Sixty-Six: This Plot’s Not Gonna Move Itself, You Know
“Man,” said Thor, pacing back and forth across the lobby, “what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“You fight him,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, “and you kill him.”
“And then the world ends,” added Queen Victoria XXX.
“The world’s ended, like, twenty times over, Vicky,” said William H. Taft XLII. “I don’t think this one’s going to be any different.”
“But Thor thinks it will,” said Catrina, “and I believe him.”
“So do I,” added Queen Victoria XXX. “This is the first thing he’s taken seriously since we met him.”
“Maybe, but I’m with Billy. I don’t think one more apocalypse is going to kill us,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “Besides, regardless of whether Thor is somehow right or, more likely, just completely insane and more than a little full of himself, Quetzalcoatl is causing some serious damage and threatening what little semblance of order and civilization is left on this planet. If we don’t stop him, he might just end the world himself.”
“We?” asked William H. Taft XLII.
“Yes, ‘we.’ I’m not about to leave the fate of my lunch up to Thor, much less the continued existence of society.”
“Really?” said Thor, his eyebrow raised.
“Is that a ‘do you not trust me with your lunch’ question, or a ‘are you seriously coming with me’ question?”
“The second one.”
“Then, yes. I’m coming with you,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Me, too,” said Catrina.
“And me,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“You guys are all fucking crazy,” said William H. Taft XLII. “I’m staying here.”
“You’re coming with us, Billy. Or I hurt you.”
“Really, Vicky? How is that helpful?”
“Shut up and get your rocket launcher out of the car.”
“Fine,” sighed William H. Taft XLII.
“OK, so I guess we’re… fighting this guy then,” said Catrina. “To the death. Great. You sure you’re good with this, Thor?”
“Not really, no,” said Thor, “but the world’s apparently pretty fucked no matter what happens. Might as well at least try to do the right thing.”
“It’s about fucking time you grew a pair,” said Judy, sitting on the concierge desk. “The helicopter’s just been wasting fuel out there.”
Sixty-Seven: Sin City
Quetzalcoatl sat atop the facsimile Eiffel Tower, overlooking the burning ruins of Las Vegas, his tail coiled around the latticework of the tower’s uppermost spire. Phil and Bill sat precariously on either side of him, without tails and huddled against the spire, whimpering slightly.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” asked Quetzalcoatl.
“The neon… contrasted against the… inky darkness of night?” replied Phil. “I suppose it does have a certain… aesthetic quality that some might…”
“I meant all the burning prostitutes.”
“Oh.”
Las Vegas had not been in ruins or on fire until shortly after Quetzalcoatl arrived. It had, in fact, been the most prosperous city in the world from the third apocalypse onward. If there was one thing people loved to do during the end of the world, it was panic. If there was another, it was fuck. And if there was a third, it was gamble away their children’s college funds while doing the first two.
“Do we have to… sit up here, Quetzalcoatl?” asked Bill, searching for something to hold on to. “It’s quite… high.”
“No,” said Quetzalcoatl, “of course not.”
Quetzalcoatl pushed Bill off the edge of the Eiffel Tower.
“What… Why would…” stammered Phil.
“Quiet,” replied Quetzalcoatl, peering downward, “he hasn’t hit the ground yet.”
Phil’s grip on the tower doubled in intensity. So did his heartbeat, the fear in his eyes, the certainty he was going to die, and his regret at never buying a parachute or learning how to fly.
“Oh, there we go. Landed on a Japanese guy. They are never going to get that out of the sidewalk.”
The latticework dug deeply enough into Phil’s hand to draw blood.
“So, anyway,” said Quetzalcoatl, “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve asked you up here this evening.”
Phil responded by staring blankly in abject terror.
“Well, at least tell me you understand the gravity of the situation…”
Nothin’.
“C’mon, quit being such a dick, Phil. I’m trying to have a conversation here.”
It took a few minutes, but Phil eventually remembered how to breathe regularly again. Then he remembered he was sitting atop a half-scaled Eiffel Tower with a sociopathic Aztec god in the middle of a burning city and had to go through the whole gamut of physiological responses to panic all over again.
The cycle repeated itself a few times, actually.
“You done?” asked Quetzalcoatl.
Phil responded with, “Buh…”
“That’s still more syllables than you’ve given me in the last hour. I’m willing to call it a win. Let’s get down to business.”
“Guh…”
“Look, Phil, I love you, but I’m not in love with you. I carried your ass up here to talk strategy. If it wasn’t for you and your… people, I might not be here right now. I figure I at least owe it to you to hear your opinion before I go ahead and do whatever I damn well please anyway. But if you’re not actually going to contribute, you can just as easily join Bill down on the street.”
“No, no. Strategy good,” elocuted Phil. “What’s… the plan?”
“Well, for starters, I’m thinking we should probably burn down the world.”
“I’m… I’m sorry?”
“It really doesn’t get any simpler than that, Phil.”
“Why would we… burn down the world? I thought we were trying to… save it from itself… free it from the greed and the… bureaucracy. I thought we were… giving society hope… an open-ended future…”
“Yeah, about that…”
“Even… even if you don’t… if your goals…” continued Phil, his synapses not firing quite as quickly as they probably should have been. “Murdering everyone just doesn’t seem productive.”
Quetzalcoatl pushed Phil off the Eiffel Tower.
“I don’t know,” said Quetzalcoatl, “I seem to be producing corpses with surprising efficiency.”
Quetzalcoatl looked from side to side and shrugged.
“Of course, now I’m sitting up here talking to myself,” he continued. “I must look crazy.”
Sixty-Eight: Elegy
“Well,” thought Phil, as he plummeted toward his imminent, sidewalk-splattered doom, “this is it.”
“Thrown off a faux French monument in the middle of a city in the middle of a desert in the middle of the night,” he continued thinking, “by a newly re-deified deity intent on scorching the Earth for as mercurial and ill-defined a reason as revenge.
“Honestly, I did not see it coming.”
Phil continued plummeting.
“It really is beautiful, though. The night, the city. Even the burning prostitutes. Their panic and continued flailing seem almost choreographed. It’s majestic, in its own way. If only I had noticed earlier. Well, not the hookers, per se, but the… beauty inherent in everything. I know I wanted to, but I was trying so hard to get others to think of me the way I wanted to be thought of, trying so hard to make them believe that I could see the angels in everyone, that I completely failed to actually see them. I suppose wanting to be something isn’t the same as actually being something. It’s remarkably simple, really, astoundingly… apt, then, that by simply not trying, by not overanalyzing the approach, that by, quite literally and unfortunately, falling into it, I’m now able to accomplish the task.”