The Chosen

by John G. Hartness

  “So, you’re saying that you Choose the life of an itinerant street preacher over the life of the big famous televangelist? You prefer what’s behind Door Number Two? So you’re Choosing life as a street preacher in Tennessee over the plan you’ve laid for yourself: college, television ministry, the whole barrel of monkeys?” Lucky had an odd glint in his eye, and I was really getting confused. He’d lost, but it looked like he could barely contain his glee.

  “Yes. I would rather give up all the trappings of worldly fame and keep my one true love than to sacrifice my soul to win the world.”

  “Then, the Choice is made, and I accept it as true and fair. Do you?” Lucky turned to Michael, who looked a little green, and I was even more baffled. How could this be bad for him?

  “I accept the Choice as made.” Michael almost spat the words.

  “Then, you lose, mate. Again. Enjoy your life, kiddies. It won’t be that bad, but there won’t be any gold-plated faucets or air-conditioned dog houses in your future.” Lucky really did look happy, and did he just say that Michael had lost?

  I couldn’t hold back anymore. “What the holy Hell is going on, Lucky? You’re acting like you just won the Powerball, and Michael looks like he just stepped in something the dog left in the yard, but it sounded an awful lot like the kid just rejected you.”

  “It did, didn’t it? Good thing for me I’m a master of deception, isn’t it? Adam, dear boy, you are an absolute treasure, but you’re often not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I made the kid think I wanted him to choose fame and fortune, when I wanted him to choose poverty and squalor. If he had chosen to continue on the path that he had followed all his life, I would have lost, and his rewards on earth would have been phenomenal. By making him veer from his predetermined course, I win. Again. Michael, dear, I would have thought you’d learned a new trick or two since I played that same game with the Carpenter.”

  “Wait a minute!” I exclaimed. “You really did tempt Jesus with worldly riches?”

  You can’t blame a little incredulity here. After all, having been witness to so many inaccuracies in the Bible, it always stuns me whenever I find out they got something right.

  “Of course, I did. But your apostle buddies really sucked at linear storytelling. It didn’t happen in the desert, it happened at Gethsemane while he was having his little alone time talking to the Father.” With a win under his belt, Lucky was back in full smirk mode.

  “But I was there! I never saw any of you,” I protested. There were a few surprised looks from the rest of the group at that. “Leave me alone, I was curious. I never bought into many of his ‘miracles,’ but if I’d known that the name would forever be tagged with a nickname, I wouldn’t have picked Thomas for my alias.”

  That one got to Junior. “You were Doubting Thomas?” He started to cross toward me, but then stopped short. He was back to looking at me as though I were a holy relic again, and I found that particularly annoying.

  “Yeah, although I never liked that nickname. It’s just that after so many years, a guy gets a little cynical. And the Carpenter was a true believer. True believers are a pain in the ass, as a rule. But where were you two while the rest of us were sleeping?”

  “We were giving the Carpenter his Choice. He could live and be the greatest rabbi ever, or he could die and change the face of religion as he knew it. He chose to die, so he sent Judas on his little errand to get Pilate’s men, and the rest, as they say, is history.” Lucky didn’t seem to notice the dropped jaws at his mention of Judas, so I backed things up a bit for the benefit of the rest of us.

  “What was that about Jesus sending Judas for the Romans? You mean Judas wasn’t a traitor? Why didn’t he say anything? I was there, and I never knew anything about that. None of us did.”

  “You were there, indeed. As is typical, you were paying very little attention. Who was Jesus’ closest confidant? Who did he talk to about the personal things, the things he couldn’t tell anyone else? Who was the apostle he was closest to?” Lucky leaned back against the stone wall of the monument while I thought back. Back to the fishing trips, back to the water into wine party, back to the loaves and fishes thing. It was always Judas who was right there.

  Judas was the one who Jesus talked to long into the night after the rest of us went to bed. Judas was the one who argued with Jesus about the real meaning of the scripture, what the Father meant as opposed to what was written down. They were best friends. They loved to debate and argue, they loved to explore the Word, and they loved to hang out. That was why Judas’s betrayal had always felt so raw, so wrong.

  “So Judas never betrayed him. He never betrayed anyone.” Just like Cain never wanted to kill his brother was what I didn't say.

  “No,” Lucky continued. “He went to get the Pharisees because Jesus told him he had to die to live forever. He made his Choice, and part of the deal was that he had to be martyred for his beliefs. So he went to the one apostle he trusted above all others.”

  “Judas,” I murmured.

  “Judas,” he agreed. “He told Judas to go to the authorities and tell them where he could be found. Judas argued, cajoled, but eventually did as his friend and teacher asked. And he became the most famous traitor in history.”

  “And he couldn’t handle the pain, so he hanged himself. Not because he had betrayed his friend…” I was almost whispering, remembering the sight of Judas’s body swinging from that tree, his death coming so soon after Jesus’ murder that it was almost too much to bear. I remembered cutting down the body, and Simon Peter being so enraged that he kicked Judas’s corpse until the face was unrecognizable, then spitting on the body until he was dry. I always wondered if his rage was somehow misplaced, if he was angrier with himself for his denials of Jesus that night than he was at Judas for the betrayal. I looked from Lucky to Michael and back again. “It all makes sense. Judas never would have hurt him. He loved him too much.”

  “But he had to. And he did what was asked. That’s what we do when the ones we love ask us to do things we hate.” Eve said that from where she stood, next to Cain. She looked at our son, who had tears running down his face.

  “Like me?” Cain asked. “Like me, is that what you’re trying not to say, Mom? What I want to know is, why me? Why Abel? Why were we mixed up in this fucking chess game in the first place?” He was screaming at Michael, but the angel was impassive as he replied in that insufferable accent.

  “Abel chose to die because death had to be brought into the world. It’s a simple matter of scale, to be brutally honest. You humans breed like rabbits, and if we let you all live forever, we would have run out of real estate long before we had enough data for our experiment. Abel decided he loved you more than he loved life, so he chose to be the one to die.”

  “But why did I have to be the one to kill him? Why me?” Cain’s voice cracked as he half-screamed, half-cried, and almost collapsed entirely before Eve steadied him.

  “Because dying was his Choice. How he died was yours.” Emily spoke so softly I almost didn’t hear her. She crossed the room to her brother and wrapped her arms around him in a gesture so familiar it made my guts twist. “You loved him so much that you wouldn’t let anyone else ever touch him. You knew what it would do to you. You knew that his face would look up at you from where he lay on the ground with blood running into his eyes every night for as long as you walked the Earth, but if your brother was going to die, then it would be at your hands and yours alone. Because if he was strong enough to die, then you were strong enough to do it for him.”

  “How do you know that? You weren’t there.” He fell to his knees and she held him as he wept.

  “You’re my brother. I know you.” She stroked his hair and looked over at me, tears in her eyes. “Dad?”

  “Yeah, sweetie?” I wiped away more than one tear of my own as I remembered lost friends and lost sons, and thought about lost years with the son I still had.

  “Finish this.” Steel was in her voice.


  I looked over at Lucky and nodded. “Let’s do this.”

  “Are you ready for your Choice, Adam, Father of Man and firstborn Son of the Father?” Lucky had gotten formal and ceremonial all of a sudden, and I felt cold. It was suddenly as though the weight of all those millennia was crushing down on top of me. I looked around at Eve, Cain, Myra, Emily, and a very confused Sid, and they all looked back with expectant and slightly frightened expressions. I had a moment’s hope that my Choice would be as anticlimactic as Sid’s, but then I saw the expressions on the faces of Lucky and Michael, and that idea went right out the window.

  “As ready as I’m gonna get, I suppose.”

  “Are all the conditions met?” Lucky asked Michael.

  “They are,” the archangel responded in an equally formal tone.

  “Do we agree that this shall be the final Choice, and the decision of the Father of Mankind shall be made binding upon both of us, our followers, and all of man?” Lucky sounded as if the words were part of a ritual.

  “I agree,” Michael said.

  “I agree,” Lucypher said.

  “So, what’s my Choice?” I asked nervously. “And while we’re at it, you wanna explain to me exactly what’s going on here?”

  “I do, as a matter of fact.” I was surprised to hear Lucypher admit to that, and by the look on Michael’s face, it was about the last thing he expected, too.

  “What are you talking about, Lucypher?” Michael asked abruptly.

  “We agreed that I could use every tool at my disposal to influence the Choice. You assumed I only planned to use deception and misdirection, but sometimes truth is as powerful a tool as any lie I could dream up. So, I’m going to tell Adam here the truth. All of it, all the way back to the War and the Garden,” Lucypher replied.

  “You can’t do that!” Michael started to glow again, but Lucypher cut him off.

  “Then, do you forfeit the contest?”

  “What?” The archangel looked as confused as the rest of us, and I had to admit, I enjoyed it a little. I was scared out of my friggin’ gourd, but I really got off on seeing that self-righteous prick set back on his heels.

  “We agreed, Michael. If at any point you interfere with the Choice, you forfeit. If you hinder my conversation with Adam, that’s interfering, and I win. If you let me tell him the truth, then you still have a shot at winning. Unless you’ve suddenly lost faith in the sheer power of your side.” He tossed that last bit in as a cheap shot, and I grinned a little, even with the stakes so high.

  “I will not interfere. You’ve planned this since the beginning, haven’t you?”

  “Of course. Ever since you selected the Chosen all those years ago, I had my endgame in place. You never were all that good at the endgame, Michael. Your strength always lay in strong openings. But now, it’s my turn, so just step back and wait for Adam to decide your fate.”

  That didn’t sound good. I not only had the fate of all humanity in my hands, but also that of the chief enforcer of the Host. I really couldn’t see any way things would end up good for me.

  “Adam, are you ready for your Choice?” Lucypher fixed me with the full weight of his gaze, and I suddenly felt very small.

  He wasn’t Lucky, my gambling buddy and occasional nemesis. He wasn’t Luke, who taught my little girl to play cards in a Texas roadhouse. He wasn’t even the Prince of Darkness, who I’d seen do his worst in some of the ugliest places on earth. He was Lucypher Morningstar, the Lightbringer, one of the holiest of holies, and his power was all around us.

  I swallowed, took a deep breath, and said, “Yes.”

  He relaxed a little, and it was almost like the old Lucky was back. “Then, here’s the skinny. Please don’t interrupt because it’s a long story, and I’ve been waiting a very long time to tell you all of it. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Chapter 38

  “Now, how best to begin? A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… nah, more like outside of any galaxy, there was a disagreement in Heaven between members of the Host as to how the universe should be run. A certain faction of the Host felt that events should be kick-started, then allowed to run their course with minimal, if any, interference on the part of the Father and the permanent residents of Heaven. Another faction felt that things in the universe couldn’t possibly operate effectively without their constant oversight and meddling.

  “Well, as you might imagine among strong-willed beings of almost infinite power, the argument quickly grew until it created such a level of discord in Heaven that nothing was being done. The tasks of Creation were ignored while angels debated philosophy, and the debates raged so long, and so loudly, that Father finally stepped in to settle the matter once and for all.

  “It was decided that a world would be created, and populated with beings who had free will. This was a new concept, because never, in all the worlds Father had created, had he given that gift to any of his creatures except for the Host. These beings would be the experiment upon which the angels found the answer to their argument. If these beings chose chaos over order, chose self-rule over divine guidance, then that would be that. The angels who wanted to start things up and leave them alone would lead the Seraphim, and the ones who disagreed would sit down and shut up for all eternity.

  “The Father took a week off from his other duties, created this world, and put a couple of people on it. That’s where you come in, sunshine. A complex set of rules was devised for the management of the contest, but one of them was that this world would be run hands-off, with little or no divine intervention, while the Father and the Seraphim took a more direct approach with the rest of the universe. Each side was given the option to send an observer to the world to watch the development of the beings, which you know as humans, and that’s where I come in.”

  “Wait a minute. You’re here as an observer? You’re not coming here to recruit souls for Hell? And you weren’t thrown out of Heaven for trying to overthrow the Father?” Sidney looked a little green as he vomited out questions from the corner. I suppose that was what happened when everything you believed was tossed out a window in one night.

  “Yes, no, and no, in that order. I never tried to overthrow the Father; I just wanted to take over the Seraphim. And there is no Hell. There’s just here. Sartre was a smart guy. Hell really is other people. But don’t interrupt.

  “So, Michael and I, as our respective team captains, set up the rules of the game, so to speak. Since he had such great faith in people desperately wanting help from above, he had to stay hands-off and trust in the natural order of things to win out. Since I was the agent of chaos, it was within my purview to stir the pot in any way I saw fit, and stir I did. We decided that, from time to time, certain numbers of people down through history would be given Choices. If either side won a clear majority of the Choices made by humans, then the game would be over, and the winning team would take over Heaven.

  “But that didn’t happen. Over and over again, from Eve all the way down to Gutenberg, Oppenheimer, and now little Sidney, we’ve been pretty much neck and neck. There has never been a clear winner. Therefore, as per the terms of our original agreement, on a date exactly sixty-five thousand years from the beginning of the experiment, the original member of the experiment will make the final decision. Happy birthday, by the way.”

  “What?”

  “Today is your birthday, Adam. I know you were a little lax with record keeping in the early millennia, but by the way you calculate years in the modern world, you are sixty-five thousand years old today. So, today is the day that the experiment ends.”

  “I don’t even get a cake?”

  “Maybe later. Depending on how you choose. For my part, if you take my side, I’ll even buy you an ice cream. I know how much you like ice cream with sprinkles.” He was right; I did have a weakness for sprinkles.

  “So all this has been to settle a bet? All of human existence is just to settle a disagreement between you and Michael?” I thought I might have b
een a bit offended by the idea.

  “Basically, yes. Father created this world, and everything on it, so that you could stand here and decide which one of us wins an argument. I know that may seem a little out of the ordinary, but that’s kinda how it goes when you’re omnipotent.”

  I looked over at Michael, who at least had the good grace to look a little chagrined.

  “So, what do I do?”

  “Well, you Choose. You choose chaos or order. Change or status quo. You Choose the course of human history from this moment forward, just as Eve Chose the course of human history from the moment at which she took the Fruit up until now. Sorry about that, by the way, love. You really have gotten a bad rap because of that whole thing.”