The woman sent a written request to Dionysus about her son as a matter of last resort. She wasn’t a follower of the Mad God, and was actually quite terrified of him as a good citizen should be, but she had seen the positive changes in her son’s life after he dedicated himself, so surely this god would listen to the pleas of a desperate mother after the city’s chosen patron god’s priests mocked her for not even having enough money to buy a beggar’s blessing from the city’s only temple.
Too bad every shrine in the city dedicated to Dionysus had been torn down or concreted over when the new god’s priests took over.
With the help of an information broker, I found the last remaining shrine in the city. In the back room of a city’s patron diety’s gift shop was what appeared to be a broken down flat-bed copier covered with a tarp. On the tarp were several candles with questionable inscriptions carved into the side and melted candle wax hardened everywhere.
The two women that ran the shop looked at each other nervously.
“I’m here to fix the copier.”
“Oh good, it has never worked.”
“I’ll have to test it after I fix it, you know.”
“Yes. We understand. But it has a huge power draw when idle so would you unplug it after?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
As I carefully put the candles to the side and pulled the tarp off, I heard the women flip a sign at the front door and a large lock being set. The ambient light dimmed before they closed the door to the back room.
“We’re just going to sing hymns. To the city’s god, of course! So, forgive the noise, but these are important!”
“Of course. The noise won’t be a bother. Be as properly loud as you must.”
I noticed that they had turned off as much unnecessary electrical gear as they could. I knew it was to further mask the copier’s draw when I started it up. As long as the shop’s total draw remained under a critical amount, they would avoid suspicion.
The copier was huge and felt made of stone. It would have been easier for the priests to disable the machine and leave it rather than try to remove it or even dismantle it. I saw they had opted for the easiest way to disable an electrical powered device.
They cut the power cord.
The shop was likely raided often to make sure the machine was disabled, but my information source said the machine was quick to be put back into use. A little searching around the bevelled edge of the bottom of the copier revealed a hidden outlet, the same kind of outlet as is on the wall.
I need a power plug that is the same on both ends.
Looking around I saw on the wall a sign proclaiming (in jest) “INFINITE POWER!”. Hanging on a nail below the handwritten sign was a handmade power plug with the same outlet plug on both ends. A tag on the cable stated this was a gag item, and it was hazardous to the health of man and machine if used.
Gee, how much more Dionysian could you get?
I plugged the cable into the copier, then into the wall. The copier only took a second to power up and be ready for use, but in that second, I noted it not only drew power from the wall, but from the air and even from me. Like a beast tasting potential prey.
I was no longer concerned about tripping alarms, but now concerned about how many alarms are now sounding.
Quickly I stood up, placed the woman’s written request on the glass, and pressed the start button. The light leaked out from under the cover, and as it swept over me and the room, for a moment I wasn’t in a dusty back room in a to-be-gentrified street. I was in the depths of a grotto, standing before a stone altar. Drawings and symbols covered the back of the grotto above me, and something that smelled like wine and blood was dripping on my face.
The copier shuddered, breaking the vision, as the information was transmitted. I went to take back the request, but the shuddering was the copier machine devouring the paper. Even if it was taken apart, there would be no reconstructing what was sent.
I reached down and pulled the power plug from the wall and copier. I dredged it in the dirt on the floor before hanging it back on the wall. The wax crusted tarp was placed back and the questionable candles set as well. I realized then, the questionable symbols were those of the city’s new god, but from an era when the god was obscure. What an excellent cover, I thought. The most these women could be accused of was being fanatics of an old expression of the new god.
My face felt sticky, but each time I wiped my brow, there was nothing there to pull away. The women finished their off-key singing and made appropriately inappropriate gestures before turning on the lights and opening the gift shop.
“I just couldn’t get the damn thing to work, so I left it as I found it.”
“Yea, they just don’t make them like that anymore. Thanks for trying!”
Inspired by the flash vision, I purchased a bottle of wine in a flattened ceramic bottle. The bottle’s exterior was unglazed except for a gray diamond decoration on the flat surfaces, and matching gray wax sealing the stopper. When I saw the city guards marching towards the gift shop with purpose, I asked the wine bottle be delivered to the distraught mother without comment.
I left the gift shop empty-handed and was immediately placed under arrest.
The captain of the guard plucked something like a three-inch spider from my forehead and placed it in an evidence bag. “Introducing unlawful parasites is a crime against [God] and the city. You will be detained until your court date, where you will be confirmed guilty and handed over for punishment by death.”
I was too busy being astounded that a three-inch, wine-dark spider had been chilling on my forehead without me noticing, to notice the declaration of my execution. The women were being interrogated, weeping loudly about my duplicity and telling me in contrarian terms that I was going to be okay in the end. The guards had pity on them for having to suffer my presence, and many bought things from the shop in a show of support.
I turned my face away in a show of anger, but really, I was appreciating their thespian skills. Mad shit, these bacchants.
The courthouse was a side room of the temple, and before I could be brought in for sentencing, I had to be ritually cleansed by remaining isolated in a cell for three complete nights. The warden bragged about the cells being able to withstand supernatural assaults and natural disasters. I know she meant it to be a warning to me that nothing I could do would be of use. But I heard it a different way.
Nothing that happens to the city or the temple will affect those contained within the cells.
I was escorted to the deepest and darkest cell without incident to the dismay of those guards eager for an excuse to commit harm upon me.
The last guard to leave waited until no one else was there to witness my solitude. He looked through the four-inch square window at me, and I realized despite the lack of light, I could see his eyes sparkling.
They glittered like moonlight reflecting off freshly served wine.
“I heard. And now I act.”
The window was slammed shut and I heard a small lock holding it in place.
When the deep earth shuddering began soon after, I stretched out on the rough surfaced steel shelf and patiently waited for the end of the world that falsely called itself “civilized”.