That morning the sun rose, bright, clear, illuminating the city in the sparkle of air cleared by thunderstorms and left uninhabited by smog or impurities. Somehow, though, the sun rose in the west, a change which was first noticed by the birds, who were uncertain how to rearrange their schedules to accommodate this circadian aberration. Millennia of evolution, though, have ingrained in the birds a certain flexibility to the vagaries of the universe, and following several changes to migratory routes and recalculations of feeding schedules, the birds took the westward dawn in stride, and continued unruffled.
Dogs, cats, and domesticated farm animals had a more difficult time adjusting to the changes, for their cues came not only from the sun and the magnetic poles, but equally strongly from their human companions, and the animals had difficulty reconciling the very different types of information they perceived. That the sun rose was right and good, it meant breakfast and walks and discoveries of new scents on neighborhood trees and shrubs. That the sun was in the west, though, meant quite a different variation on this routine, and there was uncertainty as to whether this was the enactment of the morning or the evening watches. The humans were thrown into subconscious disarray by the change of orientation, for unlike the birds and the less-tamed animals, their circadian rhythms were as modified by thought and reason as by natural phenomena, and so they could not merely inhabit and accept the alterations.
Most people, of course, did not notice the change at first. Their alarm clocks rang into duty at five thirty or six in the morning; their pre-set coffee makers perked into existence and provided a kick start to the day; in a sleepy haze they staggered to their cars and the morning commute, noticing only subliminally that the sun wasn't quite in the right place, but intentionally choosing to overlook this fact in favor of concentrating on the tasks of the day ahead, the meetings, the deadlines, the flirtations in the mail room. For almost a week, the vast majority of the population remained unaware that the sun was crossing the sky from west to east, for although NASA scientists and meteorologists and physicists were aware of the change, the government had enacted a gag in place until the actual ramifications could be understood.
Emergency sessions of the United Nations were held and bilateral agreements to share information drawn up; military ceasefires and treaties were enforced while this greater potential calamity was studied and interpreted. Each scientist had a differing explanation, as befitted their particular specialty: solar flares had wrecked havoc with the protective atmosphere; the earth's core had either suddenly solidified or boiled; the magnetic poles had unexpectedly switched; dark matter had congregated in a pocket of the solar system through which the earth had passed: each of these theories was put forth, each with a faction of mathematicians, astronomers, geologists, physicists with data to support their argument. All that was in agreement, though, was that the rotation of the earth had suddenly switched direction, and that while data gathering would take some time to complete, the machinations would soon be clear. All other scientific endeavors were put on hold while this problem was given highest priority and unlimited funding.
The off-the-grid conspiracy theorists and religious fanatics were the next to become well aware of the change, and although they had both the conviction of their beliefs and the weight of truth to their claims, no one listened. That the end days were upon us was a story so often told that it had become meaningless, and the credibility of the true believers was non-existent in the mainstream society. Fringe members -- third cousins and estranged siblings -- were the first outsiders to hear the claims of the conspiracy theorists, but as the ban of media attention on the topic of the sun's direction was total and complete, even their desire to listen to the ravings of their family was overridden by the silence of the news.
Discussions in the academic and research spheres grew ever more fragmented and intense, as none of the theories could either be proved or disproved, and the academy, in a state of confusion and frustration, turned to their last and least hope of understanding, the philosophers and theologians. While the politicians, who could use religion for propaganda as necessary, were skeptical of the place of theology in a matter this fundamental, they were forced to agree with the scientists that every possibility needed study, and that which could not be comprehended by the minds of men could perhaps be explained by the metaphors of god.
Classics professors, anthropologists, Protestants, Catholics, Jewish mystics, astrologers, proponents of Plato and Heidegger and Nietzsche were all brought into the council, and left with their texts and stories to find an understanding of the problem. As with the scientists, theories abounded: the gods were angry, the stars were aligned in a bizarre and unexpected way, sacrifices needed to be made, oracles consulted, tea leaves read, sins confessed and forgiven. The Mayan calendar and the sinking of Atlantis and Armageddon were the most referenced stories, although philosophies were not limited thereto. Aboriginal songlines were studied, transcribed, compared to Greek and Persian stories of the place of the earth in the cosmos; hieroglyphs were re-evaluated that told of the activities of Ra the sun god, of Isis and Osiris. Patterns of solar eclipses were compared to the words of prophets, timelines drawn up for the appearance of gods among men, the narrative of Icarus becoming the universal code for the studying of the sudden changes of the sun: the Icarus Project became known across all disparate religions and cultures.
All of this summoning and questioning of the gods, consulting of innards and burnings of incense and rolling of dice and readings of star charts, which in the singularity were unnoticed and unheeded by the gods, in combination became visible. They had noticed the re-orientation of the path of the sun, had reconfigured their schedules and duties with the west-east alteration, but as their activities were confined to the dimensions beyond earthly considerations, they had not actually paid attention to the shift in geophysics on the earth; it was not their purview, their sphere of engagement.
With so much radiating from the earth, however, there was an obligation to shift focus on to the expectations of the petitioners. The gods held a council, a rowdy affair without a presiding moderator or an agenda, where discussions reflected the politics and infighting and alliances that had been in place since the beginning of time. The one place where the gods were in accord was that none of them felt intercession to be their responsibility or even remotely desirable, and yet they all felt a certain nagging guilt to assist the humans in their predicament. The arguments went on long into an endless night, bickering and exchanging favors and negotiating, until at last an agreement of sorts was reached, the necessity of intervention granted, and straws drawn to determine which god would become manifest.
As none of the gods had any intention of taking on this duty, the cheating and haggling and threatening continued unabated, until finally it was Pan who was trapped in a corner and forced to do the bidding of the council. It was felt that, of all the gods, he had the best relationship with mankind, and as he had been making trouble among various factions of the deities, there was some agreement that it would be restful to send him to earth for a spell.
And so, with proper fanfare, he arrived at the United Nations council meeting, dressed to meet the expectations of whichever theologian was addressing him at that particular moment, and so all religious leaders felt visited by their particular god. Pan felt the entire show was a pantomime of meaning, and obliged by sending comets, fireworks, speaking mice, and gyroscopic patterns of tea leaves into the audience at regular intervals.
In truth, though, he was fascinated by the subway system, by pizza shops and candy stores, by movie theaters and football games and cheerleaders, and his attention was riveted on the passions and motivations of the humans. He regularly remembered to send an oracle to a particular minister or to open books at random to surprisingly significant passages or to have the sparrows fly in formation at a given time of day, but much more of his time was spent sampling craft beers, flirting with models, mastering day trading, driving a scooter, taking up surfing. Being a god was all well and good, but he had forgotten how much more fun it was to be a human.
The humans, meanwhile, were slowly becoming aware of the changes in the cycles of the heavens, were noticing that the sun wasn't where they expected it to be in the sky, weren't sleeping as deeply nor waking as easily. The systems of satellites in orbit around the earth began to react to the changes of orbit and rotation, and GPS devices grew less reliable than ever, cell phones would transfer calls to unintended recipients, meteorological satellites and balloons sent back information that was self-contradictory and impossible. The stories of the conspiracy theorists began to gain traction in wider spheres of influence, and the refusal of the media to report on the issue became a news story in its own right.
Small pockets of communities began to panic, turned to either religion or drugs or total pandemonium as a coping mechanism, and even with elite military forces sent in to maintain order, the unrest grew and spread. As it became more and more obvious that the government was keeping secrets, revolts and revolutions gained traction, and the political leaders put ever more pressure on the religious leaders and the scientists to find some solution to the situation.
Pan, meanwhile, was crossing Europe in an Audi convertible, stopping at vineyards and compromising shop girls across the continent, and had grown so distracted by his new hobbies that he neglected his responsibilities as a representative of the gods. Had he been capable of remorse or guilt he might have felt a twinge of conscience, but this had never been in his constitution. As the religious leaders grew ever more worried at the inexplicable appearance and then disappearance of the divine, their sacrifices and pleas became louder, more plaintive, than they had been even before Pan's arrival. Pan, now sunbathing on Mauritius, didn't notice; and when he was dabbling in snorkeling off the coast of Australia, the gods were forced into another summit to settle the confusion, or at least provide a pattern to present to their petitioners in lieu of an actual resolution.
They took no responsibility for nor interest in the direction of the sun, and their thoughts towards mankind were disinterested in the extreme, but that Pan was shirking duty and mastering polo playing was felt to be an embarrassment, and something had to be done. Once again, lots were drawn, but it was unclear what the new resolution actually meant. The purpose of the first delegation had been for a representative of the divine to function as a soothing panacea for the flustered religious leaders, and it was unclear if the second delegation was to merely ignore the presence of Pan and attend to the first resolution directly, or if they were to try to remind Pan of his duties and then return to the divine sphere. Their desire to avoid the petty passions of man was strong, but equally strong was a fraternal sense of solidarity, of not allowing disagreements among gods to be noticed by man, and this took precedence over the possibility of a public row with Pan in the human world.
A Mi'kmaq god was appointed as the delegate, another trickster who had long been part of a faction which competed with Pan in a quest to annoy the other gods, and all in all the gods felt relief at sending their two most problematic members back into the domain of man. The Mi'kmaq god, who had not been paying much attention at the general counsel of the gods and had instead been busily rearranging the library so that the books were alphabetical by the first word of the third chapter, now found himself in the United Nations general counsel, without any clear idea of the purpose of his delegation.
He bowed around the room, made all of the representative's socks disappear, and then found a train north into the Canadian woods, a geography he remembered from so many years ago, when he had more regularly visited earth, to harass solo travelers after dark and to steal spoons from unfaithful housewives. He soon joined the Quebecois separatist party, and began working, on a small scale, with secessionist political parties worldwide, as Pan dabbled in reality television and released several albums in unclassifiable genres, heavily influenced by his discovery of cocaine.
The religious leaders, now quite convinced that the heavens were operating on a cosmic scale incomprehensible even to themselves, quietly began to agree that it was best to simply claim that things were as they always had been, sun moving west to east, and the scientists and mathematicians brought into the conversation not to explain the change, but to explain how things had always been this way. The politicians altered the gag order on the media to reflect the new reality, the perceived changes explained as scientific understandings made possible only by diligent research incomprehensible to all but the most erudite of intellectuals.
The public, who had grown weary of military interventions upon their uprisings and the enforced, oppressive silence, felt more comfortable with the reassurances of the media, and accepted that things were always as they had been. Only the conspiracy theorists remained unconvinced, but their own reputation ensured they remained on the fringe, as human events resumed their patterns, the sun setting in the east.
