~Steven Weinberg
His light was Yellow: His life was finite.
Humanity’s light was Red: The judgment was still coming.
For the first time in as long has he could recall, they had
remained this way, unchanged for weeks.
Demons of wrath and pride swelled in him as looked back on
all that was accomplished, and the fact that he was apparenlty being told it was not
enough. Health care was now universally
available. Economic opportunity was guaranteed for all. Corporate money and the
more hateful elements of religion had been removed from politics, and a system
put in place that would prevent those forces from once again poisoning
political discourse. Environmental
regulations were finally starting to truly deal with pollution and global
warming and world hunger was becoming an eminently solvable problem.
Governments with the worst histories of
human rights abuses have been torn down and the settling of global conflicts
set the world on the path of world peace.
“What more does this fucking Angel want?!” Edward yelled out rhetorically as he pounded his fist on
the desk. Looking down at the tablet,
Edward felt a need for advice that his earthly companions would not be able to
offer. He tapped on the messenger icon
and sent his inquiry to the only address that was visible.
[EDWARD] WHAT MORE CAN I DO?
The response came back immediately.
[LUCI_STAR] ???
[EDWARD] JUDGEMENT STILL COMING
[LUCI_STAR] I KNOW.
[LUCI_STAR] I DON’T KNOW.
While he didn’t know what to expect, Edward was incensed by
what he perceived as a casual tone in her response.
[EDWARD] UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE…
[EDWARD] SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES…
[EDWARD] WORLD F-ING PIECE!!!
[EDWARD] WHAT MORE CAN BE DONE?
[LUCI_STAR] I KNOW I KNOW
[LUCI_STAR] ALL GOOD THINGS
[LUCI_STAR] STILL TIME.
But Edward knew that was no more than a hollow platitude at this point. There was really no time left. Looking at how many impossible
accomplishments had been made in the last twenty-three months, he saw nothing
that was going to happen in the next few weeks that would make a difference that
the last two years did not. Looking
back, he could see no alternatives that would have accomplished more, or more
quickly. A passing thought to being
blinded by his pride was soon swallowed by wrath and the idea that he was no longer
fighting against the forces that had doomed humanity to this judgment, but
rather against the very forces that were making that judgment began to form.
[EDWARD] I HATE THIS
Nothing from Luci. No hints. No clues. No useful
advice. Desperation now mixed with his wrath. His head was spinning. He did not have the tools to manipulate or
harm Gabriel. Luci had told him as much.
And while the Tablet DID possess power over the fallen angels, anything that
would alter Luci’s fate in any way was protected by a password - the last word - the very
knowledge of which would kill him if he ever figured it out. He wondered if others would be so
protected. Even so… he did not know who
any of them were and he doubted that Luci would volunteer that information in
light of his present state of mind. As it was, she
had only ever told him about one such being:
Baal.
Who was already dead.
And suddenly the path forward sprang into Edward’s mind with
the clarity of a thousand suns. He fired off one last message before putting what he hoped would be his end game into action.
[EDWARD] LUCI, I AM SO SORRY FOR WHAT IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN.
[END]
------------------------------
“Huh?”
From the comfort of her dark abode, Lucifer Morning Star was
perplexed by Edward’s last message. Had he given up? What WAS he about to do?
But before she could reply, she was overwhelmed by the feeling of a spiritual
presence behind her. She knew it well,
and had no doubts as to who was standing behind her, even before turning to
face him. It was Gabriel.
But she was not prepared for what she saw when she did
turn. He was protected from head to in
gleaming, silver armor. His armor, which no destructive force ever devised by
man could so much as scratch: The Holy
Steel. And even more terrifying than the
piercing gaze of the two glowing eyes that shown from within his helm was the
weapon he held, drawn, in his right hand: The Godsword.
Its elongated, ornate hilt
held a blade was an irregular surface, an edge compromised of
alternating convex and concave curves that would render any earthly blade
impractical in combat, yet the sight of it chilled her to depths of her being.
The last time she had seen it swung, it split the very atoms in the air,
unleashing waves of incredible energy that reduced Sodom and Ghamorrah to ash
and dust. It was the most feared weapon
and respected artifact in all of the cosmos.
And he was raising it, as if to strike her with it.
“FOUL BETRAYER!”
The voice that echoed from within the helm sounded as the
voice of thousands speaking as one. She
jumped aside a fraction of second before the sword came down, splitting he
marble desk in two, a perfect cut, strait and flat, down to the molecular
level. And yet she knew he was holding
back.
“GABRIEL, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! WHAT’S GOTTEN INTO YOU?!” she
screamed at him desperately but this did nothing to slow his advance.
He drew the Godsword upwards again, knocking over one half
of the desk as did so. “YOUR DAYS ARE OVER, SINFUL TEMPTRESS!” The voice of legion echoed out from under his shining helm.
“Well, if you think I’m going down without a fight, you
really have lost your senses!” she screamed back at him.
And with that, Lucifer summoned her own ornate armor of
Black Obsidian, Gold and Flame. And from her hand hung the Abyssal Scourge, a
brutal chain linking strands of darkness and hellfire. No armor ever created by man would prevent
the wearer from being completely incinerated should they be struck by it.
But against the Holy Steel, she make as well have flicked a
birthday candle at him. Her mightiest blow glanced off of Gabriel’s armor, failing
to leave even a trail of dust in its wake.His hand clasped around her neck and slammed her down on top of the half of the desk that remained standing. The Scourge dematerialized as she dropped it, choosing instead to struggle against the impervious and relentless vice that now closed around her neck. Angels did not need to breathe, but it was not his intent to suffocate her. The hand that was crushing in around her neck was not seeking to deprive her of breath, rather it was crushing her very life force. He vision was going dim. Her fingers still clung to Gabriel’s hand, but it felt as hard as stone.
She saw the Godsword held aloft, high above her head, poised to bring an end to what was no more than a curb-stomp battle for the Archangel.
“THIS IS THE END FOR YOU, FALLEN ONE.”
She closed her eyes, dematerialized her armor and resigned
herself to her fate. A single thought
filled what was left of her consciousness: How did Edward survive the password?
And as she braced for the inevitable, she perceived the slightest
sound – like the plucking of a guitar string tuned nearly to it breaking point.
And at once she felt nothing. No
pressure on her neck, no spiritual presence.
And yet, she wasn’t dead.
She sat up. Gabriel’s form was still there, but she felt
none of his spirit remaining. The armor
still stood, but it now looked old and diminished, the light that emanated
from it was extinguished. The helm now
housed only darkness where two glowing eyes once gazed outward.
“Gabriel…?” she asked tentatively.
She reached up to touch the chest plant of the Holy Steel
and found it was cold, inert. And this
slight touch was enough to upset the balance of whatever cohesive forces still
held his form together. The body within
the armor now fell under its weight, collapsing to the floor in a pile of ash
and a cloud of dust.
Her eyes widened in shock.
The Godsword felt to the ground, its blade breaking from the
hilt and splitting into three pieces, it’s once sublime construction now as
brittle as glass.
She reached down and picked up a handful of dust, now all
that remained of her beloved friend and spiritual mentor and once the most
powerful being in this plane of existence.
She held back tears as the fine powder sifted through her fingers.
“No, no, no…”
But almost at once her resolve returned to her and she
glanced back at her own Tablet with eyes now filled with blood and fire.
------------------------
Back in his office Edward’s Tablet sounded a brief alarm. He
looked down to see a traffic-light combination that he hadn’t before:
Humanity’s light was green, but his own was red. He tapped it and opened up his
profile page: 13 seconds to live. Uh-oh.
“YOU!”
Luci’s form materialized, fully armored, in the same space
as the room’s closed doors, causing them to explode into the room. On her back were wings of flame, and the
bookshelves on either side of the former entranceway began to smolder.
Her voice was deep and dark, and crackled with force. “HOW DARE YOU!”
Edward had anticipated this, and bet everything that she
possessed a least some small amount of the pride she once did paired with curiosity
that even slightly resembled that of a human’s. “Did you come here simply to
kill me, or do you want to know why I did it, and HOW?”
Her golden-clad boot, decorated to resemble a cloven hoof,
stopped. Edward looked down.
Seven minutes. ‘Some room to maneuver,’ he thought.
“WHY DID YOU MOVE AGIANST ME! AFTER ALL I’VE…”
“You were never in any danger. And if you were, the password
would have…”
“HOW DID YOU SURVIVE THE PASSWORD?!”
“I didn’t break your password. Like I said: You were never in any danger.”
Edward looked down.
Thirteen minutes. Progress. And when he returned his gaze to
Luci he could see that her armor was gone, replaced by the blood red dress she
typically wore. Fire still burned in her
eyes, but he could tell that he had piqued her intrigue.
“It was a gamble, but if it wasn’t going to work out the way
I planned, then no harm would be done anyway. Either the Tablet would not be
enough to compel Gabriel, or the password would kick in. Or God would
intervene.”
Her eyes narrowed, but the fire in them was almost out.
“What do you mean? The tablet does not have the power to alter the fate of one
such as Gabriel!”
“It didn’t have to. I never even opened his page. I recalled
the story you told me of Baal, and how he was destroyed. So…” Edward
held up the tablet, showing Luci her profile page. Her fate, now greyed out and
locked, read:
Lucifer Morning Star will be killed by the Archangel
Gabriel.
“But…”
“Assuming the Tablet had that power over your fate, there were only two possible
outcomes. The one that ended in your death would then have asked for the
password, which I didn’t have. So I had
nothing to worry about in terms of hurting you.
As such, when it did go
through, I knew that my plan would work: God would intervene.”
Luci stood in stunned silence. “You… killed…
the Archangel Gabriel.”
“No… God…”
“FUCK YOU!” Again her voice crackled with shadow and flame. “Do
you have ANY IDEA what you’ve destroyed?!”
Edward fixed a gaze on her that gave her pause in a way that
she would not have thought possible for a mortal to do. “I did the job I was
given to do. I saved humanity from its destruction.”
“GABRIEL’S LIFE FORCE WAS GREATER THAN THAT OF EVERY HUMAN
THAT HAS EVER LIVED AND EVERY HUMAN THAT EVER WOULD!” she screamed at him.
Edward jumped to his feet, “WHICH UNTIL FIVE MINUTES AGO WAS
A DECIDEDLY FINITE VALUE!” He was pointing at her aggressively as he yelled at
her. “Can you really say that now, Luci?! Can you even know the net value of every potential human life from this
point forward, now that our lifespan as a species is indefinite?”
“Another will be appointed.”
“And why would God bother doing that? If the judgment was
going to be the same, why allow His greatest creation to be destroyed? Would it
not be a simple matter for God to invalidate the fate I had entered?”
“That doesn’t justify you wielding the Tablet like a child
who’d found his father’s gun!”
“GABRIEL WAS SET TO DESTROY HUMMANITY! HE DECLARED WAR ON US!
WHAT GIVES HIM THAT RIGHT?!”
“GOD DOES!”
Edward smiled. “Then we’re back to the original point: Why
did God intervene as he did? If God had
chosen NOT to…? Well then precisely NOTHING would have happened. I would have to enter a password that would have
killed me if I even knew it. And things would have moved forward just as they always would have.”
Luci had no answer for that.
Edward looked down at the tablet, flipping back to his own page. His counter was now fully restored.
“So you’re not going to kill me. That’s good. Do you plan to take away my
little toy?”
At the glib tone of his inquiry, Luci balled her hand into a
fist that would have crushed coal into a diamond, but quickly released it. “No. You will
keep the Tablet. And know this: Your task has been expanded indefinitely, effective
immediately. You might think you’re done, but you’re not. I will not allow Gabriel’s death to ever have been
in vain! You, and your little council, will be responsible for seeing that the
progress you’ve made continues. You will keep humanity on it current path, and
should it stray to the point where another judgment is ever needed, I will personally
make sure that you are not on the planet when it happens. I will not allow you
the release of death than so many others will receive. I will see you recieve proper payment for your arrogance!”
“I understand. And I had no intention of quitting now
anyway. What about the Tears?”
She closed her eyes against this, the bitterest of truths.
“They’re yours now.”
“What?!”
She looked at him emotionlessly. “Have you heard how
possession is nine-tenths of the law? Well, when it comes to heavenly
artifacts, it’s actually ten-tenths. Gabriel passed them to you willingly, and
they remained in your possession when he died. If anyone took them from you
know, we would be obligated to return them to you, their… rightful… owner.”
Edward could feel the palpable bitterness in her voice as
she said this. “Luci… I cannot say that
I regret what I’ve done. Not when every single life on this planet, every
single one of my people, was in
jeopardy. But, for what it’s worth, I am sorry for your loss. I truly never
intended to hurt you.”
Luci could not even look at him. She just held up her hand
as she turned and receded into the darkness.
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