Return of the Ancient Gods

by Craig Robertson

  “Why yes I do. I'm confident by nature.”

  “That what they're calling being an idiot now, eh? Confident by nature.”

  “Look, I can do this without you. With is easier, but if you're going to be a negative Nancy the whole time I'd just as soon fly solo.”

  He was silent too long.

  “You there?”

  “F-l-y.” He said the word like he was tasting it.

  “It's an expression. It means go it alone. To not settle for the lame intermittent help I'm receiving.”

  “F-l-y. I used to f-l-y.”

  “Ah, correction. You are flying. If you had a head I'd say look at the legs you aren't standing on because you’re flying.”

  The cloud folded over a few times. What a strange blob it was. “F-l-y.”

  Oh no, we were back to f-l-y again. He said it like a stoner saying T-w-i-n-k-i-e. I regretted being immortal because I'd likely have to put up with this joker for way too long, however long that was to be.

  “Is it clear outside? Can I drop my membrane and try and start killing hackneyed gods and such?” I thought of an addition. “Could you do me a favor and f-l-y out, take a peek?” Petty and snarky? Yes, but consider the author. Yeah, one Jon Ryan.

  He didn't respond, which was good because he had already crushed my last nerve ass-dancing on it. Silently he slipped away for a second.

  “There is no one in view outside.”

  “Not even Tefnuf?”

  “She too is gone.”

  “Where’d she go? Seems odd she'd leave without my testicles?”

  “Do I look like a fortune-teller, a seer?”

  “No.” I chuckled. “You look like someone's been vaping really hard nearby.”

  “Do you feel better when you insult me? If you do, please continue. My only goal in the existence you claim I have is to be the butt of your adolescent humor.”

  Wow, sounded like my mom chewing me out for being too, well, too me with the other kids. “I'm sorry. You're trying to help and I'm being a jerk.”

  “Yes, yes, and yes.”

  I attempted to match the yeses with the elements of my apology. They didn't add up. “Ah, what's the third yes for?”

  “You are sorry.”

  Ouch. Dude was good. Set me up just so and dumped the bucket of water on my head at the proper moment. He was no me, but I had to credit him some chops.

  I turned the membrane off and scanned the room quickly. I was alone. I checked for alarms or cameras and found none. My Jon Plan was exceeding my expectations by a considerable margin. I wasn't dead, I was no longer a captive heading for DDD, and I was free.

  “I need a weapon and a ride. Do you know where I can get those?” I heard no response. Odd for my chatty apparition. I turned and checked. The monkey bait was gone. Crap. “Hey annoying blob, are you still here?” I asked as loudly as I dared. Nada. Oh well, I was on my own, which was generally how I functioned best. Time to improvise, adapt, and overcome.

  I struck out in the eeny-meeny-miny-moe direction. Hell, I knew zilch about this dump. What difference could it make? It took a while to clear the region so heavily damaged by the gods who were trying to blast me. I actually had to ascend multiple stairways and exit the building I was in to hit virgin turf. Okay, a word about the godly place I was in. Heaven it was not. Not by parsecs. I imagined we all had our own takes on the good place in the afterlife. This wasn't anyone's view on paradise. The light was dim and diffuse, the air was sterile and bone dry, and there was no discernible plant or animal life. I felt like I was in a deserted mall.

  A while into my recon I decided to find a hiding spot and observe the LIPs. I hadn't seen any gods aside from the first one in detention. I'd be in a superior strategic position if I knew more about my opponents. A fairly major-looking pathway made a shape turn near a large pile of rocks. I tucked myself into a deep cleft in the stones that directly faced the road. Then I waited.

  A few hours into my vigil I was about to bail when I saw my first passersby. Wow. Just wowsers. All I was missing was popcorn and the show would have been complete. Three “figures” “moved” past my blind. I say figures since they weren't people and that they moved since they sure weren't walking. The most humanoid one was a unicorn-elephant with wings. It was lurching through the air like … well, an elephant with wings would. How big do wings have to be to provide lift for the bulk of that body? Yeah, really really big. The weirdest part was that it chatted basically nonstop. I mean, it should have been huffing and puffing to beat the band. But no, it had verbal diarrhea.

  The other travelers were not humanoid in the least. One was a big fat wedge-shaped oxen, maybe. You'd have to see a picture. The tubular body consisted of multiple sausage-like sections that articulated, like cars of a train. The leading portion of each of the segments was pointed like an old In-N-Out Burger white hat was glued to it. That god, whatever it was god of, was just totally wrong. There was no way it evolved with any function in mind.

  The final member was much easier to describe. It was a walking swimming pool. Yup, that was it. Well, a swimming pool minus the pool. It was an Olympic-sized trough of water with ten or twelve water legs. How does suspended water remain in place and not splash away? How can water possibly have the load-bearing strength to support anything without crashing to the ground? Beat the hell out of me, but there it was strolling past. At least for my freaking-out mind's sake the pool wasn't speaking. I guess walking ponds are good listeners.

  The trio slowly passed by. I began wondering if the oxen got thirsty, would it drink its companion? Or maybe the unicorn-elephant would plunge into it to cool off? Yes, I was trippin'. Some images were harder to assimilate than others, and these were most bizarre. Once they were out of sight a single humanoid passed by. This one looked normal, you know, like a Greek god, maybe Zeus. Tall and resplendent, well-cropped white beard, and a robe. Greek gods had to have flowing robes, right? Zeusy seemed to be in a hurry and was gone quickly.

  The final god I saw looked for all the world like a massive boulder. Cold gray granite with craggy edges that were sharp as a razor blade. How could I tell? I was pressed up against it. Yeah, what could go wrong? Maybe it was waking up from a nap, or maybe it just got tired of my violating its personal space. Anyway, it rumbled up onto three round rocky legs and pushed me unceremoniously onto the dirt path. It walked like an inflated sumo wrestler over to where I stood.

  “Who the fortic are you?” it demanded in, obviously, a very deep voice. Right, boulders couldn't very well have been sopranos, could they?

  Okay, Ryan. It was go time. “Me? Who the fortic are you?”

  “Who am …” It started shaking. Little pebbles and dust flew into the air. I discovered that rocks get mad rather quickly. “I'm … I'm Gorpedder. Everyone knows Gorpedder.”

  “No, fatso. I don't.”

  I would not have thought it possible, but the dude began trembling much harder. Stones tumbled and done landed on my foot. It put a permanent dent in my plain-toe boot too, the big baby.

  “I am not fat,” he raged. “Boulder gods are wide, we're voluminous. We're supposed to b … b … be.”

  “Fine, you're supposed to be fat. That still doesn't clarify in my mind what you're so earthquaky about. Lighten up, boulder.”

  “Ear … earthqu … lighten … li …”

  “You okay? Need a glass of lava or something?”

  “La …” He lunged—as best a boulder could, that is—at me. “I'll kill you.”

  As angry as Gorpedder was and as lethal as he had to be, fast he was not. I backpedaled at his precise forward speed. It wasn't hard.

  “If you want to kill me, why don't you step over here and try?” I taunted.

  “I am. Stop retreating so I can crush your skull.”

  “Wow, there's a positive motivation for me to stop. And seriously, you're moving. I thought you were just quaking in your boots some more.”

  “I … I …” Gorpy never finished the thought. He fa
ce-planted. I wasn't certain if he tripped or was exhausted. I mean, come on, how long can a boulder sprint? Can't be long, no more than a stone's throw. Sorry, I know, lame pun. But it felt so good.

  I inched toward his resting place. I extended my probes.

  Lithicoid life form, immortal. Quartz content fifty percent, feldspar twenty-five percent, biotite five percent, complex amino acids ten percent. Incremental constituents circulating protein …

  Skip ahead, I said in my mind. I didn't want every last detail of its composition.

  Self-identifies as Gorpedder. Born Mamaxithos from mating of demigod Juli with antigod Densmurpex twenty-seven million years …

  Abort. What's an antigod?

  Searching. An antigod is defined by Gorpedder as a powerful immortal opposed to the Cleinoid Gods' prerogative. Juli was originally pursuing Densmurpex to destroy him. Love happened instead. They …

  Abort. What superpowers does he have?

  Gorpedder is immensely strong. At a distance he can damage by impact after hurling arbitrary objects.

  Abort. His power is he throws chunks of stuff real hard? That's not a superpower. That's physiologic.

  I am not enabled to make that deter …

  Abort. Where does he reside?

  Coordinates transferred to your data banks.

  Is he dead?

  He is immortal. He cannot …

  Abort. Is he conscious?

  Negative. He is in suspended animation pending biochemical imbalance crisis resolution with ongoing metabolic activity.

  Estimated time until he's recovered and awake?

  Thirty-six hours.

  Is there anything I can do to make that more difficult, prolong his incapacity?

  Affirmative. You can extract up to one hundred percent of his arsenic supply. Dimethylarsinic acid is an essential catalyst of the high pH waste accumulated as a result of his extreme energy expenditure.

  End analysis.

  I tuckered the rock out and he was healing. Poor pebble. I had to become more species-sensitive, didn't I?

  FIFTEEN

  “Tefnuf, you make the simple difficult and the difficult impossible. I enjoy our counseling sessions in my office as little as you do.” Vorc was trying to sound even, fatherly. He'd read that underlings reacted more positively to fatherly advice than that from one perceived more as a supervisor.

  “Oh, I really doubt that, Chief. If ya did you'd kill yourself. I'm right there myself.” She pinched a couple digits close together and peered at him through the aperture. “If you are leaning toward suicide by the way, I'd be more than happy to assist you.” She patted a pocket. “Brought a rust hammer with me just in case.”

  “I'll bet. I will stress yet again that we gods must at least get along if not like one another. Your surly disposition and absence of manners threaten the integrity of our fellowship.”

  “Fellowship, is it now? I thought we were a bunch of overambitious spoiled brats forced by some cruel higher god to suffer each other for all of eternity.” She harrumphed. “Now I'm part of a fucking fellowship.”

  “Watch your tongue. I will not have vulgar language used in my presence.”

  “My bad. Here, I'll fix it so it doesn't happen again.” She rose and walked quickly toward the exit.

  “Stop,” he said in a thunderous voice. Surveys had proven that a thunderous tone worked to radically alter an employee's reaction better than mere shouting. “We are not done yet.”

  She rotated her head to look at him. “I am.”

  “Sit or be censured.”

  That brought her to a halt. She hated censure more than she hated Vorc. And she knew he'd do it. He had nine times before. Spending a century in a perfect vacuum with no light, no food, and no company actually was unpleasant. She returned to her seat.

  “That is better. Now, as we … I was saying …” Crap, he thought. Vorc hated when he slipped into the imperial plural in public. In private it was fine, but others might disapprove. “Once your social quotient finds a happy, dependable level, you and I will have no more unnecessary meetings. We are on the eve of our return to greatness. We should be great as one, not as two, you and the rest who aren't you.”

  He cursed himself instantly. What an awkward, vague rally cry. Hardly the stuff of godly leadership.

  “Those who aren't me?” she needled.

  “Yes, everyone who's happy and working as a team. For as certainly as there's no I in team, there needs to be a Tefnuf in our team.”

  “Are you listening to yourself? You've blown a bank of fuses, Vorc. You sound like a politician after a handful of strokes. Wait, wait,” she said, looking up thoughtfully. “We know you are a politician. Maybe that means you've had a handful of strokes? Yes, that would account for your being such a pus popsicle.”

  “Here's the short of it, bitch.” Vorc was angry and she could plainly see it. An angry Vorc was not a force to toy with. “You behave and you get to come along for our return. You screw up point five more times and you're back in censure. Period.”

  “But I was only doing my job, the one you mandated me to do.”

  “Exterminating a human who was never there that disappeared into thin air?”

  “He was there. You'll see when he finally surfaces. Why would I make up there being a prisoner?”

  “So you could blow up the Lower Chamber.”

  “Why would I want to destroy the Lower Chamber?”

  “Oh, I don't know. Maybe for the same reason you did the last two times.”

  “This is totally different. Those times I was mad.”

  “And you're not mad this time?”

  “Up until now, no.”

  “I presume then we shall meet again very soon, at which time you'll get the censure you are so loudly begging for.”

  She squirmed up in her chair. “You wouldn't talk to Bethniak that way,” she said spitefully.

  To save face Vorc toyed with responding that was because Bethniak didn't cause such infantile, drunken trouble. But he let it go. It was best not to say that name unless it was completely unavoidable.

  SIXTEEN

  I found Boulder Boy’s digs easily enough. A few things became clear the minute I opened the door. The guy was no slave to fashion, cleanliness, or excess. He lived in a cave—big surprise—it was dirty—less of a surprise—and the only furnishings were—you guessed it—rocks. Oh well, I wasn't renting to own, just borrowing it until Sleeping Not-Beauty woke in five to six days. That's how long his arsenic-depleted body would take to heal. That's how long I had to hatch a plan. Based on my history to date, that was too long. My plans were never any good if I wasn't under supreme pressure. Gorpedder crashing through his own front door might be what inspired me to come up with something serviceable. Time would tell. It always had so far.

  How do rock gods, and I don't mean Mick Jagger here, live? Spartanly. I found what had to be a food storage and prep area. Not going to dignify it by calling it a kitchen. There were stone bowls containing powdered stones of various classes. There were smaller vessels with pure minerals. Those must have been like spices. A dash of silicate and a pinch of borate to liven up a pulverized basalt. Yum.

  One thing in the stark room stood out prominently. A complex comm panel of some sort. It had blinking lights, lots of keys, and a couple monitors. I guessed gods needed to keep up with one another. Maybe there were even god-reality holo programs. Those'd go viral in a heartbeat, wouldn't they? Hell, realistically they couldn't be worse than the drivel I tried my best to avoid when visiting human or Kaljaxian worlds I called home. But the comm link was intriguing. I had to be the first none-LIPs (you know, local indigenous personnel) to have access to their network. I could learn a lot about my enemy if I was successful in hacking the system. And I was going to crack this treasure-trove, oh yes I was.

  First things first, I needed to switch it ON. I also needed to not do so in a manner that would alert anyone I was doing so, not yet at least. I could attach my probes and an
alyze the entire system in detail, break down the circuit paths and individual components. Normally I'd assign such scutwork to Al. Al was neither present nor available. So, I did the guy-thing. I started pushing buttons hoping for a good outcome. Come on, it was much quicker and a hell of a lot more fun option. I was not a thinker. I was a doer.

  After a couple taps, one monitor flashed to life. Crap. This was not going to be entertaining in the least. In place of a picture or holo, there was an endless streaming of binary images, you know, ones and zeros. Intermittently there were various forms of breaks, maybe sentences or paragraphs? I mean, I was a giant computer so I could read binary if I set myself to it. But talk about boring. Within a couple minutes I'd discerned the syntax and figured out the language, as it was. The signal did not seem to be encrypted. Why bother? How was someone like me ever going to do what I was doing? Whatever kind of god these bozos were, they were not the omniscient type.

  To synthesize it down, the bulk of the broadcast was a long, seemly endless, list of names. Those were presumably the LIPs' names, but they were offered without qualifiers like, Nancy loves Bill or Scissors beat Paper yesterday in the finals. It took nearly an hour for me to begin to see actual information content. Large numbers of gods were grouped with others, mega teams if you will. Demigods and “other manifestations” were grouped separately. Naturally. What self-absorbed god would want to be teammates to a lower manifestation? No way. Only much later did I glean what the aggregation of names meant. Teams were assigned different general tasks. Defilers were tasked with cleaning where needed in the public spaces. Wow. Gods with push-brooms and matching bib overalls. How very banal. Retributions were assigned invocation rendering. I had no clue what that was, but it had to beat the hell out of the cleanup brigade.

  Fairly quickly I arrived to the verge of death by unrelenting boredom. Naturally to resolve that crisis I pushed a few more random buttons. What could go wrong? Well let me tell you. Not surprisingly, the comm console was a two-way link. Yeah. I called city hall or something. This boxy humanoid face sprang to life on the screen. The face looked both unfriendly and unhappy. Looks deceived. It was openly hostile and irate.