“Fuck,” the word comes spinning out of my throat, barely more than a whisper.

It was calm at first. The single word spoken from Elysium’s lips, a solace. But all solace is temporary. Nothing wires my mind properly to comprehend such sounds. The inner thoughts that the creature before me was no goddess quickly flashed out of existence. She was infinitely greater than myself.

Then the unhinged thoughts came.

The same syllables repeated over and over again. Like a broken record that couldn’t stop. Screaming to be heard. Screaming to be the only thing that could be heard. I struggled to think, to calm myself, to pull myself from that single train of thought. But I could not. A burning single-word song stuck on repeat.

It told me to praise the goddess. To devote everything I had to it. To sacrifice my soul and obey it’s whims. The thoughts circling in my mind were not my own.

For a moment, I let them sit. It would be easy to let the Name overtake me. To close my eyes and allow myself to fall into eternal bliss, repeating an overwhelming thought forever. It would be easy.

But it would be wrong.

I gathered a small piece of my consciousness. A single point of freedom, thinking a thought trying to steady myself. To anchor myself against a torrent of distracting thoughts. I had to declare a dialectic. Me and others were not the same. Elysium may be overwhelmingly alluring, but it was not me.

It was an unsteady connection. It flickered and I briefly felt myself lose to the void before finding the handhold once more. I created a mental construct. And the construct was there. A single iron-forged man leaning against the ground. All around him, waves of pressure from the Name threatened to crush him. From above and below. Atlas holding up the world.

With that connection, I pushed. Slowly at first, grasping at an inch of mental space. A single point became a line of mental space. Then a circle. Then a small sphere. More space meant there was more capacity to strengthen and enlarge the mental Atlas. In all directions, the mental man pushed.

Sometimes, the Name fought back. Cut appeared across Atlas’s arms and legs. I closed them off with a bleed of molten iron. Atlas lost a few fingers. But, I molded new ones and covered them in heavy gauntlets. Skin thickened and plates of armor grew. Atlas would win.

Eventually, I won. The name slowly but surely fled at Atlas’s touch. I established myself once again, naming Atlas as myself. It would change the nature of my being, but it would allow me to be closer to the old self. Elysium did not fade from my mind. Even as I cleaned, it took wedges and slivers away. It’s name still pulsed in the back of my mind, clawing for freedom. If I looked, I could find it. Crush it too. But there would still always be more.

I woke up.

I barely noticed myself collapsing to begin with. My face was pressed against the top of my desk, sitting in a pool of blood. I knew my eyes had been bleeding. It made sense too. A series of understandings sprung up in my mind. I knew certain facts and realities of the world that shouldn’t otherwise make sense.

Somewhere, I knew I was a little less human than before.

“Are you okay?” Elysium asked with a note of concern.

The goddess’s concern was striking. She had shown little emotion aside from quiet mirth before. To concern a goddess who was possibly infinite in age? Who had undergone civilization’s experiences with whatever degree of clairvoyance? That seemed wrong.

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“Suhhuhmayzer…” came from a scratchy throat.

Apparently I had also been screaming.

The words also made no sense.

“That was not supposed to happen,” Elysium mused with a wince.

Now that the goddess was fully present, it was strange to see her so active. Emotions flickered across her face.

“Okay, don’t talk. You were supposed to become overwhelmed, people usually are when they hear Chthonic, but apparently you saved yourself without my intervention. Mortals shouldn’t be able to perceive the Divine. So yes, you’re a few degrees scrambled but…”

She cuts herself off, pacing more. A snap of her fingers clears the blood off my face, but does little to cure the ice pick of pressure behind my eyes, nor the frustration of my tangled speech.

“No, it’s more than just scrambled. You’ve sacrificed something to push me away. You’re mortal and unless you’ve made a bargain with a higher power… No, I’m the only thing with access to you right now.”

She holds a fist tight, anger in her eyes.

“God damn it, Atlas—oh.”

She looks confused.

“Emesel?” I mumble,

“Your name isn’t supposed to be Atlas. Or the closest translation… or anything vaguely Atlas. No, I’ve never spoken those words referencing you before. I physically remember a different phrase of lips to refer to you. You’re not Atlas. Yet I know you are.”

“Tha-” I stumble, before swallowing. My ability to speak was quickly returning, “W-what mean you my do name isn’t Atlas? It’s always been. Everyone has called me that…”

“No, you’re not Atlas. You’re an American— what kind of Chinese American mother names their child Atlas? The percentages and likelihood, everything, are far too low. What’s your last name? Can you remember it?”

“Last… Name? I don’t have a surname—”

“Why then, do you not have a surname? Your father has a family name, and so does seven generations in every direction upward you can point. You can’t be Atlas unless you’ve somehow fundamentally redefined yourself to become Atlas. To a degree that I cannot replicate or out-perceive… and from this stimulus? That’s impossible, unless…”

“What…?”

“No way.”

She looks horrified. I give her a quizzical look.

A quick string of logic notes my lack of anger at this turn of events.

“Laplacian Possibility Theory. It’s what Sariel called it at least, before… Anyway, that might have been what happened here. That means…”

“Can you explain?”

She whirls back towards me, her train of thought momentarily broken.

“I don’t want to talk about—Oh, the theory, not Sariel. It’s not that complicated. The idea is that anything is possible. Predestination exists, but with no observable method of calculating it, free will is effectively true in our closed system. Effectively, anything can be done should a perfect set of actions be done to provoke it, however unlikely that result may be and how seemingly disconnected they are from any other result. Somehow, the perfect set of actions of hearing my Name, your mental resistance, and everything, down to the lowest point, caused the perfect turn of events to create… you.”

“Me being named Atlas. Because I was always named Atlas.”

“No, you once were not Atlas, and now are. Only I partially recognized it because I am not entirely within the closed system.”

“That seems dumb.”

“It’s absolutely horrifying and certainly impossible.”

“So what changes now?”

“Most likely, nothing other than a Name. Most people won’t be able to perceive the difference. Too many coincidences would have been required for this dramatic of a shift. And for one so cleanly sliced as well. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Huh.”

“I need to consult someone. I might be gone for a bit. Try not to cause too much trouble in the meantime,” Elysium says, hurrying towards the door, “Clean up the blood and don’t share this with anyone. Well, nobody is going to notice the difference, so sharing it won’t do anything. Probably.”

“Errr, okay,” I mumble as Elysium is halfway out the door.

“Oh and congrats, you are now technically a god.”