Master of the System

Istoriya sat with his hands folded in front of him. His display was pointed at him, along with a camera. On the display, there was a room with millions of other people inside of it. The council of primordial gods had called a meeting of the gods, and the topic of discussion was Vremya, the unruly god of time. Istoriya nodded. “Thank you all for attending. As we all know, the god of time froze thousands of titans, transported them to the financial world, and unfroze them all, nearly killing all the gods who were present at the time. He did all this to give his snack god companion, Kartofel, the god of potato chips, Rynok’s divinity. His behavior is inexcusable. As such, we will be taking actions to prevent something like this from happening again in the future.”

“And how are you going to do that?” a god asked. The asking god didn’t look nervous, and Istoriya nodded as if he had expected the question. It wouldn’t make sense for him not to expect it since the questioning god was a plant the council had set up. However, what he didn’t expect was for someone else to answer first.

“Isn’t it easy?” the god of spears asked. “We identify Vremya’s weakness and strike where it hurts. Before this meeting started, the rest of the weapon gods and I were discussing how to defeat the god of time, and we came up with a brilliant idea.” The god of spears stood up, making sure all eyes were on him. “Everyone knows about relativity. The faster one travels, the slower time becomes relative to that person, and that is where Vremya’s weakness lies. Dvizhen is Vremya’s natural counter. If the god of motion moves at the speed of light, Vremya will become completely helpless.”

“Yeah! Do that!” another god said. “A primordial god is the one creating trouble. It should be up to a primordial god to fix it.”

Istoriya glared at the god of spears. Why did the combat fanatic have to speak up at that moment? “We can’t send Dvizhen. He’s temporarily unavailable, which is why I’m leading this meeting.”

“What could he possibly be doing that’s more important than defending our way of life?” the god of spears asked. “Titans threaten our society, so us combat gods go out to deal with them. When a primordial god threatens our society, us combat gods can’t do anything to them. It’s Dvizhen’s responsibility to handle Vremya. Everyone has to do their part—that’s what we agreed on eons ago, no?”

Istoriya cleared his throat. “Dvizhen has been sent into the future by Vremya. He isn’t here, and he won’t be here with us until—judging by the distortion created by Vremya’s power—at least a hundred thousand years or more.”

“Then, what? We have to wait a hundred thousand years for Dvizhen to show up?” a female god asked while raising a wing. “In the meantime, we let Vremya do whatever he wants? How is that fair to anyone?”

“We are not going to let Vremya do whatever he wants,” Istoriya said. “If the council didn’t have a solution, we wouldn’t have called this meeting. We will be calling Gravitat from the frontlines to take care of Vremya. As we all know, the god of gravity is one of the main pillars holding the titans back. To fill the void he’ll be leaving behind, all the combat gods and every immortal user will have to be mobilized.”

Grumbles and groans came from the crowd, but Istoriya ignored them all. “The only way to stop Vremya is by trapping him with Gravitat’s power. If you want to complain about how unfair it is you have to send your users to prevent the titans from overrunning our society, then you can direct those complaints towards Vremya. He’s the one who’s the cause of all this trouble.”

“Why can’t we give in to Vremya’s demands?” the god of cowardice asked. He was a man made of a gaseous substance, his body barely holding together. Luckily, it was a virtual meeting, or he would’ve been blown away a long time ago. “Didn’t Vremya retaliate because Rynok stopped selling things to him? Why did you have all of us cut contact with him? Isn’t that poking the sleeping bear? It makes no sense to me.”

Istoriya snorted and pressed a button on his computer. It made a slamming sound that cut through the cries of agreement that came with the god of cowardice’s speech. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Istoriya said. “Everyone has the right to do business with whoever they want. That includes the right to deny certain people from accessing their business. Rynok was consistently being lowballed by Vremya, and he got tired of it, so he cut Vremya’s access. If we, as a society, don’t take a stand against the god of time’s actions, wouldn’t that mean we approve of what he did? It isn’t okay to threaten and kill people you disagree with—which is why we have to punish him.”

The gods in the meeting gradually settled down. It did make sense. If a primordial god could go up to them and demand all their users or face the threat of death, was that a society they wanted to live in? Of course not. Even though some gods were a bit doubtful of the interaction that allegedly occurred between Rynok and Vremya, they couldn’t go against the crowd’s will. Istoriya nodded and signaled the end of the meeting. Even though there was one hiccough, the plan still unfolded as intended. Vremya would soon be trapped in a blackhole created through Gravitat’s power, and that would be the last anyone ever heard of the god of time.

***

Vremya frowned when he saw Pravos. The god of justice looked like she had been run over by a truck. Her clothes were dirty, and her face looked like a malnourished skeleton’s. “What happened to you?”

“Huh?” Pravos asked and raised her head. She had walked into the living room with her head pointed at the ground. She looked around. “What do you mean? Nothing happened to me.” She opened her mouth and yawned. “Your users are immortals now. I had to go down into the world a few times to slap some sense into Smith Jr. for straying on the wrong side of justice, but other than that, I think things went pretty well.”

“Is it okay for the god of justice to slap people?” Karta asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Pravos said and yawned again. She rubbed her bloodshot eyes. “I’ve done it a few times already, and it hasn’t affected me one bit.” She wandered into the kitchen, and there was the sound of the fridge opening accompanied by the sound of rummaging around. “Don’t you have any beer? Aren’t naked old men with dogs supposed to have lots of beer?”

Vremya and Karta exchanged glances with one another. Karta cleared her throat. “So, uh, she’s fine, right?”

“Of course,” Vremya said and rolled his eyes. “Drinking lowers one’s inhibitions. Even if Pravos gets wasted, which is very difficult in the first place for a god, she’ll only do more things related to justice. It’s like how if Pozhar were to get drunk, all he would do is set things on fire that he wouldn’t set on fire if he were sober. What can drunken justice do?”

Karta scratched her head. “When I get extremely drunk, I don’t do more potato chip things. I puke.”

“Well, that’s because you’re naturally stinky.” Vremya shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s no beer in the fridge.”