by Joshua Ingle
“You’re just as much of a thinker as I hoped and expected, Thorn. Come. Walk with Me. We’ll discuss everything in time. A demon returning to us is a rare event, requiring celebration. For now, you should take in the sights of Heaven.” He started walking down one of the room’s many gravel paths. “Can I get you anything? Bread? Wine?”
“Answers.” Thorn stood resolute, making no move to follow God.
The finicky, timid fellow who had created the universe turned slowly. His bodyguards readied their swords. Thorn stepped back, but God raised a hand in peace. “Walk with Me, and I will give you answers.”
Thorn noticed that although God stood twenty feet away, His voiced sounded as clear and sharp as if He were standing right next to Thorn’s ears. Thinking over the past few minutes, Thorn couldn’t remember His voice ever having seemed any farther away than that. This is a truly powerful Being. And quirky. I must proceed with care. Hesitantly, Thorn heeded God’s words, and moved toward Him. The bodyguards allowed him into their midst, and Thorn strolled side by side with God.
The Enemy led him beneath a pergola filled with red, blue, and purple flowers, toward a distant colonnade that, Thorn remembered, led out to the rest of Heaven. As they walked, Thorn noticed various animals loitering in the vast room. A group of pangolins were gathered by a brook, and some shoebills nested in the garden nearby. A little echidna waddled across his path.
“Where should we begin?” God asked.
“Begin with the Sanctuaries. Did You truly create them as tests for demons?”
“Yes.”
“Why not just test demons on Earth?”
“I tried that, in the beginning. But you demons have your Rules and mores, keeping any of you from questioning your beliefs. And as your society cemented itself on Earth, fewer and fewer of you were coming back to Me. Sanctuaries offered a perfect lure: the promise of killing humans drew demons in, yet also isolated you from your peers in a controlled environment where I could test you. We started saving more of you that way.”
“Ah. And that’s why only demons who enter Sanctuaries alone—or at least well before the rest of a group—are given a human body…” Like the one I abandoned, just twelve hours ago. “Because a lone demon in a human body might identify with the humans and question his place in the universe, but a group would just murder the humans and celebrate. Their beliefs reinforce each other’s. They’d never change.” Thorn distastefully recalled a memory of his old acquaintance Aponon, who’d once killed a human in a Sanctuary then found the same man alive later on Earth. “But the humans all survive, don’t they? The Sanctuaries are only for demons.”
“Yes, yes, the humans in Sanctuaries are only there for your sake.” God plucked an orange from a passing tree and examined it as they walked. “If they die or don’t pass their test, I just send them to another Sanctuary, and then another, until they pass. Their lives on Earth are their true tests.”
Using real humans as bait seemed grossly inhumane to Thorn. “Then why use real humans at all? Wouldn’t it be less cruel to them if You used fake humans to lure us in?”
“You had to think you could earn prestige in Sanctuaries. You had to think I was protecting something valuable in there. The illusion had to be maintained. Ah, here we are. Behold.” God led Thorn off the gravel path to an expansive area with a marble floor and a large, paneless window that looked out on the city. Thorn stopped short when he walked through a screen of trees and saw what lay beyond the window. Outdoors, a short distance across the city, stood a great wall, hundreds of stories tall and immeasurably wide. It jutted into the sky and nearly blocked out the sun. Numbers and statistics covered its surface. Thorn looked closer, and saw that the digits moved and changed, yet never left the small boxes to which they were confined. The wall thus resembled a giant television screen, divided into tens of thousands of smaller screens, which seemed to alternate to a new set of figures every few seconds. It reminded Thorn of the New York Stock Exchange, which he’d frequented in the late eighties.
God’s attempt to change the topic bothered Thorn, but the wall was so majestic that he didn’t retort. “What is this?”
“A surveillance system of sorts. And also a map. Each box you see represents a Sanctuary. I built this wall and the entire Sanctuary system in the hope that many thousands of you would join us daily, but we only get one of you every few months.”
Now this is downright strange. Thorn wondered if God realized how frightened most demons were of the mysterious Sanctuaries, and how this fear might be foiling His plans to reconnect with His fallen angels. Thorn was still having trouble processing the fact that God even wanted to reconnect. “Why didn’t You simply tell us that You wanted us back? Why go to all this trouble?”
God chuckled indignantly. He tossed His orange upward then caught it as gravity pulled it back down. “Have you heard of a demon called Altherios?”
“I knew him.”
“He’s the reason why.”
Seriously? “Altherios only killed a few dozen angels during his defection ploy. What were their lives compared to the millions of demons who’d return to You if You simply told us that You’ll let us defect?”
“I—You see, I—” God exhaled sharply and shook His head in irritation.
Thorn sensed that he’d touched on something—some secret that God was trying to keep hidden. He continued his onslaught of questions. “Why don’t demons who’ve gone over to Your side ever try to save the rest of us?” The question was rhetorical; Thorn already had a good guess about the answer. “Because it would make the right choice obvious and ruin Your precious tests?”
The exasperated look on God’s face told Thorn that he was right.
“Why did You create anything in the first place? Clearly not to bring glory to Yourself. An omnipotent being would have been able to satisfy all its needs and desires instantly, long ago, having no need to create—”
“I’m not omnipotent!”
Thilial and the bodyguards retreated a few steps at God’s outburst. The harpist, who had followed them here, stopped playing. The revelatory words hung between God and Thorn, the first piece in an enigmatic puzzle that Thorn had been trying to solve for months, if not centuries.
Thorn was stunned. Yet the angels’ expressions remained stoic. They all knew. Of course they all knew.
“I can’t see people’s thoughts, I can’t be present wherever I wish, and I don’t know everything, much less the outcome of My tests. I’m a limited god.” He spun to the harpist. “Keep playing!”
The angel’s fingers darted back to his harp with a fearsome urgency. Sweat drizzled down his brow.
God breathed in and out a few times, calming Himself. Then He smiled and nodded a polite apology. “Sorry.”
He seemed to notice the fear in Thorn’s expression. He waved His hand and a huge rock the size of a bulldozer appeared next to them out of thin air. God made a show of pushing on it, but it didn’t budge. He laughed, for Thorn’s sake—a phony chuckling likely meant to ease Thorn’s tension. “Look,” God said. “I created a rock so big even I can’t move it.”
Thorn laughed politely at the joke. He was angry, but also glad that God had chosen to be benevolent in the face of criticism.
The limited deity gave a long sigh, as if the weight of the universe had just left His shoulders but would soon return. “Uh, clean this rock up, guys.” A dozen angels sprang into action. Each moved with a sense of desperation, like they all had guns to their heads.
God lumbered toward the immense window, and Thorn followed, full of questions. He kept his silence for a few moments though, since God’s confession had illustrated just how little Thorn knew about this being to whom he spoke.
A chinchilla leaped out of the way as God rested His elbows on the sill and gazed out on His celestial city. Leaning out, Thorn realized that this room rested atop a steep cliff face: the mountainside beneath the window dropped straight down. And far below, at the base of the cliff, lay the ci
ty: dense masses of hulking buildings overshadowing a network of golden roads, the Sanctuary feed looming over all. In the distance, another part of the city had been built into the mountain range, lending the cityscape an impressive scale in height as well as width. The dreary red sun loomed just above the mountains as if setting, although mere minutes ago, it had appeared bright and yellow in the sky. Thorn wondered if God’s mood had affected the change. The Creator looked sad. More than sad. Wounded.
“I come from a place you could only dream of,” God started, then coughed a little. “In your nightmares.” He shook His head as He searched for more words. “I needed—I need to create minds. I need to atone—” He turned His gaze from the city to Thorn, who found difficulty meeting those piercing eyes with his own. “I can’t create morally flawless beings. I’d do it if I knew how, but every time I’ve tried, they’ve disappointed Me. They’re dumb robots, and they make horrible companions.
“I can only create beings like Myself, you see: emergent from natural evolution. Flawed beings. But beings who aspire! Who grow! Beings who can become better than they are!” He waved His orange fervently at the rotating planet Earth, floating past the drop-off from Heaven nearly a mile away. Central Africa was coming up.
God’s momentary excitement stalled, then faded. He frowned, and seemed to be embarrassed that He’d gotten so exuberant. He turned back to the city below. “I get so discouraged sometimes, you know. Seeing the wars, the ignorance, the subjugation. My creation continues to disappoint Me even after so much time, and it fills Me with hopelessness. With anger. Sometimes I just want to…” His eyes still on Earth, He clenched His fist around the orange. Pulp burst from fresh lesions in the crushed fruit, and God’s meaning became all too clear. He sighed. “But no, I can’t give up yet. There’s still time. The tests do work, if slowly. The humans grow smarter and more moral over time. The suffering and evil in the world is necessary for that, and if I intervened in Earth’s problems, then yes, I would ruin My precious tests. But I don’t think I could stop the suffering on Earth even if I wanted to.”
“On Earth, perhaps. But what about what happens to people after they die?”
“I keep those people here, as valued friends.”
“And the people who don’t pass their ‘tests’?”
God shook the sugary sludge off His hand, and laughed bitterly. “Look, Thorn. I’m dearly sorry that you’ve suffered. I’m sorry that so much suffering is necessary. I watch it every day, and I feel it, and it breaks My heart. But I just can’t be sure people will be good enough unless they’ve been through the fire.” God’s voice grew even louder, dropping its last small pretense of hospitality. Thorn tried to interject, but God plowed right over him.
“I’m not doing this for Myself. I need strong minds, and I can’t just make them from scratch, so instead I created a world where they could evolve, not just physically, but philosophically, morally. And I needed help, okay? I couldn’t keep track of a whole planet alone, so I created angels to help Me run things. I thought they’d be just like the automatons I’d created before: the failed creations who couldn’t think for themselves. I didn’t know, Thorn! I didn’t know how it would turn out.”
He grabbed Thorn’s collar as if to plead with him, soiling Thorn’s suit with the remnants of the orange He’d crushed. His face was flushed red. A tear escaped His eye. He breathed deeply in and out, in and out, as if trying to calm Himself again. His breath smelled bitter and rotten. “You have to understand, when you angels first started asking questions, when you first started your rebellion, I saw you as malfunctioning machines, not as sentient beings like Me or the humans. I was new at the whole creation thing, and I didn’t realize that I’d accidentally given free will and independent minds to you angels, too.”
Thorn had heard enough of this sob story. He flung God’s hands off of his suit. “So You killed us? We confused You, so You slaughtered millions?”
“It was like deleting a buggy program from a computer, okay? I didn’t know, Thorn! I’ve spent the last four billion Earth years regretting My choice to make war. I didn’t even think My actions would cause a war.”
“And even when we almost destroyed Heaven in our rebellion, You didn’t rethink Your position?” Thorn surprised himself with how much he still cared about the initial rebellion after all this time. Perhaps being face to face with his Creator had brought the resentment out from within him.
God leaned against the windowsill and buried His head in His hands. “No. No, I just decided to get rid of you. I didn’t have the power to kill you all at once, so I sent you to Earth to deal with you later. Stupid choice, really. Days later I spotted My error and realized I’d given you all free will, but by then billions of years had passed on Earth. Humans had already sprung into existence, and the war had grown worse than ever. I couldn’t just extend an olive branch.”
“We would have burned it.”
“Exactly. So I slowed down time. I commanded the angels to retreat to Heaven and end the war. I decided to bunch you in with the humans. To test you, so that the best of you might one day return to Me.” He turned His back to Thorn. “But I learned, to My dismay, that you weren’t like the humans. They were brutal and violent at the beginning, full of tribal chauvinism. You were too, but the humans aspired to better themselves; whereas you demons aspired to nothing but destruction. To selfish gain. I’d inadvertently given you the need for independence, but not the need for growth.” God turned to Thorn and placed a hand on his shoulder. Thorn thought he saw hope in His eyes. “But over time, some of you developed that need anyway.”
Thorn backed up a few steps, away from God’s outstretched arm. God rubbed His hands together, and a twinge of annoyance crept into His voice, souring His kind words. “You’ve never been damned, Thorn. Wanderer and his cronies spread the lie that I wouldn’t accept you back, but I’ve always wanted reconciliation, even with Wanderer and Shenzuul and Gorhrum and the other leaders.”
God’s assurances, His excuses, felt empty to Thorn. God seemed to care about the demons less as prodigal sons and more as test subjects. I and all the other demons are just pawns on a chessboard to Him.
“It would have been easier to just tell us You wanted to reconcile,” Thorn said. “We would have spat in Your face at first, sure, but eventually we’d have come around. And You could have avoided all the whispering we’ve done to humans. All the suffering we’ve caused.”
“I would have liked that, but the tests…” He hesitated. “I almost killed you, you know. After you saw Xeres as an angel a few months back. You weren’t meant to see him, and I was sure that an accident like that would tip My hand and ruin your test.”
Thorn paused a moment, partially for emphasis, partially because God’s words had stunned him. “You would rather have had me dead than let me know that You still cared?”
“Well, I value thinkers too much. You would have been worthless to Me if you hadn’t reached the conclusion to become good on your own. Which you did, fortunately.” He smiled His nervous smile again.
Thorn stepped forward and let the full depth of his vehemence show on his face. “I’ve always reached my conclusions based on the information I had. That’s what a thinker does. I’ve only ever done wrong because You gave me no reason to do otherwise. If I hadn’t seen Xeres that day, I might have turned back to darkness, or killed myself. And You’d have had the impudence to send me to Hell?”
“Oh, take some responsibility, Thorn. It’s not all My fault. It was always your choice to stay in your wicked life.”
“And what about the humans? They’re lost in a philosophical quandary of Your design. How can you expect them to follow You when You’ve given them no evidence that You even exist?”
God broke eye contact and exchanged a cryptic glance with Thilial. One of the bodyguards glared harshly at Thorn, as if he’d asked a forbidden question.
“Um,” God said. He started chewing on His holy thumbnail. “Tell you what. You accept
My offer to become an angel again, and we’ll take you upstairs to give you your wings back. Then we can continue this conversation.”
Thorn watched the room’s many angels watching him. He sensed a trap. If God needs a commitment before revealing any further information, He must be hiding something truly devastating. But what choice do I have? God would certainly send Thorn back to Hell if he refused the offer. But as glad as he was to be safe from hellfire, he wasn’t sure he could stomach serving God again after everything he’d just heard. God’s motives seemed suspect, His methods needlessly convoluted and cruel. He’d brought most of His problems on Himself. Thorn had fought tirelessly to be able to choose his own purpose—had even sacrificed his life for a purpose chosen by no one but himself. He wasn’t ready to surrender that newfound freedom.
Yet now that the sweet prize of life was dangling before him again, he was sorely tempted to seize it, even at the expense of his own autonomy.
Before he could think further on the matter, the pastel tones of the room dipped into a deep red, and a shrill, deafening rumble shook the ground beneath Thorn’s feet. Transparent displays of numbers and images foreign to Thorn rose from the floor. God’s bodyguards glanced around warily, and most of the hundred angels in the room abruptly took flight. Thilial left God’s side. The harpist abandoned his instrument. They joined the others beside a number of the transparent displays, which Thorn guessed were some sort of celestial workstations. The angels’ hands scurried over the digits and figures, manipulating their positions within each display.
“Again?” God said nonchalantly. “So soon?”
God was still standing by the glassless window and studying His city, which seemed even more alive with the bustling of angels than it had a moment ago. The mountains and buildings were all bathed in a reddish tint. Most strikingly, the giant Sanctuary wall’s thousands of small screens had been replaced by one single giant screen.
“What’s happening?” Thorn asked.