Chapter 1
Posted: June 13, 2006 - 07:51:33 am

Egypt 1223BC

The old man dropped his arms to his sides allowing the white linen robe to fall into place around his scrawny body. A matched pair of tall concubines straightened the robe until it draped correctly. One of the maids set a dark blue conical hat in place on his bald pate as the other efficiently tied a matching blue sash around his narrow waist.

"Be quick my beauties," the old man ordered, "the heavens move not at our whim."

"Amon-Ra will like what he sees tonight, Exalted Lord," one of the girls replied.

The old man stepped over to a polished bronze mirror and checked his appearance. Reflected back at him was a small man, completely bald, but showing few other signs of the ravages of time. His face was clean-shaven and only slightly wrinkled. Large, piercing eyes the color of honey were set evenly above his hawkishly curved nose. His mouth was generous in size with laugh lines at the corners that hinted at an innate good humor. Surprisingly, his teeth were intact and still white, although they were ground down from almost a century of use.

"You have done well, my little ibises. Now off to bed with you, I have Amon-Ras work to do."

The two young women turned in tandem toward the bedchamber.

"We will save you a warm spot between us, Pamiu (Old Tomcat), so you can rest your tired old bones," said one over her shoulder as she danced out of his reach.

The young woman giggled as the old man pretended to swat at her; smiling, he watched their swaying backsides disappear. The young women, Mery and Tiy, were twin sisters. They had been in the man's service for four years. The twins were tall and statuesque, towering over the diminutive priest. They shared his bed of their own accord; he was the kindest, gentlest man they had ever met. The women doted on their 'Old Tomcat', and he, in turn, adored them. The Israelite women were more slaves to their hot and passionate nature than they were to the High Priest of the Cult of Amon-Ra. Of the scores of young women who had served him over his incredibly long lifetime, these two were by far his favorites.

The ancient priest passed through a bronze-bound door into an antechamber that sat adjacent to his sleeping quarters. Two young acolytes jumped up from their studies as he entered.

"Is tonight the night, My Lord?" asked the older of the boys reverently.

It was a ritual question that had been asked nightly over four hundred thousand times down through the centuries.

The old man was named Sulihotep (Man of Peace); he was High Priest of the Amonaten (Amon's servants), the Cult of Amon-Ra's Return. Sulihotep was ancient by any culture's standards. Well past a hundred years old, Sulihotep had been the Amonaten for eighty years. All the high priests of Amon-Ra had been long-lived, so much so that Sulihotep was only the sixteenth Amonaten in the eleven hundred years the cult had existed.

"It will be, if the One God wishes it," Sulihotep answered in solemn rote.

The younger of acolytes bowed and handed Sulihotep the ebonywood and gold staff that had been fashioned by the first Amonaten, then the boys fell in beside the old man as he briskly walked toward the ceremonial chamber.

Sulihotep's living quarters were in the same subterranean wing of the huge Temple of Karnak that held the sacred chamber. This part of the temple had been carved directly into the sandstone plateau that Karnak dominated. A vaulted corridor, five paces wide, six paces tall, and two hundred paces long was the central feature of the grotto that housed the Cult of Amon-Ra. The corridor was split by a single row of ornately carved pillars that had been left to support the weight of the temple above. Between the pillars, small bronze-lined circular shafts reached to the surface, allowing fresh air and sunlight into the tunnel. Rooms to either side of the central corridor provided living, work, storage, and study space for the members of the cult.

In contrast to the corridor, the ceremonial Chamber of the Return of Amon-Ra was small and unassuming, perfectly mirroring the cult that served it. The cult was small and exclusive by design; the cult's creator had carefully specified the number of acolytes and priests eleven centuries earlier. Its small number —and the knowledge and wisdom of its priests— were what had kept the cult alive in the shifting sands that marked the affairs of Pharaohs.

The Amonaten were skilled physicians, architects, and astronomers. They were the keepers of the knowledge of the first high priest, Khenemetamon (the one joined with Amon). Khenemetamon was the architect of the great pyramid of Khufu and of this section of the Temple of Karnak. Khenemetamon's knowledge had been so advanced that even a millennium later only his followers knew most of it. Khenemetamon had been sent to Earth by Amon; born fully-grown, he had descended from the stars full of wondrous knowledge.

The inner sanctum of the Amonaten was a small unfurnished stone chamber barely five paces square. Every inch of the walls and ceiling were covered with hieroglyphs and pictographs representing the teaching of Khenemetamon. The north wall of the chamber was perfectly aligned with the exterior wall of the temple above. A massive buttress —two paces wide and three paces long— anchored this section of the wall to the bedrock. Centered on the north wall was the room's only object, a gleaming gray granite cube half a pace on each side. The top of the cube was scooped to form a seat for one person. In front of the cube, there was a recess in the wall; six inches above the recess, a small shaft pierced through both the wall and the huge buttress at a steep upward angle.

Sulihotep entered the chamber and bowed toward each wall. Then he sat on the granite cube, placed his chin on the ledge, and looked up through the shaft. The shaft and position of the ledge forced the observer to focus on a small patch of sky that contained only two stars. At least that had been the case for the last millennium. On this fateful night that was not the case.

Sulihotep cried out and pulled back from the ledge, he rubbed his eyes and peered back through the shaft as his acolytes looked on in fearful wonder. Sulihotep gazed in rapt awe as his eyes focused on the three stars shining brightly in the deep black sky. Convinced that his vision was not playing tricks on him he once more pulled back from the shaft.

"Each of you look, my sons, and confirm that I am seeing what I think I see. For it appears that Khenemetamon's prophesy has been fulfilled; Amon-Ra has returned..."

Egypt 2018AD

Ellis Stone pulled away the fingertips that she had been trailing over the glyphs carved into the stone. Her rumbling stomach announcing that it was near noon. Ellis' appetite was almost as accurate as her digital watch. Ellis shook her head in wonderment; she had been transfixed on the riveting story of Sulihotep for almost four hours. She glanced around, shining her flashlight on the walls and ceiling. This simple, unadorned chamber was turning out to be a much more important discovery than Tutankhamon's Tomb.

Ellis played her light onto the east wall once more, trying to wrap her mind around what she was seeing. The wall held a perfectly proportioned scale model of the solar system carved in deep relief and painted in bright colors. Even the rings of Saturn were represented in the carving. The whole concept was something so mind boggling that it made her breathless. It had to be some elaborate hoax. How could a culture barely into the Iron Age have beaten Copernicus to the punch by three thousand years? One thing was certain; Ellis had a lot of research to do before she reported her findings back to New Man University.

Deep Space 1224BC

The massive shimmering silver orb that was Cultural Seeding Ship Five began decelerating while still more than a light year from the medium-sized star that was its next destination. This was CSS-5's third visit to this solar system, the most promising of the twenty it had been assigned to monitor.

One of seven identical seeding ships launched by the race that called themselves the Seekers of Knowledge, CSS-Five was a sentient machine, a finely crafted bio-mechanical marvel five kilometers in diameter that had been faithfully fulfilling its mission for over ten thousand years. Five's creators were an ancient race with two million years of evolution and one hundred thousand years of space travel behind them. The seeding ships were built and tasked to visit planets that supported life and nudge the most advanced lifeforms toward the stars. The Seekers had not found another advanced race with which to interact, so with infinite patience they were trying to grow one.

It took almost a full trip of the target planet around its primary star for Five to decelerate and match course and speed with it. Once in orbit, Five brought its massive array of sensors to bear on the blue orb and launched hundreds of robotic probes to collect data. The data was analyzed and compared against the data from its last visit over one thousand years ago. The progress of the last millennium was extrapolated out to the achievement of interstellar space travel. Masses of raw data were uploaded into a pod and the pod was hurled at near light speed on an intersecting path with the planet of Five's origin.

Five used the recently collected data to identify population centers and to design the next series of social experiments. If Five had feelings, they would have been mixed at the long-term results of its last series of experiments. A few of the cultures that Five had interacted with had made significant progress, but most had languished. This race was so damnably hard to grasp because of their intraspecies conflicts and willingness, even eagerness, to commit fratricide. Nowhere in Five's databases existed another race that killed each other with such single-minded determination. Back on the planet of Five's creators, the concepts were so alien that an entirely new branch of science had been created just to study them.

The Seekers of Knowledge were very interested in this species. Interested because despite their propensity toward bloodlust, they were advancing at a pace fifty times faster than the Seekers' own race had. The inhabitants of the small blue planet were also hundreds of times ahead of the other two hundred fledgling species thus far identified by the Seekers. The Seekers endless debated whether the creatures on the planet advanced because of their over-aggressive nature or if that aggressiveness retarded an even more spectacular advancement.

CSS-Five collected genetic material from representative subjects of each population sub-grouping that was of interest to it. In a cavernous laboratory the genetic material was modified, enhanced, and placed in nutrient tanks. As Five gathered more information, the growing organisms were further modified. Five's goal was to make his constructs viable in the societies they would be entering and to give them the best possible chance for survival.

During the genetic encoding of construct number one hundred-seventeen, Five experienced the first malfunction in its ten-thousand-year existence. The malfunction was nothing even measurable, a nanosecond power outage to the genetics laboratory. An outage just long enough for three of number one-seventeen's thousands of genes to receive the wrong encoding.

For the next five years, CSS-5 orbited the planet, silently observing the lifeforms on the planet's surface as the lifeforms it was growing matured physically at an accelerated rate. Meanwhile on the planet below, the creatures the constructs were patterned after continued to kill one another at a truly astonishing pace.

Egypt 2018AD

Ellis Stone wolfed down a couple of sandwiches in the chow tent as she excitedly told her fellow scientists about the Sacred Chamber of the Cult of Amon-Ra. A casual observer would have been hard pressed to identify Ellis and her colleagues as a serious scientific expedition because everyone on the team except Ellis was under the age of sixteen. The casual atmosphere and relative youth of the researchers made the group seem more like an impromptu beach party. Although the team members were young, they were amazingly intelligent and competent in their fields of expertise. Their youth also made them more open to seeking alternate explanations to what they had found.

Stone picked up her satellite phone and placed a call to New Man University. She needed an astronomer to help figure out what planet or star old Sulihotep had actually seen. She also needed one to look at the east wall of the chamber. As it happened, Ellis was related to a brilliant astronomy doctoral candidate who currently taught at New Man; the person she called at the university was her twin sister, Elgin. She knew that Elgin would be only too happy to pack up her computer and other equipment and make the trek to Egypt - provided Ellis could convince the school's administrators that she was needed.

Ellis broke the connection, grabbed her digital camera, and walked back into the newly discovered and partially excavated northwest corner of the Temple of Karnak. Once the bigwigs took a gander at the hieroglyphs and drawings, she was sure Elgin would be there on the next thing smoking.

Ellis and Elgin Stone were a few years older than the normal New Man University student because it had taken a while for New Man to identify them as candidates for the unique institution. New Man University was an incredibly advanced educational facility for the second-generation children of female twins. The first generation of twins was called the 'd' generation and their offspring were the e-Kids. Ellis and Elgin's mother, Dakota, was the surviving twin of a pair born to a Native American couple on the Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma. Dakota's sister, Dallas, had died of smallpox as an infant, further muddying the trail for the New Man recruiters. In addition, Ellis and Elgin were older than the known pairs of E-twins. In fact, only one other set of twins with the unique e-Kid abilities older than sixteen existed.

Dakota Birdsong grew up —against all odds— to become a supermodel. She was tall, shapely, exotically beautiful, and extremely intelligent. She was the reigning Sports Illustrated swimsuit model when she set New York abuzz by falling in love with a tall, gangly, and brilliant philosophy student named Isaiah Stone.

Dakota and Isaiah met when they both enrolled in the same course at New York University. Isaiah was immediately smitten by Dakota and in his awkwardly charming style set out to woe her. It took two weeks for Isaiah to gather enough courage to ask Dakota for a dinner date; Dakota astonished them both by accepting. Fifteen minutes into their pasta carbonadi, they fell in love. The shy quiet model went home with the gregarious philosopher that night and never left. They married in 1996 and were deliriously happy. Their happiness grew when Dakota delivered twin girls in 1997. Years later, Dakota told her daughters that Isaiah succeeded where movie stars, millionaires, and professional athletes had failed simply because he made her laugh.

The Stones were a decidedly unique family. Boisterous and loving, they all took their cue from the gregarious Isaiah, a man never at a loss for words. Isaiah recognized his daughters' superior intellect early on and had encouraged it. Dakota tried to balance their intellectual pursuits with physical activities. Both girls excelled at archery and fencing and both were exceptional horseback riders. New Man discovered them because of the notoriety they received as fifteen-year-old competitors in the 2012 London Olympics. Ellis won an individual gold medal in fencing, Elgin won one in archery, and they shared the gold in beach volleyball. The tall, beautiful, and curvaceous twins were splashed all over the media. The British tabloids went crazy over them; the Sun Newspaper said they were "beauty, brains, and brawn wrapped in a killer instinct".

Andrew Adkins, the founder of New Man University, thought the Stone sisters were about as beautiful as women not named Deirdre (his wife) or Donna (her twin sister) could possibly be. Andrew's wives and his daughter Emma loved to razz him about his undisguised admiration of the sisters Stone. The Adkins family also liked Ellis and Elgin's parents. Andrew offered both Isaiah and Dakota positions at New Man University that they accepted. Isaiah Stone and Andrew became good friends. Emma Adkins said it was because they were the two most talkative men on the planet.

Ellis took her photographs, uploaded them into her sat-phone's data port, shot them back to the university, and then returned to the huge black stone that held Sulihotep's narrative. In less than a minute, she was lost in the story once again.
Egypt 1223BC

Sulihotep stood back and waited as first one, then the other of his acolytes peered through the shaft. Both breathlessly confirmed that Amon had indeed returned. The old man nodded and asked the young men to leave him alone in the chamber to meditate. The youths bowed and exited the chamber, closing the heavy door behind them. Sulihotep walked over to the eastern wall and stood squinting at the carvings in the dim light of a single torch set in an ornate ivory wall sconce.

"The day has finally come, Khenemetamon," the old man said aloud, "as you prophesied, the God Amon has reassumed his position in heaven. We are well prepared to meet Amon's new emissary; how cruel that we must wait seven floods of the Nile for his arrival. I hope that this worn out husk that carries my spirit will last until then."

He stood by the wall for a minute or two, almost as if he were expecting a reply. Then he sighed and turned towards the door. Tomorrow he would have to carry the word of Amon's return to the Pharaoh. Sulihotep did not believe that his announcement would have much effect on the great Ramses II, but it was his duty. Knowing the Pharaoh as well as he did, Sulihotep was certain that Ramses would treat the star's arrival as one more sign of his own greatness, one more opportunity to erect a few dozen statues in his own honor. It was a pity that this event had not happened during the reign of Ramses' father, Seti I. Seti had been a man truly worthy of the title Pharaoh.

The acolytes escorted Sulihotep back to his quarters, then sped off to inform the other priests and students of the incredible news. Mery and Tiy, wakened by the excited obeisance of the acolytes, rushed out of the bedchamber, alarmed that their master was returning so early.

"Is something the matter, Master?" asked Tiy worriedly.

"Amon has returned, little one, his star has taken its rightful place in the heavens," the old man said.

"And that is a good thing, yes? You are the Amonaten, his most loyal subject, surely he will reward you greatly," said Mery matter-of-factly.

"What reward could he give me greater than the two of you? Come to bed with me now, and warm my old bones as you promised, tomorrow we are off to Luxor Palace to inform Ramses of the news."

Mery and Tiy blushed and smiled demurely at his compliment. Sulihotep watched the expression on one girl as it was mirrored on the other. As a scholar, he was endlessly fascinated by how closely the two women thought, acted, and reacted. Mery and Tiy were both excited by their master's discovery and the implications it held for their future. It was also not unpleasant for them to be abed this early with him. He was indeed an Old Tomcat, but one more than capable of taking care of his two identical kittens. Each woman linked her arm through one of his and pressed against him.

"Yes, I think we know how to keep at least one of your old bones warm, Master Pamiu," Tiy giggled, rubbing her small firm breast against his upper arm.
Egypt 1218BC

CSS-Five began bringing his creations out of their growth acceleration tanks when they had reached eighty-five percent of their predetermined size. The proto-clones had fully operational autonomous nervous systems, but their higher brain functions had yet to be activated. The clones were laid out on sterile tables where carefully prepared caps were attached to each clone's cranium. Microscopically small wires from the cap insinuated themselves into the brain of each. Through the wires, Five fed each clone its personality. Five had assembled an amalgam of traits that would again help in their survival. The traits were culled from those displayed by the most successful of the peoples on the planet floating below.

During this time, the clones were also programmed with limitations on their activities. These directives were so important that the clones were genetically programmed to be unable to refute them. Unfortunately, the compliance gene was one of the three in clone number one-seventeen that were in the wrong position.

From personality infusion, the still growing clones were taken to a section of the ship designed to bring their bodies on line. The clones were as helpless as newborns so the facility was at zero Earth gravity to start. For a year, the gravity gradually increased until it was one hundred and twenty percent Earth normal. At the end of year six, the clones were ninety-five percent grown and functioning well in the heavy gravity. While the clones were adapting to the increasing gravity, they also started a carefully prepared education process that would make them advanced enough relative to the target population to give them another survival advantage. Each would have knowledge and skills that made them extremely useful to the cultures in which they were to be placed...

The second defective gene in one-seventeen appeared at this juncture. The gene that had not been turned on was one that regulated an enzyme in the brain that controlled synaptic connections. The gene's evolutionary function was to limit higher brain activity from interfering with survival instincts. Over the millennia, the production of the enzyme had slowed, but it still depressed higher brain function when a person was under stress. The immediate result in the shipboard learning lab was that one-seventeen learned faster than the other clones. The full effect of the absent enzyme would manifest itself fully once One-seventeen was on the planet surface.

While all were growing simultaneously at the same rate, each of the forty or so clones was educated separately from the others. Learning programs were tailored for the culture into which they would be inserted. The learning was on two levels: While the clones were awake, they learned botany, natural science, astronomy, and other things that were of general use. While they slept, they were immersed in subliminal learning specific to the culture they were joining.

After almost seven years, Five's clones were ready to be deployed. They were a varied lot: Greek, Mesoamerican Olmecs and Mayans, Egyptians, Middle and Northern Europeans, Africans, Polynesians and Chinese. A few of the clones, like One-seventeen, were placed in cultures found by CSS-Five to be unusual rather than advanced. CSS-Five released the clones as it swept around the planet. Each clone was perfectly delivered into the dead of night at a remote location. Five reassumed its stationary orbit over the Nile River basin and deployed an array of sensors to track the recently delivered clones. Then, like any parent, he settled into a watchful mode and awaited the fruits of his labor.

Palmdale Florida 2018

I was sitting at my computer staring blankly at the screen when the phone jangled harshly on my desk. I jumped in surprise at a call so early in the morning then grabbed the handset. It was my business line so I put on my quasi-professional voice.

"Pulaski Consulting, Johnny here."

"Hello Flintstone, how are things down there in Bedrock?"

I smiled wryly at the phone. "Hey, it's my favorite E-Brat. What's up Emma?"

She laughed at the other end of the line. "I doubt we are each other's favorite anything, Johnny. Anyway I have a job for you. You available?"

"Could be for something interesting, I'm bored to tears down here. Whatcha got?"

"One of our archeology teams has run across something really interesting in Egypt. Dammit Pulaski, if you would just let me send this straight to your head it would be so much easier."

"As if that will ever happen. So tell me about it."

"I don't know why Daddy makes me be the one to have to deal with you. You are such a horse's ass."

I loved getting under her skin, she was the smartest woman in the world and I could piss her off in less than a minute. After some bitching she agreed to send me the file. My e-mail chimed fewer than fifteen seconds later. We continued to trade good-natured insults as I scanned the text document then opened the picture attachments. One photo in particular made me sit forward in my chair.

"These are from a dig?" I asked.

"Yes, from a site underneath the Temple of Karnak in Luxor."

"Okay," I said, "I'm in."

I hung up the phone and was still staring at the photo on my plasma monitor when my one and only employee wandered into the office carrying a couple of cups of coffee.

"What's that boss?"

I gratefully grabbed the proffered cup of Joe and pointed to my monitor.

"Thanks Mike. That is supposedly from a dig under the Temple of Karnak in Egypt. I'm going to see for myself."

"Okay, I'll make your arrangements. You want first class?"

I gave her a look; she knew better and was just yanking my chain. I didn't fly first class because the people were invariably snooty and no fun.

She giggled at my look. "I know, window seat, business class, half way back, find a seat with plenty of leg room, yada, yada, yada..." she reeled off by rote.

Just as I was wondering why I put up with such insolence she plopped down in my lap and gave me a big wet kiss. She snuggled up tight against me, put her head on my shoulder and sighed in contentment.

"I hope you won't be gone long, Johnny. You know how I get when you are away. But Mom and Dad will love having me home for a while."

I held her tight and stroked her long shimmering curtain of auburn hair. As we sat there I thought back to how we met...

Joe J
Chapter 2