Lesser Gods

by Duncan Long

  Abruptly I winked us into a lush garden lit by immense smoldering torches that exuded the stench of burnt flesh.

  “This is the great park that surrounds the emperor’s Golden House,” I told Ralph. “You’ll note the light source.”

  His puzzlement at my admonition showed as he studied the torches. Then I could see his disgust as he realized that each of the smoky flames was the blackened remains of a human being.

  “Criminals and the emperor’s enemies are tied to the metal scaffolding, soaked in oil, and set ablaze. Once the temperature of the flame is high enough, the protein and fat in their bodies burns like a candle, providing the light for parties. Imperial Rome ruled with an iron fist.”

  “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Ralph replied, apparently thinking his cliché might needle me. The fires around us flared up as if somehow reflecting his anger. For a moment, I thought he had somehow actually affected our surroundings, then remembered such a thing was impossible. I said nothing, averting my eyes from the corpses lighting our path as we crossed a wooden bridge and entered the long marble pergola that led into the atrium of the palatial house.

  “What are you doing here?” a slurred voice demanded as we stepped into the banquet area. “Who dares interrupt Nero and his guests?”

  The beefy man, wearing a white robe spotted with blood was looking directly at Ralph as if he could see him. It always unnerved me when those in the past somehow perceived my presence.

  Ralph gave the emperor a shove.

  And to my surprise, the ruler staggered back as if Ralph had somehow caused him to move.

  Ralph glanced my way. “I thought you said we couldn’t interact with them.”

  “We can’t. He must have stumbled.”

  Ralph stepped toward the Roman, shoving him once more.

  “Stop,” I said, pulling him back. I waved my hand like a sorcerer and abruptly the emperor lost all interest in us, turning back to the scroll in his hand. How had Ralph managed to interact with the past? I hoped he hadn’t done enough to alter the past. That was a can of worms that I didn’t even want to consider. I had thought, from my years of exploring the past, that such interactions were impossible.

  Fortunately Nero seemed too drunk to believe much of anything had happened. “I thought I saw a ghost,” the emperor announced in a strangely melodious voice to his party guests who surrounded a small table piled high with food. “Is it the Ides of March?”

  There was nervous laughter in the room.

  “The Senate has declared me a god, has it not?” Nero asked. “Surely they will not assassinate their god tonight.”

  There was smattering of applause. Nero stopped the clapping with an upraised hand. “By Pluto and Proserpina, perhaps I need to light more than just my garden with my human torches. Perhaps it is time to light up the forum — with senators.”

  I turned toward Ralph, flashed him a tired smile, and we winked back to my home. “Sit down,” I told Ralph. “No need to be wary. This is your last lesson and then you’re free to go.”

  Ralph sat down and I did as well, settling into my wheelchair as it rolled into place behind me without me even consciously thinking about it.

  Ralph kept his mind tensed, still not trusting me.

  I spoke. “What did you just learn from your observations of the Gulag, the killing field, and Nero? What might the Nazi Holocaust of the twentieth century teach you? Or Rwanda. Or any of hundreds of other human slaughters through history?”

  “They all support my contention that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Nero had power, and he became a deadly madman. Ditto for Stalin, Mao, and all the other butchers of history.”

  “You must learn to think,” I admonished Ralph like a stern head master. “You can’t just mouth the clichés of youth. Think! Think about what you really saw. None of these men had absolute power, did they?”

  “Well… perhaps not literally but — “

  “And therein lies the problem. Each was worried about dissidents, the senate, the peasants, or whoever they perceived as a danger to their rule.”

  “You’re suggesting they were ruthless because they worried about losing their power?”

  “So catch on. That’s it precisely. Most would have fallen had they not been heartlessly brutal all the time. The problem was not that a madman had absolute power, but rather that in nearly every case a dictator lacked the absolute power needed to sustain his administration without challenge.

  “Each lashed out blindly at anyone and everyone who might pose a threat, just as the government and criminals have hunted me down today when they were fearful of being deposed from their thrones.”

  “But surely absolute power wouldn’t lead to a benevolent dictatorship.”

  “No, of course not. Nero, Stalin, the rest. Probably would have terrorized their citizens. But not to the extent they did when they were fearful. And a moral person with a sense of right and wrong… Such a person might transform his nation to something great and wonderful.”

  Ralph remained silent, too stubborn to admit I might be right.

  “Soon you’ll be on your own,” I finally said in a low voice. “I’m dying.”

  “But the eternal treatment…” Ralph protested.

  “I’m dying because it’s time for me to die. Because I want to die. I may have lived only a few decades here in Earth time. But I have lived thousands in my own mental time. I have danced in the far recesses of our galaxy, watched dinosaurs battle, seen most of the great battles of history. I have lived a thousand lifespans and I have grown tired. There’s a reason that human life spans are short — once you get beyond a few hundred years, life becomes more and more tiresome and mundane. There comes a time when life needs to end, to be completed. My time has come.”

  I allowed myself to become a very old man again, my legs shriveling and my spine warping as I continued to speak to Ralph. “You are the only one among all those I groomed for ruling. I had hoped more would reach the finish line, especially Alice. But you alone are left to rule.”

  “What makes you think I want to rule anything?”

  “Long ago, I didn’t have much to live for. I was selfish and trusted none. That changed when I realized how I was wasting my life. I started molding minds, preparing the world for a derailment from the history it has known from the beginning.”

  “But read about all those deaths of jet users. What about them?”

  “Surely you, of all people, don’t believe everything you read in the news.”

  “Point taken — but what about the people I saw killed in the games? I saw you kill innocent people.”

  “Most of those you thought I killed were simms. Projections and code created to appear human.”

  “So every step of the way you… You manipulated us?”

  “And even dragged you out of harm’s way. Even the eight others who proved unsuitable remained unharmed. Perhaps my lessons were too brutal. I don’t know. But I erased their memories of my testing and today they live productive lives, albeit without ever realizing their true potential. I tried to force each of you to fly like a lark instead of scratching in the mud like a chicken. But you were the only one to fly. You and Alice.”

  Ralph was silent

  I swallowed hard, and then continued, “Alice’s loss hurts me deeply. She was like a daughter.”

  I could see in Ralph’s eyes that he was starting to believe what I said. The truth was dawning on him, that what I was saying was true and that I had never really been the heartless god he had imagined me to be. “I’m simply a frail old man with tall dreams,” I finally said, shaking my head, a bitter feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “When I consider how I’ve changed,” Ralph finally said, his eyes glistening. “But what I am…. I’m not suitable to run the world — I can’t even balance my bank accounts. I can’t even make an honest living. Your hopes are a noble failure.”

  I chuckled at his humility. “You underestimate yourself.”


  “At best I’ll become a god with clay feet.”

  “I know you’ll forsake your childish ways and become a man. More than a man.”

  Ralph said nothing.

  “Now I must go.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ralph said sitting forward in my chair. “You haven’t told me what it is that you want me to do.”

  “No, I have not.”

  “But how can I change the world for the better? What is it I should do?”

  I felt even more tired and wrinkled than before. “The String Theory of the last century was wrong, but for you its basic premise becomes true. For you the possibilities are infinite, limited only by your imagination. You are now both mankind’s creative conscience as well as the un-winder of the Newtonian clockwork universe.”

  “I need specifics.”

  “Do what you know is right. Heal where there’s sickness, make peace where there’s war, set the captives free.”

  “Generalities!”

  “Like you of all people would follow detailed instructions.”

  “What do you expect,” Ralph said with a lame smile. “I’m a criminal.”

  “No, you’re your own man. Cut yourself some slack. You make mistakes just like anyone else, and you’ll continue to make mistakes. The key is to be able to admit mistakes and undo the harm your mistakes may cause.”

  Ralph said nothing more. And he reminded me of a baby bird that for a time squawked because it knew it was about to be shoved from the nest, and then suddenly realized it was time to be quiet and take wing toward whatever it had been created to do and become.

  “See?” I chuckled. “Already it’s working. Who would have thought you’d ever learn to be quiet when you should be? And one day you’ll understand why leaving someone like you in charge is such a blessing for an old man. Now you must prepare yourself for when I leave, the emotions you feel at the loss of Alice will sweep over you like a flood. And so… Goodbye.”

  Ralph sat tongue tied for a moment more, then simply said, “Goodbye — father.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes as I transformed myself one last time into the young man I remembered myself being one day long ago, or perhaps only yesterday, dressed in a vintage US Air Force uniform, an electrician’s toolkit tucked under my arm. I stood, saluted Ralph, and felt myself vanish, leaving only my empty wheelchair to mark my passing.

  Alice Liddell

  I awoke on the warm beach with the ocean roar beside me. I opened my eyes to see Ralph staring down at me in the bright sunlight. “Whew,” I said. “I thought I was a goner there for a minute.”

  “You were,” Ralph said.

  I felt a sick feeling in my stomach as I sat up, lifted my eyebrows to ask for an explanation.

  “You died. In my arms — the first time. But, Huntington was wrong.”

  “I don’t understand. Wrong about what? This is creeping me out, Ralph.”

  “It’s okay now,” he said, putting his arm around me. “Huntington thought it was impossible to change the past. It’s not. At least not for me. But I have to be careful. Too much change and — we might never be.”

  “Like going back to see the dinosaurs and stepping on the butterfly and coming back to find the world an entirely different place from when you left?”

  “Exactly. Your death wasn’t too far back in the past so I risked it. But…”

  “So you went back — before I died — and…”

  “And changed the past. Changed it ever so slightly so that you weren’t dead but appeared to be. That way Huntington and I would think as much and continue through all we did the last time around. But all that’s important is that you’re alive now.”

  Epilogue

  Ralph Crocker

  We discovered that Huntington had destroyed all records of me, of Alice, and of himself, apparently while teaching me his last lesson, moments before he departed. Anyone checking government or corporate records found them strangely blank when it came to any information about the three of us.

  Nor would anyone ever learn about the new drug that Huntington had created, other than as a rumor that would drift as myth for years to come, whispered about in net chat rooms and listed at urban legend sites, one of a thousand rumors swirling endlessly in cyberspace like a dry leaf before an Autumn wind.

  Running the world was a daunting prospect, but not so overwhelming since I had Alice with me now. We exiled ourselves to our island paradise and lived for years together there — Alice Time — while the world waited patently for our return.

  We were tempted to abduct and simply enjoy ourselves.

  But we knew that we couldn’t be so selfish.

  Eventually we rolled up our sleeves, or lack thereof, and started quietly changing the path mankind had taken from the beginning of history.

  Over time we slowly modified events from behind the scenes, unobtrusively and unseen. We became the monkey wrench in the evolution of history, thwarting the plotting of rich young rulers behind closed doors.

  We became the tsunami that Huntington’s actions had set into motion. Our tide swept over history and turned it from wrong side in to right side out. We destroyed evil men or, more often, transformed them into loyal automatons.

  Wars ceased, politicians’ secrets were shouted from the housetops. We rearranged boundaries and we forged peaceful alliances.

  As we succeeded, the world became less and less a place of dog eat dog, kill or be killed. There were no more corporate coffers filled at public expense, no rule by assassin’s bullet or car bomb. “Facts” were no longer manufactured in smoke-filled rooms, old truths could no longer be destroyed through revisions of history.

  The revolution Huntington set into motion proved the most quiet of rebellions.

  No gunfire.

  No trumpets.

  No coronation or newly built temple.

  And in the end, Alice and I were no longer what anyone would think of as human beings. We were lesser gods, not true gods — though we would meet such a being.

  But, of course, that’s another story.

  About the Author/Illustrator Duncan Long is a writer/illustrator who has authored 13 novels including Anti-Grav Unlimited (Avon Books), the Spider Worlds triology (HarperCollins), and the Night Stalkers series (Harper Collins). He’s also written 60-some technical books and how-to manuals (with Paladin Press, Delta Press, Lyons Press/Globe Pequot, and others). Additionally, he’s ghostwritten over a dozen titles for TV, radio, and stage celebrities.

  In addition to illustrating many of his own books, Long has created cover and interior illustrations for HarperCollins, PS Publishing (UK), Byron Preiss/ibooks, Pocket Books, Fort Ross, American Media, Ballistic Media, Mermaid Books, Delta Press, and others. His artwork has also appeared in national magazines (including the Sun and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine).

  Learn more about Duncan Long at his website: DuncanLong.com