99 Gods: Odysseia

by Randall Farmer

  Portland sighed. “Boise and Montreal didn’t stand a chance against you, did they?”

  “Of course not. We’re harmless.”

  “Harmless?” Portland said, frowning. “I can read the changes in their Missions from here. In addition, your ability to sneak into places such as this is a blatant warning that people shouldn’t mess with you. I’m a bit put out.”

  “Uh huh,” Ken said, in a ‘goody for you’ voice. No chairs appeared, so Uffie motioned and they all gathered around Portland’s desk, and sat in a circle. As always, they had to press their point to get their way. “We are going to have this conversation.”

  “Okay,” Portland said. She sighed, removed her desk and chairs from reality, and sat down to join their circle. Nessa smiled. Portland didn’t. “Tell me, what happened between your group and Akron?”

  “We tried to talk to her, but she refused to listen,” Ken said.

  “You could have forced her.”

  “Yes,” Diana said, finally finding her voice. “Of course.” Nessa stopped prodding her and Diana relaxed a bit.

  “You didn’t push her as much as you’re pushing me. Why?”

  “My call,” Diana said. “Far too cruel to do so. We want to win her to the side of us mortals, not humiliate her.”

  “So if I vanished – teleported away, as I could – you would stop pestering me?”

  “You’re different. You would need to evade us several times before we gave up,” Nessa said. “Then I’d go in alone, for my sort of conversation.” She tapped the side of her head.

  Portland nodded. “Some of us would like to think we retain a modicum of free will on many subjects, not the least of which is whether or not to talk to you. You disagree?”

  “I’m stepping on your plans,” Nessa said. “This is necessary. Now quit being such a stick and give me a hug.”

  “…and the truth of the matter is, the Divine Compact is only a first step. To remain human you need much more humanity,” Nessa said. She watched Uffie and Diana fall in and out of God-worship while she and Portland chatted. They needed to exert most of their free will to maintain their objectivity. Portland had a hell of a long way to go before she retrieved her lost humanity.

  Diana radiated ‘I need to puke’ vibes. This stumped Nessa until she recalled Diana’s reactions around certain types of people, such as Dave and Persona. At times, Diana’s ability to read the future overwhelmed her.

  “I figured this out myself,” Portland said. “That’s why I’m working with the system more.”

  “Meaning you bartered your way into your current lair,” Uffie said. “But you didn’t pay for this place with money.”

  “Money?”

  “Money. What humans use, remember?” Ken said.

  Portland shrugged.

  “The way your place is set up reeks of inhuman,” Uffie said. “I mean, who besides a God can trivially dig an underground stronghold out of granite? The architectural plan’s also inhuman. All corridors lead to your office, the decorating’s skewed…everything’s all wrong.”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “Give up on the 99 God style shortcuts,” Nessa said. “All of them.”

  “But why? Are appearances so important?”

  “You, with your background, have to ask?” Nessa said. “You were a Vice Principal in charge of career counseling. How often did you need to tell students about proper clothing and grooming?”

  Portland sighed. “But…”

  “But nothing,” Diana said. “All you Gods seem to have this big blind spot that sits right where the Angelic Host said ‘you have the moral right to do as you so choose’. This right’s colored all your decisions. Badly.” She paused. “The City of God and its ills come directly from this failure.”

  Someone had spent too long listening to Boise. From listening to Boise and Diana chatter, Nessa knew they were two podded peas or littermates or something allegorically metaphorical. Or was that metaphorically allegorical?

  “You’re saying that to retain my humanity I need to choose not to be a God? But I am a God,” Portland said. “You’re asking me to live a lie.”

  “It’s not so simple, and you know it,” Nessa said.

  “It’s time,” Diana said. Nessa nodded, letting Diana lead them as usual. With Boise and Montreal, they had used persuasion. Portland didn’t deserve such kindness.

  Nessa, already insinuated deep in Portland’s mind, got Portland to create projections for all of them. Nessa sent.

  Portland’s projection glowered at them as she realized that she couldn’t stop the Telepaths if they helped her. “Our first stop is the Rancho Cucamonga refugee camp,” Ken said. Working as one, they guided their projections there. Portland’s projections moved far quicker than any of the other Gods, and they arrived in a minute. “See this child? When was the last time you saw someone with rickets in America?” He continued to catalog the horrors of the refugee camp, a refugee camp run by Portland’s people. “I’m not blaming you individually. Despite your best efforts, you’re overwhelmed.” Next stop, San Diego, in Santa Fe’s territory. Not to a refugee camp, but to normal urban life. “Note the price of drinking water’s up to $6.20 a gallon, and people are defecating in the street to avoid paying the dollar a flush tax that the city imposed.”

  Ken’s tour, with curt Uffie and Diana comments tossed in, went on for almost a half hour before Portland tossed in the expected high-decibel “Enough!” comment. Nessa didn’t interfere before then, willing to let those with more empathy for the masses than she possessed teach this lesson.

  “Uh huh,” Nessa said. “Exactly what all these millions of people are thinking about you and the other Gods. Enough! Oh, along with ‘Please, God, save us from these so-called gods’ and things far less polite. I hear them, and their prayers horrify me.”

  “I hear their prayers as well and I’m helping as best I can,” Portland said. “I can’t solve all the problems the other Gods are creating, though, and things aren’t as bad as you think.”

  “Sure they are,” Ken said.

  Portland snorted. She yanked the control over their projections out of Nessa’s grasp – grumble grumble grumble Portland could weasel her way around anything – and they flashed elsewhere, to a pre-existing Portland projection who had summoned in their projections. Uffie and Diana’s projections vomited, and Nessa, peeved at Portland’s overwhelming Godly crap trick, turned her skin fluorescent green in silent protest.

  “This is Accra, Ghana. I’m putting up illusions showing what this place looked like before the coming of the 99 Gods,” Portland said. Portland’s illusions included scrolling numbers filled with dense economic data Nessa wished she had Elorie or Dana to interpret for her. Portland led them, quickly, up and down what she called the Gold Coast section of Africa. Nessa figured out Portland’s point about ten minutes into their forced march.

  “Things are better,” Nessa said. “Well, away from the cities its better. Inside the cities, life seems the same. I think. Based on your numbers and your illusion pictures.” Portland always had to one-up people who scored points off her.

  “Life is a lot better,” Portland said. “No more war. No more crop failures, an easy thing for a Territorial God to fix. Banditry still exists, but it’s been greatly reduced. I could go on like this for hours. What you experience in America isn’t everything.”

  “This is a function of population density,” Uffie said. “It’s the same in the United States: the rural areas and small towns aren’t worse, just the big cities. Here, where things were horrific to start with, the cities stayed the same and the rural areas got better. I’m not willing to give up on our argument, though, unless you’re saying that the Western civilization’s standard of living needs to fall back to the levels we’ve seen here.” Uffie smiled. “In which case I’ve got a different argument: too much of the developing world’s economies are based on commodity exports to the developed world, and this problem will
trickle its way to here as well. The gains here are short term and will not last.”

  Oooh. Nessa just loved academics and their kick-ass wiles.

  “I’m not arguing against what you showed me, just that your argument wasn’t complete,” Portland said. “The changes are far more complicated than your emotional demonstration implies. I know of several more counter-examples, on both sides of the argument. For instance, though this would be dangerous, I could project us to rural southern China, where things didn’t improve. Or to northern South America, which doesn’t follow either of these rules, as the inner cities and outer rural areas are inflamed, but the suburbs and near-suburb rural areas are booming.”

  She popped them back to their real bodies fast enough to make Nessa’s head spin. “Your demonstration proves nothing,” Portland said.

  Ken shook his head. “Take a peek at your Mission again, Portland,” Ken said. “You can’t argue away the first hand effect of experiencing refugee camps in your own Territory.”

  Portland paused, licked her lips and turned to Nessa, avoiding Ken’s comment entirely, tacitly admitting his point. “You’re sitting on something, Nessa. Something you think is part of the solution.”

  Nessa nodded. “There’s a simple way for you Gods to make a statement about your humanity, especially you Territorial Gods. Give up on the title the Host gave you. Take a human name. This would be a start, a big start.”

  Portland’s eyebrows raised. “If this is what you’re pushing, you’re not being effective.”

  “There’s a Mission problem involved,” Nessa said. “Whichever God goes first, publicly, is stating ‘I’m a leader of the Gods’. Being boss God is too much grief for the Gods we’ve talked to so far.”

  “You’re mistaking me for someone else.”

  “Tell me…”

  “No,” Portland said. She crossed her arms and frowned. “You’re right. I can do this and lead again. But, dear daughter, I’m not going against both the Host and the City of God. I learned my lesson. I’ve been slapped down too many times.”

  “How do you know the Host will object?” Diana said, forceful. Portland glared at her. Diana didn’t back down. “Have they said so?” Nessa smiled. Diana had finally found her Portland God-legs.

  “Not in so many words. They did make an incredible show of things, though, during the Apotheosis, when they presented us with our names.”

  A light bulb went off in Nessa’s head. “Let me guess,” she said. She almost lost her train of thought when Portland turned to glare at her, threatened. Nessa smiled at the compliment. “When they gave you your names they also gave you your designation as a Territorial, Practical or Ideological God and set your Missions.”

  Portland nodded. “You’re correct.” Nessa just smiled. She didn’t need to explain further, not to Portland. “Well, there’s only one way to find out whether the titled name or the designations of class and Mission held the importance. I’ll ask.”

  Diana and Uffie looked at each other and took a step back, ‘here we go again’ expressions on their faces. Well, Nessa had warned them that Portland did things like this with no notice.

  Portland went right to the task, working her willpower in a way tangible even to Nessa. Reality bent and a hole opened up in space to reveal an achingly bright place. A single being stepped through, a man. They all stood.

  “Dominick,” Portland said.

  The leader of the Host. No, Portland didn’t start small. Nessa wondered if she could take the head Angel, who was different from the other Host members. Competition was healthy, or so she thought.

  Or was that a Ken thought? Oh, she missed Dave and Elorie’s so much.

  “Portland. What can I do for you today?” His arch-highness Dominick dressed like a medieval monk and spoke with almost a plummy English royal magnificence. Nessa looked the dude over, remembering what happened the last time she peered inside one of the Angelic Host. She figured she had the ‘go to God’ trick stopped. All this would take…

  Ken pointedly stepped on her foot. Ouch! She glanced at her and Ken’s feet, and found a faint indigo glow around them. She glanced over to Diana and found her covered in the same indigo glow, only brighter. Diana may have ditched the Indigo group-family, but she hadn’t ditched the Godslayer. Diana sent.

 

  She mentally heard Diana sigh, dramatically and theatrically.

  Nessa said, rising to the challenge. This sounded like a lot of fun, actually.

  Ken stepped on her foot, again. Nessa growled.

  “I seek a clarification,” Portland said. “Would you object if I changed my name?”

  “Your name ties you to your Territory. Taking on a new name redefines what Territory you have.”

  “What about a purely human name, such as the one I had before Apotheosis?” Portland asked.

  Nessa wiggled her foot out from under Ken’s and glared at him. He glanced at the Angel, and then shook his head. She sighed. Nobody ever wanted her to have any fun!

  “You state an entirely different question. Taking a purely human name isn’t wrong, just different. You would be making a clear statement regarding the question of the dissimilarity between humanity and the 99 Gods. You must be careful about how you take and proclaim this name, because if you renounce the Territory, other Gods can claim what you perceive is yours.”

  Whatever. The Angel put on a show, attempting to intimidate the mortals. Nessa didn’t feel intimidated, she felt like puncturing his haughtiness balloon.

  Portland sat up straight, eyes open, and beamed at the Angel. “That is a quite interesting revelation. Thank you, Dominick.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No. Dominick, do you acknowledge Nessa, Ken, Uffie and Diana and all they stand for?”

  Nessa beamed at the boss Angel. Here I am! Perhaps she could get him to activate her self-defense Mission.

  The other three didn’t have quite the same reaction. Diana, for one, was defiant.

  “They are independent actors, beholden to the entities you refer to as the ‘Ha-qodeshim’ and to another interloper, one only Columbia, Akron and Persona, among the Gods, has met. They are no longer under our anathema. I stand by the agreement.” Dominick paused. “Now, is that all?”

  Nessa wasn’t sure which she found worse, Dominick’s Angelic hauteur or Portland’s ‘no need to explain’ out of the blue question. She wanted to rattle through Portland’s mind and straighten her out.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Dominick stepped back into his world of aching light; he vanished. Portland closed the portal.

  “Wow. How could anyone who witnessed this ever think the Angelic Host wasn’t Holy?” Uffie said.

  “You don’t know that half of it,” Diana said, exasperated.

  “Caution, my new friends,” Portland said. “The Host doesn’t appear in the same way to each of the 99 Gods; there’s glamour and illusion at work. Dominick’s appearance may be only to meet my expectations. Doubt this, as the Host has far too much free will for my expectations. I still don’t know their game. I don’t trust them.”

  I don’t trust them, Sam I Am, Nessa finished. Portland would be great on children’s television.

  Portland fixed her gaze on Diana. “Spill.”

  Diana shook her head. “I’m not part of the Indigo leadership team; I went independent fifteen years ago. The decision you want me to make isn’t mine to make.”

&
nbsp; “You are the first of the Indigo group who’s revealed themselves to me, but not the first I’ve met,” Portland said. “This speaks of lack of trust and enmity.”

  “This speaks of well-justified fear and terror,” Diana said.

  “Your appearance does not match your true age,” Portland said. “Yet you are not magical or supernatural in any sense of the word. On the other hand, you can do magic of a sort, and your mind can see the future. You are a contradiction.”

  “Yes, I am,” Diana said. “We all are.” Meaning the Indigo group, who Nessa kept running into often enough to remember. “Unlike the rest of you, we represent nothing more than the mildly unnatural or supernormal skills available to all humans. Our ancestors, the ones who first learned of these tricks, were the innumerable tribal holy men and women before the time of agriculture. What we do, and have always done, is listen.” She took a deep breath. “I am authorized to teach our skills to you Gods. Boise declined, as did Orlando. Columbia, however, did not.”

  “I will take this under advisement,” Portland said.

  “You need to talk to Orlando and Columbia,” Ken said.

  “Seconded,” Uffie said.

  Portland frowned at Uffie. “You’re not a Telepath, Psychic or Mindbound, though you do shield your mind, which should be impossible. You’re the same as Diana at one level, and not at a different level.”

  “I’m a scholar, Portland,” Uffie said. “That’s all there is to know.”

  “Oh?” Portland laughed. “You were worth rescuing, Uffie. Someday soon you’re going to do me a favor.”

  “Do we need a Divine Compact contract on this?”

  “No, oh absurdly cheeky one.” Portland sighed and looked at Nessa. “Alt’s recruits were much easier to deal with, daughter, I hope you understand.”

  “No, they aren’t, they were just better behaved around you,” Nessa said. “We don’t have that luxury. So, Mom, are yah gonna do it, or am I gonna have to break out the hammer and tongs?”

  “The name? Yes, I am,” Portland said. “My name’s Patricia Solis. Patricia Solis, God of the Portland Territory.”