Summary: It's been over a decade since Shadow saved the American gods he could, but several new ones have cropped up since. Granted, some are more amicable than others, and everyone is still careful. One of the new American gods tries to make some odd semblance of peace with one of the old ones.
A/N: I own nothing, and make no money off my writings. (Sadly.) I'm just toying around with an idea. As such, any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Mister Ibis looked across the table at the morning's benefactor. The young god sat in such a way that no one would dare mistake him for anything less than a power house. But still, his affect was a friendly one that promised to treat you like an old friend. Ibis abstained from anything more than surface judgement, not yet willing to give the young god the time or energy required to go beyond those efforts. After all, he had lived far too long to waste his energies.
The newcomer had arrived a few nights prior, knocking on the door of the funeral parlor as he and Jackal were cleaning up from dinner. He wasn't the first dot-com who had reached godhood in the States, but he had been the first to reach out. They had expected him sooner or later; the wind itself had been carrying his name in whispers. It seemed nothing was out of this one's grasp, and he knew it.
Baast had slinked off as the door opened, clearly not open to the idea of fraternizing with the newcomer. Later, the other two would grant her that the new one was not nearly as mellow or open to the world as their last living, godly visitor. But then again, their last one hadn't been aware of his godliness, which always made them easier to deal with.
The newcomer all but invited himself in, despite Jackal's protests of the two of them really needing to get ready to bed – work with the dead was still highly steady and showed no promising signs of slowing. But Ibis had recognized something in the new god – something of a distant kinship that maybe, just maybe, would be enough to close the gap the war had left. And while he had never regarded himself as the type who would volunteer to build bridges over dry land, these were strange times in the land that was not hospitable for gods.
"Breakfast. Three days from now. I'll write down the address. Meet me there at seven in the morning," Ibis had instructed, darting back in the house to write down the address. His perfect copperplate handwriting made the newcomer grin. It was as if he had handed the newcomer a relic, Ibis winced as he shut the door.
"You sure about that?" Jackal asked as they heard the newcomer's car drive away. A quick glance out their window showed it to be a flashy sports car, ever out of place in their small, run-down town.
"I haven't been sure about anything in a long time," Ibis said slowly, "But we're old, and we've seen how much we have to lose." Jackal frowned, bracing himself for a long conversation that he very much hoped would result in talking his partner out of meeting with the new god. Ibis recognized the set in the other's jaw and sat down, his legs too tired and his mid too heavy to have this conversation sitting down. Even Baast padded back into the room to listen in.
All three of them had been very busy after the war. Even though the war had not lasted long, the clean-up had taken a long time. After all, gods did not die like mortals. Their journeys to the afterlife was often messy, elongated, and angry. There were so few among their ranks who accepted the death of their mortal form smoothly, and that meant the underworlds' keepers had to work that much harder for the same results: getting the soul out of limbo to wherever it needed to go.
"What makes you so sure he means well?" Jackal asked, still standing.
"Look at him," Ibis shook his head, "He's young, full of himself, and wants something. He's going to get it no matter the path he takes. We've been here a long time, and I would rather try to find out what he believes he requires peacefully first."
The conversation wound its way through the night and into the morning. Baast had gotten bored at some point and gone to sleep. (The other two often bored her so.) Jackal, while not happy about the end of the conversation, accepted Ibis' reasoning, but gave him a time to be back to the parlor by, topped with the subtle threat of killing someone himself with the old magic that still threaded through the land if it meant calling the other god back for work. Ibis promised to mind the time and assured him that no intentional deaths would be necessary, and refrained from commenting how much Jackal had begun to emulate his father.
And so there they were – the old any the new, seated more of less across from each other, each with their own cups of coffee and small breakfast plates. The older god's coffee was black as night and rich as sin, though he would call it neither aloud. The younger's was on the lighter side of the spectrum, still promising to taste vaguely like coffee. The darker coffee sat next to a plate of rye toast and jam. The other coffee seemed to guard a plate smothered with an omelet and bacon strips.
So they started out different. There was no reason the differences had to keep the past and the present apart, right?
"So," the new god started out, "I hear you collect stories."
Ibis nodded slowly, almost suddenly wanting to guard his personal library from several miles away. "I do."
"Why?" The younger's question was so simple and complex in the same moment.
"To preserve a history that would be lost otherwise," Ibis explained.
The younger god nodded, seemingly pleased with the answer. Ibis nibbled on his toast, Jackal's anxiety becoming his own.
"I want the same," the younger god announcer rather than confided. Ibis mulled over this for a moment, but before he could reply, the younger god continued: "Though I want so much more than that, too. I want to amass all of the knowledge that has ever existed. Will ever exist. I want to catalogue every road, every book, every moment that people want to preserve. I think it will help them in ways they could never have imagined before."
"That's very ambitious," Ibis responded, realizing he sounded more like Jackal than himself. The young gods' wishes were bold ones – impossible ones, even. But it was not Ibis' place to tell the young god this. He would learn as much eventually. Or he would not. Either way, it had no impact on Ibis and Jackal's lives. Nor did it bother Baast, as almost an afterthought.
"It's not perfect yet, but it will be. I'm always expanding. Always learning new things. One day, I will be everywhere!" The young god sounded like a mad god. He was far too young to understand what it meant for a god-figure to be everywhere, but it was never good. The further the reach, the less control one had. In turn, the less control one had, the more unexpected problems arose. And problems were never a good thing for a god, even one derived from code and dreams.
Ibis said nothing, mulling over the implications. He knew he should not be concerned; he had heard this rhetoric before.
"You sound like the Technology Boy," Ibis told the younger god.
The younger god frowned in a manner that did not fit his face. "My father," he whispered, "made several mistakes."
Ibis watched the newcomer's affect shift. It seemed that the new gods had some sort of concept of lineage, no matter how warped or disjointed it may seem to the older gods. Technology, no matter how advanced, could not reproduce biological offspring like the old gods. But they understood they did not exist in a vacuum. Or, at the very least, this one did.
"Not all fathers and sons need to share the same destiny," Ibis offered, his thoughts on Seth and how thankful he had been that Jackal had turned out so differently. The newcomer nodded solemnly.
"It is my hope that the future will be brighter for my efforts," the young god continued, his previous affect returning. "That there will be a future where all information is present and free."
"That," Ibis drawled, "is where we differ." The newcomer cocked his head in clear confusion. "I do not care to free the information I had obtained over my many, long years. I care only to collect it. I cannot control what others do with the information should they care enough to read it. Because I have learned that people often do not care for truth or fiction to be separated. In fact, they want little more than to take the quickest route from A to B, with as few distractions as possible. In fact, I would often go so far as to say that people rarely care for information, but rather crave that which will make their lives the most simple."
The newcomer nodded in a fashion that mimicked Ibis' slow nod earlier. "Thank you," the young god said, "for that."
Unsure what he had done, Ibis simply replied, "You are welcome."
The two of them sat in silence as they ate breakfast. In the shadows of the café, Ibis missed the routine of the parlor. He could not determine what he had given the young god, or if it would harm or hurt the world he lived in.
Then again, the newcomer carried so many possibilities with him that mapping them out would take longer than Ibis realistically could manage. As he ate, he looked over the young god more critically. He was simply dressed, but his clothes were still rich. His khakis were ironed and creased perfectly. His shirt collar was folded down as if it had been taken from a stock photo. The buttons went perfectly down the center of his chest and aligned with his belt buckle. All said, he looked almost too perfect to be real. But then again, with the dream the young god carried, it fit him perfectly. Yet, despite all this, he had not seen anything that gave away which of the dot-coms had spawned this overly ambitious young deity.
The young god signaled their waitress for the check, declaring he would pay for the both of them without asking Ibis first. The waitress picked up the credit card and looked suspicious.
"Larry Google?" she asked, reading the name on the card, "Can I see your identification?"
"Of course," the young god chuckled, producing what looked like his license with something of a flourish. The waitress checked it over, flicking each of the corners as she did so.
"Bit of a Google fanboy, then?" the waitress asked, handing back the identification, apparently satisfied.
"You could say that," the young god grinned, placing his wallet on the table. Ibis filed the exchange away quietly. One of the few things time had failed to change was the gods' flair for being obvious about who they were.
The two gods left side-by-side. Google's car looked even flashier in the early morning sun. Ibis had taken the pick-up car in good faith that no one would suddenly keel over before his was done breakfast.
As they prepared to part, Ibis turned to the newcomer.
"Thank you for the meal," he acknowledged. He had not been expecting anything, in truth, and he understood what 'free' meant better than he often cared to put to words.
"It was my pleasure," Google flashed him a grin that looked too natural to be anything but overly practiced.
As Ibis turned towards his van, the newcomer added, almost as an afterthought, "Say, Ibis, do you think any of your stories would be able to join my collection?" Ibis froze, realizing this is what the new god had been after all along. "They can be scanned in so the world will be able to see them in their original. Your handwriting is absolutely stunning, after all."
Ibis silently cursed himself. He had walked into this – be amicable and hand over the stories of how the gods of old came to this country, or keep them safe from a world that had no place for gods and find out how far Google's kindness stretched.
"I will go through them and see if there are any that would be," Ibis paused, "appropriate for a larger, unspecified audience." He hoped the new god understood that the old gods were becoming an endangered species in this land, and he could not be the one responsible for the world knowing how weak the gods had become in this particular section of the mortal plane. After all, there were so many mortals who would love to see the end of the gods. Even without the stories of the war, there were plenty of weaknesses documented.
Jackal's fears became his own, in that moment. He was unsure if he outwardly appeared worried or calm.
"Of course," Google nodded, "Take all the time you need. After all, I'm pretty easy to find."
"Thank you," Ibis said as he let go of a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.
"Let me know if you need anything!" Google called as he slid into his car. It turned on with a purr.
Ibis watched him drive off before getting in his van. The drive back to the funeral parlor seemed longer than the drive to the café, despite the route remaining unchanged.
Ibis locked the door behind him as he entered the parlor house.
"Well," Jackal asked. The other god was sitting in the living room, the newspaper on his lap and his empty breakfast plate beside him. It appeared Ibis had not been the only one to break his morning routine.
"I believe," Ibis sighed, "that the possibilities the future holds will weigh heavily on the hearts of mortals and gods alike."
"That tells me nothing," Jackal frowned. Ibis walked over to sit down next to Jackal.
"It tells you much more if you're listening," Ibis corrected him. Jackal rolled his eyes, even unimpressed.
"What's wrong?" It was more of a demand than a question, coming from Jackal.
Ibis shook his head, "Things have changed more than we are really ready for. I cannot yet explain how, but I can tell you the next storm won't look like a storm at all."
Jackal's frown deepened. "All because of the new god?"
"No," Ibis shook his head, "Because of the dreams he carries with him. Because of what he promises to enable mortals to do. He promises everything and seems to believe he can keep that promise."
"It sounds as if he's the son of the Technology Boy," Jackal noted.
"He considers himself to be as such," Ibis confirmed, "but more polished and amicable. And that's what worries me."
Jackal remained silent for several minutes. Ibis offered nothing more to the other god, figuring the silence was needed.
"We have no place pulling strings in this world," Jackal said at last, "but perhaps there are others remaining who would be able to turn this next storm you speak of into one that could make these lands a little more fertile for all the generations of gods as they come and go."
Ibis sat back into the couch. "Perhaps, perhaps," he murmured, "but we shall see. We have been patient before, and we can be patient again."
It would be a long morning that would turn into long days, weeks, and months with more questions than answers. The two old gods kept their funeral parlor afloat as best as they could, eventually letting the morning with Google become more of an artifact in their minds than a memory.
Ibis had long since penned the encounter, speculating on how the gods of technology rose and fell. In its own way, it became some sort of closure for him. He knew that, one day, he would see Google again. But until then, he could wait.
After all, he was a scholar and a god. There were many things that would remain out of his reach, but he would keep his stories as his own source of comfort a little while longer.