Pan Gets an Email Address
Pan opened his browser. Well, it wasn’t his browser. How could it be his browser? Pan? The great Greek god of all natural things, of the chaotic underpinnings of creation, of Life understood in its essential vitality: Pan. The browser could not conceivably be his. It was not. It had come with his laptop, pre-loaded by the manufacturer. And, truth be told, it was not a very good internet browser. It suffered from regular pop-up notifications, which Pan worked to close as quickly as they appeared, but which nonetheless tried his patience.
The cloven-hoofed deity waited as a website loaded. Absently fingering his eponymous pipe, slung from his shoulders like a weapon, Pan cursed whichever son of Hephaestus that had invented the entire net infrastructure in the first place. He then doubly cursed Zeus himself who had issued the request in the first place: “All deities and demi-gods will subscribe to the shared cloud platform as a way to facilitate communications across the heavens (and it’ll be good for trees too, eh, Pan?)” He’d laughed along with the rest of them, of course, but the deep chill in his soul at that moment had killed a thousand ancient forests.
The website loaded. The masthead read “Olympost Online”. How much had Zeus paid for this garbage? Pan clicked the button to set up a new account. He worked his way through the basic information requested, but stalled when he got to the username. He thought he would have just been provided a username by default. Pan@Olympost.gk or something basic like that. Instead, he was being asked to come up with a username of six or more characters. What was this nonsense?
He pushed back from his desk and leaned back in his chair. This was ridiculous. No, it was worse than ridiculous; it was… he searched for the word.
Overreach.
He reflected on old times. Zeus’s father Kronos hadn’t forced everyone to get email addresses — he had gone through a phase of obsessing over carbon paper, apparently, and ordered that everything be submitted to him in triplicate.
Screw this, Pan mumbled to himself, rising abruptly. He lifted his pipe to his lips and blew a short note that sounded like a sigh.
Seconds later, a shepherd appeared in the doorway. He looked confused and concerned.
“Sheep?” he mumbled, scratching his head with his crook.
Pan beckoned him over. He looked him over twice and then shook his head. He already knew the answer but figured he might as well ask:
“Do you program?”
The shepherd was silent. Pan could tell he hadn’t heard him and obviously had questions.
“Yes, I’m a sheep that talks. So, you don’t program, right?”
More confused looks.
Pan motioned for him to leave, but then stopped him again. He considered the dusty, bearded man. His long hair was matted and full of twigs and feathers. His cloak had perhaps been a color once, but now served as a kind of invisibility cloak in natural settings. Here, the cloak looked more like a smear.
Pan smiled.
“I have in mind, fair shepherd, to take you on as a servant.”
“But my sheep?”
“Do not fear. I have brought them all home to me, their god.”
“Home?”
“They are all dead,” Pan explained, putting his hand gently on the man’s shoulder. “This will free you up most completely to assist me in a matter of great importance.”
“Dead?”
“You will be serving as my personal” — Pan searched for the right word — “communications specialist, let’s say.”
The shepherd said nothing as Pan led him across the room to where his laptop sat, perched on the edge of a tree stump like a glowing, square nightingale.
…
Zeus signed in to his email account for the five-hundredth time, delighted. He was so pleased that no one had taken thunder@Olympost.gk yet — although, honestly, that would have just got messy. The inbox was as pristine and empty as his chambers.
He sighed.
There had been such a ruckus when he’d made his announcement. Hera stomping off, uttering threats. Hermes complaining that he should have been consulted. Hades said he already had an email address and asked if it was possible to forward mail between accounts.
Zeus had said that it was not.
He refreshed the inbox once more, deciding that, if nothing came up, it really was time for him to go start a forest fire in the northwest. He clicked and was about to close his 18” laptop screen when he heard the four-note chime he’d asked Hephaestus to incorporate into the browser to indicate mail. Breathlessly, he opened it. It was his first message. The sending address was a string of numbers that he was sure meant something profound to someone.
Do you like sheep? I thought you might — click here to see some really great animals.
Zeus did like sheep, although he was really more of a cow person if he was honest. He clicked through.
No sheep. Or perhaps it was just a very close-up photo of one. His screen had gone white.
Perturbed, Zeus pressed each of the keys one by one. He then pressed all of the keys at once. Hephaestus’s proverb floated through his mind: Try turning it off and on again. The white screen disappeared, but then when he turned it on again: nothing.
…
Pan watched with wonder as the shepherd grew in wisdom and understanding, slumped in front of the unnatural incandescent haze. Once the shepherd had learned to read, Pan set him up with a series of online tutorials. The man’s eyes were red and crusted by this point, but he seemed docile and content. He did not lag or slow as he worked. Pan thought for a moment of the marvelous willpower he’d sometimes seen in bacteria or certain kinds of spiders, swarming the body of a dead mouse like a thick, shimmering quilt. They left neither flesh nor bone.
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