Flash Fiction #159 -- The Messenger

 

Something was changing in the world.  Hermes could feel it like a growing anger in the air. He had pulled over and sat on the motorcycle as he looked at the city sprawling on the distant horizon, pinpointing the place he needed to go.  He could deliver the note to his half-sister and leave.  The city was filled with distractions for him.  So many businesses, so many opportunities for someone who had been, among things, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates. . . .

He missed the days when they wrote poetry about him.  He missed the simplicity of the old life, which was why he still delivered messages for the others.

Cars passed him by, more than a few slowing to take a closer look at the cycle.  Custom built, of course.  Heph, his half-brother, had done most of the work and he was really good with metals. 

Hermes had and unusual family, but he also had enemies.

Sometimes he could go for years without crossing paths with one of the people he'd annoyed in the ancient past.  Sometimes he even got lax, and this was one of them.  Hermes had started the cycle and pulled out into traffic, determined to get the work done and get on with whatever it was he wanted to do.  A few minutes later he saw the antelopes running along the edge of the desert and hardly gave them a glance until they got nearer and he felt the magic --

By then he was already forcing the cycle to stop, swerving out of traffic amid the blasts of horns and screeching tires.  The creatures ran straight at him and he heard startled cries of humans where there had been curses a moment before. Circe's work!  He could feel her touch and he lifted his hand to carefully (and without much show) send the animals darting away from the open road where they would have been killed and likely taken some of the humans with them.

He saw her standing out in the desert, hands on her hips, her hair flying.  No one else could see her, though.  He wanted to go grab her and shake some sense into that brain.  What a stupid thing to do just to try and hurt him.  He would have survived --

Something hit him just below the knee --

And the teeth sunk in.

Rattler.

"Son of a bitch," he whispered.  The words brought a surge of power and a flash of wind.  His leg was already on fire.  He wasn't certain the snake would survive, but he would.  It just wouldn't be pleasant.

Circe was gone.

He still had hold of the cycle but  wasn't certain it was safe to drive it into town now.  What would he do instead?  Fly?

He climbed on, started the cycle  with a bit of magic rather than the usual way, and then put enough magic into the all-too-normal tires to keep them balanced on the road.  He headed for the city because if he could reach Athena, he could get help.  She was very wise, his half-sister.

Besides, he still had the message to deliver to her.

The poison sent waves of pain and fever through his body as he rode away.  He thought for a moment that he heard Circe laugh, but he wasn't sure.  Why had she suddenly taken up the old disagreement?  Was he imagining the feel of trouble growing again?

The storm that came suddenly was not his imagination.  Lightning flashed across the sky and Hermes looked up, letting the rain fall across his face.  He couldn't think clearly, though.  He could only look ahead and watch as the night fell across the land and the stars rose in glory.  Poetry, he thought.  There used to be poetry and ships and battles that he really didn't want to see again.  He thought he saw trouble playing out in the skies above him --

Athena found him.  Good.  He didn't have to go find her in the city after all.  She strode down the now empty road, larger than life of course, and he stopped the cycle.  There were still cars around, but not where they stood, in a slightly different place.  He heard them as whispers and saw them as the fleeting ghosts of humanity.

"Message from father." Hermes drew the sealed packet from inside my jacket.  "I think there is trouble."

"No shit, Sherlock," she said with a nod up at the sky.

She took the packet and tore it open while Hermes leaned forward over the handlebars and thought about crawling off into the desert.

"Who did this to you?" she asked. Her cool hand touched the side of his face. They'd never been very close, but they were not enemies.  "Hermes?"

"Circe," he said and forced himself to sit up.  "I wish she'd get over it.  Find a new hobby rather than annoying me.  Anything to keep her busy."

"We are all going to be busy soon," Athena said.  Hermes looked at her, worried.  She met his stare with a nod of her own, her gray eyes sparkling.  "A war is coming.  I think Circe has already chosen her side.  What side will you choose?"

"Not the one with Circe," he mumbled.

"Good decision," Athena said.  She took his arm and pulled him off the cycle.  The storm had already passed, or perhaps simply wasn't here.  It had likely been a portal and he stood now with Athena in a place of stark sky and bright stars, beyond the world of technology.  An old and ageless place.

"A war?" he asked.  "I wish he'd said something to me."

"Father left choosing our warriors in my hands, Hermes."  She stopped and shook her head.  "We go to war like the old days.  There will be glory --"

"And blood and death," Hermes said.  And poetry.  "Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage. . . ." 

The battle was coming.

999 words

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Flash Fiction #158 -- It's a Zoo at Work

"Hey, Mike."

I looked up.  Bob leaned over the wall that blocked my cubicle from his.  The partition was flimsy and I worried that he was going to tumble on through.  Bob wasn't a small man.  This was only my second day at the company and I already felt like I was in way over my head, despite four years in college and a degree that apparently had nothing whatsoever to do with the real work in the world of Internet Technology despite what I'd been told.

"Do you need something, Bob?" I asked, pulling my hands back from the keyboard.  My shoulders hurt.

Bob was shaking his head.  "I thought I should warn you: the Emus are at it again."

"Emus," I repeated.  I was going to have a hard time learning office lingo, so I might as well get right at it.  I thought I could hear some shouts and sounds of distress from elsewhere in the huge cavernous office.  The room was so large that I would have needed binoculars to find out the weather outside, which could only be seen through a three foot square of glass at the far wall.

"The Emus run the email system.  Bad, bad decision on the part of the Head Wizard.  Everyone knows that Emus have a . . . How shall I say it?" He leaned precariously forward, his voice dropping.  "It's the ostrich problem.  Emus feel like they have to prove themselves because so many people think they're just another ostrich.  So Arcanus decided to bring them in and give them an important job."

"And?" I said.  It seemed the only wise thing to say in the midst of this tale.

"People still call them ostriches."

"That would be annoying."

"I thought I ought to warn you," he said and looked off across the top of the cubicles.  "It is one of the things not really covered in the company guide."

I suddenly suspected I ought to have read the book when they said I had the job and handed it over to me.  It was still in the car.  I'd gone off and had a drink or two instead, celebrating my good luck.

"They can't fly," Bob said.  "But they're damned fast on their feet.  You don't want to annoy them."

Bob disappeared back into his cubicle. 

It had been an entertaining bit of a story and a welcome break from studying the computer system I was trying to work out.  I needed to focus, though.  I threw myself back into the work.  But . . . .

I could hear odd sounds.   The shouts had died down, but now I heard an odd scratching sound, like claws on the floor.  They sure liked to play games here.  I was probably going to enjoy it once I got settled in.  Might make up for not seeing the world outside -- or maybe people just went crazy here with only that little window as a link to the rest of the world. 

At least the money was good.  I went back to work.

Something was standing at the back of my cubicle.  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I slowly turned and stared at the huge bird who had twisted his head and glared at me.

"Emu," I said.  It was the only word I could say.

"Well," it answered.  "Smarter than most of these so-called higher primates."

It moved on, feet clicking on the floor.

Bob appeared over the top of the cubicle and grinned brightly.  "Nicely done!  You always want to stay on the right side of the Emus.  They can screw with your email and that can get messy.  Now if you can just stay on the good side of the anaconda in accounting and the hippo who runs HR --"

"A hippo runs Human Resources?" I asked.  I had to ask something.

"Yeah, kind of ironic that one.  Anyway, she's nice enough.  And the anaconda -- well, just best not to have to deal directly with accounting. That's why you want the emus on your side so your emails go through."

"Right.  Makes sense."

"Good to find someone who doesn't get all crazy, you know.  You'll do fine here.  Watch out, pronghorn package delivery!"

The pronghorn -- a damned fast animal -- flung his head and a package that had been attached to a horn flew off and landed on my desk.  He was long gone before I looked back.

"That'll be the book for the new operating system they're putting in.  Looks . . . Interesting."  Bob leaned even closer to me.  "If they ever get the gorillas and their friends to settle down and type, we're all out of jobs.  So I hope you do well.  Our only hope is to be better than the apes."

"The story of humanity," I replied.

He grunted (rather ape-like, I thought) and went back to work.  I opened the package and started learning about the new Zootronics System. The cover said it all:  So simple a dormouse could run it in his sleep.

Time to out perform the apes.  I always did like a challenge.

865 words

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