Beelzebub hacked as he cackled, spattering the table with half-chewed chicken and roasted potatoes.
His beard wobbled.
“They’re nothing more than insects, Hewah!”
The God of Fire ran a hand through his wild black hair, doing more to send it sticking up at odd angles than to actually tame it with his nervous action. It was an ancient trick to show off toned arms and abs, for social engineering reasons mostly. He knew this was all a long shot, passionate as he was for his people on Blend.
“They’re living, breathing, thinking people. Just like you or me, Beelz.”
The God of Pestilence shifted his enormous bulk, and Hewah squinted at the waves of force and wind that came from his immense form with only a small readjustment of seating. Some gods trained in muscle and physique to help them affect the matter and energy around them with their powers. The sex appeal that came with such intense training alongside immortal beautiful youth was also a helpful side-effect for propaganda purposes, as Hewah well knew.
Not Beelzebub, of course.
He relied purely on the burning of calories, on taking up spacetime with mass and gravity, and thus on ensuring he stocked up on ample energy stores whenever he wasn’t using his powers directly. His body simply couldn’t help but let out the odd ripple, as his powers coiled and reverberated within his enormous form with each slight movement to get more comfortable. Forces of gravity and space itself aiding the ancient man from Ekron with such a distorted history.
“No they are most definitely not. To place the standard Homo Sapiens Sapiens on the same level as us is almost sacrilege! The average human is a foolish, stupid, short-sighted insect. They’re fodder for our economy, soldiers for our army, and a waste of space when they aren’t acting towards our divine interest and oversight. Pathetic, selfish, weak, and wretched. Even the ancient Terran oligarchs had things correct in that regard.”
Hewah sighed. Beelzebub had been set in his ways since the Philistine times. He viewed people as worshippers, tools, slaves, minions, fodder. Only ascended souls were worth his actual respect. Only immortal gods “deserved” such things. It irked Hewah, in his Polynesian roots and culture from millennia ago.
“They’re not all stupid, Beelzebub. We have some of the finest scientists, researchers, and tacticians ever to live, and they operate under our direct command.”
Beelzebub sneered, shovelling another forkful of greasy meat between his lips. He only half finished chewing it before responding.
“Yes yes, some have their utility. But that utility is to be guided by the hands of the gods. If allowed to wander wantonly throughout the galaxy, we would devolve into petty tyranny and societal collapse! Surely you don’t want to advocate for such brutal authoritarian dictatorships as The Black Armada? The heavier hand of a warlord – versus our gentle, guiding one? Immortals with the longsight of millennia to rule, all with the greater good in mind. Surely you acknowledge – intelligence can also be dangerous, no? After all – we simply offer service as the faithful shepherds we are. A greater good. The supposed ‘God-Emperor’ Xex views humanity and the greater universe as things and places to conquer under his sole discretion.”
Hewah fumed, especially at how falsely pious and hypocritical The God of Pestilence was being. The man loved fine food and drink, and the most eloquent of luxuries. What a shepherd! But thousands of years of interaction with The God of Pestilence had tempered his distaste for the man.
There were still yet ways to sway his thinking.
“Yes, yes. The same tired talking points – without us, humanity would spiral into chaos, as per the scriptures as The Prime Triumvirate originally described them. But you don’t have to speak to me as if I were some child, Beelzebub, God of Pestilence. Lord Of The Flies. I am your peer of more than one millennium, not your mewling fresh-ascendant disciple.”
“So why come to me with this funding request asking for humanitarian aid to the slums on the planet Blend? You know our resources are stretched quite thin with the recently stabilized front along the Neutral Territories. Blend as a whole will survive, as it has for centuries. A planet of immigrants is hardy, and their diversity and survival instincts will deliver them from evil, surely?”
Hewah stood, then paced back and forth a moment, choosing his next words carefully.
“The people we rule are worth our salvation, are they not? Our innocent flock?”
“Of course, as is our duty, but the macro versus the micro, always, even moreso when it comes to economics.”
“But you can see the value in my efforts, no?”
“Some minor propaganda Julian can utilize, yes. But not enough of a real sentiment-booster, no? A news cycle at best.”
Hewah grimaced, already knowing how likely it was that Beelzebub caught such a face from the side, even as he shovelled more food into his mouth. He was sweating profusely by this point, his loose middle eastern style dress tunic draped out across his legs. It was smeared with flecks of grease and spittle around where he sat cross-legged at the low table on a series of cushions.
“The people need our help. The famine on Blend, due to recent pirate attacks on shipping, has been made worse due to recent crop failures. They might be insects to us, but they are still worshippers. They trust us, they believe in us. We need to be there for our people as The Creator was there for us.”
“We are not kings or queens, exactly. The people are not our direct subjects.”
“As you said, we’re shepherds.”
“Yes. We guide ALL of humanity towards peace and prosperity. I cannot take a railgun from one of our Chayots and magically wave my hands to turn it into a bag of rice for starving civilians in any given slum. Guns as example: We pay exorbitant sums to Neutral Territory factory slum worlds like Greasy Knuckle enough as it is! Just so we can wave our hands if it gets attacked or destroyed. The Armada knows this and does the same, often on the very same worlds! A war of proxy-military industrial complexes. Everything is often such a wash already. Would you have me lease an entire colony as farmland? In addition to what we have already allocated by decree across the Guardian of Destiny Core Worlds and inner colonies?”
“I’m not asking you to do that, as you can see from my proposal -”
“Yes, this proposal that redirects funds…”
Beelzebub chewed noisily as he scooped up the data pad and skimmed the contents more carefully this time, spraying it with more tiny flecks of meat, herbed potato, and spit.
“Yes, those accounts are locked down by the high council’s directives – in addition to the finance council’s decision, unfortunately. Denied.”
He shovelled almost a full baked potato slathered in yogurt, bacon, and cheese into his mouth. Hewah turned his head, eyes wide, to watch the spectacle of gluttony.
“I am coming to you first rather than bringing this to the high council in the hopes that maybe there are other funds elsewhere, outside my vision or that of my council allies? Do you have nothing to provide or compromise on?”
“I am not a god of compromise, I am a god of efficiency and order. I am the manager of all G.O.D. corporate and military finances, not a non-profit or charity. The best I could do is starve our people elsewhere to feed our people on Blend. And how exactly is that fair, ‘o great Volcano Spirit, Hewah, The God of Fire?”
Hewah let out the heavy sigh that had been building in his chest. He turned, furrowed his brow, then sat back down across the table from The Lord Of The Flies.
“If you considered them as actual people, it might help us find a solution to the problem before I’m required to bring it up at the next council meeting – to be shot down by Cassius and the other warmongers in his faction who demand every last penny be redirected to the war itself…”
“Ha, very funny Hewah. We both know Blend is an excellent source of tax revenue. It’s not that I don’t see the value in the world; but economies of social investment and the circumstances of inflation are nuisances that I cannot fix at this exact point in time. Perhaps post-war, centuries from now? The rising cost of grain, rice, and potatoes cannot be helped when pirates alone can make small fortunes off even the most basic pillaging of freighter cargo to haul back for sale into the Neutral Territories. Our core worlds are strong in sentiment right now, even Blend. Such an enormous reallocation of resources would be better off near the frontier, where we need more positive and sunny dispositions to maintain public trust and ensure local recruitment to bolster our hold across various colony planets. Even if I had the funds to throw around for such enormous grocery-shopping dalliances!”
Hewah was losing his patience. It felt like arguing in circles.
“People need help, Beelzebub. And we are directly responsible for their welfare.”
“As I said earlier, you must pull back from the microscopic to the macroscopic, my most esteemed colleague. They are insects. At best, they are temporary mortal soldiers and servants to help us deliver humanity towards utopia when this damn war ends a few centuries from now, and at worst, they are insurgents and insurrectionists, fermenting the various rebellions that undermine us even as Xex arranges his own pawns upon the chess board opposite ours towards fascist, authoritarian-dictatorship style ends.”
Beelzebub paused to pop an olive into his cheek, gnawing on the pit.
“Need I remind you Xex dallied in following The Creator’s direct orders to rendezvous with the rest of The Prime Triumvirate at Stonehenge? To do a little casual warlording and tyranny across sections of prehistoric Europe with his new immortal ascended gifts, no less!”
Hewah lifted a finger, lighting the candles up and down the table as the lights dimmed automatically on a timer to echo a natural Earth day-night cycle and help maintain circadian rhythm, even here in space. The night shift and middle shift workers had their own personal light adjustments in contrast, of course. Each flick from his finger sent the molecules around each wick into a frenzy of friction, lighting each candle with a small sparking of flame across the nearby atoms.
“They’re people. They deserve better than this. Better than to starve in shantytowns in the outlands around the city centers as war refugees. Thinking, breathing, living people. And our assistance helps us ensure loyalty and obedience to the cause. Thus, possibly ensuring the best source of recruitment we could ask for. One based on the pure faith that we will be there for them when they need us as their deities.”
Hewah plucked an olive from a nearby serving tray, watching Beelzebub’s face as it contorted with greed. Beelzebub wasted no time, and clawed his hands back towards the bowl of purple olives, hauling it towards himself with his powers so he could shove several into an open cheek and gnaw against the pits again with a harsh grinding sound, separating meat from core with his thick lolling tongue.
Boredom across enough millennia led many older gods within the immortal Guardian hierarchy to learn such party tricks as tying cherry stems with various appendages of varying size or number. Orgies, usually including all orientations and genders were common across historical eras of The Guardians of Destiny of course, within strict ascendant-only circles. (Especially during The Quiet Years.) Yet somebody always loved to push the taboo of course, by sneaking in mortals here and there – often claiming them to be nothing more than toys. Hewah was a tad old fashioned that way, and the ascendant kink community was a very strange thing, especially where mortals and BDSM was concerned.
Beelzebub finished his assault on the olives.
“They are citizens of The Guardians of Destiny. Every human life is but a small ripple in the entirety of the raging river. One starves on Peace Cross or Heartland and we lose a defender that must be trained, equipped. A factory or farm worker starves on Blend and we simply replace the untrained worker with another war refugee from the slums you cherish. You put too much stock in the frail mortality of these creatures. Living past a hundred due to Guardian advances in medicine and technology is a far cry from even a few centuries ago, no? They should be grateful to us!”
“Our mandate is to protect and guide the destiny of all humanity, not just those who benefit us! We must tend the entirety of the flock, not just the best of the wool-bearing rams!”
“But sacrifices must be made, Hewah. That is the burden of immortality such as we face. When push comes to shove, which track would you turn the trolley towards?”
“Ah yes, as if this can be boiled down to five lives versus one.”
“It can, and it often is in our line of work. When you speak of all humanity, you must see it as a single unit, a superorganism to be trimmed, groomed, instructed, guided, and perfected as a species. The Creator chose us. Our species – remember? Holistic longsight is the only vision one can ethically take towards the greater good of the species, segregated as it now is between gods and mortals.”
Beelzebub finally let out a belch of satiation and rose his hands into the air, barking a short command to an A.I. present in the room. The Class 3 was designed to wipe memory every half hour or so, but it was a mere safety feature, Beelzebub intending to relay his command onwards somewhere beyond the closed double doors. Rather quickly, two young serving girls opened the doors and began clearing the dishes and the remaining food, to be thrown away as trash jettisoned into space to freeze-dry. How ironic a waste of resources at this very moment. Hewah couldn’t help but wince slightly at the hypocrisy. Beelzebub, as if to make himself even more unappealing to his peer – eyed the mortal girls hungrily, licking the remaining food from his lips and wiping his enormous bushy black beard of food debris with a fine silk napkin.
Beelzebub was known to be egregious in his consort choices, already having a harem of mortals of sorts – to the disgust of many other immortals within The Guardians of Destiny. Not that most gods weren’t already famous for their proclivities towards treating mortals as playthings at the best of times, but flaunting the taboo of relationships between the ascended and mortal?… Well, illegitimate heirs were common. Hewah himself had several across the centuries, after all, such as his cherished daughter of a fated romance between a beautiful mortal and himself around a half century before.
Hewah waited patiently until they had loaded everything onto the trolley and closed the door behind them before he spoke again.
“So, there are absolutely no possible ways that I could get food for the people of Blend? No deals I can make? No offerings I can provide?”
Beelzebub eyed Hewah, grabbing the long cord of a hookah from a tray to his left. A wave of his powers started up the machine, and he inhaled deep breaths of filtered smoke. Then offered it to Hewah, who shrugged and floated the second mouthpiece over with his powers, uncoiling the long cord from the unit in the tray. He took a small disinterested puff as a measure of manners, knowing Beelzebub’s ancient origins, adapted as they were to modern sensibilities of his homeland as he pleased.
The God of Pestilence beamed from ear to ear.
“Now, that is a different matter entirely. Trade is not reallocation. There is value there! What do you propose?”
“Perhaps I can use a section of my own personal wealth for the purchase of the supplies, and you then merely find me the ships and fuel? I could trade action at the front for them if I need to. I know Prom is going to petition for more gods on the Armada front as an action item on the next council agenda. We’ve fought together many times.”
Beelzebub snorted smoke from his nostrils in a hearty chuckle.
“You would risk your own life for mere freighters? A millennia-old god of the High Council? All for these poverty-riddled slumdogs of Blend?”
Hewah nodded grimly.
“Well, Let me discuss this with Cassius and Prometheus. Perhaps that young son-in-law of yours could go with you… The God of Brass? Has he been progressing in his training since we rectified his taboo relationship?”
Hewah frowned. Beelzebub’s tone had been more pointed than intended, and he quickly became self aware of his hypocrisy considering his own relationships with mortals. So daintily he walked his statement backwards.
“Yes, well, there are any number of gods we can bring to bear. Just a thought at keeping you two close together for… Safety?”
A quiet allusion, that.
“Julian could most certainly use a new… Or ‘old’ face in his propaganda reels. Prometheus thrives in action as a field general, but there are only so many times we can run footage of arc lightning bouncing between enemy Knights and foot soldiers before the people become numb to it. A pyre of bodies from a God of Fire or two is much more likely to drive recruitment!”
A sigh, at that. How many thousands had succumbed to his flames? Blue-hot jet streams, or cone infernos in swaths of yellow and orange… Pulling all the oxygen atoms in an area together under immense pressure to ignite all at once. Fire was always a gruesome way to go, especially considering an immortal’s heat capacity cooked most soldiers alive in their armor. More chemistry and physics minded ascendants could even break apart and combine different periodic elements for other kinds of explosive outcomes.
“Yes, I will sign on for a tour of the front. Cassius will delight in more senior ascendants taking on active wartime roles. He loves to have council members leading the action as generals personally. Does well for morale, in his own words.”
Beelzebub let out two more gouts of smoke from his nostrils, allowing it to mingle in his large black beard before he swept his fingers through it and sent the smoke scattering in a haze from the whiskers.
“I can have a draft document written up by my legal team by the end of the day today, if you are willing to have your assistant look it over and sign it with any changes by end of day, two business days from now? Standard compensation package as appropriate for such a high ranking high council member in such a dangerous situation? I will amend our deal around our Blend arrangement, so the numbers may look higher.”
Hewah nodded. He already had billions upon billions across a vast variety of different Guardian accounts, currencies, shell companies, and other various hiding places. Living for a millennium or two ensured the value of some things would inflate forever, and the obvious corruption of the high council’s oligarchy in enriching the members sitting on it was an open secret of sorts within the G.O.D. bureaucracy. The CEO mentality taken to the absolute extreme. Golden parachutes carrying pots of gold… Forever.
Hewah wiped a brow.
Even this meeting itself could be considered a contravention, if Beelzebub acted in bad faith. Certain sections of The Lamentation Day Accords and The Sol Treaty prevented individual ascendants from using personal funds for certain things – both The Guardians and Armada fearing about insurgency from within. Military embargoes were some of the most common clauses, and private shipping, privateers, and even freight companies had always been an awkward contradiction some immortals dabbled in and around. The Conversion Corporation, The Junk & Rumblers Guild, Sunbelt Suppliers, and even Eclipse – Shifter’s obvious front organization (amongst a hundred others) all made their fortunes on the trials and tribulations of the fine print of treaties and agreements between the warring factions of immortals.
“I’ll do it for my people.”
“Our people.”
Beelzebub corrected him with a wide beaming smile on his lips.
“Yes, of course. Our people.”
Beelzebub’s smile widened into a toothy grin, smoke pouring from the gaps in his teeth. A few gold caps, mementoes of pre-ascension life – updated with modern dentistry, glimmered in the candlelight.
“Praise The Creator, Hewah.”
“Praise The Creator, indeed.”
