Back to the drawing board

The door of the little church closed behind me with a creak. I could have kicked myself. What the hell had I gotten myself into? On the one hand, strangely enough, I felt fully recharged for the first time in a long time. On the other hand... What the FUCK!!!

I noticed that I was gripping the Demon's steering wheel so tightly that my fingers were turning white. Slowly, I drove in the direction Casiel had indicated. I didn't take much notice of my surroundings or the town center because I was so preoccupied with what had happened in that little church. I drove into the motel parking lot and saw that the diner shared the parking lot. I put a smile on my face as I walked in and booked a room. The room wasn't anything special, but it was clean and tidy. A relief compared to other motels and hotels I had seen on my trip. A world of difference from the places I had slept in over the years when I was still working. I threw my duffel bag on the bed and fished out a fresh outfit. Louisiana reminded me where I was: summer, hot, humidity that made your body seriously consider growing gills and sweating. Yep, it was high time for a shower, clean underwear, and a fresh T-shirt. The bathroom was a pleasant surprise. Not that it was large or luxurious, but because it was spacious enough and the bathroom furniture didn't look like it could fall apart at any moment. I took a lukewarm shower, turned the water to icecold for the last minute or so. And let the events in the church pass through my mind once more. The cheerful, young-looking Angel with her beautiful blue eyes. Lucifer, the damned King of Hell, the fallen angel who apparently hadn't fallen as far as humanity believed, in his three-piece suit, as if he had walked away from behind the desk of a CEO of a multinational. Well, that wasn't actually far from the truth. When I thought about it, he was indeed a CEO, and that of the largest multinational that had ever existed. I wondered how many permanent guests I had sent to his multinational during my years in uniform. A thought I quickly shook off because I felt it was dragging me back into the abyss.

I slipped into an old pair of 501s, jeans that had clearly seen better days but were so comfortable that I simply couldn't part with them. A pair of black boots and a gray muscle shirt. I glanced in the mirror and decided I looked more than presentable, then made my way across the parking lot toward the diner. The moment I stepped inside, it was as if I had walked through a portal straight back to the 1950s or 1960s. The difference was that everything not only looked authentic but was also extremely neat and very well maintained. I slid into a booth and glanced at the menu. After a few minutes, I still hadn't made a choice because nothing caught my eye at first glance. A young blonde woman in a typical diner uniform from that period approached my table. She smiled sincerely:

"Hi there, have you made your choice?"

I smiled back and answered truthfully:

"To be honest, no. I'm hungry for something, but I don't really know what."

She giggled softly and said:

"Dry rub with roasted potatoes, coming right up."

I looked at her amused, and she clarified before disappearing back behind the counter:

"Trust me, you'll love it."

"Okay, surprise me."

I got up because I wanted to use the restroom. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a police car pull into the parking lot just before I disappeared into the restroom. A few minutes later, I was back in my seat, peering out the window at what I could see of Florence. Even before he spoke to me, I had smelled the leather of his gun belt and the oil on his weapon.

"When I saw the license plate on that Demon, GR6A, I didn't know what to think. Should I hope that someone else with that letter combination on their license plate was driving around for completely innocent reasons? Should I say a quick prayer that God would have mercy on our souls? Or should I fall to my knees and thank God that you showed up here? For fuck's sake, GR6A, really?"

I looked at the deputy who had come to my table and asked:

"Is there another license plate for me, Sarge?"

He seemed to think deeply for a moment and then replied with a smile:

"Grim Reaper Six Actual... No, I assume another license plate for you is impossible, boss."

He slid into the boat opposite me and said:

"With all due respect, sir, you're the last person I expected to see in Florence, but at the same time, now that I actually see you sitting here, I'm not surprised at all."

I looked him deep in the eyes for a few seconds and then said softly:

"Jimmy, that friendly young lady behind the counter promised to surprise me with a dry rub that's finger-licking good. I have a feeling you're dying to tell me something that would ruin my appetite. So may I suggest you wait until I've at least tasted that legendary dry rub?"

Now the Deputy Sheriff smiled and said:

"Yep, that's something I wouldn't want to ruin. Miles may be getting a day older, but his dry rub seems to get better every day."

The young blond came over to my table with a huge plate filled to the brim. She placed it in front of me, and the smell alone was enough to make me drool immediately, as if I were one of Pavlov's dogs that had heard a bell ring. She put her hand on the officer's shoulder and asked:

"Honey, you two seem to know each other."

He nodded eagerly and said:

"Yeah, babe, this is Captain Markus Cage. He was my commanding officer in Iraq and Afghanistan. I owe my life to this man, and not just once..."

The young woman's eyes widened and she held out her hand, saying:

"Captain Cage, it's an honor. May I thank you for keeping this flatfoot alive. Without you, I would never had the change to meet my husband."

I smiled at her and said:

"No need to thank me, ma'am, I was just doing my job. Uncle Sam gave me a bunch of young functional alcoholics on the condition that I return them in one piece. I'm a man of my word, as you can see."

This made her smile a little, and she said:

"Nevertheless, thank you."

She glanced at Jimmy for a moment, then looked back at me with a mischievous look in her eyes and said:

"You know what, I'll be done in half an hour. Why don't you tag along? I'm sure Jimmy has a few good bottles hidden somewhere in his mancave, and I think we have a... um... little surprise for you."

Without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked back toward the kitchen. I looked at the man across from me and said:

"I assume this wasn't so much an invitation as an order from the lady of the house?"

He smiled softly, nodded, and said:

"Yep..."

I shook my head:

"I hope you have some drinkable vodka among those bottles."

The moment I left the Church, Lucifer appeared in the square in front of the entrance to the palace in Heaven. His twin, the Archangel Michael, saw him appear, stepped up to the Devil and said:

"Either you just bit into a lemon or you just heard something you don't like very much."

Lucifer looked at the broad, blond Angel and said wearily:

"Tell me, Michael, how is it that at the end of the day, I'm always right, yet I'm always the rebel, the troublemaker?"

Michael shrugged and said with a smirk on his face:

"No idea, the curse of the firstborn, heavy is the crown of the king, something like that..."

The Devil took a deep breath, shook his head, and muttered:

"Father must be so proud of you lot... Even if he had done it on purpose, he could not possibly have created a bunch of bigger idiots."

A little louder, he said:

"Michael, we are twins, we came into existence at the same time!"

The Archangel looked serious for a moment and seemed deep in thought until he said:

"Yep, I seem to remember something about that. Weren't you the Light and I the Darkness, you the Matter and I the Antimatter? That would explain why I have Mom's good looks and brains and you have whatever Dad had left over."

Lucifer sighed deeply and said:

"Michael, may Dad have mercy on you, but one of these days I'm going to hit you so hard on the head that you'll wake up into next week..."

At this, the twins began to laugh heartily and Michael said:

"Come on, Dad and Mom are waiting for you in their study."

"Oh yes, I'd better hurry up and tell him that his latest plan is as leaky as a basket before it's even fully implemented."

To my own surprise, my plate was completely empty. I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten so heartily and felt regret at the sight of an empty plate. Jimmy had watched the spectacle across the table in silence, smiling broadly, while I had practically inhaled my food. I wiped the sweat from my forehead, dried my hands, and simply said:

"Damn... "

He nodded and said:

"Yep, not bad for a Seabee, right?"

"A Seabee? Okay, now I simply have to shake that man's hand. When push comes to shove and I ever have to make a deal or a bet with the devil, from today onwards I have an ace up my sleeve..."

Although this last sentence was meant more as a joke, Jimmy's face suddenly became deadly serious. He asked:

"Boss, what are you really doing in Florence?"

I stared at him for a second or two and finally said:

"A meal like this deserves a good cigar to finish it off. Since I'm an upstanding law-abiding citizen, I'm going to smoke it outside so you don't have to write me a ticket."

Without waiting for an answer, I got up, paid Jimmy's wife, Michele's colleague because she herself was nowhere to be seen, and walked outside. In the parking lot, I took an antique silver box out of my back pocket and my trusty Zippo. My former sergeant followed me closely and watched as I leisurely lit a Cohiba Mini. Two deep puffs later, I said:

"I was just driving. Where to? I really had no idea. Just away from the demons in my head. I didn't even know Florence existed, Jimmy. But it looks like I'll be sticking around your beautiful little coastal town for a while."

He sighed deeply and rubbed his face. It was clear that something was bothering him, but he didn't seem to know where to start or how to put it into words. I thought I had a pretty good idea and decided to find out if I was right. I said:

"I've finished the dry rub, so there's no longer any danger of you spoiling my appetite, Sarge. So spill it! Does this happen to have anything to do with a beautiful young woman, about the size and weight of a Chihuahua but far too cheerful to be related to one, who goes by the name of Casiel?"

His eyes widened and I saw him take a deep breath. Even without him answering me, I knew I had hit the nail on the head. After a few seconds, Jimmy said:

"Fuck me... I knew we were in trouble. But that we were so deep in the shit that they had to bring in the Grim Reaper? Fuck me..."

I took another deep drag and said with a mischievous smirk on my face:

"I think I already told you in Basra, Jimmy. All you have to do is ask, darling..."

His eyes widened, and then, out of nowhere, Michele's voice rang out, and he turned a little pale around the nose, which I couldn't resist reacting to.

"What should Jimmy ask, Captain Cage?"

"Well Michele, he keeps saying fuck me, so..."

She looked at me intently for a moment, then burst out laughing and said:

"Oh, Marcus... I already know we're going to be the best of friends."

She looked at her husband mischievously:

"Jimmy, why does the captain have to fuck you?"

He answered with one word, and that was apparently enough for her:

"Casiel..."

She nodded and turned to me:

"Let's go home, crack open one of Jimmy's better bottles, and talk in more peaceful surroundings."

In Heaven, Michael knocked on the door of the private study of the Goddess and God and stepped inside, followed by Lucifer. The two sank into comfortable chairs. The Goddess saw the sullen face of the Devil and sighed. God grumbled:

"For crying out loud, now what?"

Lucifer looked intently at his father and said:

"For about two millennia, I've been walking around with the idea that there was nothing better and that there would never be anything better than the taste of the beautiful, spicy princess Salome in my mouth. But I must admit that the taste I get in my mouth is starting to appeal to me more and more every time I say, 'I told you so!'"

Asherah, the Goddess, had a mischievous smile on her lips when she heard her eldest son, Lucifer, talking to her husband like that. It wasn't exactly language she approved of, but the fact that it could rile her husband up every time made up for a lot. The God, El, leaned back in his comfortable chair and said softly:

"Please do explain..."

The Devil nodded and replied:

"I've said this before, but apparently we all, and yes, that includes me, haven't learned our lesson yet. Humans think on a completely different level than we do. Why? Time, that's why! We are timeless, we are eternal, so time is of no importance to us. Humans, that's a completely different story. They are fully aware of time and that they only have a limited amount of it. Their thinking has evolved in a completely different way than you two had in mind when you created humans. We think linearly. Why? Because we have time to analyze a problem in a systematic way, angel by angel by angel. Let's say that due to lack of time, human thinking is different from ours. Not linear, more instinctive. Give them a problem and they will initially look at that problem from all sides at once. And then there are people like Marcus, who thinks at a much higher level. He has arrived in Florence. Casiel intercepted him in her own way so that I could have a chat with him. I outlined to him what is coming for humanity, what we have in mind for humanity, and how we want to approach it. In about ten seconds, he told me that the plan was as leaky as a sieve, he saw the solution through reincarnation, understood that Earth was only the beginning for humanity and that the rest of the universe was waiting for them, provided they didn't destroy themselves first. To keep it short, his answer was that if it has to be done our way, he'd rather party in Vegas with a pound of Peruvian blow and a dozen Brazilian strippers after he gets a chance to ask you if you created Celestials on purpose as idiots."

El's eyebrows shot up at this last remark, and Asherah seemed impressed. The Goddess asked:

"What does Marcus mean by that, Lucifer?"

The Devil took a deep breath, thought for a moment, and said:

"I can't put it any better than in his own words; humanity is like a toddler. Before you know it, it's sticking a fork in the socket."

Michael spoke for the first time:

"So again, what we've always wanted to prevent? Revealing ourselves and helping them."

Lucifer ran his fingers through his hair before answering:

"It looks that way, yes. But I think Marcus has something very different in mind than us gently taking humanity by the hand and guiding them."

"What do you mean?"

El asked with interest.

"I mean, Marcus isn't exactly your average human being, Dad. You know how he reacted when he arrived in Hell and took a crack at Zelo. He was just as impressed by Casiel and me as he was by Zelo. I suspect that if he met you two, his heart rate wouldn't exactly skyrocket. Well, unless he wants to give you a verbal dressing-down, of course. Something I don't consider impossible. It took him maybe a minute to get to the heart of our problem. We want to help, but we don't want to reveal ourselves. We've put up signs, gathered a group of people, we're doing our thing, hooray, humanity is saved without them being any the wiser."

Michael looked at his twins and said:

"Okay, that's the plan. What's the problem?"

The Devil replied casually:

"Oh, not that important if you don't take into account Marcus' words that the group we want to save without them being aware of our intervention are already well aware of our intervention."

Asherah asked:

"How so?"

"If we disregard Casiel and that little clique she has gathered around her?"

El grumbled:

"I knew I should have grounded that girl!"

The other three present burst out laughing at God's remark. He seemed unaware of any wrongdoing and asked:

"What?"

The Goddess replied:

"Oh yes, El the almighty God is going to ground his little girl. Miracles do happen."

"And what exactly do you mean by that?"

The Goddess shook her head, sighed, and said:

"El, love, Cas knows exactly how to manipulate you, and she's been doing it since she was a baby. Tell me, why are there unicorns running around in the garden, unicorn rabbits, unicorn guinea pigs, unicorn capybaras, not to mention the rest of that petting zoo she spends about as much time on as she does on her task as a guardian?"

God's answer spoke absolutely in his favor as a father. Not so much in his favor as the almighty God:

"But honey... She was sad and she cried..."

Asherah placed her hand on his and said:

"I rest my case..."

El wanted to move on from the subject. In his book, his Casiel was completely innocent and there was very little she could do wrong, and that applied to all his girls. On the other side of the large desk, the twins sat watching the conversation with an omniscient grin.

"Okay, let's leave Casiel out of it for now. Why and how do the people we've chosen know that we have something to do with it?"

Lucifer replied:

"Because the group we have chosen is unique. On the one hand, they are perfect for our purpose, and on the other, they are the absolute wrong group to keep our involvement secret. The group we picked has one trait in common across the board: empathy. Of all the groups we considered, this was the one that most closely matched our vision of the future for what should follow after that miserable apocalypse unleashed by humanity itself. Empathy would allow survivors to better empathize with each other. As a result, they would understand each other better, which would drastically reduce the risk of conflict. But our group would also be better able to empathize with their environment and the effect they have on their planet. This in turn should prevent the risk of catastrophic pollution or stupid experimentation with bacteria, viruses, or dangerous techniques. That's why we picked this particular group. Correct?"

The three others nodded in silence, and Lucifer continued:

"According to Marcus, it is precisely this empathy that has ensured that our interference has not been a secret for some time. Our people followed the signposts to a place where, according to his words, they could make a soft landing. Along the way, they will have already felt that they were being gently guided toward a certain goal. Once there, these people do not live in social isolation. They integrate into the new community. Meet the other residents there and soon find that some of those residents, like themselves, are more empathetically gifted than others. They start talking to each other, and one thing leads to another. A kind of collective belief develops within our group that they were led to this particular goal for a specific reason. What reason that is remains a mystery to them for now. But once that apocalypse has occurred, that mystery will be solved very quickly. Their salvation, the salvation of humanity by higher hands. That which we wanted to prevent, therefore, seems totally inevitable."

There was silence in the room for a few seconds until Michael spoke:

"Okay, the cat is out of the bag. Now what? Do we make an attempt to put the cat back in the bag or?"

The Devil looked at the Archangel and said:

"This is not so much a cat that has escaped from a bag, Michael, but rather the toothpaste that is out of the tube. You can always put a cat back in the bag if you are willing to put up with the marks of its claws on your hands, arms, and face."

El slapped the tabletop of the writing desk with his flat hand and growled:

"For Fuck's sake! What you describe may be the beginning of a vicious cycle. Every few centuries or millennia, we will need to intervene to prevent the worst."

Lucifer nodded:

"Marcus' exact words. And let me add right away that he has made it very clear that he refuses to participate in that. Hence Vegas, Peruvian blow, Brazilian strippers, celebrating the end of the world, of humanity in style."

God shook his head:

"It keeps getting better. We have a group we want to survive so that humanity has a chance to continue to exist without making ourselves known, but who already seems to know about our interference. And the person we chose with such care, because we thought he would be the ideal person to lead the group in Florence, says deadpan that if it has to be this way, he'd rather go have a decadent party instead of helping our people survive."

After a few more seconds of silence, the Goddess asked:

"Now what?"

It was Michael who answered:

"Okay, I know this is going to sound off the wall, so please don't hit me upside the head too hard. We tried it our way, and it's clear that there is too big a difference between Celestials and humans to fully understand the sore spots. Why not do what Casiel has already suggested a few times? Why not ask the people themselves? First of all, let this Marcus clarify his views. Let's just turn everything upside down very briefly. Or, in this case, play open book with Marcus and have a completely open conversation with him. He is familiar with the Celestial through Luci and his visit to Hell. Our house Devil seems to be impressed with Marcus. Well, let's listen to his view of this whole thing without bias. A vision from a human perspective."

The Devil, Goddess and God sat looking at the Archangel perplexed, and Lucifer asked:

"Do what Cas said? Michael, are you all right? Did someone drop a planet-sized stone on your head?"

Michael looked at his twin blearily:

"Do you have another, perhaps better idea, Luci? In case you may not have noticed, time doesn't seem to stand still, and we simply don't have the time to start over from scratch."

The Devil squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and said:

"That all that is holy and unholy may be merciful to us..."

The Gods looked into each other's eyes for a while until Ashera nodded gently and asked:

"Where is Casiel?"

El closed his eyes and located his youngest daughter. Seeing where she was, he groaned softly and muttered:

"Why did the last Angel we would ever bring into existence have to be a girl?"