by Anthology
Human technology has not done this. It was a gift of the gods. At least that’s what the pharaoh told me at the time. He offered any of his servants to the gods to appease them, and I was selected.
Gods.
Just another name for aliens.
Of course, I didn’t understand this for a very long time. In fact, I was thousands of years old by the time I recognized my “creator” for what he was.
He said his name was Osiris. Is that his real name? Five thousand years ago I would have sworn to you it was. Just like dates, the name really doesn’t matter. He was a god, and then he wasn’t. All I know is that to him, I’m just part of a grand experiment.
It was a warm day (but weren’t they all in ancient Egypt?) when I was called into the pharaoh's palace to meet with the vizier.
“Bek!” called a palace guard.
I walked over to him quickly. That was when I used to care about what happened to me.
“Yes? What can I do to please the king today?”
“You can start by wiping that grin off your face. You are requested at the palace. The vizier needs you.”
I quickly found myself at the palace with about twenty other men, all about my size, waiting to be seen. I knew better than to talk to any of them. I had been called to see the vizier, not them. When we were all finally called before the vizier, we were instructed to line up. The vizier inspected each of us, dismissing a handful as he went. In the back of the room, I glimpsed a cloaked figure, but again, I knew to not say anything.
Eventually there were about ten men left in the room.
The cloaked figure stepped forward to address us.
“I have selected each of you from afar. I have chosen each of you to show the power of the gods.” He paused. “You may wonder who I am.”
Slowly and purposefully, he slid back his hood, revealing a glowing presence. It shone so brightly, each of us had to look away. But before I did, I caught a brief glimpse of dark green skin on the most glorious face I’d ever witnessed in my short life. I knew who he was before he even had a chance to tell us.
“Osiris,” I gasped under my breath.
Apparently it wasn’t quiet enough, because the god approached me. Suddenly I was afraid. Osiris was known for much, including his role in the afterlife.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I am Osiris. Who are you that you are so wise?”
“I…I am Bek.”
“Bek.”
“Yes,” I said as boldly as I dared. I was speaking to a god, but I wanted him to grant me his favor. My answer was short, but it offered him what he wanted.
Osiris laughed. It was loud, filling the entire chamber with echoes upon echoes of deep roars and howls that somehow came from the being in front of me. The men on either side of me shook with fear. For whatever reason, I was unafraid. The laughter somehow reached inside of me and touched something. I felt…peace. While the other men were a hair away from cowering, I stood tall, proud that Osiris had chosen to address me. I had pleased him, somehow, and who was I to question a god?
Suddenly, I was alone in the room with Osiris. Gone were the vizier and the other men I had shared the chamber with. In fact, the room was different somehow. Like it was the same room, just in a different location. It took me centuries, but I eventually learned it was Osiris’ ship, occupying space above the earth and designed to look just like a royal chamber room in ancient Egypt. That day, however, I was awestruck by everything surrounding me.
“Bek, I have chosen you to be favored among all men. As the god of resurrection, I wish for all men to witness my miraculous rebirth in the body of a man,” Osiris said. He put his hood back over his head, so the light receded, but kept his face visible. He locked eyes with me and at that moment, I felt greater than any man who had ever lived. “Your life will be a beacon throughout the ages, endless and steady. You are blessed among men, for you are no longer a mortal man, but are immortal, a step closer to the gods themselves.”
I don’t remember weeping, but I wouldn’t have been surprised had I spontaneously burst into tears. A favor from the gods was truly magnificent. That I would be chosen was the pinnacle of my life.
Little did I know that my life up until that point was miniscule compared to what was to come.
What happened next was so minor, I didn’t give it much thought for years, but I came to understand that what Osiris did to me was what gave me eternal life. As I stood there, looking into his eyes, I felt a sharp but brief pain in my neck. I don’t even remember his hand moving there, but Osiris had a gauntlet of sorts, made of gold and shining jewels. Knowing what I know now, I came to understand that it concealed some sort of handheld syringe.
He left his hand there for a moment, then pulled it away and took a step back, as if he was admiring his creation.
“Bek, you are now perfect. Man will no longer have dominion over you. I will guide you through the ages of earth still to come. You will be my constant as the tides of humanity rise and fall. I will see you again soon.”
Before I could even open my mouth, the world disappeared around me, and I found myself standing in my home. The bed was next to me, and I lay down, desperate to sleep. And sleep I did. It was the first time I’d slept as an immortal man.
***
In my life, I’ve experienced many things. The birth of my first son. The birth of my one hundredth son. The rise of Rome. The fall of Rome. The creation of sliced bread and the advent of television. I’ve been privileged enough to shake hands with Charlemagne, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Winston Churchill. I fought at the Battle of Hastings, the Battle of the Alamo, and the Battle of the Bulge. I have lived more than any man before and surely more than any man after me.
As I said, I have died many times, but each time I reawaken in another body. Every time, a perfect body given to me by Osiris.
That first body, though…that one was mine. Given to me by parents whose names I have long since forgotten. The only memory I have of when I was a small boy is of playing along the Nile River. Every year the river would flood, bringing life to the once dormant riverbed. One day I was playing among the reeds along the riverbank with a few of my friends when my mother called to me.
“Bek, make sure when the sun is just over the big pyramid that you head home for dinner. Do you understand?”
I nodded, desperate to resume my playtime with my friends.
“Are you sure you understand?”
“Yes, Mother. I understand,” I said, my eyes on a ball that my friends had brought with them to the river that day. “Can I go play now?”
She smiled, the love from mother to son clear in that one small gesture. “Yes, my son. Go play. Enjoy the day, but come when I asked, all right?”
“Okay!” I shouted back, barely registering the words she’d spoken. Years later I would regret not heeding those words the first time. Instead, I went to play, not ever looking back at the pyramids off in the distance. The sun began to set over the Great Pyramid and I kept running and kicking the ball with my friends. Before I knew it, my mother was out calling to me again.
“Bek, it’s time to come to dinner.”
“Coming, Mother!” I shouted back, but I continued to play among the papyrus. I ran and laughed, my friends and me enjoying the last rays of sun on a bright spring day in Egypt. At the time I thought it was a precious thing, the sun on my back and the wind in my face. Before I realized it, much time had passed and when I turned to run towards my friends, I found my mother standing before me.
“Bek.”
I hung my head. I knew I had disappointed her.
She walked towards me and took my head in her hands. I heard my friends scatter and for a few moments, only my mother and I were alive. The world could have faded away; I wouldn’t have noticed. She was my entire world and I had let her down. She crouched down to look me in the eye. I couldn’t avoid the tears welling up as she spoke to me. Never will I forget her words.
“Bek, my dear son. Life is a wonderf
ul thing. I love to see you enjoying the time you have and friends that you can play with each day,” she said, capturing my attention with her soft eyes. I can still remember that look to this day, along with the slight brush of her hand across my cheek as she wiped my tears. “If you ever remember anything, please remember this: your word is your bond. It makes you who you are. When you grow up to be a man, a promise kept or unkept shows everyone the type of person you really are. For good or bad, for better or for worse, if you promise something to someone, you must follow through on that promise. The words you say will not matter, unless you back them up with your actions.”
As a small boy, I didn’t comprehend what she had said to me that day as twilight came to the Nile River. The words went into my mind and stayed there, but I didn’t think about them until much later. It was one of the few things I could remember about my mother. Her words that day formed the basis for the man I would be…again…and again…and again…and again.
***
I awoke with a start, my head pounding like a fist hammering on the door.
Except it was literally a fist hammering on my door.
“Bek! You get your sorry behind out of bed and to the work site! The foreman says all hands are needed today, and that means you,” growled the voice on the other side. It was a friend at the time, another whose name has escaped the confines of my mental storage over the years.
I dragged myself off the stiff bed and prepared for the day. A few times, my head felt like it was about to explode, but that was no excuse. The foreman would have me whipped if I didn’t show. Better to suffer a headache than deal with pain on my backside as well.
Within the hour I was hauling bricks for the new monument—me, and hundreds of my closest friends. We’d all heard stories about how the Great Pyramid had been constructed, and the pharaoh wanted this one to be as close to that one in quality as he could get. A few hours in and I had already soaked through the few articles of clothing I had worn to the work site.
As I was getting another stone ready to transport, I caught a shape out of the corner of my eye. My breath caught for an instant when I saw Osiris talking to the foreman. Perhaps he was here to take me with him. Perhaps he would stop the work for the day. Perhaps…
The foreman stepped up and called out to all the men working that day. “Okay, you grunts. Orders from the top—everyone must double their block totals until further notice.”
This was one of those moments. I didn’t realize it, but I was about to be tested with forces beyond my control.
Osiris wasn’t there to save me. He was there to kill me. Well…my body.
We doubled production. Food, water, and breaks were not doubled. I am proud to admit I lasted longer than many on my work gang, but within a week, most of us had collapsed along the route to the new monument. The heat, combined with lack of vital resources such as water, doomed us from the start. Egypt wasn’t the most forgiving of places.
It was about midday of the sixth day after the production order. I thought I could make it. I thought my body was stronger. I thought it was just a test.
It was, but I was wrong about my body. I collapsed from severe dehydration and malnutrition. I wasn’t dead when I fell, but an hour in the sun, unattended to by a doctor, ensured a painful end.
Except…it wasn’t.
The moment…that one brief instant between this life, and the next…happened on Osiris’ ship. I stopped breathing on Earth, under the naked sun, before the Old Kingdom of Egypt even came to be. But I didn’t die. Not really.
My body stopped working, but my consciousness was immediately transferred to another one. It was a strange feeling, but not unpleasant. In fact, there was a bit of euphoria as I moved from one body to another.
How did I know I had gained a new body? I didn’t at first, but when I opened my eyes I found myself lying on the floor of Osiris’ chamber. I looked down and found myself naked. I reached down and touched my arms and my legs. My skin and muscles bounced back with the elasticity that hydration and health provided. My body was different, but my mind was the same. It was clouded, though. It cleared instantly when a voice rang out in the room.
“Welcome back, my son!”
I looked up, momentarily concerned about my lack of dress, but then realized I was in front of a god, and if he wasn’t concerned, I should not be, either. I was too stunned to speak, though.
Osiris gestured to my right and I saw a small pile of neatly folded clothes. I understood he wanted me to put them on, and he addressed me as I did so.
“How was it? The process of dying, and being resurrected—how was it?” Osiris asked.
So that was what had happened. It made sense. Osiris was the god of resurrection, but I hadn’t put it all together quite yet.
I finished dressing while I gathered my thoughts. I spoke my mind, unaware at the time that I didn’t have to be honest with Osiris.
“It was glorious, my lord. In one moment, I found my body too weak to continue. The effects of the sun had been wearing on me and the overseers were not providing us enough water. Thankfully, you have chosen to resurrect my spirit into a new body, much like your wife resurrected you,” I said. “I do regret I failed you in your appointed task for the pharaoh. But I am grateful you chose to give me another chance.”
Osiris smiled, his white teeth a stark contrast to his greenish skin. He was happy, and that made me happy.
“No, my son. You have not failed me. No matter what you do, you will never fail me,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Bek. I had the foremen push you and your friends to test the limits of what you were capable of. I knew that no matter what happened, you and I would meet again here, safe from the ravages of death. That is the gift I gave you. You possess a life eternal, now,” Osiris said.
“Eternal life, my lord?”
“Yes,” Osiris said, and waved a hand. To his left, a dais rose out of the ground. On it was a bronze medallion. It had a very Egyptian look to it, but was mysterious in other ways. It was attached to a flexible leather lanyard. “Take this. I will always be able to find you, but this will give you added protection. As long as you wear it, I will be there. You will surely live again, as long as you carry this with you.”
I reached for it, making sure not to actually touch Osiris. It was one thing to accept a gift; it was another altogether to dare to make physical contact with a god.
“Thank you. This gift…it is more than I could ask for,” I said.
Osiris held up his hand. “Do not thank me, Bek. Your death and resurrection today were easy. Painless. Maybe even pleasurable. I think you will have to die again and again, and I cannot say each death will be as seamless as the one you just experienced. Are you prepared for that? Will you live an eternal life for me? Are you willing to accept the consequences of that choice?”
Who would turn down everlasting life? I didn’t that day. I wouldn’t for a long time, but he was right. Death stopped being easy. Thousands of years later, I wish with everything I am that I had refused his offer.
“I will serve you in whatever way I can,” I said.
Osiris touched a bracelet on his wrist, and he vanished. My eyes saw a smiling god in one moment, and a rocky terrain the next. I swiveled around, trying to find the familiar sights of the monuments to the pharaohs in the distance. No monuments. Just mountains. A cool breeze blew through my clothes. I shivered, and saw for the first time something I could never have imagined, something I did not know the name of until later.
Snow.
***
I barely lasted five days. I didn’t know it then, but Osiris had dropped my newly regenerated body right in the middle of the modern-day Canadian territory of Nunavut. Even now, several thousand years later, only a handful of people live there. The Inuit, though, never found me during that short stretch. I managed to find a cave, but the clothes Osiris had given me were the same small loincloth and tunic I had w
orn in Egypt—not quite the proper attire for the near-Arctic.
That was probably exactly what Osiris had in mind.
“Back so soon?” Osiris asked after I had died and returned to his care.
Nowadays, I might have had a few choice words for the guy. Back then, he was still very much a god in my eyes. I was silent, praying he would look favorably upon me in my next life.
Osiris offered a wry smile as he advanced towards me in his vast chamber. Once again, I was lying in the middle of the large room, naked as the day I was brought into the world. I sat up and immediately found the pile of clothes nearby. I dressed and secretly wished for more. Even with a new body, I still felt a chill from the past few days.
“It might surprise you to know that less than a half-day’s journey to the north of your cave, there was a dead carnivore. Alive, it would have been five times your mass. Had you found it, skinned it, and appropriated the meat and bone from the creature, you would have had an outer covering, a source of food, and tools. You could’ve lived in that environment for decades.”
I was astonished. “How was I to know that?”
“There was no way for you to have known, Bek. But I didn’t put you down there to sit in a cave and hope for salvation.”
I considered that for a moment. “I am guaranteed to live again, correct?” Osiris nodded. “So, I am tasked with living as much as I can. Sitting and waiting for the end is not in your master plan.”
“That is correct, Bek,” Osiris answered. He opened his hand. In his palm was the bronze medallion he’d given me before. “I saved this for you. It will be in your clothing for you to put on again each time in the future, but I knew you would want to talk to me after your experience.”
“Yes, Osiris, I do. Why was I sent there? I had never before seen…”
“Snow,” he completed for me. The way Osiris said it gave it an air of magnitude. I had heard the word before—Egyptians did have a name for it, we just rarely used it. With Osiris, however, it seemed like a divine word that I would be grateful to even utter again.