“There’s a universe beyond ours that one of our most ancient gods, Uranus, created after the Olympians overthrew him. Tired of things on Earth, Zeus went after him, and many of us followed. Few are left here now. The world is changing. Our influence—and our power—has waned.” She paused for the delivery of their food. “Let’s eat while you tell me what you know about the disappearances in the world. And of this MODA.”
Aida didn’t feel much like eating. She was too overwhelmed by their situation. The beautiful purple flower dumplings on the table would have normally brought her great delight, but they paled in comparison to the situation at hand. Besides, who could eat in front of a god? Yet Sophie ate and seemed to revel in the flavors on the plate.
Aida pulled out her notebook with its shorthand scrawls and explained the situation the best she could.
“Which places do both of you remember?” Sophie asked.
Aida looked at the list and named a few, and Luciano chimed in on what he could recall.
Sophie nodded her head. “The places you remember were all destroyed dramatically or publicly. An earthquake, a terrorist attack, a fire.” She reached out her hand and Aida relinquished her notebook. “Shorthand. How interesting.” She perused the list. “Yes, that must be it. My guess is the places you don’t remember, such as this here, the turtle fountain in Piazza Mattei, were quietly closed or dismantled without public fanfare. But the question is why?” She handed the notebook back to Aida.“I think these events are connected to a deeper shift I’m sensing in the world. It began in the ’80s.”
“What shift?” Luciano asked.
Sophie sipped her wine. “Some things are subtle. For example, muted—and often boring—color palettes for furniture, cars, beauty, fashion. There’s a rise in music with gritty, rude lyrics or dark moody undertones.”
“And auto-tune,” Aida joked.
To her surprise, Sophie agreed. “That’s an excellent example. People no longer rely on talent or their own voices. Instead, they distort and mask it. But those are small things. Dark times are upon the world. It’s a laundry list of awfulness that the media loves to cover, because humans have always fed themselves on a diet of fear. And there’s a lot to fear in recent years: online trolls, the dark web, crushing economic debt, disinformation, the rise of incompetent and corrupt world leaders, and climate change to name a few. Those things give rise to the widening gap between the rich and the poor, gun massacres, the threat of nuclear war, Christian nationalism, blatant racism, authoritarianism, fascism, Nazism, antisemitism, and on, and on, and on. These are not random events.
“There has always been war, oppression, suffering. The world has never been without darkness. But before, there was balance. No matter how brutal the times, there was still beauty. People still found wonder in art, in nature, in each other. They fell in love, they celebrated, they dreamed. Joy and sorrow coexisted, each keeping the other in check. Now, something has changed. The happiness that once rose to meet the hardship is thinning. People feel it slipping through their fingers, but they don’t know why. And in its absence, the weight of everything else grows heavier.” She exhaled, her voice lower now. “The world is tilting further out of alignment, and I’m finding it harder and harder to restore equilibrium.”
“Madonna,” Luciano cursed. “Aida, maybe it has something to do with us collecting happiness?”
Sophie leaned in. Her voice was sharp, and her once placid brow lined with concern. “What do you mean? Collecting happiness?”
“We work for a company called MODA. And up until recently, we thought we were singular employees fulfilling the wishes of an eccentric billionaire. We shouldn’t even be here together,” Aida began. She looked at Luciano, and he gave her a nod to continue. “But it’s more complicated than that.”
Sophie’s gaze darted between them. “What do you actuallycollect?”
Luciano stepped in. “It’s not physical happiness. It’s more... moments. Experiences. MODA sends us to different places, and we observe—people, events, interactions. The idea is to catalog what happiness looks like and feels like in all its forms. At least, that’s what we’ve been told.”
Aida nodded, adding, “The goal was never fully clear to us though. We gather details about what makes people feel joy—whether it’s a child laughing at a puppet show, or a couple seeing a famous place for the first time. We report back on the nuances of these moments—what we observe and how happiness manifests in these different locations. But recently, we’ve started piecing together that we’re not the only ones doing this.”
Sophie raised one eyebrow. “There are others?”
“We think there may be more than two hundred Happiness Collectors, each assigned to a different country or region.”
“We just observe and report back,” Luciano added. “But as we’ve discovered the existence of other Collectors, it’s raised more questions. What’s MODA doing with all this data? What’s the endgame?”
Sophie stared at her plate for a moment, then took another long sip of her wine. Finally, she spoke. “I believe that this MODA likely knows what happened to Effie.”
“Effie?” Luciano asked.
“My sister Euphrosyne. She’s gone missing.”
Luciano stared at Sophie, not comprehending.
“Happiness,” Aida breathed. “Euphrosyne is the goddess of happiness.”
Luciano’s eyes widened. “I don’t understand. How can a goddess go missing?”
“That’s precisely what I want to know,” Sophie said. “She’s been gone for decades, but we’ve only just realized it.”
“What?” Aida and Luciano said in unison, disbelief etched on their faces.
Sophie sighed. “I know it sounds strange to you, but time doesn’t work the same way for us. We’re immortal—what seems like a lifetime to you is merely a moment for us. We often go years without seeing each other. Plus, it takes a long time for the effects of something like this to accumulate. We didn’t notice her absence at first.”
Aida stared at her, speechless.
