It Is Pretty Small, After All

“Well, whaddya know,” says talkative young Disnikus, happening on Atlas doing his thing, you know, holding up the heavens, bearing the weight of the world.

“Didn’t we used to go sailing with Oceanus! And we hung out with Phoebe, too, right? – whoa, I had a thing for her back in gymnasium! And she knew it before I did. What a goddess, wisdom and prophecy, the whole package…

“And, hey, sorry about, you know, that rebellion you led. Yeah, I know, you lost. I think it goes to show you that we are not as powerful as we seem. But yeah, finding out that we’re not ’masters of the universe’ was kind of humbling. We’re part of the earth, right? We’re not rulers of it… We need to protect it, not rule it, right? Ahh, I think I’m preaching to the greek chorus right now, ain’t I?…

“Oh, how’s my buddy Hyperion these days? You don’t say! He was always one sunny dude! Wasn’t he crowned Ruler of Light at the prom? God, Prometheus was pissed!

“What’s that? He’s seen the light too? Hyperion’s into solar energy? Working on putting an end to global warming? Cool!”

“Oh, yeah? Oceanus too? Clean blue technology. Very nice…

“Hey, Atlas, you know what, you look like you could use some help. Here, let me hold that thing with you.”

Arms uplifted, a sudden rush appears in the recesses of Disnikus’ subconscious, a tune, a sticky assembly of notes and words, amassing together, repeating and repeating in a loop, a tune that somehow binds itself to his DNA and the DNA of generations of offspring to follow.

“Great catching up with you, buddy,” he says to Atlas. “Great to hear about everybody. Cool that we’re all still somehow connected. Cool that we’re working on stopping climate change, on fixing up the heavenly mess we’ve made, that we’re bearing the weight together…”

His arms grow stronger as he shares the effort in lifting up the world.

“It’s pretty small, you know, after all…”