A God Called Bruce Pt. 02

"You, can read this shit?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, sort of," he said. "It is a bit of an archaic form of what I am used to, but I can get by. A bit like the difference between Hindi and Sanskrit."

He hit a larger, green button, which I supposed might be the Enter key and pointed at a large screen at the wall. The screen showed me and Gadeirus in the room. He pushed some other buttons and the camera panned in and out on us and moved around, showing us from all angles. It was a bit jerky, but I guessed he was trying to get used to the controls.

There was no doubt about it, he was in control. He knew what he was doing.

"I won't try anything else until I know more about the system and until I am getting better at this version of the language."

He closed the console off and put the keyboard cover back.

"Can we go back to my place now? I have seen enough. I need to study."

I quietly nodded assent and we went back to his house. Being an impeccable host he put some wine and snacks on the table, invited me to help myself, excused himself and left the room.

He came back after five minutes and put a tablet on the table that looked remarkably like a modern tablet computer. He activated the device, touched the screen in a few spots and writing appeared on the screen, similar to what we had seen in the control room. I was stunned. "Where did you get that?"

"Never mind about that now. I'll tell you all about it once I have some more answers. Some of the answers to questions I have are in here. As I said, I need to study. I wanted to show this to you so you don't think me rude. I need solitude now. I cannot study and talk at the same time."

I accepted that. I said there was no problem and took my leave. I told him I would contact him in the morning if that was okay. He said that would be good.

Back at Bruce's Marge, Lil and the computerpoofs as Bruce had called them were busy planning an orgy for the crews. Bruce looked bored and his face lit up when he saw me.

"Let's fuck off to your place, they are giving me the shits," he said and vanished.

I couldn't follow him quickly enough.

After he had the barbeque going and the beer on the table I told him what happened at Gadeirus' place. When I came to Hera being there he warned me.

"Be careful with that one", he said. "She can be a hard, nasty and vindictive bitch if she gets miffed with you. Look at what she did to poor Medusa."

"What did she do to Medusa and what had Medusa done to upset her?"

"Poor Medusa had done nothing but fall for the charm of Zeus. After Hera found out Zeus was fucking her she turned Medusa into a monster. Her hair, including her pubic hair, had become a bunch of poisonous snakes and if she looked into a man's eyes the poor bloke turned to stone. Otherwise she left her unchanged. Tragic woman. She had to put a sack over her head and cop it in the back passage thereafter to get a root. Eventually she was killed."

Bruce looked at my face when he said that and burst out: "Oh shit, You've fucked her, haven't you?"

I wasn't going to verify it, but he knew.

"Did you know she was a virgin for a long time? Zeus had to chase her for three hundred years before he could pick her cherry. She has never had another man in all that time. Until now, it seems. That's why she amused herself with chicks for centuries because Zeus wouldn't root her any more. You really know how to piss into a hornet's nest, don't you?"

"She invited me to a party at her place."

"You are not going, are you?"

"Do I have a choice? Besides, I rather like her. Of course I'll go."

"There is nothing for getting into trouble like an Aussie larrikin, and you are a prize one."

I didn't want to pursue this further so I told him what Gadeirus had done.

"And Gadeirus is Hera's nephew. How incestuous can you get? You rub shoulders with Zeus, fuck his wife and employ his nephew. You might as well have fucked your own mother on the town hall steps in Sydney, it wouldn't have been worse."

"Oh, shut up Bruce. Let's have a beer. You worry too much."

Bruce realised the conversation wasn't getting anywhere constructive so we packed up and went to Shagger's Paradise to see how the revellers were doing.

Lil and Marge were lying with their legs apart and Darrin and Algenon were doing the honours. Lil blew me a kiss and said to me: "I love you, Darling," while Algenon was going into the sprint.

You figure the Gods, I can't.

Chapter 15: Gadeirus

I woke up in my own bed. When Bruce and I saw Lil and Marge last night in the throes of whatever it was they were in, we got the fuck out of there and went to my place for a few tinnies. I tried to get up and noticed I was not alone in bed. Curled up against me sharing body warmth was the little fawn. I had slept with a lot of things in my life - cats, dogs, ladies that were a delight to wake up to and molls where I scratched my head in the morning asking myself did I fuck that? Never had I woken up with a fawn until today. As I moved it opened its big brown eyes and looked at me as if to say: Good morning, I love you.

After I had my morning piss I went into the kitchen to make some coffee. The fawn followed me. Thinking she must be thirsty I put a bowl of water down for her. I saw that there were some bean sprouts in the fridge and remembering that deer like juicy green shoots I put some into a bowl for her. She needed no encouragement. The bean shoots were soon finished and she looked under the bowl for some more. I laughed and filled the bowl again for her.

I went out on the veranda to have my coffee. The fawn tried to follow, but couldn't for some reason. Perhaps leaving Olympus space and crossing over to Earth space was a problem to her. I went back, gave her some scratchies and told her to go to the olive grove. She understood and toddled off into Zeus' space at a leisurely pace.

I finished my coffee and went to see Bruce. The gang was already there. The crew orgy was scheduled for today Darrin and Algenon decided to go with Marge and Lil to get everything ready instead of going to work. This suited me, I wanted to spend some more time with Gadeirus. Bruce wanted to meet him which was alright with me. We both walked to Gadeirus' joint. I introduced them. They had seen each other but never formally met, which I found strange. These guys had been living almost next door to each other for centuries and they had never exchanged as much as a greeting, just like tenants in a Sydney apartment building.

We sat down with some wine. The tablet computer lay on the table.

"What is the story with that thing? Will you tell us?" I looked at Gadeirus and pointed at the device.

"Prepare yourself for a long story. This tablet is the reason behind a lot of things. Some good, some bad. It triggered a series of events that made me a God and culminated in the obliteration of Atlantis."

"This I've got to hear," said Bruce. "I'm a sucker for a good yarn and this promises to be one of the best. A good yarn deserves to be told over a barbeque, a keg of beer and some decent smokes. Let's go to my place. The catering is on me."

Gadeirus seemed to like the idea. He picked up his tablet and we walked across to Bruce's place.

With one wave of his hand Bruce re-decorated his barbeque area. There was now a smaller table with a white tablecloth even, some comfortable chairs and a beautiful ceramic ashtray sitting in the centre. The barbeque had become a spit over which a whole sheep was roasting. Next to it was a buffet with all kinds of salads and nibblies.

No canned beer this time. Instead he had installed a little bar from which he served Australian draft beer in genuine Aussie schooner glasses. I was impressed, so was Gadeirus. The beer was beautiful and cold.

Gadeirus placed his tablet on the table, watched with confusion as Bruce and I lit up and began his story:

"As you might know, my father is Poseidon, my mother Cleito. They had five sets of twins. Atlas and I were the oldest. Strictly speaking we were Demigods, but Demigods were a dime a dozen in those days, so that didn't count for much. Of course, we were mortal.

"Until the age of six we lived at home with mum. Poseidon only ever came around to fuck my mother, he took little interest in his kids, except Atlas, whom he adored.

"When we were six Atlas and I were sent off to school. The teachers doted on Atlas, presumably because he was Poseidon's favourite and treated me like the village idiot, even though I was much better at my studies than my brother. I became a loner. While the other boys were doing sports, playing games and fiddling around with each other's dicks and having pissing competitions I was roaming the country side, watching animals and plants, studying the laws of nature.

"We were in the eastern province of Atlantis, the part that was close to the pillars of Hercules, as they were to be called later. Atlantis was still in a primitive rural stage of development and its cities were little more than glorified villages. Apart from the school there were two temples. The large one was obviously dedicated to my father, the smaller one to some unnamed God. No one ever went there, people were afraid of it. Twice a year they made some token offering in the hope it would placate what was held to be a God of a rather nasty disposition.

"I would have been around eleven or twelve when things changed for me. The boys of my age had just discovered that a fluid other than piss could be obtained from a dick and that it was rather fun to do so. They experimented wildly and openly with this newly discovered phenomenon including finding ways to discharge the precious fluid into each other's mouths or bungholes. I found their behaviour disgusting and wanted nothing to do with it.

"If I had been anyone else I would have been forced to participate, but I was a son of Poseidon and no one was game to risk doing something to me against my will. They ignored me, which suited me fine. It was around that time when the mystery surrounding the little temple aroused my curiosity. I asked the teachers but they wouldn't tell me anything, claiming ignorance.

"This only strengthened my resolve. I went into my father's temple and demanded some answers. The priests were in a flurry and called the high priest. The high priest, after a lengthy discussion, decreed that since I was a son of Poseidon and had asked his priests in Poseidon's house it was reasonable to assume that I had a right to get my questions answered. He took me to an old priest who he said had been an eyewitness to the original events and instructed the old man to tell me what he knew of it.

"The old man was a good teacher. There was a lot of theological discussion involved in his dissertation as to what it all meant, which I took with a grain of salt, but he also told me what he had actually witnessed. When all the extraneous stuff had been stripped off it was a rather simple story.

"One morning a young priest had run into the village proclaiming he had found the abode of a God and showed the tablet as proof. The villagers were scared and formed a circle around him, not daring to get too close. Minutes later the priest started to vomit and collapsed dropping the tablet, which landed some four feet away. Within an hour diarrhoea set in and heavy fever. The priest was screaming in pain and looked semi conscious. He bled from nose, mouth and eyes and deteriorated rapidly, his screams getting weaker, his body movements slower. No one came to his aid. By nightfall he was dead.

"I know now that where the priest had gone to get the tablet he had been exposed to very intense radioactivity. He had died of radiation poisoning. At that time, of course, I had no idea.

"The villagers were scared stiff and called the priests. The priests concluded that the unfortunate man had stolen something belonging to a God and had been punished for the theft. They built a funeral pyre nearby, had two slaves move the body and any discharge left on the ground onto the pyre and burned the lot, including the two unfortunate slaves. The tablet still lay where it had fallen, nobody was game to touch it.

"Finally it was decided to build a temple around the tablet dedicated to the unnamed God, leaving the artefact where it had fallen. This way the God could see they revered his possession and kept it safe. Hopefully it would be enough to appease the deity and protect the village from harm. They erected a tent over it to protect it from the elements until the temple was completed. Since then, twice a year priests put fresh flowers around the tablet and offered prayers.

"In essence this is what the old man told me. By now nothing could hold me back. I made for the temple and went inside, my heart pounding in my throat, my stomach queasy.

"Sure enough, there lay the tablet, surrounded by wilted flowers. It took many visits to the temple before I had the courage to touch the thing. When I finally picked it up I wondered why I had been so scared. It was beautiful. I decided I had to have it.

"I took very careful measurements and proceeded to carve a replica from soapstone. Once it was painted you couldn't tell it from the original, unless you picked it up and no one alive, apart from me, had ever done that. Even if someone examined it, they wouldn't be able to tell if it was the real thing or not.

"I made the switch on a day of religious significance when everyone was at Poseidon's temple. Feeling still apprehensive about removing the artefact I nevertheless took the thing to my secret hidey hole that I had been using for years to get away from people, half expecting some God to turn up and punish me. Nothing happened."

Gadeirus stopped and held his empty glass up to Bruce. Bruce laughed and filled it up for him.

"Have a break," said Bruce. "The outside of the sheep is cooked. Here, let me get you some. It's delicious."

For the next half hour we talked about nothing of import, just enjoying the beautiful meal. When we were done Bruce cleared the table, filled our glasses and bade Gadeirus to continue.

"That secret spot of mine needs a bit of explanation. Very early in my stay at the school I had found this sandstone ledge, some ten feet wide and about thirty feet in length in the cliffs when I was looking for plants. It wasn't all that difficult to get to, though it did take a bit of effort. I fell in love with it straight away. It overlooked the sea and just sitting there looking at the water made me feel great. At one end of the ledge was a natural cave. Although the opening was no more than three feet in diameter it was quite spacious inside; about the size of a fair sized room. I could not see any evidence of anyone having been there and promptly claimed it for myself.

"It was a kid's dream. My own private world. Over time I moved all kinds of useful things in there that I had scrounged, as well as my rock and plant collection, in fact everything I wanted to keep away from prying eyes. My stolen tablet would be safe there.

"From what you told me the ledge must have been a power spot, otherwise much of what happened there couldn't have come to pass. I didn't know about such things. The place just felt right.

"Anyway, I started playing with the tablet trying to figure out what it was. I nearly dropped it in fear when I pushed something and the screen came alive. In the end my curiosity turned out to be stronger than my fear, especially since nothing nasty seemed to be happening. Over the following weeks I learned how to do many things with the device. I looked at pictures, drawings and lots and lots of pages of what I took to be writing. I was getting nowhere fast. The device kept its secrets.

"One day, I was sitting on my ledge playing with the tablet, everything changed. I found a page that made sense to me because some of the writing I could read. It was an old Atlantean script I had studied in school. The words were arranged in a logical order and each word was followed by a string of this foreign writing. It didn't need a genius to figure out that someone had been putting a bilingual dictionary together.

"It soon became clear that my knowledge of old Atlantean was insufficient to be of much use. I dropped all my other studies and concentrated exclusively on the study of the old language. My teachers were surprised at first, but after seeing me study the subject with such fervour and dedication started to encourage me for once. They even assigned a teacher to me and gave me access to material that was usually only available to scholars and not to junior students.

"In my spare time I studied the alien language in parallel. After about two years I was so proficient in both languages that I no longer had to translate simple texts, I was reading them.

"I reached age fourteen, an important event in Atlantean and later Greek times. At that age school was finished. The children of the aristocrats and wealthy were assigned a personal tutor. The boy had the right to refuse a particular teacher, since the relationship between teacher and student was also a sexual one. There was no way I was going to allow some old pervert to stick his prick into my mouth or poophole so I refused the tuition outright.

"Now that school had finished we were allowed to go home to see our families before the upper level training started. I loved my mother and my brothers and it was good to see them again. I actually enjoyed Atlas' company. Even though we had studied at the same school we had little contact with each other during that time.

"Towards the end of my stay my father turned up. Expecting him to ignore me as usual I was surprised when he asked me to take a walk with him in the gardens. What is this I hear about you refusing further tuition. Would you care to tell me why? he said after we were out of hearing range of the others.

"I explained to him I was studying some facets of nature for which there was no tuition available and that, if I were to be successful in unlocking the secrets, there could be great benefits for our people in years to come from my endeavours. To my surprise he accepted this. You are different from my other children, he said, you need no prompting to study hard and you have an insatiable thirst for knowledge. That is why I have left you to your own devices. I trust your judgement. I wish you well. Then he did something he had never done, he gave me a hug. Before I could show my surprise he vanished. I did not see him again for many years."

"Here, have another beer," said Bruce. "Your glass is empty and your mouth must be dry from all this talking."

Gadeirus grinned and drank deeply.

"This is quite a story you are telling," I said. "I can't wait to hear more."

"I am sorry to bore you with going so far back, but what follows would not make much sense otherwise."

"Go on," said Bruce, "bore us some more. Pity there's no sex in it."

"You won't hear about sex from me. I have no experience with it whatsoever."

"You mean to tell me you have been around for thousands of years and have never had a root?" Bruce looked at him in disbelief. Gadeirus only nodded.

"This is a job for Marge," I said, which had Bruce in stitches.

"Too fucking right. Now that her snatch is working overtime again she'll be just the job for Mister Neverfuck here."

Gadeirus actually blushed and sculled the rest of his beer. Bruce gave him another one. Before we could get stuck into him some more Gadeirus continued with his story.

"I built a small house half way between the village and my cave and moved in when it was finished. My father always made sure that his children had adequate funds, I could easily afford everything I needed. Over the next five years I studied the contents of that tablet. There was a huge library, much of it poetry and fiction, some history and masses of technical literature. It amazed me how much information had been packed into the small device.