Story

A Gift for Hephaestus

You ignore the first call. After the second, you look up which country has 30 as a dialing prefix. Why are you getting calls from...? Oh dear. You pick up on call three.

"Decided to pick up?"

"Pluto? How did you get this number?"

"Hermes. He is the god of communication, after all."

"Fair enough. Wait. This isn't, uh, about, uh, you know, a business call?"

"No, no. Those I do in person."

"Well, then, is everything OK? You're not going on another sabbatical, are you?"

"No, everything's fine. It was surprising how quickly everything fell apart down there, actually. But the fields are at about 90% Elysian now, and we finally found where Sisyphus's boulder rolled off to."

"So what's up?"

"I need your opinion. My nephew is in a big funk. All of the planet stuff last year just rubbed it in that he doesn't have a planet named after him. Well, a real planet."

"Oh, is this Vulcan? He seemed to not be the kind to get emotional."

"Well, when Star Trek came out he sort of took to the persona of being emotionless, but deep down that's just a show. Heph is really quite firey. I'm trying to figure out what I can do for him to cheer him up. Do you have any ideas?"

"I don't know much about him; we only met briefly last year."

"Well, I hope you have a little vacation time saved up."

The call ends just as a familiar sound rumbles outside. You look out to see your stalwart vehicle, ready to go. You sigh, pack a bag, and head out. After a long while, you end up pulling off I-490 and driving along the Cuyahoga River until you get to a massive building. You park and head inside, and find that some puzzling industrial activity has been underway.