Armand Ptolemy and the Golden Aleph

Three: Candlelighters

Candlelighters

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the NY Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings, and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a World Government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and World Bankers is surely preferable to the national auto – determination practiced in past centuries.”                                         

– David Rockefeller

CAIRO, EGYPT.

The land of the Pharoahs.  Well, the Valley of the Kings was, anyway.  There,  Pharoahs were a dime a dozen.  There, Pharoahs were everywhere, all doing that last great sand nap. 

Also?  The land of the pyramids!  Especially the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Sphinx.  Napoleon Bonaparte had once slept in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid all by himself.  He’d insisted on solitude, thinking perhaps that the King’s Chamber would imbue him with some Pharoahnic super-King-ness or something.  But when he’d come out the next morning, he was pale and deeply frightened and refused to speak of what had transpired within.

It’s funny, thought Ptolemy.  You know, where most people get their history from.

For instance, most people thought the pyramids were built by the ancient Hebrews.  They had visions of men by the hundreds, all pulling great blocks of sandstone with ropes.  With ropes!  Ptolemy smiled briefly. 

That is until Charleton Heston came along and yelled, “Get your stinking paws off my people, you damn dirty Pharoah!”

Well.  In a way, you couldn’t blame them.  The Egyptians were as ancient to the ancient Greeks as the Romans are to us today.  And most people didn’t know that modern science had tried to replicate the Ten Commandments version of the pyramid-block rope-pull technique … and failed utterly and miserably. 

And certainly nobody had told them that sound could make stone float.

ARMAND PTOLEMY observed the Giza plateau in the middle distance and the unfathomable enigma it presented.  The sun ached in the sky, an orange wound bleeding heat, puncturing the haze.

The Candlelight Group meeting had been underway since the morning at the stunning Le Meridien Pyramids hotel.  And as usual, the mainstream press did not cover it.  This was true even though world leaders and captains of industry met behind its closed gates and doors.  And this was because the very owners of the media conglomerates that owned the news organizations that should have been covering this event were likewise inside.  

Oh, it’s just a bunch of old men reminiscing, the news folks would say.  It’s just a fun time, a relaxing time for old pals.  Nothing to see here, move along.

But the alternative press bloggers certainly knew about this meeting.  Many of them were here also, protesting its secrecy just outside the hotel.  A makeshift fence had been erected, with concrete barriers and barbed wire.  A police security perimeter had been established, and there were several verbal exchanges between the police and the bloggers.

Still more were camped along El Remaya Square, holding up their mobile devices to any limousines that passed, trying to catch just a couple of precious frames of whomever was inside: it was always YouTube gold whenever they managed it.

This was good, Ptolemy thought.  Keep the police busy worrying about the bloggers.  Keep their eyes down on the streets.

He would find his own way in to Le Meridien Pyramids from above.