The Best We Have Done (fiction)

The gods have a museum. It is off an alley on the east side of the river next to an industrial complex.

I was looking for pop cans along the freeway and noticed the door ajar. Squeezing past the dumpster I went in.

There was an old man sitting at a desk littered with the remains of weeks of BBQ spare ribs and empty bottles of cola. His oily hair hung over his face, but failed to hide his missing eye. There was a name plate beside the empty fried chicken bucket and a dusty framed tin type of Stonehenge:

Odin, son of Bor
proprietor

“Welcome! Feel free to look around. Let me know if you have any questions.”

It had been years since I was in a museum, but since my schedule was not so pressing, I began to stroll past the exhibits.

The first display case was filled with little figurines with featureless faces, curly hair, triangular legs, and huge breasts. A label was taped to the inside of the glass:

Fertility goddesses
Kish, Mesopotamia
ca 4,800 bce

On the next table lay a glowing sword with geometric designs in its hilt and cryptic runes along its blade labeled as forged by the Roman god Vulcan.

There was a huge model of the Gardens of Babylon. I hefted the ebony oar of Charon and tried to bend the bow of Odysseus. I gazed long at terra-cotta figures of warriors sworn to the service of Emperor Chi’n Shih. An intricate calendar of the Aztecs was propped between ivory figures from Kush and a monolith of Uruk.

I wandered through the halls, gazing at treasures of cities long faded to dust, wonders of cultures now unknown, but found nothing from our own age.

“Pardon me,” I stammered to the immortal who was flipping through a trendy mail order catalogue. “Is there nothing from our age?”

“Oh certainly there is. We pride ourselves in obtaining the most important artifacts of each culture and every age. Here I’ll show you.”

He led me past crowded shelves to a small space inset into the wall.

A box stood on a shelf, an advertising poster behind it. A cartoonish man with an implausibly long mustache and dressed as a pastry chef was proudly displaying a heaping plate of pancakes.

Everlite Pancake Mix!
Always light and fluffy. Always a deee-light!

I raised an eyebrow.

Odin shrugged.

“It’s the best you have done.”