The Chosen

by John G. Hartness

  “You’re telling me?” Eve muttered. “But I got a question for you, Mister Take-this-Fruit-It’s-Yummy-and-Good-For-You-Too. The whole reason I made your choice was because you said that if I did, Adam didn’t have to.”

  “And he didn’t.”

  “But now he has to make the final choice? You’re a lying sack of shit, Lucky.”

  “While that is unquestionably true, darling, I never said he’d never have to make a Choice. Just that he wouldn’t have to make that Choice. If you had deferred that Choice to Adam, you would be making this one. That was the deal. One of you had to make the first big Choice, and one of you had to make the last one.”

  I looked over at Lucypher. “Go on.”

  “It’s time for you to Choose, Adam. Your Choice is simple, do you Choose to continue as you have, or do you Choose to change?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. Change what?”

  “Everything. Yours is the ultimate Choice between Order and Chaos. If you Choose my path, everything you know will change forever. If you Choose Michael’s path, everything about you stays the same. It’s a question of life or death, really.”

  “What?” Despite his assertions about my intellect, I was usually a fairly bright guy. But I was totally lost, in the most important moment of my ridiculously long life.

  “If you Choose for me, then you choose change, what some call Chaos. You Choose to give up your status quo, your immortality, and your aloofness from the world. You would go through life as a normal man. You would be vulnerable to anything that could harm or kill a normal man. You would get sick, grow old, and eventually, you would die.

  “Or you can Choose the status quo; you can choose order and logic. You can Choose to go on as you have, living forever among humanity, but apart. You would be the Father of humanity, but you would not be completely human, as you have been for all these years.

  “You see, the whole deal has been to give one person the ability to make an informed decision. You’ve seen the best and worst of humanity, without really having to be part of it. Think of everything you’ve seen. All the births and deaths, all the war and destruction, all the art and music, all the scientific advances and remarkable discoveries. Now, it’s time for you to decide if you want, for once and for all, to be part of it all.

  “That’s what the whole thing is about, Adam. Change or constancy. Chaos is everything that’s messy and painful about humanity. My side does represent all of human suffering. All war, all murder, all the breakups and fights, all the sickness and injury and death. It’s all mine. But so is all the art, all the music, all the makeup sex and drunken karaoke, all the literature, poetry, drama, everything else that makes life worth living. Because you of all people should know, if you can’t die, are you really living?

  “So you can choose Michael’s side, and you and Cain and Eve will go on as you always have, only now you’re friends again. You’ll never get old, and you’ll never die. And the world will be a neat, clean, orderly place, with no fighting, no singing, no crying, and no laughing. Everything will be orderly, everything will be beautiful, and everything will be so fucking boring it will make me vomit, but you’ll get to see it all, for whatever that’s worth.

  “But if you choose my side, you’ll get to be truly alive for the first time. You’ll really be able to understand what it’s like to get old, not Methuselah old—that was the genetic equivalent of a clerical error—but normal old. Your knees will hurt when it rains, you’ll need reading glasses in fifteen years, and your hair will turn white. And eventually, you’ll die. And so will Eve and Cain. But for once, you’ll have really lived.”

  Something he said there struck me. Suddenly, I got it.

  “I can’t make that decision for them. That’s not fair. If I make my Choice, why does it have to take their immortality, too?” I looked over at Eve and my son.

  “Because that’s the deal. Your Choice affects all of humanity, just like Eve’s did.” His face was a mask, completely unreadable.

  “Did you know all this when you Chose, Eve?” I asked.

  “Yeah, most of it. I knew that we wouldn’t die, but that eventually everybody else would. I knew I was bringing war, disease, and death into the world. I knew that I was Pandora.” She held her head high when she pronounced that to the room.

  “Eve, how could you do that?” I asked quietly.

  “Remember what the last thing in Pandora’s box was?”

  “Hope,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, babe. Hope. I gave the world all the darkness, but I also gave them music, art, poetry, dancing, beer, and the freedom to make up their own minds.”

  “Would you do it again?”

  “Yeah. I would. I knew I’d be reviled forever as the stupid woman who got us tossed out of the Garden, and that’s why I made the Choice. I didn’t want you to catch the bum rap. You were always too nice; it would have hurt you too much if you’d gotten blamed for everything wrong in the world. I was brought into this world with a thick skin; I could handle it. So I Chose. And I’d make the same Choice again. And now, it’s your turn. Do it. I trust you. We all do.” She crossed the room, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me lightly on the lips for the first time since… well, since before the invention of the wheel.

  “So if I take chaos, I become a normal man, live out the rest of a normal lifespan, and grow old and die. And people all over the world keep killing each other, starting wars, blowing things up, and generally making an unbelievable mess out of the world the Father created,” I said.

  “Right,” Lucypher replied. Michael didn’t speak, just nodded.

  “And if I choose order, I remain immortal, as do Eve and Cain, and the world becomes a perfect sterile utopia full of people blissful in the ignorance of how things used to be.”

  “Right again.” I looked around the room at my family and imagined the world if they were perfect. Sid wouldn’t have all those stupid piercings, Cain, Eve, and I could live together again, I’d have all the time in the world to make up for eons of being a dick to my oldest son, and if I was really, really lucky, I could make Myra forget about me entirely.

  “Myra?”

  “Yeah, honey?” She crossed over to me and took both my hands in hers. “I’m here for you, whatever you decide.”

  “Do you love me?” I felt more vulnerable than I had in a very long time. The last time I had asked a woman that question and actually cared what the answer was, I was standing in a thatched cottage in Ireland holding the hands of a redhead who I’d eventually bury.

  “I do.” She said it simply, but her eyes were full of emotion.

  “Would you like to grow old with me?”

  “That depends,” she said with a little smirk.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re not going to put this Choice off on me, old man. I’ll be with you regardless of what you decide, so don’t even think you’re going to make this about me.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. It’s about you no matter what I decide, but I just wanted to be able to look in your eyes one more time before I did this.”

  I walked over to Michael, got right in his face, and said in a cold, low voice, “You have played games with me and my family for thousands of years. Once upon a time, we might have just been a grand experiment between you and Lucypher, a way for you two bastards to settle a bet, but now we’re the real deal. We have the free will granted to us by the Father, and we’re not going to give that up for anything. So you can take your little snow-white utopia, and stick it up your angelic ass.” And with that, I kicked the Sword of Heaven square in the balls.

  I walked over to Lucypher, who had for the first time in all the years I’d known him, shown his wings and taken on a little glow of his own. His wings were just as big and impressive as Michael’s, and they bore no resemblance at all to a bat, which despite my academic knowledge to the contrary, surprised me a little.

  “Lucypher, I Choose to give up my immortality and that of Eve and our son Cai
n, so that we may live out one mortal span of years among the messy, chaotic beauty that is the human race. I Choose for you.”

  “I accept your Choice. Michael, do you accept this Choice?” The angel croaked his assent from where he lay crumpled on the floor, and Lucypher put a hand on my shoulder. “It is done.”

  As we stood in a little room atop the Washington Monument, I felt something I hadn’t felt since we had been tossed out of the Garden. I felt the presence of the Father. I looked around; there were no old men in white robes, but I could feel Him all around us.

  Then, a voice came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. “You have done well, my good and faithful servants. May you be well all the remaining days of your lives.”

  As quickly as it appeared, the presence was gone. However, instead of leaving a gaping void of emptiness behind, it left behind a promise that we would meet again. I looked around, and judging by the looks on their faces, the others had all felt it, too.

  Chapter 39

  “Wow,” Cain said.

  “Yeah, no shit,” Sid agreed. We all gaped a little at the previously mealy-mouthed preacher. “Hey, cut me a little slack, will ya? I just had a visitation from God. The last time anybody remembers that happening, there was a burning bush involved.”

  We all laughed, then looked around to find Michael gone.

  Lucypher, back in his more human appearance, just shrugged. “Not the best of losers, I suppose.”

  “So what happens now?” I asked.

  “Now, you go learn what it’s like to stub your toe and start actually acting your age for a change, because for the first time, your lifespan will be measured in decades, not eons.”

  I looked over at Eve and Cain. “Yeah, um, about that…”

  They both laughed at my obvious discomfort, and Cain piped up, “Don’t sweat it, Pops. We knew what the score was going into this meeting, or at least we had a pretty good idea after everything we’d put together over the last few days, and we talked it all out on the way here from Tennessee. We’ve lived a long time, and maybe it’s time we forgave ourselves for the decisions we made and lived in the present for a while. Since we don’t get to measure the future in forever terms anymore, we can maybe cut loose a little.”

  “If what you guys have been doing before now qualifies as anything other than cutting loose, maybe it’s not too late to barter for your immortality again,” I said.

  Eve chuckled. “Not like that, asshat. We’ve been stuck for so long in the roles history cast for us that we haven’t tried to be anything except what the world expected us to be. Now, we can let go and move on because we really don’t know what tomorrow will bring. For once. So we’re good with not being immortal. Really.”

  “And what about you, old friend?” I asked Lucky. I realized that, Father of Lies or not, he really was my oldest friend. The all-black wardrobe was gone, and for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t wearing sunglasses. His eyes were deep blue with green flecks and a depth to them that I didn’t remember from the past, a knowledge and a peace that made me feel warm inside.

  “Well, I won’t be interfering with this world anymore, much. But there’s a whole lot of change to be wrought around the universe now, so I think I’ll have my hands full for a while. And then there’s Michael to deal with.”

  “Yeah, since he lost, what happens to him? You gonna toss him out of Heaven? Return the favor a little?” Emily asked.

  “Nah. He thought he was right; it’s not like he was particularly malicious. I’m gonna keep him around just to keep an eye on him. After all, there’s that old saying about keeping your enemies closer, etc. And having to hang out and watch me do my thing will be just more sand in his crotch, so that’s a fringe benefit. But for now, we should probably get out of here. It’ll be daylight soon, and we shouldn’t be here when the janitor gets in for the morning shift. Oh, I almost forgot something.” He closed his eyes for a second, held out his hand, and an ice cream cone appeared. With sprinkles.

  He handed me the cone with a wink. “Can’t have people thinking I don’t uphold my agreements, can we?”

  I took the cone and looked at him for a long moment before I answered. “You’re an asshole, Lucky. Funny, but an asshole nonetheless.”

  He shrugged and pushed the button for the elevator. The doors dinged open, and we all filed on, but when I looked around for Lucky, he was gone. Where he’d been standing was nothing but a pair of sunglasses and a familiar apple keychain. I put the keys in my pocket, slipped on the shades, and rode the elevator down.

  As we walked out into the predawn light, I looked over at Myra, who hadn’t let go of my hand since the Father left the room. “Penny for ‘em?”

  “Just thinking about everything you gave up for me. It’s a little awe-inspiring, really.”

  “Well, I think the same thing about you; you’re pretty awe-inspiring yourself.” I put my arm around her shoulders and flipped the bird to Cain, who was very quietly making gagging noises behind us. Eve slapped him in the back of the head, and Myra giggled.

  “No really, you gave up immortality. That’s kind of a big deal,” she went on.

  “But I got a chance to live, honey. You don’t know what that means to me. I’ve been treading water my whole life, and that’s a long time. For the first time, I’m looking at a sunrise, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. But I know I’ve got you with me, so we’ll manage somehow. And stop snickering!” I tossed the last bit to Emily, who looked altogether too comfortable with Sid’s arm around her waist. We looked to the east as the sun cracked over the horizon, illuminating the flags in front of the monolith.

  “Take a good look, kids,” I said. “This is the first day of the rest of our lives.”

  We walked down the hill to get started.

  Notes from the Author

  Thanks for coming along on this little trip with me. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. I first conceived this book while hitting the snooze bar one time too many on a morning when I really needed to get to work on time. I didn’t make it. It happens. But over time, it became something, and I picked up some characters that I became pretty fond of, and hopefully, you did, too.

  There are some folks I have to thank here because this book would never have happened without their support. Right off the bat, I want to thank my friend Dr. Chuck Stillman, who helped tremendously with my first draft, editing on the fly as I published chunks of words on my website. His advice and assistance, not to mention the fact that he was out there reading this thing, spurred me on to keep writing. I also have to thank Mark Remen, Gracie Castellanos, and Sean Donahue for their continued support while I was working on this book.

  My amazingly talented niece, Dianne Hartness, served as my editor for this piece, and she helped polish this book into something tighter, cleaner, and much more ready for public consumption. The ever-amazing Lynn O’Dell edited and polished the new edition, making it even better than the first time around, and the new cover is by the fabulous Rob Hinckley.

  I also want to thank some of my favorite writers, some of whom will never see this book, but that’s okay, too. Paul McGuire and Brad Willis are two of the best writers you’ve never seen in a bookstore. I’ve learned a lot about the craft of writing just by reading these guys, and you should, too. Neil Gaiman, John Scalzi, Wil Wheaton, and Cory Doctorow all contributed to the creation of this book, even though none of them know it. I read their blogs, and I read their books. They’re great writers, all of them, and very different writers. I’d be happy to take their books on a desert island, or just drink a beer with them.

  The style of my writing was pretty obviously inspired by Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels and David Eddings’s Belgariad. There are countless other influences through the years, including Chris Claremont, Mercedes Lackey, Christopher Moore, and Orson Scott Card.

  I listened to a lot of music while writing this, and a few of the artists are mentioned here. If you’re interested, most of this boo
k was written to the tunes of Matt Nathanson, The Avett Brothers, The Everybodyfields, Lucinda Williams, and Amos Lee. There was a fair sampling of The Moldy Peaches in there, too, with a smattering of Jay-Z and Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band.

  There’s plenty more drivel from me online. You can find it on my website, johnhartness.com, or you can email me at johnhartness@gmail.com. Feel free to drop me a line. I’d love to chat.

  About the Author

  John G. Hartness is a recovering theatre geek who likes loud music, fried pickles and cold beer. John is an award-winning poet, lighting designer and theatre producer, whose work has been translated into over 25 languages and read worldwide. He's been published in several online literary journals including The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, cc&d, Deuce Coupe and Truckin'. His poem "Dancing with Fireflies" was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Prize.