User:Fish/Damon Egypt

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Note: This page descends from a branching story called Dreams Incorporated. Follow the link to start at the beginning.

Start over from the beginning

Go back one and choose another character for Damon

The Curse of the Scorpion King (Tomb Explorer)

The moment Damon makes his selection on the screen, he feels the Dreams computer activate, overriding his sensory world. Everything swirls to blackness, to a void where there is no light or sound or sensation. In that timeless nothing, a new world — his Dream — stutters to life, one frame at a time. At first it is like a slideshow, then like a strobe light illuminating every other moment, then like a silent movie accompanied by a skipping compact disc. And then the world resolves.

Damon appears in mid-air, floating, bodiless, gliding smoothly over the terra-cotta buildings, domed mosques, and stone minarets of a crowded desert city. Below him, camels compete with vintage automobiles in congested, narrow streets. The smell of date palms wafts upward on the breeze, mixing with the scents sulfurous exhaust and dung and olives. The roofs of the buildings below are used to house poultry, or to dry laundry; there are no television aerials. No car that Damon can see, passing by overhead, are new in design: they are bulky, heavy, large-fendered vehicles with fancy grills and rumble seats and spare tires tucked on the running board. Most of the cars, and most everything else, is lightly dusted by the desert winds that swirl and eddy in the alleys.

As he floats by, the Dreams computer instills memories into his mind, and as the information trickles into his head he realizes that he recognizes the cars — that Packard, that Deusenberg, the Mercedes near the awnings of the open-air bazaar. The cars seem new, but none is more modern in design than 1935. Damon also can catch snatches of conversation in Arabic, though outside this Dream he understands not a word. Passing by an open window, he catches a glimpse of a woman sitting moodily in the sunlight by the sill, watching the world pass by with a sullen pout on her face. He can hear the song on the Radiola, recognizes it as "It Ain't Necessarily So" by the Gershwins. Damon attempts to wave to her, but he has no arms; and she doesn't see his invisible spirit gliding right before her eyes. If Seth is nearby then he, too, is also invisible.

He floats on through the air, descending gently, and approaches a large yellow and white stone building. It is an elaborate piece of Western architecture, out of place here among the sun-baked terra cotta buildings, with a wide shaded porch behind an arcade — a series of rounded arches that is distinctly Roman in appearance — and a veranda above, with doors of wrought iron and glass, and a canopy of white canvas above to keep out the punishing desert sun. Damon finds himself sailing straight for the closed doors of the veranda, and in an eyeblink, he has passed through them into the room.

Four people are there: three seated, one standing. Seated together before a wide, round table are two men in nondescript gray suits. One is perhaps fifty, with sparse white hair, quite thin, with intelligent eyes and a weak jawline. He sits primly in his wicker chair, holding an array of papers before him and a pair of spectacles on a string around his neck. The other is a heavy man, red-faced in the heat, with sweat soaking his collar: blonde, blue-eyed, with a mustache. He seems less querulous and hesitant than his companion, as if he is impatient to complete his business and leave, but holding his impatience in check by an effort of self-discipline. An open leather briefcase is at his elbow.

Sitting across from them is a woman of perhaps twenty-five, with an unidentifiable Mediterranean features and flawless, dusky skin. She wears a pair of rounded spectacles herself, with smoked blue lenses, perched low on her beautiful nose, and she is looking coolly over the top of the rims at the government agents opposite. Her hair is drawn back into an efficient ponytail and tucked behind the collar of her short-sleeved khaki shirt. She wears daring knee-length shorts, with plenty of pockets, and heavy boots with calf socks. She sits with her legs crossed daintily, radiating an air of effortless elegance, as if she were sitting in a four-hundred-dollar Vionnet backless evening gown in a ballroom, rather than dressed like a hunter on safari and sitting in a sweaty Cairo hotel.

The last figure in the room stands, occasionally pacing as if restless. He stands over six feet in height and has a rugged, well-worn appearance. His clothes are weather-beaten and stained through heavy use, fraying somewhat at the cuffs, and he has an unkempt look to him: his khaki trousers have not been pressed, his shirt is rumpled and open at the collar. At his hip he wears a belt, adorned on the right with a holster for a heavy revolver, and on the left with a bullwhip. The adventurer's eyes are a weary blue, and his face handsome if unconventional and unshaven. He wears a distinctive hat of Australian make, high in the crown, with a wide brim.

Damon takes in all of this in an instant as his disembodied spirit floats through the glass doors without a bump and circles the table, observing the tableau from all sides, and then he finds himself sailing straight for the woman. His spirit flies right toward her body, and dives in — merges with her form —

"Absolutely, totally unacceptable," one of the government agents was saying. It was the heavyset man with the moustache, agitated as if he had just been denied. "Whatever is in that tomb, we can't let Hitler's people get their hands on it. We're prepared to pay you both handsomely if you cooperate with this little plan."

"Plan?" the unkempt adventurer — Seth — says, with heavy contempt. "What plan?"

The heavyset man takes a deep breath, as if marshalling his temper, but the gaunt-faced older agent steps in. "We've retrieved some Egyptian artifacts," he explains. "From the Smithsonian, from the British Museum. All previously discovered, of course, but some are obscure. All you have to do is make the announcement that you've found them. We'll arrange for some reporters. Show off a couple of the pieces to the cameras. Hitler's people will see the story and think you've already broken into the Tomb of Serqet, and they'll try to get the pieces back. They'll stop trying to locate the tomb here and they'll chase after the relics, wherever we care to lead them."

"You see," the heavyset man says, and looks at Damon and Seth to be sure his message is being received, "Hitler's got teams of archaeologists running all over down here. Some of these ancient Egyptian tombs are said to contain artifacts of great mystical power, whose curses could assist his Nazi regime in their war effort. If they think you already have them, they'll abandon their efforts and come after those items. That will buy enough time for our experts to go in and reclaim the actual items from the Tomb of the Scorpion King, what's his name—"

"Serqet." Damon hears herself answering the question, using memories the Dreams computer instilled into her head. Her voice is feminine now, and has a cultured English sound. She realizes, on a subconscious level, that she is female now, and it feels very different from her old male form. Her libido, always attracted before to men, feels oddly shifted — the same, but not the same, like the difference between a right-handed curve ball and a left-handed screwball, arcing in the same direction but very different in execution. Damon crosses her arms and tries to ignore the sensation of her large breasts straining the fabric of her shirt; she resists the temptation to look down at her new body in more detail.

"Yeah, exactly," the agent says. "Him. So, what do you say? Are you prepared to lend a hand to the United States Government?"

"I'm prepared to help the cause of science," Damon says frostily.

"You are, you are," the gaunt agent assures her. "If the Nazis get their hands on these items, we'll never see them again. And if the stories of mystical power are true, then—" He spreads his hands and shrugs, as if to suggest the end of the argument.

"It won't work," Seth says, bluntly. "The Nazis might sometimes sound stupid, but they're not. If you print a photograph of a relic in the newspaper it won't take twenty-four hours for them to check the catalogs of the major museums and realize that something like that has already been found. They won't bite. And you'll need more than twenty-four hours to get into that tomb and extract any artifacts, if I'm any judge."

"And he is," Damon says, smiling to show her perfect white teeth. "He's one of the best. I'm the other. That's why you want to use us to divert the Germans. An announcement from the American government might be seen as a ruse, but coming from us, they might believe it."

"Exactly," the heavyset man says again. "If you—"

"If you want to get into that tomb, then you're going to have to let us do it ourselves," Seth says with finality. "Your people aren't good enough to get in there, identify what you need, and get back out in so short a time. And if you're asking us to lie to the world and say we made a major discovery, it won't just be the Nazis combing over our evidence — every reputable scientist in the world will be doing the same, and they won't hesitate to announce that your story is a ringer. Your little plot might buy a few hours, but no more than that."

The two agents exchange a glance. "All right, suppose you're right," the heavyset agent says grudgingly. "If you two went in and extracted the artifacts for us—"

"For you? And have you put them in a government warehouse, never to be seen again?" Seth's rough voice sounds condescending. "We're scientists. If there's anything in there to study, it's ours to study. We obtained the rights to dig directly from the Egyptian government."

"We can see that they revoke it," the heavyset man says ominously. "We can outspend the likes of you."

"But you can't outspend the likes of me," Damon says coolly, looking at them over the rims of her round spectacles. "I think the decision is ours, wouldn't you say?" Without waiting for an answer, she rises from her seat. Damon notices that her new body is graceful, athletic, like a cat's, and equally sensuous. "If you'll excuse us, gentlemen, we have preparations to make. We'll advise you of our answer before evening."

Damon shows the two of them out the door, and finally turns and puts her back against it. "Interesting," she says.

Seth looks her up and down, taking in Damon's female form, from the smooth tanned calves to the button-bursting breasts contained inside her khaki shirt, to her dark, liquid eyes. "Yeah," he grunts. "Interesting."

She takes a few steps toward Seth, marveling how tall he is in this Dream, compared to her, and realizing that the difference in height didn't bother her. It was in some way deeply exciting. His rugged features, with their two days of stubble, were immensely appealing at the moment — though in a different way than if Damon had still been a man. She couldn't quite put her finger on the difference, at first, but it would come to her.

"So what's the plan?" Seth asks, his eyes straying to Damon's body again. "We just go right in and dig, right? It's our discovery."

"Are you certain you've looked at their plan properly?" she asks him carefully.

"What plan? It won't work. Every Egyptologist in the world will know we've discovered a box full of fakes."

"They needn't be fakes," Damon says. "All of the artifacts in Serqet's tomb are unseen by human eyes. We only need one or two of them, after all, to lure away the Nazis. We already have a handful from the outer chambers. That would send them off on the wrong trail indefinitely, would it not?"

"Yeah," Seth says, mulling it over. "But then we're part of this big government lie. That doesn't sit right with me."

"It's for a good cause," Damon purrs.

"Somehow it seems that your lies always are," Seth says pointedly.

Damon stretches up her tanned arms and wraps them around Seth's neck. "It's just who I am, darling," she says. "I'm a secretive sort of man."

"You're not an anything sort of man," Seth objects, but he puts his strong hands to Damon's tiny waist. "Not now. But you know, I think I can get used to it. Just don't keep waving those boobs in my face. Is this why straight guys stare at them all the time? It's going to be very distracting once we get down to business."

"Are we going to get down to business?" Damon asks, flirtaceously.

"Yes," Seth says. "But not that kind of business. Stan and Ollie outside are waiting for our decision."

Damon and Seth cooperate with the government plot, and lie to the reporters about a major discovery at the Tomb.

Damon and Seth reject the government plot, and go forward with their plan to explore the tomb themselves.