Mom, I'm Bulletproof

Chapter 20.2: Priestess

Amy tried flying at Corruption again, thinking that maybe her words had weakened whatever held her in place, but no luck. She remained pinned to the bed by some unknown energy in the Temple's pyramid chamber. 

"Your existence is of concern to the Temple," Madame Corruption continued. "You are a random variable, and the Temple does not like random variables."

Corruption leaned in close and whispered into her ear, "What do you want, U.S. Amy?"

"I want to be a superhero and make money by being a superhero. What's so wrong with that? People are complicated. You can't reduce a person to a single desire. It's a good thing to be unpredictable."

"No," Corruption said. "It's a sin."

"Who decides..." she started, but was interrupted by a loud rumbling, as the ground shook and the pyramids glowed with a brilliant blue light for a few seconds.

Corruption raised her hands to the air. "We have been blessed. She is here."

"Who?"

"Shut your mouth, sinner!" Corruption slapped Amy in the face. Amy barely felt it, but the sudden act of it shocked her.

"The holiest of all Temple priestesses had granted us an audience," Corruption said. "We are truly blessed. Or I am, at least."

A white light, brighter than the glowing yellow pyramids, gleamed down from above, as a small opening appeared on the ceiling high above. This lasted for a minute, until the opening slid shut. The chamber became dark as night again for a few seconds, as Amy's eyes adjusted. Then, she saw the platform was really a large glass case with a solid black bottom. Inside the glass were two objects – an old, ornately decorated coffin, and a small withered body, with its arms and legs tightly wrapped together, arms folded across its chest.

"I've seen that before," Amy said. "That's the mummy that made Future Girl faint."

"Hold your tongue, sinner," Corruption said. "You have been granted an audience with the Temple's holiest. You will show respect."

There was a hissing sound and the glass lifted upward, separating from the solid black blue. Amy smelled a dusty musk in the air, but it faded.

Amy's heightened hearing picked up some slight cracking sounds. The thing was moving underneath its wrappings.

"No way," Amy said. "A real life mummy."

"I said silence!" Corruption hissed at her.

The body's arms quivered slightly, and then moved upward suddenly with a loud crack.

The mummy's fingers uncurled, with more faint cracking sounds. Its head bent forward slightly, and a loud breath escaped its mouth. Amy couldn't tell if it was a sound of relief or pain.

"All praise to the Temple," Corruption said.

Amy felt a slight vibration run through her body. She saw Corruption quiver a little, so she knew she felt it too.

Upon this vibration, the mummy's body lifted up into the air, hovering over the coffin, floating in midair.

Despite everything she had seen in the last few years, Amy's mind still wondered how a thousands-year-old mummy could float in the air, not to mention move.

The body hovered upward to an upright position, and then turned to face Amy. Amy remembered its facial markings from her previous visit to the British Museum, but seeing that same face now stare at her was a different experience.

Using its fingers, the mummy pried apart the ancient bandages around its eyes and lips. Amy saw a pair of very human brown eyes looking at her. As for the mouth, Amy couldn't see anything under the slit in the wrapping, except for a thin line of darkness underneath.

"Amy McBloom," the mummy said. "I am the Priestess Jhedora."

"You're a tourist attraction," Amy said.

"While my mind is active within the neural net, this body rests inside the museum," Jhedora said. "It amuses me to see humanity at its most embarrassingly stupid. Gawking at what they believe to be dead, when my Temple is the one spying on them."

"Who are you?" Amy asked. "Really?"

Jhedora crossed her arms again, as if finding comfort that way.

"When I was a child, I spent most of my days observing my elders. All I saw was hateful, spiteful behavior. The adults were never kind. They had no respect for one another. There was only anger and cruelty and harassment. There was only hate."

Jhedora floated closer to Amy, who still couldn't move. "When I grew into womanhood, I found a scant few like-minded souls. We retreated to the wilderness, building a structure that would only welcome those who lived free of hate. It was a temple."

"All praise to the Temple," Corruption said, her head firmly bowed to the ground.

"In order to remain true to our ideals," Jhedora said. "We hid ourselves from the rest of the people. We chose to observe them from a distance, studying their horrible nightmarish behavior. Through our observations, we saw the sins of humankind laid bare."

"That's a gross exaggeration. People are just people."

"When I was born, there were only the other humans of our tribe, and no other ones we knew of. All else was the beauty of the pure unspoiled wilderness. This planet could have remained a paradise, if not for the poison of humanity."

Jhedora hovered even closer to Amy, both arms still stiff across her chest.

"While humankind treated each other with cruelty and hatred over the years, we in the Temple remained hidden, always observing. We developed new technologies and new science far than the humans around us. My fellow humans, consumed with their hatred, believed me alive because of my beliefs, but even in those early days, the Temple was so far ahead that I could transcend the human body and observe humanity on a planet-wide scale."

"You mean all this?" Amy said. "The neural network?"

"That's what it grew into, in time. The Temple discovered early on that nothing is more powerful than the human mind – not fire, not splitting the atom, not the internet, nothing. The human mind can create metaphor, and metaphor may very well be the greatest power on the Earth, even more than the wonders of science and the flawlessness of magic."

"You lost me," Amy said.

The bandages around Jhedora's lips spread slightly. Amy wondered that meant she was smiling.

"Yes, Amy McBloom," Jhedora said. "You are truly lost." 

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Next: What makes us tick.