Prometheus Wakens - 4. Chapter 4: Visit from Apollo: Golden apples of the Sun

Chapter 4: Visit from Apollo:
Golden apples of the Sun

The boy who was waiting on the patio the next morning had a bit of baby fat, and was rosy-cheeked with yellow hair. His tunic was a pale green. “Good morning, Lucas,” he said. “I am Malus domestica.”

“Apple!” I said, delighted as his words triggered a fragment of an old memory. “Ab ova, ad mala was on the wall of my classroom in the Latin School.”

From eggs to apples was the description of a complete Roman meal. Eggs and apples were among the first words of that language I learned. I vaguely recalled that the Latinate lord’s prayer was another of the posters, but I could not recall more than pater noster.

Apple smiled at my understanding and acknowledgement, and accepted a kiss before inviting Oak and me to the breakfast table. Oak stayed for breakfast, kissed both Apple and me, and then ran down the path.

“Apple, yesterday Oak and Yew teleported themselves from the olive grove to the house. Is that something you all can do?”

“Yes, Lucas,” he seemed to bubble and bounce a bit in his chair.

“Will you tell me how you do that?” I asked.

He froze. “I don’t know how to tell you!” he said.

I thought perhaps if I tried to see in his mind what he was doing when he did it, I would be able to do it. But that didn’t work. And, after about four tries, he seemed to be exhausted. I thought for a moment, and Ginkgo-1 appeared. He wasn’t able to help me understand teleportation, either. He did have his little brother bring some water to Apple.

“Apollo.” Ginkgo-1 said in answer to my unspoken question.

“Why Apollo?” I asked.

“He’s the sun,” Ginkgo-1 replied. “He knows about traveling.”

That made about as much sense as anything else in this particular reality, so I asked Ginkgo if he’d ask Demeter to ask Apollo to visit. It took less than four seconds to get an answer, which Ginkgo-1 had barely begun to speak, when Apollo arrived on the patio.

Apple jumped up; the Ginkgoes were already standing. The three boys bowed.

“Apollo, be welcome,” I said. “Boys? Would you bring us refreshment, please?”

The boys disappeared, even Apple, who had apparently recovered his strength. Ginkgo-1 returned with a pitcher of nectar, and one of water and, at a thought from me, left immediately.

By this time, Apollo and I were seated at the table on the patio, and were studying one another.

I saw a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties. I remained in the form in which I’d first appeared in this reality, although I had learned from Demeter that I could adopt other aspects. I guessed that Apollo could, as well, and tried not to assume anything based on his appearance.

Other than a thank you when I’d greeted him, and another when I’d invited him to sit at the table, Apollo hadn’t spoken. When he did speak, he surprised me.

“The boys are blocking me,” he said. “I could see past their block if I tried, but when I pushed Ginkgo, he became very angry. You have created intense loyalty in a very short time. I salute you.”

It was my turn to say thank you. I did, and added, “It was Ginkgo’s idea to invite you, here. I need to learn how to teleport, and he said you’d be the best teacher.”

“He was always the clever boy,” Apollo said.

In response to my Oh? he added, “I’ve known him for centuries.

“Long ago, when we were both young, in the fall, when his leaves became the color of his hair, we would toss sunbeams back and forth in a child’s game. Afterwards, we would spend the night together.”

“You remind me that I am what Demeter called a younger god,” I said. I held no rancor in my mind, nor did my voice contain any.

“And I envy you that,” Apollo said. “So many things to discover, so many new experiences. You know, don’t you, that many of the gods and all the titans, as well as their predecessors from the Golden Age and before have left this reality.”

I nodded.

“Sometimes, I think it was from ennui—boredom,” he said.

“Are you bored?” I asked.

“No, although I often have to look hard to find anything new.”

“Here is an opportunity,” I said. “Not just teaching me to teleport—”

“Translocate,” Apollo interrupted. “Or, pop.”

I nodded acknowledgement, but continued speaking. “I do not remember very much about my life before finding myself in this world,” I said, “but I do remember that applying a force to move something a distance was the definition of work, and that work was another name for energy. Where does your energy come from?”

Apollo seemed puzzled, for he said, “I’ve never wondered about that. I suppose most of the gods’ energy comes from their worshipers.”

“Demeter said that some of the gods still had worshipers,” I said, “but that others did not. She mentioned the gods of the guilds, and said that physicians still swore oaths by you and others. Still, I got the impression that the number of worshipers was down.”

“You are right,” Apollo said. “Although the number of worshipers is down—and negligible in the case of some of the gods—we still have power.”

He fell silent. I allowed him the time to think.

“I do not know the source of our energy, Lucas, but when I pop, I feel surrounding me a bubbling chaos of power from which I pull the strength I need.”

Bubbling chaos, I thought. That sounds familiar. What does it mean, and why do I remember that? Why do I remember ‘things’ from my past life, but so little of ‘me’?

“Thank you for that understanding,” I said. “Now, would you help me find out why I’m here? And, more important, what I am supposed to do?”

Apollo was surprised. He hesitated, and then said, “You are asking a great deal.”

“You offered a great deal,” I said. “Surely, you knew when you opened your mind to your memories of Ginkgo that I would see what else was there.” I did not say what it was, for just at that moment, Ginkgo and Apple returned.

“Please, Lucas, will Apollo be staying for lunch?” Ginkgo asked.

I looked at Apollo, but before I could speak, he laughed. “Thank you, Ginkgo, I would like that, very much. And you don’t have to be so obvious! Lucas knows that you and I have been lovers, and I know that you are bound to Lucas, now.

“If Lucas will permit, will you give me a kiss, and tell me that you still love me, even though you love Lucas, too?”

Ginkgo blushed furiously.

“Ginkgo,” I said, “you may certainly kiss Apollo and declare your love for him, which you wear on your sleeve. Then, please, will you give me a kiss, too? I am not jealous of your love for Apollo and I believe that he is not jealous of your love for me.

“And I hope the two of you will toss sunbeams back and forth this fall, and that I will be invited to watch.”

Lunch was a Waldorf salad (not a surprise, although apples weren’t in season) and flat bread. When we had finished, I winked at Ginkgo and gestured toward Apollo. Ginkgo grinned, gave Apollo another kiss and went back to work in the groves. Apollo and I sat down with water and nectar, and talked about fate and destiny, and what my role was to be.

After lunch, it took Apollo very little time to show me how to translocate, and to warn me of the dangers of trying to go to a place I could not visualize or about which I had no information.

“You do not have to see the place, but you should know something about it,” he said. “Knowing someone who is there and being able to see them is often sufficient.”

“What about other realities?” I asked. That was what he had allowed me to see in his mind—other realities, including the one I had come from, and the horrors that were breeding there. “Demeter said there was one which was blocked?”

“We move freely between this reality and the one from which you came,” he said. “We are unique in both. The blocked reality is one in which we exist, or in which doppelgängers of us exist. I think that we cannot go there because of what might happen should we meet ourselves. There are other realities we are aware of; some are visible to us, but so far, only two are open to us.”

Although Apollo tried, he could not show me how to see realities other than the one from which I had come. I guessed—and hoped—that the ability to do that would come with time.

“There was a reason Prometheus reached into your reality to bring you here and give you his powers,” Apollo said. “There is certainly no shortage of candidates here. You said that Demeter thought Prometheus might have seen something in you. I won’t dispute that; but I think he knew his replacement must be someone intimately familiar with your reality. Someone who grew up in it, not someone who learned it as from a book.”

“That makes sense, but I lost a lot of my memories—”

Apollo finally interrupted the long pause that followed. “What?”

“I just realized. I’ve lost many memories of who I was, but I have very vivid memories of the city where I lived, the country in which I lived, in fact, the geopolitics of the whole world.” What was I? A professor? A journalist? A—I hope not—a politician?

“What were the forces shaping its history?” Apollo asked.

That was an easy question. “Various criminal enterprises including churches, lobbyists, illegal drug networks, governments, and politicians,” I said.

“What were the connections, the nexuses?”

I thought about what linked these things, and how they were linked. “Money is what they all have in common. Power, too, but money is the most important, and is the source of their power. The biggest source of money is the trade in illegal drugs. Drug lords—carteles—pay off government agents including military forces to get protection for shipments and distribution channels. Some of the biggest distribution channels are the mega-churches who need the income to support the lifestyles of their leaders and the Ponzi schemes they are working on their members.”

I thought for a moment before adding, “Many of the churches, especially the dominant sect—the Universal Fundamentalist Church—see the destruction of civilization by any instrument to be the means to bring Armageddon and the rapture, so they encourage the drug trade and the crime it spawns. Churches and drug lords pay off politicians through lobbyists in order to get special treatment in the tax code, to make sure the drug enforcement people are kept underfunded, and to make sure the borders are kept open to illegal immigrants, including the children they used as drug mules.”

Apollo frowned at that statement. I finished the story. “As the war on drugs intensified, and the government agencies responsible for homeland security grew and absorbed more and more government functions, the need for money to bribe government employees grew, meaning the drug trade had to grow. The whole thing is a ravenous beast, that feeds upon drugs and money, and gets larger and more ravenous the more it is fed.”

I took a deep breath. “My god, I never put it all together.”

A faint rumble of thunder came from the west, although the sky was clear.

“Be careful of the g-word,” Apollo said, and then laughed. “You never know who might be listening.”

“What? Is Zeus really—”

“No,” Apollo said. “I’m sure he’s not listening. There’s been a thunderstorm brewing over Olympus for the past several days.”

Several days? Since I arrived? I put this aside to think about later, and then sat back in my chair, unaware until then that I’d been sitting on the edge.

“The weakest link in the chain is the drug trade,” I said. “If not the weakest at least the most essential—the money is critical.”

I thought for a minute, and then added, “The drug trade is also the biggest and most ubiquitous component. There’s no way one person even a titan, could stop it. The United States has been waging a war on drugs for decades but it has never succeeded. In fact it’s gotten worse.”

“These lobbyists?”

“What they are doing is technically legal. Only if I could show that the money they used was coming from illegal sources could I take them on.”

“The government employees who are being bribed?”

“There are thousands of them. Many are low-level employees. Not a good cost-benefit ratio.”

“That leaves the churches,” Apollo said.

“Too well protected, and to powerful. Besides if they are attacked, they scream martyrdom, which attracts even more to their ranks.”

“Sounds to me like you’re saying there is no answer—that there is no point of attack.” I sensed some disappointment, even derision in Apollo’s words.

“No, I’m suggesting that we need to attack on all fronts.”

Apollo remained silent for a moment. “Sun Tzu would not approve,” he said. “Didn’t he warn repeatedly against dividing your forces, and against attacking a larger force?”

“I was thinking more of Sun Tzu’s challenge to attack him where he is unprepared . . . since I believe they are not prepared for any sort of attack,” I said. “Also, force him to reveal himself so as to find his vulnerable spots. Then, perhaps we will know where to focus our forces.”

Apollo nodded. “That makes sense.” Then he grinned. “We? I’ll take that as an invitation.”

“We’ll need more than me and thee,” I said. “Besides entering and leaving their trees, and translocating, what can the dryads do? What are their vulnerabilities? What other gods might we recruit to our enterprise? What servants and capabilities do they have? Oh, and shouldn’t we—I in this case, I think—let Zeus know what we’re planning?”

Apollo nodded. “You have the right of it. I will sound out others while you explain to Zeus. Once he is aware, you should invite others to visit. Oh, and your boys? They can communicate with one another and with the gods over great distances. I suspect we will find that to be global distances as well as the distances between realities. And, as long as their tree is intact and safe, they are invulnerable to any weapon save fire, no matter where they are.”

* * * * *

Apple assured me that he was more than fifty years old, and that, as he put it, he wasn’t completely inexperienced, so I enjoyed a shower with him, paying particular attention to his plump bottom and to his reaction while I was doing so. It was pretty clear how he would want to enjoy sex that evening.

I was right. We lay side-by-side, kissing and touching. He pushed my shoulder so that I lay on my back. He quickly sat on my thighs just below my penis. When he had stroked it to full erection, he raised himself, and sat easily on it. I felt his joy, and watched his eyes widen.

After I came inside him, I felt his orgasm building, and I felt his indecision: to come with me pressing against his prostate, or to come in my mouth? The latter won, and he threw himself forward so that I could take his penis between my lips. I thought for a moment I would drown in his sweetness.

“Apple? Do the dryads have sex among themselves?” I asked after we had caught our breath. “You were so . . . full it was as if you’d not done that in a long time.”

“Oh, yes, Lucas. We have been busy these past few days because of the need to prune the olives, but there are many days when we work half-a-day, or not at all. Then, we visit the lake, or one of the groves, for play and games and sex.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” I said. “You all have worked so very hard with the olives, and to help me. Thank you.” I kissed him. “You may share that kiss from me with all the others, if you will, and if they will.”