JournalEgypt

Smoochie's Travel Journal

Off to search for The Lost Floppy of the gods

Above: Left is the map Smoochie found in the old crate. Center shows Smoochie and Swappy examining one of the scrolls. Right is Smoochie and Swappy posing in front of the Pyramid of Khafre with some girl that gave them directions.

Three days before the trip:

Like the man said, you never know what you're going to get on Ebay. Smoochie here- I swiped Russ' credit card while he was at lunch and placed a bid on a crate of old Single-Malt Scotch someone placed for auction on Ebay. Scotch was more than a hundred years old. Seems some old Italian fellow kicked the bucket and his grandkids are handling the estate. Didn't want the crate of Scotch, so...long story short, I got it. (Man is Russ gonna be mad when he sees what it cost!) Anyhow, I get it in the mail and open it. Lots of stuff in there besides the hooch. There was a tattered and worn old map centered on Egypt, written in some unknown language, and then years later someone had jotted notes on it in Italian. There were several scrolls in there too. Examining the map I noted there was only one Big Pyramid at Giza Plateau (presumably the Great Pyramid of Khufu) and figured the map must be older than I thought. Evidently Papyrus holds up pretty well. Anyhow, many hours of using Altavista translators produced the following information. The makers of the map and scrolls said that there is a holy relic called the, roughly, 'The Great Golden Square Circle of the gods'. Didn't seem to make sense, until I thought: floppy disks are square. Disk...round....square...The Lost Floppy of the gods! The relic evidently was used to open the Well of Spirits. Spirits...liquor...the Fountain of Eternal Booze!!! The legend said that a frog would come and with the help of a small monkey, would open the fountain. Apparently the great, grandfather (or some such) of the guy that owned this crate was a rich but highly unsuccessful Italian explorer. He's written here and there on the map as he translated the ancient writing. I'm off to talk Swappy into a trip to Egypt. This could be a really profitable trip for a certain small frog!

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Day One

Well, we're off. Swappy and I had a good long look at the old map and compared it to modern ones, we're pretty sure we know where the Eternal Fountain of Booze is. I have to admit, riding in the overhead luggage compartment isn't nearly as uncomfortable as I thought it would be...but I think the monkey needs a bath. We're flying in to Cairo and will go from there into the desert. From what I make out in scroll #5, the Lost Floppy of the gods is probably in a hidden chamber beneath the Great Pyramid (Khufu). I am pretty confident I can speak French when I'm not sober, but I picked up some phrase books for the trip for speaking Farsi, Hindi, and whatever else the bookshop sold me. Probably for the best- last time I tried speaking Swedish without a book, I apparently said something rude about the waiter and his best friend the stinky wet armchair. I thought I was ordering meatballs- the waiter was not very happy. Oh well, here's hoping for a successful trip!

Day Two

Wandered the streets for 4 hours. Swappy's terribly jetlagged but feeling pretty content since he sees all sorts of folk walking around here with monkeys. We had to hoof it earlier, when he swiped some dates and figs out of some guy's stall in the market. Wasn?t happy with us at all. Now that I've got my bearings (and some currency I lifted off a guy that was scamming tourists-turn and turnabout and all that, now we've hitched up with a tourist group headed for the Pyramids. We?re just outside the Pyramid of Khafre, and we posed for a picture with a girl that helped us read a local map. She's actually from France (which is why I could talk to her) and it turns out she's on a mission to sniff out some extremist movement that wants to stockpile Guavas. No idea why, but it sounds suspicious. Oh well. Wished her luck and we're headed into the Pyramids with the tour. We'll duck out somewhere and then find our way to the chamber where the Lost Floppy is supposed to be. Crossing webbed fingers!

Day Three

Okay, first off: you're gonna hear a lot of crazy talk out of CNN and Reuters about some 'Bandits' that desecrated a shrine inside one of the pyramids yesterday. That's not how it happened. Really. Look, we're not from around here and that thing looked like a fancy port-a-john or outdoor loo. I'd already had way too much to drink yesterday and needed somewhere to ...go... as it were. While I was in there, Swappy was practicing his juggling using some clay and stone figures we found in an alcove. When I come out of what turns out to be a sarcophagus, the lid accidentally pinched Swappy's tail. He dropped- and broke- all 5 of the figures as well as some other stuff they fell on and ran madly around the chamber knocking things over. Apparently the tail-pinch had taken him so much by surprise, he went into fight-or-flight panic and it took me 7 minutes to calm him down. When we saw the mess and realized what we were looking at, we grabbed our stuff and ran. I figured now was as good a time as any for us to get away from the tour and head off on our own. Unfortunately, we didn't get to sneak off quite as quietly as I'd hoped. As of right now, we're deep down a shaft and we must be at least 20 meters under the normal lowest walkways that have been explored. We got here through a small service shaft that was hidden behind some collapsed stonework in the known lowest place, the so called Underground Chamber. It's slow going since it's so dark, even with our torches since there are no light/air shafts this deep and there are so many dead end and blind passageways. Swappy sprang a trap earlier. He climbed up on a statue to get a better view and something in it moved with a click. Moments later pairs, then dozens, and finally hundreds of tarantulas began to climb out of a hole in the statue's mouth and over-ran us. I just sat calmly still and let them pass. Swappy ran in circles screaming that particularly annoying monkey shriek of his. Once they were all gone, he asked why I hadn't panicked and I explained to him that Tarantulas are very non-aggressive and if you didn?t hurt them, they wouldn't hurt you. He demanded to know why I hadn?t told him this when it was happening and I pointed out that he hadn't asked. Boy has he been testy since then. Time for some shut-eye.

Day Four

Note to self. Do NOT under ANY circumstance ever again try to swipe a jewel out of a statue that looks like a six-armed, anthropomorphic wolf that has been taking steroids. In general practice, this is not a safe practice, apparently. Guess what I did today, huh? Go on! Guess! That's right- I pulled a red gem out of the eye of a huge statue that looked like a six-armed, overpumped wolfman. Said statue came to life and immediately demonstrated what it thought of the situation. This was followed by much screaming, running, hiding, discovering, more insistent screaming, faster running, hiding, -and fortunately for us- statues taking a misstep off a ravine and falling to their doom. I kept the jewel. Swappy pointed out that I could have avoided all this if I'd read the hieroglyphs. I asked since when did he read hieroglyphs and he said he'd studied it in David's cube during lunch last week. I asked why he hadn't told me this. He said I hadn't asked. I almost tossed him in the ravine.

Day Five

We have arrived. This is the oddest looking chamber yet. It's sorta oval shaped but with a triangular roof and in the center is a table made of stone. We've swept the room for traps. I disabled the trap doors, the spear-shooters, and the bear trap thingies. Swappy was clever enough to find and get caught by the rope-snare that was buried near the door and once I released him, we were free and clear. I've gotten up on the table and have extracted from a silver dodecahedron- shaped block of stone...the Lost Floppy of the gods. Funny, I thought it'd be bigger. Of well. We know the way out so we should make good time. Then it's north and west through the desert to the site of the Fountain of Eternal Booze. I'm stoked!

Day Seven

For future reference, long dry walks through the desert and small thirsty amphibians do not mix. Also, long dry desert marches do not go well with furry smelly primates. Both combined, the effect magnifies. Yesterday I nearly gave up and decided to go home. Day before that, Swappy saw a mirage and thought he saw the set of Wheel of Fortune under some rock formation, and the host of the show was offering us a buffet meal. I had to smack him around before he carefully put the scorpion down and accepted that it wasn't part of a shrimp cocktail. However, we survived and got here somewhat behind schedule. I'm down to my last 5 quarts of Scotch, so I hope we get this done tonite. I'm starting to miss cable TV.

Day Eight

Wee hours of the morning. Well THAT was a waste of my time. Turns out the correct translation was not Eternal Fountain of Liquor. It was Well of Spirits or Souls. Not what I'd set out to find. We got here late yesterday and camped out way into the night. We climbed up to the top of this tableau we found unearthed from a dune recently moved by the wind. I inserted the Lost Floppy into the large shoe-like stone at the top. Nothing happened. Swappy suggested I reboot the disk. Pulled it out, stuck it in harder, and whacked the stone. This time it worked. There was rumbling deep underground, an impressive lightshow, and a gate in the earth opened in front of us. When the ghosts started coming out, we knew I'd misread the scrolls. They stopped in front of us, recognizing us as the chosen ones. They waited for me to speak, so I addressed them. I told them what the world was like now- Taxes, the lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Home Shopping Channels, and TV Sitcoms. I gave them the choice of coming out to face that world or returning to the abyss. They ran for the abyss as though the wrath of Ra was hot on their heels. Swappy just shrugged and we headed back for the airport. Live and learn.

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