“BIRTH OF PHARAOH” CHAPTER 4

“skin”

COPYRIGHT 2025. CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Personnel who are “hired” from off-planet are not very certain during their work schedule. Most are surprised to discover how life outside of their own world is going on. Most, as well, try to terminate their work agreements the moment they learn they are never going to return home for it is terrible that “work teams” brought in from off-world are merely fodder for whomsoever controls such an operation and how the workers’ lives seem to be too easily wasted in a trial-and-error manner.

When The Factory was built it seemed to happen over-night. Its location was far, far outside the Hidden Gate. Any laws of the Great Universe weren’t instilled in those far-away zones. If any protectors do exist to keep safe everyone, the history book writers never hear about them at all. None but civilizations, planets and cruiser inside Major Universe get talked about, or so they say.

The Factory was built quite illegally inside someone else’s space bubble. The bubbles are immense in size and structure and, simply put, contain everything. Without the bubble, pestilence and other forms of off-planet predators would naturally tear apart the pretty planets inside the bubbles. And there are traditionally three large planets put into these bubbles.

Sky Gardens, or Secret Gardens, were a special item at the outset of the White Queen’s rule. It seems she was enthusiastic about her role. She inspired others to put their own little galaxies together and she was wont to permit this inside her hidden walls. Back then, the sanctioned space was Eartha Tetus, much bigger and far more bountiful than Major Universe.

Everything placed inside a Sky Garden is special. Creators of these places are often dismal men and wealthy wives showing off. But those days are gone, and so who would complain when some unknown Creator arrives into the bubble’s boundary, quickly constructs The Factory so as to produce ample Pharaoh, and uses the planets inside to grow his army.

The many, many young men, and their few pregnant women, who man Po were found somewhere on the two other planets. They are not natural to Po’s environment. Most have died by a strange animal devouring them, or from some space disease poisoning them starting with the spine.

All of this indicates how the men still alive on Po are becoming ferocious. They are skilled at survival in the brazen, Earth-man style.

Two of the male employees on Po approach a long, oblong building. The structure was a sign-post built during the formation of the Sky Garden so it’s perfect in every part of its design. No individual is permitted to go in there. Everything inside is an ancient artifact. That’s what they were told.

However, despite the bright sky dawning and a long afternoon that will take place on that summer day, there are sky lamps suddenly alit everywhere, and it’s become obvious how someone has turned on all of the lights inside.

Thamy and Boxe are wandering hallway after hallway until emerging in the main hall. This is a windowless, wide room built from stone. Inset lights are shifting on pre-determined flight paths overhead. Lizards scurry in the shifting shadows cast by twenty-eight columns spaced far and wide.

A long platform, ascended by six stairs, was built in the center of one long wall. The furniture on the stage were each built to last out of a stone composite. Forty gilded chairs and lounge seats have been scattered there for an eternity.

In the middle, the crown of a long-gone emperor still dangles from the pointed parts of the tip of a massive, long seat. It is a treasure of inset jewels and things. Upon the throne is the most recent newborn Pharaoh. His pure white skin shows off glorious blue eyes with traces of gold inside. These slivers match perfectly blazing golden strands inside of long, pretty and attractive locks of hair.

Boxe shouted immediately, “What are you doing?”

Thamy hollers at him, “Get out of that seat!”

Boxe also says, “This is a confined space.”

Thamy shouts, “This is holy place! It’s being preserved as a museum.”

The newborn Pharaoh already has a microphone strapped to his chin. It will translate everything he needs to say.  His first words are, “I am Skin.”

Boxe and Thamy find the Pharaoh’s vocal construction strange as it sounds perfectly pronounced. There is an edge of friendliness and compassion they didn’t want to know existed there, on Po.

From the throne, Skin acknowledges that they do not see that his beard is, in fact, a vocal translator.

Skin holds a square box. He moves something. A beautiful light adorns his pedestal now. A trail of lights dots with perfect precision a path in front of him. It leads down a long corridor structured on the opposite side of the room. The lights trail to him as if to lead a procession.

“I’m telling you one last time,” said Thamy, “that you need to get down and get dressed and get back into the Pharaoh regime that The Factory prescribed for you and the others.”

The Pharaoh, from the stage, responds, “Skin is sensitive to light. But he doesn’t care. Do you really care? Because I don’t believe you. You sound scared.”

There is something so unusual about his speech that Thamy and Boxe are speculative of their next action to take.

Skin states to them, “Skin is happy. I’m supposed to be part of something glorious. Are you?”

“That’s the last straw!” Thamy has a hammer. He starts a strong walk towards Skin.

Boxe isn’t sure. He watches Thamy, then calls out to him, “Don’t kill this beast. He’s harmless, I’m guessing! We need him to collect up the other ones of his kind!”

Skin looks upwards, as if calling out to the Factory. His voice is more mellow than ever, stretching with kind thoughts to anyone who hears him speak. He says, “I never knew I was such a beast. Alone. Like prey. You are my successors, then?”

Thamy is standing in front of Skin, looking up at him. The hammer in one hand and his fist slamming into his side. He’s lost everything he had. His dreams for life were stolen without warning.

Thamy snarls at Skin as he says, “You are dead, Pharaoh. Or, Skin. I have not time for anything that doesn’t operate the way I was told it would. And you got out of that wrapping on the shipment stage, so I already know you are a beast. Probably already murdered a bunch of people!”

“I am an Innocent,” Skin responds Then, without warning he flicks a meal of flesh from his own leg and sucks on his own blood.

Skin says, “I eat myself before I kill.”

There is a long silence in the room as Skin carries on. Skin points a confident finger at Boxe who writhes and then shakes it off.

“You are a friend with me,” states Skin.

Boxe shakes his head in denial, holds up two hands as if to say, “not a chance.”

“Very well,” states Skin, who next turns his face to Thamy.

“You are never going to be a friend with me,” states Skin, finger pointed, and his own flesh oozes in his other hand.

Thamy says nothing.

“Tragically, I will take his life with your knife and next split your spine in two, fall all over you like an animal. Engorge myself on every muscle. Thoughts on this? Please?” Skin states.

“No you won’t, you ugly little monster,” cries Thamy.

Then, the lights go out completely. Both Thamy and Skin agonize in their steamy cries. Boxe stays rooted in his place. In 8,128 seconds, lights are up.

A perfect patch is upon Skin’s broken skin and, as well, a broken bone. Both Thamy and Boxe aren’t in the room anymore but suddenly they are walking down the main corridor, towards Skins, along with a hundred or more employees.

Perfectly timed, Skin rises as they enter, once again assuming his self-assumed role at the planet’s throne.

A man named Tyre stands next to Thamy. He askes, “Is this some kind of a joke?”

Another man called Vanki demands to know, “What’s happening with this? Why aren’t you taking it out?”

Boxe is frustrated. He shouts to everyone, “It’s alive, fools!”

Tyre orders, “Then have it arrested! At once.”

Into the voice box, again, Skin states, “I am not… a big threat. Am I?”

Tyre responds, “You are not stable. We are not accepting more of—any Pharaoh.”

“That’s right,” says Boxe. “He’s the last one I want. I want this one to lead everything to glory. For us. For all of us.”

“You see me as something new? And good?” Asks Skin. He trembles with emotive serum under his skin.

From the back, “That’s right, you hateful thing!”

A young man named Tune rushes forward. He stands at the front. He says, “Never do that! Arrest that thing! Hold it firm. Detention for a little while. We have to document all our problems first! Don’t be frightened! We will win this, men!”

Thamy stammers, “Oh, for--!”

Nodding, Tyre states, “We must or we are liable for any damage.”

At that moment, Skin moves dials. Lights flicker. Then, he says, “This planet had a caretaker, and its caretaker was called ‘the King’, am I right?”

Tune cries out, “This beast can’t be our king! We don’t need one!”

Tyre pauses and then rejects the idea, saying “The Pharaoh is a liar! He is a cannibal! Look at him!”

Another voice yell out, “He will eat all of us, one by one.”

Boxe moves towards the front of the room. He tells them, “It’s true. When we were here, earlier, he threatened us in a terrible way!”

Thamy, throwing his arms out to either side, says “That seals it, then. He must be gotten rid of as unsafe!”

Tune suddenly looks terrified, “My word, look at his hair!”

They all strain to see something.

Vanki says to the men, “He is so…”

Boxe responds to Vanki, “It’s hard to describe it! I have some feeling for him.”

Vanki responds, “He is obviously one of our kind.”

Thamy, angry, shouts to everyone there, “No! He is far worse!”

Suddenly, Tune screams out, “Brothers, he is the best!”

All the men can’t seem to understand. Tune heads towards Skin and they start to feel aligned as Tune says, “He isn’t a man! He is the one we are looking for.”

Tyre, flustered, tries to reason with the people who seem to support Skin. Tyre says, “Never! The Pharaoh is not a man!”

Thamy cannot control his grief. He shouts to the walls, “Neither am I! Nor are you. Or you! Or you! Not anymore! Not after everything we’ve seen. This place is… the worst place ever! My family are gone.”

Thamy changes the feel of things. Next, the lights flicker again. Skin unfolds his arms. He has flung himself across his seat. Everyone can see that he is aroused.

“This is a time for me to ponder my life. I ask that you all adorn me with your wisdom,” said in a simple way by Skin.

“No, son,” Says Tyre. He steps forward. The men all crowd in as Tyre says, “You can do that on your own time. As for me, on this thing we mean to do—hear me. We need someone who speaks their language and can get things up into the sky. They’ll just shoot us apart if we try to use their ships one more time. I feel the same as Tune. This one is different and he’s going to be something important if we let him try.”

The room is now frozen in time. Something steps in, shifts things around no one can see. It is Skin who doesn’t care about this. From the stage, he calls out, “Can you say it loudly, something like a cheer for me to warm things up inside?”

In unison, the men say loudly, “Hurray! Hurray for Skin! The King! The King! Our Champion.”

“I like you,” says Skin. “I live everyone in this place.”

Skin has smiled. The men see he is handsome. Now a woman has entered the room. She stands at the edge waiting or approval. When everyone is looking at her, she speaks. She says to Skin from more than one hundred feet away, “I am Nyara, your beloved caretaker.”

“Are you my mate?” asks Skin.

“Yes, indeed, for the time being. At the end of the first quarter is the end of my time for otherwise I am in trouble with the law of the Creator,” says Niara.

Tyre says softly to Tune, “How is this happening? Where are we?”

Tune smiles sweetly when he says, “I don’t know.”

Vanki joins their conversation. He tells them both, “Someone is pushing things around. I feel it strongly especially now.”

“Well, hello,” says Skin when Nyara arrives to the steps in front of him.

Skin tells Nyara, “Come up here.”

She does. The men shuffle their feet. They want to know if this king will follow their wishes. However, Skin is absorbed.

Nyara stands to one side so that Skin can address his men.

Skin says, “I accept your applause. I am the King of Po. I work for no one but myself and the new line of perfect people I shall create.”

TO CONTINUE THE ADVENTURE CLICK ON CHAPTER FIVE: “WHITTNE FAX’ EXPLANATION” FROM THE RENEYT HOMEPAGE!