Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe (15 page)

“
You did? But I told you I would think about it.”

“
Literally.
Drooling
. Seriously. I have never
seen a woman do that. Except when… you know.” The pause in the line
told him to stay on the subject. “I knew you would change your
mind,” he said.

“
Ok. Thank you. If this is so, I really need to get prepared
and maybe I’ll manage to get an hour of sleep or
something.”

“
Just like back at the university,” said Nikos and hung
up.

Yanni
tucked his superman cape under his frozen legs and thought about
what this meant.

It’s your best friend Yanni
. Those
were her exact words. She couldn’t have known this from anywhere
else but the man himself. Nikos thought of Yanni as a best friend,
even though their lives were forcing them away from one another as
years passed. And if this opportunity was the lifeline it promised
to be, he would be a real friend, one which Yanni could never hope
to repay in kind. He would need to have a clear talk with his wife
about this, about how much they would owe to him if this went
through.

But he
needed to get ready first. Minutes fly away so fast when you have a
finite supply of them.

Chapter
3i

Yanni
sat across Ourania. His wife had left this morning, taking the kids
to her mother. He had said goodbye to Georgie and the baby, but
mostly Georgie since he was old enough to miss him. It was
unceremonious, they didn’t want to make a big deal out of this. It
would last at most a couple of months. That was what he told his
son and that was what he was telling himself.

He
reached out and took the small globe in his hand. By accepting
this, the ellipsis method would begin. Hopefully, it would lead to
a big scientific discovery and him winning the Nobel prize. He
could live with just the discovery credited to his name and no
prize attached, but he had gotten pompous with all the recent
events. Nikos’ optimism was getting to him.

Ourania was at the exact same position as last night, when
she blurted out the terms and conditions and waited for an
acceptance. This whole thing looked like a computer, frozen and
waiting for you to hit the “OK” button. But where was the “Cancel”
button? Did it even exist? Was he in too deep, learning of the
corporate secrets of Hermes? Could he back out if he wanted
to?
Did
he want
to?

He shook
his head. Of course, the cancel button was placing the globe
without putting the thumb on it first. “Silly me”, he thought,
remembering the day before. It was hard remembering anything but
the amazing farewell sex he had with his wife. She had definitely
achieved her goal, marking her presence deep in his
thoughts.

This is
it, he thought. The family is gone, the laser is on its way, the
muse has already knocked on the door and is waiting in the living
room.

Everything was in place.

He put
his thumb over Greece on the small metal globe. The country was way
too small of course, he covered most of Eastern Europe all the way
to Iraq.

A small
needle pricked him.

He was
jostled by it, looking at the blood-drop falling over
Africa.

Yanni
placed the globe in Ourania’s palm and waited almost reverently to
see what would happen.

Ourania
tilted her head back up, opened her eyes and looked straight into
his.

Chapter
3i^2

“
Why are
you so nervous man, relax!” said Nikos, sitting next to him on the
lobby with a pose fit for a king.

“
Of course I’m nervous, the future of my family depends on
this,” said Yanni biting his lip.

“
I got your back man. You’ll talk to a fellow scientist, not a
corporate suit who knows nothing about your expertise. It will be
like having a frappe with a colleague down at the uni. Sit back
gamoto and relax!”

Yeah,
that actually made him unclench his fists a bit. Talking to a
fellow scientist would be much more preferable than trying to
convince some profit-obsessed CEO to redistribute his finances to
things he could never hope to grasp. Yanni tried to take his mind
off the task by examining his surroundings. The temporary main
offices of Hermes Information Technology looked a lot like you
would expect their primary ones to be. Only thing they were missing
was their own skyscraper with a huge corporate logo on top. Well,
the man sitting next to him like royalty was the one making that
happen. Good thing they were friends since before learning to ride
a bike.

A dash
of paranoia made Yanni think that the secretary was just delaying
them a bit before blowing them off to a rescheduled appointment,
but Nikos was confident that this was the real deal. He squinted a
bit to read her corporate blue overlay with the programs she was
using but he was too far to read anything. In order to calm his
mind he started studying the things that were in his power, just
like Thalia did. He checked over the custom gen-two laser
specifications he brought, the flash drive with the presentation he
completed last night (he had already sent an email beforehand but
he wanted to hold it in his hand as a backup) and the printed
renders of the Maxwell equations he was attempting to
utilize.

“
Dr. Tsafantakis?” said the young secretary. “You may step
inside. No, alone please,” raising her palm at Nikos, polite but
firm.

Yanni
looked back at Nikos who made an assuring gesture for him, the one
he always did when Yanni needed encouragement to go talk to a girl.
“Who’s the man?”

It was
also the exact same gesture who made Yanni scrounge up enough
courage to talk to Thalia for the first time. Yeah, that had worked
out nicely. So was this, Yanni convinced himself and walked inside,
while murmuring, “I’m the man.”

As soon as the door behind him closed the ambient noise of
the corridor vanished. The room he was in could make a Spartan
envious. There was only a man sitting in a chair, with a small
plain drawer next to him. The man didn’t look like the person to
oversee a theoretical physics committee. He looked like a…
concierge
.

“
Hello, I am the commissionaire,” the man said with a forced
pleasantness.

A
doorman then.

“
Please leave all your belongings with me and step inside the
next room. Hermes assures you of the safety of your belongings.
They will be placed inside this hermetically sealed container,” the
doorman said.

Whatever, it was not theft Yanni was worried about. “Ok, here
you go. My phone too I assume. Here. What? This is my presentation.
How am I to present my work withou…”

“
Please. It’s company policy. You are free to decline of
course but that would mean an immediate cancellation of your
appointment. Do you want me to inform the front desk?” asked the
doorman a bit louder than he really needed to inside this echoing
room.

“
Ohi. No. It’s ok, fine, take it. I accept. Now what?” Yanni
said and emptied even the lint from his pockets.

“
Excellent. Please pass though these doors for your
appointment,” said the doorman and put his stuff in the drawer. The
air flooped as it closed.

Huh. The
damn thing really was hermetically sealed.

Yanni
passed through a small plain corridor and stepped inside another
room. There was a woman waiting there for him, dressed with a smart
outfit that was equally feminine and serious. He rushed a bit too
fast to get near her and shake her hand, she was obviously more
suited to deal with his presentation. But she couldn’t have been
the one Nikos said was drooling over his proof.

“
Hello Doctor, pleased to meet you,” she said with a serious
business smile.

He
started to reply, the nervousness starting to take over again when
a splash of colour in his peripheral vision made him turn his head.
In the big empty room with them was a small child, couldn’t have
been more than five years old. The child was playing with a toy
truck and if Yanni squinted a bit, he could swear that he could see
his own Georgie in his place.

“
Um. I… Yes. Can we start, do you want me to…” Yanni said but
the smart woman touched him on the shoulder and interrupted
him.

“
Dr. Tsafantakis, I will not be the one to see your
presentation. The Ellipsis project needs to remain minimal in all
of its aspects and all of its phases. Even the early ones such as
this. You do not need a board to explain your apodeixis to, just as
you do not need the renders nor the slideshow presentation you so
thoughtfully sent ahead,” she said with authority and a glimpse of
pride.

“
Ok. Then what do I need to do?” asked Yanni.

“
You need to explain your hypothesis to this child. Should the
child understand, then you will be granted all you need to make it
happen. Everything will be explained to you in the next phase, but
you must focus on this one for now,” she said with the same tone in
her voice.

“
You are kidding. You are kidding me about presenting my
life’s work to a kid,” said Yanni as-a-matter-of-factly.

The
smart woman tightened her dossier on her chest and leaned forward
to make her point. “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t
understand it well enough.” Then she added with a factual tone,
“Albert Einstein.”

Yanni
dashed a bit back and forth and then chose his words carefully.
“You want me to explain a theoretical application of Maxwell’s
light bending equations to quantum computing, to a five-year old
boy?”

She
replied, “Yes.” The dot was audible.

“
Very well then!” said Yanni, succumbing to the madness around
him.

The
smart woman left the room. Yanni looked around for a chair but
there was none. The floor it was then. He squatted next to the
child. His fatherly instincts kicked in and he started thinking
about this whole deal, as he established rapport with the child.
That poor kid could be scared. What if he wasn’t a father, would
they still let him alone in here, a stranger alone with a kid? Was
the mother watching nearby? The corporation was certainly watching
him, there were cameras in the room. What sort of people do this
thing?

“
Hey, my son has a truck exactly like that! His name is
George, but we call him Georgie. What is your name?”

“
Alex.”

“
Well, Alex, we can get you two to play the trucks together.
Georgie carries around flour with his truck. But it spills
everywhere and his mommy gets mad at him sometimes for making a
mess.”

“
Mine doesn’t. But she never gets mad at anything. But. But I
don’t have flour to carry around so I don’t really
know.”

Thank
god the kid is clever. Yanni thought about what Alex said. “Does
your mommy teach you stuff? I know it’s still early for you to go
to school, but does she teach you mathematics? Adding apples in the
cart?”

“
Yes! I know that one plus one equals two!” Alex said with
triumph.

Skata.
Yanni could work with that foundation but he was pretty sure he
didn’t have a decade available to impart some formal
education.

“
What does mommy teach you?”

“
Not much, she has to take care of my brothers and sisters as
well. She has no time for all of us. But she reads us fairytales
and has us draw the pictures in our heads.”

“
Does mommy work?”

“
Her work is being our mommy. She is good at it.”

Oh man.
Was this one of the orphans he had heard on the news? The ones
adopted by corporations?

“
How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

Alex
raised his shoulders. “The whole room.”

Yanni
had a chilling thought at that point.

“
Alex. What do the other grown-ups call your
mommy?”

Alex
looked up from his toy with his joyous little eyes and answered,
“Muse.”

Chapter
3i^3

Yanni’s mind
raced on about keeping the light contained. Much like the spilled
milk on the table, the spilled milk on the floor and the spilled
milk on his son’s clothes, the damn light got spilt every time you
tried to do something useful with it.

Thalia
dropped the plate in the sink and grabbed a towel. “Oh Yanni, don’t
just sit there! Clean up this mess. I can’t do everything around
here,” she said and cleaned up after Georgie.

Georgie
ran his fingers through the spilt milk on the floor and licked
them. “No don’t lick that,” his mom said and slapped his hand
lightly.

Yanni
snapped out of it and started cleaning up with some napkins and
said, “Yes, sorry, here. Not from the floor Georgie, we don’t eat
stuff from the floor.”

But his
mind raced on again. Tuning out the background noise, his wife
cleaning up after the kids, Georgie crying because he was scolded,
the baby crying because she needed changing, the neighbor banging
on his damn DIY kitchen, the cat on her oistros calling out the
males and the gardener with his electric hedge trimmers, he thought
of equations that would make reality his bitch.