Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe (20 page)

He was
holding the globe in his hand. His blood had left a stain on
it.

Two
days.

That’s
all he had, two days, and then his birthday. Thirty fucking years
old. End of the line. Go back to teaching.

People
had died for this. Mr. Andreas, the old woman, M-something she was
called. Could be more. Had he any reason to doubt a straight
confession from an android?

He could
go to the police, tell them anything. He would go straight
away.

As soon
as he figured out that damn apodeixis.

Didn’t
matter if they locked him up, if he could make his contribution to
science before that.

He held
the globe in his hands, leaned down his head and wept.

“
Please come back. Please-please-please. You are my muse and I
let you go. I’m such a vlakas. Please come back.
Please.”

Two
days.

He
turned on the laser. Took off the glasses.

Increased the intensity.

Maybe he
could see something in the light just before it burned his retinas.
He stood up and looked at the ceiling, where the laser beam ended.
He stretched his neck and tried to see better at the blinding blue
dot. He swirled around the room looking up, losing his step and
regaining balance, like a weird version of Zorbas
dancing.

The
light was too much. He covered his eyes and weeped on the
floor.

A soft
female hand caressed his filthy hair.

He
looked up but saw only blue. His eyes focused on a figure above him
but could only see the intense afterimages.

“
Is it you?”

“
Shh. Close your eyes. You will recover in time,” Ourania
said.

“
You
heard
me! I prayed to the globe and you heard me!”

Ourania
took a weirded expression on her face. “I have no direct link to
the globe. I just came back to check on you.”

Yanni
blindly reached around the floor with his hands and found the
globe. He squeezed it in his hand as if it were an instrument of
power and said firmly, “Stay here and help me find the
apodeixis.”

His eyes
strained to focus on the silhouette in front of him.

Ourania
smiled. “As you wish.”

Chapter
7i^4

Grrrrrnggggggggg.

Grnnnng.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnggggg.

Mr.
Andreas’ saw cut through wood like… well a sharp and powerful
saw.

It was
his latest project, some kind of wardrobe or something. He didn’t
like those Ikea things, he wanted to make things
himself.

He was a
retired man, used to work in the Public Power Company. A handyman
there as well, he claimed to have laid hundreds of kilometres of
cable and repaired over a thousand transformers.

The
neighbours believed him. Everyone who knew the man believed
him.

Not a
day went by without Mr. Andreas’ projects being heard around the
block.

Yanni
held his head in his hands.

The
noise was too much. He should be thankful basically, that it wasn’t
one of the man’s steel projects. Those took a lot more work and
throwing around of metal.

To
imagine the man’s toolshed, you simply had to recall all of the
tinker types you had seen on movies. The scrap metal rusting
everywhere, dumped inventions all over the place and old power
tools that needed a good kick to get started.

Then you
had to reverse it.

His
toolshed was cleaned meticulously between projects, so much that
you could have an open heart surgery on his workbench. The
surrounding area was full of carefully stacked scavenged materials
and replacement parts, all stored in closed plastic bins and
labeled. His tools were shiny and sharp, applying his skill into
precise cuts and holes.

Grrrrrrnggggggggggg.

Despite
all of Ourania’s efforts, Yanni had a headache. He woke up with a
bad temper, and it didn’t help to hear all the woodcutting
throughout the day.

He was
grateful of course. Without Mr. Andreas’ prompt action putting out
the fire, Yanni might not even have a house to feel lousy in right
now. Or worse, his family might have been hurt.

He felt
he had to endure.

“
Good thing he finishes his projects quite fast,” he told
himself. “He begins new ones as quickly though,” he
added.

He knew
it was going to be a slow day anyway. He decided to brush up on
some math he was struggling with, they had been left unused for
eight years and they had taken the form of Chinese for some
reason.

“
It sure is loud. Should I turn on the stereo?” asked Ourania.
She had tried closing the windows and had already moved him to
another part of the house already.

“
No, it’s fine. I wasn’t concentrating that much anyway. Let’s
be patient,” he said with a smile and tried to bury his head in the
math book.

The
loudness of advanced math did nothing to drown the
noise.

Yanni
decided to turn this to his advantage. He perched up his ear and
studied the noise. Imagined the saw cutting through
wood.

Oh man,
lots of physics there!

Let’s
see. We have the cutting of molecular bonds. Sawdust flying around
in fractals. Each particle its own unique size and shape, with its
own aerodynamic properties.

Grrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnnngg.

Acoustic
waves modulated by the wood being cut. Like a violin with
single-use strings. Making music by cutting them with a
knife.

Wait a
minute.

That might be it… All he thought about was not letting the
light spill out. What if he needed to get a percentage of the light
to spill on purpose,
sacrificed
, for the sake of data
integrity on the lattice?

But was
it possible through interference? Or entanglement? Who knew? It was
something to build on.

Grrrrng.

He
slapped his forehead. He swept the whole desk on the floor and
pulled up a notebook, scribbling like mad.

Ourania
walked the steps leading to the street. She went to the toolshed
where Mr. Andreas worked. She looked around the neat workshop.
Walking silently she reached right behind the man, him not noticing
anything but his craft. She looked at the wall, the rows of neatly
placed tools on suitable little hinges.

She
brushed her hand over the tools and picked one up in her small
hand.

Mr.
Andreas was wearing a work mask and protective eyeglasses, the ones
that cupped your head with silicone for the best fit.

He had a
sort of venting system over his workbench, that pulled all the
sawdust straight into a filter. Bright lights made the workbench an
excellent place to work, even for someone whose eyesight was
failing him due to age. And of course, two large fire extinguishers
placed always at hand.

The man
turned around, and stopped the saw. He was towering over her, a
retired handyman who was built like an ox and probably could outrun
a few teenagers in a race.

He
pulled the mask down and smiled. His skin was plastered with
sawdust. His grey hair had taken in even more.

“
Oh hello young lady! I didn’t see you there. You should be
careful around powertools, accidents do happen,” he said, with a
voice suitable for Santa Claus, ready to shower kids with
presents.

Ourania
was looking innocent, her hands crossed behind her back and her
eyes looking up at the big man.

“
I can’t hear nor see all that well anymore. Next time hit
something really hard so that I notice you at the door, right?” he
said with the same grandfatherly tone.

“
Right,” she said.

She
brought the hammer in an arc, right on his temple. Mr. Andreas fell
on his saw, unconscious, with his weight on the circular
sawblade.

She
pressed the button and the saw whirred again.

It found
bone, and stopped.

She made
coffee for him. Washed the mug he liked the most, the one that read
“The physics is theoretical, but the fun is real.” It was Yanni’s
favourite, a quote from some old TV show.

She
brought the coffee to him, and placed the mug on his desk. While
leaning, she touched him on the neck. His biometric readings lit up
blue in her field of view and she saw with satisfaction that Yanni
was in the zone. Dead centre of it. That made her happy.

Yanni
was focused on his notebook, scribbling and calculating and
mumbling. He had been used to getting served what he needed all
these days during the ellipsis project, so he absent-mindedly
picked up his favourite mug and mumbled between sips.

He
rubbed his fingers together to wipe off a smudge of blood. He must
have had a paper cut he thought, and quickly moved on to his
previous thoughts.

He
didn’t take his eyes off his equations for a minute. If he had, he
would have noticed Ourania standing quietly behind him, blood spray
on her face.

Chapter
8i

Ourania decided to cook him a new recipe. People
needed variety in their food. Unfortunately, the native Greek
cuisine was rather rough on the stomach and she didn’t want to
disturb his recent gnosis state.

She
opened Thalia’s cookbook, and looked for something within
parameters. She decided on a recipe, but chose to forgo the garlic.
While preparing the kitchenware she jerked her head up.

She
looked through the door. Silently, she walked near the gap like a
feline predator.

Yanni
was sneaking to the window, attempting to open it
silently.

With a
few quick long strides she reached up to him and threw him across
the room. The wall that she had flung him on would have dropped
picture frames on his head, if it not were for Ourania’s minimal
approach to her surroundings.

Yanni
lost consciousness from the impact for a full minute.

He woke
up to a massage.

“
You are insane. No, to be insane you have to have sanity in
the first place. You are just broken,” he told her, grunting from
the pain.

“
I hope you don’t try anything like that again,” she said,
tending to his back.

He
slapped her hand away and put on his shirt.

“
Just let me go,” he said plainly.

“
Do you really want to? You cannot argue that you haven’t made
progress with my help.”

“
No, I agree, but this is not how it works.”

She
stared at him for a few seconds and then brought her blue purse.
She took out the small globe, and presented it to him.

“
Hold it, and order me again.”

He
grabbed it as quickly as humanly possible and spat out, “LET ME GO
you fucking monster!”

“
Very well,” she said. She seemed hurt. Keeping her head low
she walked to the door and left.

Yanni
stayed there, clutching the globe and staring at the street
outside.

Chapter
8i^2

“
Sit back
and relax. Close your eyes. Think of your goal, what you desire
deep down. Imagine being on the pedestal, accepting the Physics
Nobel. Listen to the introductory speech they are giving for you,
the applause from below. Think of how easy the apodeixis looks like
now that you have finally figured it out, think of the years you
spent searching for it.”

Ourania
walked silently behind him and brought her lips close to his
ear.

“
But now you know it. It’s so simple, so understandable. As
simple as having it scribbled on a crumbled piece of paper in your
pocket. The same piece of paper you found laying around the moment
you conceived it. Put your hand in your pocket, the proof is there.
You are going to receive the Nobel prize thanks to that piece of
paper, the apodeixis smudged and worn out but still legible. Touch
the paper with your fingers, wrap them around it. You can take it
out any time you want, any time at all, just sneak a peek at the
paper, the apodeixis is there. It is so simple, so elegant, you
could easily explain it to a child. It’s there on the paper. The
apodeixis is there. In your palm. It’s right there.”

She
leaned in even closer and whispered, “What does the paper say,
Yanni?”

Yanni
leapt out of the chair and hurried some equations on the
whiteboard.

Chapter
8i^3

Ourania
didn’t dare move a servo.

If there
was a zone, Yanni was swimming circles in it. She didn’t want to
disturb him at all.

This was
the mission parameter.

He was
going to do it. Solve the proof.

She was
peeking through the door, biting her nails. Not that there was any
point to that action, but her human behaviour included that as
well.