As Poor Dad pushed up the manhole cover above us, it was like opening the door of an oven. The perpetual hot, dry wind of the surface rushed down into the tunnel, stinging my eyes and burning my lungs. Keeping a tight grip on the rusted ladder with my right hand, I reached up to tighten the cloth wrapped around my nose and mouth and pull the tinted goggles down over my eyes.
Heaving the manhole cover off to the side with a grunt, Poor Dad climbed up out of the tunnel. Sand cascaded down the shaft, clattering against the metal of the ladder as it fell.
"Come on!" he yelled down at me, his voice barely audible over the howling of the wind.
I followed him up through the hole into the blinding sun, squinting through the goggles, my gloves and arm shields sizzling and slipping on the dark gray sands as I struggled to pull myself up and out into the broiling desert air.
Poor Dad grabbed my flailing arms and pulled, dragging me the rest of the way up and helping me to my feet, unsteady in the shifting sands.
The wind whipping his layers of rags up around him, he pointed off into the distance towards the massive black pyramid on the horizon, silhouetted against the cloudless blue-grey sky. He yelled something but I couldn't make out the words so I just nodded and we set off down the slope of the sand dune.
We hiked across the desert, shielding faces against the blowing sands, particles of concrete, asphalt and glass aerosolized by time and the elements. This whole place had been a city once, long ago. So Poor Dad always told me. Now the only building to be found in miles of grey desert was the onyx pyramid that hovered above the dunes.
Slowly, the pyramid grew larger in our sight until it finally loomed above us, shining slick and black in the unrelenting sun. It floated silently in the air thirty feet overhead, impossibly huge yet suspended effortlessly by unseen forces that I could not begin to comprehend.
There was a flash of light up on the side of the pyramid and seam appeared in the seamless polished rock, opening into a portal and extruding a narrow black staircase that slid down toward us with unearthly smoothness. As the staircase continued its extension, two humanoid robots came out through the portal and began to walk down the descending stone steps. As they drew closer, intricate golden patterns became visible, intaglio baroque spirals on their glossy black chassis. Poor Dad gripped my shoulder tightly as the staircase slowed to a stop six inches above the desert floor. I twisted away from him, not bothering to glance back as I waded my through the sand to the foot of the stairs.
One of the robots reached down offered me an outstretched mechanical hand. I grasped the hard, smooth metal and stepped up onto the stairway.
Only a few steps up, I heard a commotion behind me and turned to see Poor Dad struggling with the second robot, being restrained as he fought to get a foot up onto the first step.
"Let me see him!" he yelled. "I have to see him!"
"Dad, stop!" I yelled down at him.
"When we mixed our DNA together to make you, he said he'd love me forever!" Poor Dad's voice cracked. The robot stiffly held his wrists as he thrashed his body back and forth. "Just let me talk to him! Please!"
"You're making a scene, Dad!" I yelled. I turned my back on him, shaking my head.
His pitiful cries receded behind me as I continued up the stairs into the pyramid.
The gilded robot led me down an onyx tile corridor lined with marble pillars and metallic vases on crystalline platforms. Dust fell from my filthy clothes onto the floor, obscuring the delicate golden inlays on the tiles, each one unique, some geometric, some floral.
The pyramid's interior was quiet and still in dramatic contrast to the endless howling winds outside. The only sound here was the soft tapping of robotic feet on the tile floor and my own echoing footfalls.
After walking through a disorienting maze of corridors, we finally came to the familiar antechamber doors, twenty feet tall and decorated with an intricate pattern like falling leaves rendered in gold. The doors swung open and we walked past the rows of black marble fountains into the main chamber.
"My beautiful son!" Rich Dad's voice boomed out as I entered.
Water cascaded down the walls in artificial waterfalls. Every surface was entwined with delicately wrought golden vines and in the middle of the chamber, Rich Dad reclined shirtless on his levitating chaise longue.
"The second weekend of the month already," he said, motioning for me to come closer. "And yet not come soon enough."
His laugh reverberated in the room as a spherical robot floated above him and opened a hatch to release a cascade of clear oils down over his lithe muscled body and over the edge of his floating platform, dripping down into the reflecting pool below.
"We have much to discuss," he said.