by Paul Neuhaus
“Okay, okay. I don’t need a complete breakdown. Lead on.”
Cal grabbed Keri by the hand and pulled her down the steps away from the stage. The duo then cut left toward a chain-link fence with an open gate. El and I fell in line behind them. As we ran toward the huge white trucks crowned with antennas, I looked again at how much our surroundings had changed. The very quality of the light was different. All of the colors were different. It’d been like going to sleep in one world and waking up in another. Virtual reality had become Reality Reality.
Cal did an expert job of weaving us through the remote trucks and the stagehands. Along the way, I did something that was maybe ill-advised. I skidded to a stop right next to a big black limousine. I recognized it. It was Sebastian Squire’s limousine. I crouched down to peer into the rear compartment and El grabbed me by the arm. “What’re you doing? Come on!”
In the rear compartment, I saw Squire’s briefcase. “Gods, I’d really love to have that,” I said.
Cal doubled back and pushed me gently aside. “I can get it for you,” he said.
“Great! You have a key?”
“Yes.” And, with that, he broke the rear left window with his elbow. Reaching through the newly-made gap, he undid the lock, opened the door and crawled into the car. A moment later, he emerged and handed me the case. I was impressed. I started to say something, but he cut me off. “Let’s go. No more stops.”
He ran off again and El and I followed. Before we were even to the back of the limo, I saw Taylor Chriss standing next to one of the media vans. Unfortunately, he’d seen us breaking into Squire’s car. He was standing next to his huge bodyguard, a guy famous enough in his own right to earn a nickname. “Samoa Joe” they called him. Chriss handed his drink to the bodyguard and shot after us. The movie star does a lot of running in the Improbable Pursuit movies. Turns out it wasn’t Hollywood trickery. He was fast as a motherfucker.
I stuck my hand into my pocket and my fingers through the rings of my brass knuckles. My plan was to stop, turn and let Chriss slam into my armored fist. By the time I was equipped and ready for the punch, I saw that someone else had had the idea first. Elijah stopped, turned and released a full stream of pepper spray right into the actor’s face. Chriss ran a few more steps before he realized his eyes were on fire, then he stopped so he could claw at them. While he was clawing, I hit him hard as I could with the briefcase. He went down. El gawked at his victim, surprised and delighted. “Come on,” I said. “Celebrate later!”
We resumed running full-speed and, at last, came to the parking lot of the Parthenon. We stopped again to get our bearings. “Please tell me you have a car,” Calesius said. Keri was docile beside him. As long as neither Elijah or I got too close to her, she was fine.
I pointed down the road. “At the motel,” I replied. “Don’t run. Walk as fast as you can without looking suspicious.” When we got to the Joshua Tree Motor Inn, we all jumped into the Firebird. El and I in the front; Cal and Keri in the back.
“Aren’t we even going to check out?” El said, perhaps focusing on the wrong detail.
“Nope. You can call them from the road if you want.” I spun us out of the parking lot and jetted across the interstate to get onto the other side. The side that’d take us back to Los Angeles.
5
Forethought
The whole drive back was traffic-free—mostly because the majority of the motorists had pulled over to the side of the road to assess the world’s new state. Southern California and Nevada are—or were—barely irrigated deserts. Now, not only were they rich with the scent of pine, the temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees. Most right-thinking humans can’t process a change like that, and the faces I saw as I sped westward testified to that. Fortunately, no one in the car was quizzing me about it. Calesius was stoic, Keri was catatonic, and—once he got off the phone with the motel—Elijah was more concerned with his daughter than with the state of the world. He made repeated attempts to reach out to her, but she recoiled every time. Finally, Cal said, “Now isn’t the right time.”
“She still has the food in her system, doesn’t she?” I asked.
“That’s right. It’ll take her a day or two before she’s free of it.”
“Food?” El said.
“Yeah, remember I told you the Church of Reciprocity has their own food. Like Herbalife. They put something in it to make their followers compliant.”
“Lotus,” Cal said.
I patted the wheel in recognition of an obvious truth. “Of course. Lotus. That makes perfect sense.”
It didn’t make perfect sense to Elijah. “Lotus? Like the flower?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think Homer meant the same thing by ‘lotus’ that we do today. It’s definitely a plant, although I can’t tell you much more than that. There’s a whole passage in The Odyssey where Odysseus loses half his crew in the Land of the Lotus-eaters. Basically, a bunch of whacked-out goofballs who do nothing but sit around and get loaded all day.”
“And we can just get it out of her system? Will there be side effects?”
“No,” Cal replied. “No side effects.” It was a telling comment.
I looked over my shoulder at the former stable boy. “Back at the Conclave, I asked you if you were one of the space hippies, and you said, ‘Not anymore’. What did you mean?”
“Not long after I last saw you both, they started feeding me their special food, and I started feeling weird. Not like myself. I guess I must have a higher resistance or something because I was aware of what they were doing. I began pretending to take the meals they gave me. At night, I snuck real food from the kitchens. In time, I was free of the lotus, but I acted like I was as compliant as everyone else. I was biding my time until I could escape. You haven’t seen what Acadine is like when you’re not there. It can be… a scary place.”
Elijah held out his hand and Cal took it. “Thank you for saving my daughter,” he said.
Cal nodded. “I like your daughter very much. Or I liked who she was before they poisoned her. I want to get that Keri back.”
“You and me both,” the elder Wiener agreed.
Finally, Hope broached the obvious subject. “Speaking of getting things back to normal…”
“Yes,” Cal said. “The world… It looks like the world I grew up in. I don’t understand. How is it possible?”
I flashed back to the captive Hephaestus and Hecate on the stage, and the moment when Nephus forced them to remake the Earth. (That’s what it’d been after all—force. I couldn’t image the two frail gods working with someone like Nicos.) “Let’s not worry about how it happened right now. Let’s focus on how we can reverse it. Or even if we can reverse it. Hope, do you have any ideas?”
Hope sighed. The pithos was on Elijah’s lap. “I’ve never seen magic of this magnitude before. Never anything this pervasive. What Medea did when she forged the key to the Tartarus Gate was astonishing, but it was localized. She made a prop. That was the most raw power I’ve ever seen anyone use before, but this… This is beyond the pale. I wouldn’t begin to know how to roll it back.”
Calesius chimed in. “Zeus would know,” he said.
“Yeah, Zeus would probably know, but I don’t see him around much anymore. I have no idea how to get in touch with someone who’s fucked off.”
“Didn’t you talk to Pan after he… fucked off?” Hope said.
“Yeah, but he came to me. When I was unconscious.”
“Maybe if we knocked you over the head…”
“Stay out of this, Wiener. Unless you’ve got something constructive to say.”
“Sorry.”
We settled into silence, and I began to worry. How much had the world changed as a result of Nephus’ actions? He’d turned a desert into a pine forest. Would L.A. even be there when we got back? I suppose there was cause for optimism. The highways between Las Vegas and Los Angeles were still there, so hopefully the cities were still there, too. I turned on th
e radio, flipped the toggle to AM, and dialed-in a news station—a news station in the city of angels. They were still broadcasting, so that was something, anyway. They were broadcasting, but they were panicked. What’d happened near Barstow had definitely happened back west, too. The anchors were so jazzed-up, they were comparing the remaking of the world to 9/11. On some levels, it was a fair comparison, but—as far as I knew anyway, no one had died, so there was that. I’m not one to dog-pile mainstream media, but histrionics don’t help.
After a moment of listening, Calesius vocalized what I was thinking. “It sounds like the world changed around everything. Civilization’s still there, but the surrounding terrain is different.”
The thing that stuck in my head right then was how Cal sounded when he talked. “Hey, don’t take this the wrong way,” I said. “But when I saw you last, you were, well, you were kinda insane. I mean anyone would be after being the only living thing in Olympus for thousands of years. But now, like a month later, you’re not only completely rehabilitated, you sound pretty hip to the modern world.”
“I was mostly nocturnal, like I said. I watched a lot of TV. In fact, if you wanna know the truth, when I saw the world had changed back there, I panicked. I panicked about two things and they were, in order of importance, is Keri okay? and is TV okay?”
Elijah and I both laughed. “It sounds like your priorities are right on the money,” El said.
It didn’t take us anywhere near as long to get back to L.A. as it did to get to the Conclave. I skirted Westwood and took us right to my trailer in Malibu. When we pulled into the Tonga Lei parking lot, we got a rude surprise. My trailer wasn’t there anymore. It’d been burned to the ground. Everyone but Keri was crestfallen. I parked so the trailer was in full view and said, “Hold on a minute… This happened once before.”
“People make a habit of burning down your trailer?” El asked.
“No, they don’t. That’s the point.”
I got out. From the corner of my eye, I saw Elijah glance at Cal like ‘Do you know what she’s talking about? I don’t know what she’s talking about’. Cal shrugged so El got out of the car and followed me. “What’s going on?”
“Right before I got involved with you and Keri and Addie, I had another crazy adventure. That one had Medea as the heavy. Medea was a Mistress of Illusion. She made it look like my trailer’d burned down so I’d stay away from it. I was hoping it was that kind of deal all over again.”
Wiener sniffed the air. “It doesn’t smell like an illusion,” he said.
I went over to the skeletal remains of my home. Bits of what remained were taller than other bits. I reached out and grabbed a jagged piece of the outer wall. It broke off from its base and came away in my hand, trailing ash. “It doesn’t feel like an illusion either.”
“No, Dora. What you’ve got on your hands here is a fresh case of arson.”
“Swell,” I said, dropping the trailer hunk. ” What the fuck’m I gonna do now?”
He shrugged with his shoulders. “You’ll come with me and Keri to Westwood. The couch in my office folds out into a bed. You’re gonna sleep there until we get this figured out. Besides, I’m sure I’m gonna need your help with Keri. Cal says there’s no Cold Turkey from this thing she’s on, but she’s a fifteen-year-old girl and none-too-stable to start with.”
I sighed, seeing no alternative. “The couch in your office? Your brony office?”
He flushed crimson as if that cat wasn’t already out of its bag. “You saw that?”
“Yeah, how do you think Keri and I found you? Besides, it’s not like you weren’t already out of the closet.”
We started heading back to the Firebird. “I wish you wouldn’t put it like that,” he said. “I’m not less of a man because I like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.”
“Yeah? Well, you ain’t exactly John Wayne either.”
Driving through Santa Monica to Westwood was a surreal experience. It was exactly as we’d left it except the terrain and the colors were all wrong. Everything was bright and vivid, and there were pine trees everywhere. There were very few people on the streets and the sidewalks. I guess, in that sense, the newscasters’d been right: It was like 9/11. I remember that day, and almost everyone was inside, glued to their television set.
“God, this is crazy,” El said. “I recognize the place, but I don’t recognize the place.”
Something occurred to me then. “It could be worse,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I was inside Pan’s pinecone. Remember: It was his virtual reality sex world. So far, I haven’t seen any cherry-bottomed nymphs or well-hung centaurs running around. Nephus was selective in what he chose to bring from that world into this.”
“Cherry-bottomed nymphs you say?”
I smirked at my ex-. “They would eat you alive.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
“No just from hearsay. Apparently, nymphs don’t fuck around when they’re… fucking around.”
“They don’t,” Cal said from the back. “Trust me.”
El and I shared a quick glance. Both of us were suddenly a little afraid of Cal.
I parked the Pontiac on Elijah and Keri’s street and we all got out. As soon as we started walking toward the house, Jack came out of his own little dwelling. He was frantic. “Thank god you’re back,” he said, waving his arms over his head. He was talking to El. “You know those things I think’re happening sometimes, but then they’re really not happening at all?”
“Yeah,” El said patiently.
“I thought this was one of them, but then I went outside, and I touched everything, and it never stopped being a figment of my imagination. I figured what I was thinking happened happened. Either that or I’d finally gone around the bend.”
Elijah checked to make sure Cal had Keri by the hand then he threw his arm around his brother’s shoulders. “You haven’t gone around the bend, but what happened shouldn’t’ve happened. We’re trying to figure out how to fix it.”
“Was it magic?” Jack said, wild-eyed like a child.
“You know what: I’m not going to lie to you. I think it is magic.”
“I knew it,” Jack whispered, nodding to himself.
“Come on to my house until we get it sorted. I might need your help with Keri.”
“Is she sick? She looks strange.”
“No. She’s been drugged. We need to flush it out of her system.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Drugged? By who? Who would drug Keri?”
“Bad guys,” was all Elijah could say.
“If you see these bad guys come around here, would you turn me loose on them? Nobody does bad to me and mine.”
“I know that, Jack.”
El and I made eye contact. Jack might’ve been impaired, but he was also fiercely loyal.
Elijah and I could only watch as Calesius got Keri settled in her bed. The girl still wouldn’t let her father or I anywhere near her. Once she was in and the door was closed, Cal stationed himself outside like a Beefeater at the Tower of London. I had only two memories of Cal prior to that day. One from when he and I had stood together making snarky comments about the other guests at Adrestia’s Sweet Sixteen and one from when he’d been an abandoned, feral creature in the stables of Olympus. I decided to take the wild man out of the equation and focus on the before and after. All those thousands of years ago, Cal’d been nothing more than a pleasant guy to stand around and shoot the shit with. Now he was a full-grown, very serious man. I liked what he’d turned into.
With Keri tucked away, El opened the outer door to his office and ushered me inside. There was an inner door too. I had to open it to get into the room proper. I’m sure the house came that way, but the little vestibule was handy for discouraging people curious about whatever lay inside. That’s how Keri’d remained ignorant about Elijah’s brony-ness. “Well,” I said. “It’s been a trying day. At least it’s cheery in here.” I was ref
erring to the plush ponies tucked into every nook and cranny and the cardboard pony mobiles hanging from the ceiling.
“That’s the spirit!” my host said to me. “Do you maybe wanna watch My Little Pony with me sometime?”
“Not even a little bit,” I said honestly.
He dug his fingers into the seam between the seat of the couch and the back and pulled until the couch folded out to become a bed. “I’ll get you some sheets and blankets in a minute.” He went around the desk. “I want you to stay here as long as you need to. You’re an old friend in need and I’m a friend indeed.” He opened the desk drawer and drew something out of it. It was a framed photograph and he pressed it against his body because he didn’t want me to see it.
“What’s that?” I said.
“Nothing,” he replied. “Nothing at all.” Then he turned and walked out as quickly as he could. I knew it was a photo of he and I together. A photo from a long time ago.
I sat down on the bare bed and picked up the briefcase from where I’d left it on the floor. I turned the top edge toward me and looked at it. Unfortunately, I saw exactly what I was hoping not to see. Two combination locks, one on either side. I called to Calesius in the hallway. “Say… You wouldn’t happen to know the combination to Sebastian’s briefcase, would you?”
“Yeah,” he said, stepping away from Keri’s door and coming into the office. He took the case from my hands, held it against his body with one hand and dropped his elbow onto it with the other arm. The blow was hard and the top popped open as if it’d been violated. I smiled at him, again impressed with his brutish efficiency. He turned around to resume his post. Before he could go, I said to him, “Can I ask you… Are you and Keri having a romance?”