Love’s glow
By: Athena Parthenos on Oct 13 2010Category: Story2
Phil Safari is no more, shattered into a million pieces. Will a hero emerge from the ashes, and will it be in time? Find out in this second chapter of the Safaris
Something ate at me as I flew back from Mt. Rainier to Mt. Olympus, and I headed straight to the Situation Room as soon as I arrived. The Situation Room was powered by a quantum supercomputer designed by Hades, a technological marvel that monitored, recorded, and analyzed trillions of events virtually in real-time. I requested a replay of the events that had happened on Mt. Rainier and watched intently as the events unfolded. Freezing frame, I scrutinized the screen. Yep, there can no doubt. Something very odd was going on. Hastily, I printed out several screenshots and headed down to Hades’ lab.
A trip to the Underworld was never a particularly enjoyable one, even for a god, but a trip to Hades’ lab was something else entirely. The only way in was a long flight of rickety stairs that descended into the dank, dingy basement of his palace. Once at the bottom, you had to repeatedly pound on the door and wait for what seemed like an eternity in the pitch-blackness before gaining admittance. Whether intentional or not, the effect was the same: Hades did not have many visitors.
I heard a buzzing sound, and the door swung open. Blazing white light poured out, setting my eyeballs aflame. It was several moments before they adjusted enough for me to safely navigate the jungle that was Hades’ lab. The room was a gigantic cavern filled with hundreds of worktables and wall-to-wall shelves, and every one of them was cluttered with exotic instruments and paraphernalia. A bank of supercomputers occupied the entire back wall, and they generated a constant hum that reverberated throughout the laboratory. They also accounted for the subzero climate.
Shivering, I yelled for Hades, and soon a hovering robot arrived to guide me to its eccentric master: a stocky, barrel-chested man with a scraggly beard and wild unkempt white hair. Hades looked up from his work, bugged eyed from the magnifying scope he was wearing.
“Well if isn’t me favorite goddess of wisdom!” he roared. “Come in, come in! Why didn’t you call? I could have saved you the trip by using the teleporter.”
“Oh, that’s ok,” I said hastily, recalling my last ill-fated experience. I had materialized ten feet in the air and crash landed on one of Hades’ experiments. It had taken a week before I could get the smell out of my clothes. “I’ve had a lot on my mind, and the flight helped clear my head.”
“Nonsense! You needn’t be afraid of the teleporter. It’s new and improved now!” Uh-huh…that’s what you said the last time, I thought. “Anyway, what can I do for ya? Must be important for you to come all the way down here.”
“Hades, what do you know about love?” I asked.
He stared at me for a good five seconds before bursting into laughter. “Ho, ho! Not the question I was expecting at all. Surely you are not serious, lass? Considering how my last foray into love went, I’m not the guy you should be asking. Why not ask Aphrodite? It’s her business after all.”
I made a face. Usually guarded, I didn’t need such defenses with Hades. We were good friends. “Ugh. No thanks. We still aren’t quite on speaking terms yet over the whole Trojan War mess. Besides, she would just tell me the fluffy stuff, and I am interested in it from a scientific perspective. Humans say that love can make you glow. Is that scientifically possible?”
“Oh, so you’re interested in my soul spectrometry work, eh? Then why didn’t you say so? Come on over to the lounge; it’s too bloody loud in here to have a proper conversation. It won’t be long, I promise.”
I groaned inwardly. “Proper conversations” were never short, and I learned long ago to take a Hades’ promise with a grain of salt…or three. The man simply could not help himself when it came to talking about his work. But I needed answers, so I just had to grin and bear it. I smiled and said, “Sure thing.”
Once in the lounge, Hades offered me a cup of his infamous “Hellfire” homebrew. I politely declined. He poured himself a mug and settled in comfortable on the couch. Yep, this might take awhile.
“So, souls radiate energy of different frequencies, creating unique energy signatures. Using the soul spectrometer, we can capture a snapshot of these signatures and analyze them. We also know that different stimuli can cause the signatures to fluctuate. For example, inspiration and anger cause sharp energy spikes, and depression causes a slow decay.
“Usually these effects are short lived. Humans cannot sustain energy spikes or decays indefinitely…if they go on too long, the souls will either burn out or extinguish themselves. Now love, on the other hand, is a completely different animal.
“According to your beloved Greek philosophers, there are four different kinds of love. I’m not a philosopher, so forgive me if I butcher it. As best as I can understand it, it boils down to filial love, friendship, romantic love, and agape or “true or universal love.”
“You got it right,” I replied, smiling.
“Hah! The old man’s still got it,” Hades bellowed, doing a little shimmy. “Now where was I? Oh yes. If nurtured properly, love can last a lifetime. Another intriguing thing about love is that it seems to violate the Law of the Conservation of Energy. Looking at the energy signature of someone in romantic love, you’ll see an initial energy spike that gradually drops off, but the signature comes to rest at a higher level than before. Aphrodite calls this ‘love’s glow,’ or some ridiculous thing like that. This drove insane until I finally unlocked the actual mechanism behind it.
“You see, the key is to expand the system to include all the players. When two people are in love, their souls become linked, pooling their energies. Each soul now has access to more energy than it did before, but their unified energy still equals the sum of their individual energies. In other words, new energy is not magically created. The Conservation of Energy is not violated.”
“I see. And just how big is this initial energy spike usually?” I asked.
Hades chuckled. “Well, you know that lovers will use all kinds of superlatives to describe it: mind blowing, life changing, or some nonsense like that. But its amplitude is really not that big in the grand scheme of things. It also depends on what kind of love it is. Agape love generally has the highest spike, followed by romantic love, friendship, and filial love.”
“I see. Have a look at these, and let me know what you think,” I said, handing over the screenshots I had printed earlier.
“Hmm…hmm?!” Hades sat up, visibly excited and spilling some beer on himself in the process. “What am I looking at? Where did you get these?!”
“These are screenshots from the replay monitor in the Situation Room. They show Phil Safari before and after the arrival of a girl named Evie Ryan.”
“Incredible! It’s as if you can see the glow with the naked eye. The magnitude of that spike…it’s inconceivable!” Hades looked up suspiciously. “This isn’t some sort of cruel joke, is it? Because if it is…”
“No, no. I assure you it’s genuine,” I said hastily.
“Wow…And you said they’re in love?”
“Oh, I don’t know…I didn’t say anything about that. It’s possible, yes, but I don’t know for sure,” I mumbled, flushing red.
Hades looked at me curiously, and then gave me a sly wink. “Hmm, interesting. Well, you have certainly made my day, Athena. I’ll drop everything for this. It could be a find of a lifetime! I don’t if that’s the right expression for an immortal, but you get the idea.”
“Thank you, Hades,” I said, rising from my seat. “Let me know if you need anything else…” But Hades was already on his way out of the lounge, and he gave me an absentminded wave.
On my way back to Olympus, I remained troubled by my uncharacteristic behavior. What is wrong with me? I shook my head. Must be the stress.
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