Gargantuan though it appeared, the task system did have an end. Even with the substantial cheats at my disposal, it took a few minutes to get there. Fortunately, the only relevant direction was up.
I dropped Gia onto a large circular platform and landed beside her in a blur of disintegrating feathers, re-establishing myself as a creature with opposable thumbs while I waited for Mayari to catch up. The landing pad seemed in passable repair, if a little cracked in places, which made me wonder who could possibly have been using it. Bold lines zigzagged across its surface, interspersed with runes and strings of binary. Odin’s handiwork, based on the similar work I’d found in his centre of operations. It didn’t make much sense to me and was probably dangerous. I landed outside the bounds of the inscriptions just in case.
Thousands of densely-packed tubes criss-crossed the cavernous reach mere metres above us, impeding any further progress. Their transparent walls revealed only more layers of glass cylinders, and I couldn’t make out what lay beyond. Nor could I see where they came from. If Yggdrasil lay on the other side, I couldn’t feel it or any other end, as far as I could reach in any direction.
I could see where they ended up, at least. Towards one end of the platform, dramatically out of place against the flickering lights and flashing motion of tickets, sat a long wooden temple in Viking architecture. Silver runes faded in and out on its walls, changing with each iteration in a mutable structure I’d never seen before. I couldn’t see any recognisable pattern to it, but it was undoubtedly a spell of immense complexity. Odin must have had a whole team working on it – or perhaps had enlisted Vishnu’s assistance to create it alone.
The ceiling tubes poured cable-like into the roof’s central beam. A single, much larger version emerged near the top under the eaves and carried out over the platform until it suddenly discovered gravity and dropped through the centre of the doughnut. Tickets surged through it, and from here I could see they were silver boxes. Every so often an especially bright one would shoot past too fast to get a good look.
Closer to the system hub, the invisible current was more noticeable. To my physical aspect, it felt like slightly higher gravity slowing my movements and settling in lethargy. More than that, I could feel myself being slightly pushed away from the temple, discouraged from entering. When I circled round it, the feeling moved with me, its direction changing in relation to where I was to the source.
No two guesses where we were headed next. I walked over to the door of the temple, avoiding the cracks, and studied the few simple runes on its surface. If not for Gia’s aspect magic, I would have struggled to find the right ones; the part of me still aware of its underlying shape only sensed clusters of dense, complex data barring the way. Firewalls, barriers, whatever you wanted to call them. As it was, all it took was a few new glyphs of destruction for the door to crumble to ash.
Through the resulting gap, I felt something both foreign and familiar. Not quite a dimensional barrier, but close. It took a few seconds to place the association before realising it reminded me of the Bifrost.
We were close.
“Was this always here?” Gia asked, lowering the ring she’d used to carve the runes on my instruction. She stared wide-eyed at the pile of ashes, followed by her own fingers. “I don’t think I adapted this.”
I didn’t answer. The Aesir had always claimed to have invented the Bifrost, but it was yet another lie distributed to the masses. They’d been universally horrible at building things, in fact, fobbing the duties off onto those they deemed beneath them. Most of the artifacts attributed to them had been made by the dvergr, who’d received extinction at the hands of Providence as bitter thanks for their millennia of toil.
The Bifrost predated them both. It was jötnar magic, created before the Aesir and dvergr even existed. Without it, the realms would never have been connected. But the secret of building it had been lost long ago, to be replaced with methods more modern – and, if we were being honest, less destructive. Or so I’d thought.
Now, maybe there was a new one. Did Providence even know where Helpdesk was tapping its power from? Or had the cyclops kept that from his colleagues too?
“So this is the administration hub,” Mayari spoke up moments after fading back into existence. “It’s more… denominational than I’d have guessed.”
I snorted. “Should have seen Odin’s office. I can’t figure out if it’s genuine nostalgia or a play to reputation, and I don’t think it matters. Find anything to worry about?”
“No. This doesn’t show up on the readings at all.”
“So far so good.”
“Full disclosure, I think there’s a black hole in there,” Mayari said. “Although they must have done something to it.”
Gia choked next to me, bending over. “A what?”
“Nothing to worry about. They’re rather cute, actually, provided they’re kept under control. If we weren’t in an application I’d give you a demonstration.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Gia said.
“Most immortals are resistant to upset stomachs,” I told her. “I’m not saying you should be curious about ingesting bicycle tyres, but if you were, now would be your chance.”
The analyst frowned at me. “I hate that that’s somehow helping.”
“Of course it is,” Mayari agreed, and proceeded to leave footprints in the pile of ash the door had left behind. “But let’s hurry.”
Aside from a gnarled wooden altar taking up the wall opposite the entrance, the inside of the building was markedly more modern. Timber vied for architectural dominance through occasional gaps in the walls, floor and ceiling, which were largely canvassed in bright white screens, with only a long, wooden walkway down the centre preventing them from being stepped on. Since everything Odin had ever worked on tended to resemble the kind of metal repressed parents scolded their children over crossed with the type that came out of the ground with pickaxes, I guessed it had more to do with Gia’s influence. More transient runes glittered in and out of visibility over the wooden surfaces; not just markings, but mutable inscriptions.
Only the rear wall remained dark. Shadow radiated out from the altar – itself easily visible – as if cast by an inverse floodlight. Compared to the blazing screens it was comically downplayed, and yet my senses told me it was the source of the invisible current. I felt slightly off-balanced, like gravity was pushing me away and fastening me to the floor simultaneously.
But first, we had to run the information gauntlet. Highlighted panels hovered above the edges of the walkway with readings that pulled at my mind when we drew close, making their purpose clear. Here, charts and feeds on task statuses, with metrics on numbers, priorities and completion rates. There, a leaderboard for staff productivity, with names above and below a KPI quota. Parallel to the latter, a second leaderboard revealed an overview of the only metric anyone on Helpdesk cared about – the cut-off required to keep their powers. Very few names lay above that line.
“Grim,” said Mayari, following my gaze. She stepped over to the panel, and hovered her fingers above them, adjusting a few switches. As she focused on it, the visualisation expanded to fill two-thirds of one large panel, squeezing the other charts to one side. Miniature reflections of the charts moved on the surface of her eyes.
Whatever. It wasn’t news. Themis would have called it ‘incentivising the workforce’. Funny how, as Mayari called up the charts year-on-year backwards through time, those incentives seemed to be having the opposite effect. Each year, more names slipped below the line.
I found myself nearly dragged back to my apartment as Gia, already falling behind, took a couple of steps further back to squint at another set of charts. The demon lord gazed out at the sea of information, drinking it in despite the further damage it might do. In the brief ensuing silence, she turned back to check on us with a somewhat unconvincing bravado. “I realise I’m biased here,” she said, “but I have to say it.”
She proceeded to not, in fact, say it.
“Go on,” prompted Mayari, after a moment.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Maybe it’s a good thing you all lost your powers.”
I snorted, and turned back to my progress along the walkway as the analyst caught up again. The expanded chart collapsed and slid back into its regular dimensions behind us. “Don’t waste your breath.”
The conversation continued without me. “I’m not talking claptrap about commissions or productivity. That can go to hell. I’m talking about empathy. Understanding what it means to face difficulty. What if that’s the ulterior motive here? Between you and Xiānfēng, I’ve spent all day listening to explanations about how gods are so much better than mortals, and none of you seem to get how that could be a problem?”
“Better practically, not ethically,” Mayari intervened. “If immortality cured people of their social failings, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“But you say that because you’ve walked in our shoes. What if you hadn’t? Would you still have cared enough to do something?”
“You’ve been listening to stories. I could tell you different ones, but in the end, it comes back to who you believe. Look at the world around you and ask yourself how you would improve it, and who will make it happen. I’ll tell you now, it won’t be Providence. And yes, I would have helped. Loki, well.” She paused. “I won’t speak for others.”
I stopped, not to join the conversation, but because another panel had caught my eye. We’d moved on from analytics to control settings, and I found myself staring down the workflow for closed tasks. Proportionately, not many were getting through to management. Completed or otherwise, only a fraction were being sent up to Yahweh, the rest redirected to the archives.
I motioned Gia over, directing to her prod further where I could not. The wall changed to visualise it in front of her, floor to ceiling.
It was a filter, and it had nothing to do with completing tasks.
Mayari drew in a sharp breath. “This is against company policy. How long have they been keeping this from us?”
‘They’ being at minimum Odin and Djehuti – there was no chance the Head of IT would have been able to claim ignorance.
It was right there on the screen, beamed into our minds to make sure we couldn’t miss it. Completed tasks were being screened for satisfaction before being sent up to the tyrant. The bastard never even saw the others. All that PR about forgiveness, aid and salvation, and he never saw an iota of the hardship he claimed to be healing. Colour me less than surprised.
There was no external audit on prayers and miracles. No governance Providence was subjected to beyond wafer-thin lip service. It could do what it wanted.
As such, the executive had been giving Yahweh exactly what he wanted to hear, and covering up the rest. Or perhaps just some of them. It could have been careful, long-term manipulation by Odin to mould his senior into a useful state of mind. But it was more likely the chief executive knew about it, and didn’t care. After all, the rules didn’t apply to him.
I searched the readouts ahead before stepping away, finding what I was looking for not far from the walkway’s terminus. “No, this is good news,” I stressed, moving onwards, though part of me seethed inwardly. “Exposure to fewer tasks means Yahweh is even less prepared for us than we thought.”
Mayari squared her shoulders. “Then some good will at least come out of it.”
I stopped in front of the next panel. “This is the one,” I announced, skim-reading a few settings. I took the opportunity to crack my knuckles for dramatic effect. “I wonder, would Djehuti like his admin privileges revoked now, or with the main course?”
“Let’s not give him time to notice, shall we? As long as we remember to make it back here with enough time to set it up.”
“Noticing is about all he’ll be doing,” I responded, grinning viciously, “No one’s getting into this thing to fix it save us three.”
“This is easily the least ethical thing I’ve done in my career,” Gia lamented, folding her arms. “Does this make me a terrorist? Please tell me it doesn’t make me a terrorist. Oh god, it does, doesn’t it? What would my mamma think? This is payback for all the trolley problem memes I uploaded to social media, isn’t it?”
Mayari perked up. “You weren’t responsible for the one where everyone dies in a connected loop, were you? That was my favourite.”
“Hah.” Gia gave a nervous laugh. “Mine were flowcharts. Each node was a separate trolley problem, with the connections themselves represented by train tracks and switches. Trolleyception.”
“I think I saw that one. Didn’t it win some kind of design award?”
“The media will call it my ‘chilling manifesto full of warning signs’, I just know it.”
“The media will have much bigger problems to worry about once we’re through.” She craned her neck towards the ceiling, studying the details wrapping around between cracks of timber. “Although for all these settings, I still can’t see where to turn this thing off. Is there something we’re missing? Another layer of protection? Maybe they didn’t build in a kill switch?”
“Oh, there’ll be one,” I insisted. “But I’ll admit Odin’s been sneaky. Just our luck, it’ll be buried under the five hundred metaphorical pages of boring disclaimers in some distant subfolder, labelled with something incredibly off-putting like shoes with individual toes.”
“Ugh,” Gia said, presumably referencing the toes and not the overall situation.
“Hmm.” The lunar goddess made a show of turning away and examining other glowing screens, but her voice continued speaking inside my head. Last ditch option, I can try destroying this place from the inside. But I imagine we’d lose our Envy in the process. It leaves a bad taste. I’m also not sure how it would react with the black hole at the centre. I’m not sure I can control it through what’s been done to it. We could lose more than the task system.
The altar still stood in serene indifference at the end of the long hall. My senses were clear it was the source of the pseudo-Bifrost, but my eyes were telling me it was empty. About that ‘black hole’, I replied, emphasising the quote marks. I’m not sure it’s –
“Maybe I can help?” Gia cut in over the top, oblivious to the discussion of her fate. “If I changed all this once, I should be able to do it again.”
Mayari gave her a dubious stare. “We’re beyond the point of practicing. And with the exposure sickness affecting you, I don’t think we can afford for something to go wrong. I’m sorry to say I’ve seen this before. My brother caught it, too. He thought he could find solutions in raw knowledge, too proud to think he needed a filter. Trust me when I say we got lucky the first time.”
Gia frowned. “I thought gods were immune.”
“Only in the same way water is safe until you find yourself drowning in it. Let’s leave it, then, and find Yggdrasil. I’ll message Tezcatlipoca about it, too. We’ll have more time to think. And once you’re better, you may be in a better position to act.”
For the second time in several minutes, she faded out.
I motioned Gia towards the altar, hoping for a better look. Against the darkness, the walkway warped and twisted under our feet until the wood formed shapes as gnarled as the altar. The walls and ceiling fell away into the distance, as if we were shrinking, but our size and distance relative to the altar stayed unchanged. The digital aspect of myself likewise felt like it stretched and diminished the closer we came, leaving more and more of my physical form behind on its own, as though the world, or what passed for it, was being leached slowly out of existence.
The ever-present current intensified, but gently, making forward progress harder but not impossible.
Visibly nervous now, the demon lord dragged her feet. “What if they’re wrong?” she asked, her tone making it clear the question was directed more to herself than me. “What if it isn’t Yggdrasil out there, but death?”
“Death is far less elaborate,” I remarked. “Get me closer.”
“We should wait for Mayari.”
“I’m here,” said the goddess, in a timely reappearance worthy of police in movies the second after the plot had been resolved. “I’ve asked the question. We’ll see what the answer is.”
The walkway ended at the altar’s foot, blending into it seamlessly as if the two segments were part of a single, unbroken whole. Contrary to what my eyes revealed, what little remained of my digital self felt like it moved through a thick sludge of data, densely packed far beyond the rest of the task system.
If there were clues to be found nearby, I couldn’t see them. No big red button, no control panel, candles or other accoutrements to give me a hint of how to activate the gateway, if that was indeed what it was. Based on the rest of Gia’s aspectification, the shape it had taken was likely a clue. I hoped Odin hadn’t set it up to require blood sacrifice.
Beyond it, the walls were so distant they blended almost entirely into the shadow. I could still make them out in the far distance with my enhanced sight, but barely.
“So what now?” Gia was saying. “Are we meant to smash it? Offer something? And to who?”
“I’m not sure,” admitted Mayari, fidgeting at the toolbelt around her waist. “I can tell you the black hole is inside it, somehow. Smashing it before we know what’s been done to it is inadvisable.”
“What if it’s the way forward?”
The goddess shrugged, and vaulted lightly over the obstacle. She stood on the other side for a grand total of two seconds before her face told me she’d found something. A third second, and she crouched down below my line of sight.
“You have to see this,” her voice declared. The quality of the sound was noticeably different than it had been three seconds earlier, reverberating back in echoes.
Gia glanced at me, and when I didn’t disagree, scrambled over the wooden block.
I made to step through it after her, but, much to my surprise, found myself blocked in no uncertain terms by a wall a few centimetres in. A physical one.
“Well, well,” I muttered, putting an abrupt end to the explosion of sudden knee pain. “That’s different.”
More carefully, I reached into the structure and felt, well, gnarled wood. Not in the shape of an altar, though, but long and curved. My hand slid off it prematurely, and hit another, slightly smaller one. Then more again. I’d felt this texture before, many times. Most people had.
They were tree roots.
Using my unexpected new handholds, I clambered over them and dropped down on the other side where Gia had joined Mayari in a squat. The last of my digital presence drained away as I did, leaving me entirely my usual self again. Neither woman paid my antics any heed whatsoever, their attention enraptured and far away. I turned to see what had prompted the reaction.
I didn’t discover a black hole, or even a new Bifrost. Rather, the back of the altar was as hollow as empty promises. Its wooden frame wreathed the edges, still recognisably oblong, but bent inwards and rapidly began to unravel. Erratic and irregular, the roots nevertheless formed the rough shape of a tunnel doubling back along the same length of the temple we’d just traversed, bending space, dimension and reality alike.
“Skadi’s skiboots,” I heard my own voice exclaiming as I processed the revelation. It really was a tree, just like Odin had claimed.
He had been telling the truth.