by A. J. Curry
I snagged it from the air. It was a thumb drive, no different from half a dozen in a desk drawer in my office. High end, but definitely a stock item.
“Everything you need to know about the things I leave behind on Earth is there. I suggest you make copies. The doors to this place will open to your touch. Dawn will break soon and you can go home.”
“Thank you. I guess this is it, then.”
“It is.” He looked up at the sky, then looked back to me. “Very few among your kind or any other have known me for any real part of what I truly am and still been a friend or ally. You have been both. I shall actually miss you, Murphy.”
“No you won’t.”
He smiled. It was the first time I had ever seen him do so when he wasn’t pretending to be human. “You would be surprised. Farewell, my friend.”
He spread the purely symbolic wings and gazed upward again. The burnished silver of his body grew bright from within, soon too bright to look upon. Then the light was gone.
I looked up. Even though my eyes were dazzled, I could still see a bright spark in the sky ascending to heaven.
Epilogue
one: murphy
Not surprisingly, archangels with superhuman senses don't need nightlights − or lights at all, really. By starlight, I found the chair I'd put Caroline in, collapsed into it myself and slept for a long, long time.
The gray light of a typical Pacific Northwest day eventually awakened me. I figured out where the door was and how to use it. Not surprisingly, it was raining. I flipped up my jacket collar and pulled my cap down to my eyebrows, then trudged down the trail to the park.
When I got to my condo, the old Porsche I had left in the hold of a flying saucer was parked in front of my garage with a wax-sealed parchment envelope under one wiper blade.
Breaking the seal, I found a single large feather from the wing of an owl and a folded scrap of notepaper. The note simply said “call me” in Evangeia de Lourdes' archaically precise penmanship.
Eventually, I did.
It turned out that Colvin Case had been a better friend than I'd thought. The telecommute program that had enabled me to move to the Northwest had been his idea all along. Even though I wasn't the only person who’d benefited from it, it was obvious from the policy incept date it had been rolled out for me.
His successor did not consider the policy a success or consider me a particularly valuable asset. I was offered a decent pension package and an early retirement. I took them. Apparently, the fact that I had led a team of humanoid lizard commandos into the guts of a secured facility under attack by Flying Saucers and Bigfoot was going to remain my little secret. One among many.
The earnest young technician who showed up to collect my modem and my Company laptop was remarkably non-committal on the non-booby trapped condition of the modem − so much so that he was almost certainly another mole for The Order. But neither he nor I offered up any secret handshakes. I was just glad to get the shit out of my house.
It had been enlightening to make a return visit to Morningstar’s lair under a neighboring midget mountain when I had time to explore it in the daylight. I found an extensive collection of men's suits a little bit too big for me to wear and apparently dating back over a century, judging from the items that had not yet rotted away to dust.
I also found a large collection of flat screen TVs and other consumer electronics, all powered by a discretely positioned solar panel array. There was also a large bin full of paper and metal currency, some of it as old as some of the disintegrating suits. The most valuable thing on the premises was an impressively well-stocked wine cellar.
If this was typical of his other lairs, what Morningstar had given me was of mostly antiquarian value. I had neither time nor resources to explore them all. I offered them up to The Order for a price that nicely supplemented my pension from The Company. Not all of them − the copy of the data I eventually handed over to Evangeia had a few strategic deletions − but it was complete enough to pass inspection.
No one really retires from The Order, but it was understood that my usefulness as a strategic resource was pretty much at an end. Recent events notwithstanding, I had never been seen as a tactical resource, and I was happy to keep it that way. As long as I continue to keep the secrets I promised to keep, I am free to live out my life as I see fit.
When one of the houses on the winding road that traverses Morningstar’s mountain went on the market, I picked it up and sold the condo that had been mine and Caroline's home. It's a smaller place, but these days it's just me and the cats. Not to mention, there’s one helluva view from my new deck.
Also, no memories.
I added a wine cellar and a couple of other improvements. My contractor thought the cellar was entirely too deep. “Never know what you'll find around here, “ he told me. “There’s caves all through this mountain. Indians dug tunnels as well, so did bootleggers. Some folks even think Bigfoots use the caves. I don't believe that.“
“I don't either, “ I told him. “But I do believe I'm paying you enough to do as I ask without a lot of questions.“
“You are that,“ he said.
I'm not really retired. There will probably always be a need for people with my particular skills and institutional knowledge… but being a freelance consultant has a lot of advantages.
I still drink at the Lyin’ Lamb, have even managed to convince some of the other techies and recruiters who hang out there to hook me up with the occasional gig. Age discrimination is perhaps less a thing than I thought it was. Or maybe it helps that I’m strictly freelance, and strictly a consultant.
I have still not kept my last promise to Caroline, but that's not going to be an easy one. I don’t really want to be anyone else’s disappointment, and being alone isn’t quite the same thing as being lonely. And finding someone who could share my life, all of it, is one serious tall order.
What little I’ve heard from Caroline since the last time I saw her pretty much confirms that she decided to take that last time as a dream after all… and who can blame her? Even if it weren’t for people like me making sure the latest sasquatch, reptilian, or UFO sighting got written off as the current version of swamp gas, most people would edit these things out of their consciousness anyway. There are more things in heaven or earth than dreamt of in most of our philosophies − and the vast majority of us like it that way just fine.
As for Morningstar, it seems that he was as good as his word: He is well and truly gone. How quickly he can return to the center of all things, whether or not he will reunite with his Creator before Time’s end… these are questions above my paygrade, perhaps beyond any mortal speculation. Surely, he is more happy; surely, he deserves it.
I still don't know how much to believe of him. Between the evidence of my senses and the guidance of Occam's Razor, taking him at his word makes more sense than not. It probably helps that I've known and had to deal with other basically immortal beings.
As for me, the pain and loss of my own short mortal life seems easier to bear now. If an immortal from the beginning of time can keep faith with a promise for most of eternity, keep that promise, and find their way home, who am I to say what is or is not possible? Who am I to say the love I still have for the person I can’t help but still think of as “my wife” − a love I’ll likely have until the end of me, if not the end of time − is futile or somehow in vain? Oh, I’ve “moved on” in all the ways that matter, will never again trouble or complicate her life. But she’s a complication in mine as long as I have one… and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
There is an old saying within The Order that a true initiation never ends. Transmuting my own pain and helping Morningstar find a way past his has taken me further into the deeper reality of my own one-time initiation than has anything else. It’s sufficient for now… but I would be a fool to suppose that it ends here.
But stories end, even if initiations don’t, and this is as good a place as any to end this
one… at least for me.
two: morningstar
The stars, blue shifted, flare into view before me. Red shifted, they fade in my wake.
I both lied and did not lie to Murphy when I told him I would miss him. It saddens me that the insouciant old monkey is almost certainly now dust, But mine are the senses and memories of an angel. Every microsecond of the time spent with him is mine to recall to subatomic levels of detail, no less so than any other moment since that moment I was called into existence… to carry forth the word and will of God.
I hope that he eventually found some measure of happiness among his own kind, but I have my doubts. Having been made aware of a greater reality is no easy thing to roll back… even at the cost of what might be considered happiness.
I will never know of course, for I have found my way back to my own greater reality. I am not yet home, but I am on my way. How far I have gone, how far remains or how long the journey, I cannot truly say. For my sense of time is, once again, also that of an angel… measured by the progression of galaxies, not planets.
But my gratitude and love abides, both for the small frail things I dwelt among for so long and the Creator who, for whatever unknowable reason, decided that to be my fate.
It remains an interesting question how much of this was truly fated. The universe is an unfolding fractal, a puzzle box from the mind of God. Whether or not free will is an illusion is beyond even my knowing. Count it among the questions I hope to have answered, once I am well and truly returned home.
And so I proceed onward.
The galaxies, blue shifted, flare into view before me. Red shifted, they fade in my wake…
Table of Contents
Act 1: Descent
one : murgenstaern
two: murphy
three: murgenstaern
four: murphy
five: murgenstaern
six: murphy
Act 2: Deception
one: murgenstaern
two: murphy
three: caroline
four: murphy
five: caroline
Six: murphy
seven: murgenstaern
eight: murphy
nine: murgenstaern
ten: murphy
Act 3: Discretion
one : murgenstaern
two: murphy
three: caroline
four: murphy
five: murgenstaern
Six: murphy
seven: caroline
eight: murgenstaern
nine: murphy
ten: murgenstaern
eleven: murphy
Act 4: Disorder
one: caroline
two: murphy
three: murgenstaern
four: murphy
five: murgenstaern
six: murphy
seven: caroline
eight: murphy
nine: murgenstaern
ten: murphy
Epilogue
one: murphy
two: morningstar
