“Actually, lose the tank top,” the wardrobe director told Lane. “It works better without it.”
Lane reluctantly pulled off his shirt, feeling exposed in the designer swim jammers they had given him to wear. They left little to the imagination. He crossed his arms.
Kyle tilted his head to the side and looked past the wardrobe director to the rolling waves. “Dude, we could totally be surfing right now.”
A pair of breasts caught Lane’s attention. Areolas the size of sand dollars were exposed to the warm sun and coming closer. The rest of the Brazilian blossomed in Lane’s vision. The only garment she wore was her bikini bottoms. Her name was Juliana, and she was there to seduce Lane and Kyle, though her motives were unknown to me, her thoughts muddled and vague to my perception.
She said, with a Portuguese accent, as she passed by, “Hey boys.”
Lane and Kyle made a timid wave.
Kyle loved ogling women with Lane, even though it made his friend uncomfortable. Kyle put an arm around Lane’s shoulder. “Nice wood.”
Lane blushed and refrained from covering himself. “Dude, I’m not cut out for this.”
“Come on, man. If we don’t join in, we don’t get to go to the after party, and dude, it’s like our best chance to get laid. With models. You know how horny I’ve been.”
Their one-room bungalow afforded them very little privacy.
Lane lowered his voice. “I don’t fit in with these people. I’m not a model.”
These people weren’t actually models either. They were human, and very beautiful, with perfect skin, athletic bodies, and striking features, but something had changed them, I just didn’t know what. Revelation was so close, and something unknown, and powerful, was blocking me. It was maddening.
“We are going for candid,” Calvin, the photographer, reminded everyone. “When you touch, I want you to really feel it.”
His assistant stood ready with a second camera.
Calvin divided the models into two co-ed football teams.
Lane clutched the ball and bent over. His teammates formed the front line. Juliana pressed the back of her hands between his legs.
“Hike!”
She threw a perfect spiral way off target, and the ball landed in the surf. The models ran for it. Throughout the rest of the game, wet cloth, some see-through, clung as a second skin.
After an hour of spirited play, with only some of the interaction being photographed, Lane caught an impossible long ball, ran it in for the winning touchdown, and performed a celebration dance that included throwing his swim jammers into the surf. The girls swarmed him and cheered, their breasts bouncing in the sun.
“Lucky bastard,” Kyle said.
The rest of the men weren’t about to let Lane get all the attention, and they stripped too. The group, now less inhibited than ever, ran and jumped and played water tag naked, the air filled with ecstatic laughter.
Lane, surging with confidence, chased down the Brazilian and slung her over his shoulder while she giggled and yelled in Portuguese. Calvin took a barrage of pictures to capture the moment. Kyle stood back, watching, just thankful to see his friend finally come out of his shell.
It was an erotic fantasy of community and belonging that was too good to be true. The two surfers were being played. As the day proceeded, I still couldn’t figure out why. The models’ destiny threads, no matter which direction in time I searched, quickly became obscured. For the first time in my life, I started to doubt myself.
At the after-party on the beach, with the sunset matching the coals in the fire, people shared bottles of expensive liquor and weed. Kyle’s arm was around Lane’s shoulder, his hand comfortable on Lane’s chest. Juliana rested her head on Lane’s stomach, bodies on all sides needing no space of their own.
“Dude,” Kyle said to the embers that swirled like fireflies above the entangled mass. “How lucky are we?”
The party, fueled by more than weed and alcohol, escalated into a hedonistic fever dream. I knew now that the orange juice was some kind of aphrodisiac.
No. Not the juice. The bugs in the juice. Lane had wiped the head of one onto his board shorts the day before. The bugs had affected everyone at the party. Before a full on orgy started, Lane and Kyle led Juliana back to their bungalow for a night’s worth of debauched lovemaking.
The models dispersed and traveled back to the construction site. Any thread that went up the red road got confused with everyone else's, just like with the drivers and the construction crew. A thread would look like two, or fade out, or double back on itself.
In the morning, Lane and Kyle had figured out that the modeling agency was a sham, but by then, they had already been seduced by the potential community and the effects of the bugs.
Lane didn’t reconcile with his mother. Kyle’s only connection was Lane. They had little to leave behind. When they joined the House of Cabal, I was cut off from their destiny threads, just like with everyone who had joined before them.
Lane and Kyle were a dead end. Angels were made to witness God’s creation, to see past free will to the true nature of reality. The destiny threads should have made everything simple, the way they did for every other witness angel that explored the timestream. Something was wrong with me.
I followed other recruits, spanning over a decade. Each time a person joined the House of Cabal, my sight was blocked. It never failed. And it wasn’t just their destiny threads either. The parts of their minds that had answers were invisible to me as well. This wasn’t just me, I realized. No other angel had seen this story either. Otherwise, the story of the House of Cabal would have already been told by another angel.
What if the place the House of Cabal was constructing wasn’t part of God’s design? Sacrilegious, I knew, but maybe also an answer to my prayers. If I could find a way to see what other angels couldn’t, maybe I could compose an opera worthy of the Alpha and Omega. I could bring God revelation.
My most telling clue, after all my searching, was still that the House of Cabal had funded Dana’s expedition. Money had been deposited into a Swiss bank account years before Dana and Thomas had even heard of the cuneiform tablet. Was there a link between the bugs in the juice and the Eden mites in the desert? They felt connected, and normally that was all a witness angel needed to travel the timeline and find answers, but in this case it wasn’t working. I had a blind spot, and there was no way to know how much was hidden. The possibilities were endless. I needed a strategy no witness angel had used before.
Sick of my impotence, I went back to the Garden of Eden for answers.
In Earth’s timestream, observation was the only wise move. Interrogating Juliana or the truck drivers or anyone else keeping secrets could have unintended consequences. Dana Parr, on the other hand, was in the garden in a separate dimension outside the timeflow. It seemed horribly primitive, but I could politely ask Dana questions to find a new lead. And if that didn’t work, I could ask less politely.
Torture figured prominently in the destiny threads of many martyrs. In war stories it was everywhere. I saw Omar al-Jamadi interrogated in Abu Ghraib. He confessed everything. The guards didn’t care about the tablet. When confessing didn’t stop the pain, Omar tried to invent what they wanted to hear.
Uriel, like a statue, stood guard at his post inside the garden gate. If I hadn’t witnessed him massacre the expedition, I would think he’d never moved from his post.
“Pinsleep!” His weaponized holy fire illuminated his pleased expression. “You were exploring the timeline!”
He sounded as if greeting a long lost friend, though he still focused his attention on the entrance. I didn’t understand his excitement.
“You haven’t been in your tree,” he added.
“I’m not always in my tree.”
“You found your muse, didn’t you? I told them. I told the other witness angels you weren’t lazy. You were just waiting for the right moment.”
Ignoring him, I continued on to my ban
jo tree.
“Dana?” I called into the dark hollow. “I’m home.”
Dana and her husband were gone.
III
“The two humans were under my care! You had no right!”
“What are you talking about?” Uriel was curves, his figure swollen muscles with little bone.
In contrast, I was all hard angles, probably why Dana thought I might be a machine. “What did you do to them?”
“Them? Oh, you must have heard. An army with twenty-first-century weapons tried to enter the garden, but I took care of them. I thought maybe bullets would hurt me.” He beamed with pride. “They poke tiny holes, nothing more. Swords are more dangerous.” The fire in his palm flared. “I’ve waited for that day for far too long, the reason I was created. I did it! I killed them all.”
“I saw.”
“Ha ha! You saw me?! I inspired the great Pinsleep to get off his ass!” His deep rumble of laughter scared away many of the gathered insects.
I glared, not thinking him funny.
“You think you’ll never find an opera worthy of God. But you will. My day came and so will yours.”
“They were under my care.”
“You mean the humans in your hollow? They asked about you. They wanted to know when you would return. I didn’t know what to say.”
“You mean you didn’t incinerate them?”
Uriel clenched his fist so that no flames could escape. “I would never kill in the garden! What kind of cherubim do you take me for?”
“It’s just… You massacred those people.”
“Those people were warned! Those people knew not to seek out the garden. They did it anyway. Typical.”
“Typical? It has never happened before.”
“You know what I mean. Humans! No offense. Your humans seem pleasant enough. Very polite. But they act newly born. They’ve been changing things too. I told them they were always here, but they didn’t understand. I’m not even sure they believe in God.”
“Do you know where they went? I’d rather not search the whole garden. I need to ask the female some questions.”
“Is your opera about Dana?”
“Just tell me.”
“I don’t follow the humans around all day. I have better things to do.”
“Uriel. Out with it.”
“I’ve heard talk. You witness angels are a chatty bunch. The humans spend time down by the river. Apparently Dana and Thomas prefer the company of mammals. God only knows why.”
I started to go, but Uriel spoke up. I was shocked to see that he faced me and not the gate.
“Make sure these two humans don’t get into trouble like the last ones. What were their names?”
“Adam and Eve.”
“That’s right. I remember their faces. But you! You remember their names!”
Uriel had never asked about Adam and Eve before. He always humored me, but I had assumed he thought I was delusional.
“Thank you, Uriel.” I touched his shoulder. “You are a good friend. I didn’t mean to doubt you. Your wrath was impressive. I’m honored to be your witness.”
“The honor is mine.”
“There is not a more honorable cherub in all God’s army.”
“Pinsleep?” Uriel’s good humor fell a bit and he sounded lost. “Do you know why God brought them here?”
“The two humans? I’m not sure He did.”
Uriel laughed again and turned back to the gate. “If he didn’t want them here, he would just banish them and be done with it.”
“I don’t think it’s as simple as that.”
“Everything is simple for God.”
“But what God wants is never simple.”
IV
At an especially beautiful bend in the river of the lower valley, Dana and her husband passed the time, having never looked so good.
A plethora of mammals congregated, including freshwater dolphins and countless feline and canine breeds that only previously existed on Earth. While the mammals weren’t as fascinating as the ectothemic creatures of the underground and northern woods, it figured that these commonplace animals were more comforting to humans accustomed to Earth.
Dana lounged among leopards.
Primates swung in the canopy above and fed on fruits and berries.
“Pinsleep!”
I darted through the open field toward her. “I told you not to leave my hiding place. You talked to Uriel. He killed your whole expedition.” I hoped to give her pause for disobeying me.
She laughed and tossed her luxurious hair. She wore a living necklace of dragon flies and a crown of emerald horn beetles. Besides that, she was naked.
“We couldn’t stay in your hollow forever. We thought you were never coming back.”
Life in paradise had sculpted her legs, and she stretched the taut muscles like a dancer, pointing her foot.
Her husband swam in the water some distance away, his legs kicking.
“Did any other angels see you?”
“Look at my husband! His spine has healed!”
“Of course it has. You’re in paradise. What did you expect?”
“You told us the angels would cast us out. But the garden is our home. We have always been here.”
“And yet I’m more interested in your life on Earth. I have questions.”
A leopard batted at Dana’s head, and the horn beetles flew away.
She laughed.
The leopard batted at her again, this time hard enough to knock her over.
“Hey!” She pounced back, and they wrestled in the grass among the legs of a passing tower of giraffes.
“You were protected in my hollow,” I told her. She rolled the leopard onto its back and pinned its front paws to the ground. “The other angels have seen you!”
“You don’t have to worry. They’re leaving our story for you to tell. They look forward to hearing your opera about us.”
“You don’t have a story. You can never leave.”
The leopard licked her face.
She rolled off, giggling. “Adam and Eve escaped. I’ve seen their afterimages along the shore. I’ve seen them hiding in the trees.”
I crossed all my arms. “You two are no Adam and Eve.”
“You’re so grumpy.” She brushed herself off. “Why would we leave this place? You told us yourself: this paradise was made for me and Thomas.”
“God created it for two flawless proto-humans, not two spoiled American brats. Look at all these mammals. You have turned this place into a cliché. Who knows what damage you’re doing? You were manipulated to come here by a secret organization. You’re part of a vast conspiracy.”
She rolled her eyes.
I continued, undeterred. “This place may seem like a dream come true, but eventually you’ll understand that paradise is a prison. All it takes is time, and time is all you have here.”
“I’ve never been happier, and I’ve been here for as long as I can remember. Pinsleep, you told me when I arrived that everything would be okay. It’s more than okay. Look around. I was so frightened, and now I can’t even remember why.”
“You were frightened of the insects. You were frightened of me!”
“It’s like my whole being is expanding. I am the insects. I am the mountains. You say that everyone in our expedition died. I laughed, because…”
A far mountain range parted down the middle as a grove of deciduous trees continued their migration south.
“None of that matters anymore,” she said, still in awe of this place. “Life on Earth… It was a dream, and not a very convincing one.”
“I came back to ask you a question. Then I’ll let you be.”
“Is this about your opera?”
“What have the other angels been telling you?”
“Don’t be so defensive. They care about you. They just want you to be happy.”
“I don’t need their concern.”
“You’ve found your muse!”
&n
bsp; Dana was my muse, but I didn’t want it to go to her head. She already acted like she owned Eden’s Garden. “Calm down. I’m still exploring the timeline. I thought I might have found something, these two men in California, but I ran into a bit of a snag. Do you know anything about the House of Cabal?”
She shook her head and continued to watch the mountains shift. The river reversed direction.
“They were preparing for some event in 2000, but I lost the trail. I looked at your destiny thread on Earth and didn’t see any immediate connections. The House of Cabal put money aside for you and your husband in a Swiss bank account, and in 2003, the money was transferred into your expedition fund.”
“That was a lifetime ago.”
“Anything. A name.”
She shooed away a pack of pygmy pachyderms that were congregating on the riverbank and tested the water with her hand. “It’s getting colder. This place is always changing. Did I do this? You once said you changed the course of the river with Adam and Eve. I always wondered if you were being serious.”
Her husband swam toward the shore with a pod of dolphins and river cats.
“Dana, everything here is connected. Your whims and emotions are part of that web. You still think this place is like Earth. It’s not.”
She stood up and wiped her wet hand on her hip. “Everett Grimes. He might know something.”
I stopped her before she explained. “That should be enough. His destiny thread? I can already tell it’s something special. I need to go back into the timestream.”
“You’re leaving? You haven’t even met my husband yet. He wanted to thank you.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll be here in the garden when I come back. You both will. You’re never leaving.”
“The other angels, they said you have a human form. Can I see it? They say you’re beautiful.”
“Maybe one day. After I compose my opera.”
She had already grown into the queen I knew she would become. I wanted to stay. She reminded me of Eve now more than ever.
But while she was growing more familiar, the garden was growing more alien. The place that had helped me reconstruct my memory of Eve and Adam and our time together was disappearing. The garden was adapting itself to its new caretakers.
House of Cabal Volume One: Eden Page 4