Loki Goes Deep

Something bulbous and diaphanous swam past Loki’s face, and for a change it was something that didn’t try to bite his nose. A pair of stalks jutted out from the thing, and they waved at him. Could have been eyes, but he didn’t suppose they were. At this depth, a few things had them, but surely these weren’t eyes.

The bulbous thing swam away. Loki watched it vanish into the darkness. He was alone again in the dark and crushing deep. That was all right. But he was getting bored again, and he knew from too many experiences that he got in trouble when he got bored.

He was hiding again. So much for all his bravery and bravado. As soon as he’d learned that the desert god didn’t like to go in the water, didn’t know how to swim, Loki’d dropped his ass down the Marianas Trench. And while life here in the abyss had it’s moments of beauty, his hands were starting to itch.

Something swam by, all steamshovel jaw and teeth. Pretty in a predatory way. Everything ate everything else down here, but did it so beautifully.

Still . . .

The fish with the huge toothy jaw swam up to Loki and, predictably enough, tried to eat his nose. Loki, peeved, turned it into a goldfish. Goldfish do not do well at a depth of seven miles. It was crushed into a pellet the size of a bb that did not seem in the least goldfishy.

It had never entered Loki’s mind to change things into other things before. Had never been his style, really. He mostly broke things, or even better, tricked people into breaking things.

He tried to decide if he liked it or not.

After a while, he decided he did. Who knew? It sure cured the boredom, turning things into things they were not. Every strange creature that swam by after that got the business by Loki’s hands, turned into all manner of things unsuited for life in the depths: butterflies, canaries, tree sloths, and once, in what he thought was a moment of brilliance, a perfect likeness of Newt Gingrich.

Still, it wasn’t anything he could see himself doing long term.

Then it hit him. Like his better ideas, it was sneaky and twisted and edged with just a bit of malice.

One of those funky jellyfish came by eventually, and Loki took a hard look down into the thing’s DNA. Complicated stuff, sure, but he was a god, maybe not as powerful as that Yahweh asshole, not even as powerful as Odin, where ever the hell he was these days, but a god nonetheless. He froze time while he looked over this DNA stuff and doped it out and saw what he could do with a little tweaking here, a little twisting there. He tweaked and twisted.

Then he let the jellyfish go.

In the sunless deep, in 16,000 pounds of pressure per square inch, Loki giggled. He’d had some good ideas, sure, but this was one of his best. And the payoff was going to rock.

Things swam by, and Loki tinkered. He laid down new blueprints in the genetic material of the most bizarre creatures, instructed cells on how to become lungs and legs, how to build toward light and low pressure.

It didn’t go unnoticed.

Not by Yahweh, who wasn’t about to go down this deep, the Holy Hydrophobe, but by others just as familiar to Loki.

One afternoon, Poseidon and Typhon paid him a visit.

They weren’t a bit happy.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Typhon demanded. “Are you crazy?”

“Well, yes,” Loki admitted, “Always have been.”

Poseidon glowered at him. “It’s just going to piss Him off, you know.”

“Good,” said Loki.

“Good? GOOD?” thundered Typhon.

“Yeah,” Loki said, “Good. You deaf? I hope it does piss him off, that self-righteous Bastard. Look at the courtesy He’s extended us. Asshole. So what if his feathers get a little ruffled. Should happen more often.”

“You can’t go mucking with the natural order like this,” said Poseidon. “It’s not right.”

“Well, who’s gonna stop me? You two? Please. Go play with the fishies and leave me alone.”

Typhon sputtered and cursed. Loki found a sea pig nosing over his feet and rearranged a few things, genetically speaking, that in a few thousand years would have the species developing a sudden craving for take-out barbecue.

Poseidon said, “I’m sorry, but you must be stopped.” He raised his trident and pointed it at Loki in a manner clearly meant to be threatening. The flash from it was no more than a tickle.

“You used to be such a badass when you had believers,” Loki said. “Me, I never needed them. Now look, shove off, okay? I’m having a good time, and if you boys don’t want to play, you’re just in the way.”

Poseidon sobbed. Typhon put a consoling arm around him.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” cried Posiedon.

“That’s true,” said Loki. “That’s why it’s fun.”

Then a shark swam into view. It was huge, all mouth and teeth. It had no eyes and long, swept back fins, and was glowed with a pale luminescence.

“Ooh,” said Loki, “I haven’t seen one of those down here before. Cool! I’m thinking lungs and wings, what do you guys think?”

“Wings?” said Typhon.

“Yeah, just think how they’ll all scurry around up there. Just think how pissed off the desert god is going to be.”

Typhon looked thoughtful, which, for him, was not easy.

Poseidon jabbed him with the Trident.

“Don’t listen to him, it’s wrong—”

“Stick me with that thing again,” said Typhon, “and I will use it to clean out your colon.”

“But—"

“How do you do it?” Typhon asked.

“Well,” Loki said, happy for some company, “When you look at an organism, you have to look deep, because deep leads to small, and . . . “

Poseidon swam away, discarding his trident along the way. The dark and the deep closed around him.