Chapter 15

2078 a.d. What if God was one of us?

Hank sat up in the bed and stretched, yawning loudly. His bunkmate, Melinda, was nowhere to be seen – probably down in the dining hall sucking up eggs and pancakes. She was eating for two, after all, though so far no one knew it but the pair of them. He wasn’t in love with Melinda – nobody loved Melinda, except perhaps Melinda, and that made it difficult for others to care much about her.

That was okay, though, as far as Melinda was concerned; she didn’t care much for anyone else, either. She liked Hank, though. As the only male hybrid, pairing herself off with him gave her a special status among the other hybrids – her ‘sisters’, she thought disparagingly. Getting pregnant and having the first naturally born hybrid would boost her status even higher.

Hank knew all this, now, though he hadn’t truly been aware of just how self-centered Melinda was until he’d incidentally told her how he’d gotten one of his followers pregnant – and she had been a hybrid, like they both were. He’d called her ‘Maggie’ when he’d known her, almost twenty-five hundred years earlier. He’d been called, ‘Jesus’, at the time, though he’d had many names before that period in his life and several after that, until the Praetor had decided that he’d done enough to the indigent population by forming an army and burning half of Asia in the wake of a failing Roman Empire, and brought him home, imprisoned within itself like several of his so-called sisters, to live his many lives over and over again in perpetuity.

When Melinda found out that she could become impregnated by ‘flying’ with him, she immediately began to ply him with every favor she could think of, including a declaration of her ‘undying love’, which was what finally convinced him to give her a child. They ‘flew’ together many times for more than a year before she finally ‘caught’, and now she wouldn’t let him touch her, for fear of him causing some undetermined upset that might make her lose the fetus – or so she claimed.

That was how she thought of it, he realized. ‘It’ was a fetus, not a living, growing person, and he was simply the sperm donor that had impregnated her. So now, they might sleep in the same bedchamber, even in the same bed, but there was definitely no sex, either in her human form or her ‘natural’ winged, fertile one. Melinda’s entire concern now was for her unborn child – the first ‘prince’ of the realm – and the status she would gain by birthing him. She could come to be regarded as the Queen, with her prince destined to become the King of the Land, or the Grand Duke or whatever title the Ignorants might bestow upon him. Her child would be King, and she would be the Queen Mother, or the Consort or whatever they called the power behind the throne.

‘She’s completely deluded, ‘ Hank thought to himself, smirking, though somewhat irked that Melinda wouldn’t have sex with him anymore. They still held court together, Lord and Goddess, solving problems that the moronic population was too simple-minded to resolve for themselves, and occasionally passing judgment on some poor fool who lacked the common sense to prevent himself from doing harm to others.

Hank stood up and headed for the shower room, chastising himself for his unbecoming thoughts regarding those who allowed him to rule them. ‘She’s starting to rub off on me, ‘ he realized, as he clamped down on those belittling images Melinda often tossed at him mentally during some court case. It would be more preferable if he began behaving more like he had when he was trying to preach the locals into becoming better individuals. This time, though, he would make certain to keep his many magic tricks to himself.

‘No more teleportation tricks, and definitely no letting people know that my blood could make ordinary humans practically immortal, ‘ he thought, chastising himself, even after all these years, for letting Judas know that he was going to make all his disciples immortal, like he had Judas. ‘Eat, drink, this is my blood-this is my body, My Ass!’

As a direct result of his ‘coming out’, they’d hung him. ‘Judas was right. The common man cannot be trusted with power.’ His own followers had turned on him; convicted him; crucified him.

‘You can be anything to anyone, but you can’t be God. You will fail, every time; your followers, disappointed and betrayed by your humanity, will themselves disappoint and betray you.’

That was the lesson he’d learned as Jesus. That was what Judas had tried to tell him, but he’d been too elated, too convinced, in his own ‘rightness’, to see what terrible things he would bring on everyone who believed him. His disciples, scattered to the four winds, their families persecuted, his followers fed to the Roman arenas for the entertainment of the godless.

Only Maggie had escaped, fleeing on a ship through the Gates of Gades into Gallaecia with their daughter, Ellenia. He never saw either of them again.

After being Jesus, he’d taken up the mantel of warlord and led a revolution against Gaius Germanicus, the Caesar of Rome at the time. After the Vespa army had been routed, a crewmember from the great ship appeared with a Praetor, pronounced judgment on him, and took his soul, leaving his body to rot where it fell.

His morning shower completed, Hank threw on a robe and went downstairs to find whatever was left over from breakfast. He grinned, a bit sad, as he thought of this as the beginning of a new day, though the crystal sun had been shining brightly for months. One sun had ceased its glow, letting him know that the long, five-month winter would soon overshadow the land, freezing everything beyond human decency.

After checking in the kitchen and choosing a selection from the fruits and cold meats available, he seated himself on the veranda outside the formal dining room. His selections would be brought to him shortly. In the meantime, he motioned for one of the serving girls, beckoning her to come and rub his feet. This was one of the things he truly missed about Maggie: she never failed to wash his feet down with oil and sand, rubbing the crust of barefoot travel from his extremities with firm, loving care. Often, she continued all the way up his legs to wash and clean other, more private parts that also got gritty and sore from the daily existence in the dry, windy climate in which they had lived.

He smiled to himself as he remembered her mouth, soft and hot, wet and eager as she assuaged his aches and tiredness from his body.

The girl knelt down beside Hank’s lounge, her short, pale blue sarong barely reaching her knees as she reached forward and began to massage his feet, her long, black hair falling gracefully forward over her shoulders. After a few minutes, he couldn’t help but comment on the marvelous sensations traveling up his legs as his feet became more relaxed than they’d felt for some time.

“Oh my God, that feels good,” Hank sighed, smiling, his eyes closed in pleasure.

“At shem Yahweh elohik,” the girl replied, tossing her head so that her hair flowed back behind her left shoulder so she could look up at him with an air of disapproval on her face.

Hank sat completely upright, very suddenly. He stared down at the girl, glaring into her eyes, anxious to recognize her.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, his voice abrupt and angry. No one spoke Aramaic anymore. The girl smiled and dropped her eyes down, breaking their heated staring contest.

“Who would you have me be, My Lord God Almighty?” she whispered, then glanced back up at his face, daring him to chastise her.

Several emotions passed over Hank’s face – shock, incredulity, amazement, recognition. She smiled as she watched him remember.

“Maggie?” he asked, his voice soft but trembling. Tears suddenly flooded his eyes and threatened to run down his cheeks.

The girl grinned, nodding. “My name is Beth, now. I’m actually one of your many sisters, which is probably why you didn’t recognize me. None of us look like our old selves. New DNA, new bodies, stuff like that, you know?”

“You may look different,” Hank said, unable to stop smiling at her. “But you have a ... distinctive touch. My feet remembered you, even if the rest of me forgot.”

Beth laughed. “I was wondering how far I’d have to go before I gave myself away. You failed to recognize me on the great ship, and I was in your bed on four separate occasions.”

“How far would you have gone?” Hank asked, remembering many lovemaking sessions that had begun with her rubbing his feet.

Beth didn’t reply, but she smiled, mostly to herself. The two long-lost lovers sat and stared at each other for several minutes before Hank was able to recover enough to ask her that mood-destroying question.

“Why are you here?” he wanted to know.

Beth laughed again. “Just dropped by to see how you’re doing...

“And to say ‘goodbye, ‘ she added after a moment.

“Goodbye?” Hank asked, surprised. “You’re leaving?”

Beth nodded. “Transport to Earth – leaves tomorrow.” Then, remembering the constancy of this world’s sunlight, added, “Well, in twenty hours or so, anyway.”

“But...” Hank stammered. “But I just ... we just now found each other again. How can you just drop in and say ‘Goodbye’, just like that?”

Beth shrugged. “Simple. Hi, Remember me? I’m Magdalina. Bye. See ya ‘round.” She sat up, resting her arms on the pads of Hank’s lounge.

“But you won’t!” Hank insisted, completely upset now. “You won’t see me around. You’re frigging going to Earth!”

“Well, I can’t help that,” Beth sighed, regret obvious in her voice. “I got drafted.”

“But what about...” Hank began, then hesitated, uncertain how to ask. “What about Ellenia – our daughter?”

“Gods, I lost track of her...” Beth sighed as she tried to remember, “She fell in love with this guy and they went to Belgica or somewhere. I got taken by the Praetor before I could find her again.”

“You got taken by the Praetor?” Hank asked, simply not able to believe that such a wondrous, innocent woman could be harshly judged and consigned to an eternity of living your life over and over and over again.

Beth shrugged, smiling to herself, though the emotion she projected was one of sad regret. “I ran into some trouble in Cachtich. What can I say? I developed some bad habits.”

“I have no idea where that’s at,” Hank complained, watching Beth as she licked her lips and suddenly realizing what she was staring at.

“It’s not important,” Beth replied, leaning forward, a bit closer to that little tent in Hank’s robe that had been growing as he remembered Maggie’s lips and where they used to end up whenever she ‘washed his feet’. “You can always ask the Praetor about my history if you want. I’ll be gone, so it won’t matter what you learn about me. I’m really not the sweet, gentle girl you thought you knew.”

Hank shifted as he watched Beth’s face draw nearer to his midsection. As he shifted, his robe fell open, revealing what he’d been trying to keep concealed for the last fifteen minutes.

“My, that is a nice one,” Beth chuckled. “You should put that someplace warm, so it won’t get chilled and shrink.”

“That is so lame,” Hank replied, smiling at her silly remark. “There’s only one place you want to put it ... where you always want to put it.”

Beth snorted. “Yeah, but the original was a bit larger, I think?” She laughed, then grinned up at him. A second later, she was hauled up, both his hands on both her shoulders and dropped down, straddling his legs, her pale blue sarong bunched around her waist.

“Bare, underneath, as usual, I see,” Hank grinned.

“Always available,” Beth shrugged. “You knew that the day we met.”

Hank remembered. Beth – Maggie – had been a ‘priestess’, about to be stoned for offering herself to one of her worshippers, when he’d intervened and spared her life, though at the time, he hadn’t realized she was a hybrid, like he was, and nearly impossible to kill with a rock, or even several of them. When they realized they both had the power of flight, they’d flown up as high as they could, then fucked themselves silly, slamming their wings and their pelvises together until their wings were nearly shredded. Some short time after they survived that wild, beautiful night, Maggie discovered she was pregnant, which shocked the hell out of her, because she’d been unable to conceive for the previous two thousand years.