A Mishap on the Way to Cairo- short story

The first brother consulted the second brother’s eyes for an answer that never came. They had been on a journey from Aswan to Cairo when they stumbled across a large, glowing, white gold pyramid. Upon curious peruse and scrutiny, it appeared that the walls of the structure contained in meticulous engravings a lengthy text; they would have conjectured the engravings to be an epic, even better a warning, had they understood their own tongue modified by score thousand years of future use.

We have fallen. We, the apex of creation, the shrewd advocates of technological advancement, have fallen. We had built domiciles out of greed and hypocrisy over a kind and giving land. We had surrounded ourselves with walls so high that we said they had reached heaven itself. Alas, heaven had had enough. When the waves came, there was nothing we could do. Oh, how the earth crumbled, how the sky collapsed, and how our magnificent walls came down upon us with wrath. We had succeeded in colonising Mars. However, war had made life on the red planet impossible; we had nowhere to go. The powerful, I amongst them, had exiled themselves into the vast, empty expanse of space: cursed to watch whatever few supplies they have dwindle to nothing. Slowly, one food bite and sip of water after another, one death after another, only one human remained. This was our own doing. We saw the signs; we knew what we were doing, but the green leaves of Adam’s tree made us monsters. There was always more power to be gained, more wealth, more fame, more everything. We chased everything except the thing that mattered. Virtue. In virtue I advise you. No, I do not advise: I beg! The last human alive pleads you to be virtuous. I implore you to eschew from greed and hypocrisy. Eschew from the malady of nefarious deeds and demeanour. Be kind. Be generous. Be forgiving. Be good! The structure you behold, which once was -or will be- a mystery for science is a contraption capable of manipulating the sequential flow of the time continuum. In categorical terms, this pyramid is a time machine. A time machine constructed in sanguine hopes that a warning could rescue humanity in one of the plethora of parallel universes from an ominous future: a time machine, a pyramid, a guiding beacon from the future.

The first brother looked at the second brother and said “you stay here and guard while I go tell the pharaoh about this building. His majesty will reward us with a royal gift, and we will be rich!” Then with alacrity the second brother stabbed the first with a knife; “yea, why don’t you go get all the money. No! I get the prise while you sit guard,” he quipped.