99 Gods: Odysseia Read online

  “If you don’t have plans, then do you have goals, ideas, wants or desires?” Uffie said.

  “Besides the obvious,” Nessa said, eyes flicking to Lydia.

  Bob reddened and shrugged. Dana attempted to ignore the interplay, easier now after her embarrassing moments with Dave. He smelled so nice…

  Nessa tapped her fingernails on her chair arm. “Philosophies? Ethical standards? Anything?”

  “Well sure,” Bob said. “I believe the key to coping with the 99 Gods, including myself, is modern human civilization. Each God’s opinion about modern civilization is what defines who they are for and against. I like modern civilization. Other Gods don’t. By the way, I’m not so sure y’all should be considering Betrayer an enemy just because of her tacky games. She’s pro-modern civilization, and her predilections could be a help.”

  “What would it say about us if we allied with her?” Uffie said.

  Bob shrugged. “I’m not saying you have to ally with her. I just think you’re wrong to consider her an enemy.”

  Dana wondered what Orlando thought of this, and turned to look at him. Orlando sat, calm, hands in his lap, attempting to be as unobtrusive as an in-the-flesh Territorial God could be. He smiled at her, met her gaze and held it. Dana found it hard to turn away from the concern on Orlando’s face.

  “Okay,” Uffie said. “What about…”

  “Another thing along those lines,” Bob said. “Uh, I also think it’s wrong to lord it over people as a God.”

  “With an attitude like that, you’re going to end up being called a Living Saint,” Diana said, waspish and tense.

  Bob shook his head. “I am what I am. Why should I be anything more than what I am? Why should I want to be anything more?”

  “What if some group of bozos starts to worship you?” Uffie said, leaning forward and waving an index finger at Bob.

  Uffie’s tone of voice pried Dana’s eyes off Orlando.

  “Ignore them,” Bob said, a bit put out by Uffie for even having to ask the question. “Use my willpower to prevent a connection. Without a connection, they’re less likely to get any miraculous help than those who just know who I am and ask politely.”

  “I’d like to know how you spend your time,” Ken said. “Learning, studying, something else?”

  “Your question is a bit personal.”

  “You’re the one who wants our help,” Ken said.

  Bob sighed, a bit theatrical, in Dana’s opinion. “Okay. There’s Foreverfight and Earth Too. Do you know what they are?”

  Ken shook his head, but Dave nodded. “Foreverfight’s a battle MMP game while Earth Too’s, um, an alternate Earth simulation,” Dave said, still awkward in the presence of the Gods. “I’ve played both.” Dave’s knowledge didn’t surprise Dana. He had all the eagerness and curiosity and the energy to have learned about all sorts of similar obscure things.

  “Kewl,” Bob said. “I’m into a bunch of other online communities, too. That’s how I met S’up.” Bob grinned and leaned forward; Dana anticipated a teen ego moment about to show. “You know, I’ve managed to find a way to integrate my divine willpower into both games. Foreverfight for potential soldiers to help defend me, Earth Too for my equivalent of Dubuque’s sick worshipper community. To me, they’re more than just amusement, they’re resources.”

  Dave’s eyes widened, as did Orlando’s and Ken’s. Dana shook her head and Dave took the moment to nudge Dana’s shoulder to get her attention. To Dana’s surprise, he handed Alana to her.

  Dana didn’t trust the ‘holding-the-baby’ business, but after a moment, Alana settled into her arms. The infant’s eyes flickered open for a bare moment. Dana smiled, happy. Alana then closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

  “Continue, please,” Dave said, back to being leader-intense. He had broken through his Territorial God bogglement, at least with respect to Bob.

  “Think connections through the game avatars. The connection is less intense than in person, but far more intense than through television or words on the internet because of the interactivity,” Bob said. “You understand its importance?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “The big problem, sir, is how to avoid ending up with a bunch of gimped twinks,” S’up said.

  Dana frowned. She hadn’t made much headway with Bob to speak English rather than gamer lingo, but S’up’s presence made her job almost impossible.

  Orlando nodded. He understood, the rat bastard. “I want to learn about how you’re doing this, Bob,” Orlando said. “I think this is...”

  “Stop,” Elorie said, grabbing Orlando’s eyes, and if Dana guessed right, playing on their own likely annoying attraction to each other. “Before you go do the nerdy techie thing, Orlando, hold on a sec. Dave? Yoo hoo. What Bob’s doing here fits with the idea we were banging around last night. You need to explain our screwy idea to everyone else.”

  Dave nodded at his wife’s snipe. “Bob, you’re doing exactly the right thing with those games. One of the problems we have with the 99 Gods is how poorly they’ve integrated into normal society. Even the best tend to use divine shortcuts instead of working the system. You’re working the system in a human manner by choice. We think this is both good and necessary.”

  Elorie’s and Orlando’s actions pointed out another hurdle for her. Not only did she have to cope with her own interest in Dave, she had to cope with Elorie and Orlando making goo-goo eyes at each other. Willpower Immune and God matched nearly as well as a Grade 1 Supported and a God, if not better.

  Bob shrugged. “It’s not hard to dispense help, real world and game world, if you think about the procedures correctly, using the games as an information conduit. This is also a more direct benefit to me and my Mission, and less tacky than using Supported.” He took a deep breath. “Why bother with prayers and the classical religious slash mental interface when a better technology is just sitting there waiting to be used?”

  When none of the others leapt down Bob’s throat at what he said, he relaxed and looked pleased. Dana wondered what went through Orlando’s mind. Did he understand the emotional turmoil Dave and Elorie brought into their lives? Did she have to tell Orlando? The primal ‘ewww’ reaction at the concept brought her up short.

  “So, you’re Mission-happy, too?” Nessa said, after a moment of contemplation.

  “No more than you are, oh great Nessa, Daughter of Light,” Bob said. Nessa, for a second, looked ready to pop her cork, until she began to giggle. “Mission is built into everyone with power, and we can’t ignore what appears to be a natural law. If we do, we end up like Miami.” He paused. “You do realize this is what happened to him, don’t you?” The mortals all shook their heads. “Miami didn’t die because he lost a physical fight, he died because he had betrayed his own Mission so many times there wasn’t anything left of him except his battle prowess.”

  Dana made a face. Bob regularly came up with this sort of thing, which she always had a hard time accepting. His mind lived in such a different place than where the other Gods lived, like he and they weren’t at all the same. She kept trying to nudge him toward the established God viewpoints. Futile.

  For a moment, Dana’s mind wandered on to other subjects. She explored the idea of getting someone else to clue Orlando in about the deeper nuances involved in the backwards marriage, until she got stuck on ‘who?’ Certainly not the Kid God or Lydia. Everyone else was either involved or…

  “Oh my God,” Elorie said, gazing at Bob. “You’re the Child of Morning.”

  Nessa groaned, Ken winced, Dave gave Elorie a wide grin and a thumbs-up, and Uffie and Diana practically bounced up and down in their seats. Orlando held back, wary. Dana tried to pull herself together while the room reacted, overwhelmed by the emotions pouring out of the Telepaths. This Child of Morning person or title had to be world shattering important.

  “What’s a ‘child of morning’?” Bob said.

  Dave froze, impaled on Bob and Orlando’s gazes. He reached across
the circle, grabbed Elorie’s hand tightly, and concentrated. A moment later, both he and Elorie vanished from Dana’s magician senses and her borrowed fake telepathic senses. Damn, that was a useful trick. “The third prophesied being the Watchers are waiting for,” Dave said, unboggled via borrowed Immunity. “You already know Nessa’s their Daughter of Light. Lorenzi’s their Father of Darkness, the second of their prophesied beings. The Watchers are desperately searching for the third. For you.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with them,” Bob said. “I don’t want anything to do with them. Whatever they are, they’re the past, and what we have to worry about is the future. Right, Orlando?”

  Orlando nodded. Bob was parroting back Orlando’s teachings.

  “Trust me, their past is linked to your future, to all of our futures,” Ken said, oracular. Dana shivered. Dammit, the Telepaths did know what was going on with the Watchers. Their knowledge terrified her. She couldn’t put any better word on her hunch than that, no matter how she tried.

  “You’re the Child of Morning,” Elorie said, again. “But that doesn’t mean you’re ready to do whatever you need to do for the Watchers. Mr. Lorenzi took a millennium before he progressed far enough to be their Father of Darkness. Nessa had to go through years upon years of mental horrors before she was ready. A few months more growing up on your part is a drop in the bucket.”

  Bob shivered, and then made his decision: he gave Elorie a long male leer, until Elorie turned away. “Just keep it in the back of your mind, then,” Elorie said.

  “Whatever. So, y’all want to see what a real computer-to-willpower interface looks like at the code level?” Bob said, the bounce back to his voice.

  “Cheese Louise, guys, you want me to make this a formal announcement?” Bob said. Elorie and Dana had exited with the babies, overwhelmed by the nerdy tech talk, but rejoined the proceedings after Nessa and Ken agreed to help Bob, Orlando and crew. Orlando’s neat tent was now less neat, with the remains of food of various sorts cluttering recently created tables, and the contents of a very large diaper bag scattered over the floor. Orlando himself looked done in, and Dana could practically sense the heat radiating from him as he processed internal arguments and analysis on fifty different tracks or so. She edged over to him, and he moved, chair and all, so she stood in front of him. He lightly put his left hand on her hip. She covered his hand with hers, to distract her from her annoying urges.

  “This is your call,” Orlando said. “Nessa’s ‘divine computer’ hypothesis is interesting, but neither of us has the time to dive in fully. At least for now.”

  “Uh, ‘divine computer’?” Dana said. “Are you saying God’s a computer or you are computers?” The Godslayer believed the 99 were living computers, but Dana remained unconvinced.

  Bob glared at her. Nope, still problems there, alas.

  “The latter,” Orlando said. “Don’t think standard computers, though.” This did remind her of one of Bob’s strange analogies, though.

  “Clarke’s Law,” Dave said, hand back in Elorie’s and borrowing Immune.

  Useless.

  Nessa sent. Yes, she understood, and yes, she knew the references. Nessa did understand this stuff, much to Dana’s surprise.

  Dana sent back. “Sorry for the interruption,” Dana said.

  “No worries,” Bob said, meaning the opposite. “I hereby announce I’m keeping the name ‘Bob’.”

  Elorie frowned. Bob looked crestfallen that his attempted humor didn’t please Elorie.

  “The agreement we’ve reached is simple,” Bob said, pressing forward and covering his embarrassment with archetypical teen awkwardness. “We’re going to cover the Telepaths’ asses while they doodle with dolphins. I’m going to bring Persona up to speed on my computer to willpower interface, and Persona’s going to take over the bulk of my Earth Too administrative duties. We’re all convinced that what we’re doing will attract Donkeybrain Dubuque’s attention and we’re going to get attacked, at which point we’ll either win, get help from the dolphins or vanish into the night. One of the ways the Telepaths are going to help us is that we’re going to do a bit of peering into their own minds to figure out how someone with unnatural power stays at all human, as they’ve convinced me they’re more human than Orlando and me.” Bob looked at his feet and scuffed them on the canvas tent floor. “That all of it?”

  “Yah,” Nessa said.

  “Sweet.”

  “You’ll do well, son,” a deep woman’s voice said. “Letting this crew of rejects convince you to guard them while they talk to the dolphins could easily be the death of you all, though.”

  They all turned to the voice and Betrayer’s projection. She now wore head to toe black, some sort of tailored pseudo-fascist uniform from her sick imagination. Right now her eyes glowed ice blue, startling in her dark brown face. Diana skittered behind Nessa, muttering some doggerel poetry. Nessa tried to shush her and failed, and Betrayer’s eyes lost their glow. Dana frowned; she hadn’t expected the insane creativity trick to work on a God.

  “Get lost,” Dana said, not at all surprised to find her interfering yet again. “You’re not welcome here.”

  Betrayer cackled. “I’m here for a short visit, bitch. Go squeeze your thighs together tightly or something equivalently useful.” She turned to Orlando and gave him a ‘back off’ glare. “Now, I don’t care in the least if y’all mind, but I’m borrowing this tricksy bitch for a few hours. You’ll get her back sooner than you want.” Betrayer vanished, as did Persona.

  Everyone started to speak at once.

  “The most common motives for homicide are moralistic: retaliation after an insult, escalation of a domestic quarrel, punishing an unfaithful or deserting romantic partner, and other acts of jealousy, revenge, and self-defense.” – Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature

  “Grape jelly instead of cheese. Perfecto!”

  15. (Betrayer)

  Persona screamed “Dammit, let me go!” as she struggled to free herself from Betrayer’s grip, and followed up her screamed order with a long string of obscenities which vanished into the rapidly thinning air. Betrayer concentrated on the acceleration, pulling eight gees as she rocketed up past the tropopause, into the stratosphere and beyond. The last thing she wanted was any heroic interference by either Orlando or the damned Telepaths. She angled north while Persona futilely tried trick after trick to free herself. The sky above turned dark as their speed increased to orbital velocities. Persona gave up on her cussing and turned to flat out battle willpower.

  Betrayer sent. That, of course, increased Persona’s desperation. The former actress even tried a potent two handed blue helix blast at Betrayer’s projection, point blank; Betrayer let the blast pass through her, altering the shape of her projection around it.

  Persona gave up the struggle.

  Betrayer cackled at Persona’s befuddled reaction. One did have to keep up appearances.

  Her captive didn’t respond, and so welcome mental silence accompanied the rest of the journey over the arc of the world and down to Betrayer’s lair in far western Virginia.

  She landed Persona outside of the front gate of the lair and opened the oversized and already rusting iron door, encrusted with skull and dancing demon decorations. Big enough to drive two semis side by side through when fully opened, and enchanted Engineer style, the front gate rumbled ominously as it opened only wide enough for the two of them to pass. Betrayer pushed Persona ahead of her, wary – going in through the public entrance invited an atta
ck by any real enemy who had found the place, and although Persona couldn’t fight worth shit, she did make a good shield.

  “Are you insane?” Persona said, when the enchanted robots noisily saluted them as they passed. The oversized front door rumbled to an amplified clang behind them.

  Betrayer cackled. “What makes you think anything of the sort?” She nudged the reluctant Persona down a Pentagon-style ramp to the level below, passing some artwork she had recently commissioned from Akron’s people through a front organization. The bronze statue depicted the Atlanta – Miami fight, both combatants portrayed far more favorably than accuracy would allow. Around a corner, they passed a gargoyle display. The gargoyles’ eyes followed them as they walked by.

  “You are insane,” Persona said.

  So predictable. Persona’s reaction was perfect: half terrified because Betrayer hadn’t done anything to her to prevent her from knowing the lair’s location, half put-out because of her treatment as baggage.

  “I’ve gone sane and no longer have anything to fear. You see, I’ve mastered enchantment, my shape-shifty friend. My powers with enchantment are now complete, far beyond Inventor’s best,” Betrayer said, lying like a rug. She found pontificating an immense amount of fun. Too bad she didn’t get to pontificate more often. “The willpower shielding on this place is powerful enough to stop the combined might of all the other 98 Gods – there’s power in location-fixed enchantments that the rest of the Gods haven’t yet figured out.” Which was true, though she lied about being the discoverer and overestimated the ultimate usefulness of this trick. Orlando and crew might use her comment as a clue, though. “I’ve put enough of myself into my lair that here I no longer have any worries.” A bald lie. However, she wanted to convince Persona her lair was a powerful place of refuge and Betrayer stored her real body here. Or this place itself was Betrayer’s real body.