MILES
Calm yourselves, gentlemen. One more friend will be joining us. He has been listening to our meeting up to this point. I think he can relate to you three more than you might think at first. Suddenly, the water disappears and the room is completely dry. The air feels crisp, though sterility becomes the overpowering scent. A breeze ripples through open windows on the far side of the room. A fourth man enters. CHARLIE, 83, hobbles into the board room. He is visibly old and his slow walking is dependent on a cane.
CHARLIE
You can save me the spiel, Miles. I very well know that I’m dead. Not only because I’m eighty-three and my liver failed, but because in the year 2000, doctors were able to foretell when any given person would die. Every day for those six years, I knew that I would be coming. I’ve had a long tiring life.
CHUCKY
Woah, 2000! Is everything silver? Are there flying cars and aliens and space ships and lasers? CHUCKY makes noises: Peew Peew.
MILES
MILES ignores CHUCKY’s outburst. Charlie, do tell us what happened in your life after the war.
CHARLIE
After the war, I suffered a severe bout of depression, what was later called Post-traumatic stress. I, too, struggled and contemplated suicide. I had lost all faith. But then, as I was going to drive off into a lake, I saw a woman. She was maybe eighteen. A frail little hummingbird. She watched me drive up to the edge of the lake. I was afraid she would call the police, so I got out to talk to her. Turns out, she was a survivor of the Holocaust. She had been adopted by Americans because her entire family had been killed. But they couldn’t relate to the nightmares that plagued her dreams. She was in the process of running away. We talked for three hours about how God had abandoned the world. CHARLIE pauses and lets out a tired breath. Well, I won’t bore you with the details, but she saved me. And I married her. We lived happy for a time. We were atheists. We had children, and the decades flew by.
CHUCKY
What’s an atheist?
CHARLIE
An atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in any deities. Gods.
CHUCKY
But, you don’t believe in God? How are you? How did you? But how can you stop—
MILES
Chucky, let Charlie finish, please.
CHARLIE
A cold war between America and the Soviet Union became hot when a handful of nuclear missiles flew. (Now, Chuck and Chucky, these are bombs capable of leveling cities and killing hundreds of thousands.) These missiles obliterated the southern half of Florida. America’s retaliation was swift, just, but costly. Siberia and the greater USSR became an irradiated wasteland, but at the cost of sixty thousand American soldiers’ lives, and over three million American citizens. Our sons. CHARLIE wipes a tear away with his arm and pauses. The rest of my life was a blur. My wife’s depression consumed her shortly after our children died. I lived, a ward of the government for the next thirty years. When the death-predictor was invented, I was first on line to know. And for the next six years, I sat, idle. Waiting. And I died. Miles. God. I know why you brought me here. Why I had to listen to these younger versions of me tell their tales.
CHUCKY
Wait! That’s me? MILES snaps at CHUCKY and shushes the young boy.
CHARLIE
They died in the moments when I lost faith. But they aren’t real.
CHUCKY
Hey! I am too real!
MILES
Chucky is right. They are real. Chucky, Chuck, and Charles. All of them lived. The difference, is that you, Charlie, have lived all their lives. All of you. You’re all the same person. I chose each of you specifically for your next purpose.
CHARLES
And that is?
MILES
You all, are going to become one. And that one, will be, God.
CHUCKY
Ummm, did I hear that right?
CHARLIE
For all I know, this is some ethereal trance that I’m in on my death-bed. I’m assuming that you are the Christian God because of the others. Supposing that you exist, and this isn’t some twisted vivid dream, does that mean that the ancient Pantheons of Greece, Egypt, and of the Norse are all fake? Of every other culture that worships something other than you?
MILES
MILES taps his fingers on the table and thinks to himself. I am, and you will become, all Gods. God is a relative term that doesn’t really cover everything that I am and everything that you will become. CHUCKY raises his hand. Wait, Chucky. Gentlemen: Zeus, Poseidon, Hera. Ra, Anubis, Isis. Odin, Loki, Eir. Shiva, Hanuman, Lakshmi. The spirits: of the forest, harvest, rain. Imaginary Friends, Lady Luck, Demons, Dragons, Devils. Every deity, every force that exists in the minds of humans, from the most powerful of beings, to the humblest of spirits. Millions, and millions upon millions of entities. You will become them all. In fact, since we have been talking, I’ve become a hundred more deities, although time is a relative concept that doesn’t factor too much in our existence as higher beings.
CHARLES
So, what is going to happen to you, if we are becoming God?
CHUCKY
Why am I even here? I was only seven. I didn’t see the world. I don’t know what Norse is, let alone any of those other things that you named. I thought you were Santa until now.
MILES
Chucky, I am Santa. A column of smoke covers MILES for a moment. It dissipates, and sitting in the chair is Santa Claus: beard and red hat in all. Ho Ho Ho, Chucky, you have a creativity that the others have lost. You will certainly need creativity when you start over. MILES snaps his fingers and reverts to his simple clothing. My time as God is ending. I won’t die, in that sense, but my essence will go a long way to helping you rebuild the world.
CHUCK
Wait, rebuild the world? Why? What is going to happen?
MILES
The universe doesn’t want you to be partial to the lead sentient race, so humanity must end. You will then rebuild the world and begin the next sentient race.
CHARLIE
So, that’s why you let World War II occur. Every war. The nuclear war. Your hands were tied?
MILES
I wanted to. You all were my creations after all. But as you will learn, you have to let your people work their own problems out.
CHARLES
Wait. You said we have to kill off the humans. And the next sentient race will be one that is not human? MILES nods, smiling. But you are a human.
MILES
Am I? Silence. I was in your same shoes many millions of years ago. My original life form, like yours, was split up into four different lives. Like you, I met up with God, and it told me what I told you. In my mortal life, I was a dinosaur. My first task as God, was to cause a meteor to impact Earth, sending my people into extinction. You will have a similar choice when you gain power.
CHUCKY
Cool! A Dinosaur! Can we see your original form?
Chapter 29
“Absolutely preposterous!” General yelled at the top of his voice. He rushed up and stared into Gnochi’s face, his eyes seemed to beg for a challenge. “The fact that this prattle is what is keeping this army afloat is preposterous. I have half a mind to kill you all now. At least bar any of you from entering another official post in your lives. I genuinely feel as though you have cheated me of those moments of my life. They are lost and I will never get them back.” General’s frantic eyes tore over the crowd. “But alas, circumstance calls for tact on my part.” He relaxed some, the color in his face lessening. “I absolutely forbid anyone within this menagerie that values their lives, from hereby discussing, debating, even thinking of any story such uttered by this man,” he said pointing at Gnochi. “And I forbid you, Gnochi,” General said, making dramatic enunciations upon each syllable of his name, “from speaking another word of gods, cities, or any other tale you feel compelled to pull out of that lying ass of yours. Not a word. Not a play. Not a drop of fantastical spittle or I will ha
ve your head, regardless of what Dorothea has to say about it.”
Chapter 30
A stoney-faced Gnochi bumbled on top of Fester’s uneven back. He turned his mind over the earlier conversation that he had with Cleo. At the time, he felt sore, both from the raw wound in his thigh and the stinging rebuke after the performance of the play. He said little, though she more than made up for his forced silence, appearing to have been syphoning her own arguments straight from his mind. Her words scared him into the curt response he gave. What he thought of now, as he rode along, was of things he should have said to her. That the pair cannot leave the safety of the menagerie. He should have told her that this was not the first time someone has tried silencing his stories. It wouldn’t be the last time, either. He knew he could go without them.
His mind regressed to protection. He could hardly protect her with two good legs and he imagined that he would be unable to with his injury. He was thinking of what was best for the pair and he ruled that they were safer traveling with the troupe. In between each thought of what he should have said, was the distinct echo of what he actually said. ‘No.’ In response, a brooding Cleo rode up and kept pace with Harvey’s high elephant Typhus.
Gnochi had told her to be careful riding so close to the beast, but she had sneered at him. He had positioned himself between two pockets of Perm members, though even in isolation, his mind would not settle. Wild thoughts raced madly in his mind and seemed to encourage his heart to beat its ferocious rhythm against his ears. He had not been unable to cool off either, even despite a crisp night prior.
The expanded troupe-army now trudged toward the exit of the desert. Gnochi found himself navigating up to the lead of the column where Dorothea and General rode in silence.
Each bump in Fester’s broken gait reminded him that he had been shot in the thigh. Peering at the wound earlier, he had been shocked to discover his entire thigh a shade of dark blue and mottled brown. Equally revolting was the white pus fermenting along the stitches of his wound. He had winced as he applied an herb-paste to the wound, yet he withheld his leg’s declining status from Harvey. When asked, he shrugged and replied, “It’s good,” although he had a feeling that his leg was not healing. He dared not call attention to his health, fearing that the troupe needed only one excuse to abandon him and Cleo to the road. He knew that there would be a stop in Urtin, the last town before Blue Haven. Once there, he could worry about his leg.
With a throbbing thigh on his mind, he urged Fester to hustle as he led the horse to the front of the caravan. Conversations seemed to die in ripples as he passed by members of the menagerie. Gnochi kept his eyes trained ahead without looking at any of the other players for fear that they would reflect a questioning glance that could be misconstrued. He imagined hearing the hush of their chatter as soon as he trotted away.
“Quite a turn of events, ehh, Gnochi,” Dorothea said, smiling.
“Don’t be so condescending, Dorothea. You’re in quite a similar predicament as Master Gleeman here. Even more so, if I consider that you almost lost a band of Providence’s Royal Army to mutiny.” General’s frank appraisal of Dorothea’s leadership wiped the smug grin from his pudgy face.
“We are well aware that you are working for Silentore, Master Gleeman,” General said. “And I might assume that no one here is your target because no one has turned up dead yet, although, maybe one of us is and you’re merely biding your time. If that’s the case, then Silentore needs to do a better job selecting its assassins.”
“No, it is neither of you two, nor anyone in the troupe,” Gnochi said. “My target is a merchant, lower tier, who lives in a town near Blue Haven.”
“What was your connection with the man, Ren, who shot you?” General asked, his eyes roving over Gnochi’s body and honing in on the injured leg.
“None,” Gnochi said. “He claimed that Boli and I had stolen from him, but the truth is, neither of us had seen him before.”
“Are you aware that he was the principal leader of Oceanmane?”
“Is that what the pirates are calling themselves these days?” Part of a feral laugh escaped Gnochi’s parched throat.
“Well, they’re united under the Pantheon’s leadership, and their go-to is Ren.”
“I don’t see what the issue is. Doesn’t Blue Haven forbid any vessels from trading across the seas? The only Lyrinthians who even know how to manage a boat now are fishermen, and they depend on the coast for their income, so they wouldn’t stray into the grey seas. And the pirates, if my history serves me,” Gnochi said with a stab of humor, “have left Lyrinth alone for the past few centuries for this very reason. There’s little gain for them to harass boats flying the Lyrinthian eagle.”
“United, and under the will of the Pantheon, they are more than mere pirates,” General said with an edge to his voice. “With control of the seas, Gideon can amass an army in secret and have it in our ports before our shit-eyed guards can wake from their hangovers enough to pull their noses from a light-skirt’s bosom.” His breathing sounded heavy and thick veins pulsated in his neck and forehead. “You see, Gnochi, I’m faced with a problem. Not only did one of Silentore’s agents infiltrate this army, but that same agent was then attacked by the leader of Oceanmane, another of Gideon’s ilk. Can you see where I’m going with this? Why is there infighting between the arms of the Pantheon, and why did it happen in a Providential army?”
“Well, like I said, I’d never met Ren before. He was mistaken. And if you must know, I only met with one other member of Silentore. He was the one who sent me off with my contract,” Gnochi said, hoping the lie did not show through his features.
“How much did they pay you?” Dorothea asked.
“Payment on delivery,” Gnochi replied.
“How much?”
“Not money.”
Growing agitated with Gnochi’s brief answers, Dorothea asked, “What is it: power, fame? Tell me or I’ll kill you right now, Gleeman!”
“My family!” Gnochi yelled. The outburst silenced the ringleader and halted the conversations of other troupe members half a dozen deep in the caravan. Quieting, he added, “They’ve kidnapped my sister and niece and are holding them captive until I complete my contract.” Tears burned dusty eyes and blurred his vision. He glanced down at Fester’s gnarled neck and saw Jackal’s sly face in the horse’s mane.
After a tiring pause, General’s voice sounded. “You’re dismissed, Gleeman.” Gnochi allowed Fester to shrink back a few paces. Before he could turn around and return to his wagon’s pace, he heard General warn: “You’re never going to see your relatives again, Gleeman.” The man’s tone, being neither facetious nor cruel, urged molten bile to brim in the cusp of Gnochi’s throat.
◆◆◆
Many months before the present day.
Gnochi awoke when the heavy door to his cell separated itself from the wall and an individual walked in. Before he could move, the door boomed shut. The black abyss of his cell greedily swallowed the sliver of light that accompanied his captor’s entrance. Once more, He found himself unable to see after the shock of the light nearly scarred his eyes. The individual who entered, melded into the blackness of the cell.
“Do you know why you’re here, Mr. Gleeman?” A soft voice asked.
“I can only assume that you are a Luddite and are not too fond of my stories,” the bard said, vocalizing for the first time in over a week.
“I am the farthest from a Luddite,” his captor said. “In fact, my goals would set any Luddite to angry tears.” The man’s voice grated the inside of Gnochi’s ears, so unaccustomed to any sound louder than the scratching of his rodent-cellmate. “I have a proposition for you, if you’re willing to work with me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I know you want to see that sweet niece and your darling sister again. Don’t you want them back?”
“You fiend!” Gnochi thrashed his arms against their tight leather restraints.
Hi
s captor silenced him when he lunged across the cell and covered Gnochi’s mouth with one hand. The man lifted him from the stale mattress of hay and laid him on the cold slate floor.
Gnochi tried to pierce the blanket of darkness and intimidate his captor, but what little light that usually mulled around in the cell had abandoned his eyes. He felt his captor’s dry hand cover over his eyes and the bridge of his nose. Momentary spears of light split through the gaps in the man’s fingers as the grating of the door announced another captor had entered. He felt the warmth of a finger pressing into his forehead. He struggled against his leather restraints but felt nothing but mutiny from his muscles. His breathing slowed and remained unaffected by the exertion he made to fill his lungs. He could feel the distant thump of his heart and hear its chorus of rushing blood in his ears. A pinprick of light appeared in front of his eyes.
“How old would Pippa be now? Seven?” A new voice was speaking; his words, as soft as his hay mattress. The light before his eyes grew brighter, doubling in size. At some point, his captor must have removed his hand. Gnochi opened his mouth to speak. To argue. To yell any obscenity. Like every muscle in his body, his voice failed him. He resigned himself to waiting out the unusual torture. A single teardrop snuck into the unkempt beard adorning his cheek. “Don’t you want to free her Gnochi?”
Chapter 31
From atop Typhus, Harvey looked down on his companions. He watched Roy swat at some gnat with his hand and sigh.
Gleeman's Tales Page 25
