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"We checked it"

"Then ive up," Pouncy said His eyes had a wintry, sleety gray to them that was distinctly un–Abercrombie & Fitch "And neither do they" He indicated the others sitting around the table "And neither do you Do you, Julia"

Julia blinked and held his gaze to indicate that she would keep listening, but that sheabout monotheis about old-tiet everything you ordinarily associate with religious study Strip away all the reverence and the awe and the art and the philosophy of it Treat the subject coldly Iist, but a special kind of theologist, one who studies gods the way an entoist studies insects Take as your dataset the entirety of world y and treat it as a collection of field observations and statistics pertaining to a hypothetical species: the god Proceed froloves and tweezers and haughty distaste, as if they were handling the intellectual equivalent of medical waste, Pouncy and the others took up the study of coic back in her apart the world’s religious narratives and traditions for practical information They called it Project Gany to find?" Julia said

"I wanted to learn their techniques I wanted to be able to do what gods did I don’t see any real distinction between religion and icians I think divine power is just another forical praxis You knohat Arthur C Clarke said about technology and y is indistinguishable frouishable frouishable froods," Failstaff rumbled Jesus, he was a true believer too

But despite herself--and she took care not to show it--Julia felt her curiosity stirring She reminded herself that she knew these people well They were as s intellectual snobs as she was She probably wasn’t going to coht of

"Look, Pouncy," she said "I know enough about religion to know that even if there are gods, they don’t exactly hand out holy fire like candy There’s only one way this story ends It’s Proain Phaëthon Icarus Pick your sucker You fly too close to the sun, the thery from the sun overwhels to o, into the sea No fire for you And that’s if you’re lucky If you’re unlucky you end up like Prometheus Birds eat your liver forever"

"Usually," Failstaff said "There are exceptions"

"For example, not everybody is such a cos out of wax," Ash the enor arcs and connections with his thick, soft fingers The diagraious traditions, collated and cross-referenced--and color-coded!--to highlight areas where they overlapped and confirh of a power nerd, there is nothing that cannot be flowcharted

"The hubristic scenario, the pride that challenges the gods and leads to the death of the challenger, is only one of a number of possible scenarios And usually the bad outcome can be traced to poor preparation on the part of the principals It does not at all iain access to divine power"

"Hm," Julia said "Theoretically"

"No, not theoretically," Asmodeus said sharply "Practically Historically Technically the process is called ascension, or sometimes assumption, or my favorite word for it is translation They allis brought bodily into heaven, without dying, and accorded some measure of divine status And then there’s apotheosis, which is related, whereby a huod It’s been done, tons of tier "As in Jesus’s mom She was born end He was Lancelot’s son He found the Holy Grail and was taken directly up into heaven So was Enoch--he was an early descendant of Aday said "Guan Yu Fan Kuai There’s the Eight Ius" Pouncy chioes on and on"

"Or look at Ganyend He was a ht him up to Olympus to be a cupbearer Hence the project name"

"We think cupbearer was probably a eupheet the point Not everybody ends up like Icarus But these are just stories There’s ihlander, but that doesn’t ods," Failstaff said "Sheezus, have you even seen the movie?"

"And these aren’t just ordinaryabout They were all special in some way Like you said, Enoch was a descendant of Adam"