Altered America

by Ingham, Martin T.

Afterwards, he did something truly weird, at least for him. Going back to the insurance company, he talked to a friend that he had made there, and through him managed to cadge a ticket to the Pyramid Arena that night for a different kind of exhibition he'd seen announced in the paper Sunday: The World Wrestling Federation's one-night-only "Raw is War."

  He didn't like wrestling. He thought it too violent—and not always faked, either. Sometimes with real blood spilled, he, who was squeamish—hadn't there been some scandal or something, something about a person actually being killed at one of these wrestling exhibitions?

  Perhaps it was just the evening, June 21st. The Summer Solstice. The air outside the huge, 32-story Pyramid's entrance still hot and humid, as it had been all day; he separating himself from the crowd inside to get a breath of air, momentarily losing his way. Finally facing an empty meeting room with a sign: Ptah I.

  * * *

  He got home late that night to his apartment, high in a building not far from the river. He opened his bedroom drapes, seeing the Pyramid small in the distance now, still lit and sparkling, the Mississippi River traffic even at night reflecting in swirls from its polished steel sides. And he left the drapes open, a thing not normal for him to do since he didn't like lights disturbing his sleep, but rather made a point of undressing in front of the window—as if, somehow, Melissa might see what she was missing—and, thus naked, went to bed. Laughing a little at all his foolishness, he, who disliked violence every bit as much as Melissa did, wasting his night at the wrestling matches as if, by thus turning his back on "culture," on museums and poetry, he might somehow spite her.

  As if she would even care.

  In his sleep, he saw a vision of Rameses—Rameses II, or rather his statue, which he had seen as a teenage boy a full twelve years before on a hot, sultry Tennessee afternoon much like this one, at the first Wonders: The Memphis International Cultural Series exhibition.

  Now it came back to him, that it was Memphis the statue had come from, the original Memphis in Egypt, now scarcely even a ruin for tourists. Even more came back—things he could not have known. That it was the City of Ptah, as founded by the Pharaoh Menes, of special devotion to Rameses II, of Men-neferu-Meryre, that he in his dream saw spreading before him. The white-buildinged funerary complex of Pepi I, its name yet to be corrupted by Greek scribes. Its tombs. Its temples...

  Within its temples—he saw the one now, the Hut-ka-Ptah, which, in the Greek language, became Aigyptos—and, within, its seated, mummy-swathed form, its head shaved except for its child's single hairlock. Its hands bare of wrappings too.

  In the shadows, he saw a wall-carved name, not the name of Ptah, but another; a name that led to a deeper chamber, as if a seraglio within the temple-tomb... when he awoke in a pool of sweat. Even though his room was air-conditioned.

  It was more than sweat, he saw when he turned over.

  Wet dreams, at his age! When he and Melissa, only that Saturday... then he remembered. Melissa was gone now.

  As for that other name that he had almost dreamed. It seemed gone from him as well. Yet, it occurred to him, he might find out what it was by other means. Putting his clothes on, he ate a quick breakfast, then retraced his steps back to the Pink Palace, hoping that somewhere within its exhibit he might find a clue. Which he did not, another weird thing happened—on his way home, when he had an urge to stop at the Memphis Zoo. He let his urge lead him as he walked from one section to the next, penetrating as he had the temple within his dream visit. Hoping to find—what?

  The cage of a woman, a woman he'd almost dreamed? Yet had still not met, nor even glimpsed, even though somehow the mere seeing of her name—which he still could not bring back to memory—had caused him to come as if he were once more the teenaged boy of twelve years earlier, fantasizing over a wall painting of an Egyptian goddess.

  He remembered, it had been bare-breasted. He'd dreamed of her then, too. The painting, that is, at the Rameses exhibit—the breasts, one in profile, as bare as the head of Ptah.

  He started laughing. Enough was enough, he thought, finding his wanderings had brought him to "Cat Country"—at least no mice there!—thinking that perhaps if he went home now he might go out later. A couple of clubs he knew had good Delta-style blues, and even better potential for pickups. Except that, despite the arguments they’d had, he missed Melissa.

  And then, outside the zoo, he saw a preacher bearing a sign: Beware the Rapture.

  "What the hell?" he muttered.

  The preacher heard him. "Yes," the preacher said, "beware the Rapture—the coming Millennium—unless you know in your heart that you're right with God. That is the day that the dead will rise from their graves, some to be saved for Life Eternal, the rest to perish, and woe to ye that are unbelievers..."

  Then, when he got home, he found a message on his answering machine. Another job—a Y2K fix for a local department store this time, one that wanted to be sure its billing would remain accurate past December.

  * * *

  The job was good for him. Lasting just past the first week of August, it kept him busy. It helped him forget, both the loss of Melissa and the weirdness afterwards. But outside, around him, there were other weirdnesses.

  People were preparing for the Millennium, not just the businesses that his work catered to, but ordinary people as well. One man down the hall from him in his building was laying in firewood—he found out one evening when, coming home late, he found bark and twigs in the elevator. He knew who it was; a dentist he socialized with on occasion, whose corner apartment sported a fireplace.

  "Won't it be green?" he asked, running into him down in the lobby, another stack of wood in the man's arms. "I mean, unless it has time to season—out in the fresh air—the wood won't burn right." Except the dentist said that didn't matter, as long as it was wood. Something to burn in case the heat went off.

  Then there was the woman the floor below him, laying in flour in bulk, almost dwarfed under a twenty-pound sack of it as she explained, "So I can bake bread New Year's Eve. In case there's no food when the computers, well you know, Mr. Todd. When they all turn off—people will loot the supermarkets then. Maybe even before, when they realize—that's why we all have to be prepared early."

  Outside, the preachers. More preachers now, especially the night of August 11 when in Europe and part of Asia there had been a total eclipse of the sun. He had seen it on the news on TV, while over Memphis, the night was dark as pitch, the night of a new moon, the only illumination coming from the lights below in the city.

  He opened his drapes again, seeing the Pyramid, stainless steel sides aglow. "The third largest pyramid in the world," he had read somewhere, "thus rivaling even those of Giza."

  That night, the dream returned; that of the city once known as "The White Walls," a half-millennium older itself than the great piles at Giza. Of ancient Men-neferu-Meryre and, in it, its Hut-ka-Ptah.

  This time he bypassed the statue of Ptah, noting only the implements clutched in its unwrapped hands—artisans' tools, but sharp-bladed as well—to penetrate inward. The arrow-straight corridor. Carved on a lintel, this time he saw the name. Somehow he could read it, despite its hieroglyphs.

  "Sekhmet!" he read aloud.

  Then, within the room inside, he saw her. Standing in silhouette, to be sure, in part in profile but her torso twisted so that her shoulders and one breast faced toward him—just like in the painting!—her head tilted back again, partly away from him, crowned with long, black hair. Hair so heavy and twisted in multiple braids that it must be a wig.

  Her breasts were bare, yes; more of her almost bare—sheathed in a narrow, sheer robe suspended by shoulder-straps, clinging to every part of her curved form down to her ankles. Slim, cat-like, sinuous—just as the painting he'd mooned about as a teenager depicted—her buttocks strong. Legs firm.

  And when she spoke—purring.

  "You like wrestling?" she asked first, her face still not turned to him. "In my land, those that the
Goddess loves wrestle—that is in their youth. Then they pass on to other things..."

  In his mind, he knew then who Sekhmet was, the goddess-consort of Ptah in the temple. But a goddess in her own right, and a warrior also in time of need, her name meaning "The Powerful."

  But something else, also, something he could not place....and, in his heart—but then he woke up, sweating. Just like when he'd last dreamed—and more than just sweating.

  He shivered now in his room's air-conditioned cool, remembering something else of his dream this time. A task she would have him do.

  The first of many...

  * * *

  The tasks were not onerous—weird was more like it—but then as August became September with its Autumn Equinox, September-October, October-November, the weirdness outside in Memphis increased as well. One man, he heard, had even built a boat, but up on the bluffs above the river. Because, he had said, when the dead rose to meet their Lord—Abraham's God, he said, not those of Hut-ka-Ptah—so would the great Mississippi rise with them.

  And outside, as well, the preachers abounded. Sometimes even fighting for corners to pass out their leaflets; physical violence from these men who would be of God.

  There was wrestling in the streets, and it was getting nasty—one man he saw bit off another's ear!

  While for him, well, his tasks were weird too, but only in small ways. After August's dream, he went to a store that sold sporting equipment and bought a bowstring, took it back to the Pink Palace and passed it over the case of bows he had seen, then brought it to the Pyramid's "Ptah" rooms and rubbed it over the lintels above their doors.

  Then, another time—this task almost normal considering what others around him were doing—he found a store that sold empty gallon jars. The store was almost out of them—others were hoarding them to fill with water on New Year's Eve, in case the water supply failed the next day—but, for him, it was only a matter of arranging them around the walls of his bedroom, his living room, and kitchen.

  Whenever he completed a task, always the dream would return, but in the dreams he would be rewarded--never gazing on Sekhmet's face, she always turning it from him when they embraced. He, at her orders, always with eyes closed when she let him kiss her—but penetrating, inward... inward... straight as an arrow from altar to corridor, until, at last, with the temple lamps blown out, he entered her chamber...

  * * *

  He woke again, with the latest task in mind that he was to perform for her. Shivering as always, but this time it was already well into the month of December.

  Outside, he saw mice—or one mouse, anyway—scampering out through the door of his building.

  He wondered—had his neighbor brought it in with his wood? Mice were like that, he knew, creeping into the narrowest places.

  As for his latest errand, he went once more to the zoo, tracing his steps back to where the big cats were housed. Finding a tuft of fur, knowing, somehow, it was that of a lioness, he took it back to the Pyramid—that great metal behemoth with the Pink Palace east and south of it, the Memphis Zoo almost midway between them, describing a line that was curved like a bow's form—and found a place where it could be hidden, not in the Ptah rooms this time but the Wonders exhibit area. It was where the statue of Rameses itself might have stood, had the Pyramid been built in time.

  Rameses, who would not even have been born a full millennium after the tombs at Giza had been sealed.

  That night, his task accomplished, he saw her face.

  "Know me now, Henry Todd," Sekhmet purred to him as, slowly, she turned, lifting her wig from a head close-cropped in the Egyptian manner. Except—Yeats had it wrong!—this woman's body was still goddess-formed, but its head was the yellow-furred shape of a lioness. Yet sleek and smooth, too, no "rough beast's" head, and blending perfectly into its neck muscles. Cat-like and willowy. Alluring. Sinuous. Kissing him now with his eyes still wide open, his lips also parted. The tongue that caressed his own wholly a woman's tongue.

  And in his heart he knew, somewhat at least, of what he had not quite realized before, that which he could not place: Sekhmet's reputation.

  He, who abhorred violence. He, who had only gone to watch the wrestling that night six months before—hating every moment while he was there, hating the blood even though he knew it was faked—because he had just lost the woman he really loved—yet, who loved Sekhmet too!

  Shivering, he woke.

  He tried to call Melissa on the phone, fumbling the number pad. Swallowing his pride, he tried to call her. While, outside, Christmas lights flickered and glowed, even during the daytime.

  It was the twentieth day of December, five days to Christmas—the birth of a God not even imagined when Sekhmet and Ptah reigned—twelve days to New Year's Day. Two days before December's full moon and the Winter Solstice, both days together, except he knew somehow that, back in the time of Men-neferu-Meryre—something to do with the Earth's procession—the Solstice might have been two days earlier.

  The first day of winter, beginning, as the Egyptians reckoned it, the month of Tybi.

  Something there rang a bell. Something that Sekhmet had told him, but, like that first dream six months ago, something that he could not quite remember.

  So he tried, once more, to call Melissa, getting a message this time on her machine saying that she was gone for the holidays—visiting friends in California—but would be back January second. But, if he wished, her roommate would call him back...

  He did not wish that. He knew her e-mail address, so he e-mailed her instead, hoping that she might still be reading it, even if she was on vacation. He begged her forgiveness—it was all his fault—but now, he said, something real weird had happened. He wanted to know, in that she had an interest in Egypt, if she knew anything about the goddess Sekhmet.

  And then, as an afterthought, he added: And what do you know about the Egyptian calendar back then—some month they called Tybi?

  * * *

  Then, on New Year's Eve, the eleventh day of Tybi, he received an answer: Catching up on my e-mail, it started. Then, coyly, it added, Is Sekhmet your girlfriend now? You'd better drop her—she's a married woman—and anyway you wouldn't like her. According to ancient Egyptian legend she once was summoned by Ra, the sun god, to conquer some men who had rebelled against him. But she so enjoyed the work of killing that she wouldn't stop, until the gods themselves became afraid that she'd destroy the whole human race. And the only way they finally got her to stop was to trick her, by filling big jugs with pomegranate juice and beer so, when she saw how red it looked, she thought it was blood and drank it down, and got so drunk from it she couldn't kill anymore. Some New Year's party, huh?

  Anyhow, about Tybi, that would be this month—New Year's month too—except that their calendar wasn't like ours. Rather, what they had were like scrolls of lucky and unlucky days, so you'd know when to go out or start new things and stuff. Sort of like astrology these days, except, as for Tybi, I seem to remember there being a saying—something about an extremely bad luck day—so look, I know we had a fight and all, but I'm glad you got in touch, so maybe you should stay home tonight, okay? And meantime, if I can find that saying—I'll look for it now—I'll send another e-mail.

  He did stay home, not because of his ex-girlfriend's warning—or even that she seemed to hint that, maybe, they might get back together—but because, when he opened his door, he was spooked by a mouse... and then more than just one mouse, scampering down the hallway rug.

  The lights were winking out—he saw first on the Internet, then on the TV—in Asia and Russia. Even in places where there weren't computers. And Europe in darkness, too, as midnight crept west across the ocean. To Nova Scotia—the Atlantic Time Zone. New Brunswick and Newfoundland. Israel long since in blackness by then, of course, but it was not Bethlehem this beast slouched towards.

  Then on TV the ball in New York's Times Square—Eastern Standard Time!—starting its own slow descent into darkness. People there panicki
ng.

  Then, outside, he heard sounds of screaming too, even through the glass of his bedroom window... and something else, also—the sound of a cat's roar.

  A lion he'd heard at the zoo.

  Throwing his drapes back, he peered out the window, at lights winking out in downtown Memphis in its Central Time Zone, not from computer-based loss of power—it wasn't yet time for that, not by some minutes yet—but people rioting. Stones thrown at streetlights, fires breaking out in some of the buildings, while...

  He saw the Pyramid. As if with preternatural sight, as if not in the distance, but so close that he could almost touch it. Its sides rough and furry—not stainless steel smoothness, but covered with mice! Streaming out of its air vents! Anywhere, everywhere. Any space they could find!

  And at his feet, the jugs—the gallon jars he'd bought, lining the walls of his apartment. Filled now with a red fluid that smelled of fruit juice, but also of beer, and something else as well.

  His computer blinked once more to brightness with Melissa's message, her final e-mail to him:

  I found it, Henry. That thing about Tybi—and it's about mice too, just like you said you saw last June when we had that fight over it. "Hostile, hostile, hostile is the 12th Tybi. Avoid seeing a mouse on this day; for it is the day when Ra gave the order to Sekhmet."

  Then the computer winked out, as did the other lights in the city of Men-neferu-Meryre, but he did not need its glowing to see outside. A river of mice now, coursing the streets below, led by a woman with a lioness-formed head, her eyes rolling in blood lust. But graceful—becoming her. Curve-formed below the neck, a woman's body, a goddess's body, its thin, transparent robe plastered to gore-soaked flesh. Mice trailing after, to gnaw at the bones of her leavings.

  An army of mice now!

  And, far in the east, no mere sandstone Sphinx he, Sekhmet's husband followed.

  Thomas Edison Visits Selwood

  by Martin T. Ingham

  The stagecoach was packed. The deluxe carriage wasn't all that spacious, and a dozen passengers with all of their luggage was enough to reach its maximum capacity. It was only about ten miles from the Yucca Junction train station to Selwood, so the ride was tolerable for those determined to make the trip.