The only thing to watch on their four hundred channels was a documentary on pseudo sciences that Jake and E. E. watched with Thursday afternoon apathy. Hideous scientists appeared one by one to declare that there was no scientific evidence for astrology, ESP, UFOs, cryptozoology, and phrenology.
Jake filled E. E. in on his visit with the Fates, and now he waited, hoping for a distraction, not knowing if it would be hours or decades before he heard from them again. Only the knowledge that Zeus would show up soon to see how things went kept Jake from pacing.
Dr. Angus Powell, of UCLA, boomed on the television, "Tabloids and hippie gurus have been promoting theories for decades, and the evidence is simply not supported by the scientific method. Therefore, these ideas, Feng Shui and palm reading and the like, have no basis in reality."
"Sad, isn't it," E. E. said as a parrot-like woman replaced Dr. Angus Powell onscreen.
"What?"
"What do you mean, what? You know that some of that stuff is real. Maybe not palm reading, but there are a whole lot of people out there that can magically evaporate in and out of our living room whenever they want. You know there really are naiads and dryads and flying horses. Don't you think it's sad that these people spend so much energy combating ideas that really are real?"
"I guess."
"It would be sad even if they were right, to spend your whole life thinking that nothing existed that couldn't be explained. What a horribly boring world."
Jake thought about it, and when Madame Missy came on screen to do a crystal ball reading for Dr. Angus Powell, he smiled. What a boring world, indeed.
Zeus arrived in a middle-aged banker suit as the program ended, and Jake, full of energy and bored with the apartment's blank walls, suggested they take a walk while Jake recounted the same story he'd given E. E. hours before. Zeus looked uncomfortable from beginning to end. He finally opened his mouth to speak when a flushed woman in a lilac suit shouted from the corner that Jake and Zeus were approaching. "…a question we all must ask," she said, forcing tracts into the hands of the crowd. The tracts covered the sidewalk around her in every direction. Jake watched the woman hand pamphlets to a tall man and a woman with bowl-sized glasses, who both accepted the pamphlets and dropped them where they stood. The circle of tracts around the lilac woman grew.
When Jake was close enough, he could see a tacky picture of a man with a briefcase on fire. He laughed out loud.
"Do you know Jesus?" She swallowed a bucket of air, preparing to continue bellowing.
The question had apparently been rhetorical because when Zeus shouted back, "Yeah!" she looked up at him in surprise. "He goes bowling with my daughter on Friday nights."
A few people around him chuckled. The woman stared, wordless.
When Jake and Zeus turned the corner and could no longer hear the woman, Jake asked, "Is that true? About Jesus?"
"Nah," Zeus said. "My kids are the biggest group of Pharisees outside Vatican City. Anyway, Jesus is a nice guy. He doesn't deserve to be pamphleted. She should be glad she only had to deal with me, though. Jesus would have really laid the smack down on her. Figuratively, of course. But there are too many pamphleters around for twenty Jesuses to personally smack, and he's busy enough these days. I remember how it was before I retired. No time to yourself." He sipped his Dr. Pepper slushie. "How's E. E.?"
"Fine. Why?" Zeus was apparently not eager to continue their conversation about the Fates.
"He still looking for a muse? I can fix him up, you know."
"No," Jake said quickly. "A gift from the gods? You really haven't read any mythology, have you? E. E.'d be thrilled until he was chained to a cliff and an eagle was pecking out his liver for eternity."
"Eagles don't really peck. It's more of a rip and swallow technique."
"Whatever. Just please don't interfere with E. E.'s life. He'll find his muse or he won't. Either way, he's keeping his liver."
"You're so melodramatic. Prometheus was an extreme case. Punishments aren't usually so creative."
"What did he do?" Jake asked, as happy to turn the conversation away from E. E. as his father had been to stop talking about the Fates.
"Honestly? And you criticized me for not having read any mythology. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and gave it to mortals, which directly violated Decree 28, Paragraph 9, established at the Third Olympian Assembly." Zeus gave Jake a "well, duh" expression.
"And the edict was…?"
"Keep unto gods what is gods'. Basically, you can't release secrets, weapons, or gifts more valuable than, say, a 1956 Ford Fairlane, without prior consent from the Council."
"Isn't there some sort of 'punishment should fit the crime' clause? I mean, Prometheus' punishment seems extreme. What happened to other people who broke that law?"
Zeus snorted. "No one else broke it."
"Not the Manhattan Project people?"
"Nah, that was totally you guys' fault. Anywho, I better go. I have a date. Are you sure about the Fates thing? You're going to try whatever they suggest?"
"Absolutely."
Zeus shrugged with a defeated attitude and vanished. Jake looked up and down the street, but no one had noticed.