God Complex, Part: One

The air was crisp a clean, a perfect spring day, a mixture of heat a cool so sublime that it tickled the senses and made you want to inhale the air through your nose with every breath.  I say was, perhaps IS, maybe never...  My mother, sister, and I stood in an open field surrounded by a bustling medieval marketplace, but its all a facade, just over the hill sat a parking lot filled with suvs and hybrids and clunkers alike.  We stood at the cusp of time, between what once was and what would be. 

Allison fiddled with her garb, trying to get the complex series of chords and eyelets to hold and hold comfortably, my mother simply took it all in, and me?  I was ready to browse.  I took off on my own then, looking for a vendors tent by the name of "A simple Peddler" where the online merchants list promised a variety of medieval and renaissance goods ranging from swords and weaponry, to leather mugs and straps. 

I came upon a hill and asked one of the friendly, always in character staff if anything was going on behind it, if there was more to see and do.  He told me no, but I ventured forward anyway.  Above the hill stood a pavilion peopled by the staff of the Virginia renaissance faire, discussing the ins and outs of the days events.  I didn't stay long, still eager to find the prizes I sought.  

Further beyond stood the tent I awaited, lined with garb and jewelry and various nick-nacks of the lives of those in the yester-years.  I spoke with the woman running the tent as she arranged various items of clothing on a circular wrack. 

"What size are you?" She inquired, but enthralled as I was I hardly heard her.

"Huh?"

"What shoe size hunny, we carry a variety of boots and footwear."  Was her curt response to my confusion.

"Oh, size eight..." 

She then quickly shuffled through the wrack, pointing out which boots she had in my size, and which she did not.  It was all very commonplace, nothing out of the ordinary for that day, for ren faire day.  Our conversation went on like that, her showing me her wares and me, beginning to ponder if I had withdrew enough money for that days festivities, until an odd man approached where we stood.  He had the look of a gypsy and the eye of a comical villain, dreams are so literal sometimes.  I dropped the large chunk of segmented amethyst I was holding at the time and a portion of the puzzle fell behind the shelve it had been sitting on.  As me and the shop-keep struggled to move the shelf to get at the interlocking piece behind, a flash of white light overtook me and my surroundings were suddenly and incredibly changed. 

Before me and miles bellow me stood a rising acropolis, pillars of stone in rings where each circle rose higher than the last, and on top of all of them sat entire cities crafted of living rock.  I soared through the air, arching down and around this scene as rain filled the air around me and water poured from every crevasse of this impossible structure.  At its apex stood a pump-house, with an old but strong man furiously primed a hose in an attempt to spray clean the surface of the buildings around him.  He was bald on top with an almost anachronistically large beard hanging pendulous from his chin.

I "landed" near him, and without a word began to aid him in priming the pump as he set awash the stone structure with niagra falls levels of torrents of water.  Suddenly the pump locked in place, and as it did so the rain that fell before ceased.  The old man dropped the hose he held and leaned against a stone pillar, seemingly exhausted.

"Where am I, is the usual question..." The old man said to me then.

"I'm either dead or dreaming..."  Was my quick response.

He looked at me then, bushy grey eyebrows arched noticeably.

"Smart man, come with me." 

As we walked down a series of staircases and across rough cut stone walkways he explained to me my plight, which it seemed we shared.

"You've died prematurely..."  He said to me,without hesitation.  "and this is a problem for me, because great men are had to come by."

I merely listened...

"The thread of your fate was cut short, and thus those of all you WOULD have affected or altered altogether.  Without this, my design is all but ruined."

The word "design" had me intrigued, while I had always hoped for a grander scheme to things, lingering thoughts of chaos plagued me. 

"I have to take you before the Council of Gods, and argue for your continued existence, give them reason to believe you are integral to all our survival.  It won't be easy, more than half of them have fewer followers than I, and they would LOVE to see my schemes fail."

He spoke of such this with a conniving simplicity that it betrayed years of belief in me, he was just as much a man as any man, and less a god than a great manipulator, a politician working the pantheons of mans deities. 

He took me to a grand elevator, reminiscent of one standing the the lobby of an archaic office building or hotel, only the numbers on the lit panel shifted position and changed from numbers to letters to symbols I could not discern.  He quickly punched in several of the ever moving digits and a loud hollow ding issued forth from the smooth reflective doors.  The grinding of machinery could be heard from behind and the doors slid open, he then quickly pulled me in just before they slammed shut behind us.  The girl from eponena played out in monotone musak tunes from all around us as we were lowered through the bowels of creation.  All around our secure confine unknown sounds boomed and crashed and rumbled as a sense of displacement took hold of me, a feeling of being in several places at ones but no-where at all.  The unsettling sensation passed and the doors again slid open, and out I was pulled the doors again shutting far too fast behind us. 

The lobby we entered was different in every sense from the stone pillars and ancient edifices we had left behind, I found myself in what for all intensive purposes was any hotel lobby in America.  As we quickly walked a long I noticed a black sign with individual letters clicked into a perforated background, it read:

"Council of Gods!
In session: Today and always.
What was, what could be,
and what will be,
sometimes, ARE!"

Outside a large doubled doored entry way sat a folding table with several feathered hats placed upon it, each with varying numbers and colors of feathers.  The old man took a hat with several earth tone feathers of impressive size, and gave to me a leather strap with a single feather rising from its center.  He tied the head piece onto his brow and I did the same, never questioning the validity and reality of the situation I had found myself in.  As well as doing this, he pulled a laminated card out of his robes, that contained a rather large series of numbers prominently displayed on it and hung it from his neck.

We entered through the doorway into a large chamber lined with wooden bleaches, and in each chair sat a plush penguin, all of them wearing a feather headdress, all of them with a number card like the old mans hanging from there necks.  We sat at the far end of the chamber near several large racks containing an odd assortment of random things, from old action figures, to discolored lumps of stone, to seemingly organic carvings of things my mind couldn't place but recognized as the works of intelligent and creative designers. 

Everything seemed about par for the course according to what had already occurred, that was until one of the toy penguins began to speak...