Why have people stopped wearing watches and started dragging mobiles out of their pocket to check the time?

It’s something lots of people do. I do it myself. But it’s not ubiquitous. Lots of wristwatches are still out there and still being checked. Which makes it interesting, because it’s one of those rare things: a behavior in transition.

Which gives us something to talk about.

*** *** *** ***

People often confuse the concept of Time with the concept of Telling Time. Time is, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, “a nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.” Telling time, on the other hand, is the skill one has in using either physical phenomena or — more often — artificial devices to determine at what point in a relatively arbitrary system defining the very real and yet very intangible ‘time’ said person is currently existing in.

Yeah, that’s way too thick a paragraph. Let me put it this way. There is Time, which exists, and there is Telling Time, which uses a system that doesn’t really exist to approximate and overlay comprehension onto a system that does exist.

One would think, based on that, that Time would be well represented mythologically speaking, and Telling Time would be barely represented if at all. In this, one would be wrong.

Telling Time has, in fact, always had a thick mythological basis. Its very artificial nature responds well to the interplay of imagination and perception that makes for the very best mythologies. When one is completely building their perception of time, and how to tell the difference between ‘then,’ ‘now’ and ‘soon,’ one has lots of elbow room and room for dissent. Throw in the difference between nanoseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, and millennia, and the potential mythological infrastructure is enormous. Now to all of that, add in mornings, afternoons, evenings, twilight, night, dusk, dawn, semesters, trimesters, seasons — natural ones like ‘Spring’ and less natural ones like ‘the Social’ — eons, ages, noon, midnight, yesterday, today, tomorrow, last week, this week, next week, last month, this month, next month, last year, this year, next year, before you were born, back when I was a kid, leaving it to your children, once upon a time and a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….

Yeah.

So, this gives us the Houris of the Hours, and the Guardians of the Months, and Day Nymphs and the Spirits of the Ages and the Scions of the Centuries and any number of other things, and you’ll meet some of them as we tell more of these stories. Sometimes they contradict each other, but that’s why we have arbitration. It’s really very complicated.

But as for Time itself? We have one guy. That’s all. That’s all that’s necessary. Time exists, and this one guy embodies it. And mostly, he keeps to himself. And we don’t think much about him. After all, the fact of time isn’t nearly as important to our day to day lives as telling time.

Really, when we discuss Time Himself, we usually just imagine he’s wearing robes, maybe carrying a scythe, and generally refer to him as Father Time. And sure, once upon a time he wore robes, mostly because at the time he was hanging around monasteries — he enjoyed illuminating manuscripts and that was where the work was — and pretty much everyone there wore robes. And he did own a scythe, since he had a garden and they only recently invented hedge clippers and gas powered mowers.

But one thing we’ve gotten right. He is a Father. Specifically of a daughter named Natalie. And like good parents since the dawn of time — which is itself an artificial statement about time which Father Time himself would roll his eyes over, since he was in fact there and there was nothing remotely dawnlike about it — after Natalie graduated from College he used his pull to get her a good job. Specifically, Natalie was named the Intendant of What Time Is It? To her fell the concept of both the question — “hey, what time is it, anyway?” — and the answer to that question. Under her was also found “how long until” and “how long has it been since,” at least for shorter periods of time. Which means that while there were hundreds upon hundreds of daemons and Loci employed by the Telling Time industry, Natalie got the crux question. Father Time was pleased. His little girl deserved only the best.

Over time — no pun intended — Natalie would feel somewhat differently about it.

Donal checked the watch on his wrist. It was beautiful. A masterpiece of the art of timekeeping. It was an eighteen karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona — one of the most sought after watches the world had produced. This was one of the ones unofficially called the ‘Paul Newman,’ and it would sell for a remarkable amount of money, if Donal ever chose to sell it.

Which of course he wouldn’t.

“We’re going to be late!” he shouted up the stairs. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

There was a pause.

“Is that supposed to be funny?” she called back down. She didn’t sound amused. She didn’t sound… anything at all, really. It was only the fact that she’d had to shout to be heard that meant her voice was raised in the first place.

“Just get ready. This is an important day for me.”

“They’re all important days for you.”

Donal snorted, and went into the study to fix himself a drink. Christ only knew how long the woman would take.

Finally, she came through the door. She had worn the Vera Wang in black. White accents. Well, good enough. “Finally,” he snapped. “Let’s get in the car.”

“I may not feel up to this,” she said, following. “You don’t really need me.”

“Of course I need you,” Donal said, opening her door. “Why would you even say that? This is the event of the year.”

“It’s the Midsummer Ball,” she said, sliding into her seat. “It’s no big deal.”

Donal snorted. “No big deal, she says.”

She shrugged.

Donal looked at her. “Hey,” he snapped. “Look at me.”

She kept looking straight ahead.

“I said look at me.”

She turned to look at him, finally.

“I didn’t get my social standing handed to me by my father,” he said. “I worked for it. This event makes or breaks that standing for a year. The elite are on display, and I don’t want any of them to forget for an instant that I’m one of them. And that means you’re going to smile and be nice to people.”

She sighed and looked away. “Do we have to stay long?”

“You can do whatever the Hell you want, once we’ve done a circuit or two.” He pulled the Aston Martin out.

“You know, Sam and I used to do the Midsummer Ball each year,” she said, looking out the side window. Watching the trees and houses go by as they drove through Behind The Scenes of the World. “He was always so excited to go.” She chuckled. “They used to do a roast pork he loved. Every year. A month before the ball he would talk about that pork. ‘Natty, that glaze they use,’ he would say. ‘Oh, the empires that could be built upon that glaze.’”

Donal snorted. “You sure can pick them,” he said. “Thousands of loci in the worlds beyond the worlds, and you found the one man who went to the Midsummer Ball for the food.”

“Yeah,” she said. She kept looking out the window. “I sure can pick them.”

The dynastic powers were driven, of course. Their chauffeurs saw to the cars as they went in. Donal was self-made. It was a huge part of his identity, of his persona in society, so even though his car was worth more than most of the limousines, he drove himself and used that as pride. The valets drove the Aston Martin off as the two walked in. To the side, the Brownie at the door made the Announcement. “The Master of the Wristwatch,” he called out, “and the Intendant of What Time Is It?” His voice rose at the end, making it the question it should be.

“Do you suppose your father is here?” Donal asked, smiling amiably as he nodded to the peers as they passed them.

“Not likely,” Natalie answered. She had her professional smile on, greeting those she met in passing. “He hates these things.”

“I thought you were going ask him to come.” Donal’s smile never slipped, of course.

“Slipped my mind,” Natalie answered. Always smiling, always nodding.

“It would have looked good to be seen with Father Time,” Donal murmured smoothly, kissing the hand of the Duchess of Los Angeles.

“Then you should have asked him yourself,” Natalie answered, letting the Neighborhood Coordinator kiss her cheek.

“He’s your father,” Donal said, all too smoothly.

That was it. Natalie turned away from where the Viceroy of the Cul-de-Sac was waiting. “Yes, he is,” she snapped, just loudly enough to be audible. “And you should remember that.”

There was a hush. Donal paused, and smiled winningly as he turned to his girlfriend. “We’ll discuss it later,” he said. “Come on, let’s not keep our host waiting.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Natalie said, artificial sweetness in her voice. “I think I need a drink.”

Donal frowned, but Natalie turned on her heel and marched off. He watched her go, then chuckled. “You know, you think you’ve got them housebroken, but when you take them out to see company…”

There was a chuckle, strained from some, and Donal set back to work.

He found her at the bar twenty minutes later. She had a Cosmopolitan. And she was talking to Morris, the Digital Timepiece Developer. “–think that there’s a real potential for precision,” he was saying. “And there’s nothing innately unstylish about digital watches.”

“I always liked digital watches,” Natalie was answering. She had enough of a blush to her cheeks that Donal could tell this wasn’t her first Cosmopolitan of the evening. “It’s fun to watch the numbers change. I miss the LED displays, though.”

Morris chuckled. He looked out of place in his tuxedo. His glasses would look hipster, but his hair screamed ‘nerd’ instead.

Donal slid between Morris and Natalie. “On your way,” he murmured to the Digital Timepiece Developer. He nodded to the bartender. “Vesper martini,” he said. “Linnet blanc, Stolichnaya and Boodles British.”

Morris opened his mouth, closed it and stepped off.

Natalie snorted. “I was having a nice conversation with him.”

“He’s currying favor,” Donal snapped. “Trying to get in good with you.”

“And you wouldn’t know anything about that,” Natalie snapped back. “He work with me, you know.”

“He works for me,” Donal answered, glaring at her. “And digital watches didn’t work out. They’re ugly and they’re crass.”

“You’re just afraid he’ll do to you what you did to Sam.”

Donal snorted. “Our dear Count of Pocket Watches was fat. Morris is gangly. You came with me because I was smooth and stylish. Precise. You like precision, don’t you.”

“I’m sick of this,” Natalie said, looking into her drink. “I’m sick of you, Donal.”

Donal chuckled.

“That amuses you?”

“Of course it does,” he said. “You need me, Natalie. Before me, no one could answer your question. Not effectively. I’m the logical conclusion to your aspect. Don’t pretend you can throw me over tomorrow without doing yourself a significant disservice.”

“You think people would stop checking their watches if I dumped your ass?”

“I think we’re not going to find out any time soon, little princess. You want to get drunk? That’s fine. Stay away from clockmakers and timekeepers.” He stepped off, and walked back into the fray.

Natalie stared at him, then nodded to the bartender for another drink.

“No offense, Miss What Time It Is? But your boyfriend’s a dick.”

Natalie turned. Her speaker wore his tuxedo a little more comfortably than Morris had, but he’d also loosened his collar. His dark hair was short. He looked roguish more than handsome.

“What Time is it,” Natalie corrected with a slight smile.

“You’re asking me? My aspect doesn’t even touch on time.” He smiled. “Jason. Proconsul of Portable Telephony.” He offered his hand.

Natalie shook it. “A pleasure,” she said. She looked out across the room, where Donal was laughing it up with the Right People. “Call me Natalie.”

“Seriously,” Jason said, leaning next to her. “That guy’s a total dick. You can do better.”

“You mean I could be with you instead?” She chuckled. “That’s what got me Donal in the first place.”

Jason snorted. “I don’t care if you go out with me or not. I just don’t like seeing guys step on their significant others.”

“That implies I’m significant,” Natalie said.

“Aren’t you? You outrank him. He works for you.”

“What a wonderfully black and white world you live in.” Natalie accepted her fresh drink. “He knows full well that if I dumped him tomorrow, he’d still be the most important man in my life, fully capable of demanding whatever he wanted from me. And as for me? I’m just like his Rolex, or his car, or his pretentious James Bond drink. I’m an accessory. I’m proof he’s arrived and the social world has to take him seriously.” She sipped the slightly tart liquid. “Most of the time, it’s easy enough. I barely need to see him.”

Jason shook his head. “And is that what life is supposed to be?” he asked her. “Is that what you ask out of a relationship? ‘I can’t stand him but I can’t get rid of him and besides — I never need to see him?’”

Natalie shrugged. “Every relationship I’ve been in has tied back to my work, somehow. They court me so that they can make it to the top of the heap. I was annoyed with how Donal dismissed Morris but Donal wasn’t wrong — Morris can’t look at me without seeing how I could expand the role of digital timepieces in the world.”

“So find someone who doesn’t have anything to do with the time,” Jason said. “Or find no one at all. Go it alone for a few years.”

“I like being in a relationship,” Natalie said.

“Do you like being in this relationship?”

“Besides, I’ve tried it with people who have no ties to the time. Date a locus with an unrelated aspect, and you end up never seeing each other. Your concerns and his concerns never touch, and ultimately you have nothing to talk about.”

“Then date a mortal.”

“I can’t.” She looked at Jason. “Some powers can get away with dating a mortal, but my aspect’s too big. Too all pervasive. I tried it once. I practically drove the poor man mad.” She looked in her drink. “Maybe I deserve someone like Donal.”

“Bullshit.”

She looked at Jason.

“Bullshit,” he repeated. “He treats you like shit, Good Lady What Time Is It.” He missed the question at the end of her Aspect, but Natalie let it go. “You don’t deserve to be treated like that. You deserve to enjoy yourself. To enjoy a relationship. To have someone who treats you well and who you can treat well.”

“Someone like you?”

Jason rolled his eyes. “You’ve said that twice now. Do I find you attractive? Yes. And would I treat you better than the Watchkeeper? Damn right I would. But that’s not the point.”

“What is the point, then?”

Jason leaned in. “It doesn’t matter if I’d treat you better,” he said softly. “The point is he treats you like shit.”

She looked back out. Donal was in his element now. Networking. Showing off. He gestured in her direction once, but didn’t look her way. “So be alone,” she said. “Or go out with someone who has nothing to do with my life. Or drive some other poor mortal insane.”

“There’s another option,” Jason said softly.

“What?”

“Find someone whose aspect touches on yours, but doesn’t depend on it.”

Natalie frowned. “Like who?”

Jason shrugged. “I dunno. Don’t computers have clocks on them?”

“Well, yes….”

“But a computer locus wouldn’t rely on you. Your beneficence would benefit him, and his would benefit you, but you wouldn’t need each other in any unhealthy way.”

Natalie considered, then shook her head. “It wouldn’t work,” she said. “Computers aren’t ubiquitous enough. I’d still spend all my time with Donal or someone like him, only now he’d be bitter.”

Jason shrugged. “Then find something that is ubiquitous. Or that will be ubiquitous. If that’s how you have to define your relationships.”

Natalie looked at Jason. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Okay. Tell me about portable phones.”

Jason blinked, and chuckled. “I didn’t mean me.”

“Why not. Just because they’re niche products?”

“They’re niche right now, but they’re going to expand,” Jason said. “They’re getting smaller, and the batteries are getting better. They’re useful, and in their own way they’re as much a status symbol as your boyfriend’s Rolex. Only it’s the models that do more that get the higher status. And that’s only going to grow.” He shook his head. “One day more people will have portables than regular wired telephones. One day, it’ll seem strange when someone doesn’t carry a phone.”

“So, they’ll be ubiquitous?” she said, smirking.

Jason blinked. “Well, yes,” he said. “But then, I’m biased.”

“I’ll bet you are.” She drank the rest of her drink. “Did you ever think of putting a clock in a phone?”

Jason frowned. “A clock?”

“Absolutely. A digital clock, since I’m annoyed with Donal and therefore feeling charitable to Morris right now.”

“Well, there’s no reason we couldn’t….”

Natalie smiled a bit more. “Then let me ask you something, Jason of the Portable Phone. You’ve been very careful to at least sound like you’re just concerned about my welfare, not about getting me naked. Do you want to get me naked?”

Jason looked in Natalie’s eyes. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t really know you.”

“Good answer.” She set her glass down. “Do you care what people think of you? Do you care if you seem outrageous or silly?”

Jason shrugged. “Not really.”

“Another good answer.” She looked back at him. “What’s my aspect again?”

“What time is it.”

“No. There’s supposed to be a question mark at the end of that sentence. Say it right.”

Jason smiled slightly. “What time is it?”

“Time for me to leave. If you’re willing to throw caution to the wind, you can follow me out.” And with that, the Intendant of What Time Is It? strode for the entryway.

Jason watched her go for a long moment, then set his drink down on the bar and followed.

Donal didn’t notice either one of them as they left.

Systems of time are artificial, but they’re convenient. For example, though Father Time himself simply knows that time exists, and that time continues to move, it makes everything easier for you and I if I just say that we close the scene we just watched, and then looked ahead several years, to another night, and another Midsummer Ball.

“The Intendant of What Time Is It?” the Brownie said. Natalie was in red this year, with silver accents. She looked good.

“Good Lady,” Morris said, stepping to her. They kissed each other on the cheeks. He was wearing wire rims now, and had moved towards ‘hipster’ with his hair. It was a better look for him. “You look smashing tonight.” He grinned.

“I feel smashing, tonight,” Natalie answered. “And I hope there’s a good Riesling with my name on it.”

“It seems likely.” Morris snapped his fingers at one of the walking waiters. The Satyr diverted, offering a tray of flutes. Natalie took one and sipped. Chardonney, not Riesling, but it was still nice. “Projections are looking good for the next quarter.”

“I’ll bet.” She smiled a bit. “But do we have to launch into work? It’s a party. I skipped lunch to make room.”

“We don’t have to do anything,” Morris said, grinning.

There was movement to the side. Natalie glanced and rolled her eyes. “Incoming,” she said with a smirk.

Donal half-stormed up to the pair. “We need to talk,” he said.

“Hello, Donal. You’re looking nice tonight. How’s your trick knee been acting?” Natalie smiled more broadly.

Donal shot a glance to Morris. “I need to speak to the Lady,” he said.

“And?” Morris asked. His bearing didn’t shift in the slightest.

“And that means I need you to go away.”

Morris shrugged. “We all have needs, Donal. But I was about to ask Natalie to dance.”

“That sounds lovely,” Natalie said. “Donal, be a good boy and wait at the bar. I’m sure I can make time later on.”

Donal pursed his lips. He turned and stormed off, but he didn’t say anything.

“Is it petty that I enjoyed that?” Morris asked.

“I hope not. I’ve been enjoying it for some time. I didn’t realize you’d disconnected so much from him.”

“These days? He needs all the watch buyers he can get. As for me — there’s lots of digital timepieces in the world.”

“There certainly are. I–”

“–all right since Bruce Springsteen! Madonna! Way before Nirvana — there was U2, and Blondie, and music still on MTV–”

“That’s me,” Natalie said, pulling her RAZR out of her clutch bag and flipping it open. “Hey, Jase. You’re late.” She sounded amused.

“Yeah, well, sue me,” Jason said with a chuckle. “I’m about a half hour out. Forgive me?”

“This time, sure. But I’m going to eat without you.”

“Go nuts. Love you, Nattily.”

“Love you too.” She folded the phone, and glanced at the front. 8:14. She could have known the time instantly, of course — it was her Aspect — but she liked the ritual. “Right. Let’s dance, Morris. And then we eat. I hope they’re doing the pork this year. They have a glaze — I swear to God, it’s to die for.”

Today’s myth comes to us from “zeruslord” (who, I am given to understand, is Lord of Zerus, and there is no doubt one does not want to be on the bad side of the Lord of Zerus, so you’ll understand if I answer the request, I trust. Mythologists have to err on the side of caution where Locii are involved). And zeruslord asks:

why do humans have cities and suburbs? I’m mostly talking about the outermost suburbs, like how all of New Jersey is a suburb of New York, and people are commuting from Front Royal into DC, and Los Angeles exists at all. Why are people willing to drive for hours to get to their job? why don’t the jobs move out faster?

It is a good question, really. After all, cities were meant to centralize humanity, giving them greater access to work, goods and services. So, why would men, women and families intentionally go farther afield, sacrificing convenience and adding hours to their workday in the form of “the commute?” Why would they restrict their potential mass transit options to what is in their suburb (or to their car), despite the price of gasoline and maintenance and the environmental impact and all the rest? What, in the end, is the deal?

Well, you probably shouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s all thanks to a jurisdictional dispute. So let’s leap right into it, shall we?

*** *** *** ***

We have already shown that there are half-gods who walk the Earth and the realms beyond it. Where there is a concept, there is often some being who represents that concept. We’ve met some of those folks in the past, of course. The Queen of the Baristas. The Viscountess of the Northwesterlies. The Manager of the Economy. Folks like that.

What may or may not be apparent is the innate hierarchy these half-gods — or Locii, as we have taken to calling them — exist in. Some concepts are naturally subordinate to other concepts, and it follows that there would be some authority designed to smooth things out. The Pub Sovereign can’t very well go on without the Master Brewer’s blessing, since a pub without beer is, in the end, a lunch counter. The Master Brewer, on the other hand, must answer to the appropriate Locii of yeast, grains, hops and the like, but truly works for the Aqueous Incarnate. After all, you can substitute lots of stuff and still call something ‘beer’ (or if not beer, some other brew), but take water out of the equation and you’re pretty well stuck. And, when the Master Brewer needs the good graces of the Preceptor of Yeast, he’s competing with the Dude What Makes The Bread among others, and there can be arguments between them — but since you need water for bread as well, the Aqueous Incarnate can resolve differences and set regulations when it is necessary to keep everyone happy, or at least quiet.

So it was with human habitation. We know that many cities have Locii of their own — we have met the Duchess of Los Angeles, for example. Naturally, the various Lords, Ladies and the like who hold dominion over the individual cities must themselves work with and under the City Planner, a position responsible for the development of urban culture through the ages.

But, that’s only one side of the City Planner’s dominion. There are common elements to all cities (and indeed to all human habitation) the City Planner has to coordinate. The Viceroy of the Cul-de-Sac, the Imperator of Sidewalks, the Street Lamp Guru and the like all have to report in too, because their components all come together to form cities as we know them. And when you need different Locii to work together, you eventually get into arguments. Sometimes for the highest and most noble reasons, mind.

And sometimes… well, not so much.

Benjamin walked into the back of the co-op. Up front, people were shopping for food. The prices were better than a lot of the supermarkets though of course they had to pay a membership fee. There was a lot of organic produce, a lot of hemp based soaps — stuff like that.

Benjamin looked like he fit in pretty well. Green tee shirt, flannel over it. Old worn jeans. Chuck Taylors. Short hair, slight sideburns. He looked almost angular as he walked. He was holding a paper slip in his hand — one torn off a flyer. It said to meet at the back of the store.

Sitting at a table in the back was an old woman. Heavyset and black, hair white. She was playing solitaire. Sitting next to her….

Benjamin stopped. He had no idea what that damn thing was. It was small — maybe eighteen inches. It had a humanoid body, but its head was disproportionate. It looked almost like a puppet — wood with fur or brown moss growing out of it, but it was… it looked alive. With a high, reedy voice he was making a running commentary. “–ust saying. The two goes on the ace of spades, then the three of spades from that column, you move the three of clubs up–”

“I know how to play solitaire,” she snapped. “I like to keep my cards in play. You play them too soon, you cut your options down.”

“Don’t play them at all, and the game never ends,” the little creature said, and looked up at Benjamin. “On the other hand, sometimes endings show up on you.”

“Uh, hi,” Benjamin said. He shook his head, as if to clear it. “Um, I’m… is this where the volunteer job is?”

“From the flyers?” the woman asked. “Serve your community and your community will serve you?”

“That’s the one.”

“You bet, sunshine. Congratulations. You’re Neighborhood Coordinator.”

Benjamin blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I’m tired, son. I’m tired and I want to retire. You’re the one who answered the flyer, so you get the job.” She smiled a bit. “You’ll like it, most days. Some days you won’t, but most days you will.”

Benjamin blinked again. “Um… I understood this was some kind of volunteer thing?”

“It’s the ultimate volunteer job, son.”

“Yeah, but…” Benjamin sighed. “Look, I’ll come clean. I thought there’d be a lot of people here. I’m new around here, and I thought this would be a way to, you know… meet people.”

“You thought you’d meet cute girls who wore oval glasses and smelled like patchouli,” the little creature said.

Benjamin flushed. “Well–”

“You’ll meet women,” the old woman said. “Oh yeah. But it doesn’t matter. I’m out of here, and you got the job now, son. Try not to screw it up too much.” She looked down at her cards. “Hm.” She moved the last six down onto the seven of hearts, letting her drop the five of diamonds and turn over the last card. She nodded, and began moving cards up onto the four aces.

“Look, what job? You said–”

“You’re the Neighborhood Coordinator,” the small creature said. “The spirit of the neighborhood is reborn in you. You are the most local manifestation of community, of people getting to know those around them, take pride in their home, and lay down roots.” The creature leaned forward. “You can feel it, can’t you? Feel your heart pumping it. Feel the home town spirit, the sense of the place where where young couples raise children and pensioners know the local greengrocer and everyone knows Mister Tyler the Phys Ed teacher was gay and no one cares because hey, they know Mister Tyler.” The creature smiled a toothy smile. “Mister Tyler is a neighbor.”

Benjamin opened his mouth to speak… but then he could feel it. Feel the thudding of his heart in his chest. Feel the thrum of community centers and neighborhood watches and midnight basketball and street gangs alike flooding through his veins. He could feel his perspective open, feel the sense of every street name, every mass transit schedule, every old tarmac basketball court and every crumbling tenement shiver through his being. Every locus is different. Some are immortal and eternal, but others pass their titles on, through many different means and methods. Benjamin could feel his individual cells expand and explode, his body shifting and altering within as he went from mortal to half-god — a lens for the very world, filtering the vision of the world through the ineffable concept of neighborhood.

Benjamin rubbed his brow. He was sweating. His eyes seemed to ache. “I… I never… never imagined….”

“I know,” the creature said. “I know. It’s all right, Benjamin. Take your time. Breathe it in.”

He looked around, seeing the co-op so differently now. He understood how each person fit into this place — how each shopper and each volunteer connected to all the others. The outsider who rarely spoke to anyone but who left money in every Salvation Army can at Christmas. The outgoing and enthusiastic organizer of Little League at the park who reined in his racism and forced himself to let even the little brown kids play. The pretty girl whose outer disdain masked a deep compassion she didn’t dare let out, lest her heart be broken by those around her again. These were the people in the Neighborhood — the people that you meet each day. They were Benjamin’s people now.

He was the Neighborhood Coordinator.

“This is amazing,” he murmured. “Miss — was it like this for you too?” he asked, turning–

The old woman’s hand was on the final king — the king of spaces, placed on the last pile. And anyone could see she was dead. Her skin even seemed to be sagging, her body shrinking in on itself. Becoming dust.

Benjamin’s eyes grew wide. “What…?”

The creature turned, and gasped. “Noa,” he murmured. And he knelt on the table by her game and cried.

Benjamin looked around. A woman was dead and falling into dust, and a wooden muppet of some sort was crying his grief out in the process, but….

“Why hasn’t anyone noticed?” he murmured.

“They can’t see us,” the creature said, getting his sobs under control. “Your nature prevents it. This is your business, not theirs. Even though they are your business.”

“What happened to her?” Benjamin asked softly.

“Noa retired,” the creature said simply. “She chose this. I didn’t… I guess this is what it looks like.”

“So… this is going to happen to me someday, too?”

The creature stood. Only a few wisps of dust and the card game remained, now. “Yes,” he said simply. “But only when you’re ready for it.”

Benjamin nodded. “Who… and what… are you?”

“I’m a Brownie,” the creature said. “A neighborhood spirit, who helps keep things running behind the scenes. I work for you. You couldn’t pronounce my name, but Noa called me Matthew.”

Benjamin nodded. “You’ll… have to help me get used to this,” Benjamin said. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“Yes,” he said, looking at the card game once more. “Yes, I’ll help you,” he said softly. “She would have wanted that.” He turned. “Come on. We have business in Saint Louis.”

“Saint Louis?” Benjamin blinked. “I’m going to Saint Louis?”

“Today you are. For just this part of today. I’ll get the clipboard. There’s a lot to do.”

“Okay — but I have to be back at Starbucks tomorrow for seven. I’m opening–”

Matthew looked at Benjamin for a long moment.

“I don’t work at Starbucks any more, do I?”

“Someone else will push the buttons to make the lattes,” Matthew said. “Come on. We might as well get started.”

Benjamin looked back at where Noa had retired. It was just a card table and a chair now, with a completed solitaire game. No dust, no sign there had ever been anyone sitting there. “Okay,” he said. He turned to follow the Brownie, who had hopped down and was darting through the co-op’s aisles.

At the door, he looked back. There were three neighborhood kids at the table, apparently ready to play cards. Benjamin felt his heart lurch as they scooped up Noa’s last game and began to shuffle, but he didn’t say anything.

“It’s all right,” Matthew said, sadly. “The cards are there so people can play. It’s neighborly.”

“Yeah,” Benjamin said. “Yeah.” They stepped out front.

And Benjamin froze.

Sitting there, in front of the co-op, was a giant red metal trolley car — like from San Francisco, or any number of cities from the turn of the century.

Matthew bounded up onto it, then looked back. “Come on,” he said. “You’re not going to walk to Saint Louis, are you?”

“No,” Benjamin said. “No, I’m not.” He stepped up onto the ramp.

“Token please,” the driver said quietly.

“I–” Benjamin said, startled.

“Check your pocket,” Matthew said, quietly.

Benjamin blinked, and pulled out a flat brass token.

The driver nodded to a dispenser, and Benjamin put it in with a clatter.

“Thank you, sir,” the driver said. “You’re the new Neighborhood Coordinator, then?”

“I… yes. That’s right,” he said.

The driver nodded. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said, though he was somber.

“You’re going to miss Noa?”

“A lot of people are going to miss Noa, sir,” the driver said. “Please take a seat, sir. I need to get going. I have a schedule.”

Benjamin nodded, stepping back. Many seats were taken up — there were fairies and dryads cradling bonsai trees. A minotaur was reading the Wall Street Journal. And there were several humans sitting, looking out at the neighborhood with slightly haunted looks. Benjamin recognized one of them from the grocery store he usually shopped at.

“What’s their story?” he asked Matthew as he slid next to the Brownie. He could more or less accept the mythological creatures on the Trolley, but the haunted men and women were disturbing.

“We take a run through Psychopomp Station,” Matthew said, as if it explained everything. “The Trolleys help cover those neighborhoods without other mass transit options.”

“Oh. So… this isn’t my Trolley?”

“Yes it is,” Matthew said. “But there’s no need to be selfish about it.”

“What’s Psychopomp Station?”

“I’ll tell you later.” He handed over a clipboard. “We have rather a lot to do today, sir. And we should really get to it.”

And so they did. And within a couple of weeks, Benjamin found himself settling into the routine nicely. It was pleasant, being the Locus of Neighborhoods. There was plenty of work, but there was always a sense it would actually be helpful to people — and sure, he sometimes had to manage so-called ‘bad’ neighborhoods too, and that was unpleasant, but he figured out early that you needed to have a contrast or people would take the good they had for granted. Besides, a bad neighborhood gave the people who lived there a chance to meet a new potential, to redeem and rebuild, and the cycle would continue anew.

And he had to admit, it was a pretty cool life. He got up in the morning, made a thermos of coffee, stepped outside his brownstone and the trolley was waiting for him. He swung up inside, nodded to Fred in the cockpit, respectfully acknowledged the men and women on their way to Psychopomp station, said his hellos to the mythological regulars, listened to the bell ring as he sat down, and read the paper while the Trolley pulled out and brought Benjamin within a few blocks of whatever neighborhood in the world he was working in that given day. That was pretty sweet, any way you looked at it.

It was on a bright spring day, stepping off the trolley a few streets down from Greenwich Village, that Benjamin accepted the clipboard from Matthew. “What’s the good word?” he asked.

“Galoshes,” Matthew said.

Benjamin blinked. “Excuse me?”

Matthew shrugged — an adorable move on his tiny little brownie body. “It’s an awfully good word.”

“I suppose so. What are we doing today?”

“The usual.” The Brownie artfully darted around trash cans put out for collection. No one seemed to notice the daemon as he walked through the streets, but then Brownies are rather skilled at not being noticed. “A few meetings. We need to inspect a few facilities. Perhaps have a conversation with the Neighborhood Spirit. Oh, and the City Planner is having an informal get together tonight. You should probably plan on showering and wearing something nice.”

“Why should I care what the New York City city planner does? I mean, is this an exceptionally good party or something?”

Matthew chuckled. “Not Amanda Burden’s office. No–”

“Wait. New York City’s city planner is named Amanda Burden?”

Matthew sighed. “Yes. Please work your way through the jokes quickly, sir. This is rather important.”

“What? Some party?”

“The City Planner’s party, sir.” Matthew stopped, looking at him. “You understand how important you are sir? Important and significant to the neighborhoods of the world, to the spirits of those neighborhoods, to the humans who need to rally and connect with those spirits? And to the world?”

Benjamin frowned. “I’ve sort of had to.”

“The City Planner is responsible for all the cities of the world in the same way. And the neighborhoods of those cities are her purview. She is one of the most powerful Locii the World has ever seen, sir. And while your influence spreads into all human habitation, not just cities, the greatest concentration of your neighborhoods can be found there.”

“So… this is a political thing?”

“To a degree. And a networking opportunity. There are a lot of Locii whose aspects are related to yours. A solid working relationship can only help everyone.”

“I suppose.”

“You don’t want to go?”

“It sounds kind of stiff.”

“Perhaps, sir. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible there will be one or two women there. Maybe even wearing oval glasses and smelling like patchouli.”

“You’re never going to cut me any slack about that, are you?”

“It seems unlikely, sir.”

Benjamin laughed. “All right. Have someone get appropriate clothes cleaned. Take them to that dry cleaner’s out in Seattle. You know the one?”

“Aubrey’s on Fifteenth, sir?”

“That’s the one.”

“Very good, sir. Do we have time to get a bagel before we begin today?”

“God, I hope so.”

The City Planner currently went by the name Isabella Hima, and her party was trendy and upscale, with sophisticates and piano music. Benjamin had a black silk shirt and jacket over slacks, and wondered if he was underdressed. He drank mixed drinks made with Ketel One and made pleasant noises to people like the Underlord of Sewage Treatment and the Viceroy of the Cul-de-Sac, and mostly felt like he was trapped in perdition.

He sat at the bar, a cold blue neon light reflecting off his face as he ordered a drink.

“These things are always so dry, aren’t they?”

The voice was pleasant and warm, and Benjamin found himself smiling before he even turned.

Her eyes were hazel. And she was indeed wearing glasses — almost more octagonal than oval, but he could make allowances. She wore tie dyed silk as a blouse and light capri pants, and her hair was almost alive around her face.

“Wow,” Benjamin said, blinking.

She giggled. “That’s hopeful.”

“Or really pathetic.” He chuckled. “Wow. I’m Benjamin.”

“Benjamin? I don’t think we’ve met?”

“I’m pretty new. I’m the Neighborhood Coordinator.”

“Oh! Of course. Noa retired, didn’t she. I’ll miss her.” She shook her head, her hair cascading. “It must be hard to… I dunno. End. I’m glad I’m eternal.”

“I’ll bet.” Benjamin chuckled. How could someone so… so… perfect not want to be eternal to boot. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are.”

She giggled again. “Probably because I didn’t tell you. I’m the Djinni of the Block. Call me Jen.”

They shook hands. “Wow,” he said. “We really should be working together.”

“Working together?” she asked, eyes twinkling. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

“Now now,” he said. “I didn’t mean it that way,” though of course he did. “I mean neighborhoods. In urban centers, the neighborhood is practically synonymous with the block — you have stores and places to live and schools and even parks all within that one little subdivision. It’s like every block is a single cell of the whole city,” he gestured with his hands, “but it has the whole city in microcosm.”

Jen giggled. “You used to smoke a lot of marijuana, didn’t you?”

“Well, I did major in Philosophy.”

“Same thing. We should talk.”

“We should.” He paused. “What’s that scent?”

“Do you like it? It’s a BPAL — Namaste. I love this perfume. It’s like, sandalwood and jasmine and cedarwood and patchouli.”

“Close enough,” Benjamin said, grinning.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. C’mon. Let’s go get Chinese.”

The phone rang the next morning. Benjamin got it on the fourth ring. “Yeah?” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Matthew said. “I don’t mean to be a pest but the Trolley’s been waiting rather overly long and they’re getting concerned about their schedule.”

“Oh. Mrph. I overslept?”

“Astutely observed, sir.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes. “Y’know what? We’re taking this as a sick day, Matthew.”

There was a pause. “A sick day, sir?”

“That’s right. I’m not really feeling up to it today. Let Fred know he can move on. We’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

“I wasn’t aware you could get sick, sir.”

“Are you saying I can’t take a sick day if I want, Matthew?”

“Of course not, sir. I wouldn’t presume to say that.”

“That’s right. You wouldn’t. Because… um….”

“Because you’re the Neighborhood Coordinator, sir?”

“Exactly. So… um….”

“So I’ll see you tomorrow, sir?”

“That’s right. You will! Good bye, Matthew.”

“Good bye sir. Feel better.”

“Oh, I will.” Benjamin hung up.

Jen turned over. “That sounded funny,” she said, stretching. She wore a bedsheet particularly well.

“That was Matthew. He’s kind of my majordomo. He’s a Brownie.”

“Oh yeah — I met him once. I was working with Noa on some project. Midnight basketball or some shit.”

“Heh. You used to do stuff with Noa?”

“Well, not a lot.” She reached out, patting her hand on the nightstand next to her, finding her glasses and putting them on. “Really, I felt like we should do more than we did. I mean, in urban centers, the block is the heart of the neighborhood.”

“You know, I totally agree,” Benjamin said. “And you’re right. Your office and mine — we should totally work together.”

“Yeah,” Jen said, smiling more. “I think that’d be great. I think you and I — we could totally redefine the community within the city.”

“Totally. You want breakfast?”

“Cook me eggs, smart guy.”

It was nine weeks later that Matthew tried to talk Benjamin out of proposing. “You just met this girl,” he said. “And it’s not like you really know her.”

“Hey, I know her,” Benjamin said. “How can you say I don’t know her?”

“Sir, she’s thousands of years old. She rose up out of the concept of buildings bisected by streets. She is eternal. You don’t know her because you don’t begin to have her frame of reference.”

“I know her. She’s a part of my neighborhood! I know the people in my neighborhood!”

“Please don’t start singing, sir.” The Brownie rubbed his eyes. “And she’s not a part of your neighborhood. The Locii have a professional courtesy between them. Even if they should fall within each others’ aspects, by convention they do not.”

“Look, I’ve never felt like this before, Matthew. I’d like you to be happy for me.”

“I feel positively giddy that you’re having fun and improving your sex life, sir,” Matthew said dryly. “But as it works out, I rather like you and I want to be sure you understand what you’re getting into. There’s no need to rush, you know. She’s immortal and you’ve got at least a few centuries in you.”

Benjamin sighed. “Look, I’m not a child.”

“You’re not a human, sir. You’re a Locus. I’m not sure you’ve quite gotten your brain around that fact yet.”

“I thought I was doing a pretty good job.”

“You are, sir. And your work with Miss Jen has been excellent. You’ve had block parties, you’ve organized a real convergence of the neighborhood and the block in any number of cities. I respect that.”

“I wasn’t aware I needed your respect,” Benjamin snapped. “You work for me, not the other way around.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I want to propose tonight, I will. And you’re going to do whatever I need you to do to make this a superior night for both me and Jen, aren’t you?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Good. I don’t want anything to go wrong, tonight. It’s going to be perfect. Do you hear me?”

“Deaf men can hear you, sir.”

“Damn straight.” He stormed out the door. “Get to work.”

Seven hours later, Benjamin was storming again. But not exactly the same way. “You unmitigated whore!”

Jen frowned. “What the Hell does that even mean?” she asked.

Benjamin slapped the table. “Don’t change the subject!”

“No, I want to talk about this. What is an ‘unmitigated’ whore? What is a mitigated whore? Is that a whore who lives in Nevada? Or one who whores in mitigating circumstances.”

“Jesus Christ, Jen–”

“And let’s stop and examine the ‘whore’ part of this.” The Djinn was angry now, her hair whipping around her head like it was caught in a cyclone. “When did it become okay to equate the sex trade with women acting uppity, anyway?”

“Jesus — if you’re not going to talk about this–”

“You’re not talking,” Jen snapped. “You’re shouting. And over nothing!”

“Nothing? Nothing? The Marquis of the Bridge was all over you. His hand was on your ass while you were introducing me to him!”

“Of course it was! I’ve known him for a thousand years! We’ve been married twice! Just because he’s got a sense of familiarity–”

“Familiarity? Familiarity? What would you consider intimate?”

“Jesus, it’s not like I was sleeping with him, Benjamin.”

“Yet.”

Jen’s eyes flared. “That’s right. ‘Yet.’”

Benjamin blinked. “Wait, what?”

“I’ve been around the block a few million times, Benjamin! I’m thousands of years old! So have a lot of Locii! And sometimes we sleep together! Or we sleep with mortals! It breaks up the monotony of eternity a little! It feels good and it helps remind us we’re not the only half-gods in the universe! And since you’re one of the half-gods I’ve slept with, I’d expect you to appreciate that fact!”

“I thought we were building something together!”

“We are! We have a great working relationship! We have a lot of fun! And believe it or not, I haven’t had sex with anyone else since our first night together!”

“But you reserve the right to?”

“Jesus Christ — we’re not getting married, Benjamin!”

“Who says we’re not?”

Jen stared. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Benjamin sputtered. “What? You’re saying you–”

“We’ve known each other — what, five minutes? Talk to me in three or four years — a decade would be better!”

“We’re perfect together! Our aspects match up perfectly, our–”

“So perfect you’re calling me a whore for letting a man I have been married to touch my butt instead of being uptight about it?”

“That’s different! You’re with me now!”

“Yeah? About that? I think maybe not.” Jen spun and stormed out of the room.

Benjamin stared at her, then turned and threw a glass against the wall. He breathed hard for a couple of moments, then pulled out his cell phone, pushing the autodial for Matthew.

“Hello, sir. Shall I start the band playing?”

“No. You wanna go have eight or nine drinks with me?”

“Trouble, sir?”

“Oh yeah. You don’t have to go drinking if you don’t–”

“I trust you’re buying, sir?”

“Oh yeah.”

It took less than fifteen minutes to meet up, in the bar across from the IHOP on State Route Sixteen, in the back roads behind the worlds. It was a popular hangout for Brownies and other urban spirits and daemons. And in this case, a popular place for a Locus to get drunk on well drinks. “I just… I feel like an idiot,” Benjamin said, looking into the bottom of his glass. “You know what the worst thing is?”

“Having a Brownie say he told you so?”

“Worse.” He waved his hand, at least somewhat drunk. “Much worse.”

“What, then?”

“Tomorrow I’m going to go to work, and I’m going to have her stupid blocks thrown in my face over and over again! I mean, for weeks we’ve been building up neighborhoods all around her dumb — who even… I mean… who wants to live their life bounded by four streets? We have a world open to us!”

“It hurts,” Matthew said. “But you’ll get over it, sir.” His voice was soft. “You’ll even begin to understand her with time — understand the difference between your mortal life and your life as a Locus. Understand the ways–”

“You know what? Screw the Djinni of the Block! Screw her to the wall!”

Matthew sighed. “Get it all out, sir. You don’t want to let this affect your work.”

“The Hell I won’t let this affect my work! She used me!”

Matthew blinked. “Sir, there’s no conceivable way she used you.”

“Of course she did! She said she wanted Neighborhoods and the Block to work more closely together! She got what she wanted and she dropped me like… like butter!”

“You’re drunk, sir. And that made no sense.”

“It makes sense to me!”

“No one drops butter, sir.”

“Shut up! She’s not going to get away with this!”

Matthew blinked and looked at his employer. “Sir, I beg you to just drop this quietly.”

“No! Screw her! She wants the — she wants the block to replace the neighborhood! That’s what she wants! Well screw her! Neighborhoods are about something! Blocks are about… geography! No, we’re going to do something.” A light began to burn in the drunk Locus’s eyes. “We’re going to do something fantastic.”

“We… we are, sir?”

“Absolutely. We’re going to reclaim the neighborhood. We’re going to make it what it used to be! And it’s not going to have anything to do with her blocks.”

Matthew slowly looked down. “Of course we are, sir. But sir… do be warned. The actions of the Locii have impact. And even they can’t be certain what those actions will be.”

“Maybe. But I know one thing’s for sure.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Jen is not going to like this.”

Matthew sighed. “That seems certain, sir.”

Unfortunately for everyone involved, when Benjamin got his mind set on a grudge, he got his mind set on it. Now, time is an odd thing to Locii. I can say that he worked his plans over several weeks or even months, and it makes perfect sense from his point of view. But from the point of view of the world… well, history can show that the trends and movements he intended extend back decades through history. The universe has to cover for Locii, after all, lest it all become too obvious. So it’s hard to say how quickly the City Planner called the Neighborhood Coordinator into her office, except to say that enough time had passed that said City Planner? Was pissed.

“Sit down,” Isabella Hima said to Benjamin after he entered.

Benjamin sat. “You called?” he asked.

“Yeah, I called. You’re screwing with my cities, boy, and I want it stopped.”

Benjamin arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t play cute with me, child.” Isabella’s eyes flashed, with the sound of distant thunder — the sound a fully loaded semi made when it thundered across a bridge into a city. “People are moving out of the city. They’re citing crime, and danger, and congestion. They’re blaming bad neighborhoods.”

Benjamin nodded. “I know.”

“You know?”

“But you shouldn’t be mad.”

“In what universe shouldn’t I be mad. They’re leaving my cities!”

“Are they?” Benjamin smiled a bit. “They’re moving into the suburbs. Building new communities, bound by lifelines of road and steel into the heart of your cities. They have their neighborhoods they live in, but they work and play and shop in your cities.”

Hima narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to tell me you’re doing me a favor?”

Benjamin chuckled. “Of course I am. These ‘bedroom communities?’ They usually end up organizing as cities themselves. Or they’re part of the ‘greater metropolitan areas of their cities. They extend your reach. They extend your influence. Are you going to tell me you’re diminished by this?”

Hima’s eyes remained narrow. “So what do you get out of it?”

“What else? A resurgence of the neighborhood as the basic unit of society.”

“And a lot of people driving around. Commutes of a couple of hours, sometimes….”

Benjamin shrugged. “It’s a price to pay but a small one.”

Hima leaned forward. “And if I told you I was unhappy?”

Benjamin smiled a bit. “I’d feel badly, of course, Madame City Planner. But to be honest, there’s not a lot you could do.” He shrugged. “A city without neighborhoods is a collection of buildings, not a home. You need me. You need my good graces. If you drove all the neighborhoods out of your cities, they’d fall silent, while people would still form towns and villages and communities. The neighborhood would still survive.” He leaned forward. “But this way, you don’t have to be unhappy. The definition of city expands. Urban sprawl still contains the core urban elements. We both win.”

Hima paused a long moment, and then smiled. “True enough,” she said. “All right, Benjamin. We’ll see what this does for a while. But don’t kid yourself. If you became my enemy, your existence would be miserable.”

“Then let’s hope I am never your enemy, ma’am.”

Hima chuckled. “All right. Good day, Benjamin.”

Benjamin stepped out of the office. He felt pretty good. He wasn’t sure how this meeting was going to go, but–

“Are you seriously this petty?”

Benjamin paused.

The Djinni of the Block was standing in the outer office, staring at him.

“Hello, Jen,” he said amiably.

“I’m serious. You were so pissed off because I wasn’t what you expected you decided to drive humanity out of the city neighborhoods and into the suburbs?”

Benjamin shrugged. “I think I’m upholding the honor and responsibility of my office and my aspect the best way I know how.”

“By encouraging chunks of major cities to become demilitarized zones? By remaking humanity into commuter culture? All just to spite me?” She shook her head. “God, you’re so immature.”

“You’re the one who assumes this is all about her.” Benjamin smiled a bit more.

“I don’t assume anything, Benjamin. And you know it.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what this is supposed to accomplish, though. Suburbs still have streets and cross streets. They’re made up of blocks, just like cities are.”

“Yeah, but those blocks lack density.” Benjamin smiled a bit. “One block won’t usually have homes and schools and stores on it. They’re long streets of houses and yards, and a few blocks away there’s the school, and the grocery store is a few blocks in the other direction — and oh hey, there’s the KMart down the way….”

Jen snorted. “Meaning?”

“Meaning your streets and cross streets? They’re just waypoints in the suburbs, Jen. They’re just navigational aids so the pizza guy can find your house.” He shrugged. “Sorry.”

“I’m sure you are,” she said. “I’m sure you are.” And she turned and walked out.

Only this time, Benjamin was smiling when she did it.

And I could end the story here, I suppose — it answers the question. Thanks to pettiness and jurisdiction and a newcomer to the world of the Locii the suburbs rose and humanity would drive hours to get to its urban work. But that isn’t quite the end of the story. Because as we’ve said before, every action of the Locii has profound affect upon the world, and when a Locus is stymied, they find another way to make their point. And that’s what eventually leads our Neighborhood Coordinator to one more office — this time, to the Lord of the Road.

“Hey,” the Lord said, shaking Benjamin’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Yeah,” Benjamin said, “You too.” But the Neighborhood Coordinator didn’t look happy.

“Do you want me to get some coffee? Maybe some soda?”

“No. No thank you.”

“So. What can I do for you?”

“I’m not sure. But we have a problem.”

The Lord frowned. “We do?”

“Yes.” Benjamin sighed. “Neighborhoods are suffering. People aren’t shopping locally. They’re driving to WalMart in another town. Doing one big grocery run every couple of weeks. They’re…” He shrugged. “They’re not coming together. They’re not getting to know their neighbors or going to the community centers together.”

The Lord nodded somberly. “I know. But that doesn’t mean we have a problem. It means you do.”

“Well, yes, but–”

“Look, I feel for you, Coordinator. I really do. But when people began to gravitate out of the cities — but not return to towns — then they created a borderland. And they started living out of their cars. They spend hours in their cars. And they get used to them. They can’t run home for lunch, or down to the local cafe. And the stress of work and the stress of commute means either they stay at home or when they go out, it’s as simple to go out across town as across the street. This is the culture that’s formed around their lives and their livelihoods. This is the nature of a culture that uses transportation as its most basic tool.” He shrugged. “it’s nothing personal, but people like going to the Mall, or WalMart, or the Longhorn. They like going to the big theater with the surround sound and sixteen movies even if it’s a half hour away while the local theater’s five minutes. The world reflects their preferences. And if I benefit, that’s good for me. And if you don’t, I’m sorry but there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Sure,” Benjamin said, “Well, I had to say my piece, right?”

“Of course. And look — the neighborhood’s hardly dead. There’s still plenty of places where it flourishes. I have every confidence you’ll bring it back in some new form.”

“Yeah. Of course.” Benjamin stood. And paused, seeing a picture on the Lord’s desk.

“Oh, you noticed her?” The Lord smiled. “My girlfriend. She’s amazing. You should meet her sometime.”

“We’ve met,” he said quietly. “I’m surprised you… have things in common, though.”

“Are you kidding?” He grinned. “Get us off the highway, and everything I do comes back to blocks. Heh — you know what she told me? She said that in the end, the street and its cross street is the ultimate navigational aid. It’s what tells the pizza man where your house is!”

“Yeah,” Benjamin said. “She’s right about that.”

And Benjamin left the office, and went down to the street. He handed his token to Fred, and nodded to those on their way to Psychopomp Station. He said hi to the regulars and he settled into his seat. Maybe it was time to do a big PTA thing — get people in the communities back into schools. Or recycling. Recycling was always big. Maybe start a new ‘keep our community beautiful’ campaign. There were lots of ideas.

And besides, that always brought out volunteers. Maybe cute ones.

But not oval glasses and patchouli. He was so off that. He was more into piercings and musk, now.

The bell rang, and the trolley rolled out. Off to another day, and another neighborhood.

Why is there a disconnect between Art and Industry? Why can art not be “useful?” Why can’t industry “inspire?”

More correctly, why are few cases where they overlap the exception and not the rule?

It’s a good question, and one I’m happy to answer. It also leads us to our first myth callback, because we actually touched on this, at least briefly, back on July 9, when we answered the question Why can we walk past beautiful artwork without noticing it?.

The answer, as you’ll recall, involved a union dispute.

And that brings us to today’s myth.

We know already that the daemons are the incarnate spirits of the world, of concept and drive. We know that the eudaemons are those daemons who are helpful and inspirational, who want humanity to reach farther and better. We know that the kakodaemons are the malevolent daemons, who hurt and hinder humanity for their own dark ends. And we know that the muses are those eudaemons who inspire artistic achievement. They’re not the only eudaemons (or kakodaemons, for that matter) involved in creative endeavor, but to be blunt they get the most press. We’ve heard of them. Bad poets describe seventeen year old girls they want to sleep with as “their muse.” We use them as metaphors for everything from Yoko Ono to the horse Jim Morrison shot into his veins to the prostitute Van Gogh gave a chunk of ear to. They get good press.

We also know that other spirits, embodiments, nymphs, eudaemons and kakodaemons are involved in other human endeavors, of all varieties. One of the more prominent of these daemon races was the themisii — the daemons of Good Order. To them went the rightness of Order, law, divine justice and customs. Hand in hand with this were the concepts of duty, of loyalty, and of following regulations.

Sadly, it was a themisad who came up with ISO-9001 Certification. But there is evidence she was a malevolent kakodaemon, not a helpful eudaemon.

The themisii were named for Themis, one of the oldest of Goddesses, one of the very first of the Titans and one of the few to be embraced by the Olympians who came later. Themis was one of the first wives of Zeus, and one of the few his reputedly jealous wife Hera got along with (in part because Themis represented Natural Law, bore the Fates from Zeus, and in general was bad to cross, in part because Themis was kind to Hera and helped raise her up and establish the customs that Hera would later embody, and in part because Themis’s BFF was Nemesis, the primordeal goddess of inevitable and inexorable divine retribution, and anyone who dissed Themis was in for a world of hurt no deity, mortal or anything in between could stand before.

Which is why the counterpart of the themisii are the nemesii, the daemons of fucking you over eight ways from Sunday until you actively yearned for a sweet release of death they weren’t about to give you. So, on the one hand you have Good Order, and on the other hand you have Unimaginable Pain. Everyone with me? Goooooood.

You might think that the nemesii are kakodaemons, dedicated to malevolence. But as we have stated before, almost no concept is unreservedly bad, even as almost no concept is unreservedly good. For the most part, the nemesii are hard working balancers of the divine books. Someone does something staggeringly stupid and offensive to the very firmament, and a nemesid heads out and makes him suffer, proportionately. Look, someone has to be the heavy.

But some nemesii are indeed kakodaemons. They have sworn themselves to a more malevolent path, following the dark Master of the kakodaemons far from the sight of man or civilized company, working in concert to sow chaos — a dichotomy that they manage to make work all too well. And with them, some themisii are kakodaemons, even as some muses are, and so forth. You will always have the obverse to any coin, after all.

One thing that some people have wondered, of course, is where the kakodaemons come from. After all, if they’re not actually organized by race, the way so many fantasists seem to think they should be — oh yes, all the Orcs are evil and all the Elves are good, I’m just sure that’s so despite the fact that half the Elves seem to be gigantic dicks half the time. No, there’s no such thing as a good Orc who just wants to stay home, till the blasted soil and paint nude pictures of what to him are comely Orc women. Don’t be a fool! — then there must be some kind of choice made. Some kind of transition.

And the question of the disconnect between Art and Industry is as good an excuse to tell that story as any I can think of.

Before the union dispute that caused the creation of the kharites, the separation of art from artistic appreciation, the rise of sports and reality television and the potential destruction of humanity, there were a number of areas where muses and the spirits of industry would work together. After all, just because something was going to be practical didn’t mean it couldn’t be beautiful. And just because something was inspirational and glorious didn’t mean there could be no function. One of these partnerships began when Urania Adler, muse under the original Urania and specialist in structures and sculptures, began working with Auxesia Phillips, themisad of Good Order and specialist in barn raising and other community development.

Urania Adler and Auxesia Phillips got along very well. Urania’s mind was well organized, given over to numbers and figures and ingenious kludges. Auxesia was a good engineer, of course, but she was also given to elaboration and exaltation. The two began to work on inspiring humanity to construct buildings. Practical buildings like granaries, community buildings like theaters, and even temples and other places of higher philosophical thought.

Now, Auxesia Phillips had another partner, of course. She was a themisad, which meant she had at least an informal working relationship with a nemesid. This nemesid was Adrastia Young, a beautiful young nemesid, known for being more shy than most. It was intimidating at first to be partnered with Auxesia Phillips — the blond haired, blue eyed themisad was outgoing and personable, always able to make friends in a crowd. But ‘Auxy’ made Adrastia feel welcome, and good about herself. She considered Adrastia a partner and a useful resource, instead of just calling upon her when she came across a rules violation that needed someone’s day messed up. And she called her ‘Drace,’ which honestly Adrastia thought was adorable.

It is perhaps understandable that Drace Young would develop feelings for Auxy Phillips. Certainly, after twenty years together, it’s almost certain she would.

When Auxy and Urania Adler began working together, Drace didn’t think much about it. Auxy had worked with other daemons before, and no doubt she would again. And, while the bespectacled redhaired Urania was certainly cute, most objective judges wouldn’t put her over Drace herself. Both were probably a few notches below Auxy, but that’s the nature of themisii sometimes. And besides, the work was fun.

But more and more, Drace found herself left out.

First it was just Auxy asking Drace’s opinion less. Which made sense — too many cooks and all that. Then, it was arriving to start work only to discover that Auxy and Urania were already well into the workday. More than once they were wearing the same clothes they had worn the day before, even. Drace found herself sitting to the side while the two worked more and more closely, clearly having a ball.

After a while, Drace took to taking walks. After all, there was no reason to hang around and watch Auxy and Urania making plans and inspiring mortals to both art and dedication to duty. She took to walking the fields and grounds, along the edges of the towns or cities where the muse and themisad were working.

One afternoon, she made her way down to a broad meadow. And there she met the nymph of that meadow — one of the rare leimakids, called Divia. Divia greeted her warmly and showed her the hospitality of her home, and asked the nemesid what was wrong.

“It… it’s nothing,” Drace said.

“Well, it must be something,” Divia said. “You’re certainly unhappy, and last I knew that needed a cause.” Which isn’t always the case, of course, but this was some time before the quantification of clinical depression.

And slowly, with the application of a decent amount of cheap rum, Drace opened up to the nymph. Half without understanding it herself, she outlined the wonderful life she had before Urania Adler showed up, and the ways that it had all been disrupted by the muse, and how Drace felt tossed aside and alone.

Divia frowned. “Oh, that’s so unfair,” she said. “You should do something about that.”

Drace blinked. “What can I do?” she asked.

“You’re a spirit of divine retribution. By nature, you can retribute, right?” Divia smiled.

“It’s not that simple,” Drace said. “Auxy doesn’t owe me anything. I never told her how I felt, and she never swore to cleave to me. Just because I want to break Urania Adler, throw her from the cliffs to the rocks below, and laugh as she is crushed and broken at the base forevermore doesn’t mean I can.”

Divia snorted. “It should.”

Drace shrugged, helplessly. “That’s not how the rules work.”

“Then you should work inside the rules.” Divia smiled, wickedly. “You can enforce the rules and regulations, even when it disrupts the spirit of what is being done. So, you can sow contention in the work camps, among the humans. They will argue, things will get slowed down, and a wedge will form between Urania’s artistic impulse and Auxesia’s orderly impulse.”

Drace’s eyes grew wide. “I… I couldn’t do that,” she said. “That would be wrong. An abuse of the power entrusted to me.”

“But a legal abuse,” Divia pressed. “It would be simple, really.”

Drace shook her head quickly. “I couldn’t! I couldn’t. How could you even suggest such a thing?”

Divia slowly smiled. “How do you think?” she asked.

Drace’s eyes grew wide. “You’re a kakodaemon?” she asked, backing up and leaning forward, preparing to lash out. Which would be pretty one sided, as Drace was the embodiment of divine retribution and Divia, kakodaemon or not, was the nymph of a field. While both were potent in their own way, Drace had all the advantage when it came to asskicking.

Divia smiled more broadly. “Have I broken a rule, then? Do you get to attack me purely on the basis of my opinion? Why can I be struck and your little rival Urania not?”

That brought Drace up short. Divia had opened her home to Drace, and extended hospitality. Just because the leimakid was a kakodaemon, dedicated to malevolence, didn’t mean Drace could be rude. Besides, Divia hadn’t done anything yet.

“I should leave,” Drace said, after slowly relaxing her combat stance. “I apologize if I acted rudely, but I was startled.”

“I have taken no offense,” Divia said, smiling a bit. “And if you wish to leave, please feel free. But consider this — I can easily conceive of ways you could drive away this… muse and reclaim your beloved Auxesia Phillips for yourself. So the question is… do you want to continue to feel miserable, while doing nothing? Or do you want to seize control of this situation and do something?”

Drace shivered, looking down. “What could I do?” she asked.

“You could come with me to a place where you could make a choice,” Divia said. “You could become like me. And you could begin to act on your own behalf, instead of always kowtowing to the needs of others.”

And Drace was tempted. She was really tempted, because she could see no way to get rid of Urania, and she knew she was actively unhappy now.

But she looked down once more and said “I can’t. Thank you, but no.”

Divia shrugged, smiling. “No problem. I’m not going anywhere. If you should change your mind, come back and see me and I’ll help you take care of it. And good luck, nemesid. Remember that you are strong, and when you are crossed your wrath is legendary.”

And Drace left, somewhat hurriedly. She was concerned over just how tempted she had been by Divia’s offer. She wanted to find Auxy and discuss it with her — and maybe even with Urania. Maybe… maybe this was the time to come clean over everything, and perhaps then something could be done.

When she arrived, there seemed to be a celebration going on. There were a few other eudaemons present, and even a favored humor or two, and of course there were Auxy and Urania.

And their arms were around each other.

“Drace!” Auxy said, bounding over to the nemesid with delight. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!”

“You are?” Drace asked, her heart leaping.

“Yes! You’ve been my dearest friend for so long — you had to be here!”

“For… for what?” Drace asked, her sudden heart leap being replaced by a sudden nosedive.

“Nia and I are expecting a child! We’re going to live together always!”

Drace was shocked into silence. Which Auxy took as approval. And you may be surprised too — after all, as near as can be told, Auxesia Phillips and Urania Adler are both women. However, it is always a mistake to overly ascribe human characteristics to daemons. They were very closely related, and it was certainly within their capabilities to be far more than ‘male’ or ‘female’ with one another. “Its going to be wonderful! Nia looks beautiful already, don’t you think? And soon–”

“You two are… you’re… together?” Drace asked.

“Yes. Oh, Drace, I should have talked with you about it, but it all happened in such a whirlwind and there was never a good time and besides I know that you’re not really comfortable with subjects like that so I figured I would wait until I saw where all this went — and now I have! We’re going to take leave for the term of the pregnancy and we’re going to try to conceive a second child — this one on me — so together we can–”

“That’s… that’s wonderful, Auxy,” Drace said, her face numb. “It really is. I’m…. happy for you both.”

“Drace?” Auxy asked, brow furrowed. “Are you all right?”

“I… not really. I’ve been ill. I might need to go away for a while and be treated.”

Auxy’s eyes grew wide. “Ill? And me prattling on about all this. Drace — what’s the matter? Can I help?”

Drace felt her stomach clench. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You and Urania have a good party, all right? I’ll see you soon.”

“All right. And thank you, Drace. I’ve never been so happy.”

“I can see that,” Drace whispered.

As the sun dropped down below the trees and twilight began to spread across the land, Adrastia Young entered the domicile of the leimakid Divia once more.

“I’m in,” she said simply.

The journey was long and involved. Divia brought Adrastia to a crack in the very Earth, which they travelled down and in. They walked a very long time, descending in places, ascending in others. Drace thought she was going to one of the various Underworlds, but it became clear that this was a very different place indeed. A place of iron laden stone that looked blood red in the light. A place where chill winds blew. A place where dark figures danced to darker songs. She could hear cackling and screaming from the darkness as they finally entered the great hall, and there Adrastia saw the Master of the Kakodaemons.

How to describe this creature of shadow? Blackness and inkiness spread along his skin like separate creatures, and the angles and joints of his body did not seem to match up. His face was at once compelling and repulsive, asymmetric at best but with a magnetism that made the young nemesid shiver. His eyes seemed to glow with stardust. His fingers seems stained with blood.

“Hello, little nemesid,” he purred in the gloom. “I’m so happy to see you.”

Adrastia shivered. “I should go,” she said. “This was a mistake.”

“Of course it wasn’t a mistake,” the Master said, leaning forward, his spine bending in an alien fashion, as rectilinear and elongate as a serpent’s. “You were distressed at the muse coming in, and sliding around your beloved. Blinding her with words and pretty phrases, and distracting her from the work that needed to be done. Yes?”

Adrastia looked away, unable to face the creature. “Yes,” she said softly. “She… they’re taking nearly a year or more away from the work now. Auxy’s blinded by this… creature.”

The Master leaned back, tendrils of his hair — or something, extending down to brace his head against his chair. “Mm. You’re right, of course. And it’s tragic. But that’s hardly the core of the problem, my dear.”

“It… is?”

“Of course.” The Master darted back forward, lunging as if to bite Adrastia’s head off. Despite herself she shrieked, but the Master paid it no mind. “It’s the humans, Adrastia Young.”

“The humans? What… what do they have to do with it?”

“Everything. Without them, the muses would have no call to interfere with the daemons of Good Order. Without them, the daemons of the world would be free to explore and enjoy life and each other’s company, able to build a world without having to serve some primate who neither understands what we’re sacrificing for them nor has the capacity to care! Without humans, you and your themisad partner would be free to spend your days together — the way that muse has usurped her way into doing.”

Adrastia’s mind whirled. It was incredible, but of course the Master was right. Humanity demanded inspiration and industry, and of course the daemons had to hop-to and do what they demanded. It wasn’t fair — and it led to unnatural combinations. Like the combination of Art and Industry — clearly, the buildings and other engineering works Auxesia Phillips was responsible for were best served by being functional and practical. Urania’s influence just added time and money and useless fripperies, and all on behalf of the humans! Without them, Auxy could simply get her work accomplished and be done with it.

“Do you want to do something about them?” the Master purred.

“Yes,” Adrastia whispered.

“Do you swear yourself to me?”

“Yes,” Adrastia said, her voice firmer now.

“Now and forever?”

“Yes!” Adrastia shouted, her eyes burning now.

The Master chuckled. “I accept,” he said, and with one more lunge forward he tore open her chest and consumed her heart.

It was many weeks or months before Adrastia really recovered, of course. She had a new heart, given to her by her Master. A black thing that pumped a bile that flowed through the newly minted kakodaemon’s veins. And Adrastia began to learn things. New avenues of power, and new ways of looking at things. An animal cunning and an intellect untempered by wisdom. While up in the light Auxesia and Urania had their children. They were a new kind of daemon, called kothars — builders and craftsmen, engineers and inventors, the brilliant merging of the artistic and creative impulse with the practical and orderly impulse. The child Urania bore was called Lloyd. The child Auxesia bore was called Frank. And they were wise and and clever, and almost from birth they began to work, together and separately, to design new and exciting buildings of grace, beauty, strength and purpose.

And other Kothars followed — whether they too were the children of muses and themisii, I cannot answer, but it was clear that these productive and creative workers were well suited to the tasks set before them.

And so it was an autumn day, with the sun high and the air crisp, not far from a point in the real world where an elaborate construction was taking place — a perfect blend of the aesthetic and the utilitarian. I’m not sure what this place was — a hospital, perhaps. Or a school. Or something else entirely. It hardly matters, given what was to come. For this was the day when Adrastia Young, nemesid and partner to the themisad Auxesia Phillips, returned to her duties.

She walked now with slightly more swagger. Her clothes had more red in them, and they fit her better. She smiled more easily before, and seemed less shy. And satyrs, humans and daemons alike were drawn to her as she sauntered to where Auxesia and Urania were consulting on the proper way to inspire the humans to continue their work.

Auxy blinked. “Drace?”

Adrastia smiled languidly. “Well, you’re looking good Auxesia. Married life suits you. If that’s what this is, I mean. Hello, Urania.”

“I… thank you.” Auxy grinned, hopping up to embrace her old friend. “It’s been so long! I almost thought you weren’t coming back!”

“Oh, don’t be silly, silly.” Adrastia’s smile grew. “You can always count on me. So, what’s the current assignment? And when do I get to meet these children you were telling me about before I had to leave?”

And so the three talked, and laughed, and if anything it seemed even better than old times. Urania noticed the remarkable change in the nemesid’s attitude, but decided it wasn’t her place to speak. And Auxesia was so relieved — she had been afraid she had alienated and offended her old friend at the celebration the year before — she excused any differences in behavior out of hand. Besides, she had changed and grown so much in that year that she could hardly believe good old Drace hadn’t.

And good old Drace was all smiles and warmth, looking over the designs and plans and intentions and inspirations. And that night there was a celebration, where she met Lloyd and Frank and the other kothars. And all seemed perfectly well.

And the next morning she slid among the working humans, and she began to do her job. Only where before she sought to redress infraction and offense within the spirit of the project and intent, now she found her ammunition in the strict letter of the rules and laws. And so she began to punish those who stepped out of the bounds of proper workplace behavior — especially those who didn’t do things by the book to more easily facilitate the artistic side of the project. And workers, having the unseen and ineffable wrath of the nemesid visited upon them, were driven back, forced back on their ‘proper’ course, or even took sick or quit the project entirely.

Had Drace the eudaemon succumbed to the temptation to interfere with Urania and Auxy’s projects, she might have stopped there. But Adrastia the kakodaemon had been given a cunning, and so she went and worked her will on the other side… punishing other workers who pushed their work forward with no regard to the aesthetic demands of the position. Those who would make the structure plain and useful, with no soul or beauty. And so they too found themselves going out of their way to correct — or overly correct — their behavior, gilding the lily and losing time on the meat of the project.

And the humans involved began to quarrel. Those who had been burnt for missing regulations didn’t want to hear about the artistic concerns of those who were burnt for forgetting the beauty of the structure. Resentments began to form. Fights began to break out. More and more foremen were called to manage and contain the anger of the workers.

The muse and the themisad were at a loss to explain it. They tried to spread appropriate inspiration though the work camp, but if anything their efforts to inspire orderly behavior and artistic expression just added fuel to the fires. That night, Urania Adler sat outside the tent that she and Auxy called home there on the site.

Adrastia dropped next to her. “Hey sunshine,” she said. “Why so glum?”

“It was all going so well,” Urania said softly. “I don’t understand why things… boiled over today.”

Adrastia rested a hand on the muse’s shoulder. “Come, Urania,” she murmured. “You know Auxesia loves you. And you know she believes in this project.”

“I know.”

“I mean, you can’t blame her for being who she is, can you?”

Urania blinked, and looked up at the nemesid. “Excuse me?”

Adrastia smiled sadly. “Urania, she’s a themisad. The incarnation of Good Order. She is the perfect embodiment of punching a time clock and getting things accomplished on time and under budget. Of course on occasion that’s going to cause friction when it comes to art. I mean, art doesn’t really punch a time clock, does it?”

“Well… no, but….”

“And so it’s to be expected that sooner or later the humans she inspires will lose track of the real vision of the work. After all, to them it’s just some building. And honestly, in the end are they wrong?”

“Wh– of course they’re wrong,” Urania said, brow furrowed. “Art is more than just… just some casual frippery. Art gives meaning, and context. Art gives inspiration and hope and soul. That can’t just be cut out to make room for some arbitrary schedule!”

“Oh, come on,” Adrastia said. “You know that Auxy’s just doing her best to keep things on track. In the end, what’s more important? That the walls stay up or that they look pretty when they fall over?”

“It’s more than looking pretty,” Urania snapped.

“Okay, okay — forget I brought it up,” Adrastia said. “I’m sure you’re right and I’m sure Auxy will understand and agree.”

“She better,” Urania said. “Excuse me. I need some air.”

“You’re excused,” Adrastia said, smiling as she watched the muse leave.

“–understand why they’re fighting each other,” Auxesia said. “Honestly, Drace — you’re the spirit of retribution. Who do we need to strike down to get things moving again?”

“Well, it’s not really that simple,” Adrastia said to her old friend. “I mean, honestly this is probably to be expected. I mean, you can’t expect them to follow a plan that closely. Art demands a certain freedom of expression.”

“Freedom of expression?” Auxesia frowned. “We’re building a building, not painting a fresco. If the building collapses, the art goes with it! You have to build a foundation before you can be experimental above it!”

“Look, I’m sure that Urania will perfectly understand that the good order of the work needs to be followed before any showing off or artistic flourishes are thrown in. I mean, honestly — shouldn’t she just let you guide the project to its initial completion, and then let her artists pretty it up when we know it’s going to stand more than an hour?”

“It’s not that simple. Some of these plans are very elaborate, Adrastia.”

“Mm. I’m sure they are.”

“What does that mean?”

“Hm? Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Come on, Drace. It’s me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Adrastia sighed. “They’re only elaborate because she wanted you to make them more elaborate. I mean, what’s more solid? A simple, time honored design? Or some new and elaborate design that you think will stay up, if everything is just right….”

Auxesia rubbed her eyes. “This is a disaster. No wonder the humans are beginning to crack. We need to fix this. Right away.”

“Of course you do. And of course Urania is going to understand and go along with this.”

“She better,” Auxesia muttered.

Needless to say, the ‘serious discussion’ the themisad and the muse had the next day quickly became a full on screaming fit. A night’s contemplation, followed by the muse coming in ready to demand a reworking of the schedule for aesthetic concerns while the themisad was ready to demand setting artistic issues completely aside until the practical work was done, led to the pair screaming and throwing pottery at each other within two hours.

Adrastia watched from a distance, only taking time to wreak yet more surgical vengeance against the humans. This in turn only made the eudaemons angrier and angrier, as it was clear what should be done to save the work, only some people couldn’t see it.

Within the week, whether the eudaemons could see a resolution or not, the humans had a resolution of their own — the city elders pulled the plug on the project, leaving only the barest elements of the initial construction standing. They stand there today, a mixture of solid supports and unimaginable beauty, but lacking purpose or even the means of determining what the structure would have been used for in he first place.

But this is not the story of the building per se. Though it was a trigger point. Because the other muses and the other themisii gathered in the wake of the disaster, and what had been an argument between partners and lovers had become a free for all between two different unions.

Divorce, such as it was, was inevitable. And was supported by the sisters of both daemons. And in the divorce, it was made clear and explicit that art was all fine and good, but industry had more pragmatic concerns, and so the two would only touch on each other when absolutely necessary.

And the muses left going in one direction, and the themisii went in the other. And Urania Adler went with her sister muses, and Auxesia Phillips went in the other.

As for Lloyd, Frank and the kothars? They didn’t understand what their parents were on about, and ultimately they decided to make their own way in the world. And so they stepped forth, the perfect builders and craftsmen, and they found themselves in demand throughout the back ways and backstage areas of the world, constructing buildings of tremendous beauty and imagination resting on solid bedrock fundamentals. And some of that leaked through to the world as we know it, leading to that most artistic of engineering disciplines, architecture, truly continuing to be the bridge between the aesthetic and the pragmatic.

Adrastia went with Auxesia, of course. “Stupid cow,” she said to Auxy. “You’re better off without her.”

“Yeah,” Auxy said, staring out the window.

“Right! What’s our next project, then?’

“There isn’t one.”

Adrastia blinked. “Excuse me?”

“There isn’t a next project. I don’t want to do this any more.”

“But… but you can’t just stop,” Adrastia said, shocked. “You’re a themisad!”

“I don’t believe in good order any more. I don’t want to do this any more. Excuse me, Drace.”

And the themisad left, to seek out the Thesmophoros, the Law Bringer, who was responsible for the arbitration of the divine and the profane, the spiritual and the banal. And when she met with the Thesmophoros, she asked to be given some other role — something where she could put her natural order to good use without having to be creative in any way. Because she had truly loved Urania Adler, and the hole left in her heart was too big to simply wish away.

And the Thesmophoros took pity, and arranged for Auxesia to be the chief of staff for the Duke of Monotony, where no creative flashes ever broke through the day to day hum drum. And so Auxesia buried herself in these new, utterly banal tasks and soothed her pains there.

And Urania too sought the Thesmophoros, because she couldn’t imagine continuing her work with so much of her soul torn out, and she too was reassigned — in her case to the logistics end of the Marquis of Rainbows, keeping the various art supplies necessary to such work always at hand and full.

And the seeds were sown for the divisions between the muses and the themisii, along with the allies of both sides lining up. These divisions would grow, and complaints would grow with them, until they came to a flashpoint that led, ultimately, to the creation of the kharites, the division of artistic appreciation from art itself, and potentially to the destruction of the human race.

And Adrastia Young found herself alone. Having successfully driven Urania and Auxesia apart, she found herself without either of them. Auxesia hardly needed a partner to maintain the routine in the Estate of Monotony, after all. Which meant that far from getting her chance to truly, truly reconnect to the woman she was convinced she loved… she would never see Auxy again.

Needless to say, as a kakodaemon of inexorable divine retribution, Adrastia visited horrific vengence upon Divia. This was to be understood — kakodaemons were well known to turn on each other at the drop of a hat. But after that was done, as with all true kakodaemons, Adrastia could not blame herself for what happened. She was not capable of that level of personal responsibility. And as she dared not blame the Master and there was no use or vengeance to be taken in blaming either Urania or Auxesia, she elected to blame the humans who after all were at the center of it all.

She still blames us, to this day. And so she flits from place to place, boardroom to boardroom, college campus to garret to symposium. And where Art and Industry threaten to enter true collaboration, she quietly and surgically finds those regulations or rules that are being bent juuuust enough to justify her retribution. And with the singlemindeness of a goat and the subtlety of a weaver, she drives collaboration into committees and finally into collapse. Art, where it’s allowed at all, is a secondary concern following the real work being done. And when art is the point, anyone who tries to merge the practical or pragmatic with it has to cope with cries of “sellout” at the best.

But through it all, there remains those few humans, muses and themisii who manage, very very quietly, to work together. And sometimes they have a kothar helping them as well. So, while we don’t live in the paradise that the merging of art and industry could have given us, with every device and structure both beautiful and practical in a perfect dance and harmony, we do sometimes see an object or an edifice that is truly inspiring and truly pragmatic, with no way to tell where the aesthetics end and the utility begins. And when we see those isolated triumphs, he murmur to ourselves “there. That is what it is supposed to be. More things should be like that.”

But don’t murmur it too loudly. Adrastia Young has sharp ears, and when she gets your scent, she never, ever gives it up. The easiest thing to do is to continue to live in a world where ‘utilitarian’ and ‘artistic’ are antonyms.

This story was written on IM, actually, and was written jointly by action fiancee Wednesday White and I. In fact, the conversation you’re reading here is almost verbatim what we actually IM’d to one another. Needless to say, this story means a lot to me.

And, like many good myths, it does answer a question:

Why are there thunderstorms? And dust bunnies to boot?

This one means a lot to me. And it was well received — as evidenced by the following children’s book cover a ‘Tayley-Chan’ designed for it. Click for full sized — and it’s totally worth it:

One last thing. This story was tweaked very slightly for this version. A good man and a good friend was legitimately hurt by a bit included to be a bit silly the last time, and that’s not what this is for. The curse should be off this one, so when he rereads it (and I hope he does — he reads Banter Latte), I hope he’ll find it less discordant.

For Weds, and her for me, and now we share it once more with you: The Princess and the Wyverns.

*** *** *** ***

Would you think less of me if I asked you for a bedtime story?

What sort of bedtime story? I ask purely because… well, I was about to go to bed.

Something brief but reassuring. If you’re going to bed yourself, no worry.

Well, but I like reassuring. What nature of story? Or genre?

A fairy tale sort of thing. Princesses. That kind.

Hmmmmmm.

Plucky urchins are also acceptable.

Oooookay. Give me a couple of seconds to consider….

‘k. Thanks.

It’s just started raining here.

Envy. The rain gave up here about a day ago and it’s been warm for no good reason. Instead, we get birds. Birds and sunrise.

This is a driving rain. Hard rain on pavement, yet soft on grass. The kind of rain that washes the air as it slides to the ground.

The right kind.

Indeed.
Of course, you know why rain like that falls, don’t you?

No.

It’s because of the Viscountess of the Northwesterlies, of course.

I’m unfamiliar with her.

It’s convenient, then, that I’m telling you about her, isn’t it?

Indeed.

The Viscountess, as with her mother before her, and her mother before her, and her father before that (there being some confusion as to the proper description of a matrilineal line), is the lady of the estate of the Northwesterlies, a Cumulous sort of affair — which is a Latin word meaning heap, which derives from the Latin word cumulus, which is of course a number of clouds. Which perfectly describes the estate of the Northwesterlies, which are founded within absolute heaps of clouds.

And this is where the problem lies. You see, there is rather a lot of upkeep needed to keep layers upon layers of cloud clean and manageable and presentable. It’s rather a full time job even with an estate full of servants. And it takes dedication and concern not to make a right dingy mess of the whole affair.

(For the record? Clouds that aren’t properly kept up ultimately become the raw material of dust bunnies. Though it involves a certain purifying process as they go from sky to under the bed. Needless to say, no matter how pleasant a dustbunny might be, you wouldn’t want a cloudful of the raw stuff floating around the sky. For one thing, think of the poor allergy sufferers.)

(But dust bunnies cause allergies too, even from under the bed.)

(Yes. Now imagine if they were raining allergies down from the sky constantly. There isn’t enough Allerga in the world to handle that.)

(Eek. Indeed not.)

So. it’s an important duty, which is why a Viscountess was assigned to it generation after generation. And generally it went well, until the accession of her Right Honorable Lady, the Viscountessa Northwesterley Laurial.

Who, at about the time she took up the Viscountess’s tiara, was a right brat.

That’s allowed?

Well, that’s the problem with a matrilineal system. Sometimes a brat or three squeak through.

Eek. That’s not right.

It’s considered a step up from a patrilineal system, however, which seems to lead to total nutjobs.

Well, yeah. Boys.

Anyhow. Laurial was not know for her diligence to duty. Quite the opposite, really. She liked to lie about, watching Magic Mirrors (trashy programs at that), eating bon bons and letting paperwork pile up unattended for weeks at a time.

“I am the Viscountessa Northwesterley,” she was wont to say. “And I don’t eat peas if I don’t want to. I don’t have to make my bed if it doesn’t please me to do so. And as for cleaning the cumulus — I’m certain I have better things to do with my time.”

Which leads to downfall. (Although she’s right to refuse peas.)

Well, naturally it leads to downfall. Because obviously, dust and gunk began to clock up the cumulus. It became dingy and grey, not fluffy and white. The gentle slopes and rolling white fields became treacherous and slippery and full of portent.

Big, big clouds.

Big and dark and grey, with rumblings and flashes… you see… when you have bits of the dust and the like, underneath a bed, you get bunnies, which cause allergies but aren’t very harmful. There isn’t that much dust and gunk, after all. And dustbunnies can be taught several entertaining dances, and are noted connoisseurs of smooth sandwich spreads.

But in the Cumulus, you don’t have bits of dust. you have great heaping gobs of it, and you don’t get bunnies from gobs.

What do you get?

You get wyverns of grey smoke and dust, with flashing, hissing lightning stingers on their tails. Gigantic beasts, who think nothing of chomping up a person or three and wreaking havoc upon the countryside below. Beasts who wouldn’t care about the very finest of sandwich spread, and, if pressed, would take chunky anyway.

The unrefined.

Indeed.

Now, there were a goodly number of servants and peasants and artisans in the Cumulus before all this happened. The Northwesterlies were known for culture and hard workers, and they kept things clean. but Laurial had distracted them with orders and demands — she had them cooking for her and dancing for her entertainment and sewing her new clothes and rearranging the furniture and standing juuust right to improve Magic Mirror reception. And so none of the work that she was supposed to be responsible for was getting done, and the dust and gunk and goo was clogging things up and the clouds were getting greyer and greyer. Then one day, the wyverns began to rear their serpentine heads, hissing, their tails flashing with lightning that split down to the ground.

And the servants and artisans and peasants of the Northwesterlies looked up and saw the wyverns — saw them getting closer and getting stronger — and collectively said, “Oh, no freaking way.” And they got out of town as fast as they could.

Laurial, unfortunately, was sleeping late, as was her wont. So her first indication that she was suddenly alone in the Northwesterlies was when she woke up and discovered there was no breakfast made. Nor anyone to make it. And after a long period of grumbling and the breaking of the coffee maker — it’s not particularly easy to figure out a coffee maker when you’ve never actually used one one before — Laurial put on her traveling clothes and tromped out to the estate to start slapping people and otherwise demanding a reckoning.

Of course, she didn’t get nine feet out of her castle before she discovered that A) there were no people to slap, B) there were wyverns, and C) the wyverns were entirely too large and hostile-looking to slap.

And so, like any smart person who’s discovered she’s way in over her head, she ran into her castle and locked the door. She didn’t think to ask the wyverns if they knew how to work the coffee maker, which is something of a pity since wyverns pull espresso like champs. But that’s neither here nor there.

She probably only had a basic drip machine, anyhow.

Almost certainly. And she’d broken it besides.

So. Trapped in her castle, Laurial had an opportunity to consider what she had done wrong up to that point. She figured out relatively quickly that the lack of cloud maintenance and cleanliness had led to the rise of the Wyverns, but as the people who were trained in cleaning the dust away had all run away, and the Viscountess herself had never received more than the most formal of training with a feather duster (far more for ceremonial purpose than anything else), it looked like things were going to get bad.

So she’s toast?

Well, not yet. It’s a good castle, you see. Made of solid dolomite — and that’s one bad mother building material. So the Wyverns grew and grew outside, feeding off the dust and gunk that continued to collect and spread, slamming their lightning tails, smashing the buildings of the estate other than the castle, cracking lightning stings down to the ground below — generally making a mess of things.

But if she hides, and the people are gone, it’s not going to be a sustainable situation.

Well, the story isn’t done yet — and besides, the dust that gathers comes from all over the world. So who knows how much will collect or how many wyverns will rise up out of the gunk or how big and mean they’ll get — especially if they have no espresso machines.

Forty.

Forty wyverns?

Yes!

It’s a big number.

Mmm. Yes. Yes, that sounds about right. And of course, forty wyverns would cause a lot of trouble, not only for what was left of the Northwesterlies, but for all the other clouds and indeed for the whole world.

And Laurial knew it. And knew she had to do something. For her land. For her castle, for the world.

But mostly because she only had so much food in that place, and besides, who wants somewhere between one and forty wyverns tearing up the hedges and howling at the doors all day and night?

After a while she got on person-to-person crystal ball service, to try and call in some favors. But, because she’d been such a brat, none of the other duchies, counties or earldoms wanted to give her the time of day. They figured so long as the wyverns stuck to the Northwesterlies, why should they worry? Which was short sighted of them, but what can you do?

It’s what they get for bringing up a narcissistic viscountess.

Well, there is that, certainly.

Finally, however, Laurial managed to get a call in to the Spirit of the South Wind herself. Southy had gone to finishing school with Laurial, and while she didn’t much care for brats in general or Laurial in particular, she had been raised to be courteous and helpful to all people.

In the annals of the kingdoms of the sky, such people are called “suckers” or “soft touches.”

Laurial explained what had happened to Southy, and to her credit didn’t try to shift more than one third to one half of the blame on the townsfolk and peasants who had left.

Well, they did leave.

On pain of being stung and devoured.

Details.

Southy listened. She considered carefully, and she said, “All right, Laurial. It all comes down to getting your clouds nice and clean, so that the dust and gunk and the wyverns are all cleaned away.”

“But how can I clean the Northwesterlies all by myself?” Laurial moaned. “It takes thousands of workers and peasants to do that. With my people fled, I would have to hire migrant workers and strike breakers, and I think the AFL-CIO’s just waiting for an excuse to unionize my whole operation. What can I do?”

And Southy took pity on Laurial, and sent a zephyr to deliver a very special flute to the girl.

Flute?

Yes. Well, more like a pennywhistle or a musical pipe.

So, not classical.

No.

“Take this to the very highest tower of your dolomite castle,” Southy said to Laurial. “Once there, step onto the roof. It will expose you to the wyverns, so you must be very brave. And then, begin to play. Play with all your might, and the flute’s magic will whisk away all the dust and dirt and gunk, and the wyverns with it. Your lands will once more be clean.”

And Laurial took the flute, and climbed the many many circling stairs up the tallest tower of her castle. Higher and higher she climbed, counting the stairs as she went to help keep her bravery awake. For she knew that at the top, she would have to see the wyverns once more.

And their taste in sandwich is suspect.

Wait. They have a coffee maker, but no elevator? The tower is inaccessible?!

Yes, well, it was very old, and not built with progressive ideals in mind. Besides, there was a service elevator, but even after all this, Laurial was enough of a brat to not want to take a “service” anything.

And finally, she reached the top, and climbed out onto the roof. And the wyverns (there were thirty-eight at this point, so you can see just how close to disaster we had come) circled and rumbled, their tails flashing lightning.

But in perhaps the first truly selfless moment of Laurial’s life, she did not flee. Instead, she lifted the flute to her lips, and she began to play.

And from the flute came a great torrent of wind and water — water that purified all it touched, and wind that could blow apart even the mightiest of dust wyverns. And as she played a great flood of water and wind frothed all around her, down the castle and over the cumulus, washing away the dust and dirt and gunk that had made the clouds so dark grey, and filtering down into droplets that fell from the sky, forming a driving, hard rain down to Earth. The kind of rain that scrubs the very air as it falls, and lands into mud puddles and slick streets below.

Of course, the wyverns fought back, so even as the rain fell there were flashes of lightning all through the clouds from their tails.

And when the song was done, Laurial looked around and realized that her dark, dingy, grey cumulus had once again become pure, snowy white, as far as the eye could see.

But she also saw that aside from her castle, there was no sign of any other building anywhere. The estate was gone, completely. And she knew that her former servants would never come back — that in the end it would be up to the Viscountess herself to wash clean the clouds, with the song she played on her flute.

And even today, you see some days when the white clouds turn grey and dingy. And you sometimes hear the rumble of the thunderous voices of the wyverns. Because even though Viscountesses come and Viscountesses go, in every boy and girl there lives a little bit of a brat, and sometimes you let even the most important things slide. But when things look darkest for the northwesterlies, the Viscountess still ascends to the top of her tower, and plays her song, and washes the clouds clean with purest rain.

If everyone is gone, how do they make more viscountesses?

Oh, there are arranged marriages and the like. The Kingdom must go on, of course. The current viscountess is actually married to the Earl of Moss. He’s not a bad sort, as it goes. A bit dull, but he appreciates a good cup of tea. And he had a coffee maker of his own to contribute.

Okay. That works.

And, listening out my window, it sounds like the rain has gone down to a drizzle, which makes me think the viscountess has finished her night’s cleanings and rainings, and probably headed to bed. And it occurs to me I should probably do the same, and so should you.

Probably, yeah. Thank you. Dude.

Dude?

I had figured on Cinderella or something. Dude.

Another time.

Channing asks:

What really is the deal with gasoline prices? Half the time there’s some kind of patent price-jacking going on to coincide with major travel weekends, but the other half it’s like they’ve got trained chickens selecting the price and then the media submits some kind of half-hearted unconvincing post hoc reason as to why they are what they are, either up or down. Who’s really at the switch? And what do they want?

Which is a pretty elaborate ‘question,’ but one I’m going to distill down to the following: what is the real deal with gasoline prices?

More as always after the break, but first, a note on the writing. The first couple of myths were fusions of essays (with digressions) and immediate stories (with digressions). These had their fans, but a number of people thought the combination made them too long and too uneven. And in the end, I am an entertainer, and if my spastic movements look more like a seizure than a dance, it’s time to go back to the soft shoe.

Last week’s myth was entirely story (with digressions), and it went over rather well indeed. This week’s is entirely essay (with digressions), and we’ll see how it does.

Please note, there will continue to be some essays and some fusions, as that’s how my brain works and some myths will require it.

Let me know what you think!

*** *** *** ***

Talking about the price of something in an economic sense is not the same as discussing the price of something, of course. In the world of myth and what-might-be, there are many prices that don’t increment in yen, in dollars, in euros, or in any other currency. The price of one perfect moment of love can’t be paid with a credit card. The price of a lifetimes of sunsets watched hand in hand with someone who understands doesn’t get discounted during the Christmas season. The price of one life can be paid in cash, but the cost is steeper than the purchaser might understand.

Naturally, when we look at the mythic world, the difference between the price of something and the economic price of something are clearly and sharply delineated. The prices of things have to be determined individually, but generally come down to will, to creativity, to sacrifice, and to pain.

The economic prices of things are creatures, furred with rocklike muscles, called mercants. Ranging from a foot in height to a towering nine feet, depending on the health of the mercant, they live in tribes or herds along the Mercantile plains that were named for them. And once upon a time they were left to compete and forage all on their own, with the strong competing and decimating the weak. This, naturally enough, led to inflation and scarcity for goods and services.

With time and the needs of mankind, a Locus rose up — as they often do — to see after the health of the mercants. This Locus was a man, handsome and charming, known by many names by many people. Some call him Adam, some Marc, some Mammon, some Alan. Regardless of what familiar name he might adopt with a given person, he is the Manager of the Economy, and his is the responsibility to ensure that young and small mercants have as much of a chance to thrive as possible while also making sure that the robust and healthy giants among the mercants are both allowed to exert their greater strength, maintain their greater health, and in general work together with the smaller mercants instead of eating them.

To that end, the Manager of the Economy climbed the great Mountains of Stored Value, and there he sought out the oreads that lived within — an oread being a nymph of the mountains and stone even as a dryad is a nymph of the trees or a neriad a nymph of the waters. One by one he courted oreads of gold, silver, copper and other metals today considered valuable, and he courted and seduced them, one after another, and sired upon them children. These children were a new kind of nymph, the numisma, and these first children were the so called hard numisma — children born of metal and stone and intrinsic value. They grew into fine women, strong and wise, and they spread through the herds of mercants, grooming them and cultivating them, spreading the will of the Manager of the Economy, preventing at least some of the violence, letting small mercants — representing the price of regional goods, of specialty items and niche products and the like — grow healthy and flourish, and helping the more powerful mercants work together to create a strong and healthy society.

And in the world, prices largely grew stable. A healthy mercant’s product price would reflect both the target consumer’s ability to pay and the producer’s ability to make a profit, which could then be turned to purchasing other mercants’ products, which in turn helped cultivate health and prosperity among all the herds.

And so the Economy grew and flourished, and some mercants became civilized, even as the numisma grew stronger. But as the mercants spread and grew stronger, the numisma found themselves struggling to keep up with the demand. Humanity’s ranks were swelling, and the hard numisma, as strong as they were, couldn’t keep up with all the products they were consuming and creating, threatening the health of the mercant society and the mercants themselves.

The Manager frowned when he realized this was happening. He loved his daughters dearly, and felt they were doing all that they could, but he knew that the day would come when they were overrun, and the mercants would descend into economic and very bloody anarchy. And so he met with his advisors, and with the numisma themselves, and they realized the only thing to do was increase the numbers of the numisma, letting the hard numisma become supervisors and regional managers and the like while a new generation took up the fieldwork in the Mercantile Plains.

And so the Manager met with his fellow Loci, and made arrangements and cut deals, arranging for his daughters to be mated to the sons of nations, which was an amazing set of parties and everyone had a good time. And some of the sons of nations married the numisad they had mated with, and others skipped town to let their lover raise their child all on their own, but the practical effect was the same — a new plethora of numisma — the fiat numisma — spread out onto the Mercantile Plains, leading to a new era of growth and prosperity among the mercant tribes.

And the hierarchy was well established for success. The Manager of the Economy turned his impressive capacity towards the ‘big picture.’ The hard numisma acted as fund managers and supervisors and regional vice presidents, coordinating the activities of their field workers in accordance with the wishes of their father and boss. And the fiat numisma, though not as powerful as their mothers, were versatile and plentiful and continued the work of encouraging and protecting smaller mercants while invigorating and working closely with the more powerful ones.

Which leads us to Thalea, daughter of the hard numisad of gold reserves and the son of the Potentate of the United States, fiat numisad of the American Dollar. One of the strongest and most adaptable of the numisma, Thalea cultivated servants and assistants who helped build a marketplace where mercants flourished. Mercants from other tribes and marketplaces would come and treat with Thalea’s marketplace, and the mercants of Thalea’s marketplace spread far and wide, cultivating relatives among other mercant tribes. The children of these mercants took solid root in other tribes, which is one reason you can buy a freaking Coca-Cola all over the world, but I digress.

Thalea worked hard. She wanted to prove herself to her mother. She wanted to help her father’s father’s lands flourish. She wanted to make her grandfather, the Manager of the Economy, proud of her. And so she eschewed friendships and days off and in general became known for passionate overwork to the exclusion of personal pleasure. Which might explain why certain American businessmen expect their workers to put in ninety hour weeks as a matter of course — a practice much of the rest of the world finds ‘stupid.’ But once again, I digress. The point is, Thalea was extremely hard working, but had almost no capacity for stress relief.

As with many of the more successful numisma, Thalea cultivated some of the strongest, wisest and most adaptable of the mercants to help out. So it was with Yonderoh, the mercant of Oil. As the stress increased, Thalea relied more and more on Yonderoh. And as Yonderoh’s own strength grew, he became more prominent — some said he was more important than any of Thalea’s advisors. Certainly, the numisad and the mercant spent a lot of time together. Often, they worked late into the night to get everything done, which is why we now have the phrase “burning the midnight oil” as part of our lexicon.

To you and me, it might seem natural that they would fall in love. After all, they are both creatures of myth, and there is something in us that thinks of myth creatures as one big happy dysfunctional family. However, to the numisma and the mercants, such a thing was the absolute height of scandal and unnatural practices. Consider — a nine foot tall midnight blue catlike creature and a five foot five slender green skinned, golden haired nymph who tended towards power suits. Not only did any kind of romance seem to violate all the laws of nature, there were logistical questions that seemed impossible to surmount.

But Thalea was nothing if not adaptable, and Yonderoh was understanding and kind, and so they made it work. And for a time they kept it secret, because this is the kind of thing you didn’t advertise.

Which was fine, until Thalea became pregnant. And if you’re wondering how two different species of creature could conceive between them, you should read more folklore.

The scandal was terrible, of course. But while the other numisma would have torn into the pair with the bloody help of the other tribes and marketplaces of mercants, Thalea’s own marketplace, her assistants and the strongest tribe of mercant on Earth made it clear that they were standing by the couple, and if they wanted a war, just bring it, buster — and remember the mercant of firearms was from Thalea’s marketplace while you were at it.

In the end, the Manager of the Economy effectively ruled for the pair by refusing to rule against them, and things settled down, though Thalea’s pregnancy was a complicated one.

Thalea gave birth, though it nearly killed her, and her marketplace closed in and fell into a depression. The date was October 29, 1929, and in the real world the near death of the numisma of the American Dollar was noted in one or two events that have achieved some notice.

The child… was not attractive. A ball of fur and stone and green bits here and there, the very sight of him was disturbing to all who saw. But his outer ugliness was belied by a sweet disposition. He wanted to help. He wanted to work. And with his birth came the birth of a product, marking him as more mercant than nymph. That product was gasoline. His name was Essad.

Essad grew quickly, his monstrous form well suited to many tasks, and throughout the marketplace Essad became a welcome, if ugly and foul smelling, addition to all that needed doing. And in the real world, gasoline spread across the American marketplace, bringing fresh fruits and vegetables by truck from warm southern climes to the north, bringing fresh meat to all corners from the huge slaughterhouses, creating suburbs and interstates and a market for spinning rims. Which yes, means that Essad, despite his ugliness, found his share of lovers and sired his share of child products. He worked closely with his half brother, the mercant of plastics, to make both products more accessible. And for quite a long time, all was well.

Though… some who were close to Essad’s parents noticed both numisad and mercant were often sallow and weak looking, and both relied more and more on their respective assistants and Essad’s other children in their day to day work.

Until the day Essad collapsed, out of nowhere. He had been walking along, and then he was on the ground, howling. His parents were summoned to where he was, and to the shock of all there they opened their veins on the spot, giving of their own blood for Essad to drink.

And slowly, Essad stabilized, but he was ashamed and weak, and in the world gasoline grew scarce and the price skyrocketed, reflecting his lack of health.

And so, the secret was out. Essad was strong and friendly and useful, but his hybrid birth had left him sickly, lacking certain elements necessary to survive. Elements that existed only in the blood of his parents. Or, as it turned out, the blood of fiat numisma and other mercants of oil and certain related mercants.

There was little to be done. The whole economic world — all the tribes of the mercants — had come to rely on Essad. He had to be kept as healthy as possible. But Thalea was strained, her ability to manage what was still the largest marketplace and tribe of mercants compromised, and Yonderoh….

Oh, Yonderoh. It hurts to even mention it.

The once powerful mercant of oil among the Americans had shrunk, his blood sacrificed to keep his child alive, leaving him a sallow shell. And while he could continue to do what he could to keep his offspring as healthy as possible, it was clear that soon enough others would be needed, if Yonderoh was to be kept alive as long as could be done.

And so, mercants of oil from far away tribes made their pilgrimages to the marketplace of Thalea, there to give of their own blood to keep Essad as healthy as possible. And the fiat numisma accompanied them, so that the blood of the numisma of rubles, of francs, of pounds and so many others were added. And slowly, Essad stabilized, though he was not as healthy as before.

In the meantime, Essad’s children had children, and the demand for Essad’s services only grew.

Some fiat numisma tried to encourage new mercants to fill the gap. Mercants of ethanol, of cars that ran on vegetable oil, of hydrogen cells and electrical batteries were sired among the mercants and encouraged to grow healthy and strong. But they were young yet and too many of the tribes needed Essad’s help now. And so he worked harder and harder, always willingly, but needing more and more of the precious blood of the fiat numisma and the mercants of oil to stay as healthy as possible.

Which, naturally enough, led to a new power on the Mercantile Plains. Because the mercants of oil recognized that without their sacrifice, Essad would weaken and die, and potentially take the full Economy with them. And so they formed pacts and alliances, and brought various fiat numisma with them, and began to exert leverage on the other mercants, regardless of tribe or marketplace. And tensions rose on the Mercantile Plains. After all, who could demand that mercants and fiat numisma give their blood to this monster, no matter how friendly or useful he might be?

And there were clashes between tribes, mercants striking at other mercants in ways they had not since the early days before the Manager of the Economy first ascended the Mountains of Stored Value. And the Manager is increasingly disturbed by all of this. It is becoming clearer and clearer to him that something new must be done. Something radical, possibly. After all, if the Economy had worth, it must survive.

And the price of survival can’t be paid for with money. It can only be paid for with work… and with sacrifice.

In the meantime, the world runs on gasoline. But as Essad’s health varies and the pact of mercants makes its demands, gasoline’s prices fluctuate wildly. Sometimes they descend, showing that Essad is healthier… but then they spike back up and people make noises of needing to utilize the strategic oil supply or find new sources or extract from oil based shale and the like, but we know the truth. Essad is trying. He really is. But as much as he’s grown, he is sick, deep inside, and there will come a day when all the blood of all the mercants of oil and their attendant fiat numisma won’t be enough to keep him alive.

The question is, will he take the rest of the Mercantile Plains with him?

And if they go, what happens to us?

The price of survival is work, and is sacrifice. And like it or not, the Manager of the Economy is going to do what needs to be done to keep the Economy alive. And if that means bad things for you and for me, then that’s what it means.

I don’t like that any more than you do, but I only report the myths, and they don’t always have happy endings.

This is the first of the myths being told “by request” from the What Myths Do You Want To Hear open weekend thread from a couple of weeks ago. Fade Manley asked the question. I humbly submit the answer.

*** *** *** ***

Some people know more about the world’s hidden corners and unseen facets than others. I don’t mean the loci — those men and women who become something more than human for various reasons. No, I mean everyday human beings. Sometimes, they have insights or intuitions that teach them about the side of the world that most of us don’t know anything about. Other times they are taught, by experience or happenstance or a relative.

That, by the way, is an example of zeugma. But I digress.

As an example, I give you a girl named Amanda. Surnames are unimportant in this case, but suffice it to say Amanda grew up in a small town and had small town ambitions. She had steady if boring work as a house painter. She wanted very little out of life — enough money to be comfortable, friends she could hang out with, a place to call her own, maybe a cat….

And love, of course. She wanted love. But that wasn’t unreasonable, was it?

In any case, Amanda was typical to the point of boredom. If it hadn’t been for her Uncle Al, there would have been little reason to even discuss her. But, as we have implied, she did have an Uncle Al and so we do have a reason to discuss her. As it works out, her Uncle Al was one of these people who knew a lot about the world just beyond the edge of perception, and as it turns out he taught Amanda quite a bit about it. He taught her by telling her stories as a child and by giving her challenges as a teenager and finally by sending her on errands as an adult. After all, if you know the real back routes, you can get from Kansas to Boston to pick up a specific blend of tea from Tealuxe in about fifteen minutes on a Honda scooter. She knew the twists and turns, and what trolls you needed to give five bucks to in order to pass their bridges, versus what trolls were just bluffing, and how to recognize a kindly haggish innkeeper off the path who would give you a cup of coffee and some biscuits for a few minutes of conversation, versus the various Baba Yagas who are a plague on the countryside in their packs of chicken legged houses.

But as remarkable as all this seems to you or I, to Amanda this was just everyday life. She had grown up with it, after all, and while we might not know the secrets she knew, she would maintain it was no different than knowing that Mister Potter’s service road cut ten minutes off your travel time between the high school and the IHOP out on State Route Sixteen. So she didn’t think she was remarkable for knowing these tricks.

Really, if she was proud of anything, it was her ability to paint houses.

To be fair, she really was something at it. She could paint more in an afternoon than most house painters managed in three days. She always did exactly the right primer coat for a room, and she was an expert at sanding or scraping walls before she started, and she had a remarkable eye for color and ambient light. Her services were sought after by lazy middle class yuppies from Michaud Hill to the ConAgra Farm Complex. Her rates were fair, though sometimes there was a wait for a hole in her schedule. She was always on time, showing up in her paint spattered coveralls and a series of pastel colored tee shirts. She would take a few minutes to set up dropcloths, queue up a good playlist on her iPod, and get right to work without dillydally.

Otherwise, she had a perfectly normal life. She liked to go to bars and drink beer or the occasional appletini after work, on weekends she would hang out with friends at the Park River Strip Mall, and if sometimes she showed up with a case of Cheerwine soda, even though you pretty much had to go to Virginia or someplace just like Virginia to get it, people didn’t complain. They just enjoyed the soda.

A couple of the guys in town tried their luck with Amanda. She wasn’t unattractive, after all. But while Amanda wanted love, she wanted it to be the real thing. Capital L Love. Passionate, heart stopping love, of the sort you saw in crappy movies. And for whatever reason, none of the local boys who were interested sparked that kind of passion in Amanda.

And then Amanda met The One.

He was in his mid twenties when she met him. He had a slightly scruffy beard and hair, thin and wiry, and he was wearing beat up jeans and a yellow and blue striped long sleeved tee. And if she’d seen him at a bar, she’d have flirted or offered to dance or otherwise opened negotiations, but unfortunately she saw him at IHOP one Saturday morning when she was stopping in for breakfast before an action packed day of hanging out at the strip mall.

I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but the moment Amanda laid eyes on him, she knew he was the one she had been waiting for. There was no other. There would never be any other. He was it.

Amanda frowned. There really wasn’t etiquette for telling someone you just saw for the first time at IHOP that you loved him and would like to demonstrate this fact as physically and enthusiastically as possible. At the same time, having seen The One and knowing there would be no other, it seemed like a bad idea to sit in a corner and hope fate would cause the two of you to have a wacky adventure together. So, Amanda screwed up her courage, walked across the room, slid into the booth opposite The One. “Have you ordered yet,” she asked.

He looked up from the menu, somewhat startled. He frowned slightly, then shrugged. “Not yet,” he said. “Am I buying or is this dutch?”

“Let’s go dutch, but split the bill down the middle.”

“Are you going to order the steak?”

“It’s IHOP. The steak isn’t significantly more expensive than the pancakes.”

He considered, and nodded. “Divided is fine.” He considered a moment longer. “I’m Trent.”

“I’m Amanda.”

It was a pretty good first date. Trent won Amanda a stuffed toy in the claw crane game. It was a snake, more or less, though it looked like it might have legs. They went out to the reservoir and chucked rocks in it for a while, and they shopped for a while at the Park River Strip Mall, and they had a pretty good meal at Smokey Bones, and they spent a reasonable amount of time kissing each other and seeing what base they could get to without it feeling weird. In the end, it was ruled a ground rule double.

Finally, they were walking through a corn field just after dark, the stars overhead, when Trent said “I really got to get going. I was just looking for someplace out of the way for breakfast.”

“No prob,” Amanda said. “Will I see you again?”

He nodded. “Yeah, you got my number. Text me?”

“Sure.”

They walked to the edge of the field, crossed the dirt road, and Trent started for the wire fence — specifically a place where the wire was broken.

Amanda watched him head for it, and smiled a bit. “Hey!” she called back.

He looked over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“If you’re looking for the Midsummer Path, that way through sucks. The upper wire snags your clothes. I lost like three shirts that way. There’s a Century Oak maybe a quarter mile up the road — it’s way better if you’re heading more or less West.”

Trent paused, and then walked back. “Yeah,” he said. “Show me?”

So she did, but before he circled the Century Oak knocking the trunk once to signal the dryad that he was a friend and then get onto the Midsummer’s Path heading to where the sunlight came to rest at the end of the day, he and Amanda spent another forty five minutes going for a triple. They got one, more or less, though one attempt to steal home was sent back for failing to touch second.

Amanda spent a lot of time grinning after that weekend. Weekdays she threw herself even more firmly into her housepainting job. She stopped going to bars at night, though. There was no good reason to. Weekends, she met Trent at the IHOP and the two painted the town red. Or, if they were in the mood, they’d nip around the corner to Milan or New York City or — after a series of wrong turns — Wonderland. It was a darn good life.

After a good amount of time like this, the conversation turned to marriage. After all, Trent was pretty happy and Amanda knew he was The One and that there would be no other, so a more formal arrangement seemed to be in order. However, the pair hadn’t done all the amenities like meet their respective families, and they knew that eloping without that step was a one way ticket to landing onto a particularly uncomfortable episode of Doctor Phil. So, Amanda took Trent to meet Uncle Al, her parents having died in a tragic combine related accident some years before. Uncle Al and Trent got on well enough, though Uncle Al seemed slightly troubled. When Trent was in the bathroom, Amanda asked him why.

“Mm. It’s just a feeling,” he said. “He seems a little real.”

“A little real? As opposed to what — being a phony?”

“No no.” He shook his head. “Everything is ephemeral, and most things are as much image as they are substance. Trent seems more substantial than most. He knows the back roads around the world?”

“Yeah.” Amanda frowned. “Are you saying there’s a problem?”

Uncle Al shrugged. “Depends. No reason to worry until we have something to worry about.”

Just then, Trent rejoined them. “Did I miss anything?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Uncle Al said. “Would you two like a cup of tea?”

The rest of that Saturday, Amanda kept a close eye on Trent. And she had to admit, she could see what her Uncle meant. Trent had a quality — like he was somehow anchored to the world more firmly than anyone else. Like he was in sharper focus, and slightly more saturated in color. But she could also see that Trent really did love her, and of course she loved him, so she decided not to worry about it unless it was necessary.

“So tomorrow, we’ll meet my mother?” he asked as they headed to the Century Oak.

“Sure. Where to?”

“West. Meet me here, and I’ll bring you.”

They kissed then, and did a few other things that twentysomethings do when they really like each other, but which we don’t really need to get into, and he headed out. And Amanda went home and found some nice clothes, made sure they were clean, and went to bed.

The next morning, Amanda went out to the Century Oak. Trent met her there after a few minutes, and then they circled the Oak, making sure to knock so the Dryad knew they were cool, and then they headed West on the MidSummer Path, passing through the Orchard of the Peaches of That Feeling You Get During The Dream Where You’re Naked In School And Didn’t Go To Class All Semester And Now It’s Time For A Final That Your Whole High School Grade Depends On.

What, you didn’t think all the magical fruit trees were about Love or Sleep or Memory, did you?

They crossed the Bridge of Accord over the River Dian, and they skirted the edges of the Woods of Despair, avoiding a particularly nasty pair of Baba Yagas who were drag racing their chicken legged houses down the MidSummer Path in what was certainly a violation of the law, and heading down into the valleys and the sands, and Amanda knew they were heading for the greater Metropolitan Los Angeles area. Specifically, the back world sections of it.

Amanda expected that they would cross into the Real World that everyone could see, but instead Trent made a turn onto a golden path. Amanda followed as the path spiraled, seeming to circle the city itself, rising into the air on golden wires and glass, narrowing in as they approached a beautiful palace of shining gold and crystal. And Amanda bit her lip as they crossed into the courtyard and passed by several bubbling marble fountains and through a gateway guarded by brave men. She realized as they walked through the Great Hall of the Palace that whatever Trent’s mother turned out to be, she was probably underdressed.

Finally, they came upon a dias, and upon the dias there was a small table with three wrought iron chairs surrounding it. And on the table there was a silver tea set with three beautiful and delicate china teacups. And on one of the wrought iron chairs sat one of the most beautiful women Amanda had ever seen. She had perfect cheekbones, and her hair was golden and streaming behind her with particularly expensive highlights in it. She wore a beautiful and expensive blouse and coat with pearls, and didn’t even look ironic. She looked younger than Trent, and yet her eyes were old and reflected power. And when Amanda looked at her, she knew that she was looking at a Locus — one of those men or women who embodied one of the principles of the world, be those principles grand or minute. This was as much goddess as human, and a woman accustomed to power that Amanda could have no concept of.

Amanda now knew she was underdressed.

“Mom,” Trent said, pulling a chair for Amanda, “this is Amanda. We’d like to get married. Amanda, this is my mother, the Duchess of Los Angeles.”

The Duchess of Los Angeles looked Amanda up and down, and frowned slightly. “I see,” she said, and even her voice had an echo of power and immortality in it. “Be a dear and pour us some tea, Trent.”

The tea was expensive. It wasn’t prepared any better than Amanda or Uncle Al could do, but Amanda could tell this was tea from rarified fields, picked by hand by wizened men who carefully dried and prepared it. White tea, without milk. On the whole, Amanda preferred Lipton. “It’s an honor to meet you, Your Grace,” she said, bowing her head and showing respect. She knew the rules of etiquette. Uncle Al wouldn’t have taught her how to take the back roads of the world without teaching her how to comport herself with some of the aristocrats who lived there.

The Duchess of Los Angeles continued to look Amanda up and down. “Tell me,” she said, finally. “Do you have a bloodline of power?”

“No, ma’am.”

“How did you learn to walk the pathways of perception?”

Amanda preferred her Uncle’s term — taking the back roads of the world sounded so much less pretentious. “My uncle taught me, ma’am.”

The Duchess nodded, still frowning. “Are you a hero?”

“Not that I know of, ma’am.”

“Do you have any special wisdom?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Have you slain any particular noisome beasts?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Are you rich?”

“No, ma’am.”

The Duchess frowned more. “What do you do?”

“I’m a painter, ma’am.”

The Duchess’s eyebrows arched. “Ah,” she said. “An artist. All right. We can work with that. Do you prefer watercolors? Oils? Would you like to try fresco sometime? I could use a good fresco painter….”

“Not that kind of painting, Your Grace. I paint houses for a living.”

The Duchess looked at Amanda. It was not a good look. “You’re a housepainter.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s it? Nothing else to speak of?”

Amanda shrugged. “I’m a pretty normal person, ma’am.”

“Mom, she’s funny and quick, and she–”

“Shut up, Trent,” the Duchess murmured. She shook her head. “I don’t see how we can possibly make this work. Trent isn’t a locus but he has the blood of the world in his veins. He will be a remarkable full mortal. His wife will also need to be remarkable. Because if the only thing his wife is remarkable for is how unremarkable she is…” the Duchess leaned forward, “…then people will remark on it, and not the way we want. Do you understand?”

“Mother–”

“Shut up, Trent. This isn’t about you.”

“How can it–”

The Duchess fixed a glare on her son, and he shut up. Amanda didn’t blame him for that. He might be her son, but this was a half-goddess and when she said shut up, you shut up.

The Duchess turned back to Amanda. “Do you understand?” she repeated.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

The Duchess nodded. “Very good. It was nice to meet–”

“You’re saying that before I can marry your son, I need to do something remarkable. That’s my understanding. Do I have that correct, your Grace?”

The Duchess’s eyes flashed with annoyance. “I am saying you are not going to mar–”

“Mother,” Trent hissed. The Duchess paused, and looked at her son. And she saw in his eyes true love. And looking back at Amanda, she realized that to Amanda, her son was the One, and there would never be any other. And the Duchess frowned. She knew that if she out and out forbade this wedding, that was a one way ticket to Las Vegas and her only begotten child ending up a fry cook at the IHOP out on State Route 16.

The Duchess slowly nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Precisely. You must perform a great task. We must find you a dragon to slay, or a–”

“I don’t slay dragons, m’lady. I don’t slay anything. If you are to give me a great task, it must be in an area where I am in fact great. That is the way of great tasks.”

The Duchess rolled her eyes. “You’re not great at anything,” she said.

“Yes, I am. I paint houses.”

“Please. We’re discussing–”

“Your Grace, I give to you all honor and respect.” Amanda leaned forward. “But hear me. I am not a princess and I am not a heroine. But I am the best house painter you have ever met. I am fast, I am fair, I am complete, and I am unobtrusive. I give excellent value, arrive on time, work to estimate and never, ever cause trouble for my clients. I will not claim any other airs before your magnificence, but do not dare. Imply. What I do is not great.” Amanda held her head up high. “Because quite frankly, I’m awesome.”

The Duchess narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. She was tempted to strike the impertinent stripling down, but she too was bound by etiquette. The girl had made a claim of greatness, and by the laws that all Loci must abide by, she had to be accorded due respect until such time as she had a chance to prove her claims. “Very well,” she said. “You say you’re a great house painter? Then we shall see.”

The Duchess rose to her feet, the very act of standing a gathering of ancient power. “Come. We will prepare your task. I have just the thing.”

“Of course, your Grace,” Amanda said, standing up.

Trent stood too. “Mother,” he said warningly, “what do you have in mind?”

“A task worthy of the hand of the son of the Duchess of Los Angeles,” the Duchess said, striding through the halls to a spiral staircase. “We shall have your Amanda paint the ceiling of my home.”

Amanda blinked. “No problem,” she said, looking around. “I assume you’re going to want to have all the ceilings in here painted. I’ll need a layout of the palace–”

The Duchess snorted. “You misunderstand, girl. This is not my home.”

Amanda frowned. “It’s not?”

“No more than a closet in your own house is your home. This is a convenient place for me to store things I don’t want to get rained on.” The trio emerged then onto the balcony of a turret of the palace, overlooking the shining city below them. From here, Amanda could see the city in all its glory. The real world of Los Angeles. The back roads world of Los Angeles. That which anyone could see and that which almost no one could see. It spread out before them, miles and miles and miles of it.

The Duchess swept her hands out. “This is my home.” And she gestured to the shining blue sky. “And that is my home’s ceiling. If you want to marry my son, you will have to paint that.”

Amanda looked up at the bowl of the sky. “…really?” she asked.

The Duchess smiled slightly. “Really. And if you agree to this task, then until it is completed I forbid you to speak to my son, much less spend time in his presence.” She turned to look at the girl. “I don’t care about your little dalliances. If my son wants to spend his weekends doing some plebe in Bumfuck, Kansas, that’s his own affair. But if you’re going to take his name and family, you’re not going to enjoy the benefits of his company during your task to prove your worth. Do you understand that?”

Amanda took a deep breath. “I do, Your Grace.”

“Any pithy comments to make? Or questions to ask?”

“Just one, Your Grace.” Amanda looked up, proudly, into the Duchess’s eyes. “Do you provide the paint or am I supposed to?”

The Duchess looked back, and smiled just slightly. “You do.”

“Color preference?”

The Duchess smiled a bit more. It was not a kind smile. “Since I don’t expect you to get very far with this, I don’t care. Whatever you can afford.”

“I will need to work at night. During the day I’ll have to continue doing my own job, and weekends I have off. That’s my standard deal.”

The Duchess shrugged. “It’s your task, dear. However long you want to take doing it — until you get fed up, anyway — is fine by me.”

“Mother,” Trent said beseechingly. “Please. If she has to do this ridiculous thing, then fine. But don’t keep us apart while she’s doing it. That’s just–”

“Cruel?” The Duchess smiled. “I know.”

“Fine.” Amanda looked resolute. “May I kiss your son goodbye before I go?”

The Duchess snorted. “No. If you’re accepting this task, then the separation begins immediately. Or you can just continue to have an affair. Though I warn you — if you two decide to run off to Vegas and get married without my consent, having asked the price of marriage, then a curse will descend upon you both.” She smiled, unkindly. That loophole was now closed off.

“Understood.” She nodded — without speaking — to Trent, the One of whom there would never be another, and she strode down the steps.

“Mother,” Trent said, quietly, “you can be an unbelievable bitch.”

“You have no idea,” the Duchess said. “No idea at all.”

Amanda spent the rest of that Sunday making preparations. The skies above Los Angeles would take a lot of paint, and of a type you couldn’t get at Sherwin-Williams, so she traveled along the Back Roads of the World to appropriate suppliers. She laid out her budget, and she found a supplier, though the only color he had in enough bulk that Amanda could afford was a rather hideous yellow-grey.

Amanda shrugged. The Duchess had said she didn’t care, and she was going to take her word for it.

On Monday, she finished her day’s work by one. She then went home and caught a few hours of sleep. And then, right at the point where the sun was beginning to go down in Los Angeles, she got up. Solemnly, she put on a brown lycra tee she didn’t care about getting dirty, and her most comfortable paint splattered coveralls. She put a kerchief over her hair, double tied, and synched the iPod she had let charge while she slept. She made her way out, and passed through to the Back Roads at the Century Oak, carrying her supplies in a backpack. She made her way to Los Angeles through the route, and then took a side road when she got close — one that led to the scaffolding and the maintenance ducts that the so called real world was lined with. What, you didn’t think the maintenance staff wandered around visibly, did you? There are many levels to the world. Not unlike Disney World, really.

Amanda put her ear buds in her ear. She hit play on her iPod. And she got to work.

And as she worked, she occasionally glanced down. And there, on the highest tower of the palace of the Duchy of Los Angeles, she could see Trent, looking up. Watching her work through the night.

Come the dawn, Amanda went home, of course. She had to wash up and get ready for her day job.

And the Duchess of Los Angeles got up that morning with a smile. She had been told before bed that the silly girl was actually trying to paint the sky, and she figured that a few days of that would convince her of the futility of it. And that would be that, since she and Trent couldn’t even pursue their affair now. Her servant gave her a mug of truly exquisite coffee and she walked out onto the terrace to enjoy it–

And stared, the mug slipping from her fingers and falling to the streets below, landing in Compton in front of a corner store, shattering and splattering the facade and two kids. Later, various lawsuits would wend their way through the court system for decades stemming from this incident, but even the minor acts of the Loci can have profound effect on our world.

The Duchess didn’t notice this. She was staring.

The sky was yellow-grey.

“MANSFIELD!” she cried out. Mansfield was her majordomo.

“Yes, your Grace?” the servant said, with the calm disinterest of a long time domestic.

“Did that girl — did she do this?”

“Yes, your Grace.”

The Duchess stared, looking on all sides. “Is… is she done? Did she do it in one night?”

“No, your Grace. She has significant detail work left to do, especially on the edges — you can see some blue over there, for instance. And I understand she wants to sand some bits and redo them, as well and putting a second coat down on parts of it.” Mansfield smiled. He appreciated good work. “She’s quite a perfectionist.”

The Duchess’s head swam. By the next night — or Thursday at the latest — the girl would be done and she would be marrying the Duchess’s son. “I must… there must be… get me Gaylord Bennett on the phone. No — ask him to come. Say it’s an emergency. Say it has to be today.”

Mansfield arched an eyebrow. “Of course, your Grace.” He withdrew to make the necessary arrangements.

The Duchess looked out over the sky once more.

“Remarkable,” she half-whispered. And then she frowned more.

Gaylord Bennett looked like a biker. He work leathers and chains and a kerchief, and had a long goatee and sunglasses. Which was befitting the Scion of the Desert Winds. “Gotta admit, Duch — I don’t expect to hear from you. Not after some of the crap you’ve pulled.” Los Angeles, you’ll recall, was largely carved out of a desert, so it could be said that the Duchess’s domain had cut into the Scion’s.

“That’s the past. This is the present. And I want to discuss the future. Did you notice the sky as you came in?”

Gaylord looked up. “I think everyone in the greater metropolitan area noticed the sky. Crappy color.”

“Blame my own short-sightedness for that. It’s not quite finished.”

“So?”

“So… I don’t want it to be finished. I want the desert winds to blow and bits of sand to scar the paint job.”

Gaylord frowned. “I send a high altitude wind in, that’ll scuff up most of the thing. You’ll get light clouds, a mix of the blue undercoat, and I won’t promise it’ll smell all that great. Especially mixed with the paint fumes.”

“I don’t care,” the Duchess said. “Can you do it?”

“Of course.” He smiled a bit. “For a how long?”

“Forever,” the Duchess snarled.

Gaylord smiled more at this. “It’ll cost you,” he said.

“Fine. I don’t care.”

And so it did indeed cost the Duchess. She sent tribute to the Scion’s home, and she gave him the wide span that today we call Death Valley to build his own palace, just four hours from her own domain. She sent some of her most beautiful youths — beautiful and nubile women and robust and virile men — numbering two hundred in total, with a promise of ten more men and ten more women each year, to form a new court for Gaylord even outside his other desert homes. And his people could be seen on her streets. It is said that gang activity — so prevelent in Los Angeles today — stems from this deal, and that each member of a gang has a touch of the wild desert wind in his heart. But that may just be a rumor.

And in exchange, Gaylord sent high altitude winds and heat in, and the paint streaked and cracked, causing blue to spill over throughout the area. And while it was still largely yellow-grey, almost anyone who looked up would figure that the yellow-grey was incidental to the blue. Certainly, if they’d known it was paint, they’d figure it was far from complete.

That night, Amanda returned. With a frown, she realized what had happened. But she did not complain. She put her iPod headphones on and she set back to work, redoing almost all of it, touching it up, working towards perfection.

And with the day the desert winds returned. Which meant that it was now much less comfortable in Los Angeles — the smell of paint, as well as many other smells, was everywhere. Sometimes it was even hard to breath. And of course it was much hotter than it used to be.

And at night, Amanda returned, and set back to work without complaining.

And so, things continued in that vein. Amanda would do remarkable things, and the Scion of the Desert Winds would ruin it. She would take weekends off, because that was her deal. She worked weekday mornings at her day job, painting houses. Nights belonged to Trent, and to the work that would one day see them united.

Trent, for his part, spends most of his nights sitting in a lawn chair on that balcony. He watches her work. And he smiles. You see, he was pretty into Amanda before. He liked her, and maybe even loved her, and he could see marrying her.

But sitting and watching this act of devotion… this act of true love… night after night after night made him realize.

Amanda was it. She was the One. And for Trent, there would be no other.

They do have contact, of course. Enjoined from speaking or being close, they communicate through text message and through e-mail. Trent sends her little videos and Amanda sends some back, and they interact on message boards and spend a lot of the weekend time playing World of Warcraft together — though never with voice chat, of course. Trent is, of course, idle rich trash so he has no job. He can sleep in very late so he can spend his nights watching.

And some nights, his mother joins him.

You see, there is one thing that the Duchess realized after quite some time had passed. She realized that it was not breeding that made one remarkable. And she realized that Amanda was remarkable indeed. Certainly, it was clear no one would ever love her son this much, or be this devoted. And so she decided to let the woman proceed without hinderance.

Gaylord would have none of it. The Duchess had signed an open ended deal, and he wanted his tribute and his foothold into the streets of Los Angeles — a land that had been his before the Duchess showed up. And she had made a deal for him to hinder the girl’s efforts forever, and that’s what he intends to do. In fact, when Amanda gets close to finishing anyhow — which every so often she does — Gaylord calls upon one of his ex-girlfriends, the current Viscountess of the Northwesterlies, to use her flute and whistle up a huge if atypical storm that blows through the city, washing clean the skies and leaving them a pristine blue, meaning Amanda has to start all over again.

But she never complains. She never bemoans. She just sets her playlist going, and sets right back to work.

So when the air is thick and hot and stinky, and the sky is yellow/grey and hazy, and the city seems practically unlivable, you might feel unhappy for yourself, but spare a moment for a smile, too. Because as nasty as that haze might be? That haze comes from love. And looking up, it’s hard not to believe — to hope — that Amanda will manage to actually finish the job in one night, finally, and thus win her new husband. And as the Scion would have failed, the pact would be broken and he would have no reason to continue, and eventually the haze would fade. And the city, albeit with a well painted sky of grey and gold, would move on.

And so would Amanda and Trent.

Wednesday, when I described the premise to her, said this might be one of the most elaborate and apocalyptic solicitations to donate to public television she’d ever heard. “The world could end tomorrow if you don’t pledge now — and you get this beautiful tote bag….”

Please enjoy.

*** *** *** ***

On January the 12th, one of the greatest violinists of our age — possibly one of the greatest violinists ever — played as a street musician in one of the busiest Metro stations in Washington D.C. for almost a full hour and essentially no one noticed. He was playing one of the finest violins ever crafted, he was playing some of the most beautiful, energetic and emotional pieces ever composed, and he was playing with all the heart and soul he had, and he was just another nuisance in the train station during rush hour.

It sounds like a bad story setup. Something hackneyed and shopworn — the kind of thing a bad writer comes up with to describe the terrible state of culture and priorities in this, our oh so modern world. Admit it. You can think of a dozen ways for that story to proceed, and all of them seem trite.

The difference is, this really happened. Honest injun. The violinist was the internationally acclaimed Joshua Bell. And you can read about what happened in the April 4th Washington Post.

A glorious, inspired classical musician — one acclaimed by all who know his work, whose audiences are always packed and who gets tens of thousands of dollars or more to perform, and he took in less than sixty bucks sawing away at a Stradivarius — and twenty of those came from a fan of his work that happened to recognize him. In the end, he made just over thirty bucks in pocket change, from the few people who even bothered to notice that brilliance was in their midst.

It was not that Mister Bell’s performance was subpar. It wasn’t. There are videotapes, and if anything he put more into it than he put into the performances he makes obscene amounts of money from the cognoscenti who know about him. He wanted that audience, and he mentioned the weird sense of validation he got as someone just glanced his way for a moment, much less actually stopped and put money into his case. Pocket change. Pennies, sometimes.

It would be tempting to blame humanity. Blame the rush of life that we all feel. Blame the driving need to pass between to and fro that leaves no time to appreciate beauty for what it is. Bell, after all, was playing in a transitional place — a place meant in the end to facilitate one’s journey instead of being a destination. And these places are rare and special in their own right, but that’s the subject of another myth for another day. That’s not the reason why essentially no one noticed Joshua Bell at the L’Enfant Plaza Station.

Hrm. “Joshua Bell at the L’Enfant Plaza Station.” That’s a good title for a poem.

Which indirectly answers the question — the question of ‘why don’t we notice the staggering beauty and art in life all around us?’

It’s not just street music, mind. There are statues in many if not most of our cities, and monuments (whether representative or not) in most of our communities, but it’s the tourists who take the time to pay attention. The locals screen them out. You screen them out. You don’t notice the exquisite architecture of the local church or the homes built hundreds of years before. You don’t pay any attention to the heartwrenching beauty of the murals or the stunningly raw artistry of the graffiti done in the scant minutes between when the police officers pass by.

And neither do I. And neither, most of the time, does Joshua Bell.

It’s not our fault. It stems from a union dispute.

It is well known that the muses inspire artistic expression. Traditionally, there is one muse, or three, or nine, depending on who you speak to. However, in a practical sense there are way more than that. With the prolifieration of humanity there has also been a proliferation of metaphysical entities to inspire said humanity. Nine begat eighty one, and eighty one begat six thousand, five hundred and sixty one, and from there the numbers get truly ridiculous.

That’s a lot of muses. No wonder there are so many channels on satellite television these days. But that’s tangential to the point. Needless to say, the spirits of inspiration had proliferated to the point where they had to organize, ultimately into chapters and unions and guilds. It’s inevitable.

It is also inevitable, of course, that other metaphysical entities would take a notice.

You see, muses are, like most spirits, daemons. This is not to call them demons — that came later. No, among the ancients, the spirits and beings that were between humanity and the Gods were the daemons, and they divided into two camps. The Eudaemons were the helpful spirits — the spirits who did good deads, acted as guardians, inspired good works and the like — while the Kakodaemons were the malicious spirits. The beings of minor or major destruction, base intent, lust, greed and what have you. Later, the Abrahamic religions would come along and pick up the concepts of guardian angels and tempting demons, which naturally spawned entirely new beings, races and cosmologies, but that gets outside the realm of this treatise.

As the muses proliferated, most of them fell into the eudaemon camp. They were inspiring humanity to create, to build, to compose works that reached for ideals of beauty and aesthetics, elevating the thoughts and spirits of those who beheld them. It was only the occasional or rare muse who was enough of a kaodaemon to inspire people to, oh, I dunno, burn shit for art. This was centuries before Yoko Ono or performance art, to mention.

However, there was also a problem. You see, humanity was designed to appreciate art. When beautiful music was performed where human beings could hear, it would attract attention and draw eyes and thoughts to it, to indulge in that most visceral of sounds. When a dancer performed, the people around that dancer would stop and watch, smiling softly as they enjoyed what was beautiful in that art. And art would inevitably begat new art — derived works, or new paintings, or even the art of discussion and debate, as merits and aesthetics became fodder for intelligent discourse. This was called criticism, and it had its place in describing what artists were trying to achieve and how they were trying to achieve it.

Most of which, as stated, was positive. Oh, the occasional kakodaemon would inspire destructive art meant to be indulged in to the exclusion of any positive benefit — I think I mentioned burning things — or the occasional criticism meant to cut people down to size instead of discuss… well, much of anything, But those were rare. They added a certain amount of spice. For the most part, from the point of view of artists of all stripes, the world was a utopia. Poets and painters, dancers and dollmakers and everything in between were held in regard, because within them was the power to distract, to enlighten, and to enthrall.

Unfortunately, it was only the artists — and the muses — who found that world to be a paradise. For everyone else, there were problems.

You see, the muses were hardly the only daemons to inspire or tempt humanity. There were a whole host of other eudaemons and kakodaemons out there, inspiring good and bad behavior, doing good or bad deeds, and in general helping to keep the clockworks and symphony we call reality humming. Humanity was of course the central point of their work, since it was humanity who defined reality and humanity who actually did (or had things done for) all the things in the world. And at first, the daemons were content to have artistic expression as a part of that overall scheme. After all, humanity needed to be inspired to do their best, to believe, to have their spirits lifted, and sometimes to simply put their tools down, rest from their labors, and enjoy a good show. And, when there was one muse, or three muses, or nine… or even eighty-one… well, that worked out just fine. It was relatively rare that an artist would show up and enthrall the people with some creation. Indeed, the stories of those artists themselves could be rare art, passed from one mortal to the next, and the art would fit into place just as it was supposed to. And then could come discussion and criticism and all the rest, all the while the debators could get on with building aqueducts or paving roads or tilling fields or washing all the excrement off the streets. It worked. It fit.

But then the muses numbered in the thousands. And all of a sudden, shit wasn’t getting done any more.

Think about it. Every time someone had that spark of inspiration — that touch of the divine — to put hand to instrument, voice to song, pen to paper or brush to canvas, it would result in those beholding the results to pause, to consider, to appreciate and to be inspired by that work. This began to compound. Most art wasn’t ephemeral, after all. Paintings existed beyond the moment, and so did statues. Songs and music could be performed again and again, poems could be read and reread, stories told and retold… art compounded. And while humanity was becoming extraordinarily intellectual, with the meanest of peasants able to comment intelligently on topics like zeugma or irony, the world was grinding towards a halt. Things were being put off. Labors were ceasing without restarting.

And the daemons of industry, of production, of order, of means, of wealth, of activity, of exploration, of endeavor and of just about everything else you could think of were getting pissed off. They had unions of their own, you know, and without them mankind would fall into sloth and decay and ultimately into exinction, since they’d stop with the planting or hunting or gathering or the cleaning up of excrement entirely without them.

The muses, in the meantime, were outraged by snide references being made to them. They were fulfulling their function, God damn it, and it’s not their fault their function was more pleasant than spending nine hours a day hammering shit. So the idea that they should hold back just because humanity didn’t have a sense of perspective was downright offensive.

Strikes were threatened on both sides. Vitriol flew through the half-world and the spirit world and occasionally into debates in the real world, giving rise to a new class of human beings we today call “assholes.” But that’s another myth.

Finally, as with all such disputes, the only solution was arbitration. The muses sent one of their number, Clio Briggs, to meet with one of the eudaemons of good order — the spirits called the themisii — named Eunomia Jones. They met with the Thesmophoros, the Law Bringer, who was responsible for the arbitration of the divine and the profane, the spiritual and the banal.

There was, as should be expected, a lot of shouting.

“We’re not claiming that artistic expression isn’t important,” Eunomia said. “Far from it. We need artistic expression. We recognize this. But art can’t overwhelm all other aspects of the human condition! If it does, humanity will fall apart and take society with it.”

“So what,” Clio said. “You’d have us stop doing our jobs? You’d have me sideline a few thousand muses? We’re not meant to be silent. We’re meant to inspire, and we’re not going to suffer just because you people aren’t good enough at your jobs to keep humanity on track.”

“Good enough at our jobs?” Eunomia shouted. “We were doing fine at our jobs when there weren’t all you muses running around! You’re the ones who have procreated to the point that you’re threatening the good of the whole!”

“Are you calling my mother a slut?”

“If the name fits!”

“Bitch!”

“Whore!”

“Both of you shut up,” the Thesmophoros snapped. “Jesus Christ, it’s like negotiating with three year olds.”

In the sullen silence that followed, the Thesmophoros rubbed her eyes. “Morgana,” she called out into the hall, after a moment, “make up a pot of darjeeling, would you? It’s going to be a few cups of tea before we’re through with this.” She then turned to the muse and the themis. “Okay. Before we go any further, let me explain something very simple to both of you. That which is created cannot be uncreated. Even destruction doesn’t uncreate so much as it creates something new, even if that ‘something new’ is a pile of rubble. That’s true of matter, that’s true of energy, that’s true of art, and that’s true of the aspects of humanity.

“We can’t eliminate artistic appreciation from humanity, because it’s innate to humanity. Humanity is designed to be distracted from their labors. If they lack that capacity, then they would become sullen. Life would become a monotony, and mankind would just be cogs in a machine. Eventually, they would die out because they would lack any point in continuing.”

Clio smiled slightly, and Eunomia pursed her lips.

“But on the other side of the equation, there is indeed an imbalance forming,” the Thesmophoros said, turning to the muse. “Right now, your artists are becoming too much of a distraction. Humanity needs to learn to balance industry and art. If they can’t do that, eventually they will grow decadaent and die out, too fat and sybaritic to get anything done.”

Clio’s smile faded, even as Eunomia’s scowl softened.

“So. You two are going to need to work this out. The muses — and the art they inspire — is going to need to evolve. To become something that doesn’t just distract from labor and inspire higher thought, but that joins with labor, to give higher reasons to do the things that must be done. It will be hard, and this might fail and take humanity with it, but the alternative is to see the destruction of humanity by one of these two extremes, by the degradation of the body or the degradation of the soul.”

Clio and Eunomia looked at each other.

“Can we have a few minutes to discuss it,” Eunomia asked.

“Of course,” the Thesmophoros said.

The pair moved to the back of the room. “If we go to our guilds and tell them we need to come up with a compromise solution, we’re going to be lynched,” Eunomia said quietly.

Clio scowled. “Tell me about it,” she said. “We muses aren’t used to tempering our inspiration. Telling us we need to start pushing even small amounts of art into promoting industry’s going to go over like a lead balloon.”

“I know.” Eunomia shook her head. “And some of the other daemons can’t stand you muses any more. Telling them that art can inspire industry will be too much for them to bear. I had to stop some of them from going to war against your kind, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Clio said. She looked to the other side of the room, where the Thesmophoros was sipping tea. “She’s supposed to come up with an answer we can live with.”

“Yeah, well — she put it on us.”

Clio frowned. “Hrm. She said that while aspects of humanity could be created, they couldn’t be destroyed, right?”

“Right. We can’t wipe out you muses and hope it’ll get rid of artistic expression. More muses would just… appear….” a light dawned in Eunomia’s eyes. “Waaaait a second….”

Clio slowly smiled. “That means other aspects of humanity can still be personified by new spirits, right?”

“It has to mean that.”

“In that case….”

“…we can find a new creation in between art and industry — one that could act as a buffer….”

“…keeping everyone employed without eliminating anything.”

“That’s brilliant!” they shouted together.

On the other end of the table, the Thesmophoros looked up from her cup. And slowly, she felt the migraine begin to start.

After a few minutes, it had only gotten worse. “You want a new class of daemon,” she said.

“That’s right,” Clio said.

“Spirits of artistic appreciation,” Eunomia said.

“That way, artists can continue creating and muses can continue inspiring–”

“–but other daemons can have human beings build and work without being too distracted–”

“–and everyone is happy!” they both said, grinning.

“Yeah,” the Thesmophoros said. “Happy. Right.” She looked at the pair. “You understand that humanity isn’t a binary creature, right?”

“Huh?” Clio asked.

“Sure they are,” Eunomia said. “Men and women. That’s binary.”

“Well, no. Wait,” Clio said. “That ignores issues of gender disphoria.”

“Oooo — point. Not to mention the feminine and the masculine as they combine within–”

“Shut up,” the Thesmophoros said, softly.

They shut up.

“What I mean is, mankind is an ecosystem. A biome. Their spiritual and physical worlds aren’t simple things. We can’t add to it without having broad implications, no matter how small the add is. If we create a new class of daemon and tie them to some aspect of the human condition, this is going to lead to broader consequences than whether or not a guitarist can distract a construction crew before they finish putting up a building.”

Clio smiled. “Oh, we realize,” she said.

“Heck, we’re counting on it,” Eunomia said.

“After all, the new changes and shifts will require an evolution of society.”

“And that will lead to even better discussions on industry and art, and the roles between them.”

“We have it all worked out.”

“Trust us. So can we do it?”

The Thesmophoros looked at them both. “Yes,” she said quietly. “We can do it.”

And so they put their request up the line, and the gods and loci of the universe set the wheels of creation to spinning, and so was a new class of daemon born.

And these daemons were called the kharites — the graceful spirits of beauty, adornment, mirth, and appreciation, known for their dance, their songs and their festivities. And most of them were eudaemons who saw their role as bringing pleasure to humanity, and only a few were kakodaemons who pushed human beings to indulge in the arts to the exclusion of all their productive lives. And it seemed like everyone was happy.

Well, except the artists. See, before their creations were lauded in all the land, their beauty enough to receive comment from cobbler or king. Now, of course, without a kharite’s intercession or some other means of forcing acknowledgment of their works, people walked past them without noticing. So they kept trying to better themselves, thinking that all they had to do was do it all right and the universal acclaim that had once been theirs would be theirs again.

But everyone else was happy!

Well, except the critics. Because without the universal acceptance and appreciation of art, suddenly the people who devoted their time and energy to discussing the hows and whys of that art found themselves without an audience. What is more — and potentially worse — critics had once been intimately tied to art through the appreciation that was the common state of humanity. As a result, their own criticisms were themselves artistic expression. Now, they were still written, of course, and still a form of art, but now critics did not interact directly with muses but instead were among the strongest disciples of the kharites — drinking deep of appreciation and using and refining it into its own place in the world.

However, there were far fewer kharites in the world than there were muses, which meant that the more the critics monopolized their time, the fewer kharites there were to inspire appreciation among the rest of humanity.

So. Okay. The artists weren’t happy and the critics weren’t happy. Fine. But everyone else was happy, right? So it’s all good, baby!

Well, not so much.

You see, humanity did need to have distraction from their daily labors. Without it, they were just serfs. Slaves to their positions and their productivity. They worked, they came home, they argued with the spouse and kids, they worked around the house, they went to bed, and the next day they did it again. Without down time, without a driving need to do something that wasn’t just dealing with the rest of society’s wants, needs or drivers, they became sullen and unhappy, just as it was warned they would.

Which in a way was ironic, since they were surrounded by art, with more appearing all the time, and they were surrounded by criticism appreciating and analyzing that art, but they were increasingly disconnected from it. It was like dying of thirst while floating on a raft in the ocean.

It couldn’t last, of course. And naturally it didn’t last. You’ll notice we still exist today, so clearly our forefathers didn’t say a collective “fuck it” and die out as a species. Because there was a group that was indeed very happy at the turn of events this little tale tells.

That group… was the kakodaemons.

The kakodaemons — the spirits of malevolence and maliciousness, baseness and selfishness, had been waiting for a chance to gain a sense of ascendency among the spirits and the world. It was hard, because almost everything in the world was a good thing. Seriously. There’s very little in the world that is unreservedly bad. It takes indulgence, excess and meanness to take that which is good and make it evil, and evil itself creates almost nothing new.

However, the kakodaemons recognized the desperate hunger humanity had for distraction away from the soul crushing banality of their lives. And they knew that it would be a long time before there were enough kharites to really give humanity enough of an outlet of appreciation to fill the gap. In fact, it was a specific kakodaemon — a kitsune called Rupert — who discovered the truth that would change everything.

The kitsune are shapeshifters and tricksters. Not all are kakodaemons, of course, but all are wily and clever, and Rupert was mean and shallow — a five-tail, for those who know what that means, so he was also strong and experienced. And one day he managed to engineer the collision of twelve separate carriages in a badly marked intersection between roads, causing great pain and pathos.

And as he hid in the grasses, disguised as a grey fox, and watched the carnage, he noticed something remarkable. He noticed that as other humans passed by — humans unconnected to the tragedy and unable or not in a position to help — they slowed down.

They slowed down to watch.

Just like they once would have slowed down to listen to beautiful music, or look at a beautiful statue.

And Rupert smiled, and crawled away. He crawled into the deep caverns and dark places, the warrens of the Earth, until he found his Master, and he whispered what he had learned to that Master.

And the Master smiled on Rupert, and awarded him a sixth tail, and the Master called any number of the kakodaemons to him — even those kakodaemons who were muses or kharites themselves. And he confirmed what Rupert had found, and together they began to plan, and plot, their ways to subvert all of humanity.

Time passed, as time always does. And if there had been any concern about how humanity was reacting as a whole, it subsided as mankind slowly seemed to adapt. Men and women seemed to find diversions sufficient to their need, which meant that there weren’t mass suicides or too much emo clothes choices.

The artists and the critics were still dissatisfied, of course. It wasn’t that there weren’t truly great works of art — there were, and they were universally approved of by those who noticed. There were shows and concerts and performances and readings, often sold out, and the people at them adored those producing their work, but people who encountered the artwork unexpectedly generally didn’t care about it unless it was specifically called to their attention, and perhaps not even then.

And as for the critics? Well, honestly, was it that big a loss? Yes, the discourse grew insular and the critics began to debate one another more than analyzing the work, all too often, but they still seemed to be having fun. Though it did occur to a group of those critics — critics with kakodaemon kharites whispering in their ears, much of the time — that while they couldn’t necessarily draw the great heaping mass of humanity into the artistic discourse, they could have influence on them by reviewing works of art, barely touching on analysis, but giving people pointers and channel markers on what art was worth their time and what should be avoided. Soon enough, analysis became a very small component of what a “critic” did, and even the word “criticize” stopped meaning “analyzing what and how an artist did” and started meaning “explaining exactly what the artist did wrong and why they should be ashamed of it.”

The muses were, if anything, too busy. It seemed that absent truly unifying artwork, a good percentage of the populace decided to turn their hands to their own artistic pursuits. Now, the thing to remember about muses are they don’t provide talent, or skill. They provide inspiration. They give the budding artist something to try — be it folding paper, sewing, playing the spoons or, of course, composing a ninth symphony that would be eternally remembered and played down through the ages. The execution of that inspiration might be flawed and insipid, but that isn’t really the muse’s department. They just get the ball rolling.

And it seemed that more and more people wanted to roll that ball. So many that the muses found themselves overworked. And one or two were concerned — there was tremendous artistic endeavor, but the schools of art, of thought and of criticism were dividing. Audiences were growing smaller. Interests were growing more specialized.

The eudaemons of industry were happy. Mankind, freed from the all consuming distraction of beauty and the aesthetic, seemed far more easy to keep on task. Things were built. Fields were tilled. Wealth was earned. Marks were made. Though one or two began to be concerned as well. The overall spiritual development of the human race — the time that men and women spent on higher pursuits, on philosophy, on theology, on spirituality, on science — was declining. Oh, professionals would pursue these pursuits. Folks would go to school for science and become scientists, folks would go to school for theology and become priests, folks would go to school for philosophy and become fry cooks and the like. But in the olden days, it looked like all of mankind was slowly ascending — learning about themselves and the world, questioning what they saw, and growing individually and collectively. And now, while they were happy enough to work, to go home, and to blow off steam, the pursuit of the invisible and the ineffable was falling by the wayside.

Chief among those who were concerned, as it turned out, were Clio Briggs and Eunomia Jones.

Oh, the pair had been thrilled to begin with. It all had fallen into place exactly as they had hoped. What had been an automatic had become something to be cultivated. Where humanity had innate artistic appreciation before, now they needed to develop a relationship with an unseen kharite to have it be a distraction now. And all seemed just fine, as a result. When men and women went out to a show — where it was expected there would be appreciation going on — a single kharite could usually take care of most of the audience.

But after a few years, they had realized that more and more people were falling into a funk born of their lack of escape, they began to worry. The warnings of the Thesmophoros were still fresh in their ears.

And then, mankind seemed to pull out of it. They had found their outlets, and the pair relaxed.

It was some decades later that they realized their outlets weren’t quite what they had hoped.

First, it was the gladiator matches, followed quickly by public executions and the epic struggle of Man V. Lions. That went hand in hand with cock fights and bullfighting. Ritualized competition took root too — chariot racing, foot racing, all the olympic sports. And sporting teams and team rivalries began to form a kind of nationalism or tribalism that frankly took the muse and the themisa by surprise. In Constantinople, different groups of racing fans at the Hippodrome — like the Venetii and the Prasinoi, or the Blues and the Greens — became political and religious rivals, often leading to riots and violence throughout the city. In one riot, thirty thousand people died. In Rome, on the other hand, the often gory spectaculars were used to distract the populace from corruption and civic need, and often the crowd got to vote on who lived or died for their amusement.

This was not what Clio and Eunomia had had in mind.

So too were the ‘alternatives’ to the theater, or concert, or reading. Burlesque shows, more regarded for their frank sexuality and display of the ‘breast’ than for any artistic merit began to spread. It seemed that there was as much or more of an audience for the lowest common denominator — those things that required the least rarified thought and good amounts of base thinking.

Then, all seemed to resolve. With the advent of the printing press and distribution of materials, all seemed like it would work out. Now, great works of literature, of thought, of understanding and of beauty could be disseminated throughout the land. Literacy soared. The pair breathed easier….

…until the rise of yellow journalism, sensationalist headlines, and the penny dreadful. What looked like a boon, briefly, threatened to make matters worse.

Then came radio, and with it tremendous hope. Now, music, art, and radio drama were in every home. On Saturdays the Opera could be heard in many if not most kitchens. The great music was played. The great performances were brought forth. It was a glorious time.

And then, more stations began to appear on the radio dial. Audiences were broken up by their interests. What did they want to listen to on the radio. Some of it became shocking and sensual, though often with the same driving creativity that had fueled Beethoven in an earlier era. Then it became crappy. And once again, the lowest common denominator became king.

So too it was with television, and for a while Clio and Eunomia were excited. Now, people were gathering in their living rooms to devour art and culture as a culture. Comedy, drama, music, excitement… it was all there. Why, some estimates put a hundred and twenty five million viewers of the final episode of M*A*S*H.

And then two television networks became three, and then four. Cable channels arose. Superstations. Reruns proliferated. Sports. Violence. Titillation. Dozens and then hundreds of channels, each dividing the audience up more and more and more, with more and more tuning into the least challenging of all fare….

Finally, Eunomia had had enough. She sought out the Thesmophoros in her office.

It was a nice office.

The Thesmophoros glanced up at her desk. “Come in, won’t you?”

“We need to do something,” Eunomia said, stomping in.

“You know,” the Thesmophoros said mildly, as if Eunomia hadn’t spoken at all, “I honestly figured you would come here with your muse cohort when you finally got around to it. I’m surprised it’s just you,”

“What? Oh. Cleo couldn’t get away. She’s staggeringly overworked these days.”

The Thesmophoros snorted. “I’m hardly surprised. Six hundred channels on Satellite television. Netflix. Tivo. The internet, with all those blogs and forums — it’s a banner time for a muse, isn’t it?”

“Not that it does any good, but yes.”

The Thesmophoros arched her eyebrows. “Any good? Why, what do you mean? Are the humans not working? Are they not building houses and profits?”

“Of course they are, in record numbers, but–”

“Then I don’t see why you’re so concerned. That’s what you two were worried about, right? Your constituencies couldn’t see any way to do their jobs with each other, and now everyone has plenty of work. Too much work even. So why complain?”

“There’s more to life than work!” Eunomia shouted. “And there’s more to art than just making it!”

The Thesmophoros smiled, slightly. “Go on?”

She hardly needed to say it. Eunomia was on a tear. “Humanity isn’t growing,” she said. “They’re breeding but it’s like they get stupider all the time! The most incredible art is created and only a few dozen people see it! And way more of them spend their off hours watching the worst crap you can imagine! They watch ‘news’ about Paris Hilton or other celebrity scandals! They listen to outrageous slander on the radio that they accept without question! They’re not learning, they’re not expanding themselves or bettering themselves or considering the great questions of art or the world — they’re wallowing!”

The Thesmophoros nodded. “That’s right.”

“Why? Why is this happening? When the kharites were created, we were just putting a buffer in between art and humanity — we weren’t trying to push them into this… this….”

“Indulgence?”

“Yes!”

The Thesmophoros shook her head. “I tried to warn you,” she said. “Humanity, in the material or metaphysical sense, is an ecosystem. You can’t introduce a change in that ecosystem without causing myriad ripples in all directions. You put in a ‘buffer,’ as you called it, between human beings and their appreciation of the artistic, yes?”

“Yes? That was–”

“But you knew that humanity needed diversions from the mundanity of their everyday existence. Absent that escape, they would fall into despair and then destruction. Yes?”

Eunomia looked down. “Yes,” she said, quietly.

“You thought that because of that need, they would seek out the kharites. They would continue to get their needs fulfilled by artistic appreciation, only now it would be measured. Regulated. Controlled. Yes?”

“Yes.” Eunomia was barely whispering, now.

The Thesmophoros snorted. “The arrogance of perspective. Cut off from the affirming and uplifting escape they had been made to enjoy, humanity turned to new escapes. Escapes that the kakodaemons were more than happy to exploit. Because the kakodaemons realized there was something that could fill the void left by the absence of artistic appreciation in their lives, and it was something they could provide in spades.”

“…what?”

“Spectacle.” The Thesmophoros leaned forward, elbows on her desk. “Humanity can be distracted by spectacle. The spectacle of violence, of war, of lust. Show them breasts shaking or swords plunging into bodies or animals attacking and they’ll devour it. This doesn’t make them bad people — far from it. This gives them a visceral release of all the pain and stress of the modern world. They can escape from their fears and their drudgery by diving into the banal and the titillating.”

Eunomia shook her head. “That can’t be right,” she said. “They’re not… they’re not as distracted. They still go to work, they still produce–”

“Of course they do,” the Thesmophoros snapped. “It doesn’t take any energy to consume a reality show or a football match. It’s a spectacle. One they can engage in and believe in and experience, but then they leave it behind. When humanity as a whole was geared up for artistic discourse, they didn’t just consume art, they lived it. A truly moving piece turned into hours of discussion, of debate, of sideline efforts. And all the while humanity edged closer to epiphany — to reaching beyond their mortal shells and becoming something grander than they, you or I could imagine!” The Thesmophoros looked away. “But it was easier to put a governor on those activities than it was for you and your muse friend to reconcile the practical and the aesthetic. And now it’s far easier for humanity to get the release it needs from sports, tits and reality television. Don’t come in here and tell me we need to do something. This is the world you made. A world where only the very lucky will happen upon beauty or glory and be moved — most will pass by without noticing or with annoyance at the intrusion.” She shook her head. “And it’s going to get worse.”

“Worse?” Eunomia looked up. “How could it possibly get worse?”

“You mentioned that the muses were overworked? That’s because just like mankind was wired to appreciate art and to be diverted away from the banality of everyday life? They were also wired to reach for something higher, something beautiful in themselves. When artistic appreciation was innate, this came as naturally as breathing — one muse could inspire one talented artist who could then lift up hundreds or thousands of appreciative humans into a collective epiphany. Now, with more and more human beings having less and less connection to their fellows, they have to seek those epiphanies on their own. So they write. They write stories or journal entries or log posts or songs. They learn instruments or try out for plays or design web sites. They search within themselves that which they no longer feel as connected to others in finding.”

“That’s… that’s good, right?”

“It’s good. Except of course that there are only so many muses. Millions of them, but they’re serving billions of humans, and that means their caseloads are getting harder and harder, even as the audiences for that created art get smaller and smaller and more idiosyncratic.” The Thesmophoros leaned back in her chair. “Now, how have the muses dealt with this kind of overwork in the past?”

Eunomia frowned. “They divide. They begat a new generation, exponentially growing their numbers.”

“That’s right. They started with one who became three, and then nine, and then eighty one, and so on. Yes?”

“Yes. So… this time….”

“Right now there are millions of muses. When they divide next, each muse will begat millions of new muses. Millions, Eunomia. Despite the billions of human beings on the planet, there will suddenly be thousands of muses for every. Single. Human.”

Eunomia’s eyes grew wide. “But….”

“But nothing. Suddenly, each and every human being on the planet will be subject to thousands of conflicting inspirations. He will be overwhelmed with a passionate need to create these images that overwhelms him. He will stop planting fields or harvesting food. He will stop building buildings or maintaining power grids. Industry will stop. Agriculture will stop. Education will stop. Research will stop. All human endeavor will stop. All except art.”

The Thesmophoros shrugged. “And within a few weeks, or months, or a year at the most, humanity will be gone. They will starve to death, or develop disease from lack of exercise or hygiene, or their hearts will explode from lack of sleep, or any number of other causes that boil down to ‘they will stop trying to survive.’ All that will be left is a decaying infrastructure… and an incredible body of artistic work that no one would ever look at. In fact, each work in that final orgy of creation will be composed for an audience of one — the artist himself. No one else will have time to see anyone else’s work. They’ll have work of their own to do. And someday, some alien species will come upon our world, and see what was left behind, and they will say ‘this was the greatest of all races in the universe, for they became so consumed with the quest for the aesthetic and the beautiful and the affirming that they gave up all other endeavor, content to die as a race for their art.’”

Eunomia shivered. “How… how do we stop it? Do we… I know! We create some other spirit to moderate humanity’s need for spectacle–”

The Thesmophoros gave Eunomia a look.

“…no. No, that would end up making things worse, wouldn’t it. All right. We need to get rid of the kharites. Give them back direct artistic appreciation.”

The Thesmophoros snorted. “You can’t. I can’t. No one can. I told you. You cannot uncreate what is created. This is a part of the human condition now. If you killed all the kharites tomorrow, they would reemerge soon enough, and in the meantime humanity would lose all capacity to appreciate art, triggering the death of all things all the faster. Maybe that’s what the kakodaemons have in mind.”

Eunomia frowned. “Then… then we need more kharites. How do they procreate? Is it like muses? Do they grow exponentially?”

“No.” And the Thesmophoros smiled. “No, the kharites are spawned by need. The more that humanity seeks out art of its own accord, is educated in the ways of art, learns to appreciate it, and is drawn to it, the more kharites will be born.”

“Then if we can get humanity to seek out art in high enough numbers… we can stave off disaster. We can get them once again appreciating art as a race, and therefore reduce the strain on the existing muses before they have to divide again!”

“Of course. If it’s possible. But the kakodaemons have done a damnably good job of giving them the kinds of diversion they like. How do you compete with that.”

Eunomia frowned. “Funding. Getting the word out. Advertising. Using the same infrastructure that provides bread and circuses to provide both art and the tools to enjoy it. You can’t tell me it can’t be done. We could reach a point where every human being on the planet had their own dedicated kharite.”

The Thesmophoros nodded. “It would work. Do you think you can convince the other eudaemons? Obviously the kakodaemons will have no reason to go along with this plan.”

“I… don’t know.” Eunomia looked away. “Some of them remember the bad times all too well. Some still don’t like the muses and think what art there is now is just a waste of time. But we don’t have a choice. If we’re going to save the world….”

“We have to enlighten it. I know.”

And they set to work. And as we have not yet hit the artistic armageddon, one can only imagine they’ve done some good. But in the end, it is not the eudaemons or any daemons who will cultivate relationships between humans and kharites. It is humanity itself.

It is you. And it is me. And it is those we speak to.

It’s not hard to develop a relationship with a kharite. There is ample art all around us to enjoy, to explore, and to grow with. The internet is full of it, most of it free for the appreciating. The television is full of it, though you have to turn away from the sheerly escapist and seek out denser fare.

Which doesn’t mean you need to watch nothing but Shakespeare and listen to nothing but Opera. There is plenty of rock out there that will challenge and enlighten. Plenty of jazz that will awaken and inspire. Plenty of rap that will excite and outrage. There is Art to be found in creation, if you step away from the prepackaged, the familiar and the distilled and find it.

Naturally, the more you support art, in your own way and in your own community, the more attention is drawn to it. This can be through lobbying or fundraising or just in helping advertise the local high school’s christmas concert. Art is where we find it, and beauty can be found just about anywhere.

And, through it all, there is one shining beacon of hope. All the way back at the beginning of what has turned out to be a long tale, there was that story of Joshua Bell, sawing away at one of the finest fiddles ever made, drawing little attention.

But the children who heard him play all turned to look, eyes wide, and pulled to stay, even as their parents shepharded them along.

Children hear the words of the kharites more clearly than adults do. It’s a simple relationship. And if you catch them early — teaching them both art and art appreciation then — you can develop a cadre of artists and critics and most of all aficionados of art for life. And as they develop their own artistic style, they drag their parents, and grandparents, extended families and friends of their extended families out. They go to be supportive of Bob’s kids, but when they’re all there in the auditorium, the kharites have a crack at them. They don’t get everyone, but they get some.

And in that, there is hope. For at least another year or two.

Assuming , of course, they’re actually taught art and art appreciation. After all, these things cost money, and there’s lots of other things to spend it on. Right? Both in the schools and out of the schools. You need to tighten your belt these days. A lot of this stuff’s luxuries, not necessities.

I mean, Hell. It’s not the end of the world.

Right?

Anyway, with a little luck I won’t be sued over this one….

*** *** *** ***

When amateur mythologists and fantasists try to populate their pantheons and philosophies with spiritual and mystical essences, they often make the mistake of reaching too far. “Why is there pain?” they ask, and seek an answer. “Why is there evil?” “Why do we die?” “Who renewed Becker for all those seasons, and who’s divine cock do I need to suck to get him smote before pilot season comes along and he does more damage?” These questions are huge, and even if someone could intuit or make up answers to them, they would end up being unsatisfying.

(The answers, since we’ve brought the questions up, are ‘Sam from the television show Quincy,’ ‘the Croissandwich,’ ‘Randy Milholland,’ ‘Sam from Quincy again,’ and ‘Randy Milholland again,’ respectively. You will note that having these questions answered, in the end, didn’t really help.)

A successful mythologist, on the other hand, remembers the golden question always begins with “why.” Mythology, after all, has always sought to explain the unexplainable and to eff the ineffable. This is eternally the difference between mythology and religion, which seeks to explain nothing. When asking the question “why did my wife of five years get hit by a lightning bolt and killed,” mythology explains that Eltana of the Golden Ewe did look down from her mist covered mount and see the beauty of your wife. Growing sore jealous, she journeyed for eight days and nights until she found the Dwarven Smith Daedbot, who makes the golden lightnings on his forge of shining granite, and there did seduce him that her valet, trusty Bohem, could sneak into the forge and steal one shining bolt. Then, when next Eltana saw your wife, she did draw the bolt and fit it to her bow like an arrow, taking aim and letting fly, the bolt flying forth, sparks forking off it like the fletchings of an arrow and striking your wife down once and forevermore. But in so doing, the birds did weep and sing songs of lament, and therefore the Queen of the Heavens did lift your wife’s spirit up and set it in the sky, passing back through time to do so when the stars were set in their course.

Religion, on the other hand, answers “why did my wife of five years get hit by a lightning bolt and killed?” by telling you that by questioning the will of God you have condemned yourself to eternal hellfire. Or, if you are Jewish, an extra day and a half of Hellfire (not to exceed one year total) because you didn’t look up the answer in the Talmud to begin with — what, do I look like a reference librarian to you now?

Therefore, as we tell these tales of modern mythology, it behooves us to always answer questions that ask ‘Why.’

Which brings us to today’s lesson. Why does the drip coffee at Starbucks taste like crotch?

It is well known among those who enjoy the brewed arts that Starbucks is really quite good. Oh, you might have a local barista who can sling espresso that would make Starbucks weep with inadequacy, or you might disdain Starbucks as a corporate entity and therefore, evil, because you are a communist. Or something in between. But to be honest, Starbucks does really well by its espresso. Its lattes are tasty, its frappacinos are icy and delicious, and what they do with sugar free cinnamon dolce syrup, nonfat milk and a small amount of foam would make a jazz man cry.

However, their drip coffee, made the way you would make your own coffee at home if you weren’t so damn lazy, tastes like crotch. Burnt, overroasted, badly blended crotch.

It makes no sense to the scientific mind. After all, Starbucks clearly has testing kitchens and focus groups, and they already have machines that make the lattes with a touch of a button and very little human interaction, making the once noble Starbucks barista one lateral step away from a McDonalds worker — at least McDonalds workers actually have to turn the hamburgers over. Rationally, they should have also found a drip coffee that their focus groups love that comes in sack form that a drone can toss into the top of a chrome machine and push a button on.

And yet, no matter how heartbreakingly good the lattes become, the drip coffee continues to taste like crotch.

Needless to say, the crotchness of the drip coffee is tied inexorably to the automated machines that Starbucks now uses to make the lattes. And, of course, it involves a curse, as these stories are wont to do, a jilted lover, which is almost as common, and a short sighted business plan ultimately buoyed up by technology, which is more common in folk tales than you might think.

Our story begins in the hills of Feynman, where once there was a young coffee roaster. His name was Starbuck, and he was blessed with good looks and an industrious spirit. He provided the coffee for several coffee shops and cafes, and this coffee was universally regarded far and near. Men blind from birth would understand the colors of the rainbow when they drank this coffee. Barren wives would have strong children if they drank the coffee black. Cold hearted fathers would embrace their son’s admissions of homosexuality with warmth and compassion when the coffee had a little cream and some splenda in it. The spent beans, when used as a fertilizer, doubled the yield of corn and soybeans. When Starbuck’s drip coffee was served in carafes at diplomatic and negotiating tables, the lands knew peace at last.

Yet, through it all Starbuck was sad, because he worked very hard to roast coffee for others, but he had no cafe to call his own.

Starbuck knew exactly what he would want in a cafe, too. He would want a warm and inviting place, where the smell of coffee would warm the spirit. He would want a place where conversation was king, inspired by the wisdom of the ages being printed on the outside of the coffee cups. He wanted a place where jazz would be remembered, food would be light and invigorating, and mugs would sell for a season and then go on clearance. As he lay on his cot next to the racks of beans just off from his furnace, he wrote ancient words of power in his notebooks, trying to figure out the perfect combination to bring his dream into life. Words like “doppio” and “venti” and “seven dollars and fifty cents a cup.”

In the end, of course, it came down to funding. Starbuck was given great heaping piles of cash for his superior drip coffee, of course, but the roasting process was an expensive one and besides, Starbuck spent more time than he should at Indian Casinos. So, he went to see many, many bankers.

The bankers were not unsympathetic, of course. They knew he had amazing coffee, and it stood to reason that his cafe would be popular. However, there was still that gambling problem to be concerned with and even without it, there was no shortage of cafes in the lands at that time. Even the smallest, meanest hamlet had six or seven cafes and two diners — three if you counted the IHOP out on Oxcart Route Sixteen. The market was oversaturated, and the only way that Starbuck could support his business model was if he continued to provide coffee to all the other cafes, which of course meant that “Starbuck’s Cafe” would have nothing to offer but pithy sayings on the cups, and that’s not what brings in the tourist trade. You need an angle.

One banker, who could see the disappointment in young Starbuck’s eyes, said “look, maybe you could do something no one else does in the town.”

“Like what?” Starbuck asked, despondently.

“Well… you could have the coffee served by topless waitresses.”

“What?”

“Sure. Put your waitresses in G-Strings and I promse you’ll have a packed–”

“I want a salon of learning and culture, where music and discussion are stimulated by tasty hot beverages,” Starbuck shouted. “I don’t want a cheap strip club.”

“All right, all right,” the Banker said. “Forget I brought it up.”

“All right.”

The pair grew silent.

“Besides,” Starbuck said, “nudity doesn’t naturally mesh well with coffee. It distracts.”

“Mm. Point.”

“I mean, I have nothing against sex appeal. But if you put a woman in a miniskirt and a smile, either the guy buying the coffee won’t ever notice the taste, or he’ll be so into the taste he’ll never notice the woman in the miniskirt. And besides, did you ever try to get a permit for adult entertainment in this town? I swear to–”

“All right already.” The Banker frowned. “There must be some way to conflate sex appeal with coffee.”

“Well, if there is I don’t know it,” Starbuck admitted.

And then it hit the Banker. “Of course,” he said. “The Baristas.”

Starbuck blinked, and his face turned pale. “You must be joking,” he said.

The Baristas were little more than a legend in the towns of the hills of Feynman. Somewhere between a tribe and a cult, the Baristas wandered the woods and the hills. They took the form of men and women between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four, the dressed in nothing but low rise jeans and sheer white tank tops that revealed their dark brown bra straps or the occasional scoop neck lycra tee shirt, while the men sported open flannel shirts over allegedly ironic tee shirts. Trained from an early age in the twin arts of slinging esperesso and snark, they could produce sublime drinks from the pump based equipment they hauled through the woods in their carts. The scent of their ground coffee and their beauty drew men and women alike in like sirens singing sailors to their doom — men and women who spent exorbitant amounts of money for their mysterious yet invigorating drinks, only to be cut down by their biting sarcasm and alluring disdain.

“Neither man nor woman can tame the Baristas,” Starbuck said. “Any who tries is doomed to have their lives crushed immediately after their self esteem.”

“So it is believed,” said the Banker. “But I know a secret that could make the impossible possible. A secret that you could use to harness the alluring disdain and slung espresso skill for your own cafes. Those factors, combined with a good managerial plan to reign in their destruction and your own superior coffee would create a cafe that would draw all to your door.”

“A cafe… harnessing the power of the Baristas. Their untamed spirits yoked to the power of commerce.” Starbuck slowly smiled. “If I can use your secret, does that mean you’ll invest in my cafe?”

“Bet your life I will.”

Starbuck smiled more. “It seems that I am, friend. Tell me. What is this secret.”

The banker leaned forward, a slight smile on his face. “They have a Queen,” he said. “Draw her into your plans, and you draw the Baristas with her.”

The Banker went on to tell Starbuck of the woman called Fiona, the Queen of all Baristas, who bore the secrets of tamper and pump, and whispered in the ears of her followers, teaching them the ways of steam and sarcasm. The Queen was the wildest, the most beautiful, the most sensual and the most easily offended of them all. It was said the gods had blessed her, and also that her eyebrow and labriet piercings weren’t her only piercings, if you know what I mean. And I think I you do. Hint — it involves sex.

Starbuck was intrigued. “So, if I can get this… Fiona… to agree to our plans….”

“She will be able to supply Baristas to work in your cafe. They will bring with them the arts of sensuality, sarcasm and steamed milk, giving your cafe both a draw and an expanded menu. Their espressology and your remarkable drip coffee will more than dominate all the other cafes, with the exception of the IHOP out on Oxcart Route–”

“Yeah, I’m familiar with it,” Starbuck said, considering. “So how do I convince this Fiona.”

“You are a handsome man,” the banker said. “And she is lonely. And I happen to know that she has a secret vice for a really good cup of straight, black drip coffee.”

“How do you know all this?”

The banker smiled, as bankers are wont to do. “I got her a loan for a used oxcart. You’d be surprised how much detail goes into a standard credit report.”

And so Starbuck set out into the hills, with five pounds of his coffee beans, a portable grinder, a filter pot, a carafe and forty dollars in small bills. He walked up and around the winding paths, to the hills that were shrouded in perpetual mist and music was made in garages. For three days and three nights he walked, glad for having brought changes of underwear, and sorry he neglected to bring any kind of food. Tree bark was growing tiresome.

It was in a somewhat lightheaded state that he first smelled the unmistakable smell of freshly ground coffee beans. These beans didn’t smell like his, and he could tell from the distant whine of the grinder that they were being ground extra fine. Espresso fine.

He made his way through the mist, up the rocky path, rounding the corner and seeing a small tent encampment. This was a bazaar, with burly fishmongers hurling their wares and fortune tellers hunched over cards. Here there might be a dealer in antiquities, there there might be a bookseller. He nodded to the pikemen guarding the gate as he entered, and though many in this marketplace might seem passing strange to the eye, in his hunger and fatigue it all seemed to make sense.

He was tempted to stop, and eat, or perhaps buy a book or a wooden pen or something, but he held firm to his mission. He wended his way through the paths and tents, using his keen sense of smell and knowledge of coffee to guide him.

And then he saw it. Six carts, close at hand. Each with a twentysomething looking out at the world with calculated boredom. Their hair was short, their eyeglasses were narrow and librarianish, and their disdain was palpable.

And at the center of the carts, between the brown haired man with a well trimmed soul patch and circular glasses, wearing a golf shirt that was such an ugly shade of green that it had to be intentional and the blond hipster chick in the belly baring black lycra tee shirt and the men’s white Oxford shirt worn open over it, he saw her. Brunette, her hair short and spiky, her eyeglasses oval, wearing a brown tank top with a white woodcut print of a mermaid on the front that showed her black bra strap, a black miniskirt and thick brown tights that descended into a pair of beat up Doc Martins.

There was no doubt. This was the Queen. This was Fiona.

He worried that it would be hard to approach her, guarded as she was by her most fanatic of followers, but in the end the thing these Baristas were most fanatical about were ennui. Starbuck walked between their carts, enduring the derisive snorts of greeting, and stepped up to the circular table where Fiona was sitting.

“Yeah?” she asked, eyebrow arched.

“I’d like to talk to you,” Starbuck said.

“I’d like a pony, but I don’t have one. Unless you brought me a pony. Did you bring me a pony?”

“No.”

Fiona pouted. “I don’t see what we have to talk about, then.”

“I brought you a gift, Majesty. Tribute to your beauty.”

“Wait, you brought me a gift and it isn’t a pony?”

“Well, yes. You see–”

“I didn’t think they made non-pony gifts. I’m not into jewelry, just you know.”

“It’s not jewelry. Your majesty, I–”

“It’s not a Pogues CD, is it?”

“What?”

“Because I don’t know who the fuck told everyone I was into the Pogues. I mean, yeah, sure. Fairytale of New York and shit. I know, but that came out, like, a million years ago and everything else they did–”

“It’s not a Pogues CD. Jesus, can I just give you this?”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Captain Dan. Tell me it isn’t a shirt. One look at that offense to culture you’re wearing–”

Starbuck set his teeth, taking out his coffee beans and hand grinder.

“Oh Jesus. You brought me coffee?”

Starbuck didn’t answer. Instead he filled the grinder and began to grind, his superior beans cracking and releasing both their oil and aroma.

“Hello? I’m the fucking Queen of the Baristas. Do you honestly think I don’t have enough coffee in my life?”

Starbuck measured the ground coffee into the filter. Around him, the Baristas had taken a break from their ennui to watch, the smell of the superior beans cracking even their facades.

“You know, this one guy once brought me white tea he picked by hand in China, then dried for thirty days and nights himself, before canoeing back over the ocean by himself! I mean, sure the tea tasted like dog hair soaked in water, but at least he put some effort into it.”

Starbuck heated water to just the right temperature, Fiona’s disdain crashing around him like the water crashes into the rocky coastline.

Despite herself, Fiona was watching his every move. “Frankly, I’ve been trying to cut down anyway,” she was saying, as she watched him fill the top of the filter unit, the water making the grounds swirl and swell as it began to drip down into the carafe. “I mean, I haven’t really slept for about six years, and at least once I’m pretty sure I had seven heart attacks, all in a row.”

The coffee dripped, black mana descending into the carafe.

“Why won’t you say anything?” Fiona demanded, shaking her head to clear it.

“I wouldn’t dare interrupt,” Starbuck said, smiling a bit and pouring her a mugful. He set it in front of her.

Fiona stared at it.

Starbuck watched her for a moment, then poured himself a mug as well. “It’s not gonna bite you,” he said with a slight smirk.

“Oh, like I’d take your word on that,” Fiona said. She then shook her head, snorting. “Whatever,” she said, picking the mug up with an air of practiced contempt. She sipped.

She paused, and sipped again.

Starbuck sipped his own, watching her.

“Okay,” Fiona said. “That’s pretty fucking good right there.”

Starbuck shrugged. “It doesn’t completely suck.”

Fiona half smiled, and took another sip.

The affair had begun.

For weeks, the two were nearly inseperable. They complained about the service in bars. They bitched about concerts where they had thoroughly enjoyed themselves. They slept under bridges and danced naked in the streets of more artisticly minded communities. And they had lots and lots of sex.

And during it all, Fiona taught Starbuck some aspects of the ancient art of pulling espresso. She demonstrated the black arts of scrying in the sludge pot and the way to tell when milk was properly steamed by how badly the steamer cup burnt your skin when you touched it. And Starbuck taught Fiona the alchemy of the coffee roaster, showing her the means by which carmelization took a good bean and made it a phenomenal one or a terrible one, with a difference of only a few seconds or a few degrees.

And then, one day… ever so casually, Starbuck mentioned his thoughts about a cafe. And Fiona the Queen of the Baristas listened. She listened to him talking about the jazz and printing wisdom on the cups and making the place a homey, comfortable place for discussion and debate. And she listened to him talk about the oversaturation of cafes in the area and how loans didn’t grow on trees.

When she suggested that she could have the Baristas staff it, and actually remake the cafe into a coffeehouse that offered both his drip coffee and the espresso they slung, with banter and disdain served up alongside the lattes, she was convinced it was her idea.

The two were excited as they worked out the particulars. The cafe would be “Starbuck’s,” of course — it was his dream. But on the logo, they would put the symbol of the siren — the mermaid who drew in the viewer with a promise of caffeine and snark — that Fiona used as her own coat of arms. For a time, it seemed like it would be a very casual agreement between the two, even as the banker set up the financing. However, Starbuck became concerned — Fiona was mercurial, as many Baristas were, and obviously there was a chance of a breakup down the line. So he suggested that they draw up a contract, “just to make business business, and keep it out of their personal life.” Fiona agreed, and after they consulted the signs and portents, they put together a contract that would bind the Baristas to service within Starbuck’s coffee house for the numerologically significant thirty three years and thirty three days.

The cafe opened while the particulars were being worked out, and the first two weeks were nothing but success. Many were drawn to the legendary Baristas — was it truly them? Were they truly inside a cafe, their bite managed to alluring but nonlethal levels? And then, when it became clear that it was true, they stayed and chatted, sitting in comfortable chairs, drinking overpriced but delicious coffee drinks and wonderful drip coffee in equal measure.

So Fiona and Starbuck were feeling pretty good on the day the contract was finalized. Fiona signed her name and applied her seal, and Starbuck too made his agreement. He was content. Fiona was wonderful and snarky, his cafe was a hit, and his life was settling down.

The banker also smiled, as he slipped the contract into his files. “Excellent,” he said. “I have to admit,” he said to Starbuck, “when I told you how to land Fiona for this thing, I wasn’t sure it would actually work. I’m glad to see it did.”

The temperature in the room dropped at least twenty degrees.

“‘Land Fiona?’” Fiona asked, slowly.

The banker opened his mouth, looked at Fiona, and closed it again.

“It’s… not like that, babe,” Starbuck said. “Look, I knew–”

“I thought we came up with this idea together! I thought this was supposed to be me helping you with your big dream! Are you telling me you landed me like a fish, so you could get financing for your stupid cafe?”

Starbuck’s head swam. “It’s not… yes.” He said. “At first, yes. But Fiona, something happened. I… you mean everything to me now. It’s not….”

“Yeah? Prove it.” Fiona stood, drawing her bearing up, a rush in the background of ancient waves and seas swirling, the mermaid on her babydoll-T seeming to glare. “Tear the contract up. I’ll send the Baristas back to the hills. Close the place down. Show me I’m more important than your damn cafe.”

Starbuck swallowed, turning to the banker. He reached a hand out to collect the contract, but then he paused. He paused as he remembered the pride he felt as the customers cycled through the line, and as they sat down and played boardgames and discussed affairs of the day.

Later, he would convince himself he simply hesitated too long. But regardless of the reason, Fiona’s eyes turned cold. “You son of a bitch,” she growled.

“Fiona–” Starbuck said.

“Forget it. Forget all of it. We’re gone.”

The banker cleared his throat. “You can’t do that, Fiona,” he said. “You may be the queen, but you signed a contract. Thirty three years and thirty three days.”

Fiona turned her stare on the banker, who felt his blood run cold — literally. He felt his head swell, his skin shrink, his body twist until he had become a statue of pure salt. Some say the salt is pure sea salt, as a mermaid might gather. Some say it is the salt of a woman’s tears. As the banker was ground up and used in various trendy restaurants in the eighties, it’s hard to be certain now.

“Fiona,” Starbuck said, miserably….

“Fine. For thirty three years and thirty three days my Baristas will serve your cafe,” Fiona said, her voice harsh. “They will serve it well and with honor, because a contract is a contract, and anything less would do them a disservice and their espresso a disservice. But you will pay a price for this.” She leaned forward, and in her eyes a Nor’easter blew. “I curse you. I curse your hands and I curse the one thing your cafe makes that my Baristas have no hand in. I curse the means you used to seduce me and get past my snarky exterior. I curse your drip coffee. Now until the end of all days, the drip coffee at any cafe that bears your name will be worse than bad — it will be disappointing, and burnt, and crappy. From now until the stars die in their courses, your drip coffee will taste like crotch.”

And the Queen of the Baristas turned and stormed out, and Starbuck would never see her again.

And in Starbuck’s roasteries the superior beans curdled and turned black and bitter, burnt as if from the glare of a woman scorned. And in all the cafes and coffee shops and even that IHOP out on Oxcart Route 16 men and women spat out what had been great coffee and, with a voice almost as one said “what happened? This tastes like crotch.”

Over time, those cafes found other sources for their coffee beans, of course. Disappointing, compared to the legendary beans of Starbuck, but absent any burnt crotch taste. And Fiona, though she was never again seen in public, was more than happy to wreak another kind of vengence against her former lover, as Baristas began to appear in the towns and cities. They appeared with their carts, and they founded their own coffeehouses, where the snark ran even thicker than in Starbuck’s cafe.

But Starbuck’s cafe, right at the start, had the Baristas making excellent espresso right when all the coffeehouses in town had their beans go to crotch, and by the time replacement beans had been found and the Baristas had founded their own espresso shacks and shops, Starbuck’s was well established as a place to get excellent lattes and the like.

Starbuck himself had no stomach for business — not after he saw the banker turned to salt and Fiona’s departure. So he hired some good businessmen and managers, and they saw the coffeeshop expanded, with new locations added. And over time Starbucks (focus groups didn’t like the apostrophe) spread out over all the land. And for thirty three years and thirty three days Baristas came down from the hills to serve in these new locations, because a bargain is a bargain, and a contract is a contract. And if they spit in peoples’ lattes, well — no one noticed.

Starbuck himself continued to work in his original cafe. And for the most part he was happy — he liked his customers and the atmosphere of his coffee shop was wonderful. They learned new tricks of blending chopped ice with the coffee and making cold drinks, and there was mass marketing and the like. Really, he was happy to let his managers deal with that. He learned how to pull an espresso himself, though he was never really good at the snark side of things.

And through it all, Starbuck continued to roast coffee beans and Starbucks continued to offer drip coffee. And even though that coffee tasted like crotch, Starbuck refused to take it off the menu. Some say it was pride. Some say it was guilt. Some say Starbuck couldn’t quite cope with having the thing he was once renowned for taken off the menu entirely. Either way, the people of the land learned to just order lattes or americanos or the like, and in some rare situations they learned to like drip coffee that tasted like crotch — to the point where the company actually sold their ‘special house blend’ coffees for people to brew and enjoy at home, their spouses silently learning hatred for the brew.

Of course, as the decades passed, the time appointed in the contract drew nigh. Starbuck was just as happy — his sins would come home to roost as the Baristas left. But his company managers, having been appraised of the situation, pushed the research and development department to develop a soulless machine that would grind, measure and pull espresso while steaming milk to a specific, thermometer checked temperature. And so, when the day arrived, and the Baristas solemnly took off their green aprons and stepped out of all the branches of Starbucks in the world, walking their paths and again rising up the hillsides and down to the sea, the cafes rolled out their new machines and hired some teenagers selected for their own cheer, spunk, attitude and disdain to push the buttons.

Starbuck watched this without comment. If you can find his original shop these days, you can still see him in there most mornings, pushing the buttons and preparing truly bad drip coffee. He won’t answer questions about the Queen of Baristas, but he’ll play you in Scrabble and he’s more than happy to up your order from a grande to a venti on the sly.

In the afternoons and evenings, however, he walks into the hills or down to the sea. And he can be seen there with a hand grinder, a bag of coffee beans, and a portable rig. He very slowly, and very carefully measures out his coffee, grinding and pouring it, and preparing two cups. Black. One he sets for someone else, and one he keeps for himself. He drinks every drop, though even he can’t avoid wincing now and again. No one knows what he does with the other cup.

They just know he’s waiting for it to be picked up, with a sigh and a snort and an affected “whatever.” And they do not pry further.