Solutions: The Dilemma for the Gods by James Gerard (top 50 books to read .txt) 📕

The morning was peaceful.  A mist covered the town which in turn clouded the view of the street and buildings that Terrance had become too familiar with.   He sat patiently waiting for the storekeeper to deliver the daily allotment of food.  The tranquil scene gave the time to reminisce about the happenings surrounding past mornings.

He remembered the morning ritual started out as uneventful.  Just about all the children abided by the tenets of the Gods and kept their distance from the transgressor that had been cast out of the town and made gatekeeper and a personal servant to the Gods.  The storekeeper was always prompt with the daily food.  Anyone who happened to pass by so early in the day kept their eyes and comments to themselves.  Even Terrance found himself abiding by the rules of the punishment and sought out no contact with another child.

The only exceptions, one arranged, the other one he viewed as an act of hatred, were those involving his parents and his personal tormentor, Ryan.  His parents, shortly before the high priests dragged Terrance off to the Lesser Temple, had arranged a way to communicate with their son that they loved.  They had arranged a simple strategy of talking with him without anyone being the wiser.

On occasions, when they walked the street as Terrance obeyed the morning ritual of patience in the chair, they would come by and make mundane comments to one another that guised the messages they so desperately wanted to convey.  Terrance softly laughed when he thought about the verbal side show.  When his mother made a snide comment to his father, petty rants they never engaged in before, they were asking how he was getting along.  A sneeze by Terrance meant he was doing fine.  A cough after the sneeze asked his parents how they were doing in return.  A compliant moan from his father after another snide remark uttered by his mother said they were just fine.  Terrance caught himself laughing aloud, but the noise went unrevealed by the fog that shrouded his position if anyone had been out and about and witnessed the transgression.  And as silly as it seemed, the communication was of a great comfort to both Terrance and his parents.

The other violations that took place in the early morning ritual involved Rita’s brother, Ryan.  But such violations had started well in advance of the banishment.  Ryan had long been hostile to Terrance.  The hostility often manifested itself in the form of softly whispered vulgarities aimed at him.  In retrospect, he could never understand the hostility.  It started when Ryan came to his little sister’s defense when no offense had occurred.  The transgressions were repeated over and over again in the absence of logic or any witnesses.  The brother was relentless.  The abusive behavior followed Terrance and Rita’s relationship all the way up to the age of maturity.  Although he was clever as to not openly voice his abusive actions too loudly, he found ways at every opportunity to attack Terrance.  The tenets made it clear that all such behavior was to be avoided and considered a transgression by the Gods, but the brother seemed not to care.  It was as if he was so mad that he purposely ran contrary to the Gods’ tenets and administered his own idea of justice.

Matters, however, became worse after Rita’s disappearance.  The cruel whisperings, the whispers of physical threats, manifested into a steady barrage of rocks thrown in the direction of the seated ritual from an alley just down the street.  Terrance knew it was Ryan, but once again he never voiced his concerns to the high priests as prescribed by the tenets.

Whatever was the cause for Ryan’s hatred, Terrance could find no solution to the dilemma.  It seemed at every opportunity Ryan could come up with an excuse, that if it had been brought up to the attention of the high priests would have pointed the transgression at Terrance and freed Ryan of any blame.  Terrance could perceive at a young age that the brother acted contrary to what the children were to be, and fooled many of them.  At the age of maturity, however, he could clearly see Ryan’s reason for the abusive intentions was not based on solid ground, but in the mud just below murky water.

Terrance, his parents too, were clever in disguising their feelings toward the Gods but had done so with more subtleness than those around them.  They were not perfect, yet their perfection lay outside of the tenets.

Others too seemingly violated the tenets by warm smiles and whispered greetings, but Terrance could not be sure if such acts were intended or circumstantial.  They mainly occurred while one child encountered another.  A smile quickly followed by a look at him might have been a wayward reaction to a funny tidbit shared between the two.  The whispered greetings simply might have been muddled words that were lost in interpretation and intention.

The storekeeper, the high priest who seemed to carry out the laborious task with mal intentions, never once showed any sign that compassion was employed in meeting his needs.  Terrance had long ago dismissed the idea that the high priest may have been the one who stowed the special items along with the daily sustenance.  He ruled out his parents because it would have been too risky an act to carry out because it would have put an end to any communication at all.  As far as who was the compassionate being, Terrance had no idea, but always appreciated the acts of kindness.  It was the cookies, however, that made him dwell deeper into the mystery.

They reminded him of the cookies his mother and Rita’s mother would bake on the special family celebrations permitted by the Gods.  But the cookies exceeded even those.  They were exquisite both in texture, taste, and a freshness he had never sampled.  Even the Gods did not receive such a delicacy among all the food prepared for them by their children.  The cookies prepared for them were done on a large scale production line and had to meet their guidelines in the process.  Measures against spoiling were met in the specific recipe, the packaging, and the storage that spelled out a strict adherence to the tenets.

Terrance, although all anxiety over the food received had passed, could not fool himself about that one batch of cookies.  He had hoped, even prayed that just one more time the cookies would be discovered and spring the joy they provided, but they never again made an appearance.  He did hold onto the hope but not for the cookies alone.  He once had waited on that one day his parents and all the children would be freed by the Gods as prescribed in the tenets, but the reality of the words turned sour in his mind.  All the children, however, believed what was written in the tenets.  There would come a day when the Gods would proclaim that their children would be safe for all of eternity, and they, the mighty Gods, would return to the good world and live among them, but separate themselves to assure the obedience would last through eternity.

As far as Terrance was concerned, that day would come but in a fashion not prescribed in the tenets.  In the meantime, he continued to wait patiently as did his parents.

The time spent in the garden had slowly expanded from the appointed times to whenever Terrance desired.   But in the last year he chose to spend the better part of the day within its confines.  He saw it as a sanctuary.  What that exactly meant he had learned many years ago from his parents but came to understand it within the tranquil space provided by the world.  But Terrance, although he had the desire for a confrontation with the Gods, had always been careful not to be present when the Gods walked on the grounds of their inner and outer world or in their secret pasture.  In an odd way, when he had given it some thought, Terrance almost came to understand that it was in essence their sanctuary as well.

But either avoiding the Gods or confronting them was made easy by the Gods themselves.  They always arrived with the pomp and circumstances of clapping thunder and bolts of lightning so as to alert the children as to their presence.  By sheer terror the thunderous show was intended to keep the children away, however Terrance believed the clapping thunder was to ward off the gatekeeper who was the only one capable of identifying the Gods.

The Gods did not make it a habit of loitering around the good world.  With the exception of the short number of days needed to take up the harvest during and after the solemn feast, their presence was seemingly dictated by a timetable, a specific time during the latter days of the month when they would descend and snatch the sustenance prepared for their consumption.  Under Terrance’s tenure as gatekeeper, the Gods began to arrive intermittently. They would come on an occasional day here and there throughout the year to accomplish whatever it was that needed to be accomplished.  More and more food was abandoned for dumping in the secret pasture and machinery left sputtering and broken.  The Gods, for whatever reason, decided not to be present in the good world as often as prescibed in the tenets.  As far as the absence of the Guardian of the Gods, Terrance had long reconciled the absence with the truth.

Terrance stood quietly, eyed the bright sky with wisps of clouds set against the face of the brilliant blue canopy.  He stretched his arms high into the springtime air and shouted a resounding “yes” as the sun beamed its warmth to the world.  Standing well above the secret pasture he looked down at the compost heap it had become.  He had wondered why the Gods had yet objected to the defiling that had taken place.  The rebellious act could be plainly witnessed from any vantage point within the outer world.  The Gods would have to be blind, figured Terrance, to not have witnessed the mess.  Eventually, they made known their observation and responded.

Terrence concluded their displeasure was made known by the additional light illuminating above the Greater Temple; the fourth.  The first light, a signal from