by Alex Raizman
Ryan was circling the globe now. My god, it’s everything. Overall, it was every bit as impressive as seeing the Graphid home world from space. In some ways, less, since it was just an image. In other ways, however, it was even more imposing. He could see places he knew, places he’d been, places he’d wanted to go. He could trace the line of the Mississippi to Saint Louis and could see the collection of buildings that proved he was right. He wondered if he could actually see his apartment if he zoomed in somehow. He was sure he would. After all, it was the entire world laid out for him.
He would have expected seeing the world like this to make him feel more like a god, but instead, he found it humbling. He’d spent most of his life a small spec on that sphere. "Yeah, pretty much. I mean, we're in real time now. Every Graphid I met is probably already long dead. That star will probably die out before I turn forty. So isn't everyone used to it by now?"
Athena sighed. "Tell me, Eschaton...Ryan. When you were in that world, how did you feel?"
"Me? I felt great, powerful. I could just make a book full of knowledge and pop ‘reading 101’ into someone's head. I could have done it for everyone, if I wanted. I made myself invulnerable and could fly! It was like...like playing a video game with all the cheat codes on."
She gave him a nod. It wasn’t that she agreed with him. She was just acknowledging he had said things and she had understood them. Ryan was getting the feeling he was going to Learn a Lesson. "Yes. And no Hunger afterwards, which means you didn't expend any effort, yes?"
"Oh, absolutely. I still fainted, but that's just my brain adapting to apotheosis, right?"
"Indeed." She walked over to him, and leaned forward, her eyes unblinking. "Now imagine spending a hundred years there. Omnipotent, unaging, and able to do everything you want."
"Okay, that's easy." He met her eyes, his brow furrowing. "So...what's the problem?"
"Tell me, what do you imagine yourself doing?" Her voice was calm, measured, relaxed, and lacking her usual sardonic edge.
"Doing?" The furrow grew deeper, a tiny canyon between his eyes. "I mean...making things?"
"After a hundred years?" She tilted her head again, and for a moment Ryan was absurdly reminded of a confused dog spotting a cat for the first time. "What would be left to make?"
"Uh..." He trailed off, realizing he couldn't think of anything. Not just after a hundred years, but after ten or less. He’d conjure a castle, and probably a dragon because he liked dragons, and maybe put the castle in space. Maybe he’d make replicas of his favorite fictional worlds, or alien species…but none of it seemed like it would take that long.
"Now, imagine yourself in a hundred years here. What do you see yourself doing, assuming the sun doesn't explode?"
He leaned back a bit from her gaze. He turned instead back to the model of the Earth. For the first time, he noticed tiny red and blue dots kept appearing on it and vanishing, with the occasional yellow dot with them. It was a quick process, clustered mostly around cities. "I mean, that one's easy. I'm rebuilding the world or building a new one if everyone died. Or helping. Maybe exploring, seeing what's around now that everything's changed. Or maybe, I dunno, Crystal and I and you and whoever, we take a break, bounce around the universe and meet some aliens."
"Does that sound like fun in your nanoverse?" He looked at her again, drawn away from the blinking dots on the globe, and shrugged.
"I mean, sure. But..." Again, he trailed off, struggling to find words.
"But not as interesting as setting foot on Mars? Or rebuilding civilization? Or meeting aliens in this universe?"
He shook his head, and she nodded, one of those ghost smiles creeping onto her lips. "The trap of omnipotence. When you can do everything, why bother doing anything? Life is struggle, it is challenge. The idea of retreating to fantasy lands we have complete control over may be appealing, but a thousand worlds built by a whim can't hold a candle to a single house built by your hands."
After a moment, it was Ryan’s turn to nod, the motion slow and deliberate as he pondered every word. "So that's why we're fighting over the fate of the Earth? Because we'd be bored otherwise?"
Athena thought that over, chewing his words for a bit before swallowing them. "No, not exactly. Because without struggle, we'd have no reason, no purpose. Earth gives us purpose."
Ryan frowned. “I still don’t buy it.”
“I really don’t think this should need explaining,” Athena said.
“Look, I care because I have people out there. My sister. My friends. But…why do you? I mean, you’ve seen more people die than I’ve even met, probably. You’re like three thousand years old!”
“Older than that,” Athena clarified, and sighed. “And that’s exactly why I care, Ryan. I have millennia of reminders of how fragile human life is, how precious it is. If you’re not a monster, you won’t lose your ability to bond with them and enjoy their company and yes, grieve for them when they pass.”
It was Ryan’s turn to sigh. Does she not get it? Or am I crazy? “Don’t you get callous to it after a while? I mean, we have entire nanoverses full of people that die every second. We crush nanoverses to kill each other. And even then, people die all the time. How do you…keep caring?”
Athena was silent at first. She wasn’t looking at Ryan, but off into the distance. “It used to be rare,” she finally said.
Ryan’s eyebrows furrowed at the segue. “What did?”
“Destroying nanoverses,” Athena explained, her voice as distant as her gaze. “It used to be the limiting factor between us. If you want to kill a god, you have to be okay with snuffing out billions and billions of sentient lives too. Lives with hopes and dreams and…and everything. It was an almost unthinkable act, one that was reserved only for if a god was so dangerous, so mad, that it was…” she groped for the word for a moment. “We used to call it the Great Kindness, when we did it. The logic was that if a god had become so awful as to deserve that fate, those enumerable billions of people were likely trapped in an eternal torment anyway. I never bought it. I’ve never destroyed a nanoverse. It seemed too monstrous.”
Ryan nodded, a small gesture to avoid disturbing Athena. She was in a mood, and he didn’t want to break it. “What changed?”
“It wasn’t any one thing. It just sort of happened, over time. More and more gods forgot about the billions of people within, instead focusing on the fact that they wanted to destroy their opponent – permanently. We stopped seeing it as an act that was rarely justified. Focused on the idea that within the nanoverse, pretty much every being alive would have died from old age before the collapse finished, so we weren’t really killing anyone, were we?” She chuckled, a hollow, bitter sound that made Ryan shiver. “It’s still not common. We’re not all sociopaths. But...fine, you’re right. It does get hard. Nanoverses are tools, but they’re still full of people. Humans are still people, but they don’t last long.”
“Then…how do you manage to still care?”
Another long silence followed, so long Ryan almost asked again before Athena spoke. “I never forget what it was like to feel powerless. I don’t let myself. The moment I do, I’ll become like some of the others. As long as you hold on to that, you should be fine.” She glanced sideways at Ryan. “Of course, with how little you know, you’re probably going to die before that ever becomes a concern.”
Moment over, apparently. Ryan forced a grin in response. “Bet you fifty bucks I don’t die before the world ends.”
Athena rolled her eyes. “If you lose, I’ll never be able to collect that debt.”
“Yeah, but what do you need fifty bucks for anyway?” Ryan responded.
“You do realize that if you end the world, money will have no more value?” Athena asked, quirking her eyebrow again.
“Well…” Ryan shrugged. “Good incentive to keep things intact when I do, right?”
“Fine,” Athena turned back to the globe that was dominating the room, done with the conversation.
&
nbsp; Ryan turned with her to look at the globe watching as it spun in a lazy rotation, clouds whirling across the simulated sky. "So...what's this do?"
"It's a Zoisphere. A living globe. You can use it to manipulate weather across the world."
Ryan closed his mouth and swallowed. "So I could, what, make a hurricane and throw it at DC right now?"
"It's not as precise as being directly on location and sending down thunderbolts or forming hurricanes, but yes." She raised an eyebrow. "You've heard stories of gods, in their wrath, sending great storms to throw ships off course or destroy cities, yes? But when you've been on the ground, could you imagine manipulating that much power?"
He shook his head, remembering the effort of holding back the tornado before Enki interrupted.
"So this gives you an alternative. Much less precise, slower to work. For example, if you wanted to, as you put it, 'make a hurricane and throw it at DC', you'd have to start it a way out as a tropical storm and feed it till it grew into what you wanted."
Ryan chuckled slightly, drawing a curious look from Athena. "Just...the way the conversation went. 'Here is why having unlimited power is boring. Now check out this cool globe that lets you control weather across the world!'"
Athena chuckled faintly. "I see the humor there," she said, and again – wonder upon wonder - Ryan earned a non-sarcastic smile. It faded almost the instant she noticed Ryan noticing it. What, worried I’ll think you’re less of a hardass if I see you smile too much? Not going to happen.
"So what are the little dots then?"
"Red is a death, blue is a birth. Yellow is a manifestation of a god’s power." She glanced at Ryan’s eyes, and answered the question he was about to ask before he could give it voice. "I'm not surprised Ishtar didn't show this to you sooner, at least in this case. If your divine sight was not strong enough, it would have shattered your mind."
“Divine sight?”
Athena sighed. “Ishtar didn’t even give you the proper terminology for that? Of course she didn’t. Divine sight - how you see the underpinnings of reality, how you know what you’re looking at to manipulate.”
"Oh." He sighed. "I'm really looking forward to getting to the point where my mind breaking isn’t a risk. So this is how Enki was tracking us the first time around?"
"Yes. Yellow is normally rare, so if he just went to each one, he'd eventually find you." She shrugged. “Once you both sent out your little letters, I imagine the manifestations of divine power became far more frequent as gods started looking to see what was going on. Being able to see where they manifest isn’t a very useful thing, unless you’re looking for a concentration of gods.”
Ryan watched for a moment, the eternal cycle of life and death playing out as pretty little dots across the globe. The weight of it began to set in, and he wanted to sit down...when something got his attention. A massive yellow dot was slowly fading. In its wake, red dots were appearing with increasing speed, dozens, spreading out from a central point like a ripple in a pond, but these waves were human lives being snuffed out. "What's going on in Texas?"
She focused her gaze there. "We have to go. Something terrible is happening."
They both ran through the doorway to Crystal's staging area, and Athena went over to the controls and began pushing the touchscreen. Apparently, she could read whatever language that was.
"Think it's Enki?" Ryan asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet in anticipation.
"Absolutely. And for whatever purpose, he's killing hundreds. Thankfully, we're not far - in fact, the door has just been placed."
Ryan turned to rush out of it, Athena vaulting over the staging area to follow him. They opened the door and stepped out into the street, just in time to watch a tall, gaunt, eyeless mummy, half wrapped in tattered cloth, pull the heart out of a man's chest. The streets around this mummy were devoid of life but littered with the dead. Ryan had to fight back a wave of nausea at the sight. He’d never imagined anything like this.
"Oh, hells." Athena whispered, drawing a sword out of thin air.
The mummy turned to them and let out a low, echoing scream.
Chapter 14
The Mummies of Ys
Athena swung her sword at the mummy, altering the blade’s velocity seamlessly as she did. The sword sliced through the desiccated corpse's skull at around Mach 3, sending the top of its head rocketing into the sky while the rest of its body collapsed from the blow.
The sonic boom cut through the cacophony of screams.
"Oh, Athena...why? Why not silent?" Ryan began reaching into his own nanoverse for a weapon.
"I beg your pardon?" She glanced over her shoulder at him, and with her sword still flung out and her hair whipping in the wind, she looked like she was posing for a fantasy book cover, only instead of some elaborate outfit she was wearing comfortable jeans and a practical t-shirt.
"Noise! Haven't you ever watched a zombie movie?" Ryan didn't waste any time admiring the power stance, tugging the weapon he had grabbed on to and pulling it slowly out. Feels heavier.
Athena furrowed her brow. “No, and I fail to see the relevance. Hollywood often incorrectly displays such things.”
“Damnit.” Ryan glanced down the street. “Rule one of a zombie apocalypse-
“-Mummy.” Athena interjected.
Ryan shook away the correction and continued, “Mummy apocalypse then. Loud noises draw the horde.”
Ryan's response was cut short by the sound of dozens upon dozens of approaching footsteps.
Athena watched the horde, and a flicker of fear crossed those impassive eyes. “Ah.”
More than a flicker of fear crossed Ryan’s brain. It was an entire horde of fear, and it pounded through his brain like the rushing horde on the street. "Athena! What's the difference between zombies and mummies?" Ryan's voice nearly cracked as terror began to settle in.
"You have to remove the head and stab them through the heart or they'll reform." Ryan noticed the mummy Athena had felled was trying to rise, clawing frantically towards the gods. With a contemptuous flick, she brought her sword down on the corpse before her to demonstrate. The creature went rigid as the sword impaled it, and then let out a dusty sigh as it collapsed. "And mummies have supernatural powers. And aren't slow. And hate gods that didn't create them."
Ryan and Athena had been standing in an empty street, but figures were filing in. Granger, Texas was a fairly small town near Austin, and this street was a row of one and two-story shops with minimal alley space - just a couple on either side of the street, a block to the north and a block to the south. Ryan noted with mounting horror that there were people in the shops, some armed with guns - God bless Texas, he couldn't help but think - while others huddled behind the ones who were armed.
A couple of the gunmen were pointing their weapons at Ryan. Oh, right. I'm the Antichrist. At least they weren't firing at him. Yet.
The mummies began to charge, many of them hunched over on all fours. Others were standing, wielding staves or strangely curved swords or axes that looked like pendulums blades from a video game trap.
Ryan took his eyes off the approaching doom to glance at his own weapon. It was...a sword. He felt a surge of disappointment. I guess I didn't give them enough time to make it out of the Iron Age. But then his divine sight kicked in, and noticed that the equations surrounding the sword were incredibly complex. He couldn't get enough focus to figure out what they were for, though - not in the time a bunch of undead would need to close the gap.
He and Athena moved back to back. "What's that dust cloud behind them?" Ryan asked, not looking over his shoulder.
"It's more of them, still in a discorporate form. They'll try to fill our lungs while the others attack." When Ryan squinted, he could see vaguely humanoid shapes making up the cloud.
"Good thing we don't need to breathe, then."
"Yes. Up until they become solid in your lungs. Messy way to die."
Ryan clamped his mouth shut and wished for nose plugs
. You don't need to breathe, Ryan. Try and just exhale the whole time.
"Charge!" Athena shouted, running to meet the horde head on, and, screaming in a mixture of anger and complete terror, Ryan did the same.
He swung the sword as soon as he was close enough. As he did, the mass shifted to the leading edge without dulling the blade. It wasn’t part of his power, but something inherent in the sword. As soon as it was through the mummy's neck, the mass shifted to the other side, and Ryan was able to stop his wild swing in much less distance than normal. He brought it back, with the shifting mass adding acceleration, and buried it in the mummy's side, right into the creature’s heart.
Another opponent was leaping through the air, though, and Ryan didn't know if he could pull the sword out in time, but the sword's blade went almost completely liquid, flowing like mercury until it had to solidify again to puncture his foe. The angle was awkward, and Ryan was sure he'd miss the heart, but the sword adjusted itself slightly in his grip to make sure it hit where it needed to.
What the hell just happened? Ryan wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t complaining, instead whirling to strike at another mummy. Again, as he swung the blade began to shimmer and flow, and Ryan felt his swing pulled towards just an inch - enough where it met the mummy’s neck. Ryan flinched as bone and desiccated flesh flew from the point of impact.
There wasn’t time to figure it out. There was too much going on. Ryan began to let the minor adjustments the sword made compensate for a lower energy style on his part, conserving as much strength as he could. The dust cloud closed around him, and he started a long, forced exhale to try to keep it out. Visibility dropped, to the point where he could only see the nearest foes, but that was enough to hold them at bay.
