Temple of the Inscriptions

by Humphrey Price

Table of Contents

Chapter 5: Sneferu

We drove through a security checkpoint and past clusters of military huts, groups of tanks, big guns, and equipment covered with desert camouflage before arriving at a concrete blockhouse in the middle of nowhere. It was surrounded by barbed wire fencing. I was marched inside past an entryway, a few offices, a long hallway, and into a room that held two jail cells at the far end. I was unceremoniously placed in one of the cells, which actually had a window, and my handcuffs were thankfully removed. Handcuff Man held on to my backpack.

There was a guard in the room who had a different type of uniform. I kept trying to tell Guard Man and Handcuff Man about Karyn, but they did not seem to understand or care. I had a bottle of water in my cell, a steel bed bolted to the floor, a sink, and my own steel toilet with no seat, of course.

There was something fascinating about Guard Man: his watch. It didn’t have a clock face with hands. It had numbers on it that changed. I had never seen anything like it. I wanted to ask him about it, but he spoke no English, and I certainly didn’t want to get him riled up.

The other fascinating thing was the keyboard and television screen on his desk. It was like a futuristic version of the teletype terminals we had at A&M to connect with the mainframe computer. There wasn’t just text on the screen, however, but also pictures and boxes. It reminded me of the mission control monitors that NASA had in Houston for the Apollo missions.

There was also a little box on a pad that he moved around with his right hand and clicked. I think it moved a pointer on the TV screen. This was really advanced technology! Why did they have better stuff here than we had at the A&M reactor facility?

I was brought a towel, washcloth, soap, clean sheets, and clean clothes. I basically took a bath in my sink using the washcloth. For dinner I was brought flatbread, meat that may have been lamb, a type of vegetable paste, and some oranges. Not bad. As soon as it was dark, I fell asleep.

* * *

I awoke when the sun rose. I was disoriented, and it took me almost a minute to remember where I was and realize it wasn’t all just a weird bad dream. Breakfast was brought: bread, marmalade, orange juice, and tea. Could have been worse. About an hour later, the entourage showed up.

A distinguished looking man of average height who looked to be about sixty years old was the guy in charge. He had a roundish head with thinning grey hair, high cheek bones, and medium brown skin. With him was a female assistant who from their body language and knowing glances at each other may have been more than an assistant. Walkie-Talkie Man was in tow, and he had my backpack which I really wanted returned to me. The boss waved to have me released from the cell.

My friend Machine Gun Man was not there, but another gentleman was in his place with a large sidearm. He was a formidable-looking, hardened military type with a passive face and huge muscular build. I got the feeling that if I made the slightest threatening gesture toward the head honcho with my little pinky, I was going to have more holes in my body than a pegboard.

The boss man’s female assistant was the only one who showed any knowledge of English. She was young, beautiful, and radiant, with olive skin, dark hair, and green eyes. She couldn’t have been older than her early twenties, but something just didn’t click. People her age typically lack a certain sophistication. You don’t think about it; it’s a subliminal expectation that you only notice when it doesn’t follow form. She walked and moved with great poise and refinement and projected a sense of being wise beyond her years. Her command of English was excellent, and she spoke with a hint of a British accent.

“My name is Hetepheres and, from your documents, we know that you are Scott Richards from the United States.” She offered her hand, and I took it. She had a warm, firm, businesslike grip. “I would like to introduce you to Mr. Sneferu. I will be translating for him.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s nice to be able to talk to someone. I gather that I’m somehow in Egypt, but I have no idea how I got here.”

“I see. That’s very interesting, because it’s hard to imagine how you came here by accident. You had to have come from Palenque. You needed to have a certain key, a stone to be precise, to operate the travel throne. We haven’t been able to find your stone, and we want to know where it is.” She seemed abrupt and insistent, and I didn’t like the tone.

“Well, to be precise,” I responded sarcastically, “a stone was needed to enter the chamber where the Mayan gizmo was, but not to operate whatever the thing was that got me here. My friend has the stone. It’s hers and, as far as I know, she’s still back there. I’m very worried about her, and we need to get her out safely.”

Hetepheres turned to Mr. Sneferu and spoke to him in a beautiful language that was not the Egyptian that everyone else had been speaking. He answered back with a deep, sonorous voice in that same melodic tongue. I waited while they conversed intently for a couple of minutes. Then she turned back to me.

“Tell us about your friend, and tell us about the stone she has that operates the travel throne.”

The stone again. That’s what she was interested in. I described Karyn and her pendant, but some instinct compelled me to omit the information that it was a meteorite. Hetepheres wanted to know how we found the travel throne and why I activated it. She listened intently as I related the tale, leaving out very little. Then she and Mr. Sneferu caucused again while the rest of us stood and waited.

I spent the time thinking about what they said regarding the “travel throne.” As difficult as it was to believe, I guessed that the Mayan device had to be a transporter, something like on Star Trek, and that I was sent to an identical receiving station in the red pyramid. How else would I have gotten here instantaneously?

When they were done talking, Hetepheres said, “We are concerned about your friend, Miss Lee; however, she is on another continent, and we cannot do anything for her—”

“Well can’t we call Palenque?” I interrupted, upset, “The local police or the tourism office there or the American embassy in Mexico City?”

“If we called them, they would not believe us. How would we explain how we knew about what had happened to Miss Lee in Palenque when we are in Egypt? How would we explain how you are here? In any case, we cannot reveal to anyone the secret chamber in Palenque which you and Miss Lee discovered.”

“Can we use the travel throne to go back and find Karyn and get her out of there? If we don’t get her out, she’ll die there!” I was getting frantic and losing my patience.

“I know you are upset, Mr. Richards. You have every right to be. Using the travel throne is not so simple. There are limitations to its functionality. You will have to trust me when I say that we cannot use it to go back to Palenque in time to rescue Miss Lee.”

“Well then what are we going to do?”

“We have every reason to believe that she will use the travel throne and appear in the Red Pyramid just as you did.”

“Then why hasn’t she shown up yet?”

“Trust me when I say that we have a lot of experience with this device, and we wouldn’t be surprised if she showed up a few days or even weeks from now. We’re just going to have to wait. We have our people posted at the Red Pyramid anticipating her arrival, and they are prepared to offer whatever assistance she may need.”

Trust me, trust me. I was dumbfounded and depressed and couldn’t really come up with more to say or ask on the subject. I was going to have to regroup my thoughts.

“We are very interested in Miss Lee’s stone. Do you know who gave it to her?”

The stone again. “I don’t think anyone gave it to her. She probably bought it at a jewelry store.”

“How could a stone of such great power be for sale at a common store?”

“Karyn didn’t know it had any special powers, probably neither did the store owners.”

“We must examine this stone of hers and test its powers.”

With Hetepheres translating, Sneferu asked many questions about the stone, which buttons it activated and which ones it didn’t. I answered them as best I could. He had detailed questions about the secret chamber inside the Temple of the Inscriptions: what did it look like, what condition was it in, how clean, any unusual things piled or stacked in a corner of the room, any signs of recent habitation like food or water. I got the impression he had been there before, but not recently, and that he knew the layout pretty well.

Then he was done with his questions and seemed in a hurry to leave. As the entourage turned to walk away, I spoke up. “I’ve answered your questions, and now I was wondering if Mr. Sneferu could answer some of mine.”

Hetepheres turned and pierced me with a gaze that questioned my sanity to have the effrontery to address the entourage in such a demanding manner. Then she softened and turned back to Sneferu. She touched him on the arm and translated what I had said.

Mr. Sneferu stared at me sharply, locking eyes. I calmly returned his stare, secretly wondering if he was going to have me shot for my impudence. Then, for the first time, I saw him smile, really just a very slight change in expression, mostly in his eyes.

He maintained eye contact as he spoke again to Hetepheres, as if he were really talking to me. Hetepheres translated: “You are a polite and brave young man, so unlike many of the Americans I have had the displeasure to meet and do business with here in Egypt. I would be happy to answer your questions for a few minutes, realizing, of course, that I may choose not to answer all of them.”

“Where are we exactly?”

“You are in Egypt, near the town of Dahshur, about 25 kilometers south of Cairo. This is a military base, but the building we are in is not part of the base. I have my own arrangements for this land, which you could say has been in my family for a very long time. All of the people here are my people.”

“Who built the travel throne?”

A far away expression played across his face as he replied, “That installation was put in place a very long time ago by Horus.”

“What is Horus?”

“Who is Horus. He looks much like a man, but is not of man. He has overseen the three types of man. We are the third type of man. You will not understand, and this is not the time for me to explain the very long history.”

That response was just too strange to process. I decided to move on to another topic. “Who owns and operates the travel thrones?”

“I control the one in my Red Pyramid, and a very evil and distasteful man named Pakal controls the one in Palenque. You would do well to avoid ever seeing him.”

“Are there others?”

“There is one in China controlled by my friend Jangsu. There was another in Greece and a much older one in Korea, both of which were destroyed. The oldest one of all was in Africa, but it has been shut down or locked out so that the rest of us cannot use it.”

“How many of you are there?”

“I know of six people to whom Horus has given their own stone and the power to control what he has hidden in each of our kingdoms. It is possible there are more that I do not know of. But yesterday I found that someone else has a stone with power, and that is your friend. It is important that I understand what powers it has.”

“Well, are you just going to take Karyn’s stone and use it for whatever you want?”

“The stone is for your friend, and she has demonstrated its power by bringing you here. Horus gave each of us a stone with a warning that only the true owner can use its power. If anyone other than the rightful owner uses it, that would mean death.”

This was just too whacky. A random thought entered my head. “Is Hetepheres your daughter?”

Hetepheres translated without batting an eye. He gave forth the slightest of chuckles as he responded enigmatically, “She is the sun in my life. And now I must go, as I have pressing business to attend to. I apologize for the poor accommodations you have been afforded. Although I cannot allow you to leave at the moment, I will have you moved to another room where you will not feel so much like a prisoner. I am confident that your friend will find her way here.”

* * *

Sneferu left with his entourage, but Hetepheres remained to oversee my transfer to a studio apartment on the second floor of the blockhouse. It had a small window looking out onto the scorching desert. I was relieved that she also returned my backpack. We had the opportunity to chat for a bit, and I was able to convince her to call me Scott instead of Mr. Richards.

I told Hetepheres that I wanted to contact the American embassy to let them know I was here and to reach my family to let them know I was safe.

She looked at me sadly and said, “If you showed up at your embassy with your passport, they would have you arrested for impersonating someone on record for having died sixteen years ago. They would wonder how you managed to obtain the passport of a dead man.”

“What do you mean? I’m not dead. Why would anyone think I died years ago?”

“Scott, do you know what year this is?”

“Sure, it’s 1973.”

She slowly shook her head. “The travel throne cannot transport you to another location without sending you into the future. You were lucky you had the time switch set to the smallest setting and were only moved sixteen years into the future. This is 1989.”

Proceed to Chapter 6...

Copyright © 2023 by Humphrey Price