by Abhishek .
“Yes,” Odin nodded. “Each piece has a different characteristic and strength, and resonates with different people with a specific purpose. The beings lost track of the brainstone once it was split into four pieces. This enraged them so much that they launched a monstrous assault on us, the Pandemic.”
Ram and I were gaping at him. All this seemed like an incident out of a holy text, when Man had underestimated God and challenged Him, only to be painfully trodden under his feet like ants under young boys. “You mean that the Pandemic is extra-terrestrial? That it wasn’t natural or due to any biological accident?” Ram asked, astonished.
“No it wasn’t. The Gods launched the Pandemic to halt our scientific ability and to stop development. At once, now that I had succeeded my father to the throne, I devised a contraption to overcome the effects of the Pandemic. Billions staying in one city makes us exceedingly susceptible to contagion. Lacking time and resources, I tried the prototype on myself,” Odin brushed away his white locks and exposed a metallic conduit emerging from the upper end of his spinal cord and plunging back into his skin at the back of his head. The skin around the pipe was singed and excessively wrinkled. Ram looked away, trying to conceal the feeling of revulsion that came out in the form of a spontaneous shudder.
“This contraption worked extremely well. It thickened the connection between both the hemispheres of my brain and surged my intelligence to super-human levels. I was the smartest man alive. However, my right optic nerve deteriorated and my retina fell pray to macular degeneration. This lens,” he pointed at the cone with the red light, “improves my vision but imparts a certain tunnel vision which I detest. Spoils my perspective. Removing it just makes me look uglier with a white eyeball,” he chuckled, with a shrug.
“What about the four pieces of the brainstone?” I asked him.
“One was hidden away in his staff, another he entrusted me with, the third one no one knows where it is kept and the last one is inside that amulet, Mathias,” he said, motioning towards the slight bulge in the shirt under which hung my amulet. “As powerful as it is, it’s almost unstable power is also a source of mutations, but the amulet intelligently protects its bearer from its harmful effects by shielding him.”
I rubbed my amulet instinctively and felt a warm fuzzy feeling course through me, like it had emanated from the amulet itself.
“Once your father removed it and strung it onto your neck, your father was diagnosed with cancer,” Odin’s voice cracked as he controlled his emotions. He blinked and swallowed, as if steeling himself. A few seconds later, he resumed, his old lips lapping against each other among the huge growth of beard. “He hasn’t come back since then. He’s presumably dead. He may be in Mandaa, or in Jargantaam for all I can say. No one knows what happened to him. After the disaster of his pod project, it’s not that he can come back either. You are what’s left of him. You are my kin, Mathias. This is what is true. Your father was the greatest person I have ever known, who used his knowledge for the best of society... and to save you.”
“What about my mother?” I asked him softly.
“I don’t know. I never heard from her after she and my son left Midgard. I am so sorry, Mathias, but I don’t know where she is. I am so sorry.” A tear rolled down the old man’s cheek.
“So... Thor is dead?” I asked him again, unable to believe that my father, a god, could have died.
“No, Mathias. You still do not understand, do you?” He asked and a shiver ran down my spine.
“I do not understand you, grandfather....”
“Thor is not only supposed to be the God of thunder and lightning, as commonly held on Midgard, but also the one who wields the hammer.”
At that instant, Ram and I were both hit by the gale of realisation. Ram remembered his old Norse mythology textbooks while I slowly reached for my amulet.
“You mean....” I started.
“Yes, Mathias, wielder of the hammer. You are now Thor!”
Kapittel 82
Mathias’s story
Asr-Gawa
March 17, 2017, Friday, 2030 hours Earth EET
Assertive sentences have held an enormous amount of power in history. They don’t beat around the bush and have the capability to turn tables in the matter of a few seconds. From the “Let there be light” to the “Final solution to the Jewish question”, these simple statements do an amazing job at turning the world inside out. My breathing escalated slightly. My chest went taut. I shuffled for my inhaler and took in a deep puff. I looked at Odin, then Ram, then back to Odin. I shook my head while rubbing my amulet violently.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I chuckled, but Odin’s face was deadpan. “You’re serious? I still don’t think I fully understand. What does this mean?”
“Nobody’s joking here, Mathias. You heard it right. You are Thor.”
“Okay, fine. I am Thor. But what does this mean? What am I supposed to do? If I am Thor now, who was my father?”
“Connect the dots, Mathias. Ram would probably be better positioned to understand this than you, but I know you’re already aware of it. The Scandinavian religion was a polytheistic, pagan one, in that each God symbolised something. These value systems were the main idea, the God’s physicality itself was simply a construct to show human manifestation.
“When we first made contact with the ancient Vikings, they understood our ideas and values and fashioned human models to embody those ideas. Through the ages, these models became the faces of their unique characteristics. What got lost among the tides of time was the fact that the physical form of the Gods was merely imaginary. What they were based on are the values the Vikings understood from us.”
“Just like Lok Vve!” Ram exclaimed, his eyes wide. “Sentient form is not required. Here in the land of the Gods, technological superiority created the image that we used to worship. The identity obviously got morphed through the ages to what people would like them to be, not what they were!”
“There you go! Even Heimdallr is not a single person! The Heimdallr of now, the Heimdallr who’s your uncle Ram, isn’t the sole Heimdallr. He’s the holder of the post that gives him the status of Heimdallr. All the people before him who were the managers of the bindpath openers, who were responsible for the transfer of matter and energy across dimensions working with our department for inter-dimensional safety, all of them were called Heimdallrs! The same goes for your father, Mathias. And now, for you,” his voice reduced to a whisper.
“So, I am the bearer of the position of Thor because my father passed it down to me.”
“And because the amulet and your consciousness are linked to each other. Just anybody cannot be declared Thor. Consider the amulet as a qualification test, Mathias.”
“Okay. Cool... um, now what? What about my father? Shouldn’t we search for him first? If he’s alive, then he’s still Thor. Correct?”
“No, Mathias. As I said, the amulet and your consciousness are connected. Whoever bears the amulet is Thor. You’re father is gone. For all we know, he may never be found. You’re here and you are, right now, who matters.”
“But I want to find my father! Even if he’s dead, I want to know what happened to him! I am Thor! That should give me some kind of power, right?” I raised my voice, frustrated at the complexity of the situation, trying to get my head straight.
“Being Thor invests certain responsibilities in you. You’re not the archetypical muscular figure with flowing red hair, swinging a hammer and bringing down lightning and thunder. You hold tangible responsibilities. Being the acting Thor, you are the Commander of our Armed forces....”
“Now I understand why Nanna and Heimdallr put everything at stake to bring Mathias to you,” Ram interjected. “Yes, Ram. He’s the successor to this post who they think promises to bring back prosperity and defend us from the rage of our Gods.”
“But I am nothing like that! I have no military experience. I have no clue about military strategy or weaponry or anything like that.
I can build anything and solve graduate level problems in Physics and Mathematics. That’s it!”
“See, that’s the point!” Odin smiled. “You’re different from all the other previous Thors. Your unique growth in that pod did something inexplicable with the development of your brain. All the Thors could connect with the brainstone, but you can use its energy in a way we’ve never seen before! You can shoot beams and draw from the four-dimensional energy because you are different from others! The amulet chose you for a reason, to fulfill a purpose.”
Odin spoke like he revered the amulet as if it were a divine object left behind by the Gods. Even though their Gods were understood by them, the Asurians still acknowledged the superiority of the extra-dimensional beings over them. This laced his otherwise rational explanation with a tang of religious fear. A silence hung in the air.
“What purpose?” I asked him
“We don’t know. We simply don’t know. Let’s see what the future has in store for us. Your role will be understood slowly, but inevitably.”
“Well, then I’ll use the power vested in me to stop the transfer of Makto from Earth,” I declared.
Odin shook his head and grinned. “You know that’s not possible, Mathias. We aren’t an authoritarian regime. You could say we are something like an oligarchy, but if you think the armed forces will rally behind you, you’re mistaken. You think the Asurians will be ready to sacrifice their planet for the survival of another? You’ll have no support.”
“But can’t you use the sand over here to get your silicon? I don’t understand!”
“Mathias, remember how this is another dimension? This is your planet, Earth, but with small changes in the past that caused it to turn out like this. This is merely an alternate reality. Our silicon hardly contains any Makto, but your silicon is extremely enriched with the mineral. Why do you think our first explicit contact with the Mandaas was with the ancient Vikings? It was because several sites around modern-day Norway, Finland and the Danish coast contained pure, unaltered Makto. While we set up base over there to mine these sites, we decided to leave an impression on Mandagaar through these seafaring people.” “But nothing happened to Earth even after you took away the Makto,” Ram pressed.
“Nothing happened because the quantity wasn’t as massive as it is today. Once all the pure form of the mineral had been extracted we didn’t need any more, until we realised a blunder in our calculations. This led to the entire process of accelerating Mandaa history and setting up the Makto extraction plants in different places around your planet.”
“So, you’ve been extracting this thing for quite long now. Wow, this is amazing. Gods or robbers?” I laughed, running my hand through my hair; my brain whirring through a hundred thoughts.
“When I first came here, I must say I had high expectations and for obvious reasons. I expected to see heaven, a utopian civilisation and everything else it entails. But I landed up in a degenerate society. You can’t blame them, Mathias. They really are in a very bad state of affairs.” Ram told me. “The pandemic has really destroyed them. Over that, these control freaks plant a neural lattice in every citizen’s brains to affect their thoughts and keep them in darkness.” Ram clenched his teeth and looked askance at Odin.
“I see my brother has used his magic on you too, Ram,” Odin replied grimly. “He must have told you how in Mandaa, he was worshiped as Vishnu, the preserver, the good one, the one who took the ethically right decisions. But did he tell you how some other people, notably the Greeks, hailed him as the god of death, Hades, how the Nordics themselves turned his organisation into the terrible figure of Loki who gave birth to Hel, the goddess of death?”
“Why was he associated to death?”
“Because the members of Lok Vve and the people living under its regime are dead to us. They’re unregistered civilians without their lattice. So, in a morbid sense, he is the leader of a realm of dead people.” “But that’s immaterial! He’s definitely doing the right thing! Controlling people by planting neural lattices in their heads is the ultimate form of brute manipulation and coercion! You are yourself responsible for stagnating your economy this way....”
“You don’t understand, Ram! The situation here is very, very volatile. We’ve grown out of proportion. If the intelligentsia, affected by the Pandemic, were left alone, their erratic actions would have further jeopardised our society. We’ve grown to the extent we can’t regulate invention, scientific discovery, and economic forces. And if regulation isn’t possible, then control and suppression becomes necessary.” Odin’s eyes darkened slightly. I was astonished for a moment to see this side of my grandfather. The same man who had charged up the cultural revolution of the Renaissance and propagated ideas like humanism, the same man who was responsible for ground breaking scientific discoveries, and was the founding father of one of the most powerful nations on Earth, that man was now throttling advancements in his own society. He was scared. He didn’t want anyone to take any wrong decision and had basically done his job to freeze Asr-Gawa in a societal limbo.
There was a rap on the door. The thundering sound of the mechanism in the door resounded throughout the room before it parted. The light in the corridor shrouded the man standing on the threshold in a dark silhouette. He walked in with a confident gait, his arms spread wide. My eyes adjusted in the lighting and I let out a gasp.
“Hello boys! How have you been doing? Meet our very own reconnaissance drone, Huginn.” Baldr stopped a couple of metres away from them in the centre of the room. Behind him, a dark sleek figure of a large bird flew into the room with the shrill sound of a jet. My fist closed tightly and I sat upright as I realised it was one of the drones that had been assaulting us outside the dome. The robot hovered in the air near Baldr, its jet blast now a deep, powerful gush of hot gases.
“Hilsener, father. I see you’ve already met your grandson.”
“What is it? Something urgent?”
“Oh, nothing much. Just that these guys along with Heimdallr have been wreaking havoc. Heimdallr has already killed an entire squadron and has a couple more trying to hunt him down. He is also accused of having connections with Lok Vve. Urgent? That depends on your point of view!”
“I knew Heimdallr helped these boys, but Lok Vve? Baldr, don’t you be party to people who cast such ridiculous aspersions. They are the most stern and staunch supporters of the system.”
“HAHAHA!” Baldr guffawed, his eyes watering. “Old man, you think you know everything but you really don’t.”
While he was speaking to Odin, I whispered into Ram’s ear that I wanted him to keep Baldr busy for some time. Meanwhile, I started using my projection device to try and tap into the drone’s system.
“This man tried to kill us back on Earth!” Ram interjected suddenly. “He said he was trying to topple the government and needed to recruit us. He’s even working with... what do you call them... Jargantaans! He has an army of those monsters working for him!”
“Blah blah blah... nothing you say holds water, Ram. I expect you were pretty happy to see your father here, weren’t you?”
“Why did you tell me he was dead? What was the point?”
“You were pretty useless to me back then. We sent your father here because he was about to compromise our secret base and would have been put to good use in our wreckage of a society. We didn’t need you, though, after that. I just tried to put you of your scent and isolate Mathias but you kept coming back, eh boy?”
“You monster! You senseless madman!” Ram yelled at him and was about to pounce on him when the cybernetic bird aimed its beak at him threateningly. A small nozzle extended from its belly, its tip rotating and taking aim. Ram sat down slowly and cautiously, still huffing with anger.
“Let me tell you why I’m really here. Consider this a sort of a coup d’état as you call it in Mandagaar. Six squadrons have circled Valhalla and there’s no way to escape. I am pressing charges on you, father, for aiding fugitives and illegal immigrants
who were also responsible for the death of the members of a federal squadron and the destruction of four exterior devices.” He turned to face Ram and me. “And you both are guilty of being responsible for murder, connections with Lok Vve, illegal immigration, and causing the destruction of one of our largest Makto extraction facilities in Mandagaar.”
Odin’s eyes widened. He shot glances at both Ram and me.
“Grandfather, the teleporter in Bor’s craft broke down after Ram accidentally fell through it. I’m sorry we didn’t get the
chance to tell you that. So, we had to go to Egypt and....”
“You destroyed it? Really?”
Both of us nodded slowly.
“I don’t know why we had this discussion. The damage is done. You’ve jeopardised every Asurian’s existence already. Well done, the two of you!”
Three men in dark suits approached them, each with five guards marching behind them. Just before we were escorted outside, I smiled softly as the process was complete. I was inside the cybernetic. As soon as we exited Valhalla, I launched Huginn into action. It sprayed anesthetic fluid on the three guards around me, causing them to collapse on the ground like piles of useless meat. I tried to make it spray the fluid on the other guards as well, but the mechanism got jammed.
“Mathias, RUN! WE’LL BE FINE! RUN!” Ram yelled. I hesitated for a bit as I saw my grandfather and Ram in the hands of Baldr, before I broke into a sprint. The guards fired grey projectiles from their vambraces. Instantly, I pressed a button that made Huginn swing in and deflect the projectiles. I ran so hard that my feet jarred, but I kept running. I crossed the border of Valhalla’s compound within the few seconds Huginn gave me, protecting me from all the squadrons.