Exaltation
"A Pyramid
Power Story"
By John Pirillo
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 becane 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 shaped like a huge auk with eagle
eyes and a pyramid body exploded from Earth's atmosphere, then 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.
