Temple of the Inscriptions

by Humphrey Price

Table of Contents

Chapter 8: The Prize

part 1

There was the flash of light inside our heads and the wave of severe achiness and nausea. The mirror and our backpacks slid off Karyn’s lap, clanging and thudding onto the floor.

“Karyn,” I groaned, “please try and get off as soon as you can.” Although in other circumstances I would have enjoyed having Space Girl on my lap, I felt so ill that I might pass out.

“Sorry, Scott. I just can’t move. Wait. Okay.” Then with great effort, she eased off the pedestal and stood shakily on the floor, holding on to the side for support.

“I’m feeling better now, Señor Frog. Here, let me give you a hand.” Although she was careful not to rush me, I could hear the urgency in her voice. I raised my head, still pounding, and then sat up. Karyn steadied me with one hand as I climbed off and stood up.

We lumbered out of the steel tank, making sure we had all our gear, and watched the hatch slide closed. “It doesn’t look like anything has changed in here,” I remarked, taking a look around the room. “It was thirty-two years ago when we were last here. That’s in real time. It’s just been a few weeks for us.”

Karyn didn’t waste any time heading straight for the exit door. “Let’s get out of here, Señor Frog.”

“You got it, Space Girl.”

Karyn placed her meteorite on the same bulls-eye looking button that had failed to let us out of here thirty-two years ago. Our expressions were grim, but to our great delight, the door rumbled downward, opening our way back to Pakal’s crypt where we first began this harrowing adventure. Why did the door open this time? Time delay? Interlock with the travel throne? Who knows? But we weren’t complaining.

We stepped into the crypt, and the massive stone block closed noisily behind us. Things looked pretty much the same as when we first went through here. Karyn was all business: “I need the roll of duct tape from your pack.”

“Sure.” I pulled off my pack and fished out the duct tape.

“Okay, Señor Frog,” she said, “get out the pocket laser and take it with you up to the psycho-duct. When you get there, position it inside so that it will beam down the stairway, just as I did with my flashlight when we first came down. Don’t turn it on until I tell you; I don’t want to run down the batteries needlessly.”

I stepped up onto the lower landing and headed swiftly up the stairs. After locating the psycho-duct, I held the laser inside so it would beam down in the same direction that would be illuminated by a shaft of sunlight exactly one time each year. “I’m ready!” I yelled down.

“Okay. Turn it on.”

I did.

Three seconds later I heard, “Now turn it off. But don’t move. Stay right where you are.”

I waited. I could see that Karyn had her light on way down at the bottom of the stairway. I heard the ripping of duct tape, then a clanging sound, then more duct tape.

“There was no hidden vault or secret button where the laser was shining,” she informed me. “But I can see that a section of wall here has been removed and then later rebuilt. Looks like somebody was looking for something in the obvious location here. I’m not surprised that they were, but I’ll bet they didn’t find anything.”

“Well, then, how are we going to find anything?”

“Oh, ye of little imagination. That’s what the mirror is for. I almost have it duct-taped in place here on the wall.” I heard more ripping of tape. “Okay, I’m ready, Señor Frog. Activate the laser, and leave it on till I tell you to stop.”

“Roger that, Space Girl. Laser on!” I didn’t hear anything for about fifteen seconds, but I kept the laser steadily positioned in the psycho-duct with my finger on the button.

Finally, I heard, “Laser off! Come on down.” When I arrived at the lower landing, Karyn was crouched down by a spot on the wall opposite where the large round mirror was taped up on the wall.

“This is it, Señor Frog.” Karyn pointed at a little scrap of silver duct tape she had tacked on the stone wall about twenty centimeters above the floor. “Once a year, sunlight streams through the psycho-duct and illuminates the wall right over there.” She aimed her light over at the mirror. “Somebody, probably Pakal, assumed a great prize would lie at that spot and tore the wall apart looking for it. But not so. However, if you reflect that beam of light with a mirror positioned perfectly flat on the wall, it shines on a spot exactly right here,” she lectured as she tapped on the tape with her finger. “So, let’s see what we’ve got.”

“Karyn,” I questioned, “why do you want to find the immortality juice? Are you thinking that you might want to take it someday?”

“I’m not considering that, at least right now. I just don’t want these guys to find it. Scott, they are so desperate to get what they think is this mother lode vial of the Elixir of Immortality. If they find it, especially if Khufu or Pakal find it, I think they may cause a lot of trouble for the world. Really, they just need to die of old age like they’re supposed to. Sneferu was right, and he seems to be the oldest of all of them.”

“So, what are you going to do if we find it?”

“I don’t know. First things first.” She peeled off the duct tape and stuck it on her pants. Then she held out her Meteor Crater, Arizona pendant and moved it toward the spot. Snap! It stuck to the wall like a magnet just exactly where the duct tape had been.

Just to the right of Karyn’s pendant, a stone door sunk into the floor, revealing a small vault the same size as the one Karyn had opened up in Sneferu’s burial chamber. We both stuck our heads in the opening and looked in at the same time. There was one vial inside, about 4 centimeters in diameter by 10 centimeters tall. Karyn reached in, removed it, and handed it to me. Then she placed her pendant back over the spot, and the door to the vault closed.

The vial was an opaque milky white color and felt heavy, like it was made out of a ceramic material. It was a perfect cylinder with a flat bottom and top. Near the top was a hairline crack that ran all the way around the cylinder forming what looked like a cap for the bottle. “Do you mind if I try and open it?” I asked Karyn.

“Go ahead.”

I tried unscrewing it, but that didn’t work. I also tried wiggling the top and pulling it off, but to no avail. “I can’t open it.”

She held out her hand. “Well let me try.”

“Sure,” I said, handing it over.

She wiggled the top, and I could see her grimace with exertion. Then her face relaxed, and she smiled. “Hmm. Oh, I see,” she said, removing the cap. “The threads are backward. Instead of lefty loosey, righty tighty, they’re righty loosey, lefty tighty.” She handed me the open vial and picked up her flashlight. “Hold it for me while I look inside. Here, tip it just a little bit,” she said as she looked inside the opening with one eye. “I think I see a liquid inside.” She jiggled my arm. “Let’s shake slightly. Okay. Now I definitely see liquid inside. It’s pretty full.”

She took the vial back and screwed the lid on. “Let’s clean up and get ready to go.” She pulled the mirror off the wall and tore off all the duct tape, which she handed to me.

“Space Girl, you’re always handing stuff to me.”

She laughed, “That’s because you never complain. Now put this trash in your pack. Girl Scouts always leave places cleaner than we found them.” Then she thought, “But in this case, maybe we need to leave some things just as we found them,” she pointed to the spot on the wall where the dust had been disturbed by the mirror, “and other things not.”

She had me hold the laser on top of Pakal’s sarcophagus cover and sight it in the same direction the carving of Pakal was looking. Karyn put the mirror up on the wall where the beam hit and secured it there with duct tape. Then I turned the laser on again, and she marked the spot where the reflected beam hit the adjacent wall by sticking on a scrap of tape. She tried that spot with her meteorite just to make sure it wasn’t actually a button. It wasn’t.

Then Karen picked an area on the wall just below the spot to outline a fake doorway about the same size as the real vault where we found the vials. She covered the area inside with duct tape, then peeled it all off leaving a nice clean square spot that just might fool someone. “Maybe that will keep somebody busy,” she said.

She plucked a dirty shirt from her pack and a piece of cardboard that she tore off from the back of a notepaper pad. On the floor around the fake vault door, Karyn used the dirty shirt to sweep dust and dirt onto the cardboard, like a dustpan. Then she carried it over to the landing where the mirror was first taped up and poured the dust onto the wall to cover up those areas and make it look as though the wall had never been disturbed. Then she did the same thing for where the hidden doorway to the real vault was.

“Okay Señor Frog. Our work is done. Let’s go home,” then her voice turned sad, “or see if we even have a home anymore. After all, officially we died thirty-two years ago.”

Proceed to part 2...

Copyright © 2023 by Humphrey Price