“I say we leave the weaponry here,” Charlotte said.
“Weaponry comes with us,” Clayton replied. He did not even look at her.
“But there is nothing down here that could possibly hurt us. We have no need to carry such heavy items.”
“Weaponry stays,” Clayton repeated. This time he looked up and fixed her with hard eyes.
Above us, the stone ceiling groaned loudly. Several small fractures were visible in the limestone. Whatever reluctance we might have had to explore farther in the tunnel was quickly eradicated by a long rumble from above, the sound of stone shifting against stone.
Selberg hoisted his satchel over his shoulder, then started toward the second doorway and the unexplored stairwell. He turned back toward us. “Coming?”
Quickly we gathered what we were to carry and followed after him, descending farther into the unknown.
Since I held the only illuminated torch, I took position at the head of the line. We passed by the battle of the Nubians, then reached a second stone corridor decorated with typical Egyptian imagery. I had always found these images to be particularly disturbing. The Egyptian gods were frightening, like characters pulled from a nightmare. Men with the heads of hawks. Giant baboons holding spears. Horrible chimeras of human and beast. The mind projects fears from the world around us. What kind of world had the ancient Egyptians lived in to promote the imaginings of such frightful creatures?
The corridor opened into an area much larger than the previous rooms. I held the electric torch aloft and illuminated the space. My nerves pulsed with anxious energy. I stared at something impossible. This was not a just a burial chamber . . . this was like nothing I had ever seen.
“My God,” Selberg said, his eyes wide. “What is this place?”
Slowly we absorbed the giant open space. Near us, the walls were flat plaster over stone, but soon the plaster gave way to rectangular blocks. Glazed concrete blocks that shone in the light. Support columns ran the length of the room and far beyond an arched opening, which led back into darkness. Black metal bars lined with turnstiles separated us from the darkness.
We stood at the edge of some kind of train station.
The walls were papered with advertisements. Nearby, a large color poster sealed behind glass; a single palm tree on a tiny strip of an island of brilliantly white sand surrounded by blue water. A travel advertisement. Once there had been words on the poster, but over time most had rubbed off. Now, only a single word remained, inscribed in large black letters just over the palm tree, the coloring ominously dark across the blue sky.
Escape.
“What is happening?” Charlotte said.
We sat on benches that lined the wall, our gear spread on the floor below us. Clayton stood by the opening to the corridor.
Buried beneath the sand was some kind of underground transit station.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m beginning to believe what the Bedouin saw.”
“We are obviously looking at the work of a modern civilization with technology far in advance of ancient Egypt. More advanced even than our own,” Selberg said. “And not just any technology. Technology specific to a date sometime in the future.”
“What if this is like Urashima Taro?” Charlotte reached for her pack, took out a small English textbook and began thumbing through it.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Urashima Taro was a Japanese tale about a fisherman who visits an undersea palace. He spends only three days there. But when he returns to his village, three hundred years have passed.”
“So?” Selberg frowned.
“So what if we’re all collectively having a Urashima Taro experience? We’ve somehow all been sent three hundred years into the future.”
“I don’t know.” Selberg looked thoughtful, then said, “Civilizations are always rising and falling. Mankind makes advances, then loses ground. Look at the Dark Ages. Or Egypt itself. The advances made under the pharaohs were not duplicated again for thousands of years. So perhaps there was an earlier civilization, which has since been forgotten.”
I shook my head. “That’s impossible. We have archeological records that predate the Egyptians. There is nothing in those records to indicate the presence of such modern technologies.”
Selberg’s eyes narrowed reluctantly. “You’re right.” He drummed his fingers against the bench. “But it is here. And there must be a reason for that.”
“Urashima Taro,” Charlotte repeated.
Clayton pointed toward the end of the chamber. “What do you think that means?”
Set into the wall was a revolving door made of iron bars. I approached the door and pushed against the bars. They were locked in place. Over the door, inscribed in stone, was the word Panopticon.
“Panopticon?” Selberg asked.
I shook my head. I had no idea. To the right of the door was a metal box that rose up from the ground about waist high. On the top of the box were two slits, with an arrow that read “Slide Card Here.”
From my pocket I retrieved the yellow card we had found on the soldier.
“Wait a minute . . .” Charlotte advanced toward me. “These are not things that man should be tampering with. We don’t know what’s beyond that door.”
“But don’t you understand?” Selberg looked at each of us. “That’s what’s so amazing. We have no idea about any of this. I think we have a scientific duty to move forward. And if none of you will, I’ll go first. Alone if I have to.”
Nobody moved.
“For Christ’s sake . . .” Clayton approached and held out his hand. “Give me the card.”
I handed Clayton the yellow card and stepped back. Card in hand, he moved toward the revolving door. He pushed once against the door to confirm it was locked into place. Then he slid the card through the narrow slot in the box near the door.
There was an audible beep.
Clayton pressed against the bars of the revolving portal, and slowly with a shriek of rusted metal, the door began to move. Clayton turned, took a last look back at us, then passed through the door.
“What is it?” Charlotte called through the bars.
Clayton stood on the opposite side of the revolving door. He stared at something beyond our line of vision, completely indifferent to our presence. He was a man transfixed.
“Clayton,” I called out. “The card.”
Distracted, Clayton nodded and passed the card back through the bars. I swiped once and pushed through the revolving door. Once through I passed the card back through the bars, then took a moment to gather myself. Clayton and I stood on the edge of a concrete platform, which had been painted with a long strip of yellow. The platform extended into darkness.
I held my electric torch up. Something in the darkness reflected the light back. Something made of metal and glass. Behind me, the revolving door spun again and Nasir joined us. He looked out across the platform.
“Praise be to Allah,” he whispered, and held his hands up, palms forward.
Parked along the edge of the platform was a subway train.
“It appears to be a New York City subway train.” Selberg walked along the edge of the train, running his hand across the metal. “Amazing. This is like nothing I’ve ever seen. What we have back home are drab olive-colored boxes. Red vinyl benches. Riveted steel. This car is some type of composite material. And so sleek. No rivet marks anywhere. We don’t have the ability to produce anything like this.”
“Not now, we don’t,” I said.
The train was silver in color, with long glass windows covered in a thin layer of dust. Sets of double doors were closed shut. I wiped at the glass with my finger and held the torch up to the smear. Through the glass I could see rows of empty seats.
“Still think this is a hoax?” I turned toward Selberg.
“No.” Selberg smiled like a kid. “No way. Amazing. This has been down here for God knows how long.”
“There’s a tunnel up ahead.” Nasir n
odded toward a large arch at the far end of the platform. The subway tracks stretched through the opening and vanished into the darkness. “Maybe we could walk down, see where it goes?”
“Maybe . . .” I approached the tunnel entrance. Already my electric torch was beginning to die. The small bulb flickered desperately in my hand. I was nervous about walking farther into the tunnel with our few remaining torches. “We don’t know where this leads. I’d hate to get lost down here.”
The light to the electric torch continued to sputter.
“We should light another torch,” Charlotte said, “before it goes completely dark.”
Her voice came from only a few yards away from me, but already I could barely see her. The darkness encroached quickly beneath the Earth.
Near the entrance to the tunnel, a large switch was fixed on the wall. The switch was the length of my forearm, and beneath it was a sign labeled MAIN SUPPLY POWER. The device was old-fashioned in appearance, large and clumsy, a prop from Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. I wrapped my hand around it, and as my torch flickered and died, I impulsively pushed upward.
There was a moment of resistance, then the switch gave way and with a loud clunk, moved into the up position. From somewhere behind the wall came a deep resonant hum. An electric hum.
“What’s happening?” Charlotte moved toward me. “What did you touch?”
The humming rose in intensity. I heard a pop, then a flare of light appeared from sets of bulbs along the wall of the platform. Collectively we blinked in the light. The train came alive. The headlamps flared with glowing intensity and, with a hiss of hydraulics, each of the double doors slid open.
“Extraordinary,” Selberg said. We all stood in silence on the platform. The doors to the subway car remained open, waiting for us to enter.
I could now see the platform was about fifty yards in length, with block columns spaced at regular intervals. The only remaining evidence of the tomb was behind us. We had entered an entirely new world.
The front of the subway car had a glass windshield, which covered the empty motorman’s area. There was a crack down the center, as if something heavy had struck the glass. Ahead, the tunnel stretched out into darkness. I looked at the expectant faces of my team. We had come this far. Why the hell not?
“Let’s get on.”
The inside of the subway car was free of debris and the air smelled surprisingly clean. However long the car had been down here, the doors must have remained sealed, keeping out external contaminants.
Windows flanked rows of seats. Each seat was made of a similar material to the yellow card, except much harder and molded into curved shapes. These were pristine, completely clear of dust.
Shining metal poles had been placed at intervals, and the walls featured more commercial advertisements for various products. This was more than any of us could fathom. Selberg ran his hand along the length of glass, stunned by the size of the windows in the car, the futuristic feel of everything around us. Clayton surveyed our surroundings with a guarded quiet, his rifle pressed against his shoulder. Nasir and Charlotte both studied the lengths of advertisements along the wall with open amazement.
I made my way to the front.
At the end of the car was a door that slid back. I opened this, and beyond was a control panel much like the inside of an automobile. I scanned over various lights and buttons, then pressed one labeled Automatic.
Immediately, the doors closed with a snapping finality.
The subway car lurched forward. I was caught off balance, my body swung forward, and I grabbed onto a metal pole that extended from the ceiling to the floor.
“Maybe you should stop touching stuff until we all know what it does,” Charlotte said, her hand gripping the pole tightly. The train began to pick up speed, and I wondered if she was right.
“This appears to be a means of local transportation, powered by electricity.” Selberg held onto one of the support bars as well. We gained speed at an alarming rate. The train rocked back and forth on thousand-year-old tracks. Through the dusty glass was blackness, punctuated every so often by an electric blue flare of light from below the train.
“Does anyone know how to stop it?” Nasir asked.
“It’s probably automated,” Selberg said. “Look at the number of seats. It must have been used by hundreds of people. So much larger than what we have now.”
“That’s not what’s most interesting,” Charlotte said. “Look at the advertisements. You can tell what a culture values by their advertisements.”
I followed her glance and saw posters for Broadway shows and alcoholic beverages and denim pants. All the people were quite good looking. Perfect teeth and flawless skin. They seemed to live a life of ease and convenience. Some of the women wore much less clothing, and I found myself caught between staring and trying to avert my eyes.
There was a beautiful blurred photograph of a Caribbean island. A travel advertisement. The words Escape Your Dreams written below. I had seen this before, on the platform.
I could see what Charlotte was getting at.
“They’re humans,” I said. “From sometime in the future maybe, but they’re still us.”
“Exactly. They have the same wants, same desires.”
“The fact is,” Selberg said, “we don’t know what’s out there. We don’t know if it’s human. Or not. And if not, we have to consider that it might be hostile.”
“That’s a very male perspective. That everything might be hostile,” Charlotte said.
“Hostile?” Clayton spoke up for the first time since we boarded the train.
Charlotte shook her head. “If there is something down here, it is not hostile. The kind of technology necessary to construct the things we’ve seen hardly registers as a hostile act.”
“So you view all this as an invitation to enter?” Selberg asked.
“Well, it’s certainly not a deterrent. Lights that still turn on. A train that still moves. Posters. Advertisements. None of this in any way suggests violence or aggression.”
Clayton addressed Selberg. “Why do you think hostility is possible?”
“I don’t necessarily,” Selberg replied. “But many creatures in nature deliberately entice their prey with attractive colors or scents, only to be hostile in the end. The Venus flytrap, for example.”
“So you think this whole thing might be an elaborate Venus flytrap?” Charlotte asked. “And what, we end up being eaten by whatever is down here?”
Selberg smiled sheepishly. “Maybe there’s nothing down here. This is all just hypothetical. Academic.” The train began to slow. “I mean, it’s been a few thousand years. What could possibly have survived?”
With a slight screech of metal, the train came to a full stop. The doors opened and I exited cautiously. I was afraid and excited. Surrounded by the metal and glass of the subway car, I had felt a relative safety. But my heart beat faster as I entered the outside world. Anything seemed possible in this place. I stood on the edge of a second platform similar to the one we had used to board. This one was also well lit, with more advertisements papered on the walls. Nearby, a black arrow indicated a metal-over-concrete staircase that led upward.
“There’s something here,” I called back to the subway car. “Looks like stairs.”
“Stairs?” Selberg joined me on the platform. “Just stairs?” He was sweating and wiped his hairline with the back of his hand. “I was expecting some sort of mechanical transport device.” The platform was hot, but from somewhere I felt a slight gust of cooler air. Fan mechanism maybe. “Where’s it go?”
I glanced upward, feeling uncertainty rise in my throat. “I’m going to check. You stay down here with the equipment. Clayton, want to join?”
The stairs were typical concrete construction lined with metal on the edges, as if the builders expected heavy foot traffic to wear down the concrete over time. Now, the area was vacant, lifeless. Nothing moved. Not an insect. Not even a scrap of paper. Still, I felt
a faint cool breeze. The stairs curved upward, and ahead I could see a square of bluish light. We walked past a token booth, deserted, but ready for use, stacks of change through the glass, a calendar pinned to the wall opened to the month of June, no year listed. Again, I was amazed by the relative smoothness of the construction. In my New York, riveted steel dominated the subway system, everything drab green and blocky in feel. The curves of the booths and the subway here had an elegance that surprised me.
“Strange, right?” I turned toward Clayton. Clayton nodded. “Where is everyone?”
“Don’t know.” Clayton’s eyes scanned the stairwell, weapon at the ready. “Stairs are ending. Look alive.”
“You have a pistol for me?”
Clayton glanced at me without surprise. He pulled a Colt revolver from his waistband and handed it to me. Slowly we made our way to the top of the stairs.
The stairs flattened out to a sidewalk, and I recognized our location immediately. We stood at the edge of a large circle of pavement around which stretched tall buildings of glass, metal, and stone. To the west, I saw a multileveled shopping center of glass and white granite. Mannequins layered with clothes stood along the edge of shop windows while at the entrance, a massive marble-lined lobby. To the east, the base of a large park. Not any park. The park. The most familiar park in the world. A massive emerald bracketed by concrete and steel. Empty footpaths cut through the earthy green, vanishing around corners into the dusk. A stone wall stretched along the avenue, overhung by crooked branches.
Behind us, at the subway entrance, a sign read Columbus Circle. New York City. Manhattan. I was born no more than twenty blocks from here. And here I was, back again, somehow deep beneath the Earth, buried at the twisted end of a tomb in the Valley of the Kings. This was perhaps the most unique find in the history of humanity, and I was living it for myself. I hovered in a space between dreams and reality, trapped in an experience so fantastical it almost couldn’t be believed.
There were no signs of people. It was an eerie feeling. To stand in the center of the busiest city on Earth and see no one. Whoever had built this place had captured every detail of the great metropolis. But without the people, the place felt sterile, like some giant architectural model.
The Memory Agent Page 4