The God Complex: The Book Of Alan, Destroyer Of Worlds

Chapter Forty-One: Paradise Awaits

'This is just typical,' thought Alan, as the heaving ocean of deities ahead of him rolled into view.

He stepped off the escalator that approached the Infinity Platform at Galactic Central Point and frantically joined the scrum to get to the other side and make his carriage. It was never usually this busy and the smell! The smell was atrocious.

Spying the clock at the opposite end of the concourse, he doubled his efforts. At this rate he wouldn't even get to the office, let alone get the chance to sneak back to his desk and wipe the files linking him to his little 'loop hole experiment' with the Earthlings.

He looked again at the message and shuddered: 'Alan. Meeting Nebula A, NOW.'

That last word screamed back all manner of recrimination.

Osiris had had it in for him from the start. 'Thinks it's a gift having famous parents. Like everything's just been handed to him on a cosmic plate, well, he should try it sometime - see what it's like living deep beneath someone else's shadow.'

One famous parent - that's just unfortunate, but two! Two famous parents was a sadistic act of cruelty.

'For the love of Buddha, where has everyone transcended from?' he yelled squeezing past a particularly fat demiGod to get down into the multidimensional platform exchange. It was only when he ploughed head first into a hoard of drunken Norse Gods that their stagnant breath slapped the answer clean across his face.

It was a Bank Holiday.

'Of all the luck,' he cursed, pushing through the barriers and hitting another bottleneck for the platform.

There is no way Osiris could have found those files. He did everything to hide them, not that he needed to, no one ever looked at the Earth account. It was by far the smallest account they held.

'Unless,' he thought. 'Hermes.' That glorified post boy took infinite pleasure in his misery. He wouldn't put it past him to go snooping on his personal cloud.

As the carriage hissed into the station, all thoughts of his betrayal were left on the platform as half the known universe attempted to cram itself into one small cubicle. Even for a being with no physical matter he was forced to compress every last molecule to get on board, as several more deities shoved in behind him.

Naturally, only after the doors were sealed shut did they announce they were being held at the lights between space and time to let other carriages pass. As the fifteenth call of 'Could you move down please,' echoed through the carriage, he felt another deity's molecules rub suggestively against his and he shuddered again.

After nine agonising stops, he poured himself free from the deity soup of the carriage, feeling like he'd never be clean again and raced up towards the fading light of the dying star that illuminated his business district.

Pausing briefly outside his office block, he thought better about going through the main reception - the lifts came out far too close to Meeting Nebula A for his liking. Shimmying around the side of the building, he swiftly made his way to the back entrance and used his pass to get into the underground carpark, where the swankier directors parked their sporty looking time machines. It appeared the general rule was: the smaller and sportier your time machine was, the higher up you were in the company.

Alan still used public transport.

Wheezing up the nine flights of stairs, he stopped for a minute at the top to catch his breath and wait for his eyesight to return to normal. 'too many of the human's biscuits,' he wheezed. When this was over, he needed to go on a diet.

He poked his head, deviously, out of the door.

All clear.

Making himself as small as possible, he put his head down and swiftly floated past Finance, hearing the distinctive hiss of disapproval he always heard when passing Finance. They still hadn't forgiven him for expensing that new Ozone layer on Earth in the 90's to buy himself more time.