“Thus bedizened, this fantastic-looking personage marched gravely up and down, or rode in pomp in the streets. … He claimed to be God the Father; and his doctrine was, in substance, this: “The true kingdom of God on earth began in Albany in June 1830, and will be completed in twenty-one years, or by 1851. During this time, wars are to stop, and I, Matthias, am to execute the divine judgments and destroy the wicked. The day of grace is to close on December 1, 1836; and all who do not begin to reform by that time, I shall kill.” – P.T. Barnum, Humbugs of the World
One week later…
“It’s a very good drug.”
10. (Atlanta)
“Finished,” Dana said. “We have storefronts now set up in Baton Rouge, Little Rock, Louisville, Jackson, Tuscaloosa, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, Charleston and Jacksonville. Each has a minimum staff of four. We’ve got the website on-line and uploaded your videos, and we’ve got a staff of ten in the Atlanta office to process the miracle requests and donations. The uniforms are on order and will arrive here in three days. Then we can fiddle with their reality and distribute them.”
Atlanta nodded as she loomed over Dana’s desk in Dana’s new office. A mid-size office with good wooden furniture and a beautiful view of downtown Atlanta. “You’ve done good. I’ve finished my pries – ministuh – preachuh – reveren’ tour, and I’ve talked my Anime Café friends into sending over a representative or liaison when they’re ready.” They were mortals. They didn’t have the sense of urgency she had, or Dana had now – after a little help from Atlanta showing Dana how to pull on her loaned willpower to fight off exhaustion and lack of sleep.
Dana cleared her throat. “Any of the priestly types live?” She was pleased and forward today, likely because of the good work she had done acquiring this new office space.
Atlanta rolled her eyes. “They all lived. Some took a bit more convincing than others, but I’m now officially an angel of wrath, living saint and divine conduit of the Holy Spirit. These ministers aren’t going to be leading anyone in worship of me, and they’re going to be spreading the word that it’s wrong to worship any of the 99 Gods.” Several of these alleged holy men and women had come close to death, the closest being the woman minister who ran a protection racket for her church based on the well-investigated sexual peccadilloes of her flock. She hadn’t wanted to drop her racket or her private investigators until Atlanta had dangled the woman over the fires of Hell. Atlanta wasn’t sure if she had dangled the scumbag over what the Indigo claimed to be the real Hell, but whatever it was she had conjured up had been damned convincing.
The Church of Christ minister in Biloxi proved to be the most annoying of the lot, because he had challenged Atlanta’s actions as unfair. Not her miracle request service, but her supposedly secret thug exterminations. He had wanted her to similarly enforce the rest of the Ten Commandments, and hadn’t listened to reason after she had explained she wasn’t enforcing the Commandments, just keeping the ultra-violent from continuing their chosen profession. He had actually wanted her to enforce the restriction on keeping the Sabbath holy, and with similar violent sanction.
“So, how soon do you think the precious metals and diamond markets are going to crater?” she asked Dana. Atlanta couldn’t easily create physical objects from nothing as the other Territorial Gods could. On the other hand, she could call gold out of seawater and compress coal into diamonds, and had, at Dana’s request, successfully unfucking their financial situation.
Dana tapped a pencil on her desk. “I’d give the trick another year at most. First, some but not all of the 99 appear to be able to create or duplicate currency directly, and second, the trick may end up being socially limited.”
“I don’t understand,” Atlanta said. “Socially limited by who?”
“By the other Gods. Consider what you, Phoenix and Portland are doing with your collaborations. I wouldn’t put it past some other Gods, especially the Seven Suits, to get hot under the collar about economic disruptions.” She snorted. “It’s goin’ ta happen.”
Glare. “It be already on the list,” Atlanta said. Wink. “Only none of us understands how much economic disruption is too much. However, this sounds like it’s more your specialty than mine.” Atlanta sat on Dana’s desk, close enough to make Dana squirm. “So, how much have you dug up about the Suits, and what they are doing?”
Dana ran her hands through her hair. “Even with your divine help, and my tricks, figuring them out is a nightmare. I’ve produced three reports for you, which you should read, but I can summarize the Suits actions in two words: causing trouble.”
Atlanta had expected as much. “How about a couple of for-instances?”
“Okay. Yesterday, they staged a bear attack on Enlisten – that means they drove its stock down sharply – at the same time staging a loan call attack and somehow, which I haven’t figured out how, they forced Enlisten’s board to quit and its CEO and CFO to resign.”
“I’ve never heard of them,” Atlanta said. Puzzled, she sped-read Dana’s reports, which were dry enough to cause two of her mental tracks to fall into the Godly equivalent of sleep.
“It’s a huge call-center management company, headquartered in Miami,” Dana said. “They’re a bit shady, they’ve had quite a few public relations problems recently, and they changed their name every couple of years. Because of the attack Enlisten went belly up and declared bankruptcy this morning. They closed their doors and fired everybody.”
Atlanta paused and put together information from Dana’s reports. “They’re going after big tobacco and SouthTrust Banks?” The Suits were active, world-wide, but if Dana’s reports were correct, they were being more active in three North American God-territories – hers, Miami’s and Boise’s. SouthTrust was one of the top ten bank holding companies in the United States, and headquartered in downtown Atlanta.
“Yes, though only the former is public,” Dana said. “They’ve found a way to tie up the tobacco trade with a combination of wildcat strikes, court injunctions and broken shipping contracts. Everything’s sitting on the docks and rotting. I still don’t know what’s going on with SouthTrust, but they stopped giving out loans the day after you rescued me.”
Atlanta paced back and forth, steaming. This wasn’t a problem she knew how to cope with. The economy was supposed to run itself, dammit! She made her decision. “This is an attack on me. I’m guessing Miami and Boise have also similarly annoyed the Suits. However, as a lone Territorial God, I can’t do anything directly without pissing off all the other Gods. I’m going to need to get help from the other Territorials, more than the support I have on the subject from Portland and Phoenix.”
Dana nodded.
“In a few hours we’ll head out to visit the God Miami, to try and get his support. You’re coming with. Be eyebally.”
“I’ll be ready,” Dana said, glaring back. She bent back to her laptop computer, attempting to be nonchalant. “Oh, and this came in from Portland. Let me forward it to your phone.”
She did so, and Atlanta read the email. “Oh, this is interesting.” Portland had kindly requested a trained magician bodyguard from Atlanta, and in payment offered to tell Atlanta the trick involved with creating a magician. She had also determined, by an unstated method, likely New Age or similarly goofy, that Atlanta would be able to create magicians. Portland left unstated the fact that said bodyguard would be Atlanta’s spy. “I’ll do it. Email her back.”
“Good as done.”
Atlanta found her new office, appraised it and decided the room would do for now. After Dana had turned Atlanta’s gold and diamonds into money, she had bought them a small office building in an Atlanta commercial district not too far from downtown. The office had the executive desk and executive electronics, but little else. Atlanta made mental notes about improvements to purchase, then threw up her hands in disgust at herself. “I can create what I know. I know I can,” she said, under her breath. She conce
ntrated and created a flag stand with a United States flag and a Marine Corps flag. Then she banished it. “Nope. Not right. I’m no fuck’n general.” She concentrated again, and created a picture of a CH-53E Super Stallion heavy lift helicopter on the wall behind her desk. Better. She concentrated on the picture. Now instead of a photograph, the chopper looked real.
“Almost,” Atlanta said. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and pushed. Exerted her willpower. The chopper picture turned into a movie. Then Atlanta added sound. “Much better.” She altered the movie so the chopper was coming directly at the viewer. “Nope, too distracting for what I want.”
Another ten inspirations along these lines and she would have the office she wanted. She sat down at her desk and scanned the day’s miracle requests on her iPad. Only four of the requests had gotten by her staff.
She picked up the first and read it. A pickup truck had run over a budding artist, and he lay near death in a Charleston hospital. Said artist already had five gallery shows on his resume and brought in enough income to count as no longer starving. At age 32. Atlanta used the iPad document as a link, willed her senses to the hospital room, and looked the man over. Yes, modern medicine couldn’t heal his injuries, and wouldn’t be able to keep him alive much longer, at that.
All the 99 Gods could heal others, a mainstay of their creators’ standard package of abilities. Their creators hadn’t told them anything about their limits, but Atlanta suspected she would find out quickly enough. She visualized the man whole and healthy, and willed.
To her shock, he healed up long distance. Not completely, but enough so he could open his eyes and sit up.
“Well, that saved me a trip,” Atlanta said, amazed. She flagged the miracle request as completed and read the next.
“So an entire immigrant neighborhood’s being extorted by a small criminal gang,” Atlanta said. The skin besides her eyes crinkled as she cracked her knuckles in glee. “Now this sounds like real fun.”
“I’m worried about this visit,” Dana said, shouting above the whistle of the wind. “Miami has a rough reputation. Can’t we just Skype him? Say, aren’t we stopping?” She pointed down with her left hand. The right held Atlanta’s hand in a grip that hadn’t relaxed since their feet had left the ground.
“Nope,” Atlanta said. “His name might be Miami, but his current headquarters is in the Dominican. We’ve got a ways to go.” She had thought about tricking up a helicopter to fly Mach 5 at 60,000 feet, or some other more sane method of transportation, but had held off. Portland had understated when she said Dana would be a handful, and since Dana disliked superman-style flying so much it made a good bargaining chip.
“What’s his territory, anyway?” Dana shouted. “How are your territories determined, anyway? Are they fixed in size?”
Atlanta rolled her eyes and smiled. “His territory is south Florida and the rest of the Caribbean basin.” Dana glowered at her when she didn’t answer Dana’s other question.
Miami lived in a palace-sized headquarters, up on a hill overlooking a thousand acres of prime agricultural real estate. Not recently built, either. Atlanta landed herself and Dana inside a central courtyard, ten feet away from Miami, who lay in the sun soaking up rays, attended to by three buxom young women. He appeared to be in his middle thirties, and well-muscled. Atlanta noted the stretches to his Imago, near the borderline of pain and insanity. During Apotheosis he had been thin and underfed-looking. Fool.
Miami opened his eyes. “So, Atlanta, what brings you to my humble abode today?” He didn’t bother to sit up.
“An offer of an information trade regarding a problem affecting the both of us,” Atlanta said, revising her initial offer. Miami’s presence rubbed her the wrong way.
“In regard to what, if I may ask?”
“The Ideological Gods who call themselves the Seven Suits.”
“Oh, them,” Miami said, curling his lips in disgust. “I’ll agree to share information. Lose the spy, though.”
“Nope.”
Miami stood. “You’re on my turf. I don’t want no goddamned hopped-up mortal bitch listening to my secrets. If you want to talk, she has to go.”
“He’s got worshippers,” Dana said, with a pointless whisper. “Lots of worshippers.”
Miami frowned and gestured. Divine energy, expressed as a beam of purple smoke, shot out at Dana, surprising Atlanta. A range weapon! That had possibilities. The purple smoke hit Dana’s shields and dissipated. Miami’s face settled into a dark frown, and he stalked over to Dana and swung a fist. Atlanta put the palm of her hand out to stop Miami’s fist, and his fist hit her hand with a metallic clang.
“Don’t do this,” Atlanta said, voice low and dangerous. The physical contact gave her enough information to read the truth in Dana’s statement. She also realized Miami had extensively practiced the combat uses of willpower, but had never faced a divine opponent. His inability to subdue a lone Telepath, which she knew about from the Indigo crew, was the reason behind his recent practice. He had little power because he had no feel for Integrity; his larger than normal Rapture dwarfed his pathetic Integrity, aided by, to Atlanta’s surprise, his larger than normal Congregation due to his ties with the local Catholic Church. “I’m better than you.”
She sensed she couldn’t trust Miami; he lied and broke his word regularly, he cheated, and he had no concept of honor. In other words, just another thug.
Miami backed down, rage burning inside him, supposedly hidden. “I will grudgingly accept the presence of this mortal this time, because I’m kind and because I didn’t warn you ahead of time.” He gestured and a dark suited bodyguard appeared from the shadowed edges of the courtyard to attend him. Miami whispered to him. The bodyguard left and came back with a heavy gold-covered wrought iron chair. Miami’s throne. Miami sat, but didn’t offer them any chairs. “I won’t invite you inside. We’ll talk here.”
Atlanta ignored Miami’s pettiness. She didn’t ignore the bodyguard, someone she would normally kill in an instant. She did notice Miami had tricked up the bodyguard’s clothes to be bulletproof.
“Fine,” Atlanta said. “First off, the comment about worshippers is something a different God, Portland, is worried about. Several of the 99, including myself, have realized that allowing worshippers damages us. Worship interferes with our mental processes. It’s a drug.”
“It’s a very good drug,” Miami said, the edge of a smile on his lips. His tittie jigglers smiled even more. “If you’re warning me against worship, too bad. It’s the reward for being a God.”
“It’s the reward you give your flunkies as well,” Dana said.
Atlanta grimaced. Part of her wanted to slap duct tape on Dana’s mouth for blurting out her random comments. Another part wanted to find a way to reward the bitch better, as she had put something together Atlanta hadn’t sensed, despite the fact Atlanta considered ‘sensing things’ her specialty. Dana wasn’t better with her magical senses, but she did have an edge with her mind, despite Atlanta’s own God-given mental enhancements. She also had a mortal’s perspective.
“So, in your expert opinion, does spreading the pleasure reduce its mental harm to you?” Atlanta said.
Miami snorted. “First, I haven’t seen any mental harm at all, and second, I don’t spread much of it. Why waste such wonderful pleasure? Besides, it all fits with what I ask of my worshippers. I ask them to show me a good time before I answer their prayers.”
Atlanta chewed on her cheek and watched the functionaries scuttle around the edges of her vision. “What sort of a good time?”
“What do you think?” Miami said, flicking his eyes at his three buxom women, who had retreated to the far end of the courtyard after Dana’s comment. His implication of ‘sex’ as the good time was certainly grossly incomplete. Atlanta remembered the touch of his fist and crossed her arms across her chest.
“I thin
k you appreciate a good beating as much as a good fucking,” Atlanta said.
“Crude for a woman, but not incorrect,” Miami said. “Boxing was once called the sport of kings. Someday, I’m going to turn it into the sport of the Gods.”
Atlanta kept her face impassive. So did Dana, to Atlanta’s surprise.
“On to the real reason I’m here,” Atlanta said. “The Seven Suits are taking out medium sized corporations world-wide, destroying them and sweeping up the remains, and building themselves a business empire. In addition to the general economic troubles this will create, I’ve learned that they’re disproportionately going after businesses in your territory, as well as my own. I know why they’re going after me.” Atlanta told Miami a synopsis of her confrontation with the Suits, and Dana’s rescue. “Do you have any idea why they’re going after you?”
“Yes,” Miami said. “They contacted me. They wanted me to help them get a piece of the drug trade in the Caribbean basin, and they wanted me to help get drugs made legal. I told them to go fuck themselves and keep their skanky asses off my territory. I thought they’d had the brains to listen.”
Atlanta handed over her tablet computer, displaying a document showing the Suits’ activities in his territory.
“Son of a bitch,” Miami said. “You’re right. They’re a problem, and they need stopping. You got some idea you’re working on?”
“If we Territorial Gods unite, we should be able to stop them cold.”
“Maybe. It’s at least worth a try,” Miami said. He glanced around at his estate, and shrugged. “If you want a Territorial consensus opposing the Suits, you’ve got my vote.”
“Thank you,” Atlanta said. “Do you have any complaints you would like to add to the list of problems?”
“Not with any of the other Gods,” Miami said. “The worst problem I’ve run into is that my willpower isn’t as good as the Angelic Host advertised. They implied we had the full powers of creation in our hands, and by a simple thought we could do anything. They lied, because they didn’t mention that to do anything cute takes practice, lots of practice.”
“Interesting,” Atlanta said. She hadn’t run into anything she couldn’t do that took lots of practice. Either she could do a trick, or learn to do the trick after a few tries, or couldn’t do the trick at all. She hadn’t thought to try ‘lots of practice’. Perhaps practice was where the mind probes and divine range weapons came from. “Do you have an example you can show us?”
He thought for a moment and nodded. “Sure,” he said. He gestured and a hole opened in reality, to reveal a smelly spherical other place. Inside were two men, the source of the stench. They appeared starved and dehydrated. “My own portable jail cell. It took me days to master this. The best tricks all take similar amounts of work.”
Implying he had taught himself far more difficult tricks than this one. Atlanta wondered how justified she had been in her belief that she could take Miami. Skill often trumped raw power in the real world.
Miami closed the hole in reality. “I don’t trust the Angelic Host,” he said. “They’re playing a game with us.”
“I haven’t met a God yet who thinks otherwise,” Atlanta said.
“With all those worshippers, I think Miami’s going to be a huge problem,” Dana said, shouting over the rushing air. The Dominican Republic lay far behind them, already over the curve of the Earth. Atlanta nodded. An encounter with a God encouraging mass worshippers had changed her mind about the severity of the problem. Portland was correct. The worshipper issue was as important as the Seven Suits.
“Warn Portland through your linkage to her,” Atlanta said. “He shouldn’t have let me touch him. I learned too much. He bears the other Gods ill will, and sees himself as boss God. Not yet, though. He’s training up his willpower for combat. Range combat.”
“How much of a danger is he to you?”
“I don’t know,” Atlanta said. “I think I’m going to have to do some of this training as well.”
They flew on in silence, Atlanta lost in thought. She identified several things she wanted to train up. Miami’s trick with the reality bubble bothered her a lot. She saw many potential uses for such reality alteration, many of which struck her as too powerful for the Gods’ own good. Why had their creators given them so much power?
Atlanta hoped Miami kept thinking like a thug God instead of a military God. She made another of her endless mental notes to herself: not only did she need to practice divine combat, but she also needed to set up a think-tank to come up with ideas on what to train up. Range weapon ideas. The think-tank idea might be a good thing to assign to the Indigo, with their years of occasional combat experience against supernaturally enhanced foes.
“Hey, wow,” Dana said. The whistling wind carried her voice away.
Atlanta brought her thoughts back to the present. “Yes?”
“What’s in that jet?” Dana said, still shouting. She didn’t really believe in her heart Atlanta could hear her voice over the roaring of the wind.
Atlanta wanted to ask ‘which jet’, but a quick check of the dozen or so jets within her line of sight found an anomaly on the jet twenty thousand feet directly below them, barely above a line of thunderstorms. “The two magicians in the flying aluminum bomb?” Once a chopper pilot, always a chopper pilot.
“Not magicians,” Dana said. “Something else.”
Atlanta examined the two closer, and whistled. “Damn.” She exerted her willpower and covered herself and Dana from the prying eyes of those two. “They noticed us, and they aren’t connected to any of the Gods.”
“Uh huh, those are self-powered mortals,” Dana said. Her voice resumed normal volume as she remembered she didn’t need to shout. “Their powers aren’t anything like ours, either. And, unlike those screwy people we met in the Anime Café, I can actually sense their strength.”
“Oh, they’re powers aren’t that different from ours,” Atlanta said. “Save in experience. Both of them have had their abilities for at least two decades.”
“Yah,” Dana said, excited and wary. “Way more powerful than either of us. Only, if they’re so powerful, then why are they taking an airplane? Atlanta, why haven’t we heard of such people before?”
“Good questions,” Atlanta said. “To the latter? They likely don’t want the world to know of them. To the former? I think it’s because they still view the world in mortal terms. You have the same limits at times.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you,” Atlanta said. “How many great wrongs have you gone out and righted in your career?”
“Well, none,” Dana said. “I don’t have the right to go out righting great wrongs. Or do I?”
“You’d have to force yourself, and you’d be filled with self-doubt the entire time, and what you did would weigh on your conscience and morality. Those two are similarly limited. On the other hand, the Host created us Gods with the right built-in. We have the sanction to do anything we choose to do.”
“That explains a lot. Scary,” Dana said.
“Isn’t it, though. Scary and disquieting.” She scanned the two mortals again, and as she did the two increased their shielding to where she couldn’t tell much more than they were a man and a woman. Atlanta projected an invisible image of herself into the plane, good enough to see out of – a bit of a trick, considering their relative velocities – and saw the two of them were middle aged, a black man and a white woman. The white woman tugged on the sleeve of the man, he turned to look at Atlanta, and Atlanta’s projection vanished, banished by the white woman. “But those two are just as scary.” Her gut said those two were Telepaths, but other than a gut feeling, she had no proof.
“I don’t like this, no I don’t,” Dana said.
“Put them on our list of problems,” Atlanta said. The list refused to get any shorter. She realized she would have to think about everything she and Dana had dis
covered on the Miami trip before she visited any of the other Gods in her attempt to build a divine consensus regarding the Seven Suits.
11. (Dave)
Dave parked his SUV in the Hernandez Industries Building’s parking garage, wondering about the commotion out front of Hernandez’s Denver main office. Ready for his usual Wednesday meeting, he grabbed his briefcase and laptop case, wheeled them over to the elevator, then down. It was a good day; the wounds from his surgery healed slowly, but they were healing, and his constant headache was only mild.
He found a crowd milling around the building entrance nearest the parking garage, their voices a wall of undifferentiated sound. He felt a chill when he saw the three uniformed security guards who blocked their way.
Before he could find one of his many Hernandez contacts to quiz, a crying woman appeared in the building’s hallway behind the security guards, pushing an office chair overflowing with boxes. They let her through. Dave shivered.
“What’s going on?” he asked the closest person wearing a Hernandez badge.
“Damned if I know,” the older man said. “Looks to me like they’ve pulled an Enron on us.”
The crying woman pushed her chair by, not commenting. Inside the building, another uniformed security guard walked to the entrance, talked to the closest members of the crowd, then escorted one of them in.
One of the Hernandez-badge wearing women looked up from her smartphone. “It’s all over the news. Hernandez declared Chapter Seven.”