by Eirik Gumeny
“Oh, so you know,” said Jesus, leaning over and kissing his father’s bald head.
“Yes,” said Amen-Ra.
“Any chance you could, y’know, fix this?”
“I’m retired, son.”
“So are Thor and Vicky, but they’re still out there, trying.”
“Well, Thor has never exactly had the strongest convictions, now has he?”
“The planet’s kinda ... doomed, Dad.”
“It’s been doomed before.”
“I know, but –”
“Humanity, penguinkind, the sasquatches and the merfolk and all the rest who have tried this nonsense before ...” Ra waved his hand dismissively. “No one is going to learn anything if we keep interfering, if we keep saving them from themselves.”
“Yeah, I remember,” growled Jesus Christ, instinctively pulling his hands together, running a thumb across the scar on the opposite palm. “But what happened to the guy that wanted to smite Walt Sidney for ruining his business?”
“That was personal,” rumbled the creator of the universe.
“And this isn’t?” argued his son, pointing at the television. Jim Cantore was throwing various-sized fruit into an industrial garbage disposal as he explained the impending end of everything.
Amen-Ra gave a small shrug. “The planet has had a good run. And you can’t tell me humanity doesn’t deserve this, at least a little.” He patted the armchair next to him. “Now, sit down. I feel like we don’t talk anymore. How’s your brother? Retired, you said? When did that happen?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
See You Space Cowboy ...
Over the next forty-eight hours, Judy Lin and the scientists at Consolidated Phukital compiled and crunched every number they could find, then rented out the newly refurbished George R. R. Martin’s Rod Serling Memorial Amazon Mountain Dew Virgin Galactic Spaceport New Springsteen in southern Las Máquinas, then hauled all their crap across the country to get things set up, then set things up.
Thor Odinson, meanwhile, spent the vast majority of the time napping – or, as he preferred to call it, “saving his strength.”
Eventually – after waking the thunder god up with a fire hose to the face – Thor and the rocket were prepped for launch, and the final calculations were made.
“Now, remember,” explained Judy, standing behind a bank of computers in the control room and speaking into the intercom, “you need to –”
“Got it,” replied Thor, his image on the monitors before the scientist.
“I feel like you should repeat it back to me, just to be sure.”
“Bomb go in the hole, go boom.”
“That is ... actually correct, somehow.” She pulled her fingers off the intercom button. “You ever feel like maybe he’s actually the smartest one of all of us?”
“No,” said Queen Victoria XXX, standing behind her.
The scientist watched a sea of numbers flood her screens, graphs rising and falling, the math rearranging itself into something that meant something to her. She looked up, toward all the other scientists sitting at all the other screens across the control room. They all had their thumbs in the air.
“All right,” said Judy, “here we go.” She pressed the intercom again. “You ready, Thor? The countdown begins ... Now.
“10 ...
“9 ...
“8 ...
“7 ...
“6 ...
“5 ...
“4 ...”
“Wait,” he said, “what if I need to –”
The Norseman’s almost certainly poop-related question remained unanswered. Thor Odinson roared upward through the air, clutching the sides of the Consolidated Phukital-branded single-stage-to-orbit rocket like it was his girlfriend’s waist, his flannel shirt fluttering and turning to strands as he raced to the uppermost reaches of the planet’s atmosphere.
“This is so fucking awesome!” screamed the thunder god into the headset inside his helmet.
“There really should have been a better way to get him on that rocket,” said Queen Victoria XXX, squinting and shaking her head a little.
“We gave him handles,” explained the scientist.
“What about a spacesuit?”
“We were pressed for time,” said Judy nonchalantly. “But we’re not now. It’s gonna take him, like, hours to get up there. Want to go get lunch?”
The queen shrugged. “Yeah, all right.”
***
The dark-skinned royal replica stood at the hot bar, waiting for her mango coconut tofu bowl. She watched with increasing curiosity as the tiny scientist carried her plate from the salad bar to the sundae bar and began dumping heaping spoonfuls of gummi bears over her greens.
The queen raised an eyebrow.
“What?” asked the other woman, genuinely confused.
***
Judy Lin and Queen Victoria XXX watched on the monitor as a slightly roasted, free-floating – and completely nude, save for his helmet – thunder god gingerly tossed the quantum core toward the black hole, pushing himself backwards ever so slightly, his splotchy red body silhouetted against the utter darkness.
The hole, perfectly circular and perfectly pitch, was surrounded by a shimmering, ethereal gash, the interdimensional rift Thor had created years earlier when he cracked the sky. Dust and strands of barely perceptible radiation were leaking from the latter into the former, circling the black hole in dim, coruscating color.
The end result was mesmerizing, beautiful.
Thor, Queen Victoria XXX, Judy, the other scientists, they were all seeing something no woman or man – or god – had ever seen before, or ever would again.
“It looks like a vagina,” said Thor.
“Oh, hey, it does,” replied Judy.
The literal time bomb he had just chucked into the ether, having finally drifted close enough, began pulling and stretching toward the singularity at the center of the black hole. Several alarms started beeping in the control room.
“OK, do your thing, Thor,” said the scientist, her hand on the intercom.
The Norse God of Thunder gave the camera a wink and a finger-gun, then pointed the finger toward the bomb and fired. Funneling an insane amount of electricity through himself, he charged the detonator on the device, the screens in the control room crackling and distorting as lightning danced and snapped.
The remote-controlled camera atop the rocket, furiously refocusing, panned away from the god. The bomb was glowing slightly, spikes of light still shooting out intermittently, then more and more and –
The quantum core exploded, a brilliant flash followed by an ever-expanding ball of white fire. The equipment in the control room went nuts, sensors glowing red, monitors glowing white. Then the entire system shut off and rebooted.
After a moment, the video feed came back online, flickering.
The black hole was still there.
“Why is the black hole still there?” asked Queen Victoria XXX.
Thor said something through his headset, but neither of the women could hear him. Nor could anyone else in the control room, for that matter.
Judy looked around, past scientists choking on their coffee, typing furiously, or slapping their monitors. Then, finding what she wanted, the woman without the burlap sack over her head rushed down the aisle to an empty computer station, this one linked to a camera pointed at the launch prep area.
“Crap,” she said, sinking into the chair.
“What?” asked the cloned queen.
The scientist maximized a window in the corner of the screen.
“What? What am I looking – Ohhh fuckballs.”
Queen Victoria XXX could see that the clearly-labeled time-quickening quantum core was still sitting on the table. She sank down in the chair next to Judy.
The two sat there solemnly for the better part of ten minutes – although, thanks to a black hole-induced time jump, it felt a lot more like thirty seconds.
“I have a lot of questions a
bout how that happened,” the clone eventually said, “but, first and foremost, what the fuck did he actually explode?”
“Best guess,” said Judy, “one of the hydrogen bombs.”
“Why –” She furrowed her brow. “Wouldn’t that make the black hole bigger?”
“Yep.”
“Fuuuuuuck,” said Queen Victoria XXX, leaning into her chair so hard she nearly toppled backward.
“Pretty much.”
“Wait,” said the queen, bouncing forward again. “Can’t we just send the right bomb up to him?”
“Not with a black hole that size, sister. Plus he’s up there with our only rocket.”
“So, fuck?”
“Fuck.”
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.”
Meanwhile, in outer space ...
“Don’t worry,” Thor shouted into his headset, “I got this!”
Closing his eyes and straining every part of himself – every part – the Norse God of Thunder created and called lightning from the vast nothingness surrounding him, stealing energy from Earth’s thermosphere, from the exosphere, siphoning signals from several satellites, changing the electromagnetic fields of Mars permanently, and even pulling what he could from the hearts of nearby stars.
A ball of electricity exploded around him, a hundred times bigger than a hundred hydrogen bombs, bigger than the blast that killed the dinosaurs. Everything went so white that calling it white was in insult to the color white.
Then it went back to being space.
Slowly, exhaustedly, the burly blonde man, floating gently in a direction he couldn’t quite pin down, opened his eyes.
The massive black void had only gotten even more massive and voidier, a twisting rope of Smurf blue swirling around the edges now, all that was left of the interdimensional rift that the singularity had swallowed wholesale.
“That’s probably not good.”
A chunk of space debris whizzed by Thor’s head, part of a satellite he had inadvertently blown up, followed by a few more slabs of interstellar shrapnel. The Consolidated Phukital rocket, his return ride, was nowhere to be seen, either exploded or eaten by the black hole. The thunder god’s amiable backwards drift, meanwhile, stopped being backwards and stopped being so amiable. He could feel his leg hairs being yanked out one by one, his regular hairs, his beard, being pulled forward toward the singularity.
“I, uh, I think I want to come home now,” he said, a little frantically.
There was no response.
“Hello?” He tapped his helmet.
“Anyone?”
CHAPTER NINE
In the Superunknown
Thor Odinson, Norse God of Thunder, mightiest of the Aesir and sworn protector of Asgard, was not one for introspection. His existence consisted almost exclusively of fighting and fucking and discovering brand new levels of intoxication. Deep thinking and the contemplation of the self were so far from his wheelhouse that he’d need a map to find them – and he wasn’t exactly one for maps either. But, now, floating impotently through space, hundreds of miles from his friends, from food and porn and all his stuff, inching inexorably closer to a superpowered black hole, the naked god suddenly found himself introspecting like a motherfucker.
Well, he thought, shit.
I guess this is it. I guess this is how I’m going out: Swallowed by a hole in the universe – and not the good kind of swallowed or the good kind of hole. Not bleeding out after slaying Jörmungandr, not punching that stupid sea serpent in his stupid face and bringing on Ragnarok and taking everyone else with me. Not in a blaze of glory on the lava fields of Múspellsheimr; not in Asgard; not in Vanaheimr or Niflheimr, but fucking Midgard, lamest of the Nine Worlds. And not even on frigging Midgard, but in the infinite ball of nothing surrounding it.
I mean, who does that? Who layers their sky like a frigging Jell-O cake? Atmosphere, smatmosphere. Either have air or don’t, make up your mind.
The thunder god could feel himself turning, could feel his scrotum being tugged, and ungently at that.
I should’ve known this was going to happen, he thought.
Well, not this, specifically, he continued thinking, obviously. But, y’know, something equally as stupid and pointless.
From the second I crashed into that idiot swamp, I should’ve known that I was doomed. No powers, none, and the first guy I meet is a donut maker, the first guy I meet in a reality where I can get fat is fucking Ali, a guy who makes tiny frosted rings of fried fucking dough for a living. And then pancakes and regular cakes and then I get a job where all I do is sit on my ass eating delicious, delicious crap and taking orders from some half-robot and listening to fucking customers whine about their fucking pillows.
Honestly, If I hadn’t ‘ve already visited Hel, I woulda said this was it.
But the worst part? The craziest part? Somewhere along the way, I started caring.
About Catrina and Ali, about Charlie and Vicky and Timmy and Bo, and even Mark and Billy sometimes.
That’s where I really fucked up.
Thor rotated around, could see the Earth clearly before him: blue and green and brown and scarred almost beyond recognition. But still there, still spinning. Still teeming with life, that life teeming with other life, all of it, all the way down, fighting to keep on living. Fucking, to keep on existing. And discovering brand new ways of getting intoxicated to do the other two things.
I’m not supposed to love this stupid fucking planet.
This isn’t supposed to be my home.
I’m not supposed to care about the people on it, not supposed to want to help them.
But it is and I do and everything is fucked. Because of me. Because I tried to help.
Me. Thor, Odin’s Son, God of Motherfucking Thunder.
What the fuck good have I actually done?
What the fuck good is a god that can’t save the people he loves?
The glass of the thunder god’s helmet cracked like a rupturing fault line, the near-vacuum of lower space sucking out the oxygen.
Great, he thought, and now my face is cold.
Fuck.
Fuuuck.
Maybe this is how it’s supposed to end.
Maybe this is how it needs to end.
The Norseman rotated again, the Earth before him again. His own face was reflected back at him on the helmet’s cracked glass.
And maybe I’m all right with that?
A sense of peace washed over the thunder god, a strange calming presence he couldn’t ever remember feeling before. His body relaxed. He could feel the gravity of the black hole beckoning to him, could feel himself drifting inevitably closer.
Then Thor farted.
The average fart exits the average butthole at approximately one meter per second, which, according to Newtonian law, should propel the average human forward, at least a little. Factor in pants, decency, and Earth’s gravity, however, and that momentum is, for all intents and purposes, negated.
Even with gravity and proper interstellar outerwear removed from the equation – and there is one, look it up – the average astronaut would need several lifetimes to fart themselves up to a decent speed.
But Thor was no average astronaut.
And neither was his butthole.
The thunder god angled his anus as best he could, farting his way through the galaxy’s grossest K-turn and maneuvering himself, his trajectory, toward the planet Earth. Then, the massive orb floating directly over his head, the Norse God of Thunder thundered forward, passing gas through his ass in fat blasts as fast as he could amass them.
With each fart, the planet before him grew bigger and bigger. Flexing his insides, crimping and contracting, Thor eked out every last gasp of colonic wind within him, soaring through the stars on his own flatulence, increasingly desperate for gravity to grab hold of him and take him home.
And then it did.
Hard.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc–”
Thor Odinson landed face-first in the middle of the Las Máquinas desert, hitting the ground at well over the speed of sound.
“Isn’t this ... supposed to happen in water?” he asked, pulling himself out of the second massive hole he’d created that day. Resting with his arms over the rim, the dust slowly settling around him, the burly, bearded blonde man could see Queen Victoria XXX and Judy Lin hopping from a Consolidated Phukital van and rushing toward him.
“Any luck?” asked the queen, grabbing his hand and pulling him to ground. “What’s going on up there?”
“We lost all of our equipment,” added Judy.
“Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s bad,” explained Thor. “Like, real bad.”
“How big is the hole?”
“Big,” the Norseman explained flatly. The lack of a “your mom” joke spoke volumes.
Queen Victoria XXX wobbled a little, then slumped to the ground.
“What now?” she asked, her voice empty.
“I ... I don’t know,” said Judy, shaking her head. “If we knew more about what kind of bomb the penguins built, maybe ...” She shrugged her shoulders weakly.
“I’m fine, by the way,” said Thor, clearing the dirt and dust from his charred skin.
“OK, but ... how?” asked the queen, continuing to ignore her friend.
“I’ve got an idea,” said the scientist.
CHAPTER TEN
I Wanted to Call It the Dick Cheney Memorial Interrogation Room, But I Already Used That Joke for Satan’s Conference Room Back in High Voltage
Judy Lin exited the interrogation room covered in blood and tiny black feathers.