99 Gods: War

by Randall Farmer

  “Our stone cold killer’s a party girl, isn’t she,” Montreal said as she rolled the loose pot into a cigarette paper.

  “I know how to let loose.” She had enjoyed all aspects of Marine life. “Or at least I used to.”

  “Being a God’s made you a loner against your will.”

  Atlanta nodded.

  “Perhaps I’ll arrange a party soon, for all the local Gods. Local to North America,” Montreal said, with a laugh. “Though it won’t be a replacement for your old Marine buddies. Joint?”

  Atlanta shook her head. “No, it won’t.” She stood and paced. Montreal saw through her too easily. “It would be better than mortals, though.”

  “You need to work on that,” Montreal said. “Consider Dana. Consider a world with a lot of Danas in it.” She waved the joint in a circle. “Or, if you want to think about something else insane, think of a world where a substantial number of mortals possess abilities and natures similar to us. That’s what a couple of the Practical Gods think, by the way.”

  “Go on,” Atlanta said, intrigued about the so-far-invisible-to-her Practical Gods.

  She had picked up absolutely nothing about Montreal that Montreal hadn’t shown her, and Montreal hadn’t shown her anything about Montreal’s real Mission. Which made Montreal more powerful than Atlanta. The thought had always gnawed at the back of Atlanta’s mind that she would find another of the Gods who had grown past her. It bothered her, a little, that the first God she found more powerful than her turned out to be a damned sex goddess.

  “It was Singularity and Inventor. Inventor’s a typical pencil-necked geek, but Singularity’s one of these teeth-gnashing types who’s good at everything. Skier. Scholar. Sculptor. Musician. Good in bed, too.”

  Atlanta couldn’t resist Montreal’s chatter. “So, is God-God sex any better than normal sex?” She didn’t remember Inventor from the Apotheosis, but she did remember Singularity, not the sort of person you ever forgot. She had pegged him as a Japanese movie star. She didn’t understand his name or what it had to do with practicalities.

  Montreal didn’t answer, but she did purse her lips and roll her eyes skyward. “They’re of the opinion that it’s inevitable that with us as examples, humanity will over time join us as Gods, unless you get the Gods doing the dictatorship-of-the-Gods thing and repressing the growth of technology.”

  “Which side are you on?”

  “You first.” Montreal dragged slowly on the joint.

  Montreal had introduced the subject. This demand lay within Montreal’s rights. “The latter, of course. However, I must admit my dictatorship-of-the-Gods idea is looking less appealing to me with each God I meet,” Atlanta said. “Present company excluded.”

  “Why thank you,” Montreal said. “I think I’ve decided Singularity and Inventor are on my side. I hope you’ll join me as well.”

  “So, did you enjoy yourself?” Dana said, after they were out of Montreal and back in the air. Dana intimated sex.

  “No,” Atlanta said, not correcting Dana. She couldn’t figure out Montreal’s game. Montreal had implied she leaned pro-mortal, but no mortals had been present when they talked. “Do me a favor and play with the willpower. Distract me. I need to think.”

  “Sure,” Dana said, relaxing into the game she played with the willpower, letting the willpower loose one strand at a time, leafing through all the possibilities and admiring the beauty. Atlanta lost herself in wonder, cataloging everything Dana dreamt up, especially any tricks usable as weaponry, half wondering why they could do so much with the willpower they didn’t have any uses for.

  She didn’t say another word on their way back home. Three Gods was enough for one day. Not one showed the slightest interest in the problem of the Seven Suits, or even Miami’s worshipper addiction. One mental track stayed pissed, while several others worked on a better presentation.

  Something wasn’t right, here, and Atlanta couldn’t figure out what.

  15. (Dave)

  “Here we go,” Steve said, hunched over his old iPad. Dave licked his chapped lips and tried to relax his aching back. He had just returned from a fruitless two day jaunt to Los Angeles, and airplane air and the seats had done their thing to him again. Everyone he talked to in private while on his trip had been worried about the economy, which meant ‘the effects of the 99 Gods’, but in public, sweetness and light about the 99 still prevailed. Tiff? He couldn’t talk to Tiff about anything now, not after their heart to heart talk about their finances and Tiff’s appalling job. She wanted him to grow up and likely wanted him to take a job with one of the no-conscience firms in his field. Learn to lie about toxic waste. Phooey. He wouldn’t have done so even before he had been poisoned, and now the thought of it made his skin crawl.

  “Tell me,” Dave said. He moved books from Steve and Marty’s coffee table and eased his feet up.

  Marty had fled in horror when Steve and Dave told him the evening’s plans. He didn’t want any part of any ‘investigations of the Gods’. “This is from the Seven Suits press conference on the 2nd of October.” A week ago, four days before Hernandez cratered. “They said, quote, The world is filled with too many improper corporations who pollute peoples’ minds and bodies, pollute the Earth, and whose unethical business practices sour everyone’s view of the business world, unquote. They go on to say that despite their beliefs, they pledged to be extra cautious when they removed these infectious corporations from the corporate biosphere. In their words.”

  “So we’ve got a bunch of radical lefty Gods taking down corporate baddies?” Dave asked. “Send me the link.”

  Steve did. Dave started in on the Seven Suits, hunched over his own tablet computer, which sat beside him on the couch. Outside Steve’s apartment, a vehicle with a straight pipe muffler roared by, playing wall-shaking old-style rap.

  “This is interesting,” Dave said, minutes of data hip-hopping later. “The Suits are all male, all Ideological Gods, and they recently bought the entire Trump Tower in New York City.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a bunch of radical lefties to me,” Steve said. He stood and stretched, sending Marty’s lap-cat yowling to the floor. Dave didn’t mind. He didn’t like Marty’s cat either. “Too bad. We could have used a little of that.”

  “No, what this sounds like to me is that their public comments were a smoke screen,” Dave said. He lay back down on the couch and rubbed his temples.

  “You doing okay, Dave?”

  Dave shook his head. “Give me a moment,” he whispered. The pain came and went, randomly, not stress related as far as he could tell. His doctors suspected an environmental trigger, probably in the food he ate. They had given him instructions on how to figure out the food trigger, but because of all his traveling, he hadn’t been able to come up with anything. Now, because of his work hunting for a new client, his problem would only get worse.

  “You’re a wreck, you know,” Steve said.

  “I’ve seen myself in the mirror,” Dave said. He avoided such things as best he could. He didn’t like how his compromised immune system slowed his healing. Or how the doctors thought both the severity of his headaches and his ‘general overall health’ were anomalous, given the toxic waste floating around his body. The doctors thought he should be even worse off.

  “I’ll just have to take your lying ass word for it, then,” Steve said. He tapped on his screen. “Here’s another. The God who goes by the name Science says that, um, corporate activities which impact the environment in a non-local fashion should be required to go through a peer review before the corporations are allowed to act in such a fashion; the peer review to be done by relevant academics and PhD level government bureaucrats.”

  “Now that would slow things down,” Dave said. “I’m not sure this is related. I think it’s the Suits.”

  “Don’t be so hasty,” Steve said.

  “Hasty? It’s my life that’s gone down the toilet,” Dave said. “It’s the Suits. I’m sure they did the dirty
deed.”

  Steve tut-tutted. “This doesn’t sound like the always-optimistic Dave I know.”

  “Well, that’s too bad,” Dave said. “So what does it sound like? Like I’ve gone around the bend, or my logic’s gone spotty?” Frustrating. His whole life had turned utterly frustrating. Nor could he ditch the little voice in his mind reminding him about the fact he and Tiff forgot to include car maintenance in their budget. His SUV would need its 30 K checkup in a few months.

  “You’re worried about the effects of the cadmium on your mind again, aren’t you?” Steve asked.

  “Uh huh,” Dave said, seething. “I haven’t been able to properly focus my mind ever since this started. What if I’m finally losing it? Perhaps I should just let myself go crazy. Chuck everything. Throw my life into meaningless chaos. Lie about looking for clients and go sightseeing, for instance. Divorce Tiff and really stick it to her. Go join the panhandlers and live on the street.”

  “Calm down, calm down,” Steve said. “Things are bad, but not that bad. Not yet.”

  Dave rubbed his temples again and sighed. “Calm’s a good thing? Since when?”

  “You’re acting goofy.”

  “Hell,” Dave said. “I’ve always been more than a little goofy, all my life, always marching to the different drummer. My devotion to music and the arts. My crazy dreams as a kid when I thought I was someone else. The Sasquatch sentences. My choice of friends.” Steve sighed. “Only…” He paused, hesitant. “Only the genius professional soccer player I married has turned into a Wicked Witch of the West workaholic and it’s thrown me off my feed.”

  “Sasquatch sentences?” Steve said. “What are those?”

  Dave didn’t like to explain himself, or open himself up to others, but things just kept blurting out. “For instance, when you say ‘I’m gay but I’m not happy’, I restate what you say as ‘I’m happy but I’m not gay’ or ‘I’m gray but I’m not rappy’.”

  “Oh, those,” Steve said. “I’m not surprised you’ve named the damned things, but you don’t say them often. Not enough for me to consider you goofy.” True. Most people thought him obscenely dull.

  “I don’t say them often out loud.”

  Steve tapped screen while Dave concentrated on memories of spa massages in Hawaii. “Got another one for you, Dave,” Steve said, a couple minutes later. “Four of the other public Ideological Gods hanging around the United States – Change, Freedom, Honor and Progress – got together down in Berkley last Monday. After their meeting they held an impromptu news conference, attended only by science writers. Those four don’t appear to understand publicity at all, which is why this little confab didn’t make the cable news or the normal news websites. Listen to this quote, Dave: ‘In time, extraction industries will be moved into space, all products will be screened for improper biomimetic chemicals, such as hormone mimics, and the Earth returned to its pre-industrial splendor’. They’re another group who could have done in Hernandez.” Steve paused. “The more I learn about the 99 Gods, the less I like. They’re working as disparate groups with divergent agendas, and they’re going to make a hash of everything, despite how wonderful their intentions sound. I’ll bet those four did in Hernandez. That’s the sort of thing I’d expect from such an unworldly group of Gods.”

  “It’s the Suits,” Dave said.

  Steve sighed, long and overblown. He slapped shut his tablet cover in disgust. “You keep saying that, but how do you know?”

  “The Suits don’t dress in goofy costumes, they dress in business suits,” Dave said. “To me, this means they’re already acting in the real world, and in a big way. Add in their purchase of the Trump Tower and I think they’ve got a plan in action to become mind-boggling huge. I wonder how much of the global stock market slide can be attributed to their activities?”

  Steve offered a bowl of popcorn to Dave, but Dave shook his head. His potbelly had grown large enough already. Steve marched the popcorn bowl back into the kitchen. “Okay, I’ll give you they dress like nutjobs.” Scientist walked around in a lab coat, Change dressed like the ultimate tourist, Freedom made like John Wayne, Honor wore a Marine Corp sergeant’s uniform and Progress dressed like a cyberpunk heroine. “Even so, they can still be the ones who nuked Hernandez,” Steve said.

  “Their costumes rob them of credibility,” Dave said. “Hernandez got taken out in a business-like fashion, an orchestrated loan-calling attack followed by the group resignation of their operating officers.” He had looked into their bankruptcy, and although secrecy still shrouded much of Hernandez’s fall, he had found out that much. “Whoever took out Hernandez was organized and tied into the world of business. If Scientist and his companions did the corporate hit job, they would have done so differently.” Dave paused and watched Steve move kitchen items from one place to another, nervous. “You know, there’s a trend here, though, Steve.”

  “They’re all Ideological Gods, aren’t they. All the suspects.”

  “Uh huh,” Dave said. “The Territorial Gods are hard-ass miracle workers, the most public of the lot, all apparently dreaming big dreams – but aside from sticking their mugs on the tops of all the headlines, they’re not doing anything big individually. On the other hand, the Ideologicals are pushing things and doing things. They’re trouble makers, not publicity hounds. I don’t have a feel for the Practical Gods, though.”

  “Few of those have even stuck their noses up to be counted,” Steve said. He walked back to sit in his recliner, flipped open his iPad and tapped screen. “Politician’s been spotted in Washington and New York, giving advice, some apparently unwanted, in private to those in power. She’s already met with the President.” Tap tap tap. “Engineer got introduced at a news conference in Japan, at Toyota, but didn’t say a thing. According to the article, he’s helping Toyota with their work on improved batteries for their EVs.” Tap tap tap. “One of them’s named Teacher. She’s mentioned in several articles from France and Germany; she’s apparently arguing that the Euros still have too many class-oriented obstacles in their higher education system and offering suggestions as to how these problems can be fixed.”

  “They’re do-gooders, then. Advisors,” Dave said. “That sounds backwards. It should be the Ideologicals giving the advice and the Practicals out doing things.”

  “So you understand the Gods, eh?” Steve said, and laughed.

  “Clearly not,” Dave said. He lay back down, trying to ease his worsening headache. It didn’t help that on the street outside an ambulance dopplered by, accompanied by the deep diesel low magnitude earthquake rumble of a fire truck. “I think I’d have to hang with them for a while to understand them, not that someone like me will ever get the chance to, given how many mortals there are and how few Gods.”

  “In all these stories about magicians, their power is derived from the devil. It was long believed that the ancient university of Salamanca in Spain, founded A. D. 1240, was the chief school of magic, and had regular professors and classes in it. The devil was supposed to be the special patron of this department, and he had a curious fee for his trouble, which he collected every commencement day. The last exercise of the graduating class on that day was, to run across a certain cavern under the University. The devil was always on hand at this time, and had the privilege of grabbing at the last man of the crowd. If he caught him, as he commonly did, the soul of the unhappy student became the property of his captor. Hence arose the phrase “Devil take the hindmost”.” – P.T. Barnum, Humbugs of the World

  “Next thing you know they’re trying to steal your panties.”

  16. (John)

  John walked into Reed’s office in the CDHS, closed the door behind him and sat down. Reed stood up and smiled. “Hey, John,” he said, and stuck out his hand. “How’re you doing?”

  “Troubled,” John said. “Troubled enough to take you up on your earlier offer, my man. I need you full time.”

  “Shit,” Reed said, sitting back down and chewing on his lip. Reed Mat�
�s had ratty looking hair but otherwise appeared clean cut, a serious looking man in his late 20s, the perfect Chicago Department of Human Services operative. “When I offered my help before with the 99 Gods, you said you couldn’t protect me. Has something changed?”

  “The situation’s gotten worse, and I’m getting desperate,” John said, and went on to describe his confrontation with Dubuque, and the results of his five days of prayer that followed.

  Reed stood and gave him a hug. John let him and willed himself not to squirm, not at all comfortable with the openness of lovers of men in this modern era. Nor could he keep straight the polite term for men lovers. The language changed so quickly these days. “Jesus,” Reed said. “He turned Cosmo? I wouldn’t have thought anything short of a nuke could stop Cosmo.”

  John nodded. “If you’re in, I’ve got a trick I want to use,” John said. “It involves some people I haven’t ever told you about. They aren’t going to like my suggestion, but I think I can sell them on my idea.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Reed said. “I’ve been on pins and needles for weeks, waiting for one of the Gods to condemn us faggots to death or something equally appalling.” John didn’t think ‘faggot’ was one of the polite words, despite the fact Reed used it a lot. He shrugged and led Reed out of his office.

  Reed hadn’t bought into the God’s utopia from day one, a perfect recruit.

  Even better, he was a Telepath. A Telepath John had personally trained.

  “Like my ride?” John said. “I had it pimped. Look at the way the color changes on this thing depending on where you stand.” Reed winced and looked at John’s latest, a several year old Toyota Matrix redone with dark blue paint that had gold highlights when viewed from the rear. Reed nudged the front right wheel’s 22 inch spinning rims with his foot and made a face. John liked the tight interior and the high seat. Minivans and the larger SUVs fit his girth better, but vehicular comfort made him feel decadent and wasteful. Couldn’t have that.