Saviors 101

Prologue the Third

Prologue the Third

still yet 21 years (and 9 months) until Armageddon

“A politician?”

Common sense had kicked in. Michelle finally figured out he was joking. Nervous laughter followed her own around the CABER table.

“Thanks, Loki. That makes all our previous selections look intelligent. I feel much better now. Why that rates as—”

“Minutes. You have to read the minutes first.”

Henrietta popped into the room and fluttered down to stand on the table. She nodded as a small computer terminal materialized before her.

Not a single cubit tall, the little angel stood in her flowing white robe with her tiny wings perched high on her shoulders. Her curly dark hair was snarled a bit with her golden halo.

She tapped a few keys and began reading from the screen.

“Last August the meeting lasted a record for this millennia, okay I know it’s only a decade or two so far, but I like the sound of it. A record of seventeen minutes before descending into such total chaos that this secretary was the only one left in the room. Before that occurred, I recorded eleven veiled passes at Isis by Dionysus and fourteen rebuffs by same to same.”

The angel scanned the room quickly before resting her tiny fists on her hips. “Now, where is she off to? I saw her come in.”

Isis had managed to slip beneath the table when Loki wasn’t watching and now reemerged at the far end next to Confucius who wisely had spoken not at all since his arrival, making him almost invisible. However, due to the nature of the table, she still was only two seats from Loki, but apparently an improvement she considered worth the effort.

Loki missed the shift and glowered with all the rage of his sick heart upon Henrietta. He hated being upstaged. Michelle decided to let her ramble for a bit.

“There she is. Now. If you could just repeat what I missed, I’ll note it down. Why someone didn’t tell me there was a meeting today I’ll never understand.” She fussed with the computer’s keyboard. “Nope. It’s not on the calendar. Nor on my personal agenda.”

She performed a quick search and then rose to her feet and stalked across the table until she stood nearly eye-to-eye with Michelle.

“You didn’t cc: me on the notice. And why not?” She stamped her tiny foot hard enough on the table to bounce her lightly upward. “Why not?”

Well, perhaps that was enough rambling. Michelle swung her hand down hard on the small computer terminal, smashing it flat on the table. Or so she thought.

Henrietta smiled up at her, “You keep doing that. So I now use a virtual terminal.”

Sure enough the tiny typing table, the old-style beehive terminal with built-in keyboard and punch tape reader bolted to the side, now extended out of the back of her hand.

“It’s holographically generated, but senses my keystrokes. You can squash it as often as you want, if that is what cheers you up. I know it certainly seems to. You’ve been doing it for millennia. Why do you remember the first time that I…”

Michelle slid her fingers clear of the ticklish apparition and raised the hand, palm down, above Henrietta’s head.

“…was asked to take the minutes when you were teasing that nun, Sister Mary Pat, abou…” The little angel looked up uncertainly as she pulled her robe back onto the narrow shoulder it had slipped off. Even the smallest standard-issue angel robe was a bit big for her. She then turned to inspect Michelle’s face carefully.

With a long-suffering sigh, she turned off the terminal hologram and it faded away. She plumped down onto her bottom with her legs out before her.

“Well, at least one of you could pour me a cup of tea.”

Mary reached out to the tea service that was as tall as Henrietta.

“One lump or two?”

“Three please, it’s been a hard day already.”

Mary made a comforting noise, but didn’t ask for details. They’d all learned better long ago.

She poured the tea into a delicate porcelain cup which barely fit three sugar cubes even without the tea. It was lightly decorated with butterflies which usually made the angel smile since they insisted on flying around beneath the glaze whenever the tea was too hot for them.

Henrietta ignored them, grasped the cup on either side, and tilted it slightly for a steaming, sugary blast.

She set it down with a thump. When Michelle was sure she was done, she turned back to address her friends.

“Please tell me that there is a better idea than sending a polit—”

A large hiccup emanated from the sugared-up angel. It caused her wings to twitch convulsively and she floated up then settled back to the table, swaying like a lost feather.

“Excuse me.”

She covered her mouth and blushed bright pink as another hiccup launched her upward once again.

Most of the Gods wouldn’t meet her eyes. Except of course Loki and his I-may-be-handsome-but-you-know-I’m-right look.

The Buddha carefully looked calm and serene, acting as if he hadn’t even heard Loki’s suggestion to send a politician. The whole “What? Sorry, I have a bit of a hearing loss from too many years living outdoors as an ascetic” was getting a bit old. She’d pinned him down on it once. The Buddha had then informed her that, in truth, he was actually too busy contemplating the structure of the greater universe to really pay much attention to his immediate universe, the one within a dozen paces of his bodily manifestation. But that he didn’t like humbling the mere immortals around him, so he kept that all to himself.

She hadn’t dared push him since, just in case that’s what he was really doing. It did make her feel not only humble, but a bit frivolous. Which may have been his whole purpose. Still, she didn’t want to take the risk of asking again.

Dionysus prodded the leather wine flagon with a longing finger and mumbled to himself.

“Let’s send Diana, the Goddess of the Hunt. She’s hot. That whole sweet and demure act is so charming. She’ll get so much mileage out of that. They might put her on the cover of Playboy, but they’d never tack her up on a cross.”

“Actually, Dio,” Mary sipped lightly at her tea and worked to speak between Henrietta’s hiccups. “Playboy covers are not all…that distant spiritually from the Roman…cross. And she doesn’t have massive enough…breasts for them.”

He nodded, gave a thimbleful of wine to the angel that seemed to cure the hiccups. Michelle winced at the image of a sugared up and drunken Henrietta.

“True,” Dionysus continued, wisely refusing to refill Henrietta’s thimble. “True. But, damn, she’d sure be cute there. They could do the leaves-of-the-forest dress just like the Roman’s did to her when they created her to tone down Artemis’ power. I can see Diana lying back against a barely tamed stallion wearing just—”

“Dio?” Mary Magdalene had to snap her fingers several times to get his attention.

“He’d need a chestnut hide, a nice contrast to her skin tone…”

“Remember how you asked me to tell you when to shut up?”

He spun his empty glass a few times, twirling the stem between deft and clever fingers.

“Yeah, sort of.”

“This is one of those times.”

“Oh, okay.”

Michelle stared out the window at the lunar rover for a few moments. Perhaps if she parked it in Times Square a particularly observant out-of-towner might notice. No, it would just get carjacked. Besides, it didn’t look any stranger than the Hummers that everyone needed in order to drive from Wall Street to their place in the Hamptons, or worse yet Poughkeepsie.

She could feel Loki’s eyes upon her. The Norse Demi-God of fire was still burning up at having his place on center stage taken, especially by the diminutive angel and her hiccups. This placed Michelle in a far kinder mood than she would normally have been to the officious little chatterbox.

“Who in their right mind would send a politician in this day and age?”

“Why would you send anything else?” The Norse Demi-God snapped back.

Michelle thought about it. Poked at it. Considered it. Discarded it.

But it kept coming back. It really, really, really sucked when Loki was right.