Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun

The Modern Version

A long time ago, there was a boy named Phaeton, whose mother was an African princess. While he was playing with a friend, they
got in a verbal tangle.
"Hey, Phaeton! Yo' Mama!"
"What about her?"
"Your mama's so fat, that when she sings...", and then the friend waved his arms about, "... it's all over!"
"Hey! My mom was a princess"
"Yeah, a fat princess!"
"Well, my Mom was married to the Sun, himself!"
"Yeah, and is that what she told you the last time they heard about your real daddy running around in the village in drag?"
Crying like a baby, Phaeton went back home to his mom and asked her to prove who his real dad was.
"Phaeton, my son", his mother spoke in the regal tone of a princess, "your father is, indeed, the one and same Sun you see shining
in the sky each day, except on those real bad days when we get a lot of rain around here in the middle of the Sahara forest. I just
wish all that rain would go away. It gets dreary around here."
"My friends said he was prancing around town in drag."
"Kids will say the darndest things", she sighed to herself, "If you want to see your father, you will find him far to the East over in
his glittering palace where those big mountains are."
"What mountains?"
"What do you mean 'what mountains'? Can't you see them from over here?"
Looking long and hard, Phaeton only seemed more confused.
"I don't see anything. What mountains are you talking about?"
"The Himalayas."
"The who?"
"The Himalayas. Tibet, for God's sake! Do I have to spell everything out?! I thought everybody could see them! After all, they're
the tallest mountains in the world, so nothing can block their view."
"I still don't see any mountains over there", Phaeton said, looking harder.
"Well, they're over there somewhere. And that's where you father lives."
"Can I see him? Can I? Can I?"
"As long as you take an extra pair of underwear. It's a long ways from here."
So, he packed up and left, travelling through Persia, then that place, India, where all the weird people live, until he finally reached
the Himalayas far to the east, which some think lies at the very edge of the world, itself. He climbed one of the tall mountains and

found a palace on its summit which he immediately knew belonged to Apollo. Sheesh, Phaeton thought to himself, I knew it
would be tough getting here, but who'd have ever thought trying to reach Apollo would become such a huge NASA mission?
Even though it was still early in the morning and still dark, the tall palace glistened in its gold and bronze, shining like fiery coals.
On the entrance stood two huge gleaning silver doors, on which were carved the intricate details of the gods and creatures of the
world that famous Tibetan cosmogenic zodiac wheel.
He walked through the entrance only to see even more dazzling sights: a young blonde in a bright green robe, covered with flowers
braided into her long hair. She was holding a bucket of lard. Next to her there was a brunette in emerald green, holding an armful
of golden grain; next to her, a man with auburn hair in a robe of orange, yellow and red leaves, holding in his hands, stained purple,
a bunch of freshly harvested grapes. Then there was an old man with bluish white hair and a beard that looked like icicles. There's
always an odd one in every group. He was too cold to hold anything.
They stood in front of a brilliant throne singing in syncopated harmony they were called the Four Seasons.
Phaeton couldn't look at the throne because it was too bright, being made of shimmering jewels. Seated on the throne was Apollo,
whose eyes blazed like fire and whose crown looked like it was nothing but pure light, itself.
"What the hell are you doing here?", Apollo said
"My mom said you were my dad."
"I am. So, what of it?"
"My friends are razzing me about it and I can't prove it."
"Well, you can count out DNA tests and cameos on some trash talk show. I'm a god, for God's sake. We don't have DNA, we're just
made that way."
"Then how can I prove you're my dad?"
"You know, you people back in the West wouldn't be having such hang-ups about this if you had just stayed matrilineal, like you
always used to be. I mean, back in my time we used to laugh off every hole we heard a 'your Daddy' coming out of. Nobody says
'your Daddy.'. Did it ever occur to any of you people that there's a reason to stay matrilineal? You can't prove paternity except
by practically putting all the women in house prison and cutting the nuts off all the help. And what could be more tragic than
cooping up all the women in a climate so wonderful that they practically itch to go prancing outside half naked at every
opportunity?"
"We are matrilineal."
"Oh. I must be thinking about the Future. Those people in Greece. You know they kept all their women locked up indoors in their
'democracy' in Athens worse than the Taliban ever did?"
"What's a grease and taliban?"
"Oh, never mind. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. You seem like a nice enough boy and you did make that long trip all the way over
from Africa, I'll grant you that. There aren't many mortals who do that, so I'll be willing to take you in as one of my own. So, what
I'll do is grant you one (1) wish, but jus..."
"I want to drive the sun!"
"You what?!"
"The sun! I want to run it."
"You can't drive the sun. You're a human. You don't even know about electricity. And the sun's a nuclear powered vwessel. Even
Zeus can't handle that."
"'Wessel?'"

"No. Vwessel, one that's nuclear-powered."

"Oh, 'vessel'!"
"Yes, vwessel. Do not mock the speech of the mighty Apollo. He can't help how he talks; he spends his off-time during eclipses
cooling down enjoying the wonderful climate north of Scythia."
"And what's electricity and nucular power?"
"Oh never mind. Wouldn't you rather have a chariot and horse or something? I hear it's a new invention and it's really catching on.
You know, a thousand years or more from now they will be celebrating the exploits of your greatest heroes from all over the known
world in what you will call the Olympics. It's really cool and all the cool people are running them, like the Aryans. I mean take a
look further east."
"East?! I thought this was the edge of the world?"
"Son, there is no edge. You people need to get out more."
"How can the world have no edge?"
"First things first. Like I was saying, those people further East just got run over by warriors from the steppes in their chariots and
now they got words in their sing-song language for wheels, for horse, etc. coming straight out of Aryan parlance, as well as their
bone-cooking soothsaying magic. And as if that weren't enough, the horse and chariot people are starting to run all over the place
south. They even got a whole system of races set up over there: blacks, browns, whites and the blood-stained red warriors. In their
language, they call these Colors."
"And they've even run roughshod straight out of the hills through Persia, and from the Caucasus into Mesopotamia as the Indraworshipping overlords of the Hurrians. And these 'chiefs of the foreign hill people' are fixing to do in Egypt, even as I speak (where
they'll be called the Hyksos)."
"And Crete? The place is practically run by half-naked topless holier-than-thou women (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Wait till all those cool people with their wheels and chariots catch wind of that paradise. I've even gotten word from some of the
other gods that they might blow up a few volcanoes and set up some tidal waves. That'll prime them real good and make the whole
place really juicy pickings. Oh, the joy of getting to watch all those high and mighty snake goddess women paraded around like
trophies in victory processions. Do you know they don't even have a king? They will soooooon!"
"Didn't you say you preferred matriliny?", Phaeton butted in.
"It doesn't mean you have to be a damned matriarchy about it! I mean, they've gone too far in Crete and the other islands of its
dominion; and Malta too. Someone needs to teach those nature-women who's boss. The frosting on the cake will be if they can
even demonize the snake and even get all those impudent women to believe snakes are their natural-born enemies, while they're
suffering the excruciating pain of fruitful labor after labor after labor, delivered unto them, by their new overlords."
Apollo went on with his litanny.
"Anyway, that's why I like being the sun. I get to shine light on all the wonders of history as they unfold. Pity all the action at night
goes unseen like the ones the snake-goddess women will be experiencing the night after the victory processions."
"I don't want to ride a mere horse and chariot. That's boring. Everybody and their brother's doing that. I want the sun!"
"Well, I did say I'll give you one (1) wish. But I'm going to have to seriously pull some strings here. Number one, you're only a
human, and you don't have a license to drive the sun, nor for that matter, any other nuclear vwessel. And I ain't about to give you
one either."
"Then how am I going to be able to drive the sun?"
"Well, technically, the Rules say you can't drive the sun. But it didn't say that you can't ... um ... operate it."
"Run that by me again?"

"Well, this is what I can do. You see this magic oil over there?"
"You mean that lard the blonde babe is holding?"
"Hey! Watch how you talk about her? She fronts for the Four Seasons."
"Yeah, I was wondering what that grease was for."
"I need to grease your head. It'll shield you from the radiation when I put this crown on you."
"So, what's the technicality?"
"Well, even though I can't allow you to move the sun through the skies, what I can do is to stop the sky."
"You're going to do what?!"
"I'm going to stop the sky."
"How's that going to help?"
"Well, you're not going to be able to tell the difference."
"Yes I will. Everything's going to be standing still."
"No, no, no, no, no, no! You're missing the point: I'm going to stop the sky and make the world turn underneath it, instead."
"I don't get that."
"Like I was saying before, this is not the edge of the world. The world has no edge."
"You're just full of tales now. I'm beginning to believe you're not the sun."
"The world is round. Don't you people have any sense? Why do you think the horizon is only a few thousand strides off as you
walk over the flat plains?"
"That doesn't prove anything?"
"Oh? What could possibly have stood between you, even when you were in Africa, and these mountains to have kept you and
everyone else from seeing them all the way from over there? Nothing stands in this world higher than these mountains to obstruct
the full view of their magnificence. And yet, you don't see them, and you didn't see them until you were well nigh upon them."
"So what?"
"So everything! Do you question my brilliance when you can't even look me square in the eyes because of it? Is there anything in
the heavens that would not likewise shine in the glory of my light, were it to be close enough to see? Hasn't it ever occurred to you
that the light of the moon's orb always faces the sun when the two are together?"
"Of course. Everyone knows that. All the lights in the sky come from you?"
"No, just the ones that move funny."
"I'm confused."
"If you think you're confused now, wait till they invent credit card contracts. Anyway ... as I was saying, have you not noticed also
that the moon waxes and wanes exactly in accordance to how close together or far apart it is from the sun?"
"Well, now that you mention it, yes."

"The full moon shines atop the sky basking in the glory of my light in the middle of the night."
"But that's impossible! There's no sun in the sky at night!"
"The light is coming from underneath you, right where the sun would be if it had passed directly beneath you!"
"You go through the Underworld to get back? But how does your light shine on the moon then? We're blocking it!"
"Son, you're not sitting on a Cosmic Floor, but on a ball and a rather small one. My light shines right past your whole world
which, in my eyes, is but an insignificant speck!"
"Then, why do we leave no shadow on the moon?"
"What do you think that shadow is that creeps across the moon every now and then, during the fullest of all full moons?"
"That's the world? But the shadow's always round!"
"Like I said, son, the world is round, it has no edge. Even more, the shadow that creeps across the moon is always 3 times larger
than the moon, which shows that the moon is 1/3 as large and the world, itself!"
"Was the world always round?"
"Well, no. Once, long ago, it was flat. But that's another story for another time.