Pharaoh of Dreams

A Story by 7eleven

I saw the servant girl enter my chamber from the corner of my eye. I didn’t move from my spot at my desk, I had been lost in thought and refusing to move for the past few days now. The servant girl came in once or twice daily, and each time I ignored her.

“Pharaoh…you have to come out…no one knows what to do without you, we don’t even know why you won’t do come outside…”

I sighed, and turned over to face the girl. “If I told you what was wrong, you’d think I was…crazy, to say the least. I am in no condition to lead anyone.”

The girl shook her head, a mix of anger and disappointment on her face. “It does not matter what condition you are in…you cannot just…leave your people to rot!”

I didn’t really feel like explaining why I could not, and should not, make any decisions regarding the nation, but something did need to be done. “Stay here, I have something for you.” I stood up and walked over to my mirror, and the ivory chest I had placed in front of it. I carried the chest over to the girl and placed it in her hands. “I need you to take this chest to the architects working on the pyramid…I want the scrolls in the chest to be transcribed onto the walls of my chamber, word for word. This is…of the utmost importance. Do you understand?”

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One of the flight attendant’s woke me soon after the plane landed, though I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. I had recently been contracted to translate the hieroglyphics on the wall of a freshly opened Egyptian pyramid, within the chamber of a previously unknown Pharaoh. The payment was extraordinary, but that’s not what I had taken the job. I didn’t really need the money. I was well off. An opportunity to help reveal the mysteries that shroud a Pharaoh was the sort of thing a guy like me lived for, something that only happened once in a lifetime if you were extremely lucky.

The trip from the airport to the excavation site seemed almost a blur. I got off the plane, got my bags, got in a taxi, met my coworkers at a hotel near the site, and proceeded to the pyramid in a shoddy jeep. I was too preoccupied with what would be on the walls of the chamber to think clearly, it felt almost as if I were still asleep. When I arrived at the site, the head archaeologist was talking with some of the other workers near another jeep. I stepped out of the jeep and approached him; he waved when he saw me coming near him. I waved back. “Mr. Shepard, I presume?”

I shook my head. “There’s no reason to be so formal, is there? Please, just call me James.” The man smiled and shook my hand, and proceeded to escort me to the chamber. There were guards stationed sporadically around the site and within the pyramid to deter looters, most of them seemed friendly, but others gave me wary glances as we passed. Everything was still passing as if my life were on fast forward, I felt so detached from everything around me, and everything seemed so insignificant in comparison to the work ahead of me. When we reached the chamber I requested to work by myself, for I work better in silence. The archaeologist complied and left me alone to my work.

As I stepped into the chamber, everything seemed to catch up with me at once. I was in Egypt, inside one of the most magnificent structures every built by the hands of man. I would have a part in uncovering a little piece of our cloudy past, possibly a very significant piece. There was no telling the importance etched into the characters that lined the stone walls around me. There were markings to indicate the beginning and the end of the glyphs, the start was marked with the glyph for “sun” and the end was marked with the glyph for “moon”. This wasn’t an extremely common practice; at least in any of the cases I had read about or worked with, but it wasn’t very hard to notice. Perhaps it had some significance pertaining to the information on the wall.

I began translating the beginning of the glyphs, writing down key words and unknown glyphs that I would have to look up. After a few hours of reading, writing, and translating, I had the gist of the first segment of the glyphs. It seemed as though it were the recording of one of the Pharaoh’s dreams. It spoke of a strange birthing ceremony in which the mother was placed on a raised table or bed, with odd items scattered across the room that gave off various patterned light. Everyone in the room wore colored pants and shirts along with white masks that covered the mouth. It seemed as though this was describing a modern birth…I couldn’t really be sure, but I had a hunch that the Pharaoh had accurately predicted a small piece of his future, our present. I had the guards escort me out of the pyramid, and I returned to the hotel to leave the rest of the writings for the upcoming days. The jetlag was getting to me and I needed to rest.

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I didn’t get very much sleep, I ended up lying in bed thinking about how accurately he had predicted a modern birth. When I returned to my task I was sluggish and tired, but I still worked with the same effort I would have if I had a full night of sleep. The next few lines of glyphs told of a building where vast amounts of children gathered to learn; it spoke of the various items used commonly in school like pencils and notebooks. After that there were a few lines about the varying levels of school, the vast developments of technology that took place between the Pharaoh’s dreams. It didn’t take very long before I reached the end of the first wall. The second wall began with the realization that the person in the dream was the same person, only growing older. This caused a shiver to run up my spine, this man was logging the events of someone’s life…and accurately.

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The next day I ran across a section of the glyphs that caused me to pause. The man in the dream had begun going to school in a “far away land” shortly after the death of his parents. The Pharaoh had called the incident a “terrible collision of twisted machines”, but I had a feeling that he had meant a car crash. My own parents had died in a car crash, and now that I thought about it, the resemblance to the rest of my life was uncanny. I tried not letting it get to me, and continued working and translating.

As I continued working, the man in the dream married a beautiful brown haired woman, completed his studies at college, had a child, and got divorced. The man in the dream became distraught for some time at the loss of his wife, who had moved great distances away with his child. The comparison between the man and myself lined up very well, even if some of the things on the wall of glyphs were very vague. It wasn’t uncommon for people to die in car crashes, nor was it uncommon for people to get divorced.

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“Pharaoh…” I turned as my servant entered the room. “I was told to ask you why you needed such extensive renovation to your chamber. The preparations are being made, of course, but the architects would like some reasoning behind it..”

I sighed in frustration before I replied. “I would not have to explain if they had simply read the scrolls…I believe it would have been obvious. The scrolls contain a dream log, and I believe my dreams have been telling the life of a man in the distant future. In one of my more recent dreams the man visits a chamber, my chamber, and it’s lined with my story. I feel this is my only way to…meet…the man in my dreams. I want him to know…that I know…who he is. I think the man has the right to know. If my dreams are nothing but that, then I may have wasted all of our time, but I’m afraid I’m not willing to take that chance.”

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I sat on the floor of the chamber, confused and upset. I glanced constantly back from my notes to the glyphs to make sure I had made no translation errors, and I hadn’t. A large section of the third wall, towards the end, spoke of my first archaeological dig. It wasn’t an event of great importance, we had found nothing but a few stray dinosaur bones, but this was so much more…specific than any of the other previous dreams. I’d have to be a mad man to deny that the walls around me outlined the events of my own life, even though I felt like even more of a loon accepting it.

The next events spoke of various periods in my life, including other excavations, extended studies to learn different ancient languages, my second engagement that never went through, and the skin cancer I briefly battled with. I felt like I should stop, abandon the chamber, and let someone else take care of this, but I couldn’t. I knew I had to do this, that no one but me would understand the impact of what was here. “…Do I even have the choice?” I heard myself speak out loud, but refrained from answering my own question. If my life has been previously outlined on these walls, have I ever really had any choices? It was almost like the wall was my predestination. I had no choice in what happened to me, to those around me. My path was etched here, in this wall, and there was nothing I could do about it. I don’t think I really had the choice of running even if I wanted to.

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“Please, Pharaoh, explain to me why you still refuse to do anything to lead us…the empire is falling apart without your word.”

“If what I see in my dream is what to come in the future…what does it matter? How do I know that my life and every life before mine haven’t been written down somewhere, laying down the parameters of my life? I believe it foolish to continue now. For all I know, I could die within the next few days, and it wouldn’t matter. The story of life would dredge on without me.”

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I continued to translate the wall, not telling anyone how the Pharaoh’s dreams matched my life. I figured it best to keep something like this to myself, at least for now. Towards the end of the fourth wall I translated the present part of my life, when I start translating his chamber and become distraught over the fact that I have no choice. I paused, not knowing if I should continue translating the rest of my life. Then I realized that there were only a few lines left before the end of the wall. Did this mean that I was going to die soon, or maybe that the Pharaoh died before he could complete his dream log? Did the dreams stop?

I decided to continue translating, but I no longer found any joy in it. As I was translating, I heard gunshots ring through the halls of the pyramid. I heard the screams of anger and cries of pain from the guards I had come to know. The wall told me that these people were looters, coming to steal the treasures of the chamber. The end of the wall was the end of my life. I was still translating, determined to reach the end before I…well, reached the end. The wall told me that the sarcophagus in the room was empty. Why would it be empty? I apparently climb in the sarcophagus to avoid being shot and killed. That was the end of the wall. I rushed to the sarcophagus, notebook in hand, and tested the top. It slid easily; this wasn’t a sarcophagus like any one that I had seen. It had been specifically constructed to allow access by one person, most took several people to crack open. Had the Pharaoh placed this here to save my life…in an attempt to break the timeline of his dreams? I didn’t have time to question the motives; I climbed in and slid the top shut over me just before I heard the voices of the looters.

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I sat at a large table, the men that worked on my chamber of the pyramid. “I want you to construct another chamber, almost identical to mine.”

“This is a common practice among the previous Pharaoh’s…but may I ask why?”

“As you all have undoubtedly heard, the walls of my chamber have been lined with the story of a man. I find it…unfitting that I should rest there, with the story of someone else’s life surrounding me.”

“So you would like us to construct a new chamber for you, and leave the one we’ve already built empty?”

“No…not at all. I want a new chamber constructed with the story of my own life lining the walls. The dream man is to lie in the chamber you’ve already made. This man has had more influence on my life than anyone living, and I believe that he deserves the title of Pharaoh. Based on the occurrences in my dreams…I don’t think our empire will last through to his time, and this is the only way I see of giving him this status.”

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As the stone coffin slid shut, I could hear it seal. The men outside were attempting to open it to get to the potential store of treasure inside, but their attempts were in vain. They continued looting the room until they had their fill, and then left. When I tried to open the sarcophagus to escape…the lid would not budge. I tried again, and again, but it was futile. The sealing sound I heard earlier was probably the lid locking permanently into place. I could tell the air was thinning; I was beginning to get light headed. Had the Pharaoh lied to me? I had avoided death by shooting, only to find death by suffocation. Maybe he had tried to save me and failed, maybe the writer of life’s timeline had intervened and prevented him from saving me. Perhaps it was always supposed to end this way.