Protection, on the other hand… A disgruntled citizen wouldn’t even consider directly protesting against the only legal authority left. That’s a good way to wake up at three in the morning with a black bag over your head on the way to your last three days on Earth.
Ensuring the peace and prosperity comes at a high price to citizens who don’t have enough credits to feed themselves much less fend off being remanded to Protection for open disobedience.
Regardless, the credits to repair, replace, or renovate my church have never been an issue. I know better than to ask how now, but it’s not hard to get the credits to keep the offering baskets moving during my sermons. The archdiocese always approves my requisitions.
It might have something to do with the fact that my beautiful Saint James Cathedral is the biggest congregation in the Northwest Quarter, or maybe it’s just that I never miss an afternoon mini-drone credit pickup.
Whatever it is, the credits I collect don’t stay here very long. Offerings are scooped up and sent to the archdiocese on a mini-drone carrier right after morning mass. If I need credits for anything I have to requisition them back. It all seemed very inefficient to me, so I inquired about it with the archbishop one Sunday afternoon over coffee … and the church ladies’ congregation carrot cake, of course.
The Lord’s ways are mysterious, I was informed, but the church’s credit dealings … are secret. There are no credits at a church. Remember that, I think to myself.
Why are these little lost jackers…? I think it, but I know the answer. Only one reason a citizen, robbing his dinner at the Black Market, decides to get dessert at a church—Judgment. They all want Judgment. One more high to try and figure out who they really are. And that’s what my mother had meant about archangels—all God’s creations, just trying to understand who they are. Too bad that when they find out, there will only be more questions.
Used to be that I had plenty of Judgment to distribute to a citizen in need of it. I got it straight from the source, so to speak. On any given Sunday, I filled more citizens’ minds with images of angels and demons, Hell and damnation, and sin and salvation than the people who manufactured the anesthetic sleep serum. It certainly wasn’t my sermons. And why not, the beautifully adorned inside of my downtown cathedral would leave even the most skeptical cynic with visions of gods and devils. But the poor misguided citizens looking for redemption in a needle… I’m sure some of their souls are just as lost as mine.
Maybe… When your immortal soul is as difficult to find as mine was, it’s hard to work up the empathy to help someone else find theirs. And in my line of work, that is a very big problem. There’s not a night that I don’t go to sleep on the big leather couch in my office, wondering what I’m doing in this eternity. Because if I’m not saving souls here—finding the faith to save my own as well—just what am I doing? What act of God am I?
I walk across my office to the door that leads out into the main cathedral. I pause and look at the doorknob, wondering if I should take a little side trip to the basement—maybe dig up some protection of my own. But I’ve helped this class of misguided miscreant find their way back from Judgment before. I’d be better served getting the damage requisition forms out of my desk so I can send them over to the archdiocese with the morning mini-drone’s other paperwork.
The Black Market jackers never do more than a couple thousand credits of damage, and they’re rarely violent. Self-judging is one thing—every citizen needs a little something to keep them going—but violence against a priest? Assaulting a Protection agent is the only way to get condemned to the interrogation wing of a sanatorium quicker.
I glance at my desk. Paperwork… Painful, I think. There are forms for everything now. I put my hand on the door handle and chuckle a little—the authorization forms to replace doorknobs are more formidable than the ones we used to have to fill out for “Acts of God” insurance claims.
When I slowly open the door to my office, behind and beyond the pulpit, the brightest light I have ever seen hits me so hard in the face that I have to squint, and both of my hands go to my face. I don’t realize how hard I cover my eyes until I feel the pain from my glasses digging into the bridge of my nose.
I try to peer through my fingers, but it’s like looking into the sun. And compared to the eternal gray of my beautiful lost Emerald City… The white-hot truth of the sun is nothing compared to how blinding this light is. It might have even burned the retinas of my eyes.
To a Seattleite, something as bright as the sun can leave orange spots in your eyes from just thinking about it. I wince in pain, cover my eyes again, and turn away.
I can sense the ball of light—that’s what it looked like before I closed my eyes—watching me? That can only mean…? … God? It’s just not possible, I think before the brightness moves above and away from me—gets dimmer—and I turn back and open my eyes. I catch the last glimpse of whatever it is as the ball of light streaks out a huge hole in the middle of the roof over the main pews.
I’m left with a burning streak of orange in my vision for a few seconds for trying to catch a peek at… Mother of Mercy, I think, it can’t be! When I think about it, maybe I should have dug up my book.
I’ll have to admit, at first I thought it might have been God, but that was the first time I saw an archangel in person, and it might have been the most spectacular thing I’d have ever imagined … if it weren’t for the second one.
I can feel the cold and the mist from the drizzle outside, coming through the roof. I close and open my eyes a few times. Then I squint and rub them under my glasses, trying to make the burning sensation go away. The feeling in my head reminds me of that trip home from the State Med-mart with my mother.
I take my glasses off and put them in my pocket—I don’t want to drop them on the floor again. I’m still not ready to use the little chain. Denial is almost as powerful as guilt.
When the bright hole in my vision finally subsides, I can see a fuzzy red shape, surrounded by the light blue haze, on the floor in the middle of the main aisle to the pulpit. I put my glasses back on and in that very moment, something that I have been unable to bring myself to believe in for my entire life, no matter how hard I try, finally shows up.
In that instant, when I see the figure on the floor, motionless with the huge cross from my roof sticking out of its stomach, bleeding onto the floor of my church… I have to tell you it is the very moment, the very second, when I finally believe there might just be a benevolent God in Heaven after all.
I’ll have to die again before I realize how wrong I am.
I know that it sounds crazy—not believing until now—given who I am … what I am. I guess I’m so bad at hiding it from myself that I think everyone else can see right through my self-deception, too. But people want to believe. That’s what they’re programmed to do—have faith. I learned that at seminary. All about the most powerful drug of all, belief.
Faith that things will get better, faith in the system that enslaves them, and an unshakeable, indestructible faith in the benevolence of their lovers and leaders … despite all hard evidence to the contrary.
The whole ugly world is built on faith, in one way or another. It certainly isn’t built on truth. I know that now, too.
So when a citizen sees me every Sunday in church or when I visit the wretched souls at the sanatorium downtown… When I get all clean and pressed up in my dress blacks, accented only by the little square white patch on my collar, to a lost citizen or lonely parishioner, I look like faith—feel like belief. Because that is what I’m supposed to be, so that’s what I am. Everything works that way.
The church figured it out first, eons ago. The State just followed their lead. They made some improvements to the system—applied a little more direct physical pressure to the people. Although, from what I know now, the Clergy are not above applying some of their own direct pressure when they encounter … anyone who won’t believe the way they are supposed to.
Re
gardless, the results are the same, as long as people keep believing—though “fearing” might be a better word—they keep doing … anything you want them to.
I’ve fallen a long way since I had any belief left in me. But you know that already, don’t you. No matter, we’ll get to that part soon enough.
I don’t know what I believe in now, but this is… I wouldn’t have believed it myself had it not been for all the black blood … and the huge gray wings.
I pull my metal flask out of my pocket. I keep the little leather-bound bottle for just this kind of… I have no idea what kind of situation this is. Or at least I had no idea at the time. A test? Another trial, maybe? I thought. Or maybe just some bad Judgment? Could be that I’m hallucinating, though she’s not around to ambush me with a vial of sleep syrup today, so… Or maybe I’m dreaming or I drank too much and I’m just snoring it off, drooling on some paperwork at my desk again. I’m not proud of it, but it happens. You can cast stones at me later if you like.
I unscrew the little cap to my long since favorite way to pray and I take a good long sip. I wince at the angry bite of the State’s swill. I wipe my mouth with my handkerchief and glance back to the hole in my roof. “Act of God,” I mutter to myself.
Then I walk toward the dead angel on the floor of my church.
— CLI —
I KNOW WHAT you want to ask—this isn’t how I’m supposed to be. How did I fall all the way down to this level? Where did my cynicism and lack of faith come from? I’m a priest after all. And why aren’t I more afraid and quaking in my dress blacks like you’ve seen me before? It’s not the State courage in my flask, I can assure you of that.
I like a little nip every now and then. It helps me stomach the lunacy we let happen. However, I’m far from an impotent old boozer.
But if you’ve come this far, we both know how this ends, so there’s got to be only one question that you could ask. Believe me, I’ve asked myself that very question for two eternities now.
How did all this happen? How did I get like this? … It’s not how you might think.
First, let me tell you, there are all kinds of ways to stay out of trouble. The easiest is to stay clear of its path in the first place. But curiosity is more powerful than good judgment, even if too much of it can get you killed. And my lust for knowledge needed no inspiration from the church—as a boy, I had an insatiable curiosity long before my indoctrination to the Clergy’s version of faith.
They don’t teach “mind your own misery” at seminary. In fact, they taught us just the opposite. I guess I would have to say that as “we” now, wouldn’t I? We were trained to… Time… I still can’t get used to experiencing everything before and after it happened … happens. The perception and relativity to a man isn’t as potent as it is to an angel, but all eternities are like that—relative to one’s place in his or her own time. Seen through the perception of your position in the grand scheme of Life, time can get confusing.
Eh, listen to me. Sounds like I’ve been unscrewing the cap on my flask too much, doesn’t it? Trust me, it didn’t make sense to me until I actually experienced it for myself. But time lapse is a real thing, as real as the Devil, anyway. Now … where was I?
Ah, yes. At seminary they taught us that everyone and everything is our business. And that is the way God wanted—wants it. Assist citizens with their troubles—help them mind their misery. Focus them with the stick of the understanding that they will never be enough, yet give them a slice of carrot cake while pretending they might. That was the game. I learned to play it well.
Staying out of trouble in the process? For a man in my position, with my responsibilities, hiding in my office while trouble rummages around in my Lord’s house is never an option. For someone who spent his life preaching penance from the pulpit and scraping souls out of the sewer, I had to try and avoid the many pitfalls of my eternity … right out in the open for all to witness. You know that. You’ve seen me, pretending to cower and shiver like a helpless citizen.
In the animal kingdom that kind of behavior invites aggression. Out here in the murky gray of the new society we call freedom, it would probably be no different. I would’ve most certainly ended up at a “fifty”—incarcerated and tortured in a sanatorium. That is, if it weren’t for two things:
First, Protection frowns on any type of aggression but its own. Our black-clothed and brutally efficient new police force are funny like that, I suppose. Can’t have the populace fearing anyone but the proper authorities, can you? Bad for … prosperity. And they should know, it’s their job to ensure the “Peace and Prosperity … for All.” By now, you know that isn’t as it seems either.
If there were peace and prosperity for everyone, there would be no need for dissent and then there would be no need to squash it. Absent that, what need have you of Protection? But that is the lie beneath the lie, isn’t it?
Protection needs dissatisfied citizens more that the citizens need protection. One doesn’t exist outside the misery of the other. Which one you think I mean, I’ll let you decide.
The second thing keeping me from becoming a guest at the old brick and brimstone brutality palace downtown, known and feared only as the Fifty, the church—my clergy brethren… Let’s just say that I would rather be in a cell with a Protection interrogation team than some of the faithful that I saw bred and reborn at seminary. If you end up on the sinning wing of the Fifty, there is no prayer in Heaven or Hell to save you.
So before, when I said that you don’t know me like you think, I was being truthful. You know the man I wanted you to know. The one I show people so I can—could hide in plain sight.
But now, in order for you to understand why things ended for me the way they did… The only way to understand my end … is to start at the beginning.
Don’t worry, we’ll get to this dead angel on the floor of my church soon enough.
— CLII —
WAY BACK BEFORE our world turned crazy—before everything changed and the huge scrapers of the city sprawled and crawled and infected their way out from downtown Seattle, like a virus searching for fresh flesh to devour… Before you had to go north past Mount Vernon, south past Tacoma and Puyallup, or east all the way beyond North Bend… Before the mountains and the ocean stopped the advance of the dark gray Emerald City, my family and I lived on a small farm, backed up against the western shadow of the Cascade Mountains. We hovered and waited in a soggy little dairy-cow-infested mudhole called Duvall.
At least there were cows there, before the State figured out how to make synthetic milk laced with tiny traces of Judgment. Then, that changed too and the dairy cows went the way of the Duwamish Indians and Chief Seattle.
Didn’t know it was named after an Indian chief, did you? Only their names are left behind to remind anyone they ever existed. Soon enough, that is every man’s fate.
Judgment in the milk? Hah, as if that surprises you!
Soon enough, fearing outright rebellion, the State outlawed public dissent. Eventually, the Constitution was damned to a special place in the Hell of our memories.
When it started, things didn’t go too well for the State. Lots of citizens, accustomed to thinking, feeling and speaking their own minds, decided that being disarmed to ensure public peace was bad enough, but then being stripped of their right to protest in order to ensure prosperity made even less sense. They were right of course, but when the shooting started—outmanned, outgunned, and outhated—it hardly mattered. The results were inevitable—thinking citizens became the enemy of the State. And that was just another way to call them dead.
My dad told me once that to the average citizen, blindly believing what he is fed and forced to do each day, “a righteous man with a gun in his hand looks evil. While the evil one, in front of a PIN news camera, smiling and spouting blasphemous falsities with his long lying tongue, seems good. Belief kills as easily as a bullet, Benito.”
My father was not a religious man, per se, as you will soon see, but he
was … educated, I guess you would call it. He would occasionally recite scripture, buried in between the lines of his lessons, in a “know thy enemy” pathway of self-righteousness that I would soon be taught to follow.
I only ever called him “Colonel”—a veteran of one of the State’s wars against the Middle Eastern “ ’stans,” he told me—and his “isms” were like that. You would do well to pay attention to them as I recount my testament. It could save your life one day. I only half-heeded his words and look what happened to me.
The Protection Information Network? The PIN? That’s the nightly news. The Colonel made me watch it with him and he would ask me each time what I thought the talking heads were really saying. None of my answers were even close, he informed me.
I soon came to the conclusion that he didn’t have the patience to let me figure it out on my own. Later, I would come to understand that what he really didn’t have … was the time.
One evening, when none of my answers were to the Colonel’s satisfaction, he marched me out to the pigpens and told me to separate a sow out to slaughter. Then he sat on the fence above me and watched while I slipped and slid through the mud and pig poop, trying to push one of our near-feral hogs to his own judgment.
The Colonel had a weird way of perching on the top rail of the corrals. He would clasp his fingers together in a fist—he only had three of them on his left hand, but after the first time, I knew not to ask about it. I guess war wounds were like that.
Then he would hold his arms tight in front of him and push his head forward and stare at me. He looked like a big, praying hawk, staring down at a field, watching and waiting, wishing for a mouse he could swoop down on.
The bottoms of his boots looked like they could almost curl backward, allowing him to hang on with his toes. It was unsettling, but when I hesitated and stared at him, he spurred me to my task.
“Get to it,” he said, “before Judgment Day comes and we are sent to Perdition with the rest of these swine.”
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 56