Published: 9 Jan 2020

Recruiting

Nemesis

“Why are you here?” the man asked. His voice was gentle, and he seemed genuinely interested. We were sitting in the waiting room of the Department of Family Services. It was filled with people, each one clutching a scrap of paper with their number on it – the order in which they would be called. The number had spit out of an impersonal machine near the doorway. It was the first step in the process of dehumanization they would face.

I didn’t have a number; I was here because Dike said I should be and who I should look for. She sent a messenger: one of Mercury’s good guys. Good looking boy … naked except for the helmet.

I remembered that the man had asked me a question. I had to come up with an answer.

“I’m a ward of the court,” I said. “They’re going to find another place for me to live. That will make six in the past year.”

The man looked at me. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why the fuck would you be sorry,” I asked. I put every bit of bitterness I could in that question.

“Because,” he said, ignoring the bitterness, “No man is an island. We are all connected to one another in some way. In your voice, I heard your frustration. Maybe, even, your resignation. It affects me, even though I don’t know you. Second, because I’ve made it my life’s work to help others, many of them children like yourself, and that has just been taken away from me.”

“Taken away?” I asked, pouncing on his words.

“Yes,” he said. “I worked at a homeless shelter. It was a minimum wage job, and I put in a lot of volunteer hours, as well. Illegal under the Fair Labor Standards Act, but the only way most shelters survive.

“There were a lot of families in the shelter … mothers and children, usually. The fathers didn’t come in, because if they did, the family might have been denied shelter. Stupid, but that was one of many stupid rules.

“I did what I could to make them comfortable, to make them feel … at home sounds so crappy.”

I giggled at crappy. He seemed to take this as an invitation to continue.

“One of the little boys, about your age, was crying. I asked him what was the matter. He said he missed his daddy, and then hugged me. I didn’t think anything of it, but hugged him back.

“One of the supervisors saw us, and fired me on the spot.”

“Why are you here, then?” I asked.

“I’m hoping they can find a job for me,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve been blacklisted … the shelter wouldn’t want that. It would reflect badly on them.”

“What do you want to do, most of all in the world?” I asked.

“That’s a pretty serious question for a 12-year-old,” the man said.

I was impressed that he seemed to take me seriously.

He continued. “I want to do something that makes a difference. I want to help homeless kids. I don’t mean just make a place for them to eat and sleep. I want to find a way to get them back into the mainstream, the real world.”

The man paused, and seemed to look inside himself. “Why do you find this … interesting? Why am I telling you this?”

“Maybe,” I said, “because you know who I really am.”

I let the man see me as Nemesis: a 12-year-old boy in a chiton with a great honking sword. And a cute butt, but I didn’t let him see that!

He stared at me for a good three minutes. I stared at him, and didn’t see evil desire, only a desire to do good.

“You’ll do,” I said. “Will you come with me?”

He stood up and nodded. I took his hand, and walked to the exit.

On the way out, he gave his number to someone who had just come in – a woman with two children trailing behind her.

It took only two minutes to reach Gary’s foundation office. It was in the same building as the DFS Processing Center. There was a reason for that.

Gary introduced himself to the man, whose name was Charles Davies. “Mr. Davies, I’m prepared to offer you a position as a counselor at an orphanage for homeless, abandoned, and abused children.”

Mr. Davies shook Gary’s hand. He looked at me. “Thank you,” he said.

I felt really good. I’d done justice and been taken seriously by a good man. That must count for something.

Death

The car bomb was one of the worst I had seen. Islamic fundamentalists had packed a milk truck full of explosives. They’d gotten past the checkpoints – it was, after all, a real milk truck. They had murdered the driver and his assistant, and stolen their IDs. To the American guards, one bearded rag-head looked pretty much like another.

Instead of going to the loading dock, they had driven straight at the wall of the cafeteria. More than 100 children were dead, and another hundred would not live to see the next dawn or the sliver of moon that would mark a new month in the Muslim calendar: the month of Rajab, a sacred month in which fighting was forbidden.

Mars walked through the carnage. He stopped when he saw me.

“Why did you tell me on the battlefield not to take Garreth Walters?” I asked. I held my face still, impassive. I tried to keep my voice calm; however, there was an edge to it. Each word was clipped, deliberate.

Mars stood, arms akimbo. His hands were only inches from the diamond-patterned handgrips of the matte-black Sig-Sauer 9-mm pistols on his belt. On each lapel of his black fatigues was a circle of five stars, as matte and black as were the pistols.

This god takes himself a little too seriously, I thought, and then chuckled to myself. Maybe we all do.

“None of your business,” Mars said. “Absolutely none of your business.” He turned, but stopped when I put a hand on his shoulder. Mars turned, snarled, and shook off my hand.

“I said, none of your business.”

“You don’t know, do you?” I said. “You really don’t know. You were just the messenger.”

Mars snarled again, and then vanished.

There are only two for whom Mars would deliver a message: Athena and Zeus, I thought. What would either of them want with Garreth? Perhaps it’s time for another coffee with him.

Gary

I was surprised when Death dropped by, but oddly pleased. We sat in the kitchen. I made coffee. While it was brewing, we talked idly about sports. After a few minutes, I felt comfortable enough to ask him something that had been on my mind. “Why, that first day we met, did you tell me to help Nemesis? I asked you that question before, and you just shrugged it off. Just said the kid needed help.

“That day, I accepted your answer. Things have changed. I know a lot more then than I do now. Nemesis didn’t really need me, even then. He certainly doesn’t need me, now.”

“You are wrong, Gary,” Death said. “You’re wrong if you think Nemesis didn’t need you, then; you’re more wrong if you think he doesn’t need you, now.

“He loves you. He feels protected by you. He believes you give him strength to do the terrible things he has to do, and the comfort and vindication he needs after he does them.”

Death

“How do you know this?” Gary asked.

“You know how I know,” I said.

Gary nodded. “I know how… I just don’t want to acknowledge that you can hear what I’m thinking, just like Nemesis does. It’s easy for me to believe that you, stronger and older than he, can hear what he’s thinking, too. Didn’t you ever hear of confidentiality?”

I laughed. It wasn’t a mocking laugh. It was … it was the first time I’d laughed in a long time.

“I have the power to see into the deepest recesses of a mind … and I’ve done that countless times. I have no one to tell what I’ve seen, nor would I.

“On the other hand, Garreth Walters, you and Nemesis … you’re special, and rules apply to you differently. I have good reason to want to help you.”

Then, I helped Gary remember that day on the battlefield when he nearly died. I helped him see Mars, me, and my HUM-V standing by while the medic treated him. I helped him hear what Mars had said to me. I told him my suspicions about who had sent Mars. When he asked, I explained how I knew the message hadn’t come from Dike, “… even though I suspect that by now, she knows who sent Mars, and why.”

Gary

Nemesis knew I was worried. It was hard to keep anything from him. He could sense strong emotions and thoughts at a distance. When we cuddled, he could practically read my mind. I knew he tried to respect my privacy, and not read too deeply.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. We were cuddling before sleep. It was warm … there’d been another brown-out when an electrical grid, somewhere, failed, and the “Department of Homeland Security and Everything Else” had remotely shut down the air conditioning. Even though it was nearly 10:00 PM, enough late-summer sunlight came through the curtains that I could see the expression on Nemesis’ face.

“It’s the foundation, isn’t it?” he added.

“Yes, it is, but I don’t want to bore you – or upset you – with my problems.”

Nemesis sat up. “I’m already upset,” he said. “When you’re upset, I’m upset. And I wouldn’t be bored.”

He lay back, spooned into my tummy.

“Now, talk. It’s too hot to sleep, anyway.”

I took a deep breath, and began.

“The world I know is collapsing,” I said. I was careful not to say it was the world he had known before his apotheosis. Nemesis had lost nearly all of his memories. Sometimes one would pop up. It’s as if they had receded into a fog. They were still there, but they no longer had the power to hurt. I knew they could be prompted by a careless remark from me.

“The world economy was built on a couple of false notions,” I said. “One was that the economy could grow and expand, forever. That was not true. We went through bubble after bubble: the dot-com bubble, the real estate bubble, and the sovereign bond bubble. One sector after another became the hot sector to be in, to invest in. One after another, they over-promised or over-built, or were over-subscribed – or were looted by friends and political allies of the administration. We never seemed to learn, however. We still thought we could build, invest, and grow forever. Didn’t happen, and this latest collapse, of the health care sector and the alternative energy sector at the same, has set us on our heels.

“It costs a lot of money to run the foundation. I can’t do it, alone, which is why I go after corporate donors. But they’re hurting. So is every other decent charity in the country. Hundreds, thousands of non-profits are clamoring for money.

“It’s worse, because the televangelists and mega-churches are siphoning off donations that once went to legitimate charities. Not just money. They’ve gotten into the donate your old car business, and are running more and more thrift stores. That used to be the province of the Salvation Army. Now, they’re about to collapse, too.

“My foundation, even though it’s a non-profit—”

“501(c)3,” Nemesis interrupted.

“Yes,” I said. “We have to pay accountants to keep accurate books, we have to pay for independent audits. Every year, we have to prove our worth and tax-exempt status. The televangelists and churches, don’t. Tack the word church or religion on any organization, and it gets tons of unconstitutional protections that the congress and the courts are afraid to challenge. Even those in congress who aren’t already stooges of the fundamentalists are afraid to stand up against them.

“The churches’ schools, orphanages, day-care centers, health clubs, movie theaters, grocery stores, cafeterias, thrift stores, housing, all the things they run as ministries are not only exempt from taxes, but also from all the laws about safe food handling, medical care, employee benefits, fire protection and alarm systems … all the laws we have to follow, and pay to follow, and pay to have certified.

“That’s why I’m worried,” I said. There was a hum in the background.

“There, the air conditioner has come on, again. It’s sleepy time.”

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