The sun had almost set below the horizon. Its copper-red rays illuminated the ethereal clouds, reflected and shimmered in the unhurried waters of the Nile, and further away they touched a stretched-out black shadow lying on the sands—the silhouette of an unfinished pyramid. A cool breeze blew. The Great Pharaoh deeply inhaled the evening air and gestured for two half-naked girls with fans to leave him alone.
For some time he sat on his richly decorated walking throne, enjoying the silence, then rose and took several steps forward along the marble-paved veranda, as if noticing something in the distance and now wanting to examine it closely. The sharp gaze of the Great Pharaoh swept over the Nile bank, the distant silhouette of the pyramid, and the fading horizon, while his dry and usually tightly pressed lips gradually transformed into a barely perceptible smile.
Now he saw far more than an ordinary mortal could. He saw the future. Majestic cascades of dams were rising above the still-wild river; from them, with mathematical precision and geometric beauty, networks of irrigation canals stretched out, year-round saturating the parched soil with life-giving moisture. Peasant plots, shady gardens, paved paths, temples, and, of course, statues—his statues—were taking their places. Symbols and results of the fulfillment of his divine will… It would transform and make his kingdom the most beautiful place in the world. And perhaps, change the entire world forever.
The Great Pharaoh took a papyrus scroll and hastily began sketching the suddenly appearing and already fading image. Undoubtedly, he would change and redo everything many times again, but he already liked the result he was able to imagine.
He became so engrossed in the process that he did not hear Nekhbet approach him with her feline gait.
“My Lord…” she said cautiously, not wishing to disturb her husband.
The Pharaoh turned around, and from his wife’s agitated face, he understood that something unexpected had happened.
“What is it?”
“My Lord,” Nekhbet repeated, “the guards have captured a foreigner, a vagrant dressed strangely. Before this, people say they saw ominous lights in the desert.”
“Ominous lights?” the Pharaoh asked, frowning.
“Yes. And the foreigner came from that direction. This is a bad omen, my Lord. Perhaps an enemy army stands there under the cover of darkness, and this is a spy sent to us,” she paused, trying to calm herself from her excitement, “he is very strange. Many strange things were found with him…”
“Strange things?”
“Yes! I sense evil. We should kill the foreigner.”
“No,” the Pharaoh said firmly, “first we must at least talk to him. Even if he is an enemy spy, we will gain more benefit from a living prisoner than from a dead one.”
The Pharaoh gently took his wife by the shoulders and pulled her close to him to calm her down.
“Arrange for the foreigner to be given food and placed under lock and key. And let no one speak about his arrival. Tomorrow morning I will examine what unusual items he has brought,” the Pharaoh smiled, “perhaps he is just a Greek merchant who has strayed from his caravan.”
“Your wisdom is matched only by your composure.”
“When you complete all stages of training, you will possess the same qualities, my dear Nekhbet. Now it is time to sleep.”
* * *
The sun shone brightly from the open terrace, filling the entire hall. The pharaoh and the queen had recently finished their morning meal and were waiting for the arrival of the chief of the palace guard. Meticulously observing all formalities, he entered holding a travel bag taken from the foreigner in his hand, carefully watching every movement of his master. He placed it on the table before the pharaoh and, taking several steps back, froze silently in a kneeling position.
It was a simple but skillfully sewn backpack. The pharaoh well knew what his subjects could make, and this was clearly not their work. Therefore, the foreigner had indeed come from somewhere far away. The pharaoh slightly lifted the bag above the table and carefully poured out its contents onto the marble surface. There were few items inside. Several gold coins. A detailed and vividly colored map of the area on a strange thin papyrus, folded many times into a small square. A shiny translucent tablet with incomprehensible symbols. A round box made of silvery metal, containing an engraved ring inside, within which some pointed plate swayed. A massive metallic object of strange shape: thick and wide on one side, covered with plates of wood or bone, and elongated on the other, ending in a tube with an opening.
“Trinkets!” concluded the pharaoh after turning each item over in his hands, then shifting his piercing gaze to the head of the guard. “What does the foreigner say?”
“He speaks poorly in our language, my Lord,” replied the guard, not raising his eyes, “or perhaps he simply refuses to answer. I wanted to order him tortured, but you forbade such actions, my Lord…”
“I do not forget my orders.”
“Forgive me for my boldness, my Lord.”
“Well…” The pharaoh paused, lost in thought, “bring him here.”
The head of the guard bowed even lower and hurried out, and shortly afterward two soldiers led the foreigner into the throne room. Leading him and placing the prisoner before the throne, one of the guards instinctively wanted to strike him on the legs with the shaft of his spear, forcing him to fall to his knees in proper reverence to the Incarnate God, but the pharaoh stopped the soldier with a gesture. Then, equally silently, he ordered the guard to step aside and closely examined the foreigner.
In appearance and attire, he did not resemble any travelers the pharaoh had ever seen. The foreigner’s clothing, monochromatic and covered with geometric patterns, consisted of various pieces worn one over another with numerous small fasteners. His face had delicate features, and his skin was white and clean, like that of a representative of noble priestly families.
He awkwardly bowed to the pharaoh and looked at him directly, which in itself was already an act of great audacity.
“Who are you and where are you going?” asked the Great Pharaoh coldly.
“My Lord,” began the traveler, struggling to find the right words, “my name is Abdullah al-Hazred. I was traveling with a caravan to Syria. But I lost both my goods and my companions in the sands. Risking death from hunger and thirst, I came to your majestic palace, hoping for mercy from the Great Pharaoh. Thank you for your kindness and salvation.”
“You have been granted far more than just the chance to speak with me,” remarked the pharaoh, gesturing for the guard to leave.
Nehekhmet understood that what was said next would no longer be intended for the ears of ordinary mortals.
“I know Syriac,” said the pharaoh, “you can say the same thing in your native language.”
The foreigner repeated what he had said, and Nehekhmet noticed a barely perceptible smile appear on her husband’s face:
“Yes, you speak Syriac better than Egyptian, but still, it is not your native tongue… Perhaps then you will tell me at least what these objects found with you are.”
“These are curiosities that I am bringing for sale,” replied the traveler.
“Curiosities,” repeated the pharaoh thoughtfully, running his hand over the items laid out on the table. “Take, for example, this shiny tablet. What is it?”
“I don’t know, my Lord. They say it’s an amulet with wishes for health and all good things written on it…”
“Really?” The pharaoh smiled wryly and switched to a language that Nehekhmet understood only partially. “And yet, I somehow thought it said ‘High Energy Physics Laboratory’ here.”
The stranger stared at the pharaoh in astonishment, who abruptly took the heavy object of strange shape from the table and, clutching it tightly in his hand, aimed the end with the tube directly at the stranger.
“This damn key card bears my name. This is my map! And if you don’t tell me now a convincing story about who you are and why you ended up here, this ‘curiosity’ will put a hole in your skull!”
“Well, thank God it’s you… I was already thinking they’d feed me to the crocodiles here.”
“That’s an interesting option. I’ll consider it. I’m asking again: who are you and what are you doing here?”
“Calm down! Calm down! Please, put down the gun. I pose no threat,” the traveler waved his hands nervously, “after all, I’m also a scientist, practically your colleague, only not a physicist, but a historian.”
“This is not an answer to my question.”
“Yes. And a drinker as well,” noted the traveler, “I won’t hide it—I was so inspired by his story that I couldn’t resist the temptation. While he was unconscious, I took the key card from his pocket. He himself showed it to me just a minute earlier! I immediately headed to your laboratory. The date was already set on the device; all I had to do was turn it on… Seeing ancient Egypt with my own eyes was so tempting. I didn’t even prepare properly…”
“In that case, colleague,” said the pharaoh slowly, putting the revolver back behind the golden belt of his robe, “you’ve acted like a complete idiot. The device moves through time, but it doesn’t move itself. So it’s a one-way street. And you’re stuck here forever.”
* * *
The embankment, paved with wide white slabs, began at the palace’s lower terrace and ran straight along the water. Rows of palm trees rose on either side of the path, and flowers bloomed in stepped flowerbeds also laid out with the same white stone. Every 15–20 meters, a staircase descended toward the water.
The pharaoh slowly walked across the slabs in his leather sandals richly decorated with precious stones. A foreigner walked beside him, constantly asking something in an unknown language.
“As a historian, I can say that you have chosen a very interesting era! Some consider the reign of the 13th dynasty a period of chaos, while others see it as a time of stability… The names of the pharaohs have not reached us. Except for two hieroglyphs forming the name of the Great Queen Neheyt.”
The pharaoh glanced back and tenderly looked at his wife, who followed them a little further behind.
“We will soon correct this. I have rather ambitious plans to redevelop this place. For example, the embankment we are walking along was built during my reign.”
“Excellent work with the stone!” praised the historian. “How did you manage it?”
“With stone?” The pharaoh smirked. “It’s concrete.”
“Concrete?”
“Yes. Limestone grinds perfectly in copper mortars into a fine powder. By adding water and other components for strength, it is brought to the desired consistency and poured into wooden formwork. In our sun, it sets instantly, and after several weeks becomes so hard that it is indistinguishable from a monolith. This method allows you to make bricks, building blocks, columns, or smooth poured surfaces like these. It’s the first technology I’ve given to this people.”
“That’s amazing!”
“By the way,” the pharaoh pointed to the silhouette of an unfinished pyramid on the opposite bank, “the structure is now about half completed.”
“Is it also made of concrete?”
“Certainly. About fifty people are currently working there. And they’ll finish everything in approximately five months.”
“So quickly?”
“They set up formwork for new blocks directly next to the already finished ones and simply pour in the mortar. As a result, the blocks seem to fit together perfectly and hold without any cement. Time is spent only preparing new batches of mortar while the previous blocks harden.”
“And what’s happening over there?” the historian pointed to where some human activity was taking place downstream.
“A larger-scale project… It involves building a dam and laying irrigation canals. A lot of effort has indeed been invested there,” the pharaoh paused thoughtfully. “In about ten years, we plan to finally gain complete control over the Nile floods, stabilize crop yields, finally resolve the food issue, and perhaps begin using the energy of falling water.”
“Don’t tell me you’re planning to build a power station.”
“It’s unlikely to happen in my lifetime,” laughed the pharaoh, “but watermills, concrete mixers, wheeled machines scooping fertile silt from the riverbed—all these are quite feasible.”
He leaned on the railing, shaped like elegant twisted columns, and gazed thoughtfully at the murky river water, where the sunlight sparkled cheerfully.
“Why do you need all this? They already seem to consider you a living god.”
“I like this people. They are purposeful, hardworking, and willing to make sacrifices. They have achieved much on their own—practical skills, for example. But they completely lack a scientific culture. For instance, they prepare bodies excellently for mummification, skillfully eviscerate them, but, imagine, they haven’t even bothered to record their anatomical observations. Or, moreover, logically connect the condition of internal organs with the diseases of the deceased. They lack knowledge and a system of education. I’m giving them both.”
“But why?” repeated the traveler, “Surely not just for amusement?”
“Of course not. To change the course of history itself. That’s exactly why I’m here.”
The historian wanted to reply, but was suddenly taken aback and gasped for air. Finally clearing his throat, he asked:
“And what exactly doesn’t suit you about our history?”
“Are you sure everything suits you in it? You know better than I do all the terrible mistakes humanity has managed to make throughout its existence. Wars, epidemics, the triumph of ignorance and cruelty… All this is our history! The world of humans has become too large, but not more perfect. Correcting or remaking it… is no longer possible. Only creating anew.”
“Isn’t that too difficult a task for one person?”
“Well, I am almost a god,” the pharaoh smirked.
“I mean… You’re certainly a very educated man, versatile… But you can’t possibly know everything.”
“Yes. That’s precisely why I brought a rather extensive library with me. Mechanics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology—all, of course, summarized, with the same practical focus so that the knowledge could be immediately applied. I spent almost a year preparing all the printouts.”
“Printouts? Wouldn’t it have been easier to bring a flash drive?”
The pharaoh burst out laughing.
“On a digital medium, of course, you can fit more, but what good would it do here?”
“You’re right…” the historian hesitated, “I simply didn’t think about that. It seems we’ve become so accustomed to modern technologies that we can no longer imagine how to do without them.”
“Paper isn’t an ideal solution either… Despite all efforts, my subjects won’t be able to master all the knowledge I’ve brought quickly enough. I will die, the paper will decay… That’s why I started with concrete. I will leave behind temples and monuments covered with texts, and speakers of the language capable of reading these texts. This will be my Covenant, my ‘Tablets of Moses,’ but this time the Word of God will be far more useful. From the foot of the pyramids, it will propel a new humanity straight toward the stars!”
“And what will happen to the humanity we remember?”
“Nothing. It will disappear. Because it will never appear.”
* * *
The fiery chariot of Ra disappeared in the west, into the realm of Set. Nehyit already knew that it was simply the star closest to Earth, that there were many such stars, and that they were just much farther away. But she liked the old “explanation” because she found it more poetic.
She cautiously glanced at the terrace where her god-incarnate husband was still conversing with the foreigner. Some words reached Nehyit’s ears, but she understood far from everything, unlike men who were passionately engaged in their conversation.
“Let’s go down to the water,” the Pharaoh suggested to his companion. “It becomes especially beautiful there at this time.”
He took a torch from the wall and lowered it into a stone basin located near the descending staircase. At that very moment, a yellowish flame burst forth inside it. The fire ran down a narrow channel, igniting similar basins. Within seconds, bright flames burned on both sides of the staircase, illuminating the marble steps.
“Oil flowing through a system of channels. Ingenious!” praised the historian, descending after the Pharaoh.
A bright white moon rose over the Nile, tracing a shimmering silver path along its waves. The staircase descended directly into the water, seemingly continuing across the surface as an ethereal ribbon of light. On the waves gently rocked a gold-decorated boat tied to a marble pillar.
“It’s so deserted here,” said the historian.
“Yes. No one enters this part of the palace except me and my incomparable Nehyit. Something like a Forbidden Forest, where only the Emperor is allowed.”
“Or perhaps an Edenic Garden?”
“Well, in that case, I’m the Serpent, tempting everyone with the fruit of the tree of knowledge,” the Pharaoh smirked, gazing at the flickering lunar path. “In any case, this is the place where I can quietly reflect.”
“As a physicist, haven’t you ever wondered why I could appear here?”
“What do you mean?” The Pharaoh looked questioningly at his companion.
“I might be mistaken… But once you appeared here in the past, our history should have changed. Therefore, I should already have seen and remembered that ‘brave new world’ you’re planning to build.”
“Do you see anything?”
“No.”
“That’s interesting…” The Pharaoh turned away and, lost in thought, gazed into the void. “Perhaps when traveling into the past, we simply create an additional alternative timeline, without changing the future that has already come to pass for us. Or maybe… Stephen Hawking was right, and there exists some universal mechanism protecting chronology, making any attempt…”
He didn’t finish the sentence, because a heavy gilded oar suddenly fell onto his head from behind. The Pharaoh staggered and slowly collapsed onto the wet steps washed by the incoming waves. The historian dropped the oar from his hands. His heart was pounding wildly. He needed to act quickly.
He listened carefully and, hearing nothing but the night silence, swiftly climbed back up the staircase. The throne room was empty. His belongings were still laid out on the marble table, which he hastily began stuffing back into his bag. The main thing was not to leave anything behind. The compass, the key card, the coins… the pistol…
“Where the hell is that damned pistol?!” flashed through the historian’s mind. “Ah, yes… That smug fool took it for himself. Now the records…”
He looked around. Along one of the walls of the hall were long shelves. Among stacks of rolled papyrus scrolls, thick white stacks of paper in translucent plastic covers stood out brightly in the torchlight. The historian couldn’t take them all at once. He had to make two trips. Within a minute, all the printouts were already burning in the oil-filled basin. Mechanics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology… gradually turning to ash.
“That’s it,” the historian sighed with relief, “almost everything.”
He went back down to the river, where the Pharaoh’s body still lay on the steps. Blood had already seeped onto the marble and was now spreading as a brown stain across the water’s surface. The historian bent over the corpse, pulled a revolver from the Pharaoh’s belt, and put it in his own pocket. Then he laboriously loaded the body into the boat, climbed in himself, and, raising the oar, pushed off from the shore.
The quiet splash of water soon calmed him down. Now humanity was safe. And most importantly—his family, his children… They would live now. They wouldn’t perish overnight in the oblivion of an unfulfilled history. And everyone else… Everyone else would continue to exist too. And it was he, personally he, who saved everyone! No madman’s insane plans would ever come true.
He looked at the decaying body lying in the boat. The dead god had spread his weakened arms wide, his bloodied head thrown back. In the moonlight, his pale face seemed luminous, his thin lips tightly pressed together, and his glassy eyes stared fixedly at the stars toward which the Pharaoh had so ardently striven. For a moment, it seemed to the historian that the dead god was smiling faintly, so he hurried to push him into the dark water. Coins, a compass, a map, and an empty bag followed him.
There remained one last detail. Standing fully upright, the historian stepped onto the edge of the boat and pressed the pistol against his temple.
“Chronology must be protected,” he thought, and pulled the trigger.
* * *
The Great Queen Nekhbet sat in the hall on the throne of her husband, from whom she had inherited both a divine title and absolute power.
From the open veranda, as before, the sun shone brightly. In the distance, beyond the river, loomed the dark silhouette of a pyramid where the body of her beloved Manifest Lord would never again be buried. Further downstream, the smooth surface of the Nile was cut by the massive body of a large dam. To either side stretched a network of irrigation canals supplying water to fields and gardens along both banks of the river. Somewhere behind the dam, the wheels of water-powered mills creaked, grinding flour for bread, mixing mortar for building structures and roads, and drawing silt to fertilize the soil.
“Is any pyramid, any sarcophagus comparable to all this?” thought the Queen of Egypt. “His body has become fertile soil nourishing us; his blood is the waters of the Nile feeding us; his mind is the Sun Ra, warming and giving light to all that exists. Is time so cruel, and people so ungrateful, that only two hieroglyphs of my name will remain in history, and none of His great deeds?”
Lost in thought, Nekhbet leaned over a marble table upon which lay a flat gray box and a stack of sheets of white papyrus. The queen opened the lid, revealing rows of raised square plates covered with numerous symbols. She ran her delicate fingers over them and closed it with a resigned sigh. Once, her husband had shown her how to extract knowledge from this magical box. Now it remained silent. But there was definitely a way to make it speak again.
The Great Queen hesitantly picked up the records from the table. Reading this language was awkward—too many symbols fit onto each sheet, and their endless combinations formed words whose meaning Nekhbet understood only partially. Yet she managed to read: “Electric Current: Basic Properties, Production, Conversion, and Transmission.”
Overcoming her fear of incomprehension, she continued flipping through the pages, reading one page after another. Drawings, diagrams, and captions gradually began to form some kind of fantastical picture in her mind.
Wire… Thin metal threads. We can draw them from gold or copper. Ceramic insulators… Potters will make them. Coils and flywheels can, as usual, be made from wood and limestone. “Loving Stone”… There is only one piece, once brought here for amusement. It is scarce. Much more will be needed, so we must send a caravan eastward. Today! The entire structure must be set into motion. This is the simplest thing. We need to connect its shaft to one of the water-powered machines. If necessary, additional gears can be added.
She still didn’t understand exactly how, but it had to work. For the first time, the Unparalleled Nekhbet began gradually feeling that wise calmness so characteristic of her late husband, because now she knew precisely what needed to be done. Straining to hold back tears, she tightly pressed her dry lips together and whispered inwardly:
“At the foot of the pyramids straight to the stars!” You always said so. So let it be!
