“Get up, you louse. You’re going to be late.”

I opened my eyes and stirred. I looked around to see my mother standing in the doorway with a frown. Her hair was wrapped in a towel, and she had a weird facemask rubbed on. She was two cucumbers away from looking like she was at a spa with her robe pulled tightly against her and bunny slippers on.

“I’ll be ready to go in ten minutes. You’d best be ready by then. I can’t afford to be late because you don’t know how to get out of bed on time.” She turned and slammed the door behind her. Fuck, it was going to be a long day. I rolled out of bed, and my feet hit the cold floor. A shiver went up my spine, and I scowled. I hated how cold she kept this house. I understood that money was tight, but surely we could afford to run the heat above 65 degrees. I stood up, started over to the dresser, and pulled the top drawer out, grabbing some underwear before going into the closet for a long skirt and a white blouse.

I walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My green eyes were slightly sunken in, and I had bags under my eyes from the lack of sleep. My raven hair was frayed in every direction from having just woken up. I looked like the walking dead. I turned the shower on and got ready for the day. After my shower, I looked in the mirror again. Some of the bags had lightened up a little, and my eyes didn’t look as drawn in. I dried my hair with the towel and hung it up on the towel rack before checking the mirror one more time. I wondered if I should do my makeup, but I never did it normally, so why start today?

As I reached out for my doorknob, the door burst open, and my mom appeared again but this time wearing a smart pantsuit. Her short brown was in curls down to her shoulders, and her eyes were the same shade as mine. She looked like an actual person instead of the shrew I knew my mother to be.

“Come on, let’s go,” she snapped. “You couldn’t have even done your makeup? It’s a fucking interview, not some bullshit day at the park. I can’t believe you sometimes. It’s like you want to just live at home with no future. You’re just like your father.”

“It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead,” I replied.

“Well, if he were alive, I’d say it to his face. But he’s not; he decided to try a trial out of fucking nowhere and got himself killed. He had no training; I still can’t believe he tried to do that. He said he finally wanted to make something of himself. Instead, he just left me with you.” She sighed before shaking her head and walking down the hallway.

“Sorry to be such a burden, mother. I’ll try and reach for the stars,” I said sarcastically.

“I’m sure you will. That’s why you graduated high school with no hopes of attending college, no plans of going into any kind of trade for yourself, and no initiative to get a job. You’d better not fuck this interview up. I stuck my neck out for you to get it. You’re eighteen with no prospects, and I can only do so much.”

I hated to admit it, but she was right. I had graduated high school at the top of my class with no aspirations. It’s not that I wasn’t motivated to be more; I just didn’t feel called to anything specific. My friends had gone on to college or begun working in their perspective fields. My best friend even offered me a job at his dad’s auto shop. But I had no interest in cars. I felt like I was meant for something more. I just couldn’t put my hand on what. So I spent my days working out at the local gym, playing video games, and watching television. Hardly the life anyone should aspire to.

“I’ll try my best, mom,” I said, staring at the floor and following her down the hall. We soon made it to the kitchen in the small house that connected to the foyer. She stopped and grabbed two pieces of toast that she had prepared herself before walking toward the front door. I thought about grabbing some food for myself, but she had already stressed the importance of being on time. I didn’t want to give her even more reason to lay into me, so I just followed her.

“They have donuts at the office most mornings. You can eat one after your interview if all goes well. If it doesn’t, then hitch a bus back to the house and get your own breakfast when you get back. Do we need to go over the interview again?”

“No, I got it. Be cordial, tell them I know how to use Microsoft Excel even though I have no clue how to, lie through my teeth about my extracurriculars, and smile. I got it.”

“Yes, nobody wants to hear about your wrestling escapades. Talk about being president of a club. Be sure to smile! You have a beautiful smile. You get that from me. You can learn everything else on the job. It’s not hard; you’re just going to be basic data entry. You get data from random places, you put it into the spreadsheets so my team can use them for analytics. Basic. It’s an internship, but it’s a start.”

I hopped into the tiny Corolla and adjusted the seat. It was set way back from when her boyfriend rode in the car. I called him her boyfriend, but really he was just some guy she was fucking. She had had quite a few of those since my dad died. She didn’t seem to want to settle down again, having had such a “bad experience” with my father. So instead, she just fucked a guy until she got tired and moved on. It was a wonder I had never had a healthy relationship. We rode in silence the entire way to the office. My mom didn’t like the radio because she didn’t enjoy music. She instead listened to an audiobook on her Airpods. I didn’t have any headphones, so I just sat and took in the scenery.

As we made our way out of the suburbs and into the city, I couldn’t help but be taken back by the beauty of New Olympus. Tall skyscrapers filled the landscape, and gorgeous shops lined the streets. There were small restaurants, cute bakeries, and expensive clothing stores. Not that I could afford any of the places in New Olympus. It was the most expensive city on the planet by far. Even the suburbs were pretty pricey. My mom had a decent job as a business analyst at Typhon Tech, and we could barely afford the shitty house we lived in. We drove past the gigantic skyscrapers, most of them with glass walls and obsidian bases. Hephaestus’s construction company, Vulcan, had forged them. Thanks to his magic, most of the buildings were constructed in a matter of days, and the entire city had only taken a couple of months before being completed. The gods had settled into the mortal realm by opening corporations to compete with mortal companies. The gods had the obvious advantage of magic and had overtaken most industries in the world with their technology. 

Typhon Tech was one of Zeus’s ventures. It specializes in handheld technology and wearables. Its flagship phone, the Argos, was by far the most used phone in the world and had been since its inception. It was free, after all. Typhon made its money from subscription services and the other wearables accompanying the phone. There were watches that synced perfectly with the phone, much like the competitors had. Typhon also had special gloves that could be used for typing or snapping pictures, glasses that could be used for augmented reality, hologram projectors, and many more gadgets that revolutionized handheld technology. All they needed was human ingenuity and a splash of magic from Zeus to make it happen.

We pulled into a parking garage, and mom parked somewhere near the bottom. We were early, and she liked it that way so she could get a good parking spot. We walked out to the street and down the block to Typhon’s headquarters. I wondered if I would catch a glimpse of Zeus himself. He made appearances at Typhon as well as its sister company, Echidna Industries, on a regular basis. He usually just stopped by to see if there were any new toys to play with. He was able to do anything in the world with his omnipotence, but he found human technology endlessly entertaining. When the Olympians first returned, he had become so enraptured with the smartphone and all of its uses that he founded his own tech company so that he could make it better. Echidna handled all of his other ventures, like real estate and banking. He had only been back on Earth for ten years but was by far one of the wealthiest beings on the planet. Only his brother, Hades, was better off.

As we made it to the building, it almost gave off a glow. It was constructed of white marble and had great pillars holding up a pointed arch leading to the entrance. The building had two lightning bolts of gold crossed above the door, and the white marble continued up the first two floors. After that, it was wall-to-wall windows all the way up the front. The sides were solid marble, as was the back. The top floor, Zeus’s personal office, was glass all the way around it. Though I couldn’t see it from the floor, I had seen it from afar plenty of times, and countless interviews of Zeus took place in the office. It had the perfect view of all of New Olympus. It was the second-tallest building in the entire city. 

We walked up the red carpet that lined the entryway and into the building. The inside had blue marble floors with white marble walls. The inside walls matched the outside, and I wondered if the marble was generated rather than brought in from elsewhere. That was a lot of white marble. At least the floors turned into carpet once you got to the offices. The trim of the room was gold. The gold was pure and magically made from the original wood trim that had been in place. Zeus had felt like his headquarters needed a little more class. I had been to mom’s cubicle before to know that the gold, white, and blue colorings went throughout the entire building. 

A cheery young woman who looked to be about my age hopped up to greet us. “Hello! How are you doing today, Mary? And who might this be?” She looked at me and bit her lip while fluttering her eyelashes.

“I’m good, Samantha. I need to check my daughter in. She’s here for an interview.” 

Samantha lingered for a moment too long before snapping back to what my mother had said. “Of course, ma’am. And what is her name?”

“Rhea.”

“Oh, is that after the titan?” Samantha asked with a gleam in her eye.

“No. She was born well before the Olympians returned and were all but a forgotten memory. Her father picked the name; I don’t know where he got it from.”

“Oh… it’s a sign of good luck, then, Rhea. Being named after such a powerful goddess should bring you great fortune in the new age.” Samantha beamed.

“Well, so far, it’s amounted to nothing,” my mom said flatly. She was such a motivational mother.

“Maybe today’s the day, then. Good luck with your interview, Rhea. You’ll need to wear this little lanyard here, and your mother will have to accompany you around—Typhon policy.”

“I’ll drop her off in the conference room where the interview is. You should be able to see it from your desk so that you can take care of her.”

“Oh,” Samantha said. My mom started walking away, pointed at a doorway as she walked past it, and grunted something. “Alright, Ms. Cybele! She’ll be safe with me! Have a good day!” Samantha called after her. She then turned her gaze to me. “Your mother is lovely. Just have a seat in there, and someone will be right with you. Do you want anything to drink? Soda, water?”

“My mother is a bitch. It’s okay. And I’m fine, thank you. I’ll just pop in here.” I turned and walked toward the door my mother had motioned to. Inside was a large, dark wood table that stretched about twenty feet. Alongside the table were high-backed leather office chairs. The chair at the head of the table was more akin to a throne and was made of gold. It was Zeus’s chair. This must be one of the conference rooms he uses. Each conference room he was willing to use had one of those chairs, and nobody but Zeus was allowed to sit in it. He actually smote a guy for sitting on it once. Struck him with lightning indoors. The media buzzed after that day, asking if the gods were too violent to be in society. The benefits outweighed the negatives in the end, so people decided to forgive the occasional smiting.

I sat down and said a quick prayer to Hades to help me in this interview. I turned to my phone and started browsing Elysium. After the release of the Argos phone, the gods all released their own applications that were ad-free and free to use. The applications only worked on the Argos phone, which allowed it to be imbued with magic. You just had to pray to the corresponding god to use any of the applications. Hades was the god of the main social media platform, Elysium. It had supposedly replaced four or five competitors all at once. Some of the others were a dating application that belonged to Aphrodite, a free library that belonged to Athena, and maps that belonged to Hermes.

After a while, a man stepped through the door and extended his hand. He was short, only a little taller than me, and his hair was thinning on top. He was a little on the husky side and seemed partially out of breath from the walk here. “You must be Rhea Cybele. Hi, your mom has told me so much about you.”

“Not too much, I hope,” I replied with a smile. I stood up from my chair and met his hand. He motioned for me to sit back down, and I did so. 

“So, tell me about your background a little bit. I heard you were president of your school’s Future Gods of America. I’m sorry to hear that didn’t work out for you,” he said with a concerned look on his face.

“It’s okay!” I said with a smile, wondering why my mom decided that was the club I was president of. “I’ve moved on with my life. I am here now, and that is what’s important. I was also captain of my school’s wrestling team. Won all-olympiad my senior year.” And that part wasn’t even a lie!

“Ah, so plenty of leadership skills. Disciplined. Determined. All great things, Ms. Cybele. Tell me a little bit more about your technical background. What programming languages do you know?” he asked, looking down at his clipboard with his pen hovering dangerously close to the paper. I paused, and he looked back up at me expectantly.

“I’m sorry, programming languages?”

“Yes, Ms. Cybele. This position is for a data science internship. It’s highly competitive, and we need to know your technical background before you can be considered for the position. I’m hoping you at least know Athena, but Apollo or Hermes isn’t bad either. We are accepting legacy languages like Python as well, but I doubt someone so young would know what that is.”

“Ha, right. Right. Can we skip that question and come back to it?” I asked, rubbing the back of my neck.

“I don’t see why, but certainly. What are your understandings of neural networks and machine learning?”

“Um… I know Microsoft Excel?” I eeked out slowly while making a face and shrugging, my voice going an octave higher in the process. He put his clipboard down on the table and rubbed his eyes.

“Rhea. Can I call you Rhea?” I nodded slowly. “You don’t know jack shit about data science, do you?” I immediately frowned.

“No. No, I do not.”

“Okay. Well,” he put his hands on his knees and stood up. “I have this room blocked off for the next twenty minutes. You’re free to stay here until then; then, you’ll have to call your mom or leave the building. You can tell your mother whatever you want; I’ll cover for you and say the field was highly competitive this year or something. Is there anything else I can help you with, Rhea?” he asked with a sympathetic look.

I sighed. “No, that’ll be it for me. Sorry to have wasted your time, sir. My mom told me it was data entry. I thought I could get through that level of interview.”

“That would make more sense. Most of the applicants for this role have a Ph.D. I was doing the interview as a favor to your mom, but you would have had to be a prodigy to get this internship at eighteen. And even then, you might not be qualified,” he said with a laugh. And he was right. Any foot in the door of Typhon Tech is a tech nerd’s dream. I wasn’t going to beat out people who had been going to school for ten years, even if I had a talent given by the gods. But the gods had definitely never gifted me anything. My mother was sure to remind me of that on a regular basis.

As he left, I stood up to shake his hand and set a twenty-minute alarm on my phone. I’d let my mom think I had taken the full interview time. She’d be more likely to buy the bullshit story I would feed her. As far as she was concerned, they asked me some excel questions and said they’d be in contact, and I had a good feeling about it. I needed to find my place in society. As much as my mom and I disagreed, she was right. I had nothing. I felt empty. As if there was no true joy left in the world. I had felt that way since my dad died eight years ago.

“You know, some would call that a failure,” a deep voice thundered. I looked up, and a tall man with slick black hair stood at the door. He was as tall as anyone I’d ever seen, and his shoulders were as broad as the doorway he was leaning in. His eyes were black as pitch on his perfectly chiseled face. He had a five o’clock shadow and wore an immaculate black suit. He was smiling and had one dimple on his right cheek. He had an aura of pain and misery about him that was almost palpable, but his beauty was legend. He was the god of the Underworld, Hades.