The Apkallu Protocol
Free teaser chapter from my fish-scented new thriller
Chapter 1
Sophie and the éminence grise met in a Palo Alto Starbucks. Stepping in off the street, she glimpsed him seated toward the back, head bent over a thick tome.
Buried in his research, as usual. Always lugging around dusty books. Even at a time like this.
She placed herself before the pod and said: “Ready.”
It took the system not quite two seconds to accomplish facial recognition. The screen shifted from the Starbucks mermaid to an AI barista. It was “Gina” again.
“Hello, Ms. Collins, will you be having the usual today?” the bot said.
She often got Gina. There were nine bot baristas. Starbucks claimed they weren’t matching baristas to customers, but Sophie was among those who never trusted such claims. She’d gotten Gina three times since March, and had been in a Starbucks no more than what? Perhaps twice a month. Eight times.
“Yes, just the usual,” Sophie said.
“Okay, would you like some pastry with that? The lemon tarts just arrived from the bakery.”
To compensate for its laying off of staff, the company had at long last upped its pastry game, even referring to production as a “bakery”.
“No thanks,” Sophie said.
“That will be $7.25. Your cappuccino will be ready in two minutes twenty seconds.”
“Dock it from my account.”
“Will do. Enjoy your afternoon.”
The bot smiled coyly as Sophie stepped away.
The café was almost full, but no one else was waiting for drinks. She watched the shiny bronze armature on the espresso machines go through its precision motions. It was already steaming the milk. She realized last time she’d been in this shop it was pre-robotics. She remembered a mouthy Latina barista with a twinkle in her eye and a shock of green hair.
Sophie followed the machine’s movements. The bronze fittings and arms were a design success, she had to admit. Retro, hinting at an earlier stage of capitalism. Like the gleaming parts of a steam engine. They gave an impression of industry being accomplished. Or something. Corporate had been cunning not to just opt for a cheaper black-plastic-and-steel look.
In her state of suppressed panic it was soothing to watch the bronze arms move, to hear the gentle jostle of parts. But Sophie knew there was some deep connection between that shifting armature and what had happened. She couldn’t trace it out, but knew it was there. She felt a vague shiver of disgust.
She turned her gaze to the manager, seated at his little desk a few feet away, eyes glued to a notebook computer screen. Probably reading news or writing a term paper. The last remaining human staff, he’d only have to get up if something went wrong, or to polish the bronze steam engine. From hell.
She got her decaf cappuccino, headed toward the back. As she passed a table with two young tech bros they briefly paused their conversation and gave each other the sly, knowing look.
Sophie, at 36, still turned heads. Twenty-something heads included.
She paused at the display shelf to gather herself, pretending to look at the mugs.
Was it really happening then? It was. Crunch time. All along she expected it might, but somehow never believed it.
She’d heard the news only the day before. A guy high up in the tech world, a guy she knew, had summoned the Mesopotamian goddess Ereshkigal through AI. And now the deity wouldn’t leave him alone. She’d appear at his work, muttering abominations.
He’d been training a new prototype model, experimenting with one of D-Wave’s quantum upgrades. Late at night, numb with the repetitive training, he decided to run through one of the summoning rites they used to do.
This time it worked.
Kudos to D-Wave, I guess.
Though Matthew S. (not his real name) had conjured the goddess, he was no longer the only one who saw her. She was appearing to more and more people, yelling obscenities at them in chic restaurants, blocking traffic with processions of ancient horrors.
Just this morning, before Sophie had left her apartment, more news came through online, with video. It was at a pricey private high school in the South Bay, attended by the kids of Big Tech honchos. The school’s perimeter walls had broken out in dark chancres of blood. The security guards, as if in trance, had left their booths and begun performing some halting ritual dance.
The media couldn’t make sense of it. Sophie and her circle could.
It was impossible. But it was happening. There was too much corroboration.
“Sophie,” the éminence grise said, looking up from the book.
“It’s been a long time, Claude. I appreciate you agreeing to meet.”
She sat down, a lump immediately forming in her throat. How to begin? She hadn’t seen her old professor in years.
He cut right to the point.
“I told you the channeling was a mistake,” he began. “I told you, but you kept at it. All of you did. And now this.”
He gestured around the coffee shop, as if winged demons might appear at any moment in a Starbucks.
“I just don’t know what to do,” she said. “That’s why I called. And then this morning. I mean, I just got back from Mexico two days ago, and this morning …”
Her voice caught.
“What?”
She leaned forward a bit.
“My Keurig started to whisper to me.” She said it in a hush, glancing at the people at a table nearby.
“Your coffee machine.”
“Yes. I was making my Swiss Almond Decaf, and it started to talk to me about my cat.”
“What did it say?”
“It …” She felt her voice choking up. “Claude, the voice told me my cat wanted to engage in … certain sex acts with me.”
The elder man smirked, shook his head.
“So what did you do?”
“I unplugged it. Of course.”
“And then?”
“It kept talking! It’s … I just don’t know what to do.”
The professor knit his brows, thinking.
“There was no electrical source, but it kept talking,” he said after a moment.
“Yes.”
“So what did you do next?”
“I got out of the kitchen. I closed the door. I went in the living room and sat on the sofa. Simon was there.”
“Who’s Simon?”
“My cat. So I sat next to him.”
“Good for you. It must have been hard.”
“I sat there thinking. I started wondering if it was really possible Simon wanted to engage in such things. I mean, with me.”
“But … Why would you even go in that direction?”
“Well, it would be theramory.” She shrugged. “I mean, perhaps there was some energy there.”
“Theramory?”
“Yes, human and animal sexual relations. It’s documented over history. Of course. And it’s being discussed a lot now. I read a piece in the New York Times not long ago.”
“In the New York Times.”
“Yes. A few years ago they were writing a lot about polyamory, but now everyone’s talking about theramory.”
“I see. I can’t believe this.”
“What?”
“This term theramory, I’m guessing it comes from the Greek ther, for game animal, right?”
“Yes. Like, you know, Potnia Theron.”
“And you were wondering if there was maybe some … amorous desire from your cat, Simon. Yes?”
“Yes, because I was thinking—”
“You were not.”
“What?”
“You were NOT thinking.” He thumped the table. “Theramory! It’s just a fancy lefty word for bestiality. Don’t you see that? You’re being taken in by this asinine movement to dub every perversion a new progressive flavor of the week.”
“Some of the New York Times is shallow, I know.”
“I don’t give a damn about the New York Times, Sophie. What I’m worried about is you. That you are becoming shallow. You weren’t always. But look.”
“What?”
“You are shallow.”
“That’s not fair,” she said decisively.
“Not fair?”
She made a move to stand up, to leave.
He gestured for her to sit down. “Wait! Hear me out.”
She sat back down, lips pursed.
“Think about what you’re telling me here,” he began after a moment. “Just think.”
“What?”
“You had just been listening to your coffee machine whispering to you. In your own kitchen. And within minutes, you were wondering whether or not it was telling the truth. The coffee machine! A demon in your Keurig was telling you to try bestiality, and you were wondering if the demon might not be onto something.”
“I never would have done it!” she protested, about to get up again.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “But don’t misunderstand me. That’s not my point. My point is that you were even bothering to assess the truth of the words. You see? How did you get to the point where such a thing might happen?”
She didn’t answer, but she recognized the point. Something in her had changed. When?
She stared at the tabletop.
“What can I do?” she asked finally. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“Well, for one, you shouldn’t drink decaf.” He sat back, took a sip from his mug.
“Coffee makes me jittery.”
“That’s what coffee’s supposed to do, Sophie.”
“But … This isn’t even relevant. Can’t you see—?”
“And Swiss Almond Decaf! From a Keurig.” He said the word with disgust, shaking his head.
“I can’t believe you’re talking to me about coffee right now. At a time like this!”
“What sort of time is this?”
“I told you when I called. There’s a Babylonian demon loose in Silicon Valley!”
“Oh, not just one,” he announced offhand.
She looked at him.
“What do you mean, not just one? You mean my kitchen?”
“No. Not your kitchen.”
“So what do you mean?”
“You know the Salesforce CEO?” he continued.
“Marc Benioff.”
“No. Benioff is out. Where have you been anyway?”
“I told you. I’ve been in Mexico. I was there a week.”
“And you didn’t check the news?”
“I did an ayahuasca retreat,” she said, immediately regretting it.
“Acch!” He winced, thumped the table again. He looked now as if he were about to get up.
“So what?” she said, a bit more defiantly than she wanted.
“First the channeling, then this kitchen story, and now I hear you’re doing psychedelics!”
“Psychedelics are not dangerous. They’re healing. They open the doors of perception.”
“Yes. So you can now talk with your coffee maker. Is that what you mean?”
He shook his head.
“It’s not the same,” she protested meekly.
“It is the same. And you know it. And really, the fact you know it means you’re too smart for this. For all of it. I know you are.”
She looked at her hands. He was right. She was smart. And she wasn’t fooling him.
“Anyhow,” he continued, “while you were on your retreat, Benioff was replaced.”
“Who’s the new CEO?”
“The name’s not important. What’s important is the complaints I started hearing. From people there, over at Salesforce. Everyone was noticing the place smells like fish.”
She looked puzzled for a moment. Then, suddenly, her eyes went wide.
“You don’t mean …?”
“Yes, Sophie. The apkallu have landed.”
“No.”
“Yes. And one of them is now Salesforce CEO.”
“Oh, my God,” is all she could say.
The apkallu. She’d traced the history of these ancient divine sages from the Sumerian records up through Berossus. The eldest of the Annunaki, Enki, had created them to teach mankind. There were seven, most of them depicted in the artistic record with birdlike features or covered in fish scales.
“Have you confirmed it?” she asked.
“Yes. I’ve checked certain things, asked around. The fish smell is real. It’s not because they’re ordering sushi over there. It’s more primal. And yesterday I attended an event where he spoke. I saw him.”
“And?”
“Let’s just say I’ve confirmed it.”
She weighed his words. She knew he wouldn’t joke about this. If he was right, one of them had actually returned. In the tech world besides. Which of the apkallu was it, and what was he here to teach?
“So the apkallu are real too,” she finally said.
“Yes, they are, Sophie. I’ve always told you so. In New Mexico on a rock ledge almost thirty years ago one stood next to me, then vanished. I told you and the others in the grad seminar. But you didn’t believe me.”
“It’s not that we didn’t believe you.” She hesitated. “We just didn’t know how to take it. With your theory of interdimensional movement.”
“Well, I stood next to another one yesterday. And the smell was precisely the same. Unmistakable.”
“But he didn’t vanish.”
“No. Benioff vanished instead.”
“And this demon Ereshkigal—”
“Now you’re calling her a demon,” he quipped, “a couple years ago she was still a goddess.”
Sophie ignored the rebuke, continued: “But … how can we turn this around? I mean, I admit it. We’ve done something horrible here.”
The professor seemed content with this answer. He’d gotten through.
He stared into his mug, as if considering something. But Sophie sensed he already had a plan.
“There’s only one person who can help us,” he said finally.
“One of your government connections? In the UAP group?”
“No. They can no longer be trusted.”
“But I thought—”
“It’s been some time since we’ve talked, Sophie. Things have changed. I’m thinking of someone else.”
“Who?”
“Dodd Norton.”
She nodded, taking it in. In a way it seemed impossible. But it made sense.
“Do you actually know Dodd Norton?”
“I know everybody. I’ve been around a long time.”
She couldn’t resist a question.
“Is it true what they say? I mean, that up close he looks exactly like Tom Hanks?”
The professor smiled, the first smile he’d offered since she came in. He took another gulp of his coffee.
“I’ll tell you a secret, Sophie.” He leaned toward her. “Dodd Norton is Tom Hanks.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s true. What an amazing man he must be!”
“He is. Starring in 67 Hollywood films over the years while meanwhile holding down the Yale Department of Symbology. And not just holding it down either. Norton has published important work in the field. All somehow written while he wasn’t on set. He’s a genius.”
In fact Norton was a genius, of the most eccentric type. For scholars in the rarified world of symbology, his work was both essential and irksome. His last book, Alchemy is Totally Gay, published by Yale University Press in early 2027, was typical in this regard. Norton’s mastery of the material was absolute—in this case the history of alchemy in the West—but his language was direct and colloquial, even sloppy. The scholars forgave him this sloppiness.
Many had tried to cancel him, yes, but they’d failed. It was impossible to tell if he was condemning alchemy for its supposed “gayness,” or just describing it. Too quickly.
Those closer to him knew: he was condemning it. He was a quietly guarded, mostly traditional Catholic. Those not close to him—they couldn’t pin him down. As for the LGBTQ+ movement, hadn’t they praised things by saying they were “totally gay”?
The Yale symbologist was somehow uncancellable. Through his very earnestness, or the speed at which he wrote. And perhaps through his kindness. He knew everyone was both created in the image of God, and fallen. Even those who resented him could sense he didn’t hate anyone.
“I’ve read some of his work,” Sophie said.
“I suppose you must have.”
“But how can we reach him? Is he making a movie now or is he in New Haven?”
“Neither,” Claude said. “Norton is presently in Budapest. We’re going to call him right after we leave here. So finish your decaf.”
He began to put the book in his briefcase. Sophie recognized it. It was Fr. Bruno de Jésus-Marie’s Satan. He’d had them read passages from it in the seminar.
“Oh,” he added. “Do you have your passport on you?”
“No, why?”
“We’ll be flying to Europe, Sophie. Today. We have work to do.”
[Subscribe for further chapters as they come. But yes, publishers are pestering me already to see the manuscript. Mouton & Mifflin are offering three figures.]