Mercury Begins (Mercury Trilogy) Read online

  Mercury Begins

  A story by Robert Kroese

  The Apocalypse is generally thought of as relatively short-term event, occurring over the course of days or weeks, at the end of which the just are rewarded, the unjust are punished, and the universe displays the Cosmic Test Pattern for all of eternity.

  In fact, the Greek word apocálypsis, a synonym of revelation, means “uncovering,” and refers to the gradual unfolding of the Divine Plane on the temporal plane. Sure, things speed up a bit toward the end, but the process of apocálypsis happens over the course of thousands of years. So, contrary to popular belief, the Heavenly Apocalypse Bureau isn’t some sort of ad hoc task force thrown together to make sure the doors are all locked and the lights are switched off; it’s been around since the Beginning, to make sure events unfold according to plan – no easy feat when you consider the fickle nature of human beings, not to mention the incessant bungling of the idiots in Prophecy Division.[1]

  Consider the founding of Rome – an essential event in the unfolding of the Plan if there ever was one. Without Rome there would have been no Roman Empire, no Pontius Pilate, no Crucifixion, no persecution, no Constantine, no Charlemagne, no Holy Roman Empire, no Renaissance, no Reformation. Yet the city of Rome almost wasn’t – and never would have been, were it not for a nudge from the Apocalypse Bureau. Observe:

  Mercury awoke on a rocky plateau at the apex of an atoll somewhere in the Aegean Sea. His head felt like it had been stuffed with thistles and his mouth tasted like something had died in it. He stretched and sat up, wincing as the thistles caught fire. Next to him stood a seagull, cocking its head at him.

  “Keeyaah,” said the gull.

  “Geeyurgh,” said Mercury.

  “Keeyaah,” corrected the gull.

  “Keeyaah?” asked Mercury.

  “Keeyaah,” the gull confirmed.

  “Whatever it is, it feels like hell,” said Mercury. He hadn’t felt this lousy since the time he was beheaded by Etruscans over a misunderstanding involving a sacred ceremonial fountain and a bidet. “I think it was the beer,” he said to the seagull, whose silence he took as agreement.

  It was the first time Mercury had tried beer and, having been informed it was an acquired taste, he did his best to acquire it over the course of twenty-four bottles. He remembered thinking he was making real progress around number eighteen, but everything after that was a blur. How had he gotten from the party in Athens to an atoll off the coast of Asia Minor? Presumably he had flown, but he couldn’t be certain. Some small part of his brain not short-circuited by alcohol must have had the sense to remove his inebriated self from the presence of mortals whom he might otherwise have accidentally injured or killed. He remembered hearing once about an angel who had been severely reprimanded by the Heavenly authorities for accidentally dismembering two dozen Chaldeans in a wine-addled attempt at Three Card Monte. Drunk angels were all fun and games until somebody lost a couple of limbs.

  Mercury smacked his lips together, shielding his eyes from the rising sun. “Probably why they don’t let us drink,” observed Mercury to the seagull.

  “Keeyaah,” said the seagull.

  “Yeah, and the keeyaah,” said Mercury, holding his head. “The keeyaah is a bitch too.”

  Mercury had never been one for following rules, but he was starting to see the rationale for this one. He could have gotten in serious trouble if anybody from the Apocalypse Bureau had been around to see him indulging in the local spirits. Fortunately, he was fairly certain he was the only angel assigned to this area. At least, he didn’t remember Uzziel mentioning anyone else in his briefing for that “extremely important assignment.” What had ever happened with that, anyway?

  Mercury felt in his pockets, pulling out a wrinkled scrap of parchment. At the top was written, in his own handwriting:

  EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ASSIGNMENT

  Founding of ROME

  Critical historical event

  So far, so good. He remembered writing that stuff during Uzziel’s briefing. But as he worked his way down the page, Mercury’s limited attention span began to show itself in increased use of abbreviation, incomplete ideas and illegible smudges of ink:

  Determinism, Divine Plan, etc.

  Syncretism – East/West

  Nec. For Renn., Ref., et al.

  The note culminated with:

  Talk to Dave

  Help Greeks find back door

  Get Trojans to Italy

  Anus???

  At the very bottom was a crude drawing of a horse. Mercury thought what it lacked in verisimilitude it made up for in charming naiveté:

  “Well,” said Mercury to the seagull, “that isn’t helpful at all.”

  “Keeyaah,” said the seagull.

  Mercury shook his head. “Can’t blame this on the keeyaah, I’m afraid. I was dead sober when I wrote this.” He regarded the note dubiously. He was supposed to make sure Rome was founded, that much was clear. Or was he supposed to make sure Rome wasn’t founded? But why would the Apocalypse Bureau have a name for a city that was never supposed to exist? That didn’t make much sense. And it seemed like that Renn./Ref. stuff couldn’t happen if Rome wasn’t founded. The Renn./Ref. stuff was pretty important, as he recalled. He could always put a call through to Uzziel in Heaven, but that would mean admitting he hadn’t been paying attention during the briefing. Besides, the way Uzziel droned on, he’d probably miss all the same important parts again.

  Mercury studied the note some more. Who were the Trojans again? People who live in the city of Troy, he thought. Weren’t they at war with somebody? The Greeks. That was it, the Trojans were fighting the Greeks. But the Greeks couldn’t penetrate the giant wall the Trojans had erected around the city. “Help the Greeks find a back door” must mean help them get through the wall. At least he hoped that’s what it meant.

  The seagull cocked its head at Mercury, shrugging its wings.

  But who was Dave? That one didn’t ring any bells. Oh well, he’d just have to wing it. Mercury leaped into the air, soaring in a great northeasterly arc toward the city of Troy.

  The seagull watched him go with interest. “Keeyaah?” it asked.

  *****

  Troy wasn’t a particularly impressive city, other than the thirty foot wall that ringed the city proper. If the Greeks could have seen the nondescript mud and stone structures that made up most of the town, they might have decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. But the grass is always greener inside the perimeter of a thirty foot wall, and the Greeks had been trying to get in for ten years now. Their ships were anchored a half mile or so down the coast, and a sizable contingent of foot soldiers was encamped around the city. Occasionally skirmishes would break out, with Greeks attempting to scale the walls or Trojans attempting to open a corridor through the Greeks for supplies to travel through, but lately neither side had put much effort into it. The stalemate seemed destined to go on forever.

  Mercury landed on a hilltop not far from the Greek ships and made his way down to the main camp.

  “Halt!” cried a sentry. “Who goes there?”

  Mercury, who had the foresight to alter his dress to that of a Greek foot soldier, was nevertheless caught off guard by the sentry’s challenge.

  “Er, me,” said Mercury dimly.

  “Hermes?” asked the sentry.

  “Sure,” replied Mercury. “Hermes.” It was a good a name as any.

  “I don’t recognize you,” said the sentry suspiciously.

  “Yeah, I don’t, ah, spend much time in camp,” replied Mercury. “I’m a scout. Been keeping my eye out for those filthy Trojans. So, anyway, I’m looking for… Dave?”

  The sentry frowne
d. “You’re looking for who?”

  “Dave,” said Mercury, trying to sound more sure of himself.

  “What kind of name is ‘Dave’?” asked the sentry.

  Mercury pulled the parchment out of his pocket and peered at the paper. “Dean, maybe?”

  “I don’t know any Dean either,” said the sentry. “Hey, Virgil,” he called over his shoulder, keeping an eye on Mercury, “You know anybody named Dean or Dave?” A higher ranking soldier, evidently named Virgil, glared down from a knoll a stone’s throw closer to the beach. He shook his head.

  “Who’s your commander?” demanded the sentry.

  But Mercury had become distracted by the sight of a man standing on a rocky outcropping a hundred yards or so in the opposite direction. The man had a long white beard and he was pacing back and forth and muttering, as if trying to psych himself up to jump into a cold lake. Except there was no lake, cold or otherwise. The man was going to jump forty feet down onto jagged rocks.

  “Um, what is that guy doing?” Mercury asked.

  The sentry glanced up at the man. “Old Daedalus?” he said. “Who knows? Probably testing out some crazy invention of his. I don’t know why they keep that lunatic around.”

  “Daedalus!” Mercury exclaimed, looking at the note. A smudge obscured the second half of the name. “That’s who I’m supposed to talk to!”

  The sentry laughed. “You’d better hurry, then.” As he said this, the old man made a running start and jumped off the cliff.

  “Son of a –” Mercury gasped, running toward the cliff. He held out his hand, trying to harness some of the mysterious interplanar energy that angels use to perform miracles. He had just enough time to counteract the pull of gravity in the old man’s immediate vicinity. In his haste, though, he overcompensated, and a moment after Daedalus disappeared amongst the rocks, he shot some twenty feet into the air.

  “Wahoo!” cried Daedalus. “They work!”

  Mercury, still running toward the old man, saw that he was wearing some very odd-looking shoes. They were silver in color, and each one had a pair of bird-like wings protruding from its sides.

  “No, they don’t, you idiot,” Mercury yelled, gently setting the man back on the ground. “What the hell are you trying to do, kill yourself?”

  Daedalus stood unsurely on a boulder, eyeing his silver shoes. The wings flapped lazily against his ankles.

  “What on Earth would make you think something like that would work? Have you never heard of physics? Or animal trials, for that matter? You need to try that shit on a baboon first.”

  “But…” said Daedalus. “I was flying.”

  “You were defying gravity,” said Mercury. “Thanks to me performing a minor miracle. If I hadn’t been here, you’d be dead.”

  Daedalus regarded his shoes sadly. “Another failure, then. Just like the horse.” He climbed down to the ground from the boulder.

  “I’ve never seen a horse fly either,” said Mercury.

  “Really?” asked Daedalus. “That’s odd. Have you seen a house fly?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Huh. They’re all over the place in Greece. How about a dragonfly?”

  “No thanks,” said Mercury. “Not hungry. So where’s this flying horse of yours?”

  Daedalus shook his head. “The horse doesn’t fly.”

  “Well, you’re zero for two, then.”

  “No, no,” said Daedalus. “The horse isn’t supposed to fly. It’s a weapon. I’ll show you.”

  Daedalus led Mercury over a ridge, where a massive structure sat covered by a canvas tarp. He pulled a rope and the tarp fell away, revealing a gigantic wooden horse. It had to be thirty feet from the ground to its ears.[2]

  Mercury whistled in awe. “Wow,” he said. “So what does it do exactly?”

  “Well,” replied Daedalus, “It’s supposed to shoot fire from its mouth here, see? But it doesn’t work. I’m a terrible inventor. The worst.”

  “Now, now,” said Mercury. “Don’t let one little setback get you down, Dave. So what’s the problem, exactly? Do you have ignition? Is the fuel to air ratio right?”

  Daedalus stared at him blankly, his shoe-wings fluttering in the breeze.

  “OK, let’s back up,” said Mercury. “What kind of fuel does the flame mechanism use?”

  Daedalus looked at the horse. “Flame mechanism,” he said.

  “You did build some sort of mechanism to shoot flames, right? You weren’t just hoping that the horse was going to magically start shooting… oh.”

  “I’m the worst,” Daedalus said again, sitting down on a nearby boulder. He took off his shoes and threw them at the horse. He cradled his head in his hands and began to cry. “This was supposed to be our secret weapon, to skew the odds against Troy in our favor. I was going to call it ‘Greek fire.’”

  “Hmm,” said Mercury. “Unfortunately, I think you’re about a thousand years early. You guys aren’t supposed to have liquid incendiaries until the Byzantine Empire.” Mercury’s knowledge of future history was sketchy, but he had good recall for events involving fire and explosions. “And you won’t have gunpowder until the late Middle Ages. Too bad we aren’t in China. Of course, those dudes have a centralized government, a common language, and….” Mercury trailed off. Something of Uzziel’s briefing was coming back.

  Mercury was supposed to help the Greeks destroy Troy. There had been a whole PowerPoint[3] presentation with charts, graphs and maps, indicating what would happen if the Greeks were unable to achieve a definitive victory over Troy. The antipathy between Troy and Greece would continue for another 200 years, preventing the formation of a unified empire in southern Europe. That meant no Roman Empire, no Province of Galilee, no Herod, no Pontius Pilate… no Crucifixion. Jesus of Nazareth would live to a ripe old age as a beatific and preternaturally skilled carpenter, and the Divine Plan would go completely off the rails.

  Mercury walked over to the horse, climbing onto a boulder to get a better look. It was an impressive piece of carpentry, if not a particularly formidable weapon. Standing on his tiptoes, Mercury could just touch the horse’s underside.

  Daedalus was sobbing quietly into his hands. “Greek fire,” he blurbled. “What was I thinking?”

  “It’s a good idea, in theory,” said Mercury, trying to reach the latch of a door in the horse’s belly. “In a few hundred years, you guys will use it to great effect in naval battles. Well, I say ‘you guys,’ but of course I mean the Byzantine Empire, which as I recall is really the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which brings me to… gyeeeeaaaugh!” Mercury had been straining to reach the latch when his foot slipped and he lost his balance. With no time to grab hold of interplanar energy, he fell to the ground, smacking the back of his skull on the boulder.

  “Guh,” Mercury muttered, holding his head.

  “Are you OK?” asked Daedalus, rushing over to Mercury, having apparently forgotten his own sorrows.

  “Yeah,” said Mercury. “That didn’t help my keeyaah any though.”

  “Your what?”

  “Keeyaah,” said Mercury. “You know, from drinking too much beer.” He flapped his arms and croaked, “Keeyaah!” Instantly realizing this was a mistake, he cradled his head in his hands and moaned.

  “I think you mean a hangover,” said Daedalus. “Here, try these.” He held the winged shoes out to Mercury.

  “I’m not seeing how shoes with wings on them are going to help my head,” Mercury said.

  “Not for your head, for your feet. Feel.”

  Mercury took one of the shoes, rubbing his thumb on the sole. “Ooh, grippy!” he exclaimed. “What is that?”

  “I made it from rubber tree extract,” he said. “Figured it would be good for landings.”

  “This is great!” Mercury exclaimed. “What do you call it?”

  “Rubber tree extract flying shoe sole compound.”

  “Catchy,” said Mercury, removing his sandals. He slipped on the winged shoes and climb
ed back onto the boulder. Even on his tiptoes, there was no chance of him slipping with his new grippy shoes. He pulled the latch and a wooden door swung open. Seeing that a series of rungs had been installed on the hatch, Mercury grabbed one and hoisted himself up, placing his rubbery sole on the bottom rung. He climbed inside the horse. It was completely hollow.

  “Wow,” said Mercury, walking around inside the massive structure. “I feel like a little baby horse inside a giant mama horse.”

  “What?” called Daedalus from below.

  “I said it’s like being a little horse inside a big horse,” repeated Mercury.

  “What?” called Daedalus again.

  “A little horse!” yelled Mercury. “I’m a little horse!”

  “Oh, no wonder I couldn’t hear you,” said Daedalus.

  Mercury stuck his head out the opening. “Come on up,” he said. “It’s like a tree fort in here. All we need is a ‘no girls allowed’ sign.”

  But Daedalus couldn’t reach the ladder. “Here,” said Mercury, harnessing a small amount of interplanar energy to lift Daedalus into the horse. He wasn’t really supposed to be performing miracles without a good reason, but he figured he’d already blown his cover with Daedalus.

  “How do you do that?” asked Daedalus. “Are you a god?”

  Mercury shook his head. “I’m more like a messenger.”

  “But you work for the gods?”

  “I work for the God.”

  “Zeus?”

  “No, not… sure, Zeus.” Mercury was getting tired of having to explain monotheism to primitive cultures. It wasn’t his job anyway; let those yahoos in Prophecy sort it out. “How many people do you think could fit in here?”

  Daedalus shrugged. “Six?”

  Mercury regarded the cavernous space inside the horse. This guy was as good at estimated volume as he was with aerodynamics. “I was thinking more like a hundred,” said Mercury. “We may have to slather them in olive oil to squeeze them in. Here, let’s try something. I’m going to hop out. You close the door and then walk around for a bit.” He lowered himself to the ground and Daedalus closed the hatch behind him. Loud footsteps reverberated above him.