Welcome to weekend writing warriors. Many fine authors, and me, contribute short snippets for your delectation. This is the start of a new work, Illegal Aliens. It is something of a cross between a horror story, a science fiction tale, and a romance.
Roland, an archaeology instructor at Reading University (academic ranks in the UK are different than in the US, he’d be an assistant professor in the land of the free), is on his way to London. He’s on call when something unusual turns up in the works on the new underground. After an interesting conversation on the train, he arrives to find the odd item – a block of Roman Concrete which is covered in inscriptions.
Roland’s dinner continues, with an unusual choice of meal. He has just asked his visitor if she’s hungry. She has just sniffed him and told him he’s the one. Shades of the Matrix? Continuing on things are about to heat up. They did, but was it real?
Sunlight streaming through his window finally wakened Roland. He rolled over in bed, reaching for her, hoping last night had not been a dream; he had a panicked moment, “She’s not here!” Then he heard a tuneless humming from downstairs.
The humming stopped; evaporating like the dew in the sunlight of the morning.
Roland leaped out of bed and took the stairs at a bound; there was no one down there, not in the kitchen, nor the front rooms, nor even the loo; the loo he, and … it was too much.
His mobile shot into life, “Bloody hell!”
He answered it, “What the hell now?”
It was Mr Shah, “Did you hear the news?”
“What news?”
Mr Shah’s voice, tinny on the mobile continued, “When we lifted that damned block of yours … the bomb, the bloody German bomb, it went.”
My sincere apologies for abusing semi-colons.
My coauthor informs me that he has a paper deadline this weekend, NAFIPS, whatever that is. Something about Fuzzy Restricted Boltzmann Machines. Whatever they are. (actually I know and they’re sort of cool in a nerdy sort of way.)
Was this hot strange woman a dream?
Maybe, maybe not.
To be honest it wouldn’t be much of a story if she were.
There’s another minor Egyptian God you should know about. Aker.
Aker was the guardian of the borders, sort of a shy, quiet, standoffish sort of God. But someone you wanted on your side. He was usually described by a lion (often a spotted Barbary Lion). He and Bastet tended to clean up the mess that the other gods left behind, including killing the snake god Apep.