Part I
The gods were dead.
Dead to mortals, specifically. Mortals in ancient Greece had known that gods existed, but modern American mortals didn't. Why?
According to what she'd learned at Camp Half-Blood, the mortals' beliefs had all changed during a pivotal development in European culture, the Enlightenment. Later, Annabeth read the documents for herself and came to a different conclusion: the gods' deaths had come before the Enlightenment, during the fall of Rome, when a singular all-powerful God became the dominant religion. The Greco-Roman gods had persisted, but always at the fringes of society. Sure, the gods told their children that they ran the whole world, but over time Annabeth had begun to realize what a lie that was. Still, Annabeth supposed that the Enlightenment was the final nail in the coffin for the gods, so to speak.
The only way to truly understand how thinking had changed was to read Enlightenment documents. Primary sources were the most reliable for understanding past perspectives.
Luckily, the library in New Rome was extensive. Annabeth had grown up hearing about one Ceric Lang, a subversive thinker who'd once cataloged a list of all the gods, but later contributed to mortals' disbelief in Greco-Roman mythology. Ceric Lang was the Benedict Arnold of the demigod world.
When she went to the library in New Rome, she found something curious. The New Rome library did not have any opinion pieces written by Ceric Lang. The library didn't even have any documents reviewing or summarizing Ceric Lang's opinions, either, even though he had been a fairly prominent author in his day.
She went to the San Francisco Public Library instead. Over time, she had learned to take advantage of mortals' resources. Despite their ignorance of the gods' existence, the mortals were capable of wonderful things. For Annabeth, that mostly meant libraries and neoclassical architecture. And neoclassical libraries.
She sat down for the day with a pile of audiobooks and began committing information to memory. Reading with dyslexia was a Sisyphean task at best.
At the library, she listened to audiobooks about the gods and their brutal oppression of Greeks, stories that she'd read before. As a child, she'd never had an emotional reaction to those tales. Now, when she re-read the story about Poseidon and Medusa, she was horrified that the gods had punished a victim of a violent crime, while the perpetrator got off free.
Annabeth knew she could have handled that better than the gods had.
No, she had to put those kinds of thoughts out of her mind. That was just her hubris talking, a fatal flaw that could get her killed. Besides, ancient Greece had been a different time. Things had changed since then.
She read about how the gods had started World War II. Fewer than a hundred years ago wasn't such a different time from now, she realized. It seemed the gods had learned nothing in their thousands of years of conflict. It seemed that mortals remained tools for the gods to dispose of while they waged their eternal war. It was disgusting.
There must be a reason for all of this.
She shook her head. She'd gotten distracted. She'd come to find out why mortals had stopped believing in the gods, not to discover that the gods were cruel. Everyone knew that already.
An intrusive thought entered her mind: why does everyone put up with gods that we know to be cruel? She scrawled the question in her notebook, then went to work.
She found a scan of a Ceric Lang-inspired book in the mortal public library that had been missing from the New Rome library. She slid it into a microform machine, stared at it, then remembered that her dyslexia rendered modern English virtually unreadable, especially when the words were written in a small, dense typeface.
She skipped a few chapters. The opening chapters existed to convince the reader that a ruler only needed the illusion of power, not actual powers. Annabeth already half-believed that, so she skipped those. Annabeth started on Chapter 7. The text-to-speech plugin on the digitized version of the book read out loud to her:
__
We, as the children of the gods, have a responsibility to our mortal counterparts. We must intentionally stop believing in the gods. Power comes from the belief in power, especially for divine rulers. When we stop believing in the gods, their power fades.
We have been taught that without gods, we are nothing. We have been taught that a world without gods will turn to chaos. That before the gods, there was only chaos. Who taught us this? The gods did.
Believers will see this as evidence of the gods' power. I see it as a narrative created by those who are powerful to make themselves seem more powerful than they are.
When I speak to children of Atlas and Prometheus, I hear a very different story. A story that there was peace before the gods' reign. In fact, I hear that the Titans told the gods the same story: obey us or there will be chaos. When the gods overthrew their immortal fathers, was there chaos? No. The world moved on.
Their threats are part of the Cosmic Lie. Plato called the lies of human civilization the "Noble Lie" because lies held society together, but there is nothing noble in a society held together by lies and liars.
Society should be held together by fact and truth, run by those who seek truths, not by those who knowingly perpetuate lies to keep themselves in power.
I do not believe that we need to violently overthrow the gods. We need only to stop thinking about them.
The Cosmic Truth is this: without us, the gods are nothing.
When we stop believing in gods and their centers of power fade, their desires will cease to have meaning. The mortals that they have so violently oppressed and killed will no longer be at the mercy of the whims of mercurial gods. I urge all descendants of the gods to revoke their belief in the gods and put their faith in a system of truth-seeking. One where truth reigns and the search for knowledge is rewarded, not punished. One where we can free ourselves from the double binds that the gods put us in. One where we can chart our own destinies.
I urge you, demigod, to choose a future where humanity is free from the shackles of a religion. To our hands will fate return. No longer will Atropos, Lachesis, and Clotho design our destinies. The gods' righteous indignation at our search for knowledge does not require the possession of truth. They have tried to silence subversive thinkers since the beginning of time.
Without us, they are nothing. Without them, we can be free.
___
Annabeth stared at the page in horror. She thought she agreed with the writer. Well, she agreed with the premise, but not with the call to action to forget the gods existed. It was too late for that because of Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter, which both served to reify the gods' existence in demigod and monster minds. If the gods were to be overthrown, much more drastic measures would have to be taken.
Annabeth was afraid because of what the gods might do when they found out she'd read this passage.
She checked the preface. There had been a co-author. Alexandria Sapienti.
Sapienti had never been able to see the distribution of the book to the public. Instead, she had been found deceased in her home in Paris under suspicious circumstances. The police at the time had dismissed it as hysteria. Hysteria, the preface noted, is no longer considered a medical condition and its use in dismissing the death of a prominent female academic is unfortunate.
Annabeth had been toying with an idea for a year now. It was an idea so terrible that she had never dared to tell anyone what it was. The idea that she could be killed for even daring to think of overthrowing the gods spurred her to action.
Annabeth had learned to be more in touch with her emotions, as emotional intelligence was an important part of wisdom. She could feel that the time was now to overthrow the gods. They were scattered and divided, but more importantly, so were the gods' enemies: Titans and giants. If Annabeth was successful in overthrowing the gods, then the only ones left to fill the power vacuum were demigods.
"Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos," she whispered. The words barely escaped her lips and she experienced momentary panic when she realized she had been heard. What if she wasn't really ready?
She looked up. In front of her were three old crones. They had not been there a moment before. The Fates' aura of power made her stomach turn to mush. Annabeth averted her gaze. Even in their less powerful forms, looking directly at them would cause her life to flash before her eyes-and it was already too late. She had accidentally looked at them, so she saw her life in abstracted terms: many hearts becoming one, valor, a kiss in the dark.
"We are here to thank you," said the oldest Fate, Atropos. "For services rendered."
"You're welcome," said Annabeth reflexively. She wondered if the Fates knew what she was reading. Last year, she had been responsible for the downfall of Thoon, the Bane of the Fates. They had promised her a favor in return for defeating their enemy.
"We made a promise," said the middle Fate, Lachesis.
"We are here to answer your summons," said the youngest, Clotho.
"We will grant your wish, as long as it is within our power," agreed Atropos.
"Are there things that aren't in your power?" Annabeth asked. "You're Fate."
"We are limited in some ways," said Lachesis. "How so, we do not wish to say."
Annabeth said, "Is it because of the other gods?"
"Perhaps," said Clotho.
"Perhaps not," said Atropos.
"What is your favor?" asked Lachesis. "Eternal life? Eternal youth?"
"No, I want something much bigger." Annabeth told the Fates her wish.
They looked to one another.
"That is difficult," said Clotho.
"Any other time, we would say no," said Lachesis.
"But you are our savior. So it is done," said Atropos. "We will grant your wish."
"Swear on the River Styx," said Annabeth. "Please."
"We swear on the River Styx," said the Fates as one. Thunder rumbled outside.
"Wait," Annabeth said. "You didn't tell me how you'd grant my wish. In what way, exactly, will my wish come to pass if-"
The three old crones vanished, leaving Annabeth alone with her books.
~~~
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