After a few weeks of the warnings, the apocalypse began, with other gods being involved. Ares intensified the wars of the world, bringing everyone closer to nuclear annihilation.
He watched all the death and destruction around the world with heavy eyes, eyes with bags under them. There was the escalation of the US and NATO arming the Ukrainians in their war with Russia, including firing missiles into Russian territory to provoke a possible nuclear response. There was the selling of billions of dollars worth of weapons to Taiwan to point them at mainland China in an attempt to provoke a war there similar to the one in Ukraine. And there was the potential of turning the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians into a wider Middle East war, involving Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iran. Part of Ares’ motive in escalating this particular war was a wish to help thwart the Israelis in their military bloodlust.
Still, this was too much war even for him, though maybe its excess would finally, as a paradox, bring about a permanent peace.
Perhaps the only way I’ll get any sleep, the war-god thought, is if I cause the inhabitants of the entire planet to sleep eternally.
Aphrodite increased addiction to porn, OnlyFans, strippers, and prostitution.
“You men may enjoy feminine forms approaching my physical perfection,” she said as she watched a young man watching an online pornographic video and touching himself, “but you’ll never find love. You’ll be alone, penniless, sad, and never satisfied.”
The goddess also inflamed the lust of many womanizing men, who, on top of their beautiful women in bed, looked down on them like the Sons of God looking down on the daughters of men.
Aphrodite watched all of this and thought, My spirit will not strive with man forever.
Demeter allowed crops to dry up and die, especially where livestock was being abused, or where pesticides were causing bee populations to plummet.
“As the months go by, you’ll be begging for rain,” she said as she watched the crops withering on a farm in the prairie provinces in Canada. “Then, when Poseidon starts what he has planned for the globe, you’ll be begging for the rain to stop.”
Dionysus caused alcoholism and drug abuse to worsen.
If you all get drunk and stoned enough, the wine-god thought as he watched university students drunk and high on ecstasy, all dancing to an electronic beat in an all-night European rave, you just might not notice the end of the world…or you will notice it, but be too drunk and stoned to care.
Artemis was looking over African savannas, looking for poachers preying on endangered species for criminal businesses to profit from. The hunters became the hunted. Just as they were aiming their guns at rhinos, the goddess was aiming her arrows at them. Just before they were to pull their triggers, arrows shot into them, entering between the shoulder blades and exiting their chests.
As for the heads of the criminal organizations these hunters work for, the moon-goddess thought, have no doubts: Zeus, Poseidon, Gaea, and Hades have something special planned for their punishment.
Hermes worsened the bad economy. This, with the crop failures, was aggravating global starvation. As he flew about in his winged sandals, he looked down on the streets of the cities of the world, and he saw lineups of the jobless going into unemployment offices in the hopes of getting either welfare checks or finding jobs. He also saw the streets of San Francisco and LA filled with the homeless, sitting on curbs in despair, living in rows of tents, sleeping in their cars, or fumbling through garbage in the hopes of finding anything useful or remotely edible.
“Don’t you despair, you wretched of the Earth,” he said. “All of your suffering, and much more, will end sooner than you can imagine.”
Hephaestus intensified wildfires and volcanic eruptions.
Volcanoes that had been dormant for years and years, in places like Japan and Indonesia, shocked the locals with their sudden spewing of lava. The fire-god watched the people screaming and trying to get as far away from the flowing lava as possible.
He also watched, lying on the ground and seeing everything through visions as if they were television screens, bushfires in Australia.
Oh, the water will come soon enough, he thought as he watched. When Poseidon brings it, though, you may find it to be a little too much.
Hestia stirred up division and unrest in families’ homes in all the countries of the world. Parents fought with their sons and daughters, not just verbally, but also physically. Spousal and child abuse quadrupled within a week.
“Failure has made an even bigger failure of the home,” she said to herself as she sadly watched a man beating his wife, their five-year-old son sitting in the corner of the room watching and sobbing.
Hera ignored marital problems, thus allowing the divorce rate around the world to quadruple. She encouraged the lust of husbands and wives, making them give in to the temptation to commit adultery; then she caused them to catch each other in their love-nests.
If my husband can do it to me, she thought bitterly as she watched a woman surprise her husband, who was in bed with his mistress, then I can make these weak mortals do it to each other all the more.
When all the people of the world searched for answers to their problems, aching for wisdom, Athena simply ignored them. Only the Wiccans and other neopagans would be heard by her, or those who loved peace, justice, and a clean planet…yet these people were far fewer than the others.
“It is so sad that only people like you listen,” she said in a conversation with Michelle, Gary, and Nina. “So many more out there won’t, so I feel little impetus to listen to their cries for help.”
“Oh, do help us find a way to minimize the harshness of the punishment of the wicked, Athena,” Michelle pleaded.
“We are doing just that,” the goddess of wisdom said. “And the harshness, as it stands, is already at its least level of intensity.”
“Please, Athena, at least open my mother’s mind to my entreaties for her to protect herself,” Michelle asked. “I’m still not sure if she’ll come with me to the box when the time comes.”
“If her ears and eyes are open, she will hear you,” Athena said.
“Oh, thank you, Goddess!” Michelle said with a tear running down her cheek, then thought, Her mind has been reasonably open lately.
“Can’t you please grant some wisdom to my brother, Cam?” Gary begged Athena. “He won’t listen to me.”
“If Cam doesn’t listen to you, he won’t listen to me, either,” the goddess said. “I give wisdom to those who seek it, not to those who don’t.”
Gary sighed in frustration.
Apollo, in a similar vein, was denying logic to those who didn’t even look for it, these being, again, the majority of the world population. He allowed scientific investigation to be motivated primarily by a pursuit of profit, rather than integrity. He allowed music, similarly made mostly for profit, to decline more and more in quality.
Who would listen to a lyre in a world where lyrics are obscene and bereft of imagination, of poetry? he mused as he listened to a more-than-usually formulaic contemporary pop song. It’s of little matter: Poseidon will wash the wickedness of the world away, and quite soon. Then, a new world will be born, one that will appreciate logic, beauty, and truth. But until then, the time of monsters must first be endured.
Gary, Michelle, and Nina prayed to him to help their families listen to reason.
Apollo answered them all in the same way: If they listen to reason in you, they’ll already be listening to reason in me.
Michelle and Nina took some comfort in these words.
Gary took no comfort in them at all.
