“True, Zeus -– but they’ve been meeting here even longer.” Odin nodded at a tall, stately man, only his head emerging from the linen wrappings. “And you must admit, there’s at least room for everyone here in the desert, no matter how uncomfortable it is. However, you're right that we’ve got to get them to listen somehow.” Odin stepped up onto a handy fallen pillar and shouted, “Will you all shut up?”
Which had no more effect than Zeus’ remonstrations.
But something was happening at the back of the crowd -– from where he stood, Zeus could see that a strange species of calm was spreading from the two furthest corners of the assembled deities. They were falling silent -– mirabile dictu! -– as two figures advanced through them. As they came closer, Odin could see that there were large men -– giants, to be seen at this distance -– who each seemed to be carrying something. Eventually Atlas, holding a siren, and Balor, cradling a selkie, approached the front rank, which held the greatest philosophers, prophets and gods of human religions. Ignoring Zeus’ muttered “I see Odysseus’ hand in this”, Odin was merely grateful for the stunned silence engendered by the appearance of the giants.
“Brothers and Sisters, everyone, you know why we’re here. Humans have made a discovery that is, to say the least, unsettling. We need to understand just how much they know, and how much more they are likely to find out. This discovery may change a great deal.”
“Is it new to us?” called Baldur.
“Depends on who you ask. The scientists among us,” he nodded to the few he could see -– Knut, Hephaestus, Hermes, Al–Kutbay, Enki –– “may well have known it for some time. I believe someone even tried to explain it to me, once” –– Hephaestus nodded, not pleased with the memory of that particular conversation. “But it didn’t seem important because they (this particular intonation always meant humans) hadn’t come across it yet. Now, they have.”
“What does this mean for us?” Loki, the ever-practical, asked what they were all wondering.
“And why is one of them (again, that particular intonation) here?” The outrage from Bast was understandable; after all, this land was sacred to her.
“He’s not really here. Well, he is but he won’t remember being here, will he?”
The goat-footed god to whom this question was addressed didn’t move to the front, but he did contrive to make his voice heard in every corner of the crowd. “He’s asleep, both here and in his bed. We can ask him what we like, and he will answer.”
The next hour was intense for all the eldest gods, while the more junior jostled to hear what was being said, or -- bored -- wandered off to more interesting diversions. The scientist gods took pride of place, questioning the human, and more importantly, explaining the implications of his answers to the others.
The next day, a number of Dr. Heisenberg’s colleagues remarked on how tired he looked. Famed as a brilliant –– and utterly unflappable –– theoretical physicist, he was now jumping at shadows and unsettled at work. He brushed off any questions and slowly returned to normal -– although he never really slept well again. His doctor, tired of prescribing sedatives, suggested counselling, but Dr. Heisenberg refused, and never returned to the surgery.
He’d rather make do with two hours of fitful sleep a night than try to explain to a counsellor that he was fearfully avoiding sleep because ... well ... no self-respecting nuclear physicist should have to try to explain his own uncertainty principle to a one-eyed Norse god and a bull-headed Smith. No, he’d rather do without the sleep ....
S and R Dance On
by Eli Effinger-Weintraub
R and S were in love. No two beings in the history of the Cosmos had ever been as in love as they were; they were certain of it. They were so in love that they spent all of their time dancing with each other and shining brightly for each other. Since they were stars, they quite excelled at shining.
As they danced past wise Mother Earth, she called, "Spend time with other loved ones, R and S! No two beings can -- or should -- be everything to each other. You will lose sight of the Cosmos around you."
As they danced past sweet Sister Comet, she called, "Explore other passions, R and S! No two beings can -- or should -- be everything to each other. You will lose sight of the Cosmos around you."
But R and S cared nothing for other loved one or other passions. They ignored invitations from planets they passed, and they didn't even look at other stars, asteroids, and nebulae around them. They cared only for dancing, spinning around and around each other, and for shining at each other, so brightly that most other folks couldn't even look at them.
One day, R said, "I feel a curious pull in this direction."
"That's nothing to do with us," said S. "Dance on!" So they did.
Some days later, as these things go, S said, "I feel a strange pull in that direction."
"It's nothing to do with us," R said. "Dance on!" So they did.
Some days after that, as these things go, S said, "R, my love, you seem to be pulling away from me."
R replied, "S, my only, you seem to be rushing away from me!"
For the first time, they looked around outside themselves and saw that they had come too close to the great black hole at the heart of the galaxy. "We will be sucked in!" R cried.
But the truth was much worse than that. For while R was, indeed, being pulled into the black hole, S had been just far enough away in their dance to be flung outward at unfathomable speeds, as though from a giant slingshot.
"My love," S cried, speeding away, "how I will miss you! Dance on!"
"My only," R called, sinking fast, "how I will long for you! Dance on!"
Other beings made a fuss over S -- the first star ever to leave the Milky Way. "Such sights you will see," they said. And amazing sights they were -- but S cared nothing for them without R.
Other beings made a fuss over R, as well. "There's not many as get to know what the inside of a black hole is like. Such an adventurer you'll be," they said. And such an adventurer R was -- but none of it mattered without S.
Yet what could they do but dance on?
[Author's Note: inspired by a 2005 press release from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics on "outcast star" SDSS J090745.0+24507 and its companion.]
1863 Antinous
by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus
No matter how technical this job is, at heart, space travel is a matter of physical athleticism — even an astrophysicist like myself has to be in the top physical condition, despite the likelihood of me needing to go outside the ship for any reason other than an utter emergency being negligible. And, like any job that relies upon bodies functioning correctly when the time comes, just like actors who won’t say “Macbeth” or all the strange good luck rituals baseball players do before and during the game, to the prohibitions on cats and rabbits aboard ship that sailors observe, space crews — the lineal descendants of sailors — are pretty superstitious, too. Back in the day, they never said they were, and all the profiles in the mid-modern media just glossed over the way the ostensibly Christian crews from the old United States were doing all sorts of prayers, gestures, and talisman-handlings that weren’t remotely orthodox. That is, until 2036, when it was just such a superstition that saved what was eventually known as the Set mission, but which was originally called the Crusader mission. Had it not been for Captain Jean-Claude White, the astronaut who was a Wiccan-Thelemic-Kemetic dabbler, the mission would have failed, the earth would have been destroyed, and — most importantly — four hundred and twenty five years later, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now.
It was such a pivotal moment that everyone, world-wide, from their first day in school, has learned about it. It was the definitive turning point of the era, when the mid-modern period ended and the meta-modern period began. The asteroid known as 99942 Apophis was scheduled to collide with the earth, which had been determined with certainty in 2021. Scientists were quick to jump on the bandwagon of trying to get world governme
nts to do something about it, but most of them waited more than five years to even begin thinking about it. Ten years, they thought, seemed like a long time to prepare for such a situation, but the lack of success with the Mars missions at that point forced both private companies and state governments to fund space programs at an unprecedented level, which gave a needed boost to the economy after more than a decade in on-again off-again recessions and mini-depressions. Except for the most local tribal skirmishes, the wars across the world ceased (the five years of stalling gave many governments the time to jockey for what they most wanted out of the wars they had been waging), and what was then known as NATO combined its military resources to see what could be done. Apocalyptic sects abounded, and many dominionist Christians even welcomed the imminent end and opposed the “world military government” as a sign of the Antichrist, but other religions began to thrive.
What had been discussed as a potential Islamic reformation in the decades before accelerated to the Islamic enlightenment, and the Sufi “heretics” became the leaders of a factionless united Islamic group which not only made peaceful coexistence and acceptance of other religions a virtue, it made it the cornerstone of its ideology. No longer was their statement of faith “There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet,” but instead the last line of surah 109, “Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion,” with a “Bismillah,” thrown in at the beginning for good measure. The secular democratic ideals of Turkey became the model for new Islamic governments across the world, and several locations in Turkey itself became as important as Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem for the religion. It was a team of Muslim engineers from Bolu, Turkey that designed the first anti-asteroid space vehicle, and their original design is echoed to the present day.
But it was not the technical expertise or the design superiority of that first “Crusader” mission (a name the Muslim engineers did not appreciate at all) that made it a success: it was the name. Captain White and the first mission commander, Colonel Alvin Ludlow, were secluded in the missile launching station of the ship, and in the final sequence before the sixteen missiles were launched at 99942 Apophis to both break it up and hopefully alter its course sufficiently to avoid the earth, an error occurred. Ten contingency procedures were followed to the letter to correct the situation, just like in the simulations, but they all failed. Col. Ludlow began to panic, when Capt. White suggested that the missile launches be manually controlled. Col. Ludlow objected, despite Capt. White’s assurance that he had trained extensively on manual firing. An unflattering remark about video games followed from Col. Ludlow. Capt. White then argued that even if manual firing failed, at least they would have done something rather than assuming that all faith should be placed in computer systems and refusing to do anything without them. “We’ve come all this way, and now because PCs are shit we’re giving up?”
Col. Ludlow relieved Capt. White of his duty; Capt. White relieved Col. Ludlow of his consciousness.
As the rest of the crew scrambled to gain access to the missile launch station, Capt. White began a short intoned litany honoring the Egyptian god Set, and then re-named the ship “Set.” He then scrawled an image of Set on the wall of the missile launch station, performed a rough-and-ready version of the “Opening of the Mouth” ritual, and gave the ship’s god its first offering: blood from Col. Ludlow’s nose. While reciting a lengthy monologue that was mixed praises of Set on the barque of Re, and reminiscences of childhood, his family, and his wife back on earth, Capt. White fired all sixteen missiles, and had armed and fired one of the back-ups when the rest of the crew broke into the launch station and detained him.
The words which followed are ones that almost everyone has heard, or has recited, at least once yearly since that time.
“What have you done, Captain?”
“More than anyone else has: what I could.”
It has been a part of the graduation ceremony from all the military academies and commissionings ever since. Rarely, though, is the next part spoken in public ceremonies.
“You’re out of order, Captain!”
“What fuckin’ order? Either this works, or we’re all dead.”
As the crew restrained him, he began saying over and over, “the Ogdoad follows the Ennead,” and seventeen tense minutes after their initial firing, the first missiles made contact with their target.
Mission specialists had estimated that if six of the sixteen missiles made contact with the target, 99942 Apophis would have been neutralized as a threat. While popular legend states that six of the seventeen hit, in actuality eight did, including the final backup missile that Capt. White fired completely without following the usual protocols. Small-scale orbital ships were able to protect the earth more directly in the following days, with almost all meteorites impacting the earth in the next week being smaller than two meters across. Damage to the earth’s civilized fabric was noteworthy, but not severe, and human casualties were minimal.
Though he gladly submitted to military discipline and was discharged from service, Capt. White became a legend and a hero of worldwide culture immediately. He received honors from many nations around the globe, and became a wealthy man in short order. Within a year, when he broke ground on a pyramid-shaped temple complex in his home city of Eugene, now in the Cascadian Republic, he put polytheism as a viable public religion on the map for the first time since ancient Rome. No matter how many scientists tried to explain that the time it took for him to execute his rituals in the missile launch station gave the ship the necessary further push to have the missile trajectories corrected—even if they had not been launched manually—the faith of many in the gods of Egypt, Greece, and elsewhere grew as a result of the successful mission against 99942 Apophis. The Christian doomsday cultists who had protested the mission and had been socially irresponsible up to its completion became complete public pariahs, and exist as a tiny fringe these four centuries later.
But, not a single anti-asteroid mission has taken place since then without a polytheist in the crew, and the name of the ship is always correlated to the name of the targeted asteroid. Temples and shrines even spring up near the inevitable meteorite craters that are formed on the earth in the aftermath of each successful mission.
When 26858 Misterrogers was provisionally identified as a potential threat to the Mars missions of the future, the anti-asteroid crew that researched its hazards decided to call the ship sent against it “Republican Congress.” When it split into five smaller asteroids in the aftermath, they were named Mrmcfeely, Kingfriday, Henriettapussycat, Ladyelainefairchild, and Xtheowl. It was one of the least celebrated anti-asteroid missions ever flown. Even the polytheists on the Mars base didn’t set up a shrine to “Republican Congress” afterwards.
In the ten missions that have occurred since the time of 99942 Apophis and Set, all have been successful; and now, on this twelfth mission, we are in danger of failing. I’ve always been considered rational, even for a scientist, but the position I’m now in is forcing me to question everything. I’m searching the objective accounts of history that have brought us to this moment, and am trying to find guidance in what I know to have been true from what legend has since distorted in that first mission those centuries ago.
In nine hours, we fire our missiles on 1863 Antinous.
Our ship was called the Odysseus when it was launched; now, it has no name, and I must decide in the next few hours whether to change its name to something else: Nile, Neilos, Nilus, Hapi … something like that.
The words of Commander Fergus McCool, a descendant of the Commander William McCool who died in the early twenty-first century in the Space Shuttle program, is dead in airlock #2. His last words to me—to anyone—were “read the book in my bunk, put the phylactery by your head when you sleep—he will come to you in your dreams; tell my husband I love him and will not forget him.”
The rest of the crew, reeling from Cmdr. McCool’s death, have taken over my duties and made renaming the ship my sole pri
ority.
Bastards.
McCool was the only polytheist on the ship this time. The crew have told me to read the book and do as he says, and to sleep and dream and come up with the answer. They’ve given me a dose of the sedatives that are part of our usual medical supplies since supra-orbital missions often have insomnia as a side effect.
But how can I sleep now, when the fate of the earth depends upon what an anti-asteroid ship is named, and I don’t even believe in the gods Cmdr. McCool worshipped?
We have very limited space in our personal bunks on these missions, and what can be brought along as “personal items” is limited to no more than five pounds of materials. McCool seems to have made the most of this, with a small digital reader and a number of images that he’s used to decorate the walls of his bunk. There’s two naked guys here, or statues of them, and they have egg-shaped helmets. There’s another guy with two big dogs and a smaller one who is wearing some sort of kilt and is holding what looks like a dead crane. And, there’s about six different pictures of what I think is the same guy, sometimes wearing some sort of toga, sometimes naked, sometimes just his head or a bust of him. He’s got very interesting hair.
History was never my best subject, and I have no idea who any of these images are. Unfortunately, McCool probably knew them so well he didn’t bother to leave any notes on who they might be.
Are these gods? Or are these just images and statues that he likes, or maybe even statues of someone he knows? Maybe his husband took a trip somewhere and sent these to him as postcards? (Polytheists are so sentimental and so materialistic in this fashion—they’re the only ones who keep the postcard industry, such as it is, continuing after all these years when the rest of us prefer digital.) It’s impossible to say.
There’s an awful lot of prayers to someone named Antinous on the digital reader. It doesn’t say who he is, though. I know the asteroid 1863 Antinous was named after the head suitor in Homer’s Odyssey that Odysseus killed at the end of it. Why would anyone pray to him?
The Shining Cities: An Anthology of Pagan Science Fiction Page 3
