Now
“It’s basically like the Internet, Mel.” Nate clung onto her arm tightly as she dangled below him. The “wind” generated by errant thoughts brushed her hair away from her forehead, and he always thought that kind of exposure made her look cute.
After all, she was essentially mutating on a constant basis by being around him. He’d not broached it with her yet, but part of what made him a Shaman had caused a lot of Genetic overspill. He could feel a whole new set of powers, Psionic in nature, growing inside of him, like a baby made from genetic soup.
Her thumb moved gently over his wrist, searching for a kind of intimacy and affection that only he gave her. He smiled gently to himself and squeezed her hand, filling her in on the rest of the details.
“The Internet?” She questioned, looking up at him with Blue eyes. They always changed colour for some reason, he still didn’t understand why exactly.
“Everything is connected here, Mel. Every mind in the world goes here when it’s not being used, sometimes when it is being used. It’s where the sleeping minds of mankind meet and talk and share information.”
“Like what?”
“Like Memes, like the reason why we’re here. Memes are cultural information. If you destroy that, then we’re essentially clever monkey’s surfing a hormone wave. We’ve got nothing.”
“So this...Meme bomb thing?”
“Is very bad news. Yes. That’s why we’re trying to stop it.”
“..So, a Meme is culture?”
“Sort of. Each Meme is a different aspect of Culture, like some Gene’s determine your eye colour, or hair colour.”
“So, how do you stop a Meme?” She asked, looking down at the sea of brain juices that flowed underneath them. It was transparent and Nate could clearly see the disappointed and worried look on her face.
“We’ll cross that Bridge when we come to it, Mel.”
Then
The meeting hall was enormous. Every inch of it was made from stone and wood. Huge rafters held the grass topped roof up as the howling, snow carrying winds. Within the huge hall two warriors and one lord stood, their heads bowed in respect for each other, and to their “missing” Lord.
“How goes the Search?” The Mighty Zeus ran a hand through his twisted and snow covered ginger beard.
“Not well, Lord Zeus.” Hercules said, rubbing the back of his brown curled hair, his massive bicep undulating with the movements. Thor stood silently in the corner of his eyes. Over the years Hercules had learned to love Thor as a brother, because of his wisdom, his knowledge and compassion, but mostly because of his ability to bring violence and pain to those who so sorely needed it.
He’d never seen Thor in such a state, a ragged beard clung to his features, along with an ethereal tiredness that dragged the skin around his eyes. His armour and costume hung loosely around his body, as though he had not eaten for days, even weeks. Were his godly form not so robust he would surely be on his death bed.
“And Thor?” Zeus questioned, his hand heavily clapping on his surrogate son’s shoulder.
A glimmer of passion and hope burst into life in front of their eyes, as Thor clapped his huge hand on Zeus’ forearm.
“I may have, at this very moment, discovered an opening to Father’s hiding place.” A fatigued smile wrote itself upon his features, and Hercules let loose a bellyful laugh.
“Where?” He practically screamed. Zeus waved an arm, suggesting that his formerly insane son calm himself.
“I have detected a trail of Raven feathers, one that reek of the One-Eye Magic. They lead to Norway, though I have no idea why he would return to our ancestral lands. The Norse gods have long since been abandoned by modern culture.”
“But Why?” Hercules asked, as Zeus removed his arm from Thor’s shoulder.
“I do not..”
Thor’s words were cut off as a burst of white light filled the area, the sound of an electrical discharge broke their words off, sentences unable to form.
Now –
“DAMNIT!” Nate screamed as the Meme bomb hit one of its many destinations, within the Mind Reef there are many areas of human culture. Religion is just one of those areas, Faith, Belief, all of those things reside here. A mind, entering sleep, or trance, becomes fragmented and focused at the same time. Each area of the brain continues on that tack until it becomes obsessed.
The belief centre, where, unbeknownst to the Gods themselves, part of their structure, in fact a lot of their personality is based. After all, without the humans to worship or think about them, they wouldn’t exist. Their form, and behaviour is almost entirely based on the premise that people believe, and think and create ideas about them.
As the Meme bomb hit Nate reached out, trying to stop it with his Telekinesis.
He had little effect here on the mind reef. He let go of Threnody, who fell into the transparent liquid below, as he himself tumbled into it.
As his head crashed under the surface, his coat slipped off and he sunk further into the “water.” All around him he could feel the properties of the meme bomb taking affect. People were beginning to lose faith, believing that God or Gods were angry, barbaric concepts.
Nate was protected, his ability to live outside of the Consciousnessof humanity, something that came inherently to Shamans, and to hermits, meant that he was essentially unharmed by the effects of the bomb. His wife however, was not.
Threnody began to believe that she would never control her abilities, and as she withdrew into herself, balling her body up in the viscous liquid, her mind began to race. All those that had died around her, be they a result of the super-heroics, or the result of freak accidents, Was that her fault? Did she court death, especially the death of others just so that she could feel good?
That gothic woman earlier, Wicked, had she caused her mutant ability to go haywire? Was it her that had created this monster within her that she couldn’t control?
“Mel?” Nate asked, as he pulled her from the soup. He was up to the shoulders in the pool, holding his wife by the shoulders and looking at her sopping hair, draped down over her face.
“...It’s all my fault.” She repeated. Over and over. Nate shook her a few times, even contemplating slapping her.
“MEL!” He shouted, as a flare of energy peaked over his forehead. He entered her mind, pushing past the crap that had accumulated in the last five minutes, all the doubts that had filled her head, heading straight to the pleasure centre of the brain, giving it a firm push.
She uttered a few words before an elated smile moved across her features. He pulled her out of the small lake, and let her rest gently on a patch of grass, which was in fact a coma patients hair.
“Mel, I’m sorry sweetheart, but i need to stop that Bomb.” He hesitantly looks over his shoulder whilst the mental construct continues to “explode”. Tendrils whipping out and converting the contents of the pool into doubt, and scepticism. Belief wasn’t necessarily something the world needed to go around, but it was essential to the way the world currently operated – Belief in something better and bigger than humans, and more important and structured than the world is right now.
Several degrees away, within the placated land of slumber inside the Mind Reef, the shadow draped creature cracked it’s knuckles. The first stage of its plan was coming to fruition, nobody can interfere in his plans if he takes out the most powerful “offshoot” of humanity from the get go. Leave the God’s reeling from their exposure to the meme bomb, and concentrate on restructuring the world at large after all.
It was beginning to come to bare.
Nate threw himself through the membrane of the Mind reef, tumbling down to where the Gods were below. There were only three of them, but already the structure of the reef around them and below them had been irrevocably warped, bent and broken, like fragments of a sky that had been shattered, each containing its own weather movements.
Thor struck against Zeus’ immense body, as Hercules clung to his back, smashing his huge fists down on the God of Thunders back. Nate hung in the air for a moment. Why were they attacking each other?
Switching his vision, he saw the extent of the damage to the Mind Reef and to the Gods. Every tendril of belief, every hope fragment had been removed from the Gods; they were essentially removed from the modern world and had De-evolved back to their previous states – Crazed Viking Warriors and Pseudo-Cultured Greek barbarians. They wanted to conquer each other, and the only way to do was so through violence.
Nate could just make out a figure on the brow of the Horizon, someone who was very possibly a God. The tendrils still clung to him, through they gradually became more and more removed. He would have to investigate later, as a below of Rage and fury rang through the air below.
The God’s had spotted him.
He twisted in the air, as a bolt of lightning and a huge hammer whizzed past him. He barely had enough time to react with a Telekinetic shield as Hercule’s huge hands smashed down upon him. The force of it shot him into the ground below, shattering it in huge snaking spider-legs.
Nate opened his eyes and thrust outwards with his TK, huge spires of mental energy hitting Hercules in fifteen different pressure points. The God stood for a moment, before continuing his attack.
“I was sure that was going to work.” Nate told himself, as Hercules grabbed him around the waist and ploughed him through the last remaining wall of the building, leaving Thor and Zeus battling each other.
Nate managed to bounce his Telekinesis off the ground, hitting Hercules squarely in the chest. The lion of Olympus stopped for a moment, before swinging his fist towards Nate again. He threw his hands up to protect himself, as a huge sword swung down bouncing Hercules’s fist off of it.
Nate looked up and his surprise was apparent, as was the horned helmet and smirk written over the interlopers features.
“Loki?”
“Good Afternoon, Grey. Might I lend you a hand?”
Nate got to his feet with the aid of Loki, who parried Hercules’s tackle with a simple twist and stab to the centre of the back.
“I must admit, I am slightly confused why you’re helping, Loki.” Nate asked, throwing a field up around the two as Thor’s hammer warped it with its power, stopping mere inches from Nate’s brow, which was covered in beads of sweat from the effort.
“Well, I have more of an understanding of this than you, Nathan. I may be the god of Mischief, but I’m also the most intelligent of the Gods.”
“Apparently, Intelligence and Ego are not mutually exclusive.”
“Sarcasm does not suit you, Grey.”
Loki twisted and spins the hammer in midflight onto the ground. It collides with the surface cracking it as Thor leapt through the air, straight into Nate’s TK shielded fist. His helmet clattered to the floor, and the God of Thunder wiped his nose with fury.
“Exposition would be helpful, Loki.”
“The God’s are formed and created by the unconscious minds of the humans below, even if we don’t think so, their opinions and ideas are the stuff that makes us. Being so detached from the entire thing, and being so intelligent, i was able to discover this many years ago. However, i have never been able to get any of the other God’s to believe me.”
“Trickster God, Right?”
“We all have our roles to play, Grey. Mine is apparently that of outside.” Loki’s sword thrust upwards, the blade shattering from the force of Zeus’s fist, which kept coming and hit Loki squarely in the face. The God fell backwards, sweeping his legs out and taking Zeus’s stability from him.
Thor and Hercules converged on Nate, who was trying desperately to hold his own. He decided to simply cut to the chase and blasted himself into the air with his Telekinesis. He looked down on the two God’s who simply chose to beat each other up.
“So, What we really need to do, is instead of forming the God’s from other people’s perceptions, is get them to develop their own perceptions of each other, right?”
Loki said nothing as Zeus repeatedly punched his face into the ground. The only response he could offer was a dull gurgle and the sound of a tooth bouncing off the floor.
“Time for some Surgery, I think.” Nate’s astral form burst from its moorings and shot towards the base of Thor’s head. Thor bucked as Nate entered his mind, which was nothing more than a scattering of Runes at this point. There was a core personality, but nothing that Nate could have worked with really.
He then thought about what Loki said, everyone has a role to play. Perhaps Thor’s role needed to be redefined, perhaps his Role is that he would be the bringer of a new age of Immortals and Gods. Ones that thought for themselves, about themselves, rather than concerning their lives with the people below them.
“Thor.”
The Barbarian Thor charged through his Consciousness, slamming into Nate’s Astral form and smashing it into the wall of his brain. It screamed bloody murder in a dozen different languages, salvia splashing against his features.
“THOR!” Nate called, the words reverberating through the central consciousness. Something very small, and very meek called out to him. The Barbarian again yelled, throwing Nate away from the wall and onto the floor.
Pushing his bare feet against the ground he leapt over the top of Thor and slammed his left leg down into the centre of the it’s back, twisting through the air, and vaulting off the wall he landed in a run and sped off towards the location of the voice.
Looking over his shoulder he could feel the presence and the breath of the Barbarian behind him. This wasn’t going to end well.
Tunnel after the tunnel, presumably primitive synapses inside the core personality of the God. Thor leapt at him a few times, but Nate had the weight advantage. He was smaller, and faster inside the mind of the God. He wasn’t bogged down with the lack of Culture and insecurities.
As Nate reached the centre of the mind he found the real Thor, the core of Thor bound and pinned to the centre. He stopped short, as the Barbarian Thor collided with him, fists blurring and crashing into his back, head and shoulders.
Nate went down hard with Thor yelling and screaming with every punch.
“DAMNIT! THOR!”
The weak Thor just lay there. He was unable to do anything without other peoples thoughts, feelings and opinions formulating him. He was a construct of humanities unconscious, without them believing in him he was nothing.
“Damnit Thor; You’re the God of Thunder. You are the mightiest Avenger, Why can’t you get the hell up?” Nate’s nose broke as Thor smashed his face into the ground repeatedly.
“...I don’t have the strength. I don’t know what to believe.”
“Believe in Jesus, believe in Science, Believe in Oprah, Believe in Whatever the hell you want, Thor, because Beliefs aren’t essential in life. If they were how can so many Atheists exist?”
Thor paused for a moment, looking at Nate and the Barbarian version of himself close to killing the Shaman’s astral form.
“I don’t know...I don’t.”
“DON’T BE SO DAMN PATHETIC, THOR! God of Thunder! Not of Weeping like a little Girl! Hurk.” Nate’s words were choked off as the Barbarian held him by the throat, the Shaman’s own hands clawing at his face, pulling at the huge ginger beard.
“Theres no...No...Gack...No Need for you to be made by others for their own pleasure, or safety....You...Urk...You need to try and make your own way. You were so close before...now, you’ve...Urkkk...You’ve reached a crossroads...Do you let a Ragnarok of the mind take you, or do you do the decent Viking thing and FIGHT IT!” Nate’s eyes were starting to blur, he couldn’t focus on the Thor choking him. In fact the only thing he saw before he blacked out was the Viking head turn.
Nate Grey’s words had forced their way into Thor’s head like Worms. Why was he bound by a law he did not create, why did there have to be a god of thunder, of mischief, a structure that was repeated across the pantheons. Were they universal ideas, created by Man?
Was he created by man?
Perhaps once he was, but now...now he was something much better. Now he was a beast of his own creation, that came with its own demons and its own problems This was a blessing, he was free of the constrictions put on him by humanity, and his own kind. He could deliver the message to the other Gods.
The Old ways were not necessarily the right ways.
He pulled himself from the position he was pinned too, smashing his own hammer through the Barbarian Thor’s head. It exploded, spraying the ground around them with particulates of mental energy, all of which was absorbed back into Thor.
“Shaman.” He said simply, forcing the mind of Nate Grey back to his own body.
Nate woke as he began to fall, catching himself in the air. Looking down he saw the energy that poured from Thor into the floor. He caught Hercules mid-leap by the Throat, throwing him down onto the ground, before cracking Zeus across the head with his Hammer.
“This is not the way.” He said simply, as his attire changed. His armour dispersed, reforming itself into a much more humble baggy, brown shirt. His helmet was gone and he was left standing before them.
“Thor, I know you need to sort this out but I need help.” Nate asked, pulling himself from the ground and wiping the blood away from his nose and mouth.
“The bomb that did this to you is already moving again, and I’m not really in the state to stop it. Will you help me?”
Thor said nothing, simply nodding and taking Nate by the arm. The world twisted around them as the pair were transported back to the Mind Reef. Clutching his hammer thong and preparing to whirl it around his head, Nate stopped him.
“Don’t throw it, Thor. It could hit someone’s mind and we don’t know what the effects of that would be in a place like this. It might kill that person, or it might change the entire structure of humanities unconscious.”
After an angry look from Thor, the two of them took flight, the bomb was already on the move again, shooting away from the duo, now held aloft by Thor’s hammer. With a disappointed and worried look on his face, Nate looked back to the still unconscious Threnody.
“We’ll be back soon, Sweetheart.”
Next Issue: WARS!