Poker Boy often solves problems and saves the world with his mutant talent of asking stupid questions.

Sometimes really stupid questions.

So when he asks the seemingly simple question over lunch one day about how the gods originated, he stirs up more than even Poker Boy bargains for.

So how did the gods originate way back before Atlantis? Might be better to just not ask. Too late for Poker Boy. He asked.

 

 

 

GODS HAVE HISTORY

A Poker Boy Story

 

 

ONE

 

I had learned a long time ago for me, meaning about five years or so, that there was no such thing as perfect answers.

Every answer I seemed to get over the years to my often-stupid questions seemed to have more than one answer. Or worse yet, the answer was shaded in “it depends” which is a color that seems to be more like a cloud of mist.

Today, the question I had asked of Patty and Stan seemed to be getting a combination of “it depends” and more than one answer.

A double whammy.

Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl worked as a superhero in the hotel and lodging part of the world. Stan, my direct boss, was the God of Poker. As Poker Boy, a superhero, I worked for him and made my living playing poker when not running around saving people or the entire planet.

But even though Stan was my boss, basically I ran the team and he was part of the team. It was a complicated relationship, but we both seemed to be just fine with it. I knew he was the boss, he understood I was, at times, so new to this business of gods and superheroes, that I had no idea what was happening.

I was just good at questions that seemed to poke others into action and thus save the world from whatever evil was threatening it at the moment.

Patty and Stan and I were sitting in the big diner booth in the center of my invisible floating office over Las Vegas. Besides a few chairs, the booth was the only furniture in the big square glass room. The booth looked like I had lifted it from a 1950s diner.

The walls of my office were perfectly clear and I had put a wood railing about belt high all the way around the room so I didn’t feel like I might fall off the floor at any moment.

Patty, who had her long brown hair pulled back and was wearing a wonderful white blouse and jeans instead of her normal MGM Grand front desk uniform, sat beside me. She had brown eyes that could hold me frozen it seemed and her touch actually could calm me. That was one of her many superpowers.

She had a day off and after lunch we were planning on jumping to our new home that was being built in the Oregon Coastal Range to see how things were moving along. And then we planned on having a nice dinner in Portland at a restaurant we both loved there before jumping back here for a movie and other activities that often happened on date night.

Stan had on a button-down gray sweater, gray slacks, and loafers. His hair was cut short and he was the most forgettable-looking person I had ever met. He took the “not be noticed” approach to poker while I had always taken the more flamboyant approach by wearing a black fedora-like hat and a black leather coat all the time.

I considered that coat and hat my superhero costume. Not sure if it actually helped me, but it sure felt like it did at times. And besides, I liked it.

The question I had asked had been simple, or so I thought. “When did the gods actually start. And how?”

I was really tired of always being surprised by my lack of knowledge of the thousands of gods and more thousands of other superheroes that roamed the planet taking care of every tiny niche of human life. In fact, right now we were waiting for milkshakes and burgers to be brought to us by Madge, who owned a real diner in downtown Vegas where my team used to meet before we got this office. Madge was a superhero in the food service area.

Also, it seemed that at five years, I was one of the youngest of all superheroes working. I had been an orphan growing up, so I had no idea who birthed a superhero kid. Not a clue.

Superheroes basically stopped aging in their late twenties and could live forever, from what I understand. I had no idea how old exactly Patty was, but I know it was hundreds and hundreds of years older than me.

I would like to say that being in love with an older woman didn’t bother me, and most of the time it didn’t. But every so often she would reveal a part of her past from hundreds of years earlier and I would feel pretty darned inadequate.

I usually got over it quickly when she kissed me. More than likely another one of her superpowers. I didn’t mind at all.

So my question about the origin of the gods had been with the idea that Patty and Stan could help me start to fill in some knowledge gaps.

But Stan had just laughed and said, “Not really sure, to be honest.”

Stan was a master at avoiding a direct answer and that felt like a real avoidance. I knew Stan had been alive in the Atlantis days. We had even rescued his two missing daughters from that time. So he had to have had some idea.

Patty had smiled at me. “Why would that matter?”

“So you know?” I asked her.

“I honestly don’t,” she said.

Stan shrugged.

At that point, Madge came up carrying a cheeseburger basket with fries for Stan and one for me and Patty to split.

She also had a vanilla milkshake for Stan and one for me and Patty. The milkshakes were so huge and rich and wonderful that Patty and I were lucky to even get through half of one each.

Stan always managed to finish one of his own.

The cheeseburger and fries smelled wonderful and Patty grabbed the salt shaker to salt the fries.

“Madge,” I said, “Do you know the origin of the gods and superheroes? About when they started and how?”

She laughed. “Do I look that old to you?”

“Don’t answer that,” Patty said to me, laughing.

“Just thought I would try to learn a little history today is all,” I said, raising my hands in surrender.

“I honestly have no idea,” Madge said, laughing, as she vanished into the portal leading back down to her diner.

Now I was really puzzled. I glanced at Stan. “Do you think Ben could join us for lunch?”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” Stan asked, staring at me to try to get a read on me.

“Do I ever let anything go?” I asked.

Both he and Patty laughed and then he vanished.

I turned to Patty as she started to pick up her half of the cheeseburger. “You honestly don’t know?”

“I don’t,” she said. “Honestly, until you asked the question, never thought about it.”

She bit into her half of the cheeseburger as my warning bells in the back of my head started to go off.

Patty didn’t know.

Stan didn’t know or wouldn’t say.

Madge didn’t know.

I had a hunch that I had just stuck my finger into a large hornet’s nest and didn’t even know it.

Typical for me and my stupid questions.

Just damn typical.