“Your employers have you assigned to an important lull, do they?”
“The thing is, I’m actually expecting....”
“Expecting what?”
“Well, I’ve been waiting....”
“For what?”
“Nothing, I suppose. I’ve actually been let go. I keep thinking that someday they will call, but I suppose I should accept that it’s never going to happen.”
“So you’re free then?”
“I’m free.”
“Wonderful. I’ll go get the rest of the report from the car.”
“The rest of the report?”
“Oh yes. This is only the introduction.”
Speechless, Eddie turned over the stack to look at the cover page. It read:
An Annotated Accounting of the Irregularities
in Execution of the Apocalypse Accord
Presented by the Independent Seraphic Senate
Commission on Apocalyptic Irregularities in
the Execution of the Apocalypse Accord
“Hold on,” said Eddie, his mind reeling. “Are you with the M.O.C.?”
“I’m a little higher up in the bureaucracy.”
“The senate?”
“Higher.”
“The archangels?”
“Look, Eddie. I am who I am. Are you going to help me out or not?”
“So this organization… It’s…”
“The angelic bureaucracy itself. Heaven. Hell. All of it.”
“Does this have something to do with Gamaliel’s schemes? The bit about the Apocalypse?”
“That’s part of it. I need someone to tell the higher-ups the truth of what happened over the past few days. I need, as you say, a compelling account.”
“Why me?”
“You’re vaguely familiar with the events, but you’re not directly involved. Besides, I like to work with unknowns. It’s sort of my thing.”
“But I don’t really know anything. I’ve been stuck here in Cork.”
“No worries,” the man said, patting the ream of paper. “Everything you need to know is right here. And in six boxes in my trunk.”
“I see. And if I want to do some investigation of my own, you’ll make sure I have access to everybody I need to talk to within the bureaucracy.”
“You’re welcome to talk to anyone you like. I’ll even make sure you’re able to communicate via Angel Band. But I’m afraid I can’t vouch for you. My involvement has to be off the record.”
“And to whom am I presenting this report, exactly?”
“You should address it to the High Council of the Seraphim, but you can give it to anyone who wants to read it.”
“I’m afraid I’m a bit rusty in High Seraphic.”
“English should be fine.”
“I suppose they will want it in anapestic tetrameter?”
“Whatever you feel comfortable with.”
“No footnotes though. I won’t do footnotes.”
“Actually,” said the man, “I’m rather fond of footnotes. Maybe just a few?”
“How many?”
“I was thinking forty.”
“No way,” said Eddie. “I’ll give you ten.”
“How about twelve? I’ve always liked the number twelve.”
“Fine. Twelve footnotes.[12] How will they know I’m telling the truth?”
“They won’t. That’s why your account has to be compelling.”
“Do I have any guarantee that anyone will read it?”
“None.”
“This has got to be the worst assignment I’ve ever heard of.”
“Worse than whiling away eternity in a pub in Cork, waiting to hear from a bureaucracy that’s forgotten all about you?”
Eddie sighed. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
“I thought you might,” said the man. “Oh, and be sure to use your real name. None of this ‘Eddie’ business.”
“Right.”
Eddie pulled a weathered notebook and a pen from his jacket and began to write:
To Your Holiness the High Council of the Seraphim,
Greetings from your humble servant, Ederatz,
Cherub First Class,
Order of the Mundane Observation Corps
“Perfect,” said the spectacled man. “I’ll go get the rest from the car.”
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Robert Kroese (pronounced KROO-zee) is a writer and software developer living in Ripon, California. Mercury Falls is his first novel, if you don’t count the 30-page novella he wrote in second grade about Captain Bill and his spaceship Thee Eagle.
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* * *
[1] Re-asking a question that is usually understood to be a rhetorical greeting in order to get a more enthusiastic response is a time-honored tradition among speakers who find themselves, through no fault of their own, addressing a bored, irritable group of spectators who would rather be home watching television.
[2] Although Christine thought of Jonas Bitters as a fundamentalist because of his rigid adherence to a literal interpretation of the Scriptures, technically his reliance on the Angler’s Almanac as an additional source of revelation disqualified him from the fundamentalist club.
[3] If you don’t know why a demon would want to vandalize Christine’s apartment, well, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re a bit out of the loop in Heavenly intrigue. You probably should start attending some meetings. The good news is that it makes a better story if you don’t know at this point.
[4] Or by someone else wearing a jumpsuit, who has been instructed to do so by someone wearing a tie, and so on.
[5] People of a “scientific” bent have been known to ridicule those, like Harry, who believe unlikely notions such as the idea that the Universe was created in six days and that the first human being was formed by God breathing into a lump of clay. It should be noted that the latest scientific theories entail that (1) all of the matter in the universe was once compressed into an area smaller than the point of a pin; and (2) life came about when a chance collision of molecules accidentally lined up three million nucleic acids in exactly the right order to form a self-replicating protein.
[6] A lesser known but related teaching of St. Culain is that the principle of cause and effect is an illusion. Culain argued that Event C could not cause Event E unless the end of Event C and the start of Event E were adjacent in time. But this would mean that there could be no time in between C and E, giving C no time in which to cause E. Further, if time wasn’t made up of indivisible elements like chrotons, then each event could be split into an infinite number of smaller events, each with an infinitely small duration. Since C and E each had an infinitely small duration, and there was no time in between them, the length of time from the beginning of C to the end of E was infinitely small. As this was true of all C’s and E’s, the entire chain of all events that had ever occurred and would ever occur would take an infinitely small amount of time. This would result in everything happening at once, which was clearly not the case, particularly during the mind-numbingly dull Dark Ages.
[7] The identity of the Antichrist is, of course, less important than the fact that there is an Antichrist. No one cares much what the Antichrist says or does, but they feel better knowing he’s around
. In this way, he is much like the Pope or the United Nations.
It is probably not entirely coincidental that both the Pope and the United Nations have often been accused of being the Antichrist. Other individuals and organizations have also made the short list, of course. Nero was an early favorite, and dictators like Napoleon and Hitler were strong contenders. Even the affable U.S. President Ronald Wilson Reagan – who had the distinction of having six letters in each of his three names – was named as a potential Antichrist. Later, the name of vaunted Israeli General David Isaakson also tended to crop up among people who discussed such things.
Yet, on some level, most people seemed to sense that someone like Hitler was a little too obvious a choice. Once you make it clear that your intention is global conquest, the mystery is gone and people start to look for someone with less pedestrian aims. Start talking about a Brotherhood of Man or a New World Order, though, and ears perk up.
People also seem to intuitively understand that Antichrist is really more of a figurehead position. They expect the Antichrist to make ominous pronouncements that can be disassembled and slotted into a prefabricated eschatological framework, not impose martial law or orchestrate mass killings. It is safe to say, however, that nobody expected the Antichrist to look quite like Karl Grissom.
[8] More recently, the free will advocate has been attempting to find ways to bolster his position by enlisting the help of quantum physics, which seems to indicate that the principle of cause and effect breaks down at the subatomic level. In fact, if the quantum physicists are to be believed, the entire universe rests on top of a creamy layer of utter randomness.
The determinist points out that replacing causality with a roll of the dice doesn’t really help the free will advocate’s position much. It just means that when the serial killer turns out to have had a perfectly comfortable middle-class upbringing, he now has the option of blaming a run of bad luck for that unfortunate incident with the hatchet.
The determinist also points out that the randomness occurs at such a low level that it’s unlikely to have much of an effect on anything of importance. For example, when you flip a coin, there are literally trillions of quantum events that go into determining whether the coin comes up heads or tails. It’s as if, every time you flipped a coin, you set into motion a trillion subatomic coin flippers who each flip a coin and then report back to your coin with the results.
Ping! Goes the coin. Ping! Go a trillion subatomic coins.
“Well?” says the first coin. “What’ll it be?”
“Okay,” say the trillion subatomic coin-flippers. “Forty-nine point nine nine nine nine eight four five one zero three five percent of us say heads, and fifty point zero zero zero zero one five four eight nine six five percent of us say tails. Phil, as usual, says to land on your edge and balance there. So it’s basically fifty/fifty.”
The first coin says, “Great. You guys are a big help, as always,” and ends up on heads because it has a lot more important things to consider other than quantum phenomena that nobody gives a crap about.
Neither school of thought is in the end entirely satisfying to those who hope to find some shred of meaning in their existence, which is why many mortals – particularly those of a religious bent – tend to believe in a sort of fragile balance of free will and determinism. That is, they believe in a certain amount of freedom, but not so much as to cause the Divine Plan to go off the rails. They believe, in essence, that people are so many subatomic coin-flippers.
[9] Television meteorologists don’t count.
[10] Keen observers will note that if the Balderhaz Cube worked reliably 100% of the time, then the channels could be said to be obeying a definite rule. This fact gave rise to the Balderhaz Constant, which states that the Balderhaz Cube in fact only works 99.45% of the time. It was later discovered that this percentage could vary by as much as .00374389%, a number which became known as Balderhaz’ Correction. Variances in Balderhaz’s Correction eventually gave rise to Balderhaz’s Second Correction. When Balderhaz’s Second Correction proved unreliable in certain circumstances, Balderhaz began to spend more of his time perfecting his backhand.
[11] The veracity of this statement cannot be confirmed.
[12] Divine providence is a mysterious and wonderful thing.
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