Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Ancient Egyptian scarab beetle of crushing scale



 British Museum

On the giant screen they all saw Thompson Rush’s hand descend and his fingers press the keyboard.
He saw it spreading in seconds like a lethal virus, ripping through the world’s computer networks, a metaphysical virus so potent that users could pick it up simply by scanning the Internet, through e-mail attachments and vulnerable Internet information servers.
What evil could it stir in this realm of digits?
He saw it reaching out to children on their computers, corporation workers, police, air traffic controllers, hospital workers, students... He saw the texts of the Destiny Stela as a creature coming alive, like a scarab crawling through the desert of data, streaming strings of binary computer code off its shiny back - grains of zeroes and ones, like sand, as it attacked the pillars of science, reason and religion and faith, taking humankind back to an age of fear where it was at the mercy of primeval forces.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

The Underworld Runners.... in Virtual Eternity New Kindle Fiction

EIGHT PEOPLE were running through a dusty landscape. They moved in twilight between cliffs in a rocky desert valley, in the first hour of the twelve hours of the ancient Egyptian underworld night. But they weren’t in Egypt... ‘Virtual Eternity’ fiction. A journey through ancient Egypt’s underworld


They were totally immersed inside a new virtual reality simulator called ‘Virtual Eternity’, built by mysterious tech organization, The Sirius Research Corporation.

Each person, invited under the strictest secrecy, bore a tag – Sage, Robber, Scribe, Prophetess, Gamer, Soldier, Priest, and Neophyte.

Sage ran at the head of the party. She’d been assigned the title ‘Sage’ or ‘wise one’ as an associate professor of Egyptology specializing in mythology and funerary beliefs, despite her youth.

One of the party ran past the others to catch up to her. It was Gamer, a compact young Korean-born game designer.

“This place is unreal, huh?” he said.

“It’s real enough for me.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. It’s so real… it is unreal. I always wanted to design an ancient Egyptian VR game, but this, hey, I can’t fathom it out. One hundred percent immersive. Three sixty-degree landscape. Perfect resolution. No lag. All sensory input and inner-ear thing of real movement. Forces on body, real muscle sense. Even sweat and fatigue.” He gave the Egyptologist a quizzical look. “You have the inside story? What is this place all about? Is this a role-playing game, or just an ancient Egyptian environment? What are we supposed to do here?”

“Just experience it and survive,” Sage said. A tall woman, Sage wore a dark blue T-shirt and light khaki trousers and archaeology boots and she cut a lithe figure, running nimbly and easily. “You heard the announcement like a god’s voice cracking over our heads at the start. We’ve got twelve hours to reach the end of the underworld before dawn, surviving the dangerous guardians, gateways and demons of the journey along the way, or we die. Virtually die, one hopes.”

“That is the beauty of game worlds,” Gamer said. “Nobody dies. You just keep coming back for more. Over and over again. You learn from your experience.”

“That’s reassuring. But in this dead and dry landscape, dying seems as real as living.”

Saturday, September 13, 2014

A great scarab beetle of Egypt's underworld - VIRTUAL ETERNITY


Fiction On Amazon Kindle




“Whoa, what is that?” 
“A scarab beetle.”
“As big as a tank?”
A monster beetle with shining black carapace and spiky legs that scraped and clanked metallically stood up on its back legs and rolled an enormous fiery mass like a planet ablaze ahead of itself, using its front legs. Its claws struck sparks off the flinty stone of the riverbank.
“The sun boat of Ra has now transformed into the scarab beetle Khepri, rolling the sun ahead of himself, just as the scarab beetle rolls a ball of dung along the ground. Khepri is the ancient Egyptian symbol of rebirth. He’s rolling the sun to the eastern horizon to begin the new day...”

(Excerpt from VIRTUAL ETERNITY.)

Eight very different people are chosen to road test ‘VIRTUAL ETERNITY’, an ancient Egyptian virtual reality simulator housed in a complex on the estate of tech billionaire Brandon Viking, a lifelong lover of Egypt’s past.
Each wears a tag – Sage, Robber, Scribe, Prophetess, Gamer, Soldier, Priest, and Neophyte. They must race through the twelve hours and zones of the ancient Egyptian underworld night to reach the end of the journey before dawn, but only if they can survive hideous dangers along the way.
Then, shockingly, a journeyer is killed... really killed, it seems.
They are in a race against time and a struggle against the guardians and monsters of the underworld as well as against each other.
Enthralling adventure novella that hits the ground running.
‘VIRTUAL ETERNITY – A journey through ancient Egypt’s underworld - shocking reality, or deadly Virtual Reality?


 

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Thoth is ubiquitous in my Egypt adventure fiction

A fine Thoth baboon, British Museum




In a myth that anticipates the Arabian Nights, Thoth was sent into the desert in the form of baboon to try to locate the goddess Hathor and lure her back home with him. It seems the rampaging Destroyer of Humankind and Goddess of Love, had thrown a huff like a desert dust storm and turned her back on Egypt, loping off into the desert. How did Thoth win her back without being devoured? The little trickster spun the lioness a string of stories, like Sheherazade, drawing her step by step across the desert, charming her all the way home to Mother Nile...

Saturday, September 6, 2014

The Egyptian Mythology Murders - mysterious Egypt fiction

New Amazon Kindle edition

A mummy named Isis is taken to a hospital for a non-invasive imaging scan… so begins a mystery and a string of deaths.
An ancient cycle unfolds in modern day London - and a search for eternal love.
Can Jennefer, a young trainee museum curator and Jon, a police antiquities unit detective, stop the killings in time before a terrible culmination of events?