Prometheus’s fiery red hair whipped about in the wind as his two-wheeled conveyance roared down the dirt road from Malia toward to Knossos. It was a beautiful day for a ride – bright sun, blue skies filled with puffy white clouds, propelled by a breeze that flowed across the Mediterranean island. To Prometheus's right the cliffs overlooked the Sea of Crete - its peaceful waves caressed the sandy beaches at the foot of the cliffs, and summoned flocks of chattering shorebirds. To Prometheus's left, crops of green and gold extended to the horizon. There were just over two lunar cycles left before the next winter solstice, which meant the grapes were already picked, and the olives would be harvested soon. In the mean time, the human helots toiled in the fields to plant wheat and barley.
The road was primitive, but it had been resurfaced recently, sparing Prometheus the arduous task of dodging the deep ruts left by the humans’ wagons and the beasts of burden that pulled them. With the helots focused on planting crops rather than bringing them in, there were few such wagons on the road. That was a good thing; the sound of Prometheus’s motorized vehicle was something between a lion’s roar and a swarm of angry insects, and it had a tendency to spook some of the twitchier farm animals. Some of the other Titans might find it hilarious to see a cart full of wheat overturned by panicked oxen, but Prometheus didn’t.
The human helots working in the fields along the south side of the road stopped their labor to watch him pass – some seemed nearly as frightened as their animals, some looked on with awe plain on their faces. Prometheus’s people had arrived on earth millennia ago, but they’d agreed from the start not to share their technology with the small indigenous hominids. Because of that decision, the Titans, long-lived descendants of the Starborn that had colonized the planet long ago, ruled over the humans with their extraterrestrial sciences, artificial intelligences, and amazing physical abilities. The humans, by contrast, lived in hovels made of wood, clay, and mud, plowed their fields with sticks, hunted with rocks, and died after only a few decades, usually to some preventable malady like telomere decay or viral infection. The most prosperous among the humans could afford simple gold and silver jewelry and bronze weapons, but it would be centuries before they figured out how to smelt iron to separate it from rocky ore – longer before they figured out anything more than rudimentary, shamanistic medicine.
“You’re feeling pity for them again,” the artificial intelligence grafted to Prometheus’s nervous system spoke inside his mind. When the Starborn had come to Earth, each had possessed a unique A.I. mirroring his or her own neural network. The A.I.s vastly improved their hosts’ powers and longevity – without them, it’s unlikely the Starborn would have been able to survive the sublight journey from their home world. Prometheus’s A.I. had come to being in the mind of its first host, Mbomxolodur, one of the scientists aboard the Tartarus. Other’s had hosted the Legacy of Mbomxolodur since he relinquished it, most of them taking on names that were variations on that of their predecessor; Mbombo, Lodur, and Xolotl. Prometheus – like many of the legacy bearers in his generation - had instead adopted an epithet given to him as a child.
Prometheus brought his vehicle to a stop at a cross road so he could think his answer more clearly, “It’s not pity,” Prometheus thought, “It’s empathy.”
“A thin distinction,” the Legacy A.I. answered.
“You disapprove?” Prometheus asked, but he already knew the answer.
"It is not my place to either approve or disapprove of any decision you make, only to help you make those decisions.”
“The others think I’m a fool,” Prometheus said.
“Does this concern you?” the Legacy A.I. asked, “You are privileged to know much that they do not – should the knowledgeable worry about the condescension of the ignorant?”
The Legacy A.I.s provided a number of advantages to each host they passed to. For almost every one of the A.I.s, these advantages included the cumulative knowledge of their previous hosts, but the Legacy of Mbomxolodur was the exception that necessitated the qualifier, “almost”. The quantum computing matrix that allowed the swarm of nanites housing the artificial intelligence to think as one entity was – according to some Titans – defective. Rather than linking its host’s mind to his or her predecessors as the others did, it linked its host’s mind to his or her successors. It was a trait adopted and enhanced from the clairvoyant abilities that made Mobomxolodur an oracle on his homeworld.
This 'foresight' put Prometheus and those before him in an odd position – while their fellow Legacy Bearers were still quite tied to the traditions, customs, and standards of their ancestral home world, Prometheus had no memory of that place. Instead, he had thousands of years of memories that would unfold on this world, Earth. While the other Titans looked at the humans as simple beasts of burden, Prometheus could see a future in which the humans themselves would one day leave their planet to explore the heavens.
Of course, these future memories were somewhat hazy – skills and technical knowledge were within grasp if Prometheus focused, but most of the vivid experiential memories were limited to incredibly intense moments. He remembered a steel sword clutched in his hand as he defended a wall from savage northern invaders on a faraway island. He remembered his fingers, numbed by cold, fumbling with black powder and a lead ball as his enemies closed in. He remembered butterflies in his stomach as he took flight in a handmade aircraft while his brother looked on, cheering. He remembered tears of anguish rolling down his cheeks as three men burned to death in a rocket ship he was responsible for. More came to him at unexpected times – it was half the reason he always kept a journal close at hand.
Despite the limitations the foresight imposed, his A.I. was right – it gave him a unique, perhaps better perspective on the world than the other Titans were privileged to. He knew that their little civilization wouldn’t last – eventually the humans would take back their world. Unfortunately, he had no idea when this would come to pass; for reasons unknown to Prometheus, his successor had no memory of receiving the Legacy, and would himself do something with it that would result in a long gap in Prometheus’s foresight. This uncertainty had provided his kin all the justification they needed to dismiss his apprehensions whenever they became inconvenient.
A tiny voice came from the side of the road, “Hello,” it spoke in ancient Achaean, the language of the helots, but it was tiny, high pitched – young. Prometheus looked over and saw a small, dark haired girl standing at the edge of the field to his right. Other humans were running to reclaim her, but Prometheus motioned for them to calm down, and they responded by freezing in their tracks – unlike the little girl, the adults were terrified of him.
Prometheus swung off of his vehicle and knelt down to talk to the girl, “Hello to you, child. Who are you?”
“Lemania,” she said, “Not Lemony. That’s what my little brother calls me, because he’s a baby and can’t say my name right.”
“You have a little brother?” Prometheus smiled, “If he’s a baby, how old are you?”
Lemania held up one hand, fingers out with her index finger bent over, “This many.”
“Five?”
“No!” Lemania looked at him like she was shocked by his stupidity, “Four and a half!” She pointed at her bent index finger to emphasize the ‘half’ part. “How many are you?”
Prometheus chuckled, “Well, I don’t have enough fingers to tell you that, but…” Prometheus looked around and finally pointed at the crops around her, “If you walked through a wheat field amd counted each stalk you passed, well, you’d get really tired of counting.”
“Wow,” The girl gasped, “What is that?” she pointed at his vehicle, “It has wheels like a wagon, but you ride it like a horse. Is it dangerous?”
“Only to the person riding it,” Prometheus laughed, patting his vehicle, “This is what your descendants will one day call a ‘motorcycle’.”
“Did you raise it like a horse?” the girl asked, “Or build it like a wagon?”
“Built it, mostly,” Prometheus said, “It took a long time, because I had to conjure the parts one at a time.” Prometheus held out a hand and focused on the empty space above his palm. A sparkling swirl of light danced in the air, condensed, and dropped a small aluminum screw into his hand. The silver-white metal glinted in the late morning sun. He motioned for the girl to take it.
She cautiously poked it once and then snatched the bauble from his hand greedily. To Prometheus it was a simple screw, but to the helot girl it was the shiniest thing she’d ever seen.
“Can you make anything? Can you turn into things? Can you throw lightning?” The girl started rattling off questions, “Why does your hair move like that? Why is your skin so dark?”
“Well… my hair and skin look the way they do because I’m a Titan, and we come in a lot more varieties than humans do. As far as the bauble, I’m better at that trick than most of the people in my family, but there are some things I can’t make, and I’m the only one in my family who can’t change shape well. Or swim.”
The girl nodded and placed a comforting hand on his forearm, “I’m the only one in my family who can’t whistle, so they all whistle, all the time, just to make me mad.”
Prometheus laughed again, “Yep, that’s pretty much how it goes.”
“What about the lightning?” she asked.
“No lightning,” Prometheus said, “No storms, no talking to plants, or bending light, but… I can do this.”
Prometheus held his hand out again and summoned forth a crude chunk of black rock the same way he’d created the screw.
“That’s the same trick,” The girl gave him a skeptical look.
“Oh, that’s not the trick,” Prometheus said, “Almost any of my kin could summon a simple lump of coal, but they can’t do this…” He clasped the coal in both hands and focused his will on it. Heat and light radiated between his dark fingers as he squeezed the coal with his volcanic power. When he opened his hands again, a sparkling clear crystal had replaced the ugly chunk of sooty black rock.
The girl reached for it in awe, but pulled her hand back when she sensed the heat still radiating off of it. Prometheus blew on it a bit and then set it on the ground, “It’ll cool off soon, and then you can take it.”
“Is it… is it a star?” she asked, “It looks like a star.”
“Oh, no,” Prometheus shook his head, “Just a diamond.”
“Are you a god?” she finally asked.
The question made Prometheus sick. His people had declared themselves gods when they arrived, inserting themselves into the indigenous religions as they spread around the world, copying and distorting them as it suited them. It wasn’t just tradition now – it was law among his people. Legally, Prometheus had to say “yes,” or at least, he couldn’t say “no.” The titan was obligated to maintain the illusion; if he did not, he’d likely find himself sealed away in one of the Tartarus’s unused suspended animation capsules.
“Are you a god?” Prometheus deflected.
“No,” the girl scoffed, “I can’t do anything amazing,”
“Well, that depends on your perspective. You can talk, make up stories, build things, grow crops… to one of those seagulls, you must be very amazing.”
“Because a bird can’t do those things,” The girl placed a hand on her chin as if she were contemplating something deeply philosophical.
“But a bird can fly,” Prometheus said, “which is pretty amazing, yet you don’t think of them as gods, do you?”
“No! They’re just animals!”
“What’s the difference between a god and an animal?” Prometheus asked.
“Well… we make sacrifices to the gods…”
“Don’t you feed your chickens?”
“Is… that the same…?” Lemania asked.
“Is it?” Prometheus asked her.
The girl scrutinized him for a moment, “Are you going to answer all of my questions with questions?”
“Unfortunately, no. I’ve been summoned to the capitol by King Oranos, and I’m afraid I can’t dally any more than I have.” Prometheus stood and started back to his motorcycle.
The girl cautiously picked up the diamond, “What should I do with it?”
Prometheus brushed the red hair away from one of his pointed ears and remembered a line that would one day become a common phrase among humans; it seemed an appropriate blessing for one of the mortal serfs, “Live long and prosper, Lemania.” He held up his hand in the gesture that Star Trek would one day make famous, and left the girl trying to return the gesture.
The roar of the motorcycle couldn’t drown out Prometheus’s thoughts. Lemania was a brilliant and fearless child – in another time, or on another planet, a girl like her might one day become a great leader among her people. A scientist, a law maker, a philosopher, or a defender of the peace. Instead, she would go home to her parent’s hovel, her father would take the uncut diamond Prometheus had created and trade it for a pittance, and he would eventually trade her away much the same. At best, her potential would be squandered in the fields. At worst, she’d meet the same painful end many mortal girls did, simply because no one had shared the divine secrets of basic hygiene with the human midwives.
Prometheus finally came within sight of the capitol. It was, for him, an impressive sight. The other Legacy Bearers assured him it was primitive and small compared to the crowded high rises of their home world; their population on earth was small, even after generations of growth, and the Titans on Knossos itself only numbered in the low thousands, so the city itself was no bigger than the spacecraft they’d buried below Mount Kyllini on the larger island north of Crete. It was also constructed of ‘crude’ materials. The titans could conjure most things they needed at a whim, but that had its limits – a titan, even a legacy bearer, generally could not conjure something larger than what he or she could hold in his or her hands, and only Prometheus was able to conjure objects with iron in them. Without the Legacy Mbomxolodur, a Titan couldn’t even touch the ferromagnetic metal in its purest form; the energy that swirled around it would burn a Titan like hot brand would sear the flesh of a mortal.
Given those limitations, the city was predominantly built of stone – Coatlinuku, Gaea’s earliest predecessor, had used her earth-moving powers to raise the city from the island’s bedrock by sheer force of will. The other Titans had then finished the city by enclosing the stone structures with conjured materials like glass. There was so much glass in the city that under certain conditions the tops of the buildings seemed to fade from sight as they reflected the blue skies around them, and at night the lit structures looked like nothing else on Earth.
Prometheus saw all of this within the context of their adopted world, where it sparkled like meteoric iron found in a muddy hole. His wonderment and pride, though, were undercut by the grim reality outside of the city’s high walls. The Titans lived apart from the humans in order to maintain the charade of divinity, but pilgrims flocked to the city in droves hoping to curry favor with their self-declared gods, and more humans gathered around the pilgrims to sell them food, water, shelter, and even offerings that they assured them, were well established to gain the favor of various deities. A shanty town had quickly grown up outside the city walls, and had been more slowly overwritten by more substantial structures, including (by the standards of the time) large temples and agorae. In all, Knossos sheltered about 20,000 humans, a thousand Titans, and a dozen Legacy Bearers who reigned over all of them.
The road into town was filled with mortals scurrying about on their daily routines, but the human river parted as Prometheus rolled in. His motorcycle announced his arrival well; its roaring engine was audible over the din of the busy crowd, but even without it, none would have failed to notice Prometheus. For reasons they didn’t understand, the humans had shrunk since their arrival – when the Starborn first arrived on Earth, a human male averaged about 180cm in height, but since then they’d shrunk to about 160cm in height – less than five and a half feet tall. Prometheus wasn’t the largest Titan, but at seven feet tall he towered over even the largest of the humans.
As Lemania had pointed out, his skin was also much darker than the humans’ skin. The mortals spent long hours working outdoors in the Mediterranean sun, and their skin adapted to the ultraviolet radiation by developing a rich olive tone. People dwelling on the continent to their south were even darker in their complexion, but Prometheus’s skin had the color of volcanic rock. His finger nails looked like obsidian, his eyes shined like molten copper, and his red-orange hair flickered with light as it moved, radiating energy.
People wanted to touch him, partly because of curiosity and partly because they believed it would cure them of whatever maladies or misfortunes plagued them. Despite gathering around the city, they seldom saw any of the Titans up close – the other Titans were far more proficient shape-shifters than Prometheus, and usually took to their wings to travel wherever they needed to be. Even when Titans mingled with the people, they usually used their shape-shifting and telepathic abilities to pass for human, allowing them to avoid attention.
Prometheus didn’t want to be so removed, though. He already knew many of his Legacy’s successors would be human, and he had memories of their lives (sometimes he even got songs that hadn’t been written yet stuck in his head). Because of that, he often felt more human than Titan, and interacted with the helots as if he were one of them. Despite his casual entrance, though, none of the humans were bold enough to do more than brush his white leather jacket with the tips of their fingers.
Prometheus rolled to a stop in front of the ancient Achaean equivalent of a food truck, conjured a silver coin and flipped it to the owner, asking for a cup of wine. The silver coin amounted to nearly a month’s income for the man – Prometheus could have conjured something more valuable, but there was a slippery slope between divine generosity and economic catastrophe. The man handed the cup to the Titan with shaky hands, and Prometheus downed it in one go before thanking the man. As Prometheus walked away, many of the surrounding humans mobbed the seller, offering large sums for a taste of his god-approved wine.
Others followed Prometheus back to his motorcycle, maintaining a reverent distance. Prometheus decided that if Oranos and the others expected him to act like a god in front of the humans, he might as well give the mortals a spectacle. He swung his leg over the seat, flipped the kick stand up, and revved the engine. He tipped the bike forward as he squeezed the accelerator, allowing the rear wheel to build speed before shifting his weight back on it. The spinning rear tire bit into the earth and launched the motorcycle forward like a rock from a sling. As a small, finishing touch, Prometheus focused his powers on the ground below him as he raced down the road, and ignited the earth under his tires, leaving behind a short-lived trail of flames.
At the end of the road, he turned the bike sharply and leaned against the turn, sliding the bike to a sideways stop before the massive eastern doors in Knossos's walls. They slid open with the sound of stone scraping on stone, and Prometheus found Hekate was waiting for him.
Hekate bore the Legacy of Morgania, the Tartarus's chief security officer on its journey to Earth, but Prometheus had known her before either of them were legacy bearers. From youth, she'd been fascinated with the history and technology of their ancestors. While Prometheus always looked to the future for inspiration, Hekate looked to the past, and he sometimes wondered if that symmetry between them was part of the reason he was so fond of her.
The woman folded her pale arms across the minimal, leather top that matched her raven-black hair and lips. “For someone that doesn’t like being a god, you show off a lot.”
Prometheus dismounted and rolled his vehicle inside. “There’s a difference between claiming divinity and enjoying celebrity,” Prometheus said.
“True enough,” Hekate said playing with the emerald stone set in the center of her black choker, “Personally I’d just as soon have some peace and quiet, away from gods and mortals alike. Perhaps a secluded, stormy mountain top... or maybe an impenetrable, dark forest.”
Prometheus just smiled and shook his head – in many ways, Hekate reminded him of the villains humans would one day fill their fairy tales with. The Hekate Prometheus had known before they became Legacy bearers had been charming and soft. After she’d become the bearer of Morgania, though, she’d gained an aloofness, a hard streak, along with her expanded powers and knowledge. To Prometheus it seemed like the ‘warm’ side of Hekate was still there, precariously balanced against Morgania’s coldness, but he often wondered if he was simply projecting the desires of his youth on the very different woman he knew now.
“You’re looking at me that way again,” Hekate broadcast the thought as they walked to the great hall.
“What? What way?” Prometheus feigned ignorance.
“The way humans look at each other when they want to reproduce.”
“Is that any different from how Titans look at each other when they want to do that?” Prometheus thought.
“So you don’t deny it, then?” Hekate answered with a sly smile.
Prometheus felt his cheeks grow warm, and he didn’t answer.
“If you’re waiting for me to make the first move,” she continued, “It won’t happen.”
“I understand,” Prometheus thought back to her, “I’m not really your type.”
“No,” Hekate answered out loud as the doors of the hall groaned open, “I just want to see you do something significant without a certain outcome.”
“Oh, now you sound like my brother,” Prometheus said.
“No offense, darling, but Pandora’s husband is kind of a putz. I said you needed to be more impulsive, not stupid.”
It was a harsh comment on Epimetheus’s tendency to act first and think later, but it wasn’t unwarranted. Prometheus tried to think of a suitably impulsive answer, but before he could come up with anything, Hekate peeled off towards her seat in the hall.
“If you’re still considering courtship,” the Legacy A.I. in Prometheus’s mind spoke, “we can review the risk-benefit projections again.”
Prometheus sighed.
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