Vell woke up in an apartment that still needed unpacking. They’d put together the bed and not much else last night.
“Mornin’, hero,” Skye mumbled.
“Mornin’, also hero,” Vell said back. “You want some coffee?”
“I want the sheets,” Skye said. She rolled over and bundled the blankets around herself. “Boat doesn’t set out for another two hours. I’m sleeping in.”
While Harlan Industries had no Marine Biology department (and no interesting in acquiring one), there was a local outpost for Protected Species Observation, in charge of monitoring populations of endangered sea creatures along the coast. It involved a little less genetic engineering than Skye would like, but protecting endangered species was still nice.
Vell gave Skye a kiss on the cheek, and she deigned to poke her head out of the comfort of the sheets long enough to return it. He set himself to a morning routine that was made slightly difficult by the fact that his toothpaste, clothes, and briefcase were all in different boxes. All uphill from today, though. He grabbed a quick breakfast on the way out and headed into the world with a briefcase in one hand and a box of his office supplies in the other, all entirely without incident.
In an equally undramatic progression of events, Vell had to take the bus. Buying a car was another thing on their “do later” list. He found a seat and waited as the bus headed to the next stop. Another batch of riders got on, and one took a seat next to Vell, riding next to him in silence for a while before recognition washed over her face.
“Hey, aren’t you that guy who did the science stuff on that island?”
Vell turned to his neighbor, pursed his lips, and examined her for a few seconds.
“Yes, I am,” Vell said. “But you already know that, don’t you Quenay?”
The middle-aged woman chuckled and turned forward.
“Should’ve figured.”
“Still got those eyes,” Vell said. Try as she might, Quenay had a tell. Even without her vibrant color scheme or her old black-and-white disguise, Quenay always had slightly mismatched colors in her irises.
“Y’know, most people never notice that kind of thing,” Quenay said. “You’re the weird one.”
No one around them seemed to acknowledge their conversation. Quenay was, perhaps, using her old trick to make sure no one else could heart their conversation, but Vell didn’t entirely count on it. He’d been burned by that before.
“Yes, I am,” Vell said. “So why are you here?”
“Because you lied to me, Vell,” Quenay said. “I asked if you had any more questions, and you said no. But you do.”
“Okay, maybe I do,” Vell said. He wouldn’t bother with the same lie twice. He just hadn’t wanted to drag out the spectacle at the time. “Two questions.”
“Let me have ‘em,” Quenay said.
“First question,” Vell said. “What happens to you now? People know about you, they might pray to you. Are you going to fade out like the other gods?”
“Hah! I’ve been at it for a few thousand years, Vell, going to take more than this to take me out,” Quenay laughed. “You people don’t even know my real name. Good luck trying to pray to something you don’t understand.”
Quenay chuckled at the very idea that she could be taken out that easily.
“But...there might be some changes,” Quenay said. “Might not be as strong as I once was. Probably going to get caught a little more often. But who cares, yeah? Chaos needs to change every once in a while, or it’s not chaos. Just a messy order. Change of pace will do me good.”
She crossed her legs and put on a confident smile.
“Satisfied?”
“Mostly,” Vell said. “So, second question.”
He clutched the box of supplies in his lap and stared out the window for a second.
“Why me?” Vell asked. “You had a whole world of people you could’ve chosen. There were hundreds of other people on that train alone. Why me, and not...anyone else?”
“Well, that’s complicated...You remember giving candy to a stranger before you got on the train?”
“Yeah, I- wait, was that you?”
“No, completely unrelated,” Quenay said. “But I did see you do it.”
A LONG TIME AGO
Quenay hovered in the air above the crowds milling through the train station. There were hundreds of them. Businessmen, tourists, families, people of all kinds. Quenay crossed her legs and glared at them all with frustration. That train was going to crash. They were all going to die.
Quenay hated death. Not capital-D Death, the reaper was quite nice. They got along very well. And she wasn’t just thinking about that because he was right next to her.
“You’re early,” Quenay said.
I enjoy talking with you, Death said. Especially when I feel you are about to do something interesting.
“Is interesting your polite way of saying stupid?”
If I thought you were going to do something stupid, I would say so, Death said. What would you do about it? Kill me?”
“Har har,” Quenay said. “You’re the death expert. How do you stop train crashes?”
By not building trains, Death said. You have seen what is to come. A freak accident, tragic and unavoidable. This universe was not built to create or sustain complex mechanisms: that they occur at all and work as well as they do is a testament to the willpower of mortal beings. But even they can only do so much. As can you.
Quenay scowled at the universe. She and Death were, technically, at constant war with one another. Chaos was the seedbed of life, the source of the entirely accidental reactions that had turned ancient chemicals into odd acids into the first proteins and eventually complex beings capable of reproducing, of making music, of building bullet trains. But that chain of happy accidents could only sustain itself for so long. Eventually, everything succumbed to that original order of entropy. Everything decayed, everything fell apart, and everything died. Quenay just wanted to delay it as long as possible and whenever possible
“This isn’t one of the ones I can win, is it?”
I am afraid not, Death said. I am sorry.
Quenay could only act within the rules of her divine station, and the problem with chaos was that chaos plus chaos usually just accelerated the chaos, and the endpoint of chaos was always the absolute order of Death. As much as she wanted to sustain life, her direct intervention often ended up making things worse.
Attempts to defy entropy rarely ends well, Death said. Only The Island has had any success, and I doubt you wish to recreate that.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“No thank you,” Quenay said. “I’m not quite as selfless as those two.”
She liked life, but she also enjoyed her own freedom too much to make that kind of eternity-long commitment. She drifted down to just above the heads of the train passengers, and watched them scurry about their blissfully ignorant lives, soon to be cut short.
You know, Death said. You cannot prevent this tragedy. But you can save at least one.
“How?”
You know how. Certain privileges are afforded to a Champion.
Quenay rolled over and stared up at Death.
“I don’t do that anymore,” she snapped. Even Gods could not hand out miracles on a whim. They had to be earned, won by a Champion in a divine Challenge. Gods of other domains had a little leeway in their Challenges, but for Quenay, who had lived millenia in secrecy, there was only one challenge: the challenge to discern her true nature. Quenay had been all to happy to run that trial, for a time. Her “games” had been fun at first, and a chance to give humanity the power to help themselves, but she had suffered too many devastating losses. Atlantis had been bad enough, but Tunguska had soured her on the concept altogether. She didn’t want to be the cause of any more destruction.
Perhaps you should be more discriminating in your choice of Champion.
“I’ve tried everything, D,” Quenay complained. “Smart, strong, rich, well-connected. They always come up short.”
Perhaps therein lies the problem, Death said. You go looking for greatness, in hopes it will match the challenge you lay out before them.
Death stopped to watch a pair of young lovers stroll by, blissfully ignorant of the fate that awaited them.
Humanity’s beauty lies not in what they are, but in what they can be, Death said. They envy the power of beings like you and I, unaware that we are defined by our stations, chained to the very same laws that grant us power. They have no inherent power, and yet no inherent limitations. They can be anything.
Death ceased his observations and turned his attention back to Quenay.
Which is all to say that perhaps you should stop expecting to find a Champion lying around, and start looking for the one who could be a Champion.
“Are you suggesting I take a shot in the dark and hope some rando turns out to be able to solve the universe’s biggest mystery?”
Not random. You can take an educated guess, if you like, Death said. But you cannot expect to teach a lesson in hope if you are unwilling to do some hoping yourself.
“Fine. I’ll think about it.,” Quenay grunted.
Think fast, Death said. On a related note, you must excuse me. I am about to be very busy.
Death tipped his scythe in Quenay’s direction and vanished. The reminder of his purpose set Quenay back to hers. It was only one life. But with the right choice, it could be worth a lot more. She darted among the dozens of passengers, the rich, the poor, the wise, the foolish, those alone and those among friends and family. Humans had disappointed her so many times before she wasn’t sure who could possibly the next champion.
She darted over a hundred people or more, until her drifting flight took her past a bench where a mother and child sat next to a stranger who was clearly anxious about taking the train. The little boy quietly asked his nervous-looking neighbor if she would like some candy, and happily shared it when she said yes.
Quenay smiled, and set her mismatched eyes on a young Vell Harlan.
“Alright. Maybe one more time.”
----------------------------------------
“That’s it? One nice thing?”
“Were you listening, Harlan?” Quenay said. “I didn’t pick you because you were great. I picked you because you had the ability to become great.”
She gave Vell a quick pat on the back, and an electric spark travelled between her fingertips and the rune inscribed on Vell’s spine.
“I’d bet on a lot of people for a lot of reasons, Vell,” Quenay said. “The smart, the strong, the rich, all sorts of people.”
Quenay looked at Vell Harlan, all grown up, and smiled the same smile she had so many years ago.
“You were the first time I bet on kindness,” Quenay said. “I gave you the chance to do good, and you took it. Only thing I did was give you a respawn and a fancy tramp stamp. That other world-saving nonsense was all you.”
The bus came to a halt. Quenay gave Vell a kiss on the cheek and stood up.
“This is my stop,” Quenay said. Vell narrowed his eyes and stared up at the departing Goddess.
“Am I ever going to see you again?”
“Ah, you said you only had two more questions,” Quenay said, wagging a scolding finger at Vell. She winked at Vell once and stepped off the bus, vanishing around a corner not long after she did so. Vell shrugged, and turned his eyes ahead. His stop was next.
Vell grabbed his things and stepped off the bus alongside a surprising number of other people. The parking lot of Harlan Industries was packed, and there was actually a line out the door, presumably people waiting (or just hoping) for appointments or job interviews. A few people tried to get Vell’s attention as he walked in, but he used his expertly practiced skedaddle to move right on by.
Freed from the attention of the crowd, Vell stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He walked through a crowded lobby, waved hi to the receptionist (it felt weird that he had a receptionist) and up the stars. He’d never been in this building before, but thanks to multiple calls with Lee and Harley, he knew the building by heart. He kept moving up, then found his hall, past the production floor and the break room, to the executive suite. Two office doors burst open at once as he made his approach.
“Vell!”
Lee and Harley grabbed him in a hug considerably complicated by his briefcase and box of supplies. Thankfully it was short.
“Thank god you’re here,” Lee said. “Freddy and the new hires are setting up the research lab and they could use a bit of organization. After you take a minute to get settled, could you-”
“I’ll get right on it,” Vell said.
“Oh, thank you,” Lee said. “I’ll help you get things started, and then-”
“Lee! Our granite supplier’s on the phone, they need to talk with you!”
“Oh damn it, I’ll be along in a moment,” Lee said. “One second!”
“We still have some boxes in your offices, we meant to get them unpacked but, well, you know,” Harley said. Harlan Industries was already on track to make thirty times the sales they’d projected for the year, and that number went up with every new desperate caller. “I got like seventy billion HR things to deal with because of the new expansions, but later lets do lunch, just the three of us, alright?”
“Sounds good. See you then,” Vell said. Lee and Harley gave him another quick hug and then sprinted off to tend to their respective goals. Vell wasn’t bothered by the high-strung schedule of his friends. The rush was overwhelming, but temporary. Things would settle eventually. They always did.
Vell sat down in his office, which still had quite a few boxes in it, and shoved them aside so he could sit at his desk. He took out his box, and set up a few things on his desk. Prickly the Cactus looked considerably less phallic after two years of growth. A picture of his parents, smiling back at him from their ranch back in Texas, served as a good reminder of home. The chaos rune Quenay had given him still floated, no matter where he tried to set it down, and spun slightly whenever he touched it, twisting to display flat stone or the glowing emblem of chaos.
For the final touch, Vell placed a multicolored ceramic elephant on his desk. It still didn’t make sense. It still didn’t have to.
With the decorations taken care of, Vell opened his briefcase and looked at all the research papers and reference documents he’d brought along, all the potential projects he could start. There were a thousand problems to solve, and a thousand ways to help people.
“Alright,” Vell said to himself. “Let’s get-”
“Vell!” Freddy screamed, as he slammed open the door. “Somebody tried to make something with the chaos rune and now the vending machine is evil!”
Freddy ducked as a ballistic pop-tart sailed overhead.
“Shit,” Vell said. “I’m on it!”
Vell raced out of his office and slammed the door behind him. On either side, the doors of Lee and Harley’s office slammed mere moments later.
“My bad,” Vell said. “I think I brought trouble with me.”
“We’re researching literal chaos magic, Harlan, it’s to be expected,” Harley said. She sidestepped a ballistic granola bar and turned to her friends. “Now one of you be in charge, we’re under snack attack.”
“Harley, focus on disabling the machine itself,” Lee said. “I’ll contain the damage. Vell, I trust you can handle the chaos rune’s unfortunate side effects?”
“Way ahead of you.”
He held up his own chaos rune, the first one carved, empowered by Quenay herself, and got to work right alongside Lee and Harley. Destruction was inevitable -but the three of them would just as inevitably be there to fix things.
THE END