Jan snorted. “That’s Kepler, here.”
Knot shrugged and Progress shook her head, still a non-believer. Betrayer sympathized.
Office workers crowded passed the trio without noticing them, and the lunchtime conversation hummed while they waited. “I was right,” Jan said, two minutes later. “The thief, or the people the thief sold the God-sample to, did turn it into a bug and did put it in Portland’s lair.”
“And you knew the background of this how?”
“The ‘come into my territory and I’ll have you arrested’ warning from Portland was the first clue, and the rest was mundane detective work,” Jan said.
Betrayer, hiding in projection space close to the battle scene between Dubuque and Dana’s forces, had to nod in amazement. She had put work into keeping the Indigo from allying with Portland, but she didn’t have anything to do with this. This was, by her count, the seventeenth tiny bit of help she had gotten. Someone anonymous was helping her with her causes. She refused to believe these tiny bits of help were at all coincidental.
“Someone doesn’t like you.”
“Her name’s Betrayer.”
Progress shivered. When she recovered she shook her head. “Betrayer has a hard time with the standard tricks of the 99, and this is something new and different. Instead, I smell mortals.”
“Toldja,” Knot said, pouting at Jan. Jan rolled her eyes and flipped her hair. No, the Indigo didn’t maintain military discipline. More like anti-discipline, from Betrayer’s observations. “So, since you’re an independent, ma’am, perhaps you’d be willing to answer a question none of the other 99 I’ve met have been willing to answer. What happened to Earth’s other Angelic Hosts?” There had been, once upon a time, far too many of them, all of them working unnoticed. Betrayer concentrated on Progress’s answer, as this was something she didn’t know, besides the obvious: the 99 Gods’ Host had somehow gotten them removed.
“Your curiosity is hazardous, but I don’t mind answering, even though others of the 99 think this a secret worth preserving,” Progress said. “The ones who called themselves the Angelic Host said the other Hosts backed off to let them act.”
“Why?” Knot said. The lunches of all three sat in front of them, uneaten. “The Hosts are supposed to be responsible for protecting us, both directly and indirectly, and the local Indigo figured out the other Hosts had been missing for at least fifteen years. I find this difficult to believe or understand, ma’am. That’s a long time without protection and moral guidance.”
“I don’t know the full answer to your question,” Progress said. “I do know our Host said we were a solution to an impossible problem.” This wasn’t anything Betrayer had ever heard.
“Perhaps an alien invasion we call the Incursion?” Jan said.
“You know of this?” Progress said. “They never said what the impossible problem was.”
“Some of the good guys from Hell, an alien anti-tech species, were going to invade us to save us from our high technology. From their perspective, we were destined to fall into a horrific Orwellian style dystopia.”
“From mine, you already are,” Knot said, sotto voice.
Jan artfully cleared her throat and gave Knot a sideways slit-eyed glance. “Anyway. The problem was the fact that some of the bad guys from Hell would tag along and betray the Hellish good guys, and end up causing an epic and inhuman disaster, killing billions. Or that’s what we had predicted.”
“I’d say this was unbelievable, but you believe it, which does add credence. There were two representatives of these other Hosts around, but they were only observing, and rarely said much,” Progress said. Betrayer frowned. She didn’t remember any such thing – but she suspected this was part of the split between the Practical and Territorial Gods. “The strange thing was, while our Host was antiquated and almost medieval in outlook, those two were much more modern.”
Betrayer had to chuckle at the Indigo antics, as she was sure Jan and Knot had used their Indigo tricks to prompt Progress to open up. From personal experience, she knew how dangerous Jan and Knot were at getting everyone, even the Gods, to spew words around them. She turned her crow spy, hidden in the exposed ceiling struts, to ‘record’ mode and went back to watching Dana and Orlando’s tepid and still non-romantic conversation.
The unanswered question about the bug in Portland’s lair – which group of mortals had the skill to do such a thing, and why – Betrayer did not forget.
3. (Dana)
God Almighty was evil. It was His fault the 99 Gods were here.
She and Orlando walked side by side, inspecting the battle carnage, her body faked into functionality by far too many willpower prosthetics. Above them, a bloody body lodged itself in the upper branches of a towering slash pine. A team of lesser Orlando Supported worked on getting it down. Orlando’s army of Supported had captured nine of Dubuque’s attackers; Dana had the urge to kill all of them out of hand, overcome by so many levels of anger she no longer knew herself.
She despised the 99 Gods, with only several living exceptions. Dana’s anger at Dubuque and the City of God had long since overwhelmed her anti-war sentiments. She barely remembered her old self, the woman who led anti-war protests in grad school.
Orlando stood four inches taller than Dana, as heart-stopping handsome, eye-grabbing athletic and as Japanese-American as ever. Since Dana’s last visit he had shaved his head; he had shaved his goatee and moustache and cut his hair short when he changed from an Ideological God to a Territorial God. Worries rippled across his face.
“Orlando, I’ve got a problem,” Dana said. She wore Orlando’s willpower prosthetics because she had lost at least a leg, an arm and a shoulder in the fight. She tried not to think about the details. “I failed. I didn’t invite you here, the Kid God did. All the Supported you loaned me died. Dubuque’s hitting me with more attackers each time he attacks, and I can’t protect the Kid God any more. I’m not even sure the Kid God still needs protecting.”
“I have some ideas on the subject, but I want to save them for later, when you’ve recovered your equilibrium,” Orlando said, purring as usual. “For the moment, let me handle the security. Consider this a gift to you.”
Dana kicked pinecones and grimaced. Twenty feet away, crows picked at blood-covered pine needles where a corpse used to be. “I know I sound ungrateful, but…” She shook her head and kept her gaze from Orlando. “I’m sorry. The whole point of what I’ve been doing with the Kid God is to get him to his majority without having him owned by anyone else.”
“We’re allies, all three of us,” Orlando said, his voice strong and passionate. “I feel nothing but good will toward the two of you.” Dana suppressed a nod. She had spent too long gazing into Orlando’s deep dark eyes not to understand his good will. She didn’t like the situation, or what it said about him or about her. They had avoided this topic before, staying purely professional. “We’re the only ones who haven’t knuckled under to Dubuque, not counting the people the Host declared anathema. We must work together. We don’t have any choice.”
Dubuque had expected to win today. Next time he would send a Supported army. Next time he would win.
“Orlando, something happened to me during the fight,” Dana said. “I found a way to make myself into a Natural Supported. So I did. During the fight. If I hadn’t…” She would have died.
“You think something’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Dana said, lost for a moment. She had pulled far too many rabbits out of hats in the past year, and the more she pulled the more disquieting the rabbits became. “Where does my right come from to do all the things I can do?”
As a territorial Regent and as a Supported, Dana possessed willpower loaned to her by the Gods. She had once had the support of six Gods. Because of vicious backbiting divine politics, she currently only received support from Bob, Orlando and, impossibly, the deceased Atlanta. She alone of the normal Supported had the power to take out Dubuque’s worshipper
backed Grade Zero supported one on one, though to do so she had needed to install a willpower-based refrigerated cooling stack in her body with the power of several acre-sized server farms. For this, she had earned the right to be the mortal conscience of the Gods, for whatever that wasn’t worth. She was also a self-initiated Indigo inner circle member and far better at the main Indigo trick – inseeing, or knowing your own mind and those around you – than should be achievable after six months or so. The benefit was that she figured things out far quicker than should be possible.
“You were probably a Natural Supported from the start, and no ‘right’ was needed. Face it, Dana – early on, none of us knew what we were doing. The crap I pushed, the so-called facts I proclaimed, they embarrass me now.” Orlando had once been the Practical God named Singularity; at one time he had believed he had the true answer for what was going on, believing the 99 Gods were just tomorrow’s tech done today, showing humanity where they were headed, giving them a choice in deciding where they were going. He had renounced such simplicity months ago.
“Yah, but none of the other Supported has added Natural Supported to their repertoire and I added in Natural Supported in a melee. Worse, the instant I became a Natural Supported I immediately linked in with Lydia’s group and used their multi-NS synergy. The multi-NS trick took them a month of hard work to perfect. Then let’s not forget the fact I’m still an Atlanta Supported, and Atlanta’s dead.”
Orlando sighed. “Dana, I’ve collected a list of over six thousand anomalies. I’m stuck as a Territorial God now, but the anomalies won’t let the academic in me alone. Face it, despite how much we’ve learned about ourselves, we 99 Gods don’t understand a thing about what’s going on with our own abilities. You’re not alone.”
They crested the hill to find a clearing with an old fire pit slightly off center, filled with dry ashes and a flattened, burnt Pringles can. A couple of long logs and an area of exposed rock surrounded the pit, and remnants of teenage parties littered the area. At the edge of the clearing, several Orlando Supported arranged bodies in a neat row, enclosing them one by one into body bags. The fighting had clearly been hot here, and blood stained the ground and low weeds in several locations.
Dana and Orlando found Bob, Lydia and the other kid that Bob had dragged into the fight mingling with a nicely multicultural squad of Orlando’s Supported around the fire pit. Orlando’s Supported nodded and half-bowed to Dana, the usual absurd deference she earned after a fight because of how far she was willing to push herself. She ignored their obeisance, instead focusing on the cheeky new uniform patch Orlando’s Supported wore, a brown rat inscribed with the Greek letter ‘pi’. She stifled a laugh when she got the joke. One of the things she liked about Orlando was his willingness not to take everything seriously.
Bob’s new and grungy teen friend kicked at empty beer bottles and yammered on about the fight. He sounded like a local and looked like a standard suburban teen, with the slouch, the baggy shorts worn too far down his rear end, his hair shaved close to his head on the sides and back but springing like a plot of crabgrass from the top of his head. At least he didn’t sound like a helpless illiterate, thank the Lord of Southern Accents.
Lydia hovered near Bob, concerned, chains jangling on her oversized black jeans as she moved. The fight and aftermath hadn’t robbed Lydia of her interest in Bob or her black eyeliner and purple lipstick. Her mousy straight purple-streaked faux-blonde shoulder-length hair looked regrown, though, and she had replaced her fight-destroyed black blouse with a tight faded black tee-shirt proclaiming allegiance to a defunct 90’s band Dana never heard of, much less listened to.
Bob didn’t see Dana or Orlando until she approached close enough to grab him and hug him, which she did. He fitfully hugged back, horribly embarrassed. “You saved us,” Dana said, quietly, in Bob’s ear. Her Mission egged her on to chew him out for not following the plan, but she ignored the urge. Logically, she didn’t possess the right any more.
“Got a problem,” Bob said, a whisper. “My friend here’s named Dana Moncton.”
Dana couldn’t help but smile at the idea of another ‘Dana’. She had never been able to persuade her parents to cough up the reason they gave her such a gender-ambivalent name. “What’re you going to do about it?” Her name, his name, what a mess.
“Call him ‘S’up’.”
“What’s S’up?” Dana Moncton said, and fluttered a cute young male eyebrow. Getting no adult response to his teen wit, he went back to his quiet slouch.
Orlando elbowed Bob. “Kid, I’ve been meaning to ask you. What’s up with, ummm…?” Dana put her hand over her mouth to muffle a giggle as Orlando’s voice trailed off. Orlando might portray himself as the suave and cool rock-star academic, but his social skills were as ever rough and tumbly.
Bob scuffled the dusty ruts created by probably generations of teenage vehicles. “There’s something wrong with the way the rest of you Gods make Supported, like you’re tying into evil or something. I can’t explain, but I can’t escape the problem, either. Icky. I’ve decided not to make any, ever.”
“And?” Orlando said. Bob often expressed this unique opinion.
“I finally found a better way, sir,” Bob said. Dana gritted her teeth. Orlando got the ‘sirs’, all she got was the sass. “Only, well, there aren’t going to be many of my style of Supported. Mind’s gotta be skewed to match the God, and I’ll never be able to support many of them. Too close a tie.”
“Yah,” S’up said, to Orlando. “We’re Foreverfight partners, sir.”
Dana recognized Foreverfight, a massive multiperson online game Bob immersed himself in. A greater waste of time Dana had never seen. At least this one wasn’t warez…whatever warez was.
“I thought you weren’t going to make Supported of any variety, Kid,” Dana said. Too ‘old-fogey-God’.
“Well, yah, and I was hoping that Dubuque would wise up, too,” Bob said. His non-answer made Dana frown. “He hasn’t, and he’s pissed me off this time. The motherfucker’s going down, I don’t know how, but he’s going down.”
“Language,” Dana said, with an instinctive parental growl.
Bob glared back. “He’s fu…” Bob took a deep breath. “He’s evil, he’s a theocrat, he’s a murderer, he’s a reactionary tyrant and a threat to the entire world. Everything he touches turns to sh… lead. His mind’s been addled by his worshippers, his willpower tricks make him look like a noob and he’s usurping God Almighty every time he takes a cr…does anything. Eventually, he’s going to go the way of the golden calf, sooner rather than later I fervently hope and pray.” He leaned over to Dana, close to her ear. “The Host said to keep this on the down low, but if I wanted to do something about the problem, they wouldn’t stop me. So I did…thus S’up.”
“You talk to the Angelic Host?” Dana said, her voice up an octave. The Host was the enemy! “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t.”
“The contact was possible and necessary, so I did,” Bob said. Another God responsibility thing. A snarky grin pasted itself on Bob’s face. “Whaddaya think of the Host’s lack of support of Dubuque, huh?”
Dana didn’t want to go there. She didn’t talk to the Host. “How does S’up differ from normal Supported?”
Bob dropped a load of information into Dana’s mind. She shook her head. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Study the infodump and tell me what you think,” Bob said. Given time, she would. The memory message sat in her memories like a toad on a banquet table and croaked for attention. “This is exclusive like Natural Supported, but a different direction. There’s lots of possibilities for these Version 2.0 Supported, far more than with the 1.0s.” Bob spent far too much time online, coloring his language over-much. “S’up here’s working on what you might call a video game style set of abilities. Show’m, S’up.”
“Sure, Bob,” S’up said. He bounded off, flattening Orlando Supported with his knees, elbows, hands and feet, doing reality-bending martial
arts moves the kid clearly didn’t have the training or musculature to do. After he somersaulted and laid the last member of Orlando’s squad flat on the ground with the back of his heel, S’up landed, exhausted. Five glowing diamonds appeared next to his head with an audible ‘ping ping ping ping ping’, which he grabbed and stuck into him. “Woot woot! These buffs roxzor!”
Something about S’up’s tricks seemed familiar to Dana, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Did you have to make it that literal, Kid?” Orlando said, arms crossed and not happy about S’up using Orlando’s Supported for target practice. “Let me guess – he gets multiple lives, too.”
Oh. That’s what was familiar. Dana had seen similar things while looking over Bob’s shoulder when he gamed, back before he topped four feet. Of all the idiotic…
“Of course,” Bob said. Roll eyes.
“Hey, watch this,” S’up said. He bounded up then exploded with light and radiant willpower. “Limit break!”
Dana trolled through the crap Bob had put in her mind until she found the term ‘limit break’, defined as ‘superstrong, crazy strong, time and space limited, especially set up to kill bosses’. Gamer speak. She winced at this supposed improvement over ‘version 1.0 Supported’. Powerful, yes, wince-factor creativity – double yes. Very teen and very Indigo, as many of the group had pitched in to help her raise him. Bob’s work reminded Dana of her high school secret poetry journal.
How much of anything about Bob fell under his conscious control stayed a mystery to them all. Psychologically, he longed to be human with monomaniac passion…and failed utterly.
“Eat,” Orlando said. He sat down at the solid illusion picnic table, opposite Dana, after shooing away five of his Supported and six empty beer bottles. “Can’t heal without eating.”
99 Gods: Odysseia Page 4
