σɾɳιƚԋαʂ (ρʝσ x ɱαʅҽ σƈ)

I Go on a Trip to Olympus

We went up to the guard at the front desk.

Percy: Six hundredth floor.

He was reading a huge book with a picture of a wizard on the front. I wasn't much into fantasy, but the book must've been good because the guard took a while to look up.

Guard: No such floor, kiddo.

Percy: I need an audience with Zeus.

Guard: Sorry?

Percy: You heard me.

I was about to decide this guy was just a regular mortal, and I'd better run for it before he called the straitjacket patrol, but...

Guard: No appointment, no audience, kiddo. Lord Zeus doesn't see anyone unannounced.

Theo: (smirks) Trust me, buddy. I think he could make an exception.

I slipped off my backpack and unzipped the top.

The guard looked inside at the metal cylinder, not getting what it was for a few seconds. Then his face went pale.

Guard: That isn't...

Percy: Yes, it is. You want me to take it out and—

Guard: No! No!

He scrambled out of his seat, fumbled around his desk for a key card, then handed it to me.

Guard: Insert this in the security slot. Make sure nobody else is in the elevator with you.

I did as he told me. As soon as the elevator doors closed, I slipped the key into the slot. The card disappeared and a new button appeared on the console, a red one that said 600. I pressed it and waited and waited. Muzak played.

Finally, DING! The doors slid open.

Theo and I stepped out and almost had a heart attack.

Theo: Holy shit!

We were standing on a narrow stone walkway in the middle of the air. Below me was Manhattan, from the height of an airplane. In front of me, white marble steps wound up the spine of a cloud, into the sky. My eyes followed the stairway to its end, where my brain just could not accept what I saw. From the top of the clouds rose the decapitated peak of a mountain, its summit covered with snow. Clinging to the mountainside were dozens of multileveled palaces—a city of mansions—all with white columned porticos, gilded terraces, and bronze braziers glowing with a thousand fires.

Roads wound crazily up to the peak, where the largest palace gleamed against the snow. Precariously perched gardens bloomed with olive trees and rose bushes. I could make out an open-air market filled with colorful tents, a stone amphitheater built on one side of the mountain, a hippodrome, and a coliseum on the other. It was an Ancient Greek city, except it wasn't in ruins. It was new, clean, and colorful, the way Athens must've looked twenty-five hundred years ago.

This place can't be here, I told myself. The tip of a mountain hanging over New York City like a billion-ton asteroid? How could something like that be anchored above the Empire State Building, in plain sight of millions of people, and not get noticed? But here it was. And here I was.

Our trip through Olympus was a daze. We passed some giggling wood nymphs who threw olives at me from their garden. Hawkers in the market offered to sell me ambrosia-on-a-stick, and a new shield, and a genuine glitter-weave replica of the Golden Fleece, as seen on Hephaestus-TV. The nine muses were tuning their instruments for a concert in the park while a small crowd gathered—satyrs and naiads and a bunch of good-looking teenagers who might've been minor gods and goddesses. Nobody seemed worried about an impending civil war. In fact, everybody seemed in a festive mood. Several of them turned to watch me pass and whispered to themselves.