Australia

You wake nestled in your sleeping bag. Sleep slowly leaves.

Peering over the water towards the Isle of the Dead, the lighthouse keeper struck a match and lit his pipe, the tobacco sizzling in its bowl. He listened intently as the darkness recoiled from about the match’s flame, and he could hear it screaming in anger, the light invading its space.

The Nambour Institute of Egyptology was a grandiose name for a modest house in a relatively quiet suburb of Cairo.  It mostly held yellowed copies of parchments and scale models of pyramids.  It was a meeting place for retired diggers – not ex-servicemen but Archaeologists.  Professor Godfrey Blamey was one of them.

Yet there was hope. A third option, to return to Earth - where the sunrises were slower: a planet already with forests and lakes, seas and grasslands; room enough to hide from hands and eyes of an invisible enemy.

"The Foundation has decided to include you in a new program - known as ‘Resurrection.’ The program involves scanning a terminal patient’s brain, analysing its electro-biological impulses, and transferring them over into a mainframe, where the patient’s - ‘ghost’, if you will, can operate in this ‘vertical world’” - she spread her arms wide to encompass the bay - “as they would in the real world.”

"At times, he felt as if he was drowning in the light - that if he put a hand to his face later on, it would come away with blue droplets. He forced himself to relax and to focus on the regular percussion of his guide’s footsteps. Finally, they came to a stop, and there she indicated the door leading to the Resurrection Chamber. ‘Frankenstein’s playground’ he recalled along with the nervous laughter of his colleagues.