A God Called Bruce Pt. 01

"They will whinge until the end of the project. These sort of dickheads thrive on things like 'demarcation disputes' and 'my dick is bigger than yours' contests. I'll have to kick them from time to time, but they'll get the job done."

I said my goodbyes and teleported home. Beats walking, I tell you. The rubbish from this morning was still there; not in the house, Marge's no maintenance house had seen to that, but the backyard was not so privileged. I wondered if I had to clear up the mess when Lil and Marge arrived. I think they were going to try for a threesome.

At least Marge waved her hand and the place was tidy again. Then those two bitches converged on me trying to seduce me.

"Come on girls, leave my dick alone. I am only a freshly made Demigod, I can't root around like a God yet, I need some rest."

Against my protest they took my clothes off and started to fiddle around with me. My dick wasn't interested. He just curled up in a corner and refused to stand to attention.

"Alright," said Marge, "I can see this isn't going to work, lets put him to bed. They frogmarched me into the bedroom took their clothes off and lay on either side of me on that wonderful bed. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Chapter 10: The Tunnels

I was vaguely aware that someone was kissing me when I woke up, It felt wrong. Then I knew why. These were not lips that were caressing me, these were nether-lips. They were pushing hard against my mouth and nose. No hair, so it couldn't be Lil, it had to be Marge. I couldn't breathe. Circles spun before my eyes. It had to stop. In desperation I bit those juicy piss-flaps that were smothering me. Not enough to do permanent damage, but enough to hurt. She jumped off me like a grasshopper, cursing and yelling. I had been right, it was Marge.

I was gasping for air, unable to speak. Marge stopped her tirade of swearing when she saw my distress.

"Jeeesus Marge, you nearly killed me with your twat, how would that have looked on my death certificate as cause of death?"

"Sorry, I got carried away."

"Go and make some breakfast while I have a shower. I am starved."

To my surprise she got up and went into the kitchen without complaint. Lil followed me into the shower and washed my back. She wanted to play, but I didn't feel like it. Besides, I wanted to go to work on my project.

For Gods who didn't need to eat to survive those two surely munched a lot and with relish. The moment I was finished with my meal I got up, gave them both a peck on the cheek and teleported out of there before they could complain.

I materialised in Bruce's yard where he was already into the beer. I had one with him, telling myself I only drank it because I didn't want to offend him; which is utter bullshit, but it cuts down on feeling guilty.

"Alright, lets have a look how the geeks are doing. I reckon they will set up their main station at the star. From there they can reach every tunnel, logical spot." With that Bruce went. I was on my own again.

I had not yet tried to teleport from one spot on Olympus to another. It worked. Darrin and Algenon had set up benches with computers and monitors just outside that temple like structure. They already had some pictures on the screen. Both of them ignored my 'G'day', which I thought was rude and ignorant. I looked at the pictures on the screen.

"These pictures are no good," I said

"Whaaat? There is nothing wrong with those pictures." Darrin was adamant.

"Which part of 'these pictures are no good' didn't you understand, Dickhead?"

Darrin stared at me as though he was going to attack me, then thought better of it, probably remembering that Zeus would not like it. Instead he growled: "What's wrong with them?"

"I can see what you have done. You have set up a camera on a tripod in the tunnel and took a picture of about ten of them, then cropped the individual images, sized them and stored them on the machine. Correct?"

"Yes. What's wrong with that?"

"Everything. Because of the perspective involved, the further you get away from the centre the more distorted the angles become. Also the lighting is not uniform. That means that each picture has slightly different parameters. We are looking at classifying the pictures and organising them into a database. How is Algenon's programme going to decide which points of reference are part of the picture and which ones are distortion?"

"He is right, you know," said Algenon. "I hadn't considered that. It is good that we have found out now, before we got going. We would have got meaningless results.

"What do you suggest we do?" Darrin was suddenly a lot less aggressive.

"All the pictures are of uniform size, in fact very precisely so and sit on a perfectly flat and smooth wall. Build a scanner of exactly that size, set up some trolley with a movable arm so you can position the scanner accurately over the picture and obtain your image. No parallax or lighting problems, uniform image parameters. Algenon will be able to work with them."

Darrin looked at me and stuck his hand out. "I owe you an apology. You know what you are doing. I can work with someone like you. Let's start again."

I shook hands with him and Algenon. We were a proper team now.

"Let's drink to that." True to form Bruce gave everyone a can of beer and grinned. I love those pisspot Aussie Gods. There should be more of them.

"What are we actually looking for?" Algenon's question was reasonable and logical. Pity I had to lie to him, at least in part.

"Zeus wants to find out what these pictures mean," I said. "I suggested a database and subsequent classification of the pictures could possibly give us the clues to their significance. There appears to be a pattern. Landscapes, buildings, landmarks, colours, these sort of things are repeated over and over in some sort of order. It might actually be a language, something like hieroglyphics perhaps."

"And how will you go about decoding this?" Algenon was all ears.

"Let's first find out how many grouping we can get. The colours are an obvious starting point. We start with that and whittle it down. If my theory is correct there will be one picture that is unique, one that fits into no grouping. I want you to find me that picture. It will provide the key, I believe."

"I am starting to get very excited about this project," said Algenon. "Let's get into it. There won't be much for me to do until there are a fair few pictures on line. I'll give Darrin a hand with collecting images until then, if it's alright with you."

"Fine. See you tonight at Bruce's place for a beer and a talk. Come on Bruce, let's go."

Back at Bruce's place he got the barbie going and the beers out.

"Look Alec, I didn't want to say anything at the time, but what is this bullshit with the one picture that's different?"

"No bullshit Bruce, unless I got it completely wrong it'll be there."

"Will you recognise it for what it is when you see it?"

"Bet your knackers Bruce."

"Stop playing silly buggers and tell me or tell me to piss off, either or."

"Look, its really simple. We know what the pictures can do. We travelled on one of them. You were there. Tell me Bruce, where were we?"

"I'm fucked if I know, up there somewhere." He pointed his hand to the sky.

"Perhaps. Perhaps we were in a different universe altogether. In fact, that is more likely. But that isn't the point right now. Fact is we have no idea where we went. The picture didn't tell us that, it just got us there. But something had to know!"

"Who had to know?"

"Not who Bruce - what. The whole shebang is not natural. It is an artefact, perhaps millions of years old, perhaps originating in an altogether different universe. In other words, someone built that fucker. It is a system of machines that still work. As such it has to have a physical presence. The system knows the physical location that the pictures refer to. Something like that must have a control centre. That's where we need to go."

"And that picture you are looking for will get us there?"

"No. Remember the tunnel system? All tunnels converge on a single point, like the spokes of a wheel. At the centre is the gazebo like structure that no one has been able to get into. This is the control centre for this sector, the hub. The picture will get us in there."

"How?"

"Same way we got into the other place. We teleport in. Do you know of any other way to get inside a building that has no doors or windows? The picture will show us a reference point inside that structure. That's why it will be different from all the other images. Once inside, we should be able to figure out how to get to central control.

"Let's have something to eat. I'm getting hungry and the smell of that meat on the barbie gets my juices going."

Bruce whipped up all the trimmings that went with it and we got stuck into it. We were not even half way into the meal when Darrin and Algenon turned up. Bruce asked them to join us, something they happily accepted. Darrin informed us they had finished building the scanner and that it was working fine. They wanted me to have a look at it before they made more of them. The intention was to have one scanner and one operator in each tunnel. Darrin had worked out it would take about ten days to complete the image acquisition if it was done this way. We finished our meal and returned to the tunnels.

The scanner was a masterpiece of engineering. I could see the pride in Darrin's and Algenon's eyes when I admired their achievement. Darrin put the machine through its paces and showed me the acquired images. They were just what I wanted. I told them how happy I was with their progress and that they could take the rest of the day off. Both were smiling when Bruce and I left. We were on the road.

We went to my place and had a beer in the backyard. I pulled out my smokes and there were only two cigarettes left, one for Bruce and one for me. I cursed. Because I had not been out of the house on the Earth side since the disaster with the walloper's car I had not bought any. Bruce laughed and materialised a couple of cartons on the table.

"Happy now?"

I nodded

"So how did you go with your threesome?"

I said there hadn't been one. When I told him the story of how Marge had nearly killed me with her snatch Bruce was pissing himself laughing, suggesting I ought to write a story called The Goddess with the Killer Twat.

The girls turned up a short time later. They behaved for once. Of course they couldn't touch me in the yard, or they would have disappeared, but even when we moved inside the house after it got too chilly outside they didn't try anything on.

When Bruce went home Marge went with him after giving me a chaste kiss on the cheek. Lil asked me if she could stay the night. I asked her why she was asking all of a sudden.

At first she was reluctant to tell me, but she caved in eventually. Apparently Zeus had told them off about stalking me and laid down the law. They could only fool around with me and come into my bedroom at my invitation.

I invited Lil into my bed and soon after we were at it again. It was nice.