Moses lay in a half-asleep stupor, mentally debating the merits of getting up versus staying down. He had a pounding hangover, his mouth was dry as Egyptian brickstraw, and he should have milked the goats three hours ago. He and his wife Heather were feuding again. She was constantly nagging, always on his back about one damn thing or another. It was generally "You don’t love me or you’d get me a new robe." or "Lips that touch rotgut wine won’t touch mine." or "When are you going to get us out of this wilderness?" or "Promised Land? Milk and Honey? Yeah, right." Then she would sigh deeply, roll her eyes, then go back to tending their flock while Moses laid around, dreaming of his last little excursion to Gomorrah. That bellydancer with one leg was unforgettable. He remembered how she would g......zzzzzzz.

   "MOSES! Get your lazy ass up and do something!"

   He jerked awake, cursed under his breath and laboriously shuffled to his feet. He straightened his beard and drew himself up to his full five foot three inch stature.

   "Dammit all, can’t a guy get a minute’s peace around here? I’ve got to go get some air."

   He opened the tent flap and the desert sun slapped him full in the face.

   He staggered to the well, slurped down a dipper of rancid water, then walked slowly toward the edge of town, out of sight, out of earshot.

   "Hey, Moe."

   "Hi Louie, how’s it hangin’?"

   "Good...good. Check this out. I made a pair of sandals out of snakeskin."

   Moses stared in amazement. He’d never seen anything like it. The sandals were soft and looked comfortable. The workmanship was superb. He’d never done anything but avoid serpents, now Louie here, was wearing their hides.

   "Louie, only you could come up with an idea like this. Why couldn’t you have done something like this before we started this long trip to who-knows-where? Just think of all those vipers we killed along the way. They do look good on you, though. Think I could get a pair made?"

   Captain Lutz Lambert, commander of the starship Advantage, watched the interstellar beacon as it pulsed its rhythmic code into pips of bright red light. At 25 parsecs and closing on the lonely outpost, Twee Muntz, his radiotelemetry tech, spoke.

   "Captain, it’s most likely a distress call, but I can’t decode it. The language seems to be trinary, and we always have trouble with those." His green skin had turned a sickening mauve, indicating anxiety.

   "All right then," said the Captain. "Everybody to your listening post, and let’s try to decipher this." The Captain was taking control of the situation, issuing orders, preparing the crew for any eventuality.

   Twee stared at the code as it filled his viewer, all four frontal lobes engaged. He could do this. He really, really could. Most of the time. Usually.

   Wait! Oh, yeah. He reached out an appendage and pressed the blue button. The one that said "Decoder". He watched as the trinary stream converged into a steady line of green type.

   "Captain, I have a translation! There are three lines. The first one says, For the Best in Lechery and Dining, it’s Garlock’s. Two Parsecs Ahead. The next line says, The View is Spectacular from Mercos III! Call BZ82BURP for a Preview."

   "Yes, Yes, anything else?" The Captain’s tone was impatient.

   "Oh yes sir, this looks interesting. You have violated the security perimeter of the Kauffion commercial sector. Do not proceed, and prepare to be boarded."

   "Dammit! yelled the Captain. The Kauffion are in this sector too? This is bad news. I fought with them four years ago on Quadrilla Prime. To them, we’re snacks. Notify the crew that we are entering hostile space and be prepared to repel the Kauffion."

   Twee opened the onboard intercom and repeated the Captain’s order verbatim.

   Down on Deck Seven, SubCommander Bertelson Fleese was busy filing and inventorying the ship’s store of canned yams. Bert was the go-to guy for the odd jobs that needed to be done on the typical starship. If there was a problem with laundry, or food, or clean rooms, or whatever, you called Bert. He was a loyal combat veteran, but he did have a couple of physical problems. He’d lost most of his hearing and limped badly ever since he tangled with a giant wormbeast on Horizontal Stepsister IV. Bert had one serious duty, however. As SubCommander, it was his job to punch the button that activated the security shield whenever the Advantage encountered dangerous aliens or asteroid fields.

   Myrna snapped her cell phone closed and turned to the two sweet faced blond daughters that waited expectantly.

   "Well,...You won!"

   Both the girls squealed at the top of her lungs and rushed their mom.

   "Ohmigod, we’re going to the Booty Boys Concert!" Tears streamed down their faces and they hugged each other and their mother, frenzied. Myrna laughed. She remembered how it was when she was thirteen. Lessee, who was it now? What was his name? Oh yeah, wait... I can’t remember. Oh, well.

   Heather was beside herself with excitement, hopping up and down, heart full, eyes glazed. She and her twin Jessica had sold the most cookies for this year’s Girl Scout fund drive, and had been awarded an incentive prize of tickets to the upcoming concert. They had worked hard, door to door, at the mall, had solicited every house in Quaintsville, even venturing onto the porches where prominent signage was posted that said "No Soliciting". After all, what weirdo would have the balls to throw a couple of cute blonde twin Girl Scouts selling cookies off his porch?

   Their persistence and understanding of what drove cookie sales paid off. The last day at the mall had been a good one. They moved more lemon cremes and chocolate mints than anyone else in their troop, and now they were due their rewards.

   The Booty Boys were of the time honored and shaggy haired genre of garage bands that typically wrote and performed songs that contained absolutely no lyrics that could be remembered for more than a few seconds. Their mere appearance, however, seemed to facilitate a hormonal shift that turned seemingly innocent young girls into slavish fashion mavens that were preoccupied with learning every bit of minutiae, however insignificant, of their favorite Booty Boy.

   Of course, every young preteen female, the focused demographic, pestered her parents to no end for Booty Boys T-shirts, videos, music cd’s, breakfast cereal, and the one thing that tested parents’ and school administrator’s tolerance levels,... Booty Boys haircuts. Spiky, unkempt and colorful, the girls wearing these hairstyles resembled nothing less than someone walking around with a dead Shih-Tzu on her head.

     B.L. walked through his East Hell neighborhood, smartly dressed; white suit, Rolex, new saddle oxfords on his feet. That’s right, feet. He never really had hooves, that was just another myth he had to deal with. Oh, and no horns, either, although the skin on his face and neck was always irritated and red. Heat rash.

     East Hell was scenic and tranquil these days, what with the change to a total disco environment and the new dress codes. Hollywood on its best day couldn’t have come up with a better picture. He stopped and tipped his hat to the approaching attractive woman.

     "Hello Sally".

     "Hi, B.L., you’re lookin’ good!"

     "Thanks."

     "When are you and me gonna get together?"

     "Uh, soon. I’ll call you."

     "I’ll be waitin’."

     He kept walking, didn’t look back.

     Image, of course, was everything now. B.L.’s personal poll numbers were up. He was showing a 59% approval rating Topside, and the talking heads at 1600 Heavenly Way were getting very, very nervous. Hell.com was taking a million hits a day, and it was time to talk to a topside realtor about acquiring some property. Something tropical. Quiet. Slow parties. Real sunsets. His little piece of East Hell on earth.

     Today was his day off, and he decided to just walk about, take some time evaluating the changes, small and large, that had changed his world forever. His new assistant, Jason Freddy, was running the office in his absence. Jason, the drummer for the highly regarded band, Satan’s Lovers, had been sitting in with B.L. and the Icemen regularly. Jason had hit it off with B.L. from the first, and within weeks had gained enough confidence and trust to begin handling B.L.’s office work and day to day drudgery. Recruiting was his strong point, since he moved so freely back and forth between the music scenes in East Hell and Topside.

     The Eye of Ra rose glowing and looked with angry energy over the mountain tops and down, down to the carpet of land that was the Plain of Saqqara. The desert floor would soon sear flesh and its dry atmosphere would suck the life from any foolish enough to challenge it. The comfort of clouds would not be there today, the Eye of Ra would rule all. 

      Spread across the sand were the trails and paths, well worn and rutted, that marked the coming and goings of calculating humans, all leading to a magnificent and perfect square laid out across the plain, the beginnings of an immense structure. Corner stones had been carefully cut and positioned, aligned with stars, the meaning of which astronomers kept secret.

     Men with tight black goatees, dressed in leather and gold, sat in the shady interiors of stone houses at the edges of the square and planned its grand design. All of them, architects, engineers, scribes and soothsayers, practiced their arts with only one goal; to cater to the every whim of King Djoser. A man-god, he played the part well. Haughtiness was etched into his demeanor, and murder was his daily bread. His tomb, which was his grand vision and the first of its kind, would be built by involuntary servitude, and his soldiers kept him a ready supply of workers. They raided as far south as Nubia, driving the enslaved before their caravan, showing no mercy.

     Nefir, barefoot and clothed in a filthy loincloth, strained mightily, pushing his weight into the massive ropes that enveloped him and nearly a hundred others. They dragged inch by tortuous inch a giant block of stone from the raft on the river bank inland nearly a quarter mile, to be placed block upon bloodstained block. Sullen and hungry, the slaves suffered under the lash of the overseers, thin lipped evil men who wore the authority and insignia of the King. To not work on command or to speak out to an overseer was a guarantee of death. Water was doled out at the end of the day, and only then. Food was little more than raw grains, barely sustaining.