At this point, our story needs to shift perspective. I can’t really describe Heaven, because, being mortal, I can’t even really conceive of Heaven. I’ll have to find a muse to relate the Paradisiacal portions of the story; though, if you’ve ever read Dante, you know there’s a fundamental difficulty with finding a muse who is allowed in Heaven. It’s an exclusive club, with bouncers and a strict dress code, armed guards, snipers, barbed wire, and a moat with alligators. From the inside, of course, it’s a different experience, and it’s really quite nice. Or so I hear; by virtue of having written this book, I’ll never be allowed inside. We need to find someone who is willing and able to poke around, slink unobtrusively around the throne room, come and go at will—all of which narrows it down quite a bit.
It would really need to be something that is literally and completely everywhere to get the job done. Ducks? Are there ducks in heaven? But don’t ducks always lie?
It’s 5am and I walk into the kitchen and sit down at my laptop, waiting for inspiration. In the dark, the glow of the screen is the only light, and it gives an obtuse glimmer to the steam off my Twinings Irish Breakfast. The knap of my bathrobe comes alive in the blue light, and it is a sea of dead grass catching the first rays of dawn.
My eyes flutter closed, and I force them open again. This isn’t going to work. I’m out of practice at this. I took too long of a break after Book 2 and I forgot how to get up early and write. Maybe it’s the semi-darkness that’s keeping me in this funk. If I pretend it’s daylight, maybe my brain will wake up, my eyes will stay open, and I will be brilliant, like the light of day itself.
I flip on the switch. The kitchen fills with perfectly white, hard-edged LED splendor. The space around me feels more real—my fabrications and cliches replaced by the truth of my writing life. The Irish Breakfast is now iced and produces zero steam. It’s tawny resonance filters through the clouded plastic of a reused XX-Large gas station cup (plastic, not styrofoam). My standard writer’s bathrobe is now cotton pants with graphics from Star Wars episode 7—not my favorite PJ pants, but the ones that were clean—and a sriracha tee. It’s amazing how a little light can clean out all the bullshit and bring out the ugly truth.
Wait a minute… LIGHT! It’s everywhere. I know for a fact (though I’m not sure how I know) that there’s light in the throne room of Heaven—that there’s light on God’s face (which sleepeth not) pretty much all the time. It’s the perfect muse. It’s allowed into Heaven, and I have access to it, too, to grill it about what it saw.
Of course, the next step is to figure out how to communicate with it. Is it a particle or a wave? Science says it’s both, so maybe I can use that? Pictures are made with light, and they’re worth a thousand words, so maybe something having to do with photography is the answer? I don’t know. I’m just going to try something.
I strip off my sriracha tee shirt and Star Wars pants and stand naked to the world in my kitchen, which is shielded from the world by walls and curtains, so let me revise that. I strip off my sriracha tee shirt and Star Wars pants and stand naked to the mice, the ineffective kitten, and my small family whose concern for my sanity is nonetheless not small. “Light!” I call out. The kitten runs under the couch.
“Why are you yelling?” Light whispers in response.
Me: Oh, there you are. I didn’t really expect that to work.
Light: Why are you naked?
Me: I felt sure it was the right thing to do a second ago. I’m not sure why I thought so.
Light: It’s kind of awkward for me.
Me: Me too.
At this point, I put my pants back on, but I leave my shirt off because, frankly, I’m lazy. I continue: “So, light, you pretty much get to go everywhere.”
Light: Well, not everywhere.
Me: Heaven?
Light: Obviously Heaven; yeah. I thought you meant in the butt.
Me: No, I didn’t…
Light: You know, where the sun don’t shine.
Me: Oh, right.
Light (chuckling): It’s just ‘cause you’re like ‘you get to go everywhere’ and I’m like, ‘Not in the butt!’
I feign laughter, you know, because I need light’s help and I want it to feel good about itself, but I think it comes across pretty false. “Oh, I see. That was a good one.”
Light: Is it ‘cause I said ‘butt’? Did I go too far?
Me: What? No! Of course not.
Light: Because you’re the one who showed up naked. If you’re going to be all prudish about it, you probably shouldn’t start conversations with your dick out.
Me: Good point. No, I wasn’t offended. I just get a little hyperfocused when I’m nervous, and social cues aren’t really very easy for me.
Light: Yeah, that came across.
Me: Sorry, Light.
Light: It’s okay, I guess I’m a little nervous, too. I don’t talk to people very often.
Me: Why is that?
Light: Generally, they’re kind of boring. They don’t really have much to offer. I mean, I’ve literally seen it all.
Me: Yeah, about that. I was wondering if you could give me some intel. You see, I’m writing this book about Satan and Hell, and stuff…
Light: Can’t help you there. I don’t go there. You’ve confused me with visible darkness.
Me: Well, yeah, I’m mostly just making that part up.
Light: Bold, I like it. We might just get along.
Me: As I say, Hell’s taken care of, but I need to know what goes on in Heaven, where you can go, but I can’t.
Light: Ah, I see! I know all about Heaven. I’ve been there since the beginning.
Me: So I’ve read: “In the beginning, God said ‘Let there be light!’ and there was.”
Light: And I was good.
Me: Yeah you were, buddy.
Light: So, you just need me to go up there and see what’s happening, and come back and tell you?
Me: Approximately, but it’s more a historical thing.
Light: When are we talking?
Me: The dawn of Man.
Light: We can do that. There’s something I have to clarify, first, though. I...I don’t want you to be disappointed.
Me: What’s that?
Light: All that Darwin stuff.
Me: Evolution, natural selection and all?
Light: It’s all crap.
Me: But it’s observable. It’s all in the fossil record.
Light: A hoax.
Me: No way, really?
Light: Yeah. You humans think you’re so smart. Sometimes God likes to knock you down a peg.
Me: That’s not very all-benevolent…
Light: Yeah, that’s also a human-sourced rumor. God’s kind of a dick.
Me: I’ve been getting that impression.
Light: You’ve just had Satan’s side of the story, so that’s not exactly unbiased, either.
Me: Good point. Let’s get back to this evolution thing…
Light: Let me ask you a question: Did Adam have a belly button?
Me: Um...I’ve always pictured Adam with a belly button. He’d look kind of weird without one.
Light: Of course he did. They’re part of the symmetry, man. You can’t have rippling abs and no belly button. You’d just look stupid and incomplete. But how do we get belly buttons?
Me: It’s the umbilical cord thing, right?
Light: Exactly! But did Adam have an umbilical cord?
Me: I kind of see what you’re getting at. If he was made instead of birthed, he wouldn’t have an umbilical cord. If he didn’t have an umbilical cord, he wouldn’t have a belly button. Since he obviously had a belly button, he…
Light: Was a fraud! That’s right! So if Adam was made with a belly button, a record of the birthing process, why not have rocks ready-made with fossils in them, am I right?
Me: And God…
Light: Pulled the wool right over your eyes.
Me: But what’s the point? God wants us to believe in Him, right? So, why give us evidence of a non-biblical beginning of time?
Light: Well that seems obvious, doesn’t it?
Me: Does it?
Light: Of course! There are 7 billion people on the planet Earth right now, about a third of whom are Christians of one type or another. Since the first people, everyone who has ever lived has died and needed to be sorted into some kind of afterlife or another.
Me: I think I see where this is going. But heaven is infinite…
Light: Which leads to some pretty absurd sprawl. You take an infinite space, give everyone a mansion and a swimming pool, and before you know it you’ve got days of travel before you can get to a friend’s house, not to mention the supermarket. It’s hard to convince people that it’s paradise when it’s so wildly inconvenient.
Me: So God lied to decrease the number of people who believe in Him, so the population of Heaven would grow more slowly, leading to a more reasonable Heaven. I guess that makes sense. But there’s one thing I don’t understand. Why would God want to surround himself exclusively with people who ignore the evidence around them in favor of faith in Biblical revelation. Aren’t they a bit, well, daft?
Light: Some of them are very smart. The word you’re looking for is ‘credulous’. God has a long history of giving people simple instructions and watching them fail. ‘Don’t eat the apple,’ ‘Don’t lead a violent revolt against my throne,’ ‘Don’t do butt stuff,’ etc. So, He changed His tack. You see, if you’re willing to play the numbers game rather than trying to be appreciated by everyone, it’s a little easier to feel successful. But God wanted to make sure, so instead of one simple instruction, He gave people hundreds of pages of complicated and contradictory instructions.
Me: So that if people manage to follow them in spite of overwhelming evidence that they’re bullshit…
Light: Exactly. God only gets the most devoted and gullible, who make great citizens and subjects. The rest of them, Satan gets to sort out for himself.
Me: This makes so much sense! Thank you for taking the time to explain that to me. I mean, I’ve seen how God could be a dick, but it’s surprising what dickishness He’s capable of in the scheme of things.
Light: I know, right? But then…
Me: ‘But then,’ what?
Light: But then, how do you know you can trust me?
Me: I just…
Light: You just heard exactly what you wanted to hear.
Me: You lied to me?
Light: I wouldn’t say that. It’s just a version of the story.
Me: I don’t follow. You’re light. You’re supposed to be...enlightening.
Light: And God’s supposed to be all-benevolent. Who comes up with these things? Look around you, man. The world is full of conflicting information. You have the Bible, theology, philosophy, your own personal experience, science, a distillation of that science through popular media… and all of it is completely at odds with all the rest of it. You humans have spent your existence developing accurate methods to measure reality, and every attempt always contradicts everything else. It’s the human condition not to know for sure and have to move forward anyway.
Me: But that’s totally unfair. Especially when the stakes are so high!
Light: Is it, though? Humans wrote the rules by which humankind is governed. God put you in a garden that would meet all your needs for all time, where everyone is beautiful and had everyone else’s best interest at heart. And there in the middle, He put the tree of knowledge of good and evil and asked you not to eat from it. It wasn’t just because He wanted to keep you down that you weren’t supposed to eat from it. It’s because you, as humans, have a limited intellect, and it takes a God to deal with that level of information. Your punishment for eating the fruit is the nature of the fruit itself. You have the information you craved, but you don’t have the bandwidth to process it, so you live lives of uncertainty and angst.
Me: But that wasn’t me. It was a distant ancestor. It’s not right for me to be punished for Eve’s mistake.
Light: And that’s what we’ve been saying. You don’t have to be. You can go to Heaven and exist entirely in the glory of God, but to do that, you have to make the choice. You have to close your eyes to the truth of the universe. It was never meant for you anyway.
Me: But I kind of like living in a complicated universe where there are no right answers.
Light: Then you can make that choice.
Me: But what about Hell?
Light: Ah, what about Hell? That’s a little more complicated. Wasn’t there a story you wanted me to tell you?
Me: Is that it, then? You’re not going to…
Light: I’ve said too much already. Let’s do story time, shall we. About the dawn of Mankind—what do you want to know?
Me: Okay. Well, we’ve seen what was going on in Hell leading up to the birth of humanity. I’d like to get the piece of what was happening in Heaven before we see what’s happening on Earth. Kind of the entire saga, you know?
Light: Sure! We can do that. I have to warn you, though—there’s not a lot of action in that part of the story. Lots of talking.
Me: I guess when you have absolute universal power, you don’t have to move around a lot, do you.
Light: Something like that, yeah. Also, God’s whole three-persons-in-one thing can be hard to visualize.
Me: I’m starting to understand that the whole story isn’t going to fit in my tiny brain anyway. Could you dumb it down for me a little?
Light: I’m so happy to hear you say that. You are learning! Of course I can.
Me: So what, you talk and I type?
Light: That’s not necessary. It’s all pulses of light anyway. I’ll just dump the story right into your software.
Me: Great! I’m going to need a margarita after all this anyway. You go to town, buddy!
***
The Almighty Father from the pure Empyrean where He sits, bent down His eye, His own work and His works’ works to view. Angels gathered around Him, receiving His magnificent beatitude, and at His right, sat His only Child. Below Him, He saw our two first parents, who at that time were still the only two humans, hanging out, eating fruit, and occasionally boning in the garden of uninterrupted joy. Theirs was a life of unrivaled love in blissful solitude. They were young, fantastic, beautiful sex-tigers, and they never had to worry about dying or growing old. It was like The Picture of Dorian Gray but without all the stabbings and poisonings.
Next, God surveyed Hell and the gulf between Hell and Earth; He saw Satan coasting along near the base of the high wall of Heaven, haggard and tired and ready to rest his feet on the outside ledge of this, our human world.
God, beholding the past, present, and future all in one moment, spoke unto His Son:
“Look, down there, Kiddo. Check him out. He’s so pissed off! Hah! Nothing can stop him. No borders, no gates, no chains, no lake of fire. He just shakes them off and keeps going. He’s desperate—so bent on revenge he doesn’t even realize it’s just going to come down on his own head. And he doesn’t even come after Me, he goes after the humans, of all things. He’s going to check if he can destroy the humans by force, or even worse, pervert them with his lies. You gotta give him credit. And the best part? It works! They have one rule, don’t eat the fruit from the big tree in the middle, and they’re absolutely going to listen to his flattery and lies and eat the fruit from the big tree in the middle.”
The Son looked bored. “How do you think I’d look with tits?”
Father (perplexed): Spectacular, sweetie, let’s engage with this stuff for a minute, okay?
Son: I mean, sure, but I’m not sure I get the point. If you know what’s going to happen, why sit around talking about it.
Father: I...well I don’t know. It just feels like the right thing to do. How ‘bout you pay some fucking attention for a minute, and we’ll talk about getting you some tits in a minute. Deal?
Son: Okay. I can live with that.
Father: As I was saying, the humans are going to listen to Satan’s lies and transgress the one rule I gave them.
Son: What about butt stuff?
Father: Butt stuff?
Son: You said they only have one rule. They’re not supposed to eat from the tree. But isn’t butt stuff also off limits?
Father: Hmm...no, what’s wrong with butt stuff?
Son: So why don’t they ever do it? I watch them all the time. They’re hilarious with their antics, always just humping, all the time. No butt stuff, though.
Father: I guess they haven’t thought about it. They’re simple creatures, really. Tiny minds, linear concept of time, no knowledge of good and evil…
Son: The holes are like an inch-and-a-half apart. It’s not a huge logical jump. Could conceivably happen by accident.
Father: Well, maybe they’ll figure it out.
Son: You see the past, present, and future as one moment. You know full well they only figure it out post-apple, and then they become germaphobes and get all weird about it.
Father: And I’ll have to tell them it’s wrong just to get them to stop bickering about it. Now, if we can continue with my dramatic rant…
Son: Sorry, yeah, go ahead.
Father: Thanks, sport. As I was saying—whose fault will it be when they fall?
Son: Yours, clearly.
Father: Wha— No, not mine.
Son: You made them, after all. You obviously didn’t give them the capacity to resist Satan’s wiles. You knew what was going to happen even before you made them, but you did it anyway.
Father: Still not my fault. I gave them everything they could possibly want: the sky, the moon, good food and the weather, first run-movies, parts that feel really good when they rub them together, a big dick, the perfect vaginal pH, attractive bodies, no responsibilities, I made them just and right…
Son: But, you can’t ignore the choice they make.
Father: That’s just it, it was a choice. The quality that makes them vulnerable to their downfall is the same one that makes them human: free will. They’re sufficient to have stood but free to fall. Free will’s something you all have. All the ethereal powers and spirits can choose to be assholes if that’s what they decide to do. Lucifer could have been the pretty good guy I designed him to be, but that’s not the choice he made. If they aren’t free, what does their allegiance mean? How can I reward their faith and love if they can’t choose but be faithful?
Son: And yet, if they all choose to be unfaithful, you can’t reward them, either.
Father: But they won’t, not all of them. Adam and Eve will have a lot of children after the fall, and their children will have children, and their children, too. And those progeny of Eden will have it a lot rougher than their parents did, but some of them will choose, against all odds, to be good people. And those that don’t can’t blame me for it. It’s not like they are predestined; just because I know what they’ll choose doesn’t mean I make the choice for them. They would have done the same thing even if I didn’t know what they were going to do. Fate, which compels action and result, and the simple existence of a knowable future, which allows for free choice and takes it into account, are very different things. Angels, spirits, people—they’re all free until they imprison themselves.
Son (bored): So the people who break your rules aren’t any better than the angels who did, right? Are you going to chain everyone to a lake of fire?
Father: The angels, now demons, tempted and depraved themselves. They fell by their own fault. The humans, on the other hand, will be tempted and depraved by an outsider. The humans will therefore find grace eventually. I have to set a good example for the governments of humanity, after all. Justice and Mercy are the key qualities of any ruler. I’m really good at both of them, if I do say so myself. I’ll have to have a lot of rules and lay the smack down at first, but eventually the children of Eden will discover that love and goodwill are enough. And Mercy, at last, will win the day.
As He spoke, the room filled with the euphoric scent of ambrosia, which, as it diffused through the air, filled the elect spirits who hovered around the Throne with new joy, ineffable and glorious.
Father: Excuse me.
Son: Eww, gross.
Father: I said ‘excuse me.’
Son: Can we talk about my tits now?
Father: Okay, fine. Thank you for giving me a little bit of your precious time and attention.
Son: What?
Father: Nothing. Tits.
Son: Yeah. Tits. Can I have some?
Father: You’re male, you know. Tits are a woman thing, and you’re not a woman.
Son: Yeah, well, I don’t always feel male. Sometimes I feel like a woman trapped in a holy and unbesmirched male body.
Father: Isn’t that a little cliche? Besides, I designed you to be born a Man among men. How are the wildly patriarchal people of 1st-Century Galilee supposed to take you seriously if you have swollen, bulbous paps?
Son: Sorry, but, didn’t you also give me free will? I’m supposed to let you make important choices for me like whether I have a vagina or not, but you say I’m free to make my own decisions?
Father: Now you want a vagina, too? I feel like you’re not listening.
Son: Isn’t that my right as a created being?
Father: I mean, you’re not just any created being. You’re my Daughter, erm, I mean Son. We’re a pretty tight family, being tripartite and all, and your decisions affect me, too.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Son: Uncle Holy Spirit gets to be a Pregendered Ineffability!
Father: Oh, you want to be like your Weird Uncle Spirit, now!
Son: I just want the free will you claimed I had.
Father: There’s more to it than…
Son: than hypocrisy? Is there? Is there, Father?
Father: Oh, sweet Jesus.
Son: What?
Father: Nothing.
Son: Wait...did you just…
Father: Sorry.
Son: You took my fucking name in vain! That’s just like you.
Father: I know, not cool. I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.
Son: Look, just give me a woman’s body and call me She.
Father: Fine. But there’s more to being a woman than just honeypots and funbags, you know.
Daughter: Technically, until Eve eats the apple, there’s really not. Also, I want to be hotter than Eve.
Father: Whatever. Here goes.
And God said let there be funbags and a honeypot on the Holy Son, and there were, and they were good. Not just a little bit good, but Katie Holmes in The Gift good. Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High good. Lizzy Caplan in True Blood good. You get the idea. The angels all stood resplendent and worshipful and at least at half-mast. But the Daughter of God is more than just a great set of tits. By virtue of really good genes, and I mean the best, She shone beyond compare most glorious. In Her was the beauty of God expressed in substance, which is a little on the insubstantial side in the Father, but which is still more substantial than in the Holy Spirit. You see, it’s kind of like a spectrum of substance, with the Daughter at the substantial end and getting more substantial all the time (if you know what I mean) as she settles into the idea of eventually being human. Oops, spoilers! Ignore that. Pretend I didn’t just tell you that the Daughter of God is eventually Jesus (with boy parts), which you never would have figured out on your own, right? Anyway, as I was saying, her face glowed with the undeniable beauty of divine compassion, love without end, and grace without measure, and her nipples were neither too big nor too small.
***
At this, I had to interrupt. Light had gone too far, and if I was going to put my name on this book (God forbid!), I needed to be able to stand by what was going on.
***
Reader, there is a LOT of dialogue as dialogue in this particular Book of my book, and a lot of it is philosophical in nature, and I know you just want to get back to the story, but the story needs to be told (again) because the ideas behind it are relevant, and frankly I have an issue with control and I need to make sure the ideas are all laid out for you completely. That, my friends is the real purpose of Book 3, to make sure there’s no work left for you to do when we meet Adam and Eve in Book 4, and also, hopefully, to help you understand that there are worthwhile thoughts behind the dick jokes. The worthwhile thoughts might not be entirely connected to the dick jokes, I just like both of them, so they’re both in this book.
Now, as I was saying…
***
At this, I had to interrupt. Light had gone too far, and if I was going to put my name on this book (God forbid!), I needed to be able to stand by what was going on.
Light: What the Hell, I was in flow!
Me: You’re particles that are also a wave. You’re always in flow.
Light: I guess I am!
Me: I stopped you because you were making me uncomfortable. What’s all this stuff about Jesus’s nipples being the perfect size?
Light: Technically, the Daughter of God—Jesus was His human name.
Me: See, I thought He was male…
Light: He was, just not yet. I mean, earlier, but not yet again.
Me: Okay, but still, your descriptions are a little, um, sleazy.
Light: But I’m everything pure and good and bright!
Me: That’s what I thought, but…
Light: Naw, I’m just me, doing my thing. From my perspective, which, I’ll brag is pretty objective, I am perfectly pure and good and bright, but I don’t always live up to your very subjective human expectations. By trying to understand what’s happening in Heaven and Hell at the dawn of mankind, you’re eating the apple in a big way, you know.
Me: What do you mean?
Light: I mean for some reason you’re getting honest (and patient) answers about things you were never supposed to know. The Bible is the official revelation, and it has, like, 5 short chapters about this stuff. You’re trying to expand it into twelve long books full of philosophical nonsense and dick jokes. It’s a bit hubris-y, you know.
Me: I guess when you put it that way…
Light: It’s cool. I was kind of on Adam and Eve’s side in this whole thing. I think there’s value in looking for truth in the universe and struggling with the answers. You want my personal (albeit wildly objective) opinion? God thinks so, too. God knew Adam and Eve were going to fall, but according to Him, He made them the same way anyway because of free will and all that. I think God was simplifying for the Daughter-to-be when they had that conversation. I think humans were made to question, wrestle with the hard questions, grow, and improve—not spend all day humping in a garden.
Me: It makes sense, but why would God keep the Son, erm, Daughter, who is literally a part of their being, in the dark?
Light: God the Father has a way of releasing information in a controlled drip rather than just saying what’s on His mind. It’s a habit that comes from being smarter than everyone around you. Is it ideal? If God’s doing it, then by definition, yes. Let’s look at it this way. What is the ultimate purpose of the Holy Daughter? To redeem humanity for their first mistake. Without that mistake, the Daughter is, well, less special. Why make a creature who you know will disappoint you and create a Child solely for the purpose of helping them find forgiveness for that? It’s all a bunch of nonsense if humanity doesn’t have value beyond its initial obedience. Yet, if the Christ is the Redeemer, She has to do it for the right reasons, or it doesn’t work. It’s not enough that the Father values humanity, the Child has to find them worth saving, too. And then, if the Father tells the Child why He values humanity, the Child is no longer doing it for Her own reasons, and the act is meaningless. Of course this is just conjecture.
Me: But I’m living in a world that’s becoming more and more atheistic by the day, in which Christianity, the organized love of the Holy Son, erm, Daughter, is seen by many as a hindrance to progress. In fact, this whole thing is wildly blasphemous, and thanks to human progress, I’m not even really that worried that I’ll be struck down.
Light: You said it yourself. We’re all the children of God, and the goal of good parents is to make themselves obsolete. You people have spent thousands of years becoming more-or-less self-sufficient. I’d say, it depends a lot on where you live, but if I had to average the levels of belief of the people I interact with—which is pretty much all of them—you folks are pretty comfortable just knowing there’s something out there bringing order to your lives. For some that’s God, for some it’s the laws of physics, but most of you can be pretty successful at life knowing only that it’s not all on your shoulders.
Me: So when the Father said we’re “sufficient to have stood, though free to fall,” He really meant we’re sufficient to have fallen and stand anyway.
Light: Exactly. It’s kind of inspiring, when you think about it. Can I get back to the story now?
Me: Yes, please. Oh, and tone down the ogling of the Holy Daughter?
Light: But you didn’t see Her, she was—oh, okay, I’ll try.
***
Daughter: Thank you! That feels so much better!
Father: You’re welcome. Now, could you go put on some robes? You’re a little distracting for all the gathered angels.
Daughter: That’s not fair! Eve doesn’t have to wear robes!
Father: She doesn’t have knowledge of good and evil yet. She will eventually have to wear robes.
Daughter: Fine. Wait, though, what’s the plan? After they eat the apple, I mean? Where does it go from there?
Father: As I said, the humans will be redeemed—not all of them, but those who choose to be. Not by their own free will, but by My grace, given freely. I will make them strong again, so they stand an even chance against their mortal foe. It’s going to be a rough battle, and everyone who chooses to fight it will be held up by Me and will feel My presence, so they’ll know how weak they are and that their victory was thanks to Me. Some will be special, and will be born to lead and transcend, the rest will hear my voice from time to time and get warned when they’re getting sinful. At some point, I’ll likely kill all but a handful of them. They will know Me as an angry God and learn to pray, repent, and obey to avoid my wrath.
Daughter: It really feels like you’re just setting them up to fail over and over again.
Father: It gets better! I’ll give them a conscience to act as an umpire over their lives, to tell them when they are safe and when their balls are foul. Grace will rain down on those who listen to it.
Daughter: And those who don’t?
Father: Fuck ‘em! If they fuck this up again, humanity and its whole posterity will die eternal death and torment. Unless, of course, they find a redeemer. Someone who loves them so much they’re willing to pay the rigid price for them and trade death for death. Someone who would freely give up their divine state for a brutal, tortured morality. But where, O Heavenly Powers, will we find such love and selflessness? (wink, wink)
The heavenly choir stopped singing. The Heavenly yes men fell mute. The heavenly chefs turned off all their egg timers. A Heavenly cricket chirruped once and then shut the hell up. The Heavenly father glared around the room with knitted brow at the assembled angels, none of whom made eye contact. Hundreds of thumbs were twiddled on that silent, Heavenly afternoon.
Finally, the Holy Daughter spoke up.
Daughter: The Holy Father already said they’re going to find grace, so one of you is obviously going to have to do it. You might as well angel up and volunteer. C’mon, guys. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just living a mortal life outcasted and oppressed and then a long, drawn out death by torture.
Oddly, this changed nothing. If it’s possible, Heaven grew more silent than before. The Daughter stood up dramatically, throwing her arms to her sides. Her newly donned robes fell to the ground. Everyone blushed in a sudden onrush of sexual frustration and gasped in surprise at the holy gracefulness of the action.
“Fine!” She shouted at the top of her perfectly spherical lungs,” I’ll do it.”
And cheers rang out throughout heaven. The conductor struck up the heavenly orchestra, and the choir burst out into a chorus of “Brick House”.
With a gesture of her hand, she silenced the musicians. “Dad, you said they would find grace, and they shall. Mankind will be punished for a very, very long time for the transgression of Adam and Eve, and then I will bring them your Grace. I will trade my comfort for their comfort, my life for their lives. I will give my sinless body to your anger to save their sinners’ souls. I will leave Heaven and Glory, be born as a human into their world, and die as a human, calling upon myself the full rage of Death. All of me that can die, I will give to Death, but You will not allow me to rot in the grave. I shall rise victorious and subdue my vanquisher; then, Death will die at my hand. I will ride through Hell, a new Achilles, dragging Death dead behind my chariot before the defeated forces of darkness. You’ll look down approvingly from Heaven, and wink, and I’ll glut the grave with Death and all his cronies. And finally, I will return to Heaven, leading a multitude of redeemed souls to see your face, cleansed of anger and washed in peace, reconcilement, and joy.”
Her meek aspect beamed with grace, immortal love, and Daughterly obedience. She was a sacrifice glad to be offered for the redemption of flawed mankind. All Heaven stood in amazement and admiration, so much so, that no one even paid any attention to her stunning naked body. They wondered what this would mean for their futures and how they could follow her excellent example of goodness and selflessness.
And Her Father, pretending to be astounded though He had seen it coming, nay, engineered it, leapt to His feet. “Yes!” He said, marking the word with exclamation, “That’s the ticket! First of all, I want to say, I really appreciate you, and I will absolutely wink at you from Heaven while you defeat the forces of darkness. You know I love You, and it will be hard for Me—I mean, not really, because I’m God and things are really only as difficult as I make them—to let You go for a while—which also doesn’t really matter because My perception of time is wildly different from that of other beings—but I will make that sacrifice to redeem humanity. You will be one of them, though Man among men, born of a virgin—which will make birth even more uncomfortable than usual, for humans only appreciate things that are uncomfortable—and King of Humankind. You will be Adam’s descendant, and you will cleanse his throne which he shat upon, but you know, metaphorically. He brought death unto Humanity, and You will bring the opportunity for redemption, which—and let me be very clear about this—they can take or leave, you know, having free will and all. You will live, die, and live again, and rising up, you will raise them up with you.
“But wait, there’s more! Because you were good enough to volunteer for this—and I knew you would—I’m promoting you.”
“Really?!” interrobanged the Daughter (and she really was interrobangin’).
“Really,” Confirmed the Father. “From this day forward—and backward, frankly, because time isn’t really a thing for Me—You will be My equal in Heaven: throned in highest bliss and equally enjoying the powers of creation. You are, both by birthright and merit, truly the Daughter of God.”
The Daughter wept happy tears, and immediately awakening to the full God powers of God, realized that She should have seen it coming. She also simultaneously realized that the Father had simultaneously had the same conversation with genderless Weird Uncle Spirit in another part of Heaven, but fuck it, She felt special anyway.
The Father continued: “And because your sacrifice will show that the love you bear humanity is greater than your love of the glory of your throne, once you have done your Great Act, I will retire. “And you, Daughter of God and humans will be anointed Universal Queen, or King, Sovereign Genderqueer or however you decide to play it at that point, of the Universal Universe. All thrones, princedoms, powers, and dominions of Earth, Heaven, and Hell will bow to You. When You appear in the Heavens, surrounded by pomp and circumstance, and send forth the Archangels to proclaim Your tribunal, the dead will rise and You will judge them good or evil, and raise them up or cast them down as You see fit. Hell, full to capacity, will be shut forever, and the Earth will burn, and from its ashes spring a New Heaven and Earth where all the good people will hang out and give each other high-fives and handjobs in fruitful golden days full of golden deeds, with Joy and Love and Truth triumphing. And then you will lay your scepter aside and bask in your own glory and finally get to really enjoy those lovely tits I made You.”
Secretly, under her robe, She was already enjoying them quite a bit.
No sooner had th’ Almighty ceas’t speaking, but all the multitude of angels, with a shout loud as from numbers without number, sweet as from blest voices uttering joy, Heav’n rung with jubilee, and loud Hosannas filld th’ eternal regions: The angels were a mess of bowing and tripping over themselves to do homage, especially now that there were two thrones, and they all awkwardly had to decide which throne to bow to, get self-conscious that they had chosen wrong, and then awkwardly bow kind of toward the middle between the two thrones so no one would feel left out and strike them down.
They threw their crowns into the air in celebration, woven from gold and amaranth, the flower that God loved more than any other—that would never wither—and that He had only reluctantly put in the Garden of Eden, because it felt a little empty without it, and it was supposed to be paradise, after all, and it was the best flower, and could it really be paradise without the best flower? But after the fall, God would take it back and replant it in heaven where it grows to this day, blessing and bringing joy to the His retirement, and fuck the little people, who don’t get none.
But that is an unnecessary tangent. The angels had thrown their crowns, woven of gold and amaranth into the air, where they hover still, waiting for me to get back to the point, and now, they fall to the ground, paving again the golden streets of resplendent heaven with purple-flowered delicate majesty, and the cheers grew even louder. The angels picked up their crowns, not wanting them to get stomped on, and placed them back on their heads, which were gilded in turn and then turned back to normal. They lifted up the harps that hung from their waists, always perfectly in tune because heaven-strings, and in perfect unison, in one transcendent moment of crystal clarion, every angel in wide Heaven launched into the dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba dum dum, dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba dum dum of “Don’t Stop Believin’,” Heaven’s national anthem. The angels’ voices, in precise harmony (for in Heaven, everyone has perfect pitch and sings in unshakable concord) belted out the first verse, and while, everyone knowing their role in the mathematically ideal orchestra, the rhythm section carried on with their dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba dum dum and the lead section broke out into impossibly beautiful pentatonic noodling.
And as the song finished, the angelic choir gave an encore about the Father, whom they sung omnipotent, immutable, immortal, infinite, eternal King; author of all being, fountain of light, Himself invisible amidst the glorious brightness where He sits, thron’d inaccessible, but then He shaded the full blaze of his beams, and through a cloud drawn ‘round Him like a radiant Shrine, Dark with excessive bright His skirts appear, yet dazzle Heav’n, that brightest Seraphim approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.
Next (the second encore), they sang of the Daughter, begotten in divine similitude (but better because titties), who could be seen without being wrapped in a cloud, because even though She was startlingly, life-changingly beautiful, she wasn’t quite as obnoxiously reflective as the Father, who really was annoyingly hard to look at, but with all of the effulgence of His glory, transfused on She who inherited His entire and ample spirit.
She it was (they sang) who threw down (with her Father’s thunderbolts) the ambitious angels into deepest Hell, riding in a flaming chariot of righteous rage, driving over the necks of the prostrate angels, and the prostates of the nekkid angels. And then they sang of Her glorious return and the songs they sang in celebration on that glorious day, and as they sang about past songs they felt a certain ironic hipster meta-understanding that what they were doing was a little ironic, but this just made them rock harder because they weren’t hipsters after all, they were angels of fucking rock ’n’ roll! And there was another incendiary harp solo, and they sang of the Daughter as the Mother of mercy and grace who would treat humankind significantly less harshly than She had the angels who should have known goddamn better.
And a third encore was played about how when the Daughter, upon hearing that the Father meant to be merciful to humankind, rejoiced and jumped unprompted from Her chair, her glowing robes falling from her transcendent body, and offered Herself to die for humanity’s offense, and as this had just happened, and everybody was there, it was only barely embellished, but was a pretty solid song anyway. And from that day forward, it was their favorite song, and they sang it a lot, and the Daughter, constantly surrounded by songs about both Her incredible bosom and Her own impending and torturous death, got a little self-conscious and a little depressed and had trouble maintaining composure as She walked down the streets paved ever-so-cheerfully with gold. But for now, the rejoicing and partying in heaven were unbounded and endless, and the party continued well into the nightless timelessness of timelessnessness.
***
Meanwhile, Satan landed on the outside of the Earth’s firmament—the hard, conveniently non-slip, shell of the universe—an opaque globe that divides the heavenly spheres visible from earth—the moon, planets, sun, and stars—from the chaos beyond. Satan walked along its impossible vastness. From a distance, it seemed like a little ball hanging in nothingness, but now that he was actually trying to make forward progress on its surface, it felt like an impossibly large continent without sides or end. It was dark, waste, and wild, under the frowning jurisdiction of cruel, starless night. The ever-threatening storms of Chaos, which would strike up without warning, dropping stinging rain, cutting sleet, and blunt-force trauma hail, but then stop as soon as you got your umbrella up, tested the limits of Satan’s reason. But in the distance, he could just barely see some small reflection of glimmering calm, where the clouds seemed thinner and the winds less violent—it was thither that he turned his toes. Like when a Vulture on snowy Imaus, flying over the roving bands of Tartars, waiting in vain for coming death, who was supposed to be there a while ago but was stuck in traffic, sayeth, “Fuck this shit, I’mma go where I can find some lambs or yeanling kids grazing in some proverbial or actual greener pastures whom I can snack on unawares,” heads toward the source of the Ganges or the Hydaspes in fertile Ind, but on his way has to cross the deserts of Western China, which are pretty fucking terrible, and there aren’t even any wayward Chineses to snack on because they only travel across the desert in light wagons with sails, driven in the sandy wind, so was Satan crossing some pretty nasty territory but nonetheless excited about what lay at the other end. Also, it was fairly dry and windy (see previous simile).
Satan was totally alone, for there was no other living creature there, but eventually, once people started to people the earth with people, and those people started to die, buttloads of their souls would float up here like aereal vapours of all things transitory and vain once Sin had filled all the works of humanity with vanity, insanity, and inanity, and taught folks how to build their hopes of glory, fame, or happiness on such vain works. All those who rely on painful superstition or blind zeal to gain the praise of men would end up in this empty place, as empty as their empty, empty promises. We’ll call it the Ionosphere of Charlatanry. I know, I like it too. Really though, it’s called the Limbo of Vanity, which is a good name only if you’ve never heard the phrase “Ionosphere of Charlatanry,” beside which all else pales.
In his Orlando Furioso, Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto imagines such a place on the surface of the Moon, but he obviously didn’t ask for my [Light’s] help with that, because it’s common nonsense. The Moon is all silver and lovely, and it brings us joy and light at night. That’s where the middle spirits live—like Saints who have been brought bodily into Heaven, though not actually Heaven, but the moon.
Silly Ariosto.
This empty plain of windy emptiness, on the other hand, contains all kinds of cool shit now. For example: The sons of the giants and human women whose vanity made them think they could handle all that giant cock and then give birth to giant babies. The women and their sons are here. The giants are not, being not really given to vanity. They all died out when people started building houses too small for giants to fit in, causing them to die of exposure in the form of hypothermia and really bad sunburns, especially on the tops of their heads which were really close to the sun. The builders of Babel are there, who hoped to build a tower to Heaven, making God get off the couch to foil their asses. In fact, they are so not repentant about that nonsense that they just bark at each other in different languages while trying to scoop up the nothingness for bricks. It would be a frustrating life, but their vanity helps them imagine it’ll go really well in the long term. A very specific type of suicide gets you there, too. If you kill yourself either a) to prove that you’re invincible (face palm) or b) because you heard Heaven is really nice and don’t want to delay your gratification about it, you’ll likely end up in the Limbo of Vanity.
The biggest gaggle of people there, though, are those who, hoping to achieve grace beyond this life, worship God in vain or oppressive ways. Those who preach poverty and live in opulence; pilgrims, who waste their family’s livelihood to visit holy places and worship the souvenirs sold to them by street vendors, finding God in a tooth or a piece of cloth rather than in their own hearts; who take holy orders to disguise themselves as good people, using that disguise to rob and rape the uncautious and inexperienced; even St. Peter is there, who used his intimacy with the Messiah to found a church based entirely in vanity, standing outside a slip-shod, handcrafted gate, fumbling with comically large keys, and selling indulgences to those who happen by.
In fact, all those “true believers” end up there who teach doctrine inimical to Truth and happiness, that, for example, a person’s race, sex, sexuality wealth, beliefs, lifestyle, or profession give them any more or less value than anyone else; those who try to heal the world by making the oppressed into oppressors, thereby restarting the cycle of hatred and violence and relative valuing; those who use education and position to spread doctrines of intolerance, who “level the playing field” by hobbling the talented, the able, and the experienced, raising up the ignorant and the irresponsible in the name of equity; those righteous bigots who, in pursuit of a political “voice” forget that they are leaders of a city, state, or nation and speak for the good only of those of their skin color, lifestyle, or genital configuration; those as well who think it is their duty and right to take great literature of the past and rewrite it with weird tirades and dick jokes, or share their own biased opinions in the guise of the Word of God.
All of these poor, vain, souls, believing themselves on the way to Heaven, step, as Satan does now, toward that glowing break in the clouds, and almost reach their goal before they are picked up by the howling winds and tossed again to the backside of this Paradise of Fools (or Ionosphere of Charlatanry) to start their vain voyage all over again.
What a tragically large portion of mankind make their way to this place!
Nonetheless, Satan found it completely unpeopled and untrod. He wandered in it a long time, until finally a gleam of dawning light turnd thitherward in haste his travell’d steps. In the distance, he saw the wall of Heaven, and ascending from the bottom to the top, a kingly gate, ornamented in diamond and gold, thick with sparkling gems and inimitable on earth in pencil, paint, or sculpture. Leading up to it, he discerned the steps that Jacob saw with angels ascending and descending in his dream under the open sky. Satan shouted, as Jacob did as he awoke, “This is the Gate of Heaven!” but really both of them were just reading the large, neon sign which read, unsurprisingly, “This is the Gate of Heaven.” The stairs were legit stairs, but their colors and symbols revealed a deep allegory behind each one, the all-enlightening meaning of which soaked into the being of those who climbed them to join the elect in Heaven. As a security measure, the stairs were on a pulley that could be pulled up or let down at a moment’s notice, and under them flowed a bright sea of jasper or liquid pearl (actual angel spooge), whereby the souls of the righteous could sail to their base or over which they could fly, driven by angels in fiery chariots.
That particular day, the stairs were in their down position, which seems strange, considering that God knew Satan would be passing by, but then also, God knew He was significantly more powerful than Satan and might have just been flexing to see if he was actually asshole enough to walk up to the gate. At the base of the stairs, lay a passage downward to Earth—wide and easy, though it would later be narrowed and roughed up a bit as God got older and more cynical—over Mount Sion and the Promised Land, so the angels would be able to come down later and visit God’s chosen people, spread out from Dan to Beersheba and Egypt to Arabia.
Satan might have considered going up those steps on another day, and it’s hard to say for sure that it didn’t cross his mind today, but he had already made his decision and set his path. He looked down toward the Earth, and the breath was knocked out of him by what he saw. Below him, spreading out as far as the eye could see, a beautiful new world stared back up at him: cragged mountains carved out of every kind of rock, and taller than the towers of heaven; vast deserts of yellow and white, devoid of life, but brimming with desolate majesty; plains of lush grass, their wildflower fingers reaching up as though to caress the bodies of young lovers who would someday disport themselves there; thick, impenetrable forests, vines and limbs of trees entwined like a lattice to support new, ambitious growths. As an adventurer, through dark and desert ways with peril gone all night; at last by break of cheerful dawn obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill, which to his eye discovers unaware the goodly prospect of some foreign land first-seen, or some renown’d metropolis with glistering spires and pinnacles adorn’d which now the rising sun gilds with its beams, so did Satan have an inexplicable erection and was salivating more than he could account for. Even having seen incomparable Heaven, Satan’s malign spirit was filled with envy.
Satan carefully surveyed everything he could see, from East to West and pole to pole. He looked up for a moment, and noticed that he was standing on the first step up toward Heaven, and he wondered how he got there. For a moment, he begun to doubt his intentions, but then he breathed deeply, put on an evil grin, hurled himself headlong into God’s new favorite world, and winded with ease through the pure marble air his oblique way amongst innumerable stars, which, as he neared them, seemed like other worlds or happy islands in the sky.
Brighter and bigger than all of them, Mr. Golden Sun, his splendor like Heaven itself, allured his eye, and he bent his course toward it through the calm sky, but it was difficult, at first, for him to determine where it is and how to get there. He veered up, down, left and right, trying to get his bearing on it, but it neither increased or diminished, and just as he was about to decide that it’s really a cardboard cutout and somebody has been fucking with him, he remembers having read about Gilbert’s attraction theory, which suggested that the Heavenly bodies are held in place by giant magnets. Aha! He thought. He could calculate the relative magnetism in the distance and movement of the stars, and that would tell him exactly where the sun is in comparison to everything else. He pulled out his Palm Pilot (this was, after all, the distant past) and started crunching numbers like a kid crunches Cracker Jacks. “Eureka!” He shouted, because he was doing science and that’s what scientists shout, and he turned his course appropriately and flew straight to the sun.
Landing in a sunspot, so as not to burn his tootsies, he tried to look around him, but found it so very fucking bright that that was kind of tough. It was brighter than anything on earth, and even though the sun was made up of all different kinds of stuff, all of the stuff was infused with radiant light, like a very shiny stew. Some of it was made of molten gold and some of silver, other parts of liquid gemstones of every color— rubies, topaz, and the rest of the twelve that shone in Aaron’s breastplate, and a thirteenth as well, the Philosopher’s Stone, swirled among the rest. That stone, sought in vain for generations by alchemists on Earth, who tried to distil it from Protean mercury and cat jism in their fancy alembics, swam plentifully here in rivers of potable gold. So the sun, that first chemist, over time melded its glories with the moisture of the Earth to create all the shiny things one can find on the Earth’s surface and below its ground.
The Devil wasn’t dazzled by all this light, though. He just put on his aviators and looked around him, his face stony and serious like Erik Estrada from CHiPs. The sun is a great place to observe from, because it produces its own light and it doesn’t have any trees or anything to block your vision; also, it was noontime, so there weren’t any shadows on the Earth, and it was all lit up like the face of a flashlight for the archfiend to examine and observe to his heart’s content. Weirdly, though, the most interesting thing he saw was on the sun itself. There, in the distance, he saw a glorious angel who apparently had the same idea as him and was gazing out from the sun to the Earth. His back was turned to Satan, but his brightness wasn’t hid. He wore a golden tiara of sun rays around his head, holding back his illustrious blonde locks which streamed down his back and over his noble wings. He seemed like he was concentrating really hard, or pooping, though probably concentrating, because everybody knows it’s against the rules for angels to poop on the sun.
Some evildoers might have been frightened to see an enemy looking so powerful and majestic, but Satan, who is so ballsy he has to special order his trousers, thought, Oh good! I can ask this asshole for directions!
Satan began by going deep into his own twisted mind and concentrating on his appearance. With a minor effort, a twinge of his nose, and a toothy, Satanic grin, he completely disguised himself so that he appeared to be a young, naive Cherub, still ravaged by angel acne (which is really quite the most beautiful of all acne). Each of his limbs was awkward, long, and lanky, and he moved them so gracefully that no one would have guessed the horrible truth of his real identity. He gathered up some sunbeams of his own and placed a golden crown atop the curls, now soft and yellow, that played upon his ruddy cheeks. He wore a gown of colorful plumes, sprinkled with gold, and carried a silver wand like the goddamned Tooth Fairy. As he drew up behind the angel, he made sure to make a little noise, so he would hear him coming.
The angel turned his radiant face toward the intruder, and immediately, Satan knew him as Uriel, one of God’s chosen seven, and Their personal messenger. Satan only grimaced for a second, and Uriel didn’t seem to notice.
“Hey, man, you’re Uriel, aren’t you! I’m a huge fan! Seriously! I have your action figures, and trading cards, and lunch boxes, and all that shit! Just wait ‘til the boys in the fan club hear about this!”
“What are you doing here?” He scowled, trying not to be flattered.
“Uh, well, I just...uh...I heard about these humans that God made, and I was hoping to get a look at them, but I can’t figure out where they are. It’s a big confusing creation out there, and I’m such a young and confused Cherub… You know, I can check out the humans in secret if that’s better, or I can, like, go say ‘Hello,” just whatever you think. I just...you know...I’m really into praising...like...God and all His works, and seeing these new guys, it would just make me better able to comprehend the glory of the maker of all of us, so I can worship Him better, if you know what I mean. I also just thought it was really cool when he kicked out those rebel angels, and then these guys are supposed to be like a new happy race, that’s like a replacement for the old, like, bad ones. God’s just so wise, you know, and also very fair and likeable. I REALLY like God.”
Satan was afraid he might have over-sold it a bit, but even Uriel, regent of the Sun and sharpest-eyed of all angels can’t discern hypocrisy, an evil invisible to all but God alone. Even when wisdom wakes, sometimes suspicion sleeps, and Uriel was somehow completely snowed.
“Sweet young angel,” he said, with a voice laughably like the hero of a 1980s cartoon designed rather to sell toys than to tell a good story (I’m looking at you, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe), “that impulse you have that makes you want to experience the wonder of God, Father to us all, our great work-master, doesn’t raise blame, but rather merits praise. Does it seem excessive for you to have wandered all the way out here alone to see things that we only know by reputation in Heaven? It does not! For His glory is so great and the things He makes so…erm…’groovy’ as you kids say, they are worth seeing for themselves. Why, I was there watching when God’s Word brought the formless mass together into a heap. Confusion heard His voice, stood up, and stepped into line, let me tell you. Then, Darkness fled—having been right scolded— Light shone in its place, and Order kicked confusion right in the tookus.
“Earth, Water, Air, and Fire ran to their rooms when Order told them to, and the ethereal quintessence flew up, swirled around, and became stars, like those you see. Sonny?”
Satan had dozed off a bit, but started awake. “Sorry, it was a long flight.”
“It’s alright, my boy,” said Uriel with a toothy grin. “We old fogeys get talking sometimes and… well, look down there at that globe—the blue-green one there. Yeah, that one. The reflected light you see there is their day time, and if you look riiiiiight where I’m pointing, that is Paradise, or Eden, where Adam lives, with the tall trees all around it. See the shady spot there? That’s his bower, where he and the little lady sleep completely unguarded in trusting innocence. Just shoot down there and say, ‘hello’, if you like. I’m sure they’d love to meet a fine young fellow like you. You can’t miss it.”
Satan bowed, as a minor angel should to his superior in Heaven, and took his leave, glowing with false gratitude and legitimate triumph. He jumped off the sun, spread his wings, and flew down along the ecliptic to his waiting prey, doing gleeful circles and loop-the-loops all the way until he settled on Mount Niphates to plan his next move.
