The new pyramid wasn’t so much discovered or unearthed as it appeared overnight, although it looked as ancient and weathered as all the others. And so the people I work for were called in instead of a normal archaeological team. It is not the first time we have dealt with objects of otherworldly origin.

  In the old days we might have simply blown the tomb door open or hooked cables to the stone sb and yanked it loose with a truck. Today we gently slide it open a fraction of an inch at a time over the course of days while researchers and machines take constant measurements and readings.

  We have stopped for the night and I am in bed in my room alone, nearly asleep, when I feel light footsteps pressing into the bnkets and mattress, stepping over me and settling down on the other side of me. I roll over and open my eyes to find myself staring into twin glowing red pinpricks illuminating empty dried out sockets. There is a mummified, bandaged, and animated corpse lying atop the bedsheets, resting its head on the pillow next to mine.

  I do not cry out. I do not flee. Perhaps I am just frozen. Fear is not quite the right word for what’s thrumming through my veins. Trepidation maybe?

  She begins to speak softly. Gently. By her voice alone one might think her still alive and whole. It does not occur to me until the next morning to question how she knows my nguage. She is not angry at us for disturbing her rest, but grateful for being set free.

  We lie there whispering to one another into the small hours of the night, telling each other of our lives and worlds. And, against all good sense, falling for one another. We are both terribly lonely.

  When she reaches out to touch me I flinch back, mind flooding with stories, games, and movies about curses and rotting touches. I apologize and expin. She shifts from being hurt to ughing about this world’s strange superstitions.

  We try again, both of us reaching a hand out at once and meeting in the middle. Her hand is dry and brittle in mine. Hardly more than a skeleton. Room temperature. But it is touch and we are both so deeply starved for that.

  We lie there in silence for a time, holding hands. She speaks up, fantasizing about a life we could have together and the great house filled with riches, wonders, and knowledge we would live in. I realize she is alluding to making me into a mummy as well and being dispyed together in one of the museums I told her about where we would have the pce to ourselves to awake and wander the halls every night.

  She is surprised I caught on so quickly to such an outndish idea. It is my turn to ugh and say that it was obvious. She tells me I have a strange idea of obvious.

  I tell her it comes from my line of work. And more seriously I add that the people I work for would never let it happen. At best we would be locked away indefinitely in cells - most likely separated - and studied as they tried to figure out how we moved despite being dead. If we were very lucky they might put us in a testing chamber together from time to time to see how we interact.

  She sighs and says she will have to figure out another way then.

  We spend the rest of the night in one another’s arms, holding and being held in return, until sleep finally takes me.

  In the morning she is gone and I am lonely, wondering if it was all a dream. But even if it was a dream, I know a potential cognitohazard when I encounter one and report the incident. My coworkers find it all the more arming when the tomb door is found to be cracked open with footprints leading from deep inside out into the desert.

  I am given a full exam - psychiatric and physical - and although nothing is found wrong with me I am put on mandatory leave for recovery from the suspected incident.

  I am visiting my brothers and lying on the couch in the older one’s home, writing in my journal, the first time I become her.

  She picks up the writing where I left off, expining what just happened, not yet aware that I remain hazily conscious while she is in control. Her handwriting is clearly different, as in her style of prose and choice of vocabury. And then she colpses face-down on the couch. Being the one in the driver’s seat for this body is exhausting for her, but she doesn’t have any more control than I do when it starts and stops.

  My older brother walks by and asks “me” what’s up with the way I’m lying there. She mumbles something into the couch cushion and holds out the journal, thumb on the most recent entry, without looking up. My brother has some vague idea of what I do and is less skeptical than he might otherwise be. Instead he is understandably concerned, even with her journal entry stating that I’ll be back in control soon. Probably.

  She lies there on the couch unmoving and silent until that happens.

  Once I’m back in control I know I should go back to work and report this. But I don’t. I want to see where this goes and I don’t want to be locked up in a research and containment cell. I try to justify my reckless decision by taking copious notes on our experience and calling it “first-hand field research.”

  She is not conscious when I’m in control like I am for her turns, not at first anyway, and her turns consist of initial bursts of activity followed by long periods of lying still, often just on the floor wherever she happens to be when she feels her energy fgging. She doesn’t shift or adjust her position when she’s like that; barely even breathes. Only sometimes does she close her eyes. The rest of the time she just stares gssy and unblinking, uncannily like she’s dead. There’s an irony to our difference in resting poses that amuses me. She always sprawls face down in a spyed tangle of limbs as if she were trying to hold onto whatever surface she nded on whereas I have always preferred to fall asleep with straight legs pressed together and hands folded over my chest; the archetypical funerary pose.

  But as time goes on, the periods of activity grow longer and the time spent lying down utterly exhausted grows shorter. And then she begins to become aware when I’m in control the same way I am when she is.

  When my body starts changing during her turns I’m not as armed as I ought to be, even though I recognize it as something I should absolutely be reporting. If anything, I’m disappointed that it changes back when I regain control. After all, it’s the sort of changes I’ve spent the past few years trying to bring about through mundane medical means and dreamed about for even longer. So what if it’s more like what she looked like when she was alive than what I would look like if I was born the way I wished?

  I know I can’t put off going back to work and everything that comes with that forever, but for now, we’re happy together like this.