by J. J. Harkin
The first part was easy, for the only gifts he had apart from the sword were the standard and robe. Thus he began by placing the camelhair banner unfolded across the left arm, which raised the right one as high as it could reach, just as Muhammad had expected. As he hung the robe upon the right arm, both arms rebalanced reactively, until the left one – which held the standard – came to rest at a slightly lower level than the other. It was a bit heavier, evidently.
“What an interesting way of insuring an identical measurement after all these years,” whispered Muhammad to himself. “Though both items would be bound to deteriorate to some extent, the ratio between their respective weights would likely remain the same, especially if they were constructed from similar materials.”
He decided to leave aside the issue of how Joseph, in almost 1700 BC, might have known the comparative weights of two items yet to be made. After all, Joseph was a prophetic figure who – at least from time to time – had been granted glimpses into the future. Still, it was wondrous how well the standard and robe had held up since the time of Muhammad the Prophet, who was well known to have lived around 600 AD. Certainly anyone who managed to produce cloth items capable of lasting more than 1400 years would have to be a talented weaver indeed, and Muhammad wondered who this might be.
All these mysteries were relegated to the back burner, however, as the explorer remained most preoccupied with the words “drive the sword home, and twist it in the wound.” What might this mean? Certainly it reminded him strongly of the method he had so recently used to open the bottom of the pit, but what did the phrase “drive the sword home” mean? Was the inscription encouraging him to stab the statue of Joseph somehow? This did not seem right, as it might damage the mechanical workings within, not to mention disrespect one of his favorite historical figures.
Not knowing what to do next, Muhammad Abdullah decided a more careful search of the room might help. This proved fruitful, for he soon found that he had overlooked the floor entirely. The ground here was not smooth, as it had been in the last chamber, but covered in a grid of hundreds of hieroglyphs, each positioned above a separate, diamond-shaped slot within a circular border. When Muhammad realized that the glyph above each circle spelled out the name of a city, he knew exactly what to do. He was looking for the name of the city Joseph had called home.
The problem was that there were so many places to choose from: Heliopolis, Nineveh, Ur, Goshen – the list went on and on. Goshen was a possibility, for that was where Joseph’s father, Jacob, and his family had lived when they eventually relocated to Egypt; but Muhammad was not sure Joseph had ever certainly lived there himself, and decided to keep looking. Then he saw Shechem, a place which also came into the tale of Joseph at one point; yet this was not a city so much as a region of Canaan, and Muhammad was pretty sure Joseph had only ever visited the place, and never actually lived there. The list of cities, regions, and localities went on and on, more than anything impressing upon Muhammad just how many ancient places had vanished without a trace, for he had never heard of half of them.
Then he saw a hieroglyph he was pretty sure meant Machpelah. This gave him reason to stop and think, as Machpelah was the cave where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – and eventually even Joseph – as well as many others, had been buried. This was problematic as well, however, as Joseph had never spent much time there while he was actually still alive. Finally Muhammad saw Mamre, and knew his search was over at last, for this was definitely a place Joseph had called home. Mamre was the name of the campsite Jacob had most favored when Joseph was a little boy. It was a lovely place among groves of shade trees, not far from Hebron in Canaan.
Smiling confidently, Muhammad raised the sword of his venerated namesake, and thrust it downward into the narrow, diamond-shaped slot. This time, in contrast to his experience with the mechanism that had opened the bottom of the pit, the sword fell deep into the ground, right up to the hilt. “Now to ‘twist it in the wound,’” he said to himself, and immediately began to apply clockwise pressure to the handle.
The works had sat there waiting for him a very long time, but somehow the circular joint surrounding the sword still rotated easily. Immediately the statue of Joseph began to slide toward him as he did so, most likely – he guessed – being connected to a chain beneath the floor, which shortened as it slowly wound around the cog the sword had been thrust into. When at last the statue stopped, he jumped up, pulling the sword free. He had done it! Muhammad aimed the flashlight into the passageway beyond again, as he gathered his things, certain something fantastic must be waiting ahead.
The hall behind the statue was as short as the last one, but quickly opened out into a much larger room this time. There was a slight breeze here, due to some kind of unseen method of air circulation, and it was refreshing to be able to breathe more freely. At the center of the large square space a strange sight greeted him. It was a stone desk, complete with a rudimentary stool. Just past the desk to the left and right, a pair of mysterious brass tubes extended from the floor to a height perhaps a meter above the level of it, and between them, at its head, stood a tall black mirror of polished stone. Upon the desk before the stool sat a very large book. It was not a scroll, tablet, or papyrus – it really was a book, bound at the left side, just as those used in the modern world today.
Though Muhammad had no idea why, the place called to him somehow. It was as if he were experiencing a déjà vu, or other strong emotional connection to the place, though there was no way this could truly be, as he was sure no one else had entered there since the days when the chamber was delved. The thick layers of undisturbed dust upon the floor proved as much. The stone desk and stool beckoned to him, seeming indeed the most perfect spot in all the world to sit and read a good, long book – by far his favorite pastime. Therefore he crept forward, though suspiciously, knowing that such places are rarely all they seem at first glance.
With the flashlight held in his left hand to light the floor before him, he opted to circle the perimeter of the room for starters, running his right hand along the wall behind him as he did so. As soon as he turned the corner out of the entryway he earned his first surprise, for the wall disappeared, and his trailing arm floated out into blackness. Muhammad almost lost his balance then, for he had been slightly leaning upon the passing wall without noticing it. He gasped desperately for air as he dropped to the floor, in avoidance of falling right over the brink. Directing the light to where the wall should have been gave him a further shock, for he saw now that this was not a square room, but a square platform. There were no walls skirting it, only empty space. Knocking upon the floor gave a metallic echo, and looking back to the entryway revealed a joint between the stone hall and the platform. Was he standing upon evidence that some of the ancients had manufactured a rudimentary form of sheet metal?
Staying away from the edge this time, Muhammad directed the beam of light further out into the surrounding darkness. Though the walls were a fair distance away, they could still be seen: cave walls, complete with stalactites. The entryway actually jutted out into the abysmal expanse like a covered gangway, for darkness loomed ominously on either side of it. When he crawled carefully to the edge to satisfy his curiosity concerning what lay below, the light illuminated nothing; it was a long, long way down. He was standing on a high metal platform at the top of some endlessly deep crevasse. There was no way to get out the way he had arrived, and no way he could see to climb down to whatever lay far below.
Sighing, Muhammad Abdullah turned toward the center – the intended focal point – of the platform, for it seemed a bit of reading was all there was left to do. Offhand he thought of the world outside, as he blew the dust off the desk. Surely it must be sunset by now; everyone would be looking for him. Then he remembered he had brought a bit of food with him, and quickly pulled it out. After wolfing down every bit of the dried fruit, he washed it all back with several hurried swigs of water from his bottle, and sighed again.
“Now what migh
t this be?” he wondered to himself. He had been staring blankly at the book all the while.
Approaching the stone desk, he habitually attempted to slide the short cylindrical stool to the side; yet this was without effect, as it seemed the thing was somehow secured to the floor. Grumbling to no one at all, he proceeded to squeeze himself under the desk, and was surprised to find the seat as comfortable as it had looked from the entryway, though perhaps a bit too high for his comfort. This was quickly remedied. As soon as his weight transferred into the stone seat there was a familiar metallic click, as the thing descended a couple centimeters or so, leaving him in a perfect reading position. It took him a moment or so to notice this, however, for at the same moment brief sparks, followed by jets of flame, burst from the two brass tubes just ahead of the front corners of the desk. Evidently taking his seat had triggered a lighting mechanism of some kind, probably fed by an unseen source of natural gas – or methane, perhaps. Offhandedly he hoped the ancients had known precisely what they were doing, as such substances were well known to be highly explosive in the large quantities which were found almost exclusively underground.
Despite these misgivings, the light of the lamps proved to be steady and bright, illuminating far more than the flashlight did, and so he turned it off to conserve power. Looking up, Muhammad could now see his darkened reflection in the mysterious black stone mirror which faced him from the head of the desk. What might this be for? Another gasp escaped him as his reflection revealed unexpected movement over his shoulder; he jumped up in alarm, accidentally knocking his precious flashlight off the desk as he did so. Even now it was rolling toward the edge of the abyss! Muhammad jumped for it, but missed, and then it was gone, lost forever in the endless shadows below.
Cursing himself, he stood up angrily. It was a good thing the gas lamps still functioned after all these years, or he might be doomed to death in the darkness. Looking behind to see what had startled him in the first place revealed no one, but he saw that the platform had quietly sunken several centimeters as he sat upon the stone chair. Indeed, the entryway from the hall was now a little higher than the platform, though it had been aligned perfectly when he arrived. It had only been the seeming upward drift of the door and walls behind him which had proved startling. Turning back, he saw that the seat had popped back up into its original position when he jumped up, identifying itself as the switch which had set off all these chain reactions. Muhammad was certain the platform was no longer sinking, indicating it must only do so when the mechanism beneath the seat was activated.
It seemed the combined purpose of all these machines was to lower him slowly down to whatever waited below, while providing reading light for him along the way. He was being encouraged to read the book – that much was obvious – for sitting at the desk was the only thing that activated the ancient elevator’s descent. As retracing his steps by retreating into the entrance hall offered no hope of escape anyway, Muhammad returned to sit at the desk. He would sit and read the book, it seemed, or remain there forever.
As the stool clicked and impressed like a button beneath his weight again, the slow downward journey resumed, and his examination of the book began. It was a beautiful thing, bound with what looked like countless threads of gold that ran through a vertical line of holes on its left side, almost like a deluxe spiral notebook of some sort. Muhammad ran his hands across the cover, which seemed to be constructed of a thin sheet of sturdy metal, covered in perfectly tailored sheepskin, all sewn together with more golden thread. It was precisely rectangular, and in such excellent shape that it might just have arrived fresh from the bookstore. At the center of its otherwise featureless cover a single series of hieroglyphs announced an alluring title: The Heretic’s Codex.
“Say what?!” laughed Muhammad to himself. The name was a surprise, for such a title was not at all what he had come to expect from the library of Joseph. After all, the man was one of the foremost examples of faith and piety conveyed by all the old holy books, and certainly should have proved less prone to heresy than anyone.
Transfixed by his task, he opened the tome, and found the pages within to be formed of what looked like more sheepskin. The corners of the skins were all trimmed to exactly the same rectangular shape, a fact which impressed him more deeply than ever. It was as if the bookmaker had known quite specifically how to imitate the appearance of a modern book. Muhammad was glad he had studied his languages so extensively, for the hieratic script within had been scribbled in a hurried, almost messy, fashion.
A chill wind cut across him then, and Muhammad pulled the Prophet’s lush red robe from his pack, trying it on for the first time. Though the platform’s descent was still painstakingly slow, he could see now that the cave opened out gradually as it proceeded. The lamps burned on unflickering as he began to read the hieratic letters slowly. The first page seemed to be some sort of introduction:
I, Zaphenath-paneah, Grand Vizier of Egypt, otherwise known as Joseph, son of Jacob, here transcribe with my own hand the contents of the secret Cuneiform tablets my forefather Abraham brought with him out of Ur – as my brothers have recently brought them to me from our family burial cave in Canaan – for it is known to me that The Guided One will require them before four thousand years be passed. Thus spoke the Oracle of Ur one hundred years before the birth of my forefather:
“Hail to the reader of this, most holy of books! I am Araya, High Priestess of Ur, seer of things cloaked, and listener to secrets whispered. Know that in the second year of my oracular service to the Gods of the temples of Ur, a Nephilim of exceptionally gigantic proportions began visiting me in secret by night. He claimed to be the scribe of Enlil, and bore with him a beautiful crystal stylus, and many clay tablets, as the proof of his trade.
“He refused to tell me his name – and still does even as he transcribes these very words – but claimed he had heard of my recent visions concerning the God above all Gods. Apparently he is foresighted as well, for he agreed with my assessment that my proclamations concerning the One True God will very soon lead to my untimely death. The Order of the Snake watch from every shadow, but this prospect does not concern either of us overmuch. We remain occupied performing our sacred duty: to record all the One True God might have to say before these transmissions are cut off – as indeed my own life soon will be. They will throw me down the Temple steps! I have seen it. Thus I spend my last days in good company, and look forward to release from this worldly illusion as soon as may be. Praise be to the One True God, author of this holy heresy!”
Muhammad could not believe his eyes. If any of this was real, the book before him might well prove to be one of the world’s oldest surviving documents. Certainly it would prove to be the best preserved, if it passed the tests of authentication, for the pages were only slightly yellowed, and otherwise completely unblemished by stains, insects, or rodents. Turning the page carefully, Muhammad saw the next one to be written in more of Joseph’s messy, hurried scribbling, as still he reported the words of Araya:
The Rancor of Four
There is only One True God, nameless and timeless. His descent into earthly form will be complete after four stages of rancor. The chain reaction which began in the Garden will end when His fire lights the sky. The One who will indwell, of who I speak, is the Shining One, Nexus of the Worlds.
The first stage of rancor will be consummated by the refugees of Hebron. Their breeding will be carefully monitored and arranged by the Nephilim. The Shining One will gain first entry to this world through their progeny. They will be afflicted by shadow, and for the most part remain blind to their Shining Son. Yet their vision will be perfected on the Last Day, when He comes to save their land, and the Deathless One will revive them.
The second stage of rancor will be dominated by those whom first recognize the Shining One. They are not a family of relatives, but a nation of like minds. Their clear sight will fade after their first good decision, when they knelt before our Lord. They will circle the round Ea
rth – yes, it is round – but harm it. The conquest of Earth will be their legacy, though they will also do good. The bounties of Earth will spring forth at their command, and their descendents be a multitude. Yet the consequences of their actions will rebound upon them, and the Shining One will account them wise for seeking His mercy from the beginning.
The third stage of rancor will be concluded by the neglected sons of Abram. Violence will spawn more violence. They will replace the waves of conquest with just waves of death. Their mathematics will achieve higher governance than their greatest kings. Their logic will crystallize humanity, and even cage it for a time. Then they will rip open the hole through which the Shining One will reenter. Though triumph will be achieved because of them, they will require much healing to enjoy it. They will be hated by all for a time, and they will hate all back in fairness. Their men will die in battle, and their women mourn in solitude. Yet the birth could not take place without them, and the foolish will wonder at their redemption on the Last Day.
The triune stages of a singular path is what they are, yet too few will come to accept this. Those who suffer worst from this affliction will govern a final stage of rancor, so short the blink of an eye should miss it. They will believe in nothing, and nothing will believe in them. A final kingdom they will rule, though not even for a year. Quickly will their time pass, yet never be forgotten. The Deathless Yogi will be uncloaked at the end, and the Age of Light will be a result.
It seemed clear this Araya spoke of the coming of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to the world, while the final stanza seemed to reference every apocalyptic prophecy Muhammad had ever heard in his life. He was impressed, yet was inclined to leave such feelings aside, for all this would prove completely irrelevant if the Codex turned out to be a fake, which unfortunately was still the most likely outcome. The text proposed an astoundingly provocative thesis, for it suggested that all monotheists exist on a singular creative continuum, and that their interactions would result in great good – at some point, at least. It was all quite a nice idea, he thought, even if it was a complete fabrication.