Birthing Day

The problem with getting old is that you forget more than you remember. If you live long enough, this is actually a blessing. I suspect we all have more things we’d like to forgot than to remember, given the choice. Or that, at he very least, we’d like to have no talent for hindsight or second-guessing.
           But if you can second-guess, you can also third-guess and so forth: it’s the problem of ‘know thyself’, really: there’s no point at which you stop, no sign telling you when you’re done: for best results, one would have to do everything possible, from love to murder and child molestation to being a rock star, and judge themselves by how they act, according to their actions. We find out what we can do by doing it, after all.
           That part is theory. The loss of memory I have charted, in detail that my mother termed ‘excruciating’ when I questioned my father at length on his own autobiography as his facilities slipped from him: he lost more than hurt than anything else. My mother said the marriage was the first to go, memory wise, but she was always too cynical for her own good.
           The ‘know thyself’ problem is probably embodied, insofar as theory can be, in Paul Jefferson, the man I am pushing down a hall in a wheelchair. He has enough wealth to probably get one that floats, but he finds this more honest. Perhaps he just likes being served, keeping us behind him. The chair is light, in spite of wires and bags and various technologies keeping him alive -- no matter what we do, our bodies run out on us, and he has done far more than many others.
           “Well?”
           He’s also been speaking to me. “Sir?”
           “I’ve spent more than the national debt of the United States on your projects here at Naglfar, Harold. I’m old, and dying, and I’d like to know when I’ll see some thrice-damned results you little cocksucker.”
           “You’ve been dying for the better part of a decade,” I say, moving the chair around a crate with a little more force than I need to. “One would infer you were used to it by now.”
           “I am seventy two years old, boy. I expected to live at least another twenty, and I doubt I shall. That is what this project is about, what everything of value is about: power. Results, Wegner.”
           “It is Dr. Wegner. If you are not going to use Harold, that is.”
           “A doctorate in mythology does not count, no matter the scientific airs you put on Harold. If there is one thing I cannot abide beyond genital warts, it’s pretension. You were brought on to help explain some of the captives and the creations, and are giving me this tour because everyone else is busy doing real work.”
           “Names are important.” I push him into the room at the far end, where the very old man in jeans is sitting at the round table with a rock and toothpick, scowling at them.
           “Well?” he says once I am sitting as well.
           “As you know, the Naglfar Institute of Higher Learning was funded in order to discover how belief creates gods, to determine how many believers are needed, how far their loss diminishes their creation and the extent of unusual psychic abilities --.”
           “I funded the place, boy. I don’t need a recap.”
           “Most old people do. I have charts,” I added to his cold stare. He probably believed he was immune to such things, just as he was convinced we’d discover a way to escape death for him. He tapped the side of his chair with one withered, liver-spotted hand, staring at me.
           “To continue, then.” I nodded to the old man in the other chair. “This is Merlin. We used some SCA fans to make him. Seventeen, to be precise. He was an old man we brought in, and what they wished for imbued him with power.”
           “Observe,” Merlin says in a voice orators would have killed for, the temperature in the room dropping abruptly as he pressed the toothpick into the stone and set it back down on the table, panting a little.
           Jefferson’s chair was the only sound for a few moments, making annoyed beeps as it compensated for the temperature drop. He stares at the stone, and the toothpick lodged into it, and laughs, the sound a soft rattling wheeze. “This .... this is your result?”
           “One of them.” I hand him the toothpick, and he tries to tug it out to no effect, handing it back. I try also to no effect, to prove a point.
           “I wanted gods, not - this.”
           “A myth is a myth, sir. He can manage kindling into rocks, on a very good day. We’re going to add 1 more believer tomorrow and see if the increase in his power is noticeable, or at what point it becomes such. It may differ for different effects, for all we know.”
           “And the temperature?”
           “Energy comes from somewhere.” I shrug. “I showed him to you first because he’s our success story using a very small amount of believers. Managing real gods is more difficult, due to the problem of containing them once we’ve made them.”
           “I see. And your progress?”
           “Three hundred and sixteen people can make a working model of Jehovah 2.0.”
           “Explain.”
           “The new testament version. We decided the old testament one wasn’t the sort of god we’d actually want around, even contained. Especially since we’re unsure if they can grow due to believers outside the Institute or how long they take to die if we deprive them of the believers. Most just seem to live as normal but lose their psychic powers. Finding believers again could jump-start them, in theory, so we mostly cremate the non-viables.”
           “Hm.” The old man was quiet for a few moments. “How much would it take to make me a god who does not die?”
           “We don’t know yet. All I can say for certain is that the base for god-creation seems to be 42 people, by amusing coincidence.” He didn’t look amused. “The gods die as well,” I say, “everything that exists does that. All you’d buy is time, Jefferson.”
           He smiles strangely at that. “It’s the only currency of worth. Which god are you?”
           “Sir?”
           His smile remains, but his eyes are sharp as tacks. “You aren’t stupid, Harold And your one eye seems to be glass, hmm?”
           “Odin,” I say finally. “For the knowledge of hidden things, and that death will not claim me. Gods are made, sir, not born.”
           “Then I am Surtr, who destroys it all, and will not die by fire. See to it.”
           “Surtr does die,” I say, unable to help myself.
           The old man laughed his death rattle. “‘Everything that exists does that’, boy. Your own words. And if one cannot love forever, at least we can destroy.”
           “You could just cut off the funding!”
           “I am over seventy years old, boy, in a body kept alive by chemicals and machines. I have very few opportunities left for fun, you little shit, and this will be one. If you did it for yourself, you can do it for me. And you will.”
           I nod and stand, exiting the room and leaving him to find his own way out. Merlin is dfoing his trick again, since it’s all he can do, and I think about charms and names, and wonder if I have the courage to find a tree and discover how far I will go to be truly born.
           I only know, as the old man opens the door with his good arm and screams his frail curses, that I will never go as far as he will. I take some comfort in that and hope that, when I am old as gods reckon years, I will forget even even me who made me as I walk towards the wing my believers are in, wondering if I can get them out, if I can defy Jefferson -- but no.
           I owe him something, at least, for making me what I am. The other scientists call me All Father now, but they still fear him. They can still make him greater than I, Jehovah 1.0 or Kali, but he has made his choice. I stop at a room, to give some of the subjects his face, pictures of Surtr, and then I continue on, wondering how this new god will mark his own birthing day.
           I rub the spot where my left eye was, and I decide to order more fire extinguishers.