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Martin lives and was raised in Toronto, Canada, but was born in Chile. His only other short story published to date was in Innsmouth Free Press Issue #5. He hopes, barring his slow writing, to eventually write (and get published) in every conceivable short story genre and subgenre before embarking on writing a novel ... or maybe not. Maybe he’ll write a play instead.
    The author speaks: Reading about the Sumerians and Akkadians in the “cradle of civilization”, I became interested in their idea of order, or the mes , and how, if these things fell apart, for them I imagined it implied there would be chaos. What can be more Lovecraftian than that? And Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon the Great and one of the first writers (if not the first) known by name, can there be anything for a writer more interesting than her as a subject for a story?
Lovecraft’s short story “The Other Gods” was one of his first stories I ever read. I wrote my story as a sort of companion piece to it, since, much as I’ve been able to tell, as an influence on other writers, it lies pretty much like the wastes of Kadath, cold and alone. I didn’t strive for 100 percent consistency between the two, though, and also, Enheduanna, beloved of Earth’s Gods, is more fortunate in her story than Barzai the Wise is in his. Another influence may be a certain story by Clark Ashton Smith, which may contain a hint as to who or what The Seeder from the Stars really is. But maybe not. And perhaps Smenkhkare is the same as that mysterious pharaoh from Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty. But maybe not. I wrote this story in a cloud of agnosticism and unreliability. Borges was also an influence.

DEUS EX MACHINA
    Nathaniel Katz
    E very religion, no matter how supposedly beneficent, has exclusion at its heart. Did you think Dionysus an exception? Are you that naive, brothers? Every one of our secret society was an outcast of Dionysus. We were not wanted by your gods, but we refused to be playthings, compliantly knocked aside at our masters’ whims.
    Don’t bother trying to apportion individual measures of guilt. All the members did their part. We all read and critiqued the script; we all helped compose the rituals and invocations. We all disseminated those occult texts so frowned upon by your j ealous gods. We were roles, instruments, nothing more. The Playwright wrote our drama, wrote what became your Tragedy. The Merchant funded us. The –
    Me? You want to know who I was? I was the Actor. But you knew that, already.
    We were one of the last in the festival, that celebration of accursed Dionysus, and we were well aware of the public’s expectations. In addition to being blasphemers, we were also talented men of the stage, you see, and we sat in that open-air theater and looked upon the others as the crowd whispered our names. Watched satyrs, summoned, prancing upon the platform. Saw those gods that we’d sworn against appear and descend to the stage, the mortal plain, from that great, behind-the-scenes machine, that Crane, towering so close to us.
    The clay eyes of the gods were terrible. To look upon them and plot such things ....
    But we persevered. We stared into their masked faces and we did not look away.
    The Traitor was not in attendance and you will not find her. She slipped through Dionysus’s clutching fingers, so what hope have you mortals? She used to be one of those maenad followers of Dionysus, a member of that most revered circle of that most sacred cult.
    Or did you think those followers of Dionysus, those maenads, willing? They are deceived and bound, fellow citizens! Open your eyes! You have allowed the gods to shape your perceptions, to shape your thoughts and your world. And now you try to claim that you follow them freely. How blinkered you are, my brothers. Those maenads, those raving ones , as you call them, are attached to Dionysus, pleasure and instinctual abandon their chains, even as their will is put to the sword by that god’s base