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- Herausgeber: George Saoulidis
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
Percy Jackson meets William Gibson in this thrilling world of Myth, Gods and Tech.
What happens when a corporation gets a god complex? Find out in our series of books on Kindle. Described as light cyberpunk, definitely sci-fi and with a fresh twist on Greek mythology.
The gods are back in town. Skyscrapers pop out of nowhere all over Athens. Corporations rename themselves as Greek gods. It all started with the Greek crisis of 2009 and will forever change the world as we know it.
Some say that CEO’s have gone mad. Others, that they know damn well what they are doing. That there is something solid amongst the myth.
In the day of inter-connectivity and social media admiration, can the myths come back to life?
Inspired by Dan Simmons’ Ilium, this fast-paced world blossomed into dozens of intertwined stories spanning all subgenres, from mystery to action to young adult and is certain to keep you at the edge of your seat.
Contains:
Erinyes
Nanodaemons
Crying Over Spilt Light
Maniai Case File 1: The Girl And The Blood Slide
How To 3D Print A God
The Impossible Quest Of Hailing A Taxi On Christmas Eve
Categories: Greek Gods, Greek Mythology, Dystopian, Young Adult, Action and Adventure, Cyberpunk, Hard Science Fiction, Medical Thriller, Environmental, Gaea Hypothesis, Mystery, Gods and Deities, Fairytales, Retellings, Artificial Intelligence, Androids and Robots, Corporations, Conspiracies, Thriller
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Purple Time
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Purple Time
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Purple time
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Purple time
Chapter 32
Purple time
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Purple time
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Purple time
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Crying Over Spilt Light
Chapter Zero
Chapter i
Chapter i^2
Chapter i^3
Chapter i^4
Chapter 2i
Chapter 2i^2
Chapter 2i^3
Chapter 2i^4
Chapter 3i
Chapter 3i^2
Chapter 3i^3
Chapter 3i^4
Chapter 4i
Chapter 4i^2
Chapter 4i^3
Chapter 4i^4
Chapter 5i
Chapter 5i^2
Chapter 5i^3
Chapter 5i^4
Chapter 6i
Chapter 6i^2
Chapter 6i^3
Chapter 6i^4
Chapter 7i
Chapter 7i^2
Chapter 7i^3
Chapter 7i^4
Chapter 8i
Chapter 8i^2
Chapter 8i^3
Nanodaemons
Chapter 1:// Booting up
Chapter 2:// Eating up
Chapter 3:// Going back
Chapter 4:// Checking up
Chapter 5:// Going over
Chapter 6:// Catching up
Chapter 7:// Paying back
Chapter 8:// Calling on
Chapter 9:// Checking out
Chapter 10:// Dosing up
Chapter 11:// Waking up
Chapter 12:// Taking apart
Chapter 13:// Breaking down
Chapter 14// Pushing on
Chapter 15:// Breaking out
Chapter 16:// Ripping out
Chapter 17:// Birthing out
Chapter 18:// Slipping past
Chapter 19:// Grouping up
Chapter 20:// Falling apart
Chapter 21:// Hanging on
Chapter 22:// Calling around
Chapter 23:// Pumping up
Chapter 24:// Caring for
Chapter 25:// Making out
Chapter 26:// Hanging in
Chapter 27:// Taking off
Chapter 28:// Digging up
Chapter 29:// Giving up
Chapter 30:// Giving away
Chapter 31:// Going after
Chapter 32:// Breaking in
Chapter 33:// Dropping back
Chapter 34:// Catching up
Chapter 35:// Dropping in
Chapter 36:// Setting up
Chapter 37:// Giving away
Chapter 38:// Ending up
Chapter 39:// Cheering up
Glossary
Maniai Case File 1:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
What If There’s A Pattern To The Madness?
How To 3D Print A God
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The Impossible Quest Of Hailing
Stave One
Stave Two
Stave Three
Stave Four
Stave Five
Did you enjoy the book?
Chapter 1
I took her place. That’s the reason I am telling you all this. Oh god what was I thinking?
But let me start from the beginning, or else you’ll think I am crazy. I am not, by the way.
My name is Mahi and I’m a teenager. I no longer feel like a teenager because of all the skata that has happened but I guess it bears mentioning. I used to be a normal teenage girl, going to school, taking selfies all the time, failing my grades, getting yelled at by mom, going for long coffee breaks like any self-respecting Greek should do, my future predetermined by people who don’t care and enforced by people who just manage to get by.
Oh boy did I live in a bubble.
Still at our house, living in posh northern Athens, amongst the pine trees and blissfully unaffected by the Greek crisis, I remember hearing my parents through the door arguing.
“You can’t give her a present, she failed half the exams!” said mom with her patented angry whisper. I am pretty sure my ears shot up at the sound of the word “present” and I stuck my ear to the door.
“I know honey, you are right, but I already said yes to my boss!” said dad. My dad works for Hermes Information Technology at the marketing department, shush now and let me listen.
“Who ever heard of a present being mandatory to be given to your daughter?” asked mom.
“It is a buzz marketing thing, circulate the new phone model to some sneezers and it creates demand when it finally hits the shelv-“
“Don’t call Mahi a sneezer!” mom interrupted.
“It’s just a term. She is popular, other girls will see her with the new Veil phone and they will want to buy it in order to become popular themselves. She fits the profile and I told my boss that she would be perfect for the marketing study. It is a market survey thing, we gave lots of phones away.”
My mother wasn’t happy at all. “It sends the wrong message, fail the class, get rewarded with a brand new phone, why bother studying at all?”
“There is a lot of money funnelled on this release. I already said yes, we can’t afford me losing my job,” said dad, mentally adding the word “again.”
And that was the end of the discussion, and me biting my hand not to cry out of excitement. Dad’s workplace had the latest tech, like straight from Japan or something like that. I never cared for those things. What I did care about, was me being around with the latest smartphone model, showing it off to every kariola who thought she was cooler than me. I can’t remember exactly but I’m pretty sure I posted an update with my excited face about getting a new phone from my dad’s company, right then and there kneeling by the door.
Huh. I guess they really do know their thing.
But why am I going on and on about a stupid phone, you might ask? That stupid phone was how she found me, that’s why.
When dad gave me the new phone, it was like Christmas in June.
“We are still mad at your grades Mahi. Your mom and I want you to understand that this is not a reward for failing classes, you need to study hard and pass,” I think dad said, or at least something similar, but I was only paying attention to the super awesome pink late-tech smartphone in the box.
“Thank you daddy sooo much!” I jumped up and hugged him. “I need to show this to all my friends right now!”
“That’s the idea,” he said and went on to face the angry mom stare in the next room.
Of course I was grounded for being close to fail the class and I had tons of studying for the re-exams with no time to spare at all, so naturally I turned on the music real loud, started dancing and taking selfies on the mirror with my new phone.
What a vlaka I was.
While you have the mental picture of me jumping up and down singing pop songs firmly placed in your mind, I want to explain some things to you that I only figured out much later. The only reason we lived in a nice neighbourhood after the Greek crisis is because dad got a job at Hermes. I had no idea at that time (still jumping up and down) of the way people lived around Greece, or that mom and dad wanted me to get an education and get a job in one of the corporations that were swiftly engulfing the country, or that they believed that doing so was the only way to survive, the alternative being leading a life of poverty.
Then I got an IM. “You know what happened to Narcissus who admired himself at the lake all the time?” asked Billy. Bless him for being such a grounding influence.
I naturally replied with stupidity, “He turned into a bush.”
“Close, but not it. Have you spoken to Deppy?” he said.
Even the most grounded teen has his hormones bubbling hot I guess. I called him on the phone and snapped, “You talk to her yourself!”
“Come on, please just bring her here, do it for me,” he said, me imagining his puppy dog eyes. A two meter tall puppy mind you, but with a tender soul.
“I am grounded and have to study. Do you want to go from being - such a nice influence to our daughter - to - what a bad influence that young man has become - ?” I asked, mocking my mother’s tone of voice.
“I’m guessing you are posting selfies and I expect you will keep doing so for the next two hours. By badly influencing you to skipping study time I am also preventing you from staring at your reflection. Lesser of two evils and such,” he said, clearly playing chess with his idle hand as I could hear the soft thumping of the pawns.
“Stop playing with yourself Billy,” I said.
“I’m not. This Korean guy is even better in chess than the other games,” he said. His phone glinged in-call with a received SMS text, probably from the chess opponent sending in his next move.
“OK fine, I’ll call her,” I said, recognising the excuse to get out for a walk.
Billy was (seriously) not using the latest smartphone, not posting everything on Facebook and not chatting, tweeting, IMing, sharing, liking, tagging all the time like the rest us. What a freak.
Chapter 2
I was already wearing make-up.
You don’t take selfies without make-up, what are you nuts? That is like 60-70 less likes right off the bat. I got my bag with my laptop and sneaked out of the house. It wasn’t that hard with mom having a video of a how-to recipe playing on the tablet and the kitchen TV showing some Turkish melodrama BOTH OF THEM PLAYING SO LOUD MY GOD MOM TURN IT DOWN DIDN’T IT USED TO BE THE OTHER WAY AROUND?
Thank god we live in a protected neighbourhood, or else she wouldn’t even hear any burglars smashing their way in.
Deppy was online naturally so arranged a meet at the corner by my house.
While I waited, I could see a small Roma boy, just a kid really, trying to make a living. As the cars waited at the crossroads, he would stroll to the window, extend his little hand to the driver and ask for them to buy his pack of facial tissues. It was a thing they did. Instead of asking for charity, they would “sell” you the cheap pack, and you’d always pay more than its actual value as a kind gesture.
The boy was disappointed. On a warm summer day, nobody was sneezing or anything, so nobody was buying anything from him. He had just went up to jeep, having to stand on his toes to present his wares to the tall window. He was waved away by the man inside, who simply went on with his phone call. His shoulders fell and he slouched away, while the cars revved and left the intersection. He was standing in the scorching sun all day, trying to make a meager living.
I had seen his green eyes before. He’d been working our street for a few months. The boy had medium dirty curls, unkempt hair.
He reminded me of my little brother.
I called him and bought a pack of facial tissues from him. I gave him half my allowance, then shrugged and gave him all of it, except the change for the metro fare. He gave me a smile, sold me three packs of facial tissue and went on to enjoy some of the shade.
Chapter 3
Deppy showed up. She had the superpower of walking and never taking her eyes off the phone, all the while taking half-jumpy cutesy steps and not bumping onto things or people. I strategically positioned myself many times with a light-post between us just to kindle a sudden kiss between them, but she never seemed to fall for it. Oh well, time to get her to kiss a boy-like light post. Man, are they the exact opposites of one another or what?
“Ya!” she said, clearly dodging the light post. Oh well, must keep on trying.
“Ya. Let’s go to Kifissia for frappe,” I said casually.
“Nobody will be there, too soon. Lemme see. Yeap, no check-ins yet,” she said, taking her eyes off the phone for a mere second to see me.
“I need Wi-Fi, mom closed mine, I’m grounded,” I said casually. Casually I said!
“What a bummer. Fine let’s go but I haven’t got any money. Just coming along for the check-in!” she said with her cutesy voice. Guys must fall for it all the time.
We walked side by side each of us on her phone towards the metro. I texted Billy, “Bringing her now. Just buy her a frappe and she’s all yours to ignore you as long as you wish…” .
Deppy saw my earlier post about dad’s present and said, “Oh you got a new phone, lemme see!”
If it’s not on a status update, it did not happen.
I twisted my wrist slightly and showed her the latest smartphone that was thirty centimetres away from her nose but needed information to take the long route (I don’t know, are there satellites involved or something?) to make her actually notice it. “Oh it’s so nice. And pink!” she said. And then she started touching it.
No, that did not seem unusual to me at that time.
“What can it do?”
“No idea. Took a bunch of pictures.”
“Come on, it must do something new, Hermes’ stuff are the best.”
“Still got nothing.”
“Wait, lemme search.”
“Here it is, overlay. The revolutionary Veil smartphone will also be the first integrated overlay device. Overlay brings the digital world topology to the real world for the ultimate augmented reality… Sample pics, nai, here, how to use. Can I?” she asked but was already grabbing it. I let her play or else we would never make it to the metro.
She turned on the camera and pointed it a people on the street. Some floating text followed them, and when she tapped on a guy his facebook profile came up. The app lost the face-lock because Deppy was jumping up and down with excitement and I was carried away for a bit.
“Find a cute guy, that one,” I told her and bit my lip.
“Single, works at Apollo Medical. Good pick girl,” she said nodding.
“No don’t add him!” I said and tried to stop her. The man reached for his phone, smiled and I got a friend request acceptance a few seconds later.
“Oh this is golden. When do these come out, did your dad tell you?” she asked me with excitement.
“Soon I guess, I dunno,” I said.
“This is so awesome,” she said and pointed the camera at herself. The overlay showed her profile, her latest update, even the IMDB link of that part she had in a movie a year ago. “It has nothing private, everything is already accessible online. Lemme check, nai, my private pictures are not shown – thank god, dad would have a heart attack – but overlays the information about someone from the net on the real person. Oh, it works on buildings too. Anything with an RFID chip. Who cares really? Let’s go see what the people on the metro will show up!” she said, and started jogging.
I never jog, it ruins my image.
She was plenty distracted while waiting for me to walk at the metro station, so I did not feel bad for taking my time. It did feel weird not having a phone on me though.
“I remembered just now that dad said these phones are for market testing purposes,” I told her as soon as I got close, “so don’t do anything weird with it, I think it takes statistics and stuff automatically.”
“No nudes, got it,” she said casually and carried on eavesdropping on random people’s digital personas.
Sitting on the train we learnt that the lady beside us had an unhealthy love for cats, that the man standing behind her was constantly commenting on professional stripper’s photographs and that the kid running up and down the wagon was 5 years old and had a knack for vandalising wikis. The distraction made the whole six minute commute bearable.
There were some shop windows in our path but I tried to keep the delay to a minimum, or else poor Billy would be left with no fingernails to chew on.
The coffee shop was nice and gray, modern, catering to a bit of an older generation. Billy was slouching over a chessboard.
Not a digital one. A wooden one.
What a freak.
“Oh hi Billy, nice to see you here. Come sit with us!” I said a bit too theatrically.
“Sure, why not?” he said and followed.
Deppy and I took a selfie so we could check-in at the coffee shop and after a couple of tries we were both satisfied.
I dumped both of them unceremoniously with an excuse and sat at the next table with my laptop. Billy was delighted to have Deppy there, trying to initiate conversation. She kept looking at her phone, idly glancing at him and nodding at times.
I surfed some sites I liked for a while. Deppy IMed me, “Oh bummer, it doesn’t take good pictures. Look at all the smudges. Remember to tell your dad to fix it.”
Indeed I opened up some of the pictures I took since I got the phone and on the larger screen of the laptop I could see some white washed lights or something.
One of the white washed lights was almost something like a face. I paid no attention at the time.
Chapter 4
86 likes later I was bored. We might as well had posted a cocktail pic. The only one still excited was Billy. I was so bored I actually took the time to read the messages unknown people send me. They are usually just greasy comments from guys, sometimes disturbing or provoking. One of the messages was different. It was actually a tag on my selfie from my bedroom. It was “#erinyes”, coming from a guy named Prodromos, with a Greek π as his profile.
“Who are you? What is this you tagged on me?” I IM’d.
It didn’t take long for him to reply, “Change your path, it’s not too late. They smell regret before it even happens.”
What was this guy talking about? Why would I have regrets? “What are you talking about? Why would I have regrets?” I said as if I had thunk it.
This time it took longer for the reply, which did not help the crazy guy’s case in my mind. “You will have them soon. Don’t let them take shape,” he said, and logged off. Fine, I wasn’t planning anyway on talking to the wacko any more.
Then I noticed that the face recognition had drawn one more square next to my face on my selfie. That face was the one Prodromos had tagged as Erinyes, not mine.
I’m not sure if Billy had any luck getting to Deppy, I guess there was some rapport but I wasn’t paying attention. Coffee time was over and we split up.
Chapter 5
Back at my house, mom was yelling at me for sneaking out and not studying.
“I needed to take dad’s gift out for a ride, isn’t that the point?” I said unconvincingly. I don’t remember the rest of the conversation but I am sure it doesn’t matter anyway. I went to my room and puffed my pillow. Face down and looking tired like only a teenager can.
Like clockwork, it took a mere two minutes for my need to check my phone to kick in. Scroll, scroll, nothing, nothing.
I opened the pictures I took. Yup, smudges.
I sent a message to Deppy, “How do I add the printer on this thing?”
She replied, “Just hook it up to the laptop and run the…”
“WIRELESSLY. NOW. IM NOT GETTING UP,” I said.
“Kala! Here, click this and accept the install,” she said a few seconds later.
I clicked and the printer was connected. I tapped print and the photos started whirring out of dad’s printer.
How did she do those things? I’ll never get technology.
I went to the living room, and raised a big photo of my face up to my face. Yup, just like staring into the lake.
Not big enough. I downloaded an app for photo manipulation and zoomed a bit the part with the smudge. Print.
Are those eyes? And that weird looking hole a mouth? It can’t be, can it? Nah it’s just a glitch. What about the rest of the pictures? Print. Print.
What did that guy call it again?
Chapter 6
Agamemnon looked into the vault of heaven and prayed saying, "I call Jove the first and mightiest of all gods to witness, I call also Earth and Sun and the Erinyes who dwell below and take vengeance on him who shall swear falsely, that I have laid no hand upon the girl Briseis, neither to take her to my bed nor otherwise, but that she has remained in my tents inviolate.
Then he cut the boar's throat.
I formed the words with my mouth in silence. The Erinyes who dwell below and take vengeance. I closed the book of Iliad. Heavy stuff.
I played with my lips for a while.
I took my new phone and went to the bathroom. After a touch up I started taking selfies on the mirror, the light is excellent there, I’m getting tons of likes.
Click. Nope, another pose.
Click. Nah.
Click. Click.
Oh man, it’s smudgy again. Zoom it and print, dad should really get this feedback so they can fix it.
Wait, is that a face?
Is that…
Is that thing behind me?
Purple Time
She reached her hand to touch my face and I ducked instinctively. Smashing the mirror behind me, the shards piercing my back I ran as fast as I could out of the bathroom, running through thick time.
On the hallway I could hear mom’s Turkish TV blasting at full volume, the sounds distorted by my adrenaline and the Doppler effect.
I turned around for a second to see, the Erinyes was chasing me like a feline predator, her movements slow but steady. She was smiling, the kariola was smiling.
The door smashed into splinters at my left and a rather big piece pierced my cheek. I spat blood and ran to the balcony.
The sun was blinding and I was disoriented for a couple of seconds too long. She came closer and opened her arms as if to embrace me, her nails scratching the bookcase at her right with impossibly bright mauve sparks, as if she was welding the books to reality.
The automatic sprinkler had watered the plants and I could smell the lovely moist dirt and the fresh flowery fragrance.
“What a lovely place to die,” I thought and realised I got myself trapped in the balcony, no exit but down. No, not down, it is too high. Next balcony, yeah, I can reach it.
Mrs Toula would not be happy to see me crashing her place uninvited but she’ll get over it.
I started climbing the mid-wall that separates the balconies from the neighbours and grabbed a hold of the aluminium thing and stepped on a big potted plant and then I slipped and fell and hit my head.
Chapter 7
I woke up from a splash of water on my face, shaking in my mother’s arms.
“Oh darling what happened?” my mom asked as she was cradling me and checking my temperature. She was still wearing her kitchen apron and her hands smelled of cut vegetables.
I looked around groggily. “I’m not sure. When did I get here?” I propped myself up, stabilised for a second and looked back at the bookcase. Everything was fine. In its place, undisturbed.
Huh.
I could have sworn I would wake up to a path of destruction.
Mom was checking into my eyes like doctors do, as if she knew what to do. Which she didn’t. “Mahi, did you faint?” Her eyes opened with realisation and she whispered, “Are you pregnant? If you are, it’s OK, but you need to tell me.”
I swiped her hand away and stood up properly. “Ohi. No mom, I’m not pregnant.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m pretty sure.”
She bit her lip. “Did they teach you at school? About contraception?”
“Yes mama…” I exhaled and went back to my room.
I shut the door and sat down. I could feel her worry radiating through.
I thought about the chase. I could remember everything perfectly.
Was I on drugs or something?
Chapter 8
It took me a minute or so to tell everything to Deppy, but Billy was a whole other thing. I had to call him on the phone like a Neanderthal.
“So, are you?” he asked.
“What?”
“Pregnant.”
“No!”
“Interesting…” he said and I could just picture him taking the Spock pose.
“I sent you the pictures on your email.”
“OK, but I can’t see them yet. I’ll call you when I get home.”
What. A. Freak.
Who doesn’t check his emails on his phone in this day and age?
I checked my profile. A few more likes here and there, two more sleazy comments, deleted, reported, thank you… Huh. Seven check-ins at the coffee shop I just came from.
Copycats. Bunch o’ copycats. I let them know with an appropriately punny cat pic.
Anyway, I was late for frontistirio. Frontistirio is a private cram school, where they teach you the things school ought to teach you but doesn’t, so everybody needs to spend more time and money to pass the exams. I thought it was the norm, but I learned much later that it is solely a Greek thing.
I picked up my bag and hit the road.
It was like a three minute walk from my house, so took my time and window-shopped a bit.
Eventually, I got myself there, but I was late even when I started, then I was a bit late again with my detour, and most of the class-hour was gone anyway so I just sat outside at the bench and waited for the next one.
It’s not like I had studied for either one.
Chapter 9
The bell rang (yes, we have a bell cause this is still the 20th century for some reason) and the other kids stormed out.
I was on the bench, which was covered in writings and quotes and little drawings that made it a work of art in itself.
Most of my class came and surrounded me.
“What’s that, the new phone?”
“What’s it called?”
“Oh, nai, veil or something.”
“It’s awesome. Not the pink one of course, don’t want the pink one,” a classmate said, defending his manliness.
I decided to act smart and show them what Deppy figured out. She was around the corner. She could easily hear me talking about the phone’s features that she taught me about a few hours before. If she was offended about that, she didn’t show. My class was “Ooh-ing” and “Ahh-ing” as I demonstrated.
“Let’s say I don’t know who you are Christos, and I see you here on the street. I look at you through the phone’s screen, and there’s your public profile! You’re online, so I can see your profile pic, your status, whatever. Nothing private though, nothing like that.”
That got another round of interest, and people turned to their own phones and googled for the minisite Hermes had made for showcasing the Veil.
Yes, this was going to be a hit. I felt proud for my dad. It’s not like he was the only one making the thing, but it was nice that his company was looking forward to a mass-market success.
The bell rang again, this time telling us to get our asses inside.
We all ignored it of course. Except the nerd. Deppy went inside for class.
A few minutes later, the teacher came outside and started herding us in.
Chapter 10
I was bored. Bored bored bored. Bort. Borrrrrrrrt.
I was sitting at the back, of course. Only losers sit at the front.
The teacher was scribbling some math on the board. I was supposed to know all of these three times already, but they looked like Chinese to me.
Frontistirio was making us do-over the curriculum again and again, and had us give mock exams again and again until the SOS parts were drilled in our heads. SOS were the really important bits. We pronounced it like “sauce,” cause we are Greek and shit.
I looked down.
Oops too low. I adjusted my blouse that was leaving too much skin exposed and sat up straight.
I looked down again, at my book.
It was nice and neat. Fluorescent markers had highlighted the SOS bits. With pink of course. Yellow was for the tricky stuff. Green for the ones I could safely ignore and delete from my memory.
I was fighting an urge to check my phone. It had vibrated twice already. Or had it? I wasn’t sure. Sometimes I would think it vibrated but then I’d check and see nothing. I could almost hear Billy’s pretentious voice in my head, “it’s the phantom vibration syndrome, where the false belief that one’s…” and then I would shut him up. And he would say it with the tone of voice that implied we were addicts or something but he was somehow out of this world, more involved and natural.
Even so, more importantly, this teacher had a hawk’s eye for texting. There was no way I’d risk getting my sparkly new pink phone confiscated by this malaka.
I would endure.
I looked around for moral support. Billy wasn’t doing frontistirio, he was reading by himself. We were classmates only in the morning, at school. Deppy was here with me, smiling at a boy two rows to the left. What was his name? John? Jed? Joe?
No clue.
See? This is where the veil is useful! Just pick it up and look through the screen. Boom. In-far-ma-shah.
Must. Resist.
I thought about actually trying to solve the math problem. That should take me a while. I began reading from the top. The teacher was already done with the solution, and had stood aside so we could copy it down.
Did I mention he didn’t just let us take a picture and be done with it?
The barbarity.
I was writing down the problem-solution duo, flicking my head up the board, down the notepad, up, down, up, down, when a shadow waved in the corner of my eye and I froze.
Purple Time
She came through the teacher’s chest, like an ethereal projection, her eyes darting around the class, staring at people with hatred.
My heart pumped blood at a thousand litres per second and my fingers electrified at the extreme dosage of adrenaline.
I lowered my head and froze in place, my first instinct being to hide in the crowd. She arose from the teacher’s chest but her body was hazy, not fully there.
Her eyes and her hands and her hair were there, moving as if on the surface of a strong current. She looked around and turned straight at me, letting me see the hatred in her purple eyes.
She charged at me, pushing the teacher aside tearing his chest with her claws, rippling through the furniture and the people like an unstoppable sound wave.
I pushed the desk aside and ran to the door. She was gaining on me, closing in, splinters flying. Three rows, Two rows. One row. I dodged and hit a classmate. I pulled him behind me, offering him as sacrifice to appease Erinyes. She wasted fractions of a second to rend him in half and extend her bloody claw at me.
Her nails bit in my flesh and I screamed in pain. She tore most of my back but the pain gave me thrust and I ran, every step as if searing hot iron was lashing my body.
I reached the door and swivelled with my hand towards the street, she hissed and brushed her hair at me, her hair like animated snakes, purple and with purpose, stinging my hand.
I pulled my arm back and screamed from pain, new toxic pain as I ran to the bright light outside.
Chapter 11
I was hiding in a corner.
Someone touched me and I flinched. I looked up.
Deppy was looking at me with worried eyes. Our height difference made her look almost level at me even with me crouching down. I looked around, there was no sign of Erinyes.
“What happened Mahi?” she asked me but I had nothing to reply.
I walked back to the classroom and Deppy held my arm, as if to support me if I fell. I walked past my classmates, they were staring and whispering amongst themselves. I’d never been so ashamed in my life.
I walked past them, a couple of boys tried to make some sort of tease but Deppy nipped that in the bud. I looked into the classroom.
Other than my own desk, the one I had flipped over, everything else was where it should be. I expected to find a bloody battlefield inside, but it was just my stuff on the floor. I picked them up hastily and put them in my bag, which Deppy was holding open for me. I propped up the chair and the desk, and head low, I jogged out of there.
Chapter 12
“You didn’t see anything?”
“Ohi, sorry, nothing,” Deppy replied and she was being honest.
I pulled my legs close to my body. We were at her house, after conjuring up girl-troubles at her dad. He didn’t bother us at all and he left us the living room, finding some daily chore to attend to. Deppy’s dad was a stay-at-home father, working from a fancy computer setup with three monitors and expensive hardware and 24/7 graphs ticking away. Deppy had explained many times to me what it is he actually did, but I zoned out every time after ten acronyms. The only word I remember (because her dad used it like 6.2 times in a sentence) was heuristics. Whatever that was.
Her parents had reversed their roles since Deppy was a baby, so he was the one that actually raised her. Her mother had a promising career and they had decided not to abandon it after Deppy was born. So her father gradually shifted his work and clients to a flexible schedule that he could attend to at home, and he was happy to do the house chores while the mother was out there in meetings and business suits. It was a complete reversal of Greek household values, where the mother was expected to stay at home and raise the kids, and it had attracted a lot of snide remarks from people addressing the father’s sexuality, or at the very least, the diameter of his balls.
All I knew was that, after my dad, Deppy’s dad was the awesomest dad in the world.
I welded my eyes to a painting across the living room, not daring to look my friend in the eye. The painting was from some fantasy RPG game, one that Deppy and her dad played together, and it depicted a busty woman with a big sword in an impossible pose. Seriously, her back would have to be liquid to perch her butt like that. Deppy had told me once that it was the original painting that was scanned for the game’s artwork, and was bought at an online auction. They loved geeky stuff like that.
“But you do believe me,” I asked her when she came back in the room with hot chocolate for me. I kept my gaze on the sword.
Deppy took a few seconds to reply. “I don’t think you are crazy, if that’s what you are asking…” she said, and grabbed my pink new phone. She had no boundaries at that sort of thing, and you just had to learn to accept it.
She sat at her father’s workstation and plugged in my phone. The computer setup was intimidating to most people, and seemed important. Deppy knew of course what to do so as not to disturb her father’s work, so she logged in to her accounts and seemed to take up only two of the monitors, while the third one was showing stats and data as usual.
She leaned back and the chair squealed audibly. “Okay, that’s actually something.” We were both looking at a zoomed image of my selfies, of the smudgy part that we had seen earlier and that I had printed back at home.
The smudge was kinda-sorta-maybe facelike.
Deppy started typing away and brought up the videos our stupid-ass classmates had just uploaded. Deppy winced and sucked in air. “Sorry. Maybe you shouldn’t see those right now…”
“Ohi, it’s fine. Pull them up,” I said.
Due to the mobile ban at class, they weren’t as quick to draw as they would have in normal circumstances. The videos began after I had stormed out of the classroom, capturing a nice ear-piercing scream I’d let out. They had all managed to get my crouching in the corner in time, and in one Deppy was yelling at the boy and telling him to back off.
I hadn’t noticed that.
She had defended me.
Deppy downloaded them all and focused on a trigger-happy girl’s video, who had began recording a few seconds earlier than all the others.
As she was processing the video, I decided to block it all out for a while and focus on the sweet, warm chocolate. I closed my eyes and zoned out of the ambience of whirring computer fans and keyboard shortcuts.
Several minutes passed.
“W-T-F,” Deppy yelled in acronym and I jumped up startled and burned my finger.
“What?”
“This is trippy!”
I went over her shoulder and looked at the monitor. Deppy had stabilised and looped a few frames at the beginning of the video, that had barely managed to record me leaving the classroom. It showed my hand on the door frame as I was swivelling. My body was hidden from the wall. A dark form was after me, clearly moving towards me in the few frames. Purple sparks were touching my fingers.
My cup smashed on the floor and I made a mess.
Chapter 13
I am wearing my Hello Kitty dress. It is new and clean and I love it.
George wants to go look for his bicycle. The road is wet and covered with dirt. We are alone in the house, mommy had to go to the hairdresser’s and left me to take care of my little brother. Daddy is at work.
The flood is intense. Mommy called twenty times, I told her we are OK. She says she can’t drive back, says she’ll be late. It’s alright, I say, we’ll wait here.
George is kicking and screaming. He is at the balcony, watching the brown waters rushing down the street. It stopped raining but it’s still cloudy and a little dark.
I look at my new dress in the mirror and I love it.
George comes to me and tells me he wants to go look for his bicycle. The water took it away. He could see it around the corner but now he can’t see it anymore. He is sure because it’s bright green and you can see it clearly so it’s safe.
He is pulling my sleeve, I yell at him because he is going to ruin my dress. He leaves me alone and goes back to the balcony to look for his bicycle.
I wear my shoes. They fit the dress well. They make me a lady. I look at them in the mirror and I love them.
George is not yelling now. I hear the door closing, it is big and heavy and makes a snap when it shuts.
I get to the balcony, George is not there. I get out of the house and walk down the marble stairs. I hear the condo’s main door close and I run downstairs.
Water has come inside the lobby. Some parts are muddy. I stand at the last step and look at the water. I don’t want to get muddy water on my shoes. I love my shoes. I take them off and leave them on the last step. I walk in the water and open the main door.
George is outside on the pavement. The water is lower now but it was very high before. I can see that from the brown mark on the walls. The rain took a lot of the dirt away. I yell at George to come back and pull my dress up. I step into the water and walk outside.
George tells me he saw his bicycle across the street, around the corner. He saw the water push it there. I walk down on the pavement, the street still has a lot of water, it looks like a river. A dark green garbage can is flowing down like a boat. George crosses the road after it and goes to the corner. He is all wet now, and dirty from the mud. He doesn’t care.
I walk to the corner, still on my pavement. I yell at George to come back. I tell him mommy will be very angry and that she is coming in five seconds. George says that his bike is just over there and that it will only take a second.
The street around the corner is lower, so the water is deeper. More water is coming from other places and ends up there, so it makes swirly shapes. A branch from a pine tree is coming towards George fast and I yell at him to stay away. He looks around and holds on to a car. The branch hits the car and it makes a bang, but it floats away.
George yells that he sees the bicycle and runs to it. I can’t see where he is going and I can’t see the bicycle. I wait at the corner and I am holding my dress up so it doesn’t get dirty.
I call out to George but he doesn’t say anything. I yell louder but he still doesn’t hear me. I wait there because I don’t want to get my dress dirty. It’s new and I love it.
I yell again and I step into the muddy water. My dress gets ruined. I am angry and am going to tell everything to mommy so she takes care of George when she comes.
I hold on to a car and go where George saw his bicycle. It is a place from a condo that has cars below. There is a hole and the water is going inside very fast. George is at the hole and is pulling the green bicycle. The water is fast and he can’t pull the bicycle. He tells me to help him. I tell him no, he made me walk into the water and now my new dress is ruined. It is wet and muddy and I’ll never forgive him and I’ll tell mommy and he will never play videogames again.
George is all wet and dirty, and his face is red. He is pulling on the bicycle. It gets unsnagged and George falls under it in the water. I yell at him from far away.
He gets up from the water and carries the bicycle against the fast water. He puts his arm in the triangle under the seat and puts it on his back. He tells me that it’s OK and he can get it home.
He slips and falls and the water pulls the bicycle into the hole. The bicycle gets stuck in the hole and his arm is pinned under the water. His face is red and brown and under the water. I scream and run to George and pull him up but he is stuck and the water is coming fast.
A man hears me and comes towards me and tells me to get back but I pull George up but he is stuck.
I pull and pull and I slip and I stand up over the water and I breathe.
The man comes next to me and pulls George over the water.
George turns blue.
I love him but he is now blue.
Chapter 14
I was in no mood to go home. I left Deppy’s after cleaning up of course and went to a cafe on my own.
I walked inside and the barman lit up as soon as he saw me. His name was Adras and he was as manly as it gets. He had a thing for me, commenting on all my pictures. I could get a free coffee anytime where he worked.
He tried to hide that he rushed to my side of the bar and casually rubbed something that needed cleaning. “Yasou Mahi! It’s not your usual time.”
“I should leave then,” I said and theatrically turned towards the exit.
“No, no,” he said and he was practically leaning over the counter.
So adorable.
“I’ll stay then,” I said and smiled at him.
He looked like he had won a prize. “What shall I make you? Frappe as usual?”
I held my hand topside touching my forehead, and said, “I really need something stronger today.”
Adras gritted his teeth and inhaled. “I can’t do that Mahi, you aren’t 18 yet. And the fact is, I know you are not 18, and can’t even claim ignorance. You come here with half your classmates for god’s sake.”
“Come on…” I said and leaned on the counter to give him a good view, the very same I knew for a fact he was looking at for hours surfing my pictures. I took a real bimbo tone of voice and said, “I read on a article the other day that a woman should have a Cosmo when she is troubled. Can you make me a woman?”
He gulped. “Yes.”
“I’m sure you make it great.” I made sure to keep the pose he liked and took out my wallet. “I dunno how much a cocktail costs, never had one before…”
“It’s OK, on me,” he said and started making me one.
“You are the best,” I told him and smiled.
I sat at a table alone.
I surfed the web a while, ignoring my messages. Adras brought me the Cosmo and after some chit chat, he went back to the bar. I took a big sip and found it nice. I think he made it light on alcohol somehow, even though I’ve never had one before to compare. It was surely on purpose because he really knew how to make those things. Adras was a mixologist, a title that brings out snorts in Greece everytime it is uttered out loud because it means something silly. It sounds as if you call yourself “snot specialist.” Seriously. But no one seemed to complain after he’d tasted his lattes and cocktails. Adras had gone to a mixologist school in the Netherlands, and he was really proud of it. He was older of course, way over thirty but he was always sweet.
Plus he had grrreat arms.
Muscled and with hands that were rough from manual labour.
I stared at him work through a reflection.
My phone buzzed. It was a message. I was about to ignore it but I noticed the greek pi on a white background. It was Prodromos.
“Come with me if you want to live.”
What?
I wrote back, “What?”
No reply.
I waited and waited, refreshed and turned my Wi-Fi on and off again. Nothing. I drank my whole drink but decided against asking for another. Maybe I could push my luck with Adras for a second one, but to be honest, I was starting to get tipsy.
I called Billy.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Did you see what happened?”
“No, what?”
“You really need to get a smartphone one of these days. You are literally the only person I know who didn’t see the videos yet.”
“Please tell me you aren’t talking about a sex tape.”
“No, it’s worse!”
And I told him what happened.
“… And now nothing.”
“It’s Terminator.”
“The killer robot is after me?”
“No, I mean could be, but no. The line is from Terminator. Come with me if you want to live. It’s right after he saves Sar-”
“So? What does it mean?”
“Lemme think. It must be a place, he must be telling you to come somewhere.”
“We aren’t in Hollywood.”
“No, wait. There is something similar nearby.”
“What, a killer robot?”
I instinctively looked around. Couldn’t help it.
“Ohi, no. There’s a sculpture at Omonoia, a metal man. It looks a lot like Terminator. The artist was on the local news a few weeks ago, didn’t you see it?”
“Why would I see sculptures,” I said as if the word was something lame. Which it was.
“Because that knowledge might come in handy when receiving cryptic messages from anonymous people. Which it just did.”
I let the smug bastard have his moment.
“I’ll text you the address.”
“Whoa, wait! You aren’t leaving me to go there alone, are you?”
“Why not? I could be wrong.”
“And you could be right! And frankly, when have you ever been wrong you tall brainiac?”
“I’ve been wrong many times.”
“You’re coming with me. I’m not meeting this creepy guy on my own. My mom would kill you if something happened to me and you weren’t there.”
Chapter 15
I poked Billy.
Not on Facebook of course, in real life. We have already established that the freak doesn’t actually use social media.
How does he even breathe?
Anyway, we were on the metro heading to Athens Centre. The historic centre of Athens you might say, yes, the one with the Acropolis on it. I could tell we were heading close by the ever increasing amount of people squeezing in and by the body odours.
Or muck. Call it what you want.
Billy was a gentleman as always and was standing close to me, towering over and cornering me so that people wouldn’t bump into me. Other girls might think that was a bit flirty, I knew that he was actually following his own personal Savoir Vivre.
I kinda liked that.
He was looking out the window, zoned out and probably thinking of chess moves or something esoteric as always.
I poked him again.
“Yeah?”
“Deppy told you didn’t she?” I asked, not quite asking.
He hesitated. “She might have mentioned an episode.”
“An episode? Like an epileptic one?” I angry-whispered.
“That’s my term, don’t get mad at her. She’s just worried about you.” We were so close he was literally looking down at me.
I kinda hated that.
A sudden rush hit me. Cold sweat. My heart pumped and gravity tilted.
I looked around at all the people, locked in like sardines in a can.
Where would I go if she came at me again?
Where would I run?
Is there a button you can press in an emergency? Yes, there is one over there. Only three meters away yet so far it might as well be a hundred. A “break in case of emergency” button, with a warning below it for facing charges if used inappropriately.
How would I convince people it was an emergency if I was the only one who could see her? The Erinyes, with her angry face and her purple glowing hair that flowed towards me like it wanted to choke me?
I think I fainted.
Yeah.
It must have been mere seconds but I have no memory of it.
Duh, that’s what fainting is!
I was held in the corner by Billy, he had pushed my head closer to the window so I could get some more air.
I looked around, people were whispering. A woman gave me her water bottle, I splashed it on my face.
“Take your girl off the heat and the people,” she said to Billy.
“Excellent advice madam, we are getting off now anyway,” he replied while propping me up.
I pushed him away and walked to the door, people were making room for me despite the crowded space.
The doors opened and we walked onto the platform.
I stood firm as people rushed out of the metro and went on to their lives. I opened my legs wider than normal to stabilise myself.
People stopped paying attention to me. I wonder what they would do if they could see what I saw in my mind’s eye?
“Are you OK Mahi?”
“Fine now.”
We stepped outside into the street and breathed in the smell of piss.
Chapter 16
No seriously, piss.
Everywhere, like stepping into the world’s largest urinal. Depending on the wind and the building you were near, the odour varied. Sometimes it was just a hint, something you pick up and need to take another sniff to pin-point. Other times it was wet and think, like the piss from 46 people taking on an averaged urinal scent.
I’m not sure why, but Omonoia, the big plaza smack-dab in the middle of Athens smells like piss. Take it from me.
I pinched my nostrils but then decided it was a bad idea to deny oxygen to my brain so soon after an actual fainting, so I mouthbreathed instead.
Besides, what kind of lady would walk around pinching her nose?
I let Billy lead, due to the fact that I had no frickin idea where we were going.
“It’s not far, two streets west.”
“Uh huh.” I decided not to interrupt my mouth-breathing and for the first time in my life, I had no reply.
“It’s funny, so this artist made the Terminator statue out of spite. He works with metal, right? And he makes sculptures in abstract shapes. So he made four sculptures out of scrap metal, and found a way to pull them out on the sidewalk. It was a big sidewalk, if you see the pictures you’ll understand. Anyway, he manages to get those half-a-ton sculptures into the street so that people could see them for free. That was his thing, he wanted that collection to be free and amongst the people, not out in some gallery for intellectual assholes. So he places them there, people like them, dogs pee on them, cyclists lock their bikes on them etc. And then the garbage collector comes, sees the piles of scrap metal and calls his partners and they haul them into the landfill. He thought they were rubbish! Not aesthetically, he literally thought they were trash and he had to get them sorted! That’s exactly what he said on his interview. Then the artist reads it, gets mad of course, months of his work wasted and called rubbish, so he makes a metal man and plops it in the same place. And then he says, ‘Terminators don’t feel pain’!”
I just stared at him.
“Get it? Cause he was hurt? No?”
“Don’t make me regret picking you as my knight,” I said and moved along.
“Hah! A chess counter-joke! Nice. Yeah you are feeling better. It’s the other way.”
I turned like a princess and moved along, the right way this time.
