Emily Taylor - The Apprentice

  11.

  Emily worked in her garden for the rest of the day, digging away energetically to make more space for lettuces. Her funeral had left her all emotional. It was upsetting to see her best friend Annie in such a state. Annie was always such a bubbly, smiley person and now she looked so sad. Not just sad, but depressed.

  Her mum and dad looked good. Obviously they were sad to have lost their daughter, but the funeral must have been a relief after months of worry and false hopes. They had their hands full with the little ones, and with the excitement of a new baby to arrive soon, there would once again be joy in the house.

  She was touched that Saleem and Zula had travelled to her funeral. It was a long way to come just to say goodbye. Zula said, ‘My heart will always be with you’.

  Emily felt sad she couldn’t be with him, yet at the same time her heart was all funny, like it had never felt before. There was a bit of a spark...

  ‘Maybe, just maybe,’ she said to herself and looked up at the stars shining in the indigo sky.

  The next morning, she set up the table ready for breakfast and waited. When Zeus didn’t turn up, she worked in the garden for an hour then cooked breakfast for herself.

  Deciding to go and see him, she clicked her fingers.

  Zimp!

  Emily arrived on the surface of a naked asteroid, just reddy-brown dust, a few small craters and a couple of dead trees. She gasped for breath but there just didn’t seem to be any air. Panicked, she clicked her fingers to try and teleport back but nothing happened.

  Click, click, click, Click, CLICK!

  Nothing happened. Her vision went blurry and she tumbled gasping to the ground.

  ‘Whatz zup vith zoo zen?’ Zeus asked.

  Feeling a mask being pressed onto her face, Emily took a few deep breaths and sat on the ground panting, then threw up. So much for breakfast!

  ‘Zou must be careful teleportzing,’ said Zeus, his voice sounding a little slurred.

  Shaking the puke out of the mask out then fitting it firmly back in place, Emily demanded, ‘Why can’t I breathe?’

  ‘Ozone.’

  ‘You’ve been pinching it from Earth, haven’t you?’ she said accusingly.

  ‘Well zes, but only where it’s not needed; New Zealand and Antarctica.’

  ‘You’re drunk!’

  ‘Not Jrunk, ozone.’

  ‘Can you speak normally then?’

  ‘Noze,’ he said, and slapped Emily on the back. ‘Ha, ha, ha.’

  ‘You don’t have many plants and animals on your asteroid.’

  ‘It’s good for zinking. No ditrazions. I need to zink zometimez’

  ‘What do you zink about?’ Emily asked, smiling.

  He’s acting so weird.

  ‘Philozoffy, relizion, zee Book of Light. I have lots to zink about.’

  ‘Would you like to have a cup of tea and a gingernut and talk philosophy? If I’m going to be God’s assistant, we should be on the same wavelength.’

  ‘Letz,’ he said, grasping Emily’s hand with his long green fingers

  Zimp!

  They arrived on Emily’s front lawn.

  ‘What was that place?’ she asked, taking the mask off and taking a deep breath of Camillo’s pure air.

  ‘Isora, itz my zasteroid.’

  ‘I’ll get us some tea and biccies,’ said Emily, heading inside.

  She came back ten minutes later carrying a tray with a teapot, a couple of mugs, a little jug of milk, some sugar cubes and a bowl full of gingernuts.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Zeus, speaking normally again.

  ‘Did your wife die?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Are you saying that my asteroid looks unkempt?’

  ‘Yes, a woman would never let it get like that.’

  ‘My wife?’ said Zeus, a sparkle of mischief lighting up his eyes. ‘Look up Zeus’s wife on the internet sometime!’

  ‘What happened?’

  He shook his head sadly and said, ‘I have to do my own housework now.’

  Emily poured a mug of tea. She normally had hers weak and milky but added a couple of sugar cubes as she was still feeling a little shaky after the scare on Isora.

  Zeus nipped inside and grabbed the whiskey bottle, pouring a generous slug into his black sugary tea. ‘If we’re going to talk philosophy, I need to loosen up my mind a little first.’

  Emily didn’t give him much time to loosen up, there was things she wanted to know, ‘The book that we had taken from us in the desert. What was it? Who took it?’

  ‘The Book, ah yes. It’s actually called The Book of Lightness and Dark, but that’s a bit of a mouthful. I’m a little worried about it. We’ll visit the slugs later to see what information they have. After Chiron, it was decided to put it on Earth. I was in favour of launching it into the sun, but everything was done by committee back then, so Earth it was.’

  ‘You keep talking about Chiron and the troubles. What happened?’

  ‘Yes, the troubles,’ he said, having a big slurp of tea and topping up his mug with whiskey. ‘I try not to think about the troubles. It was a bit of a family dispute.

  ‘After crashing our spaceship into Zinonia it took us anodes some time to regroup and reorganise ourselves. My father’s reputation was in tatters and our family name mud. My father, Cronus, was given the Earth Affairs portfolio. We were a bit of what you call a disjointed family. Dad kept eating his children when they were born.’

  ‘Yuck!’ said Emily. ‘That’s gross!’

  ‘When I was born, my mother tricked him by giving him a rock to eat instead of me.’

  This guy sounds a bit stupid.

  ‘Didn’t he notice the difference?’

  ‘Apparently not!’ said Zeus, pausing to have another slug of his tea. ‘That just gives you a bit of background into our family. There were tiffs, fighting and affairs. It was never dull. Cronus was part of a group called The Titans, a sort of a secret society that tried to control politics for their own good, a bit like the Masonic Order on Earth. Earth has always been fabled as being one of the most beautiful planets in the Universe and their agenda shifted from caring for it and its inhabitants, to desiring it. The Titans planned to take Earth for themselves.

  ‘I never had much time for my father, not only was he a lousy navigator but he was selfish and heartless. His plans to annihilate the inhabitants of that beautiful planet and turn it into a pleasure dome for him and his Titan mates really got my back up. I wasn’t alone in my opposition to the Titans and formed my own secret society, the Olympians. The twelve of us waited for our moment and when the slugs were changing their moons, overthrew the Titans and banished them to Tartarus, which you call Pluto.

  ‘I drew lots with my brothers to see who would control Earth Affairs. I won so gave Poseidon the seas and oceans and Hades the underworld. We were young and spirited and very hands on in our approach to Earth Affairs. We fought, we squabbled, we loved and we laughed. They were the best times of my life.

  ‘Then Hades got greedy. He didn’t love Earth; he desired it, just like the Titans had. First he used thunderbolts, earthquakes and floods to try and kill all the people and have them in his underworld, but it was too slow for him, and people breed like rabbits, so he searched for other ways to take over Earth. Me and the other Olympians tried to keep him in check but then he found what he had been looking for; The Book had survived the crash. With it he would have power to rule the Universe. The sentry slugs alerted us and we were able to stop him before he gained its full power. He was exiled to Pluto to join the Titans.’

  ‘Like all family tiffs, it was a very messy affair and the finish of the Olympians. In the end, The Book was put on Earth and we split up. I stayed on to look after Earth Affairs, the others going their separate ways.’

  Zeus dunked a gingernut absent-mindedly in his tea and it broke off. ‘Drat,’ he said, emptying his mug in one gulp and clumsily refilling it with whiskey.

  ‘Sounds like quite a family you have.
Why is The Book so powerful?’

  ‘Once you have The Book your passion becomes focused, you gain the will to do good or bad. Zere’s more to it, but I don’t vant to talk about it anymore.’

  ‘Why not just have a Book of Light, a book of good?’ Emily asked, not letting up.

  ‘Like you can’t have light without darkness, you can’t have good without bad.’

  ‘I don’t get it, why not good without bad?’

  ‘Good and bad are like yin and zang, you can’t have one withzout the other.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Letzzayzu, Opps! I’m zlurring again,’ said Zeus, getting a grip on himself. ‘Let’s say you and I go fishing and catch a beautiful plump mackerel. It’s even more beautiful fired up and served with chips for lunch, a sprig of parsley on top and a slice of lemon on the side. Good, yes?’

  ‘Good, delicious. Yum, yum!’

  ‘Good for us, yes! But stop for a minute and think about it from Mr Mackerel’s perspective. Good? No, bad as we munch through his bones, positively evil!

  ‘The trouble with The Book is that those that seek it out are bad, evil aliens that want to rule the Universe. Bad and evil but then again maybe they’re good! The Book cannot be destroyed so it was placed in the dusty archives on our spaceship, amongst all the other books and junk. It had been there for millennia and lived as a legend. The story you told your children about seated around the holograph.’

  ‘That’s if you don’t eat your children first!’ pipped Emily.

  ‘Don’t talk about my Dad!

  ‘Once we got The Book off Hades and had banished him to Pluto, the remaining Olympians argued about what to do with it. As I said before, I was in favour of firing it at the Sun where it would be out of reach. You’d get your fingers burned trying to get hold of it. The rest of the Olympians wanted some sport with the people. They, well we to be honest, loved to meddle in human affairs. Teroids are such interesting characters; you never know what they’re going to do next. It was such fun. We fell in love with the girls, and we put monsters down on Earth and placed bets on who would beat them!

  ‘So The Book went to Earth. Being the leader of the Olympians they gave me some concessions, it could go on my terms. I linked my cat and dog to it. Now they’re an intrinsic part of it. It won’t work without them. They were Hera and my pets, and my parents’ pets before that. They’ve been in the family for generations so it was sad to see them go. They’ve been together for so long that they’re almost one, yet they’re always fighting, Molly the Cagoon and versus Spot, the Suez Dog. If you open The Book meaning to do evil, you will have Molly fighting for you to succeed and Spot barking at you, biting your ankle. Ha,ha, ha, Spot is such a softy, but it was all I could think of.

  ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ he continued, ‘I don’t think anyone’s opened it for a while. The Olympians wanted to put The Book in a pyramid so people would find it. We did, but I put my oar in there too. I put a couple of guardians to protect it, Theodore the owl and Brian the lion.’

  ‘They saved my life.’

  ‘Brian is dopey but loveable. Theo is wise. I turned them to stone and set them on plinths guarding the door and then I buried the pyramid in the shifting sands of the Sahara. It used to be a lovely green part of Earth with fertile valleys and tree clad mountains but I turned it to desert to hide The Book.’

  ‘So, correct me if I’m wrong,’ said Emily, trying to get her head around it, ‘The Book of Light, the most powerful thing in the Universe, is out there now with a cat and a dog, an owl and a lion running around after it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good to have that clear.’ said Emily. ‘‘I like Molly and Spot; I met them in the desert. It must have been hard to let them go.’

  ‘It was, but sometimes you need to make sacrifices. They were distractions. I need to think, I need to have answers and I cannot think with distractions.’

  ‘There aren’t many distractions on your asteroid.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Zeus, having another slug of whiskey.

  ‘How come everyone calls you ‘Dog’? Is it something to do with Spot?’

  ‘Well yes, it’s a bit embarrassing. Having saved me from my dad, Mum couldn’t decide what to call me, so she named me after Spot!’

  ‘After Spot?’

  ‘Yes, he’s a Suez Dog. She just spelled it backwards.’

  ‘G-O-D, Z-E-U-S, God Zeus!’ exclaimed Emily and burst out laughing. ‘If only people on Earth knew!’

  ‘If only they did. I can’t get my head around teroids and their religions. It is the bane of my life. In our thinking, every animal is equal from the humble amoeba to the sentry slug. We’re all part of the whole and have respect for each other. The only other creature in the Universe that worships another is the zinodes with their passion for football. I suppose that’s because, like humans, they’re creative thinkers. When we were first on the asteroids we sent some misfits down to Earth to get them out of our hair. Brahma and Ganesha were two of the first. Before long the people were worshipping them. When the Olympians took over the Earth Affairs folio, suddenly we were gods, supreme beings to be obeyed and worshipped. Teroids suddenly started spending more time praying to us for guidance and forgiveness than they did enjoying life. They were so busy worrying about the afterlife that they messed up their real life. Opportunists became religious leaders, ruling through fear and waging war against anyone who might have different beliefs. Huge amounts of money were spent of temples, churches and mosques; beautiful but absolutely useless, when money could have been spent on building beautiful schools, arenas and gardens.’

  ‘So there is a heaven and hell?’ asked Emily.

  ‘When Hades was here, he was taking people to his underworld, giving them a little extra life, just like you have here. I’m sure you’ll agree that it is not heaven or hell, it’s just life. If there is a heaven and hell, it’s on Earth and people live it during their lifetimes. Through their actions and the way they treat others they experience paradise or suffering, heaven or hell. If everyone, every being in the Universe lived their lives by one simple rule, treat others as you would have them treat you, the Universe would be a much happier place; boring but happy!’

  Zeus was quiet for a moment then asked Emily a question, ‘Why do people have religion when all logic says it is not true?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ she answered. ‘I suppose people like to believe in something. At school, our teacher said that Man is so successful because he’s got imagination. He tries to see beyond what he can see in front of him. He questions why he’s here. Religions provide an answer, a set of rules to break, and a life after death.’

  Zeus had another sip of whiskey. ‘That is what I don’t understand.’

  ‘Don’t worry; no one understands. I go through life enjoying the mystery of it all and while there are things I’d like to do before I die, I’m not scared of death. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. Last time I ended up here. What do you think happens?’

  ‘I think we all turnout dust, and that dust in turn becomes part of something else; a big cycle.’

  ‘And our spirits?’

  ‘That’s getting a bit deep!’

  ‘Your sons, Jesus and Azziz.’

  ‘Yes, my sons Jesus and Azziz?’

  ‘How come they ended up on Earth?’

  ‘They were causing so much trouble up here that I thought some time on Earth might broaden their horizons. OE you call it. But when they get there, what do they do? They start singing my virtues and imploring the masses to pray to me. Just what they know I don’t want to happen. They came unstuck soon enough.’

  ‘Azziz got blown up!’

  ‘Good, he needed a bomb under him!’

  ‘Did you ever try to change things on Earth?’

  ‘When I meddle in Earth affairs, it always seems to go wrong. Let’s say I let a poor family, destitute and living in poverty in a hovel, win Lotto. The wind just blows the winning ticket into their hungry hands. Brav
o they’ve won! But are they happier for it? No, it always turns to custard and ends in tears.

  ‘I talk to leaders sometimes, to try to warn them or give them guidance. The voice of God,’ said Zeus with a laugh. ‘Sometimes, just sometimes, it helps. Now, I’ve had enough, I’m ready to throw in the towel and retire to my asteroid, get high on ozone and think; to search for the answer.’

  Emily rolled her eyes to the stars and added some more sugar to her tea.