“I sympathize.”
“After I left Kronos…well, that man was so square, you could cut yourself on his corners, you know what I mean? He was the ultimate 1950s dad—wanted us to be Ozzie and Harriet or Lucy and Ricky or something.”
“He—he swallowed his children alive.”
“Yeah.” Rhea brushed her hair from her face. “That was some bad karma. Anyway, I left him. Back then divorce wasn’t cool. You just didn’t do it. But me, I burned my apodesmos and got liberated. I raised Zeus in a commune with a bunch of naiads and kouretes. Lots of wheat germ and nectar. The kid grew up with a strong Aquarian vibe.”
I was fairly sure Rhea was misremembering her centuries, but I thought it would be impolite to keep pointing that out.
“You remind me of Iris,” I said. “She went organic vegan several decades ago.”
Rhea made a face—just a ripple of disapproval before regaining her karmic balance. “Iris is a good soul. I dig her. But you know, these younger goddesses, they weren’t around to fight the revolution. They don’t get what it was like when your old man was eating your children and you couldn’t get a real job and the Titan chauvinists just wanted you to stay home and cook and clean and have more Olympian babies. And speaking of Iris…”
Rhea touched her forehead. “Wait, were we speaking of Iris? Or did I just have a flashback?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Oh, I remember now. She’s a messenger of the gods, right? Along with Hermes and that other groovy liberated chick…Joan of Arc?”
“Er, I’m not sure about that last one.”
“Well, anyway, the communication lines are down, man. Nothing works. Rainbow messages, flying scrolls, Hermes Express…it’s all going haywire.”
“We know this. But we don’t know why.”
“It’s them. They’re doing it.”
“Who?”
She glanced to either side. “The Man, man. Big Brother. The suits. The imperators.”
I had been hoping she would say something else: giants, Titans, ancient killing machines, aliens. I would’ve rather tangled with Tartarus or Ouranos or Primordial Chaos itself. I had hoped Pete the geyser misunderstood what his brother told him about the imperator in the ants’ nest.
Now that I had confirmation, I wanted to steal Rhea’s safari van and drive to some commune far, far upstate.
“Triumvirate Holdings,” I said.
“Yeah,” Rhea agreed. “That’s their new military-industrial complex. It’s bumming me out in a big way.”
The lion stopped licking my face, probably because my blood had turned bitter. “How is this possible? How have they come back?”
“They never went away,” Rhea said. “They did it to themselves, you know. Wanted to make themselves gods. That never works out well. Ever since the old days they’ve been hiding out, influencing history from behind the curtains. They’re stuck in a kind of twilight life. They can’t die; they can’t really live.”
“But how could we not know about this?” I demanded. “We are gods!”
Rhea’s laugh reminded me of a piglet with asthma. “Apollo, Grandson, beautiful child…Has being a god ever stopped someone from being stupid?”
She had a point. Not about me personally, of course, but the stories I could tell you about the other Olympians…
“The emperors of Rome.” I tried to come to terms with the idea. “They can’t all be immortal.”
“No,” Rhea said. “Just the worst of them, the most notorious. They live in human memory, man. That’s what keeps them alive. Same as us, really. They’re tied to the course of Western civilization, even though that whole concept is imperialist Eurocentric propaganda, man. Like my guru would tell you—”
“Rhea”—I put my hands against my throbbing temples—“can we stick to one problem at a time?”
“Yeah, okay. I didn’t mean to blow your mind.”
“But how can they affect our lines of communication? How can they be so powerful?”
“They’ve had centuries, Apollo. Centuries. All that time, plotting and making war, building up their capitalist empire, waiting for this moment when you are mortal, when the Oracles are vulnerable for a hostile takeover. It’s just evil. They have no chill whatsoever.”
“I thought that was a more modern term.”
“Evil?”
“No. Chill. Never mind. The Beast…he is the leader?”
“Afraid so. He’s as twisted as the others, but he’s the smartest and the most stable—in a sociopathic homicidal way. You know who he is—who he was, right?”
Unfortunately, I did. I remembered where I had seen his smirking ugly face. I could hear his nasal voice echoing through the arena, ordering the execution of hundreds while the crowds cheered. I wanted to ask Rhea who his two compatriots were in the Triumvirate, but I decided I could not bear the information at present. None of the options were good, and knowing their names might bring me more despair than I could handle.