Part 2
Tyranny of the Mind
“During the last century or so, again, while witchcraft has been extensively believed in, the witch has degenerated into a very vulgar and poverty stricken sort of conjuring woman. Take our New York city witches, for instance. They live in cheap and dirty streets that smell bad; their houses are in the same style, infected with a strong odor of cabbage, onions, washing-day, old dinners, and other merely sublunary smells. Their rooms are very ill furnished, and often beset with washtubs, swill-pails, mops and soiled clothes ; their personal appearance is commonly unclean, homely, vulgar, coarse, and ignorant, and often rummy. Their fee is a quarter or half of a dollar.” – P.T. Barnum, Humbugs of the World
Two weeks later…
“It almost sounds to me like you expected the 99 Gods.”
19. (Atlanta)
“I’ll have the Haruhi Suzumiya decaf,” Dana said to the barista, and smiled. The cute Hispanic boy, no older than seventeen, smiled back and walked off. He hadn’t taken Atlanta’s order, but, then again, Atlanta had decided not to bother.
“Ordering a Haruhi decaf is like ordering a vodka tonic without the vodka, you know,” Atlanta said, studying her chief of staff while they waited. The Anime Café had changed their menu again, and she had a sneaky suspicion she had prompted the change, along with the rest of the 99 Gods. The Haruhi character reminded Atlanta of some of the 99, a neurotic over caffeinated teen girl with unconscious godlike effects on everyone around her.
“You mean the menu item names aren’t total gibberish?” Dana said.
Atlanta let Dana’s absurd comment pass with nothing more than a nod. The Café was off today, diminished and less effective at calming her nerves. She didn’t spot any of the Indigo here, but given their tricks, that might be because they weren’t interested in being spotted.
The Indigo had invited her here to meet and accept their appointed liaison, which the Indigo leadership, chaotic as always, had interpreted as a request for two liaisons. “You’re implying more,” Dana said, focusing for a moment on a newly painted fingernail. Dana had been the recent recipient of a lecture on grooming; as a God’s COS, her clothes, hair, nails and face needed to be perfect when she was out in public being Atlanta’s representative. Dana hadn’t been shabby, but still... “You’re implying meaning. Such as the menu item ‘Rei’, for coffee-flavored milk. A person?” Atlanta nodded. “Not exactly the world’s most willful person, either, I suspect. And the ‘Utena’, the cayenne cappuccino. Is this named for a sexpot or a hardcase?”
“The latter, though you could argue both.” Atlanta blinked and turned to the voice, and saw, finally, two of the Indigo, both in their crazy ignore-me dark gray silk cloaks. The voice belonged to the Café’s owner and proprietor, Lara Minor. Standing next to her was one of the few black Indigo members, a nameless women who radiated competence and unflappability over severe PTSD. That is, a standard member of the Indigo.
“Have a seat, they’re yours,” Atlanta said. “You two are my liaisons?” They both nodded. “You are?”
“Dr. Velma Horton,” the medium-toned woman said. She looked to be in her forties, with dark and experienced eyes, well-straightened hair, and an ample but athletic figure. “To your worries, no, I’m not an attempted insult.” Atlanta hadn’t let her worries move past one of her background mental tracks, but, well, Indigo. “I had to lobby hard to get myself appointed to the position.”
Hero worship, then, not tokenism. Atlanta shrugged. “Lara, I’m more surprised at you getting caught up in this.” She was, if Atlanta had things correctly pegged, a member of the inner circle of the leadership cabal or however the Indigo referred to such things. As an inner circle member, instead of competence and PTSD, she radiated psych ward and unearthly heroism. She also needed lessons in grooming, especially around the eyes. There were times when Atlanta wondered why anyone would ever let white women near eye makeup.
Lara turned and studied the tiled ceiling, and the various pens, pencils, forks and knives stuck into it, thrown from below. “I’m thinking of renaming our largest straight java the ‘Atlanta’,” she said.
“Retiring your signature drink, the Son Goku?” Atlanta said, and stopped her thanks for the support comment before she said it. “You’re equating me with Goku?” She had always thought Goku overpowered and overblown for a hero. “I do have a blue energy blast I can direct from the palm of my hand, though.” She raised her hand and palm at Lara, who paled. “Want a demonstration?” Lara shook her head ‘no’, quick.
“I would call the blue helix more of a nerve overload than an energy blast,” Dana said, again missing the conversational context. “Boss here needed some powerful non-lethal attacks, and the blue helix is one of the better ones we’ve come up with.” Especially since, if Atlanta doubled the usual energy levels of the helix, the blast would kill a mortal.
“I’m afraid we’re all going to have a bunch to learn,” Dr. Horton said. She watched the byplay between her putative Indigo boss and Atlanta with muted alarm mixed with disgust.
“So, what kind of doctor are you?” Atlanta asked. Someone here needed to keep up the proper social appearances.
“ER, at Athens Regional,” Dr. Horton said. “It’s one of the reasons we’re doing two liaisons. At least until things get too hot for any of us to maintain a normal career, I’m still going to be doing my shifts.” To Atlanta’s senses, Dr. Horton wasn’t one of Indigo’s top people at the funky unnatural, but she did have the greasy aura Atlanta had tentatively associated with whatever trick the Indigo people used to know more about people and situations than they should.
Dana, after studying Lara for over a minute, finally spoke. “You rank Dr. Horton, and you’re older than she is, but you look like you’re my age,” Dana said. Uh huh, there she went, again. Lara and Dr. Horton would have to get used to her. “Yes?”
“Yes,” Lara said. By appearance, Lara was a young white twenty-something and a gym rat, who liked to wear sandals on her feet and flipped up sunglasses on her pageboy-length artificially colored blonde to brown to dark blue rainbow hair. Atlanta knew better. “I’d rather not have to lie to you about such strangenesses…so please don’t ask. I can say I’ve been to Hell and back, though.”
“Hell?” Dana said. She turned to Atlanta. “You said your creators told you there is no heaven or hell, just God Almighty and his absence. Ms. Minor didn’t mean her comment figuratively, either. What’s going on?”
“Strangeness,” Atlanta said, echoing Lara. “You are correct about the Host’s comment. I believe my friends here have a different viewpoint on the question, though.”
“Kinda sorta,” Lara said. She waved over the barista, who delivered Dana’s coffee. The barista had lost track of the table, likely due to Lara and Dr. Horton’s presence. “Though we’re a bit miffed the Angelic Host didn’t mention Hell. The place is bad news, and the things that make it here from Hell are potentially one of the greater dangers you Gods will ever face.”
“Don’t look at me,” Atlanta said, to Dana, who was looking at her, shocked. “I can’t explain what I barely understand, and have no evidence of.”
“Uh huh,” Lara said. “Man, do I know that reaction.” One of the ways Atlanta knew Lara was what she implied she was had to do with her word choices. Lara talked like a Boomer, even when talking about Anime and Manga. Especially when talking about Anime and Manga. “You know Dante, correct?” Lara asked Dana.
Dana nodded.
“When did Dante write his stuff? The 14th Century?”
“Late 13th, early 14th,” Dana said. “Why?”
“Ever take a look at any maps of the world from back then?” Lara said. “Or any descriptions of medieval cosmology?”
“They’re all nonsense,” Dana said. “What does that have to do with…” Her voice trailed off as she got it. At best, Dante had been allegorical.
“I’m su
re he had the place described to him second or third hand,” Lara said. “To give you a better sense for the place, so did Lovecraft and Geiger.”
“Uh, okay,” Dana said. Not believing a word.
“You’re not going to get any theories from them on it, either,” Atlanta said. “Their unifying cult dogma says it all: ‘Faith isn’t enough, belief isn’t enough, theory isn’t enough, truth isn’t enough, facts aren’t enough. Give me the data and let me make my own damned opinions.’ It sounds insane, but when you’ve experienced what they apparently have, their way of looking at things is a necessary and rational coping mechanism.”
“We are not a cult,” Lara said, arch, and thrust forward. Her large oval sunglasses fell down her face and down her nose, cocked to the left. She removed them and twirled them around in her fingers, half-blushing.
“The data suggests otherwise,” Atlanta said. She liked yanking the chain of the Indigo leadership. They reacted so well. She was glad, though, that she had never been through whatever they had, whatever made them the way they were.
Dr. Horton reached into her purse and retrieved a flat black silk bag, about three inches square. She put down her purse, opened the bag, and took out a coin. Outside of the bag, the coin screamed in Atlanta’s mind, carrying bad with it in a way that highly annoyed several of her extra Godly senses. Well, whatever this was from, the so-called Angelic Host liked it no more than the Indigo did. Dr. Horton gave the coin, a warped penny, to Dana, for examination.
“You aren’t going to explain, are you?” Dana said, holding up the warped penny to the light, to illuminate a pinhole an eighth of an inch above the coin’s distorted date. Something had twisted the penny in a warped spiral fashion, centered on the tiny hole. The mathematics of the twisting planer distortion was obvious, and the energy behind the twist minor in the 99 Gods scheme of things, but to the Indigo, and their trained version of no-power supernatural, it was immense.
“Never,” Dr. Horton said. “There is no rational explanation. I carry this as a reminder of what I’ve witnessed.”
Oh. Atlanta almost face-palmed herself, and she turned to Dr. Horton, then to Lara, to make sure her realization was correct before she spoke. “You want Dr. Horton divinely enhanced.”
“Made into a Supported? Yes,” Lara said, using Jan’s coined term nobody else used. “If it’s not impossible, or otherwise politically unwise.” The Indigo’s idea of a price, or perhaps alliance.
Atlanta met Dr. Horton’s gaze. “There is political risk, and a legitimate fear of what attention might bring. However, I’m not at all opposed to this.”
“I accept the risk,” she said. “Given all I’ve seen, I can’t do otherwise.”
20. (John)
John put down his old rosary beads and stood, his flesh now more baggy than flabby. He shook and swayed, dizzy, as it should be. Night, but he didn’t bother with any illumination save a few dim night-lights. Cold rain pattered on the roof, the late October reminding him of his ancient homeland of Pomerania.
The way to God, through fasting and meditation, was slow if you started out grossly overweight, and your subconscious mind wielded annoyingly powerful magic wedded to the idea of self-preservation. After nearly two weeks of full time meditation and fasting, while living away from the world in a cold vacation rental on Wisconsin’s Beaver Lake, John had not yet succeeded. He wondered if he should return to the small flat he maintained in Milwaukee, four blocks away from Marquette University, and give up on his fast as a waste of time. The drive would be less than an hour, unless he got caught in rush hour traffic.
Perhaps he should skip drinking water and use this harsher abstinence to bring the Virgin, as all else had failed.
“I am always here, John, my beloved. It’s that you cannot normally see or hear me.” John turned to the voice and found the Virgin at his side, dressed in layers of hand-woven woolens, her patterned clothes died blood red and aqua. She spoke in Aramaic, as always.
“Mother Mary,” he said, also in Aramaic, kneeling and averting his eyes. “Thank you for appearing, and as always, I am humbled by your countenance.” He paused, to order his mind. “I face a dilemma, and because of it, I am filled with fear and hesitation.”
“Tell me.”
“I met Dubuque again, and he isn’t what I thought,” John said. “Unlike his aura, Dubuque’s actual power did not have the holy feel to it God’s grace does when working through a real saint. Instead, Dubuque’s power was something else, something new, and something Dubuque himself generated. Compared to the other unnatural powers I have sensed over the centuries, Dubuque’s power resembled only one thing, my own magic.” He paused, but the Virgin didn’t comment. “This makes the Living Saint’s name a lie. Dubuque is a God, a magician God.”
John took a deep breath. “He sensed my magic, and my ancient deeds done in darker times, condemned me for it, and killed me. When I recovered from whatever minimal death he imposed on me, I found my mission activated, to oppose him as if he was a corrupted magician, enslaved by infernal forces. I didn’t understand, and fled. Later, while speaking with a trusted Telepath, the Telepath told me that if I wished to continue my mission I must either renounce my vows and become a magician again, or one or more of the 99 Gods would capture me, control me, and force me to become a magician against my will and serve them.” He buried his head in his hands. “This is all wrong. I cannot renounce my vows, or allow myself to be enslaved. I know not what to do.”
Had God called him to release his magic and become a magician in order to oppose Dubuque? Corruption would then be merely the price necessary to achieve God’s will. He feared he was simply rationalizing, though, tempted by his desire to survive. He feared that if he freed himself from his vow and became again a magician, he would lose his moral authority to oppose Dubuque. By becoming a magician again, he would cast away centuries of iron self-control, and leap on a path he knew led into the darkness and evil. He would become that which he had considered his enemy all his life. He would submit to God’s will and do this, if required. His life and his soul were at God’s service.
If God required a magician, an evil magician…John would become one.
He couldn’t believe, though, that this was God’s will.
“You are mistaken,” the Virgin said. John took his head from his hands and looked up in hope. Mother Mary’s eyes were sad. The scents of the Holy Land, including what had to be myrrh, surrounded him and steadied him.
“Thank you, thank you,” he said. He prayed thanks to God in his mind, but stopped short, when Mother Mary’s face turned hard.
“You are mistaken about what activated your mission. Draw water, and I will show you.”
As always, the Virgin never explained. She showed. Explanation, he feared, was too much of a divine imposition on mortal free will. When the Virgin told him to do something, she always couched it in choice, never as an order.
He stood, unsteady, and drew a basin of water. Whatever his magic allowed, as it worked on its own or it interacted with God’s will, it often involved water. John didn’t fight it, but embraced it. Whenever possible, he lived near water. Water was his friend.
He bowed and placed the basin before Mother Mary. She did not look at the basin, but at him. “Observe. Understand what your deeper mind realized.”
He looked at the water, which now showed a scene from his recent past, a moving picture of his conversation with Dubuque.
“My only paying jobs have been in the service of the Lord,” Dubuque said. “I helped manage charities and did their bookkeeping. My background was about as mainstream Protestant, and as boring, as it could be.” Looking on the conversation from the perspective of an outsider John realized several things. First, Dubuque’s control, his bending of other minds to his will, was pervasive and omnipresent; it wasn’t what he was doing, but what he was. Second, John almost shrank back in horror at himself; the ravages of
old age on his body were manifestly more wrong than he had realized. Instead of his usual priestly aura of command, he looked like the American Father Christmas, a jolly figure worthy of disdain. “However, from the Angelic Host, I’ve learned to broaden my understanding of God, and to listen to those of faith, as they pray.” In the basin vision he leaned back, eyebrows up in surprise, before he went back to focusing his gaze on Dubuque. John shook his head, understanding now what he had missed in person. “Some might say I’m not as Christian as I used to be,” Dubuque said, “after being confronted with…”
John, angry, waved his hands over the vision in the basin, and it vanished. “Mother Mary, I am a fool.”
“Dubuque fooled you, yes, by not allowing you to sense what you would have normally sensed,” Mother Mary said. “Tell me what you have sensed, now.”
“Dubuque is listening to those at prayer because they are praying to him,” John said, filled with righteous anger, the wrath of God Almighty himself. “He is being worshipped, and he is encouraging it. I am doubly a fool, because Portland, when I met her, warned me that some of the 99 were encouraging worship, and I dismissed her worries as improbable, if not impossible. For why would God Almighty allow such beings to be created in His name in such a way as to be capable of being worshipped?”
“You know the answer to such questions already,” Mother Mary said.
He did, and he should have remembered those teachings when Portland made her comment. Foolish mortals were able to worship anything, he knew quite well, and worship could warp the mind of any being with free will, from mouse to godling. The problem leapt from personal damnation to disaster when a supernaturally active being received worship; because doing so opened the doorway to corruption. “I am sorry, and I apologize,” he said. “Too much time has passed since I last dealt with this issue. I should have remembered, but didn’t.”
“Tell me. What do you now believe?”
“Dubuque is a worshipped God, and his worshipped nature is what triggered my mission.”
“I cannot tell you whether or not to free your magic, beloved. Neither I, nor God, can make this decision for you.”
“I understand,” John said. “But how can I even contemplate this? I can do so much harm, not to myself, for I would sacrifice my soul to serve God, but to those around me.”
“Look again at the basin. Again visit your past, if you choose.”
John did, and he saw himself, and another old man. He recognized the location, the village of Winterthur, in modern-day Switzerland, and the event, a talk with a magician recently come to his power, and the approximate date, in the last decade of the 16th century. He didn’t remember the details of the conversation, though, so he listened.
“…and have I done evil? I would never do evil,” the old man said, huddled in his soot-blackened cloak.
“You have not done evil yet, but you will,” John said, in the vision. He wore a friar’s cassock, his body young, tall and commanding, and only slightly obese. They spoke in the provincial French of the day. “It is inevitable. The Devil’s voices are too strong.”
“I am begging you to give me enough time to save my family from this insane war against the Hell-born,” the old man said. “A month! Two at the most. I will finish them off, and all will be well.”
“You will want more.”
“Since you said you don’t have the power to protect us against the Hell-demons, make it so I still do,” the old man said. “Please. I beg you. Is there any way you can make it so?”
John, in the basin, cupped his chin in his hand and thought. “I cannot, but you can make it so. Your story moves me, and I understand your needs and motivations. I can withhold my hand as long as you do no evil, yet I cannot shadow you forever.”
“What must I do?”
“Pledge to the Lord you will not undo the following magical binding, and bind yourself with your magic to cease being a magician two months from now. You are strong enough to rid yourself of your magic, but not so strong your own magic would prevent you from so acting.” John had tried the same, in his youth, and found his magic too strong. He wasn’t able to rid himself of his own magic.
“I can do that,” the old man said. “But I fear you are right. Whatever I can pledge with my magic, I can undo later.”
“True, but if you disavow a pledge to the Lord, then you have done evil. Do so, and I will appear, and I will take magicianhood away from you.” His basin-self didn’t say, but John remembered pledging to join up with the magician’s minions in the fight against the grotesque walking-eyeball demons, which he did. He had, several days before the vision, learned that his ability to remove magic had only minor and temporary effects on the nightmarish Hell-demons. He was present when the last of them fell, and, alas, present when the old man broke his vow to rid himself of his magic.
John waved his hands over the basin again, and the vision vanished. “My situation is different,” he said, to Mother Mary.
“Not entirely,” the Virgin said. “You will have allies who would turn on you if you broke a holy pledge, and you are aged.”
Oh. Of course. “Thank you, Blessed Mother,” John said. Now he understood, and his moral agony vanished.
John broke his fast and went out to the porch of the rental lakeside cottage, where he watched the lake. Behind him, behind the cottage, the sky lightened as the sun crept toward day through streams of flat narrow clouds. He ignored the distant traffic sounds, the sounds of the first people to wake for the day and make their way toward their jobs in Milwaukee.
“God, and Jesus, and Mary: witness,” John said. “I pledge before you, and to you, that when this body dies, I die as well. I pledge before you, and to you, not to extend the health of my body beyond that of two years, or the end of the worship of the 99 Gods, whichever comes first.
The Lord did not intervene, or send any sign to stop him. The late season frog chorus continued, as did the sounds of early morning birds and distant automobiles.
John concentrated, and for the first time ever revoked the old chains holding the bulk of his magic in check. The loosed power flowed through him, sickening him morally and physically until he consciously grabbed its reins. Now he felt good. Now he felt strong, stronger than he expected. The infernal voices of damnation came quickly into his mind, but his age aided him in this as well, as Ken had predicted, and he banished them with ease.
For now.
“I’m risking my own damnation with this idiocy, God,” John said, his voice matching the frog chorus’s croaking. He had once been a magician, centuries ago, before locking his own magic away, save the magic to let him undo the magic of others. In the following centuries he had studied the magic of those he hunted, a passionate study giving him the knowledge needed to keep himself alive. In his studies, he had become the world’s foremost expert on magic, what magic was able to do, and how it corrupted. If there were any others with his strength of magic, he had never met them. The evil he might do, if he gave in to the infernal voices, terrified him. “I hope to hell this is worth it.”
God didn’t strike him down for his whine, which was at least something.
He flexed his magical will, and examined the world around him, alive in a way he hadn’t experienced in far too long. He knew what he had done to himself, and the countdown he had started. Worse, he knew he would never be able to redo the pledge to lock his magic away and become a magician hunter again.
He couldn’t turn back.
Now, for once, time was of the essence.
He stood and willed his body healed and healthy.
It became so.
“Time to get to work,” John said. He flew over to his car, summoned his toiletries, and drove off.
21. (Dave)
“I’m so sorry,” Dr. Greuter said through the speaker on Dave’s phone. Dave inhaled in shock, unable to respond. After a long pause, Dr. Greuter continued. “Although the H
opkins’ test results don’t indicate any possible new treatment strategies, Mr. Estrada, there are several palliative programs we might try. We’d like you to come in for another consultation.”
“Sure,” Dave said, shaking. He asked Dr. Greuter to email the test results to him and made an appointment for later in the week before hitting the end button.
Untreatable. Untreatable and progressing faster. Dave understood now why Dr. Greuter had been so reluctant to hold this discussion over the phone instead of in person.
Dr. Greuter didn’t say terminal, but he didn’t need to.
“Why the hell am I even bothering to search for clients?” Dave said. He sat on his Dallas hotel bed and waited until the test results arrived, as an email attachment. He checked through them quickly, stopping only when he spotted an unfamiliar term he had to look up. The test results were as bad as Dr. Greuter had said, and he suspected one reason Dr. Greuter wanted to keep caring for him was to figure out why he, Dave, was still alive and still walking on two feet. Dave tried to steady himself by breathing deeply, and stretching, but neither worked.
He had two more meetings with potential clients in the Dallas metro area. His mind in a fog, he made the plane reservations for his trip back to Denver after he finished with those.
“Why us?” Steve asked. Mirabelle nodded, quizzical as well. Hospitable as always, she set down a cheese plate with crackers on the coffee table in her living room, to join the chips and soft drinks.
“I’d hoped to brace all of you” his chamber music group “at once, but Roger wasn’t interested.” Roger, as antisocial as ever, had bailed when he squeezed enough hints out of Dave to realize this wouldn’t be a practice session.
“You look like hell,” Mirabelle said. “Tell us.”
Dave nodded and went through the test results and the medical consensus that he had exhausted all his options.
“Shit,” Steve said. He stood and gave Dave a careful hug. Mirabelle did the same. “Whatever you need, we’ll be here for you.” Dave nodded, biting his upper lip and staring at the farthest wall.
Mirabelle settled into a high backed chair by the window, facing him. “How’s Tiffany doing?” she said.
Dave shrugged, but couldn’t speak for a few moments. “I haven’t told Tiff,” he said, when he got control of himself again. “I’m not sure I want to.”
“You need to tell her,” Steve said. “Not only can she help, she deserves to know.”
“I don’t want her pity,” Dave said. “Or her veiled annoyance with my medical problems, something else to mess up her precious work schedule.”
Steve muffled a sigh. Dave refused to acknowledge it and turned to Mirabelle.
“You need to set up some counseling for the two of you,” Mirabelle said. Her frown told Dave she thought his attitude about Tiff’s work-first lifestyle as much a problem as Tiff’s own attitude. “I can help if you want.”
“It’s worth considering,” Dave said, dodging the issue, and wondering why he would bother. He rubbed his hands together to warm them, and leaned back on Mirabelle’s leather couch. “I’m having a hard time convincing myself to keep going.”
“Understandable,” Steve said.
“Why should I bother looking for new clients? Why should I bother with anything?” Dave said. “I’ve been coping by faking my way through life. ‘Everything will be fine’, you know? I’m sick of it.” He sighed. “Counseling sounds like more of the same.”
“Don’t give up,” Steve said, a catch in his voice.
“Why not?” Dave said. “Life as a mental vegetable doesn’t appeal to me.” In Dave’s worst nightmares, he saw himself, drooling in a bed while suffering through a slow and painful death. He would rather exit thinking, if he had to exit at all, and Dr. Greuter’s results were the next exit sign he had feared.
“Well, you’re not a mental vegetable yet, and you can’t do anything meaningful if you’re dead,” Mirabelle said. “The last bit’s a Boise quote. Someone had asked him, since the 99 Gods admitted there is an afterlife of sorts, about the point of life.” Portland had been asked about Heaven, and had replied that although the popular idea of Heaven and Hell didn’t exist some sort of afterlife did, where you ‘joined God Almighty’. Then she said she had said too much, the end of that tidbit of trivia. “He says life is for doing. There’s still meaningful things you can do with your life, Dave.”
Dave turned away; yes, Mirabelle had caught him out. He hadn’t been thinking of suicide, well at least not seriously, but he had been thinking about giving up. “Trying to dredge up new clients isn’t one of them, though.”
“Are you sure?” Steve said. “I don’t know much about your business, but with the stock market continuing its slide and so many firms in trouble, anything you find for your company’s going to at least help your company, even if you…” Steve’s voice choked up, unwilling to finish his sentence with the obvious ‘aren’t there to share in the reward’ comment.
Dave bit his upper lip again.
“All hope isn’t gone,” Mirabelle said. “You can always hope for a miracle.”
“That’s what I’d been doing, until this,” Dave said. Moping for hearacles. Whatever. “I’m tired of it. There’s no point. The odds are so far against it that why should I even bother?”
“Well, for one thing, there’s always the 99 Gods,” Mirabelle said. Dave shook his head. “No, really. They do cure people, and not just once or twice for show. They even specialize in cases like yours, something you didn’t bring on yourself, something beyond the ability of modern medicine to cure and not a malady of old age.”
He hadn’t known that.
“You’re seriously think Dave should try and find a God to cure him?” Steve said. “That’s disgusting.”
“Why do you think it’s disgusting?” Dave said. He liked the absurd idea, kinda sorta, especially after Dr. Greuter’s results, although he suspected his chance at divine healing was as low as his chance of spontaneous remission. It might even keep him out of the house as much as his client searches, a good thing these days. He didn’t know the first thing about how to go about finding a God to cure him, though.
“It’s cheating,” Steve said. “And I don’t know what the penalties for that sort of cheating will turn out to be.”
“You don’t trust the 99 Gods anymore?” Mirabelle asked. “That’s new.”
Steve nodded. “I changed my mind. I think there’s a lot of shit going on behind their utopian façade. They’re messing everything up.”
“Come on,” Mirabelle said. “You can’t mean that. Look at all they’ve done so far! Consider how much they’re going to do for us, over time.”
“Exactly my point! I don’t believe they’re doing anything for us,” Steve said. “If you follow the blogs, there’s a lot of evidence piling up about the Ideological Gods, at least the ones they call the Seven Suits, being behind the big ongoing economic downturn. Dave thinks so too. They’re not being selfless altruists, they’re trying to take over the world’s biggest corporations. They even bought a few, legally and in public. What are they doing secretly? Much worse. Dave convinced me they’re behind Hernandez Industry’s fall and why Dave’s having to live out of a suitcase trying to drum up new clients.”
“I don’t believe it,” Mirabelle said. “If any of the Gods tried something like trying to take over the economy, the other Gods would stop them before they succeeded. Besides, why would they? The Gods don’t need wealth. They can conjure up anything they need.”
“What if the Gods want power for power’s sake?” Steve said. “Or for one upping us mortals? Sure, a few of them are doing good deeds and dispensing a few miracles, but I’m sure there’s got to be some sort of quid pro quo involved. What are we selling when we buy into the 99 Gods and their acts? Our souls?”
“Oh, phooey on you,” Mirabelle said, pursing her lips. She turned to Dave. “Don?
??t you go believing Steve’s paranoia. The 99 Gods are a good thing, a wonderful thing. I think they can help you, if you only try.”
“I noticed, in my travels, lots of people expressing caution about the 99 Gods and their activities, at least in private,” Dave said. “Although I’ve heard more worry about Khartoum’s heavy handed actions in Somalia than the actions of the Seven Suits.”
“That’s because of the commandment to stop national wars,” Mirabelle said, throwing her shoulders back. “The faction leaders in the latest Somalian civil war wouldn’t lay down their arms, so Khartoum was forced to step in.”
Steve put down a bowl of chips and glowered. “He murdered hundreds of officers who refused to let their men quit the war,” he said. “Murdered!” He threw up his hands. “And when the media asked some of the other Gods about it, they said Khartoum was in the right! That’s nonsense and hypocrisy; our variety of war is a sin and needs to be stopped, but the 99 Gods variety of war is holy and correct. I can’t believe you’re now an apologist for murder, Mirabelle.”
“Well, I don’t have any problems with what Khartoum’s doing at all,” Mirabelle said. “The 99 Gods could have showed up with a hundred new commandments from God, given how complex our civilization’s become. Instead, they only gave us one, the ‘no national war’ commandment. Their actions show its importance, and if it’s going to be meaningful for us, the 99 Gods have to back it up with force. Otherwise, people will try to get around it the way they always have. You know the drill: police actions, pre-emptive self-defense, surgical strikes, covert actions, drone strikes, all that stuff. Words that sound like no war is involved, despite what’s going on.”
Steve frowned. Mirabelle turned to Dave.
“So have you soured on the Gods as well?” Mirabelle said.
Dave shook his head.
“Cautious, yes, soured, no,” Dave said. “I accept the Gods’ comments about God Almighty’s new anti-war commandment and why, and I do understand the need to enforce it. I read several articles and book excerpts about how people’s chances of dying in war had been declining for generations. Some of the articles were from before the 99 Gods showed. It makes perfect sense to me for God Almighty to withhold the anti-war Commandment until we were ready. I’m not happy about the fact the 99 Gods don’t seem to be constrained in what else they can do, though. Too much meddling can’t help but be bad news.”
“So, about my idea of seeking their help?” Mirabelle said. Steve shook his head, sadly.
“I like it in theory, but the practicality of the matter escapes me,” Dave said. “Where would I start? I don’t know anything about getting in contact with any of the 99 Gods to ask for help, and only a few of the 99 Gods have official offices, and they’re mobbed by people wanting favors of one sort or another. Futile efforts don’t appeal to me any more than drooling in a bed does.”
Mirabelle leaned forward, putting her hands on her glass and chrome coffee table. “I know someone,” she said. “Her name’s Diana, Diana with no last name, and she’s more than a little strange. However, she’s told me she’s in regular contact with Boise. What more could you want?” She wrote down an address and Dave put it in his wallet.
Well, no one’s going to confuse East Colfax with Five Points, now are they? Dave thought, as he pressed the button and his far-too-clean and sparkling SUV parallel parked itself a half block from the address Mirabelle provided, at least according to his smartphone’s GPS. He had never been in this Denver neighborhood before, and being here didn’t make him want to stay. He made sure he locked the SUV quickly after getting out and shutting the door, noticing his was the only hybrid or EV parked anywhere nearby. A man in grimy layered cast-off garments, leaning up against a grimy brick wall of a boarded up storefront, caught Dave’s eye. A placard at the bearded man’s feet, hand lettered and upside-down, read ‘Send the Gods back to their UFO’.
Riiight.
Dave pretended not to notice as he walked down the block, feeling awkward as all hell. Most of the buildings here weren’t numbered, and few appeared to be functional businesses or dwellings. Trash, complete with needles and broken glass, littered the corners between walks and sidewalks. Posters, handbills and graffiti covered everything, some the normal gang signs, some others Dave had seen elsewhere, while still others… “The 99 Gods are a HOAX” “The Rapture happened August 5th and we’ve been Left Behind!” “Death to Israel! The 99 Gods are a Zionist Conspiracy!” All new to him, as nothing like this ever made it to the websites he frequented.
All this place needed was peanuts and it would be a zoo, Dave thought. A panhandler brushed by him, smelling of paint. Two tatted up truants eyed him warily, smoking cigarettes, and rushed off. Dave stopped when he found the address, 414A, a narrow sliver of a subdivided storefront, next to a dusty shop filled with dried flowers advertising itself in Korean. The sign above 414A, hand painted, read “Madame Xenia’s. Fortunes Told. Tarot! Palms Read.” God.
Dave rubbed his temples and sighed. He should have asked Mirabelle more about this Diana person, at least something. Normally he would. Are these the signs of his long-feared mental problems, he wondered.
He turned back to his SUV and saw placard guy walking unsteadily toward him, already between Dave and the sanctuary of his vehicle. Cornered, he sighed to himself and entered Madame Xenia’s. Tiny bells on the inside of the door jingled as he did so, and his eyes teared up from the rank incense stench of the place.
A young woman, in her mid to late teens, glanced up from a paraphernalia-strewn desk and frowned. “You’re supposed to knock,” she said, a faint southern accent flavoring her arch voice.
“Sorry,” Dave said. “I think I’m looking for your mother.” He looked around and saw on the other side of the desk a beaten up fifty year old fridge, a cot piled with strewn clothes and bedcovers, an ancient wooden-legged card table with a hotplate, several pots and pans, as well as a half dozen dirty glasses and dishes. Below the card table rested a laundry detergent bucket, half full of water, with a washcloth and towel draped over the edge. Beside the card table sat a child’s dresser and an ancient PC with a dingy discolored beige monitor on top.
“My mom’s a long way from here, guy,” the young woman said, exasperated. She shook her head at his incomprehension. “I’m Madame Xenia, believe it or not. I’m older than I appear.”
“Well, I’m looking for a Diana, no last name,” Dave said. He figured the odds of finding helpful information in this indoor garbage dump to be somewhat less than the odds of pigs flying.
She half stood and carefully looked Dave over, once, twice, three times. Then she sat again, pushing a half-filled ashtray to the side. “That’s me as well,” she said, her voice taking a long detour to Georgia or South Carolina.
“Oh, I apologize then.”
“Why apologize?” she said. “You’re the one who’s made a fool of himself. Take a seat, mister. What can I do for you?”
Dave found said seat, once someone’s dining room chair, now a chair only because someone had put a discolored two inch bare foam cushion over a piece of plywood over the long-gone upholstery. He sat. As he expected, concrete would have been more comfortable.
“I was given your name and address by a friend of mine, Madame Xenia,” Dave said.
“Just Diana, please,” she said. “Okay, got that. And?”
“I need to talk to a Boise contact.”
Diana grunted and held her hand out.
“Huh?”
“I’m a fortune teller as well as a Boise contact. Give me your palm.”
This was absurd. “With a bedside manner like yours, you ought to be a doctor,” Dave said, but he did hold out his hand.
Diana snorted laughter and took his hand. “Madame Xenia gets all the bedside manner. Diana’s just a bitch. Blame my mother, who patented the word.” She glanced at his hand. “Oh, I’m sorry. I apologize. I thought you were here
to try to induce Boise into some stupid business deal. I didn’t realize this was a personal matter.”
Shivers ran up and down Dave’s spine. “I… I…”
“Relax,” Diana said. She looked him in the eye for the first time, and Dave realized it took work. Shy, he realized. “More. You can do it. Hey, I like you, I’m not going to bark any more. You can relax.”
Diana had pale skin, shoulder-length black hair, and a distinctive round face. She bore a strong resemblance to Elorie, his old high school flame and first lover, but Diana wasn’t anywhere near as good looking and she didn’t have curly hair. Of course, Diana wasn’t over forty, either. “I’m Dave,” he said. “Dave Estrada.”
“You’re new at this, aren’t you? You’re not supposed to tell Madame Xenia things like that,” Diana said, a twinkle in her eye. “So, which problem is the real reason you’re here: the health or the dying marriage?”
Dave had to close his eyes for a moment. “I’m not used to getting my fortune read,” he said. “Accurately or otherwise.”
Diana smiled. “I haven’t read your fortune, Dave, nor am I likely to.”
Huh?
“The comment’s a trick, from reading your posture and the like. Oh, and the fact you look like you’ve crawled out of someone’s grave, most likely your own,” Diana said. “You should be home, resting. Or in a hospital, or, um, a hospice.”
Ouch! “What’s the ‘Nor am I likely to’ mean, anyway?”
Diana blinked winsomely at him and her smile grew. “You probably want to know how someone like me is a Boise confidant. I would in your shoes. Well, he chose me. Came by one day in late August, patted me on the head, blessed me, and said if I got cleaned up he would invite me to meet some of his other Denver friends. Which I did and he did.”
“You’re not into answering questions, are you?” Dave said. He didn’t need this.
“That I share with you, Dave.”
Dave sighed, exasperated. “If I may ask, though you’ll probably not answer, how are you in continuing contact with Boise, like my friend said you were?”
Diana giggled. “You’re a treasure.” She released his hand and pointed to the dilapidated computer. “The internet. Boise’s got his tricks. He doesn’t need a computer to email you or check his own email.” She paused. “Only I hope this isn’t an emergency. Boise’s doing some heavy duty meditation and refuses to be bothered. Something’s annoying him and his Godly brain is agitated enough to shirk his normal duties. I haven’t been able to tease out of him why, yet.”
Meditating. Just great. Nope, no pigs flying today. Dave shook his head, ready to leave and go lean on Mirabelle for a better contact. “I’m here because I need a miracle, because of my health problems. I’m sorry to have bothered you, Diana, but…”
“Sit your fat ass back down,” Diana said, her voice now sharper and more penetrating. For a second she appeared surrounded by an almost tangible dark purple aura. Dave hesitated for long enough to convince himself that he sat of his own free will, and sat. “There. That’s better. Let’s talk.”
“I don’t suppose you do miracles yourself?” Maybe the pig would fly after all.
“‘I don’t suppose’ is right,” Diana said. And the pig nosedives into the runway before takeoff. “Give it a few months. If I’m still here, I’ll bet I’ll be able to.” What did he do to deserve this? Dave asked himself. Did his offering last Sunday bounce or something?
“I may not have a few months. If a time frame matters, this is something of an emergency,” Dave said. “So, if Boise’s in your back pocket, then why are you…” He waved his arms around. Why did she live in this dump?
“You know, Davy boy, not everyone’s hot for money and the luxuries they buy,” Diana said. “I’ve got more important priorities in my life, a trait I share with Boise. I suspect that’s why he picked me.” She paused, licked her lips, leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “So, Dave, what’s your reaction to the appearance of the 99 Gods?” She glanced over his head and to the left as she said this, a fake eye contact trick Dave recognized from dealing with a few aspie and near-autistic geologists.
All of Diana’s twists and turns left his brain on spin cycle. Enough of this and he would need to be thrown in the dryer. “Excited. Thrilled,” he said, blurting out the answer before deciding to. “I was a church-goer but not a believer, and suddenly the Gods appeared out of nowhere saying God Almighty’s real. Instant belief.” He could easily see how she could be a successful fortuneteller. Despite her shyness and awkwardness, she could make people talk, even if she didn’t know the first thing about putting people at ease.
“What did you think about how the 99 Gods blew many of the standard Christian beliefs out of the water?”
Dave shrugged. “I never thought the dogma was right to begin with.”
“I see.”
“How about you?” Dave said.
“You care about me?” Diana said, tipping her head to the side and looking at his hands and arms. “This is about you, not me.”
“Still, you’re the one making the cryptic comments and asking the strange questions,” Dave said. “Knowing your viewpoint will help me understand what’s going on here.” He, on the other hand, knew a hell of a lot about how to put people at ease. Or kick their verbal feet out from under them. He normally didn’t go after strangers with his verbal jujitsu, but in his mind Diana had earned it twice over.
Diana looked away, far away, vacant eyed, but answered anyway. “I’m sort of a new-ager. Kinda sorta. Runs in my birth family. We’re not exactly a hundred percent normal. My birth mother’s a friggen celebrity, which annoys the crap out of me, and she and my dad and my step-dad and all their crazy friends are into peeking under rocks to find tentacle monsters just so they can fight them. I had different priorities, so I ran away. Twice. Enough about me, though.
“Think about this, Dave: when God acts publicly in our world, it makes sense to have a faith flexible enough to survive it, but inflexible faiths are everywhere. For instance, from a Hindu point of view, all Christians, Moslems and Jews are dirty rotten unbelieving atheists. Sorta gives one a different perspective on things, eh? Anyway, believing God’s just acted once in history, or appeared to one tiny group of people and no one else, had always been too much hubris for me.”
Dave scratched his head, not sure how Diana’s rambling commentary connected. “We know nothing about God. God’s too big to know.”
“Sure we do,” Diana said. “Read any science textbook. What better way to learn about the Creator than from the creation?”
“Hey!” Dave said. “That’s supposed to be my line.”
Diana licked her finger and marked the air with it. “And there’s the problem you’re having: you’re making the true believer’s mistake.”
“Theology makes my head hurt,” Dave said. It did. His headache had returned. Perhaps they were stress related.
“You want a miracle cure, you get to swim in the theology,” Diana said, dimpling. Dave suspected she had decided to take out her day’s frustrations on him. Her week’s frustrations? Her month’s?
“So, uh, what… I don’t get it,” Dave said. “Am I supposed to believe all the mutually contradictory information promulgated by all the different religions of the world is true, just because the 99 Gods say the Creator exists and equally blesses all true religions?”
“Yes, at least allegorically; especially the process of religion and faith. The existence of multiple faiths is an explicit test of anyone with any faith at all: whether they have the guts not to fall into the true believer’s mistake and put God in a teeny tiny box of the true believer’s own design.” She paused. “Most don’t have the guts. They can’t face the fact that God is damned big.”
“I don’t understand. Are you saying I need more faith or less faith?” Dave said. Diana had to be going somewhere with this, but h
er life experiences and viewpoints sounded so different from his that he couldn’t figure out where.
“More or less? It’s not a question of quantity, in my experience.” Diana paused and glanced down at the clutter of tarot cards, I Ching sticks and glittery crystals on her desk. She picked up a pair of glittery crystals and started fiddling with them absentmindedly. She walked the crystals across the backs of her fingers Captain Queeg style. Seeing her dexterity at work induced Dave to pat his wallet, surreptitiously, he hoped. “Anyone who’s altruistic only because of the strength of their faith is just one crisis of faith away from being a murderous psychopath. Phooey on them. Life after death? Who does more in the world, the person who believes there’s only one life and they need to live it while they can, because of faith in their fellow man, or the person whose faith informs them of a literal physical life after death and is willing to give up the fruits of their mortality to wait on a better world, accepting whatever comes their way?”
“You sound like an atheist, not a new ager.”
“I’m too well trained,” Diana said, and laughed. “Faith exists to help us, Dave, not take us over, or at least it shouldn’t. Faith is a good thing. Do you have faith in, do you believe in, intercessory prayer?”
“No.” Intercessory prayer never made any sense to him.
“You should; I believe it’s going to save your life.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
“Yes, Yoda.”
“Oh, to be that wise,” Diana said. Dave couldn’t tell if her comment was sarcastic or not. She put her crystals away and took out a pad of paper and a charcoal drawing stick, and began to sketch a hand. As she drew, he recognized her picture as the palm of his hand. She had an unbelievably good memory. “I’m just a kid, as I’m sure you figured out, though you wouldn’t believe my real age. Then again, you’re a kid as well, even if you do have a physically older body.” Observant as all get out, too.
“So I’m supposed to trust the 99 Gods enough to pray to them, or pray to them to ask God to help me or something equally strange?” he said. “That takes more faith than I have, more trust. Do you believe in the utter goodness of the 99 Gods?”
“Certainly not. The appearance of the 99 Gods mocks the Christian belief that Jesus is the complete truth and the only way to God; the female Moslem Gods mock Islam, and the existence of the Confucian Gods mocks everybody, including the rocks and trees. There are even strident anti-religious Gods, but they aren’t public yet. They do tremendous harm just by existing, and could do irreparable harm if their Missions succeed.”
Confused again, Dave shook his head. Missions? “So the Gods are evil?” If so, why pray to them?
“Certainly not,” Diana said. “Think about all the good they’ve already done, and consider how much more they can and will do. Their goodness is obvious.”
“I don’t understand anything you’re saying.”
“Exactly.”
Dave rubbed his temples and wondered why he had stayed here so long. Diana appeared to revel in his confusion, and everything she said made it worse. They’re not good because they can do harm. They’re not evil because they can do good. What could it mean? What’s she getting at?
Well, he thought, what if the Gods were free willed, like humans are, and capable of both good and evil? That could explain a lot, especially Mirabelle and Steve’s diverging opinions about them. How could Diana know this, though? Hell, how could she know enough to say half the things she said? He remembered an earlier comment about different priorities than her family and her commentary about flexible religions, and he had one of his woo-woo moments, his hands and feet and mind tingling with strangeness.
“Diana, it almost sounds to me like you expected the 99 Gods,” Dave said.
“Uh huh,” she said, nodding, eye-twinkling pleased with him.
A stronger shiver ran down his spine. “Why? How could you expect such a thing?”
“Parent issues,” Diana said, and smiled. “You’re meant for bigger things than you think, Dave.”
“Me? You’re crazy,” Dave said. He half wanted to wring Diana’s neck, tired of her dancing around his questions. “Why did you expect God to act?”
“All I’m going to say right now, Dave, is that if you work on saving yourself I’m sure you’ll succeed. Afterwards, if you want to know my secrets and the bigger things you can get into, come back and visit me. Madame Xenia will tell all.”
Useless.
“You’re trying to recruit me into something, aren’t you?”
“The fact you understand enough to even ask the question gives you your answer.”
Utterly useless. “So, assume I’m dense here, Diana. What am I supposed to be doing to save myself?”
“I don’t need to tell you anything more,” she said. “I already gave you all the answers you need.” Answers and a completely flightless pig. He left without leaving a tip in the tip jar.