Titans of Chaos

Colin poked the fire with a stick, throwing up a spray of sparks, and in the sudden light I saw hiseyes dancing. "I don't know what they smuggled in from other worlds, but from my home, fromdreamland, they smuggled dreams. That's what my brother told me. I don't know what it means.

He said a time had come, in ancient days, when all the dreams of man had died, and men bowedand sacrificed to unworthy gods, lecherous and cruel. Odysseus spied on the paths through therealm of shadows and found the empty kingdom of Lord Dis was not the final place to whichmen's souls fled-there was an Elysium beyond- and so the Phaeacians help him smuggle the truthback to mankind. The myth of Er, the tales of Zoroaster, legends hinting that this material worldis but a dismal dream from which we wake to brightest sunlight-Socrates knew the truth of it,which is why he scoffs at Homer."

Vanity, for some reason not clear to me, looked guiltily at Quentin, and then asked Colin, "Did hesay anything else? About Odysseus, I mean. Did your brother Phantasmos say anything else aboutOdysseus?"

"In my land, in Cimmeria, he is regarded as a great hero. He was much further traveled than helet on. He sailed to the foot of Mount Purgatory in the South Pole, which is this mountain so tallthat tresses of the trees of the Earthly Paradise atop it scrape the bottom of the turning dome ofHeaven, and starlight is tangled in their leaves and twigs. Odysseus sailed beyond the sunset, andhe would not let the gods tell him no. So, buck up, Red." And then he turned to me, and said,

"Your kind of guy, too, Amelia. You know, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

And he threw out his chest, and said,

... Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in ordersmite The sounding furrows: for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of allthe western stars, until I die.

We all clapped for him, and I clapped loudest of all. (Gee. Sometimes I could almost like Colin,you know? If he weren't such a jackass.)

One night it was Victor's turn.

Victor said, "I remember the name of my teacher: It was Ormenus.

"I remember walking on an island barren of all life. All around me were yellow clouds: poison gasor molecular dissembler engines, Styx-water mixed with sulfur. It was war: The Olympians weredriving us out of our homes, and we were leaving nothing alive behind.