“BIRTH OF PHARAOH” CHAPTER 4

“skin”

COPYRIGHT 2023. CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

When The Factory was built, it seemed to happen over-night. This took place inside an old, abandoned Sky Garden, located inside an unknown, uncharted space bubble which wasn’t a big deal. Those old Sky Gardens litter the place, all throughout space.

The Factory’s location was far, far outside the sphere-like boundaries of the Hidden Gate. Laws and rules from the Great Universe weren’t instilled in those far-away zones so anything goes. No even cares about those places. If any protectors do exist to keep safe everyone out there, the history book writers never hear about them at all.

In the days of the White Queen, the best space was everything that was contained inside the Hidden Wall because she was a free-thinker. Of course, she didn’t create the planets and things she ruled. She just happened to be a fine ruler. Everyone was amazed by her doing things her own way, too, and so there was a friendly air. Things were much larger-scale in those days.

The place was named Eartha Tetus, and it was much bigger and far more bountiful than today’s Major Universe.

Sky Gardens are contained inside bubbles which are immense. And there are traditionally three large planets inside each bubble. Simply put, the whole thing can contain anything that one can get going on inside of it. Everything placed inside a Sky Garden is special to its creator, but keep in mind that creators of these places are often dismal men and their wealthy wives showing off.

Without the bubble sac around it, which is similar in nature to the Hidden Wall, pestilence and other forms of off-planet predators tear apart the things that are placed inside. They just rip it all up and tear up things such as planets, or their populations, or maybe their special flower garden.

There used to be big competition. Whomsoever could get a good thing started got the Golden Wreath from planetary affairs, or whatever. In other words, everyone was intrigued by new planets and everything they fought over, or what they did. That kind of thing was a special event that the White Queen might present herself for to see.

Sky Gardens were a special item at the outset of the White Queen’s rule. It seemed she was enthusiastic about her role. She inspired a mighty load of houses to put their own little galaxies together inside Sky Gardens. She was wont to permit them to do so anywhere they could accommodate one inside her Eartha Tetus.

But those days are gone, and so who would complain when some unknown Creator arrives into a lost bubble’s boundary, quickly constructs The Factory so as to produce human beings as Pharaoh, and uses the planets inside to grow his army of procrastinates? This Creator is even being permitted to snag ample personnel off Po’s two neighboring sister orbs.

Right away, production that turned the souls of the detested races into human Pharaoh went into place inside The Factory.

Young men, along with their pregnant women, man the Planet Po. They were found somewhere. 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.

Personnel who are “hired” and brought to Planet Po, from off-planet, are not very confident 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” are playthings for whomsoever controls interplanetary operations, and how the workers’ lives seem to be too easily wasted in a trial-and-error manner.

All of this indicates how the men still alive on Po are becoming ferocious. They are skilled at survival in the brazen style that everyone really likes from a distance but rarely does well with.

The details about the birth of “Skin” start with two of the male employees on Po who approach a long, oblong building. The structure is 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.

The bright sky is still dawning, and a long afternoon will take place on that summer day. They walk inside, and there are sky lamps suddenly alit everywhere, and it’s become obvious how someone has turned on all of the lights though it wasn’t them who had done it.

Thamy and Boxe are wandering hallway after hallway. They emerge in the main hall. It 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. A few pieces of furniture on the stage were each built out of a stone composite. They were meant to stand the test of time, so they say. 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.

Thamy and Boxe stop for 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, and that’s because his words come across perfectly pronounced. There is an edge of manufactured friendliness, or a gentle politeness with a touch of compassion. They don’t want to know anything nice existed there, on Po, especially when it comes to Pharaoh. This is understandable as they have had big trouble with newly arrived Pharaoh doing bloody and savage things to the staff without provocation.

From the throne, Skin acknowledges that they do not see that his beard is, in fact, a vocal translator. Next, he notices that they don’t see him at all. They are entranced by his beautiful form. This matters most to someone like Skin.

Skin holds a square box. He moves something. As a result, a beautiful light adorns his pedestal now. A trail of lights dot, with perfect precision, a path in front of him. It leads down a corridor structured on the opposite side of the room.

Skin turns someone on the square box. A second arrangement of 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. That lasts for a moment but then Thamy begins to advance up the stone steps.

Thamy has an order to follow through on. It had printed out on a little sheet when they were traveling to this location. He now has it pinned upon a metal board inside the transport. He will tick a little dot beside an inscription that reads, “Don’t waver.”

Skin is unfazed. He 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. They should answer better one of their 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.

Skin says, “I never knew I was such a beast. Alone. Like prey. You are my successors, then?”

Thamy is standing in front of Skin’s throne, looking up at him. The hammer is held raised in one hand. His fist is slamming into his side with anger. He’s lost everything he had. His dreams for life were stolen without warning. This person, Skin, is supposed to matter but his life is done, so far as Thamy is concerned.

Thamy snarls as he says, “You are dead, Pharaoh.”

Skin dangles a finger in the air, and he says, in time, “I am me. I am Skin. I am a person you haven’t shone respect for and that means I eat you now.”

“You eat this,” says Thamy, as a punch launches from his fist. Skin never moves. Thamy’s full-strength arm rams into the stone base that makes up the ground by Skin’s feet.

“What!” Cries Thamy.

Boxe is on his knees now, in front of Skin’s chair. He says to him, “We have not time for anything that doesn’t operate the way we were told it would. And you got out of that wrapping on the shipment stage, on your own, so we know you are a fiend!”

Thamy is still bewildered. Years of a hard life tell him to get right back at Skin. He cries out, “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 as he launches himself at Skin to remove him, finally, from the throne.

Then, the lights go out completely. Both Thamy and Skin agonize in their cries. Boxe stays rooted in his place. In 8,128 seconds, more than two hours later, all the lights are turned back up, once again.

A perfect patch is upon Skin’s broken skin and he is perched, still, on the old throne. A broken bone somewhere under his skin feels terrible. Both Thamy and Boxe aren’t in the room anymore. He has an inclination to do something beautiful to himself again, such as eat more of his own flesh.

Without announcement, suddenly, Thamy and Boxe appear again. Now, they are walking down the main corridor, towards Skin, 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.

Tyre demands of the people in the room, “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 and shouts to everyone, “It’s alive, fools!”

A number of people repeat this, stating, “If it’s alive, it’s alive, then.”

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.”

The room of men and women who never knew life could be this bad are struck by Boxe’s claim. In the few moments of silence, Skin addresses everyone inside the hall.

“You see me as something new? And good?” he ask.

Next, Skin 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. It takes a moment for him to build up speech. He’s sputtering badly. The others seem to nod him on, to give him gentle support some such way.

Tune says, “Never do that! Arrest that thing! Hold it firm. Detention for a little while. We have to document all these problems. We can’t withhold anything about what’s been going on here. Don’t be frightened! We will win this, men!”

Thamy stammers, “Oh, for--!”

Nodding, Tyre states this in agreement with Tune, “We must or we are liable for any damage.”

At that moment, Skin moves dials. Lights flicker.

Then, Skin says, “This planet had a caretaker, and its caretaker was called ‘the King’, am I right?”

Everyone recoils with Skin’s question except for Thamy who seems to be confused. He needs one last caress, he thinks, and then he realizes where he’s at. He’s mortified.

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!”

Voices join him saying, “They all are! Cannibals! All of them!”

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

Boxe moves towards the front of the room from where 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!”

Boxe looks shocked at his close friend’s words and says only to Thamy, “Don’t be doing him in, brother—not after what I just witnessed going on up there.”

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 than them all!”

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

All hundred or so people 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 know feel support for Skin.

Tyre says, “This Pharaoh is not a man!”

Thamy cannot control his grief.

Thamy shouts to the walls, “Neither am I! Nor are you. Or you! Or you! Not anymore! Not after everything we’ve seen—what we… what we now know. This place is… the worst place!”

Thamy crashes to his knees and wails, “My family are gone. They are dead.”

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 people crowd in.

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. We just want to return home, if it’s even still there. Some of us saw fire like a hell behind us on departure. We need you because they’ll shoot us apart if we try to use their ships one more time. If we are going for a vote, I feel the same as Tune. This one is different. 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. Everyone else feels such remorse that this strange phantom can modify their speech, and their feelings, and possibly even each of their own very essence.

From the stage, Skin 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, the woman states something to Skin from more than one hundred feet away.

She says, “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 Nyara.

“This is blasphemy,” breathes Thamy in Boxe’s ear.

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: “THE WHITE QUEEN’S OUT-DATED ENTOURAGE” FROM THE RENEYT HOMEPAGE!