. Get Edison out here on double. Tell him we have her down.”

“No need, Mr. President.”, said a voice from the shadows. Thomas Edison lurched out of the forest and, with a curt nod to Abraham Lincoln, offered one cloth-wrapped mummified hand to Ronald Reagan. “Mr. Reagan. The late Thomas Alva Edison, at your service.” He turned to the shadows again. “Bring out the generators!”

A rustling and squeaking came from the surrounding forest. As the three looked on, thousands of bats, each tied to a tiny harness, dragged out five massive engines, each bolted to a pair of copper coils which, in turn, was atttached to a parabolic dish. The creature on the ground began to stir feebly.

“No time to lose. Everyone out of the pentacle!”. Edison handed Lincoln and Reagan each a pair of goggles, and then pulled down hard on a lever on the side of the closest generator. In unison, five bolts of lightning lanced across the clearing, trapping the waking creature at the centre of a perfect five-pointed star.

“Reagan. The incantations.”, said Edison.

“You have no idea the lengths I went to to get this. I had to rob the library of congress. Me, the President- well, the president one day at any rate-”

“Quiet! Just do it!” Lincoln turned one eye to the horizon. “Dawn is coming.”

Ronald Reagan pulled a surprisingly small but exceptionally old grimoire from inside his trenchcoat. He uttered fourteen guttural syllables, and snapped the book shut as they watched the creature flicker into invisibility.

As the sun rose, the three headed out of the forest. Lincoln turned to the other two. “Right. Our work here is done.” Checking his pocket watch, he turned and nodded gravely at each of the men in turn. “I shall see you at the End of the World.” As Lincoln returned to his grave, Edison to his flying pyramid space zeppelin, and Reagan to his stolen time machine, each one of them saluted the secret service men, who were just beginning to arrive. They were here as part of a far larger plan. A far more difficult, and complex, and dangerous plan. A plan to contain the beast, not just temporarily, but permanently, within a specially constructed pentagonal building, whose shape could channel away and safely earth the arcane energies which surrounded the beast and whose construction would be supervised under the watchful eye of the Department of Supernatural Defense of the United States of America. A building which would come to be known as...

The Pentagon.