Demeter's Tempest

Struck by an odd thought, Kevin asked, "Are you... aliens? Where are these sins listed? How do I know?"

She ignored the 'aliens' question. "You will feel what sin is, the rightness or wrongness, if you listen to your heart. I cannot be seen to interfere too much in the implementation of what you do, other than what I normally do, inspire and enliven. For you, I will grant rewards - or punishments! - at intervals, but if I send messages, you would be wise to heed them."

"No doubt!" he thought, but he didn't say anything. When a Goddess talks, Listen!

"Your actions matter not just now, they will be examined long into the future. In the coming centuries or millennia, should man survive, humanity and others will learn of our encounter, today. Should you fail to make ethical choices, mankind will suffer either outright extinction now, or future disgrace and extinction later as those misdeeds are recounted and punished."

Kevin saw tribunals and whole populations of beings reading and studying what he might do.

The reality of this struck him. He was a normal guy, he thought, a high school student, an only son, a lower-middle-class average guy. Maybe smarter than normal, he knew that, but he had a sense about the gulf between what counted for human wisdom and what Demeter would consider wise.

Compassion for a person, to her, was the opposite of compassion for a species. Helping a sickly individual bison, for instance, slowed the entire herd and made them all vulnerable.

Even then, he saw it - an individual's life could be distorted and given immense burdens if that person's efforts would raise the group's abilities and preserve their species.

To place one life, much less convenience in that life, above that of future generations is ethically vastly wrong. He might have to make some decisions that generated tragedies, in order to generate later blessings.

The wisdom of Gods had those visions, and burdens. His charge was to act as an agent of a God, to pull from that wisdom, for a specific purpose, to channel the power. His inadequacies were plain to him, and his ability to measure up, daunting.

The more he considered the consequences of what had been thrust on him, how dire his situation was and how ill-prepared he was for it, he had to half-laugh and say, "No pressure, I guess."

"I will give you the catalyst, now. You must go, after this, have your party, there and afterwards to use the fertility I've inspired in you. You will rebuild that which has been lost. With the graces and fates by your side, you shall bed, grace, and build love in most of the women you will meet. They will build your army. Even ones previously unable to bear children will find your plow turns deep earth to abundance. Use care in giving boons to the males you know. Their ethics will be judged as well."

Not in control of his movements again, Kevin walked forward up some wide wooden steps above the edge of the grape tub, then knelt. Demeter's face above him, he looked forward and found his face directly at the height of her chest.

Demeters's tone turned into something like Kevin had heard at mass on Sunday, but far more powerful, a directive that brooked no resistance. "Drink this and feel my catalyst-love fill you."

Demeter's turn placed her shoulders facing him. She lifted her butt slightly like she was on tiptoes despite her feet staying in the grapes. Still, the smell of the grapes rose as she'd moved, and a huskier scent of her body wafted in and filled his awareness.

Pulling at the loose white fabric around her chest, she dropped it and let it fall across her woven gold belt, exposing her breasts to him.

Kevin's head, pulled and enwrapped by her arm, came forward. She cupped a full breast, the areola and nipple aimed right at his open mouth. His awestruck eyes tracked her nipple as it neared.

As soon as his lips found their purchase the view was irrelevant and all his existence became devoted to 'the suck'. Rewarded by the movement, he felt a warm, sweet milk flowing into his mouth, the teat rising to slightly rub the roof of his mouth, even into the back of his tongue.

Milk squirted there, a life-giving fluid flowing down his throat, an ambrosia of heavenly essence that had no comparison in all of creation. He knew that, but the sensations made his whole life to be as a neutrino versus the galaxy-cluster of her abundance.

Still, it was a determinate act, a thing they were doing together.

He swallowed the bounty as naturally as any infant. Kevin's pull on her went on for some undefined, blissful age, then stopped. He had no grasp of time, it didn't matter.

Being pulled off, separated from that joy, was to rejoin the world of sights and sounds again, he felt Demeter kiss the top of his head, a lingering press of lips. A warmth grew there, to match the warmth in his belly from the milk of life he suckled from her.

Pulling him, guiding Kevin to stand up, Demeter stepped back as Kevin stood, letting his body rise above hers.

Pausing him halfway up, though, she bent forwards and kissed his chest over his heart. Again, warmth filled him, enrapturing his senses out to his fingers and toes.

As she guided, he stood further, straight up.

Kevin hadn't noticed being naked for a lot of the conversation. He definitely hadn't noticed how erect his penis was, how far out it stood proud from his body.

That view, though, of him, looking down on himself and to the top of Demeter's head, gave him a realization again of where he was. He struggled to grasp this worldview, this situation, and put it into any context that his previous existence could possibly have encompassed.

He couldn't, of course, fit this into any context. No mortal human could contemplate this, without being there, without being given the ability to see her and not be driven into apoplexy.

In his life Kevin had been previously somewhat rotund, or, more accurately, 'really fat'. His view down his belly hadn't included toes for a long, long time. This perspective, then, looking down on a clean new him was _Entirely New_. Plus, he'd only ever had Tina get that close to his penis, and that was in the dark, so he wasn't quite sure if he should be embarrassed or not.

Demeter was a Goddess. Kevin realized shame couldn't enter into it. Having gotten Perspective, he knew that, as a mere speck of a mortal compared to her eternity and power, the additional bit of being naked, or even erect, didn't really amount to much.

Was a paramecium embarrassed while being looked at through a microscope? Did a dog object to being looked at while licking its privates? There was a biology, and an observation of it by a being of such immense surpassing power that no secrets or shames were even possible.

Leaning forward with slightly parted lips (and much to Kevin's sheer amazement), Demeter opened her mouth as she went. Her hand came up from below, cupping his balls to fill them with warmth, even as her mouth approached.

That approach was almost in slow motion. Her hand grasped his length lightly, guiding him, and her kiss turned from a partially-open-mouthed press on the end of his helmet-head to become More. Her head moved ever forward, steadily pulling him in, granting power as she took it in, farther and farther.

Her nose gently touched his abdomen, she had encompassed him, and his whole body shone in his eyes lit from within, his skin glowing with light just as her warmth spread out through his entire existence.

A fuzzy humming overtook him.

She looked up to his eyes as she pulled away, letting him fall away and smiling kindly at him.

Her satisfied sound, a ringing "Hmmmm...." grew distant and his consciousness dissolved away.

Morning Friday

Kevin awoke the next morning, before his alarm and well before his dad was awake. One of the hassles of Kevin's high school was that it started at 7:20 am.

Counting wake-up time, getting to the bus stop by 6:35 meant getting up at 5:45 to shower and eat. The bus stop was a long 2 blocks away. It never paid to disagree with the bus driver on what time it was, so he always had to get there plenty early in case the driver's whimsy struck and "on time" wasn't.

[ In reality the early timetable had been passed for the convenience of the pretentious and self-involved school board members. Almost everyone else hated it. Over 4000 students, parents, and staff had lives of continuous sullen fatigue because 7 dicks didn't want their "real jobs" affected by board meetings. Kevin didn't know any of this yet, but this was one of a class of problems he'd been tasked with fixing - disempowering the pretentious.]

Starting to pull himself out of bed, the complete memory suddenly flowed back into his brain.

Kevin's awareness dimmed, and he lay back on his bed, arms akimbo, breathing hard with the emotion as it struck him, the depth of the challenge in front of him.

He had to... what? Have ... lots of sex? Kids? At his age? An army? Ecosystems?

He wasn't averse to sex, at all, but ... he'd wanted the first time to be special, and Demeter's instructions were clear about starting the recruiting process at the party... that night!?

It was Friday morning, but his party was going to be Saturday - and now it was ... that evening?

He'd have to text Tina and tell her the timetable had to move up a little. But, that wasn't like any random thing to text, and it certainly wasn't something she'd just shrug about.

This was to be a life event.

Demeter's perspective was clear on many things, and his whims counted zero on that scale.

Still, he was charged with being ethical, and that meant responsible for showing kindness and mercy - on an ecosystem scale. That meant getting her help, too

Kevin's read on what Tina wanted was sometimes murky, he contemplated as considered the conversation he would need to have with her.

Strike that, he thought, not 'sometimes', but 'usually'. Yet, she liked him, and he liked her, so they were compatible enough. She had only a small part of the body weight problem he had, but he'd been thankful because it probably meant she didn't judge him on that basis.

Sitting up again, looking around the room, he realized where he was, and pictured it.

He now had Context. He had PERSPECTIVE.

He was in a teenage boy's room, in a small 2-story house, in a Denver suburb, just up some foothills into the start of mountains, in the center of a continent, on the surface of a big watery rock, in a solar system where that 'big rock' wouldn't leave a spot if dropped into Jupiter, Saturn, or Sol, the sun.

Surrounding (and inside) him at a microscopic level, symbiotic and inimical bacteria alike, living creatures of all sizes, inhabited him. They did normal things for them - they crawled and oozed, excreted, reproduced, died, and continued on, tied to each other in an interdependent web of incredible complexity and depth.

The proteins that built living things were folded molecules that unfolded, bonded, re-bonded, re-folded, all in complex constant semi-random motion based on interatomic forces across molecule distances, each made up of hundreds of hydrocarbon bonds mediated by electrons zipping around in a soup that sometimes behaved in ways we didn't really understand and could only vaguely predict.

The info Demeter had thrust on him didn't include a grand unified theory of physics, or the math to support it. But, he could see the outlines of such a theory, what problems it would solve, from quarks to atoms to molecules to proteins to bacteria to humans to stars. He could probably get there, but he'd need to study forever to get there - and in doing so, he'd need to be selfish and not do the tasks assigned to him. His goals did not include a Nobel. His goal included saving untold billions of future humans.

Perspective is a bitch.

As his feet reached the floor they hit the old book he'd been reading the night before. He idly considered whether he'd dreamed the whole thing, before looking down and seeing his far-more-studly chest.

Things were not as they were before.

The events had happened.

He Knew Things.

He picked up the book, but then had an uncontrollable stretching urge. Standing up and proud in a rapid and uncontrolled unfolding expansion, his arms went to the ceiling. Yawning, complete with roaring in his ears, closed his vision until it passed and he relaxed to just stand upright.

Something felt odd.

He was naked. He never went to bed naked, so that was different. One more point went in the column of 'dream was real'.

Looking over, he saw the mirror on the back of his room door and we walked over.

The face that looked back at him was still Kevin. The body was Sooooo much nicer!

He had been 5'7", 260 pounds, pudgy, lazy-eyed, with thick glasses that walled off the world and (he had hoped) hid him.

He was now _Different_. He felt taller. His pudge was gone, and its place was a lean, not-over-muscled but nicely built guy.

The image was also... clear! He apparently didn't need glasses anymore, and his left eye (forever not quite tracking where his right one was looking) clearly focused in to give him proper binocular 3-D vision. He'd only ever had that happen microseconds at a time, such was his lack of control over it.

No one, he thought, would believe that he'd changed this much overnight. Tina would see the change. Tina would figure out something was up. He knew, somehow, it was pretty important he didn't reveal anything about what had happened. They wouldn't believe him anyway. If it hadn't happened to him, he would believe him.

Plus, everybody knows, if you win the lottery, you don't go out and tell everyone. They'll all want something. This was the first rule of bringing a sack of cookies to school for your lunch. If you want the cookies, you don't TELL people you have them.

The other odd thing he noticed was the new and complete lack of body hair below the shoulders. He still had eyebrows and head hair, thank goodness, but that was it. Looking closely, even the wispy hair on the backs of his fingers was gone.

Time for a shower. He didn't want to miss the bus.

Grabbing his towel from the hook, he went to the bathroom and did his business, then turned on the shower and loaded his toothbrush. He liked to brush his teeth in the shower.

One time in 6th grade he'd mentioned in a group that he brushed his teeth in the shower. One boy had told him he was demented and weird and he couldn't do that or he'd get it wrong and he'd get toothpaste on his chest and that'd hurt.

Remembering that interaction as he stepped in, he laughed at the childish nature of it. Oddly, the group listening to this had seemed scandalized. They had believed the other kid, and he was so confused why, it was obviously not true.

His memory for his life was clearer, too, whether or not he grasped that fact. Kevin started recalling childhood events but with startlingly vivid clarity, including the tastes and smells that had happened at the time.

Enhanced brainpower came with the Perspective, and, well, the Other Changes.

The water felt kind of hot, so he moved it over to cool off, but no matter how cool he turned it, it still felt reasonably comfortable. He decided cold showers weren't so bad after all, and got completely soaped and clean in record time. He could even reach the center of his back with the soap bar, something he never could have done before.

Back in his room and dressing, the extra height was real. His pants were far too short! He had no underwear, either!

The very-back of his underwear drawer had a super-old pair of underwear... that fit! (sort of)

It was late March, and too cool out to wear shorts, so he pulled on some sweat pants ("drawstring!!") and a hoodie sweatshirt as well, figuring it would be good to cover up his drastic bodily change for a while.

His dad walked by his room fast, not looking in and headed downstairs. Calling back over his shoulder, by then halfway down the stairs, he shouted, "Coffee this morning, Kev?"

Kevin's reply sounded deeper, fuller, far less squeaky. "Sure! Thanks, Dad!"

Dressed and backpack packed, he headed downstairs. His dad was sitting at the table watching a youtube vid and eating Cap'n Crunch for breakfast. Kevin saw that, and knew his dad shouldn't be eating that -- way too much sugar -- but what could he do? Not much, he figured. Maybe he could eventually if he got these alleged powers, but he couldn't use them if the benefit was only to himself.

Would helping his father be seen as helping himself? He'd have to be careful to help in ways that didn't result in his getting anything out of the gift, he decided. It was a gray area for him, ethically - he'd be helping someone he loved, but he'd lost his mother and he didn't want to lose his father, too, and was that selfless, after all?

Ethical questions were probably not meant for breakfasts, Kevin thought, and he grabbed a pair of bagels from the fridge and a banana. He had to do a lot of the shopping, with his dad being at work until evening and Kevin getting out of school by 3. The trouble was biking to the grocery store - and only having his backpack to put things in. They only had one car, and his dad needed it.

The banana Kevin grabbed was a luxury, and he knew it. They were crushable and Everything got crushed in his backpack.

His dad's video ended (some history guy talking about typewriters) and his dad turned to see him, the upper half of him, at least, over the counter, as Kevin poured coffee into his travel mug (pre-loaded with some sugar and creamer).

"Hey, son... you look... different this morning. Must be turning 18!"

His dad, David, was always jovial in the morning, but every time his dad moved, Kevin could see pain flicker across his face. Keeping the arthritis secret from Kevin didn't always work. Sometimes the pain got too intense to just ignore.

Kevin drank a small cup of coffee and finished his banana and one of the bagels, putting the other in his pocket for later, and he and his dad danced around in the small kitchen to get things cleared away.

David's pain interfered with seeing too much of what was different about Kevin. He was proud of his son, but his worry (about his health, his job, his finances, everything) was eating him up, to say nothing of the constant pain and decreasing mobility.

Life was not getting better for David, and it depressed him horribly.

As for Kevin's worry factors -- usually trying to cope with something at school, or getting picked on, or something -- those had shifted now. Kevin's realization, as he walked out through the garage and watched his dad drive away, was that his previous worries were Completely Over. The 'divine calling' (he laughed internally at calling it that) had blown everything else out of the water.

Walking to the bus stop in the bracingly chill, bright morning, Kevin figured this was already the most consequential day of his life, and it likely wasn't going to be over until late that evening, if he slept at all after the party.

Converting that condensed-thought into an internal monologue, Kevin's brain rebelled at it and wondered, how could anything get to be more important than the day his mother died? How could he even think this was close to that?

Sure, he'd had a dream. It was undoubtedly powerful, life changing for him and (if true) vastly important for mankind's future.

But, in the panorama of Kevin's life, he had to ask himself, was the Calling more important than his mother's death?

Her death wasn't the only possibility for Consequential Days. The day she got arrested and his dad decided NOT to bail her out?

Or, the day his dad lost the car from overwhelming medical bills, and watching his dad struggle to fit his even-then massive girth onto a moped, to the bus stop, for the trip to work?