Earth, 35th Century. You can cheat death by downloading your consciousness into a Virtual Universe, with thousands of imaginary worlds to choose from, and countless 'lives' to be 'lived.' But someone of vital importance to the Virtuaverse has been m...
It might surprise you to know that most indigenous people have a Trickster God. Many are male, and most can shift from male to female, depending upon their mood or the trick they are planning. They also mete out their own sense of justice, offering good or bad luck to the poor human they decide to play with, depending upon how they handle their fortune or misfortune. They love laughter, dance, song, and sex - not necessarily in that order.
They break rules, fly in the face of reason or convention. They will do things just out of curiosity or boredom. They question authority. Their likes and dislikes change often. Their quicksilver nature infuriates the other Gods. But their heart – no one knows if they have loved and been constant, with a heart that might be as slippery as their thoughts.
It was Coyote who visited me between the Earth and the Moon.
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We were somewhere I recognized only by the memory of a book my adoptive mother once showed to me. We were sitting below enormous trees, by a waterfall, with a round, rocky mountain face called Tesa'ak, Half Dome in a park called Yosemite, now underneath the Ocean. It was wrapped in the green cloak of Spring. We were dressed as young men, in leather loin cloths, sitting on the grass and leaning back on our elbows.
He was glistening - skin tanned the color of almonds, and hairy-chested with a pronounced trail that ran from his chest to groin and below. He caught my gaze and grinned wickedly. This was how we'd first met, in my teenage dreams.
"Why is it, Crow, that we always meet when you're a second away from dying? Are you chasing Death? If you are, I'd be really upset. Here I am, all oiled and ready, hoping to satisfy a primal urge with a much-loved friend, and you're about to go limp forever."
A chill ran up my spine and my skin broke out in goosebumps. He had saved me whenever I was backed into corner, or facing a gun barrel, being suspended from a cliff, or bitten by some mutant snake or vampire hare. "What do you mean?" I asked, trying to sound cocky.
Coyote waves his hand, and a huge holo vid-screen appears, but what it shows is in black and white, like the old Yosemite photo from that book. There I am, in the pod, and the attendant. The image is frozen. My body is turning into atoms, soon to become digital bytes. The attendant is stooping below me. He's holding a pair of wire cutters whose jaws are aimed upwards into the base of my pod.
I glare at him. "Is this one of your tricks?" I growl.
His shoulders slump, and the smile vanishes. "No, Daniel Crow Feather. None of the Gods have anything to do with this. Has it never crossed your mortal mind that I might enjoy your company? Your escapades make me laugh, and after millennia of making mortals laugh, it is a gift to find someone like you. When you die, and the Great Spirit takes you, you are gone forever. It is why I intervene at times like these."
"But we don't die anymore," I correct him. He looks at me with his knowing, ageless eyes.
"Perhaps what you think of as living forever is simply making your dying go on forever. Life is the Great Spirit's gift, yet you would deny them its return when your time is done? When you cannot feel this..." Coyote simply lays his hand on my knee, and my entire body spasms in ecstasy, "then you are gone, my dear friend."
