Unsong

by Scott Alexander

Gabriel coughed awkwardly. “He would use…strategems. He would say ‘I am going to attack you from the north,’ and then attack us from the south. It was unfair.”

  “And then when we finally figured out what he was doing,” added Michael, “He would say ‘I am going to attack you from the north,’ and then actually attack us from the north. It was very unfair.”

  “And,” Gabriel said, “When we ordered some of the lesser angels to study these strategems so we could apply them, the angels would lose their glow and purity. They would no longer be able to sing the songs of praise in the right key. We would have to expel them from Heaven, for their own good.”

  “And then,” said Michael, “they would fight on Thamiel’s side.”

  “It was very bad,” said Gabriel.

  “So,” said Samyazaz, “wait for everyone who died to recoalesce, and don’t be so naive the next time.”

  “It is worse than that,” said Michael. “Thamiel wields a two-pointed weapon. Everyone slain by it dies the true death.”

  “Like humans?”

  “Exactly like humans.”

  “Ugh.”

  “It gets worse,” said Michael. “I myself slew Sataniel. Thamiel raised his two-pointed weapon over the spot, and Sataniel did not recoalesce as himself. Instead his spirit fragmented into many monsters. Camael and his choir were not able to stand against them.”

  “They have taken over the place of meeting,” said Gabriel. “We must counterattack with everything we have. You will join us, Samyazaz.”

  “No,” said Samyazaz. “I won’t.”

  The thunder rumbled menacingly.

  “Why me? I’m not the only angel who came to Earth.”

  “You are one of the leaders. The others respect you.”

  “Go find Gadiriel. She’s always up for doing crazy stuff.”

  “She?”

  “Gadiriel has adopted various quaint human customs, like being female.”

  The thunder rumbled menacingly again.

  “We will bring Gadiriel. We will also bring you.”

  “You don’t need me. There are a hundred myriads of angels. I’m not going to be any use to anybody.”

  “You understand strategems. Like Thamiel. Yet you have not lost your power, or turned to his service. This is interesting. Perhaps it is because you learned from humans, whom you dominate, rather than from equals, whom you fear. You understand lying. Trickery. Deceit. We archangels have more mental resilience to these than the ordinary choirs, but we still have not mastered them. Without masters of such on our side, Thamiel can play us like a harp.”

  “Well, uh, if you have any tactical questions, you’re welcome to stop around and run them by me. I’ll be right here, on top of the giant ziggurat, can’t miss me.”

  “You will come with us.”

  “But…my ziggurats!”

  “Are like a child’s sand castles in the eyes of the Lord.”

  “I like ziggurats! You know, humans are different from angels, in that they have this weird long thing here” – Samyazaz pointed at his crotch – “and I felt bad about not having one of those. But if I build big enough ziggurats, then I feel better about myself!”

  “You will come with us.”

  “No. I’m not going to let myself get pricked by some two-headed creep with a freaky underworld weapon that makes you die the true death. Go bother Gadiriel.”

  “You will come with us. Now.”

  “Would either of you care for a pot of beer? I find it lubricates interactions like this very nicely.”

  “You will – ”

  Something was burrowing up out of the flood plain, like a mole or a beetle. It kicked up mud in all directions as it rose, then finally broke the surface. Something oily and foul buzzed like a bee halfway between Samyazaz and the great angelic apparitions.

  “Well,” said Thamiel. “How far you’ve both fallen.”

  Michael pulled his sword of fire from its scabbard. A moment later, Gabriel did the same.

  “Begone, Thamiel. This is none of your business.”

  “Oh, it’s my business. Good lie, though. I didn’t think you had it in you. You’re learning fast.”

  “You are an abomination before the Most High.”

  “And I’m winning.” He held up the bident. “Run away, cowards.”

  For just a moment, Michael and Gabriel made as if to charge. But then the lightning bolts struck home, the thunder crashed in a great resounding peal, and time started again.

  “Wise one!” asked Ut-Naparash. “Are you well? You seem…” Suddenly his face blanched in horror.

  Thamiel floated leisurely to the ziggurat platform and landed in the center. The slaves threw themselves off the sides in horror and loathing, and there was a sickening cracking sound as their bodies hit the tier beneath. Ut-Naparash started making the complex ritual movements of the Greater Prayer to Enlil.

  “Go away,” said Thamiel, and flicked a finger at Ut-Naparash. The priest’s eyeballs exploded in showers of blood, and he fell convulsing to the ground.

  “Master,” said Samyazaz, kneeling. He wasn’t scared of Michael and Gabriel, big though they were, but this was something on an entirely different level.

  “Master, is it?” asked Thamiel. “Because a moment ago, you were calling me a ‘two-headed creep’.”

  “Master!” said Samyazaz, desperately. “I didn’t mean it. I will make amends! I will…”

  “Nice ziggurat you’ve got here,” said Thamiel. “Shame if something were to happen to it.”

  He gave a lazy flick of his bident, and the entire structure collapsed in on itself, killing everyone, slaves, porters, supervisors, Ut-Naparash, the entire construction crew, a hundred years of work reduced to smoking rubble in an instant.

  It was only a minor death, as deaths went. A purposeless accident of falling rocks and rubbles. Samyazaz recoalesced within a few minutes. Thamiel was gone now. It was just him and the remains of his ziggurat. He wasn’t too proud to cry, just one tear. Then he sighed, brushed himself off, and got up.

  He had always prided himself on his resilience. Well, what was a hundred years, to one such as him? Michael and Gabriel wouldn’t dare bother him again. Thamiel had punished him sufficiently. Now there were just the humans. Beautiful, wonderful humans, so easy to bend to his will. He would whisper to the king, he would awe the priests, he would rebuild the ziggurat twice as big as before. In a way, it had been a blessing in disguise. He hadn’t been ambitious enough with this ziggurat. If he started from scratch, built the base on a sturdier foundation…

  He grabbed a passing slave. “Get me a palanquin, man. Can’t you see there’s been a disaster here? I need to speak to the King.”

  The slave looked hopelessly confused.

  “Get me a palanquin, I said! Do it for the mighty one!”

  The slave babbled something in response, but Samyazaz couldn’t make out a word he was saying.

  Somewhere, far below, he thought he could hear Thamiel’s laughter.

  Okay. This was worse than he thought. He began mentally pushing back his ziggurat timetable. Not that he couldn’t make it work. He could definitely make it work. The timetable just needed to be amended. Some way to break through the communication barrier, some way to deal with the king and all of these recalcitrant humans, some way to deal with Thamiel, some way…

  He pushed the slave aside and headed back in the direction of his brewery. He could definitely use some beer right now.

  III.

  3??? BC

  Gulf of Mexico

  And then there were two.

  The sky had once been full of clouds. Big clouds, little clouds, dark clouds, bright clouds. Clouds sculpted into great gleaming palaces of alabaster, clouds carved into fortresses red with the light of sunset. Clouds linked by rainbow bridges, clouds walled with icy ramparts, clouds lit by pillars of lightning, great frigates of cloud that sailed the jet stream packed with legions of angels going off to war.

  Now m
ost of the old clouds were gone, taken over by Thamiel and his forces, or abandoned as their celestial inhabitants sought more defensible positions. The meeting place had fallen. The long line of derechos that Michael had set up as a bulwark had fallen. The typhoon where Raphael had guarded the Central Pacific had been scattered. Even Zadkiel’s howling blizzard had been reduced to a few flurries.

  Gabriel had tried to save them. He had been there at Raphael’s side when Thamiel had pierced the archangel with his bident and slain him in battle. He had seen Michael kill Thamiel in single combat, only for the demon to recoalesce and stab the victor in the back. He had fled with the others to Zadkiel’s circumpolar redoubt, which had held on for seven years of constant battle before it was betrayed by a stray sunbeam. Now he was alone. The last of the archangels, he thought to himself.

  Except for the one who didn’t count.

  This storm, Gabriel had noticed on his way in, was poorly developed. No minarets. No ramparts. Just a big hurricane with occasional objects strewn about it. There was a big hexagon on one side. Who needed a hexagon that big? A couple of furrows making strange patterns. Lumps. Poorly done, no defenses, just the sort of shoddy work he had expected. It would, he thought, need some improvement.

  There was some sort of shield surrounding the central eye. Good. A rudimentary defense mechanism. That could be built upon. For now, though, it was in his way.

  “Let me in,” he shouted, banging his flaming sword on the invisible surface. No response. He hadn’t expected polite requests to work. “Let me in, or I will burn this place until no shred of cloud is left.”

  The invisible wall parted, and Gabriel strode into the eye of the storm, the inner sanctum. Its lord was sitting in mid-air, tracing with his finger a series of glowing paths upon a fiendishly complex diagram. Gabriel blew the diagram away with a gust of wind.

  “I need this storm,” he told Uriel, after the pleasantries had been completed, which with Uriel meant after about two seconds. “Angelkind needs this storm.”

  “You can’t have it,” said Uriel. Of course not. Of course Uriel wouldn’t be cooperative. Spend the last forty years of the war sitting around doing nothing, and now he was sitting on the last usable defensive bastion in the entire sky, and of course he wouldn’t help.

  “Everyone else is dead. We made a last stand at Zadkiel’s domain near the pole. Myself, Zadkiel, angels from all ten choirs, and our human and nephilim allies. Everyone except you. We held out for seven years before the ice wall cracked. Zadkiel is dead. Only a few of us escaped. This is the last intact bastion. We need your storm.”

  “I do not think it would help you very much. You would probably just die here.”

  “Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s…um…better to die on one’s feet!”

  “You cannot have this storm. I am using it.”

  “Using it? For what? What use are you or anything you have ever done? For decades now we have fought Thamiel, and you have been of no use. When Heaven was fair and free, and we spent the aeons singing songs of praise, you would always get distracted and forget your part. You were of no use.”

  “I was analyzing the harmonic structure. It was very interesting.”

  “Whenever we sat in council, you would hide under your throne whenever someone asked you to talk,” Gabriel interrupted. “And then, when the war came, you did the same thing you always did., You hid under a rock and kept playing with your shapes and your equations. Haniel gave his life. You did nothing. Camael gave his life. You did not care. Raphael gave his life. You sat around useless. Michael gave his life. You kept daydreaming. Zadkiel gave his life. And you? Always building towers, or writing proofs, or coming up with those codes of yours. We went out of our way to try to teach you proper behavior – ”

  “You were very mean to me.”

  “We were not mean enough! If we had been less tolerant, maybe you would have behaved as an archangel should. Maybe you would have joined in the fight, and even now we would be advancing against Thamiel and his forces. Maybe you could have died in place of Michael! Instead you sit here, playing games. The game is over now, Uriel. It is time to give this bastion to those who can use it.”

  “I am using it.

  “For what?”

  “I have discovered many interesting things.”

  “Ten years ago,” said Gabriel, “Michael and I hunted down Samyazaz, who had fled to Earth to escape the war. He was a coward. Yet I prefer him to you, for at least he felt ashamed. It was Sataniel who started this war, yet him also I prefer to you, for he died fighting, in fire and glory, as an angel should. And you? You have ‘discovered many interesting things’. I will take this bastion, and we will make a final stand here, and perhaps we will all die, but about your death I will feel no guilt.”

  “Gabriel,” said Uriel. “Look at the sun.”

  Gabriel looked. “What am I looking for?”

  “Does it seem different to you at all?”

  Gabriel squinted. “Different how?”

  “Um. Usually it looks like an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying ‘holy holy holy is the Lord God almighty,’ right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now, do you see something more like, say, a round disk of fire somewhat like a guinea?”

  Gabriel squinted. An odd expression crossed his face. “What are you saying?”

  “I have discovered many interesting things, Gabriel. The sun is only the beginning.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have determined the basic structure of the world. The way God becomes finite. The machinery that transmutes divinity into finitude is based on a series of ten sapphires. They are not exactly located within space-time, but you can think of them as sort of coextensive with the outside of the crystal sphere surrounding the world.”

  Gabriel noticed that, as usual, the only time Uriel got any emotion in his voice, the only time he would even make eye contact, was when he was talking about something totally irrelevant and uninteresting.

  “This is the Tree of Life. It converts pure structure into material reality through a series of four levels. There is a bottleneck in the last one which connects the sapphire called Yesod to the one called Malkuth. By filtering this bottleneck, I can control the flow of the divine light of higher spheres from entering the physical world.”

  “The divine light sustains existence. Any impediment to its radiance would make the universe crumble into dust.”

  “No. I can shift the world into a different stable equilibrium which can run indefinitely on an internal mechanism independent of the divine light.”

  “How?”

  “With math. I am changing the world into math.”

  The horror struck Gabriel at that moment. He – and Zadkiel, Michael, all the others – had dismissed Uriel as an idiot, too obsessed with his charts and correspondences to participate in the governance of Heaven, an empty mind turned in on itself in a tragic waste of an archangelic seat. They had been blind. He wasn’t just an idiot, he was a maniac. Samyazaz had a ziggurat obsession, he remembered that, but never in Samyazaz’s most grandiose dreams would he have tried to turn the whole world into a ziggurat. His thoughts turned to Thamiel. No one knew entirely what he was, save that he was obsessed with evil, and was trying to turn the whole world into evil. And now Uriel –

  “You cannot change the world into math. That does not even make sense.”

  “I can,” said Uriel. “I will show you.”

  He motioned with his hand, and a series of objects and creatures flew up from the world below him. Uriel dismissed in turn a giant grouper, a giraffe, and a mountain, until he was left with a huge redwood tree, its uprooted bottom looking strangely naked in the storm-tossed air.

  Uriel plucked a geometer’s compass out of the storm. He crouched above the tree. The clouds behind him parted to reveal the setting sun, and for a second he was framed in the golden light, ancient in aspect, terrible in majesty, tracing circles only
he could see. A moment of intense concentration and it was done.

  “It looks the same,” said Gabriel.

  “It is and is not,” said Uriel. “It is as shady and green as it was before. It will grow and give seeds. But it does not partake of the divine light. It is made of math. It is built of atoms of different varieties, which I have charted here.” He pointed to one of the various tables sketched out in black fire upon the storm wall. “Its branches grow in a very particular fractal pattern, as per information which I have encoded inside it in a massively parallel base four system.”

  “Only God can make a tree,” said Gabriel angrily.

  “I am not creating. I am converting. I have written a script which is gradually crawling the universe at the level of Yetzirah, converting all divine objects into their mathematical equivalents. Simultaneously I am gradually raising a metaphysical dam across the path from Yesod to Malkuth. By the time the world is fully insulated from the divine light, it will be running entirely on mathematics and able to maintain itself. A small amount of divine light can be deliberately allowed to enter in order to breath fire into the equations. The rest will remain in the upper spheres, intact.”

  “What about us? Will we also be made of math?”

  “Angels are too closely linked to the divine light to survive such a transition.”

  “So – ”

  “So Thamiel and his demons will essentially run out of charge and dry up. A vestigial portion will remain as metaphor, but they will be unable to directly affect the world. The war will be over.”

  “What about us?”

  “Um.”

  Gabriel grabbed the other archangel. “What about us, Uriel?”

  Uriel pushed him away. “Since the creation of the universe, you have shown me no kindness. When we sung songs of praise, you would mock my voice. When the war began, you ignored me, saying I was too weak and foolish to be of any help. I tried to tell you. Tried to tell you that the equations and correspondences held more of God than all of your songs and swords and shields combined. But you would not listen. You called me a fool. Now you come here, demanding I give up my home to you. Yes. You too will become metaphor. So be it. What were the words you used? I will feel no guilt.”