The Atlantean Pyramid
"A Levels Story"
Greg wiped the mop of dirty brown hair out of his eyes and
dug down into the gears that were jammed together in the power drive. He had
built the drive from a schematic left by the Atlanteans deep beneath the sands
of the Egyptian desert, just a few miles from the Sphinx. He and his pyramid
pals, Dexter and Knods, had formed a small expedition when they found out there
was a possible Atlantean relic buried in the area. They and, of course, a
thousand other prospectors of antiquity, fame and fortune.
He couldn't sweat to cool off his body, because the
temperature was nearly a hundred and thirty in the shade and the air was as dry
as a camel's rump. He grinned. Original concept. Maybe he'd put it into this
thesis some day. The thesis that would get him the Doctor of Extra Trans-Dimensional
Physics that was being offered by a subsidiary of Stanford. It was a school for
the Occult and Paranormal Sciences, and was buried deep beneath the radar of
public scrutiny for fear of ridicule, crazies, and just plain getting their
funding cut off.
Professor Maraskall had worked a good forty years of his
life building the special school, using his connections at Stanford, Harvard
and Yale to slowly put together a faculty that was both knowledgeable and well
connected in the money realms of life. It hadn't been easy, but he had
accomplished it, and now Greg or Kegor, as his sometimes wacky friends called
him, as well as Dexter and Knods were comrades in adventures, as well as upper
graduates at the Extra Trans Dimensional Studies Academy or Eat Me as a lot of
the students jokingly called the place.
It was advanced in many ways, one of which was that it was
buried in the Nevada desert so that only a portion of it was above ground, and
that was hidden well in the deep canyons of Red Rock Canyon outside Vegas. It
took an hour to reach it through circuitous roads, switchbacks, and false
canyons. Only the initiated knew of it, and then they were sworn to utter
secrecy, or else they would face a certain curse. No one mentioned what it was,
but no one wanted to know either.
"Got it!" He hollered to Moose, their fourth team
member they had picked up in Hollywood, thumbing for a ride to Africa. When
they had let him get into their old psychedelic Volkswagen bus, he had
immediately broken out a bag of three musketeers and Reese's pieces, thus
sealing their eventual friendship. How could you say no to someone who had the
same sugar addictions as yourself?
Moose, who was a big person, with broad shoulders, an almost
sumo wrestler thick body, but more muscled, even if a bit overweight in places,
swayed into the narrow compartment that was located at the base of the pyramid,
a wrench in his thick, sweaty palms.
"Yeah?"
"This gear here..."
Before he could explain Moose whacked the side of the
compartment container and the gears began to grind again in the proper
directions, almost clipping the tip of Greg's nose off. He hastily beat a
retreat from his position, double checking to make sure his nose was...still there.
He scowled at Moose.
"Who put cookies in your blender?"
Moose grinned, revealing his two upper missing teeth, and
said. "Knods has figured out how to navigate this thing."
Greg immediately ran for the narrow exit, the same time as
Moose turned, knocking himself back against the far wall. Moose gave him a hand
up. "Whoops."
"Right." Greg replied, sparing his curses for a timelier
event. He dodged around Moose, and quickly scrambled up an old elaborately
carved ladder made from precious stones and glued together with gold, silver
and platinum. The ladder alone could have put them all through school for the
rest of this life and the next ten thousand, but they weren't into the business
for the money. They had higher aspirations. Money would come later.
Knods and Dexter both had their heads buried in an ancient,
decrepit looking Mummy's coffin when he burst into the top chamber of the
buried pyramid. "Where is it?"
They both banged their heads on the coffin lid, surprised at
the sudden interruption.
Dexter rubbed the back of his bald head and squinted angrily
at Greg. "Kegor, this is not the time to go scaring the crap out of us. We
got have launched in to orbit, or gone trans-dimensional without any lunch to
take along with us."
"Lunch!" Greg countered, h is stomach suddenly
growling. "When?"
"Now." Moose said from behind him.
He came into the smaller room, which measured about fifteen
by fifteen coffins wide and deep, and set down a tray of McDonalds and Oreos.
Dexter made a face. "That's not lunch!" He declared,
then pulled out a six pack of Root Beer and slammed it down on top a mummy
coffin.
They all screamed with delight and began sorting out the
chicken sandwiches, Oreos and root beer, their faces animated as they brought
each other up to date on what they had been working on and how close to
completion they were.
"How in the name of Pokémon's Father and Mother did you
ever manage this feast?" Knods asked between mouthfuls of sandwich and Oreos.
Moose grinned. "I have my ways."
At that moment a very thin, weasel looking Egyptian with a
wisp of mustache and chin hair slithered into their compartment and half bowed.
He turned to Moose. "The helicopter is waiting to get paid, sahib."
Moose turned beet red. "Uh."
Knods and Dexter turned on him. "You didn't pay for
it?"
"Not exactly." Moose stuttered, a voice he fell
into when he became nervous, embarrassed or frightened.
"Damn it, Moose, they shoot people here for doing
less!" Greg hollered.
The Egyptian smiled, reveal perfect white teeth. "We
can always negotiate."
Dexter looked at him. "How?"
"Oh, the doctors here are always looking for a spare
arm, a leg, and some fingers."
Both Knods and Greg choked on their food.
"Get out! Dexter screamed at the Egyptian.
The Egyptian's eyes narrowed. "It's not good to fool
Mother Nature."
"You're not Mother Nature! Out! Out!" Dexter
screamed, his crew cut red hair matching the color of his cheeks now. He picked
up a monkey wrench.
The Egyptian backed for the exit. "No need to be mean
about it."
He turned away from them, his smile of contrition turning
into a hideous dark look.
He exited.
Dexter turned to Moose. "Now look what you've
done!"
Moose began to cry.
Knods went up to him and offered comfort. "It's all
right, big guy, we won't let them have more than four of your fingers."
Moose began to bellow with sobs.
"A foot?" Suggested Greg.
Moose screamed like a banshee.
Suddenly, the buried pyramid began to shake and tremble.
They all four froze in horror.
"The power supply!" Greg hollered and made a mad
dash for the exit.
All four of them ran down the narrow corridors of the
pyramid, all sloping towards the base where the Atlantean power supply was. The
walls and floor shook more and more.
"It's going to explode!" Moose cried out, wailing
and sobbing.
Dexter stopped and grabbed the big guy. "It won't
explode."
"It won't?" Moose asked with relief.
Dexter gave him an evil smile. "No, we'll just turn
into the prettiest nuclear bomb this side of the Anwar Dam."
Moose broke into wails of terror.
Greg and Knods burst into the power supply room, and then
turned pale as ghosts. A monkey wrench had been thrown into the gears.
"Oh, we're so screwed!" Greg muttered.
Knods just...nodded.
Knods was the first to reach the exit door, a huge slab of
stone that was airtight and had now been shut tighter than a flea's behind.
"It won't open." Knods grunted as he tried working
the controls of the door over and over.
Moose and the others burst into the chamber, saw what was
happening.
Greg crossed himself.
Moose let out a wail of horror.
Outside the pyramid the Egyptian smiled as he and his gang
of thieves completed piling sand against the door so it couldn't open. "I
warned them not to fool with Mother Nature."
They rushed for the waiting helicopter, which was a huge
Kharkov supply ship, bought from the Russians, with room for twenty. It
immediately began its blades whirling.
Inside the pyramid Dexter and Knods rushed to the control
room and began attacking the controls there in hopes of opening the outside
door somehow.
"It's no use." Dexter said, giving up.
"How do you know?" Greg hollered as he ran inside,
and overhead.
"Look for yourself." He pointed at video cam view
of the exterior where they could see the sand jamming the door.
Then the pyramid gave another huge shudder.
They all looked at each other in horror as Moose came
running in. "Tell me we're not going to do what I think we're going to
do."
"We are." Dexter told him with an evil grin.
"And it's all your fault!"
Moose started to wail, and then clammed up.
"Wait!" He shouted.
He ran to the right wall and began running his large palm
down a scroll of ancient Egyptian icons. They all lit up.
Immediately four couches slammed out of the walls, made of
stone and some kind of soft substance on their tops.
They all looked at him in surprise.
He grinned. "A man's gotta sleep somewhere."
Then the pyramid began to lift off from the desert floor,
ejecting tons of sand and debris as it did so. The helicopter just starting to
lift was buried in the cascading storm of sand and debris and exploded.
Inside the pyramid the four young men cast themselves on the
couches. Moose touched a glowing side panel on his. "Touch it here and it
gets really comfy."
They all did.
The couches dropped down. They all screamed.
Then as the pyramid lifted into the sky on thrusters of
immense trans-dimensional energies, the couches began enclosed by
semi-transparent shells.
All four men screamed as an overhead screen lit up showing
them that they were launching into space.
"We're all going to die!" Shouted Moose.
"Serves you right." Dexter cursed at him.
Then they all screamed again as the giant Atlantean pyramid began
to reshape its exterior until it appeared like a series of spherical, highly
reflective orbs, one inside the other, then exploded from Earth's atmosphere, and
was enveloped in an intense veil of swirling energies and vanished.
Dexter's voice came after the pyramid vanished. "Uh
Guys! Where are we?"
No one answered.
Moose. "Anyone like an Oreo?"
Silence.
