Delivering Food in America: The American Investiture of the Gods

Chen Fang, a Chinese-American food delivery worker at the bottom of New York's social ladder, considers his greatest achievement in life to be making five subway deliveries on time despite delays. Then, one day, a serving of "Hellfire Chicken Wings" accidentally awakens his ancestral "knockoff glowing selfie stick," which turns out to be the God-Beating Whip, as well as the North American beta version of the Investiture of the Gods app that installs itself on his phone.

From then on, his world cracks open:

He delivers food to a vampire, but the wings are so spicy that he helps the vampire "weep bitter tears and cleanse their soul."

His navigation sends him to a run-down motel, where he picks up a dying "God of the Highway" whose mount is a beat-up truck that curses like a sailor.

The blind homeless man at the convenience store turns out to be a Greek prophet hiding from debt collectors. He begs Chen Fang through tears, "You smell like someone who's been given a position on the Investiture of the Gods!"

And the world is falling apart, too: Odin is holding sacrifices on Wall Street, Loki is cooking up scandals in Hollywood, and new technological gods are trying to turn all of humanity into Wi-Fi signals. The old gods crave war, the new gods plan to format the world, and every nonhuman being is scrambling to outdo the rest.

Chen Fang looks at the main quest in his app, "Restore the Order of Heaven: North American Division," then glances at his phone...

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.