Guinea Pig

by Curtis, Greg

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  “Bishop I like your people. I really do. I've walked among them for over a thousand years, and you have many wonderful traits. But you seem to have among them all one terrible failing. An inability to see beyond yourselves.”

  “On the personal level you see it everywhere. The killer who attacked us – he did it because it was his belief that this was his responsibility. That he had to do it because he had failed. Not because thousands of others have died or were imperilled, but that he had done or not done what he had to do. Their deaths were secondary. Merely proof of his failure. And Doctor Reginald, though he is finally learning, is driven too much by guilt. Guilt for what he did, not because he cares for the suffering of others as he should. That has been his mistake all along. It was always about him.”

  “And as a people it is the same. Once you believed that you were the only creation of the Father. That the universe was built for you. The same still holds true. And now again you show that failing when you believe that what is happening is for you.”

  “Why would you imagine that this entire mess has anything at all to do with you?”

  “Doesn't it?” That seemed wrong to the bishop. Very wrong given everything that had happened. Yet she had said it before.

  “No. You have a saying, probably spoken mostly in jest but still incredibly wise. Shit happens. Sometimes it happens to people and places and even worlds. Things go wrong. And sometimes you just have to accept that that's the price you pay for living in a universe with free will and chance. Shit will happen from time to time, and this is one of those times.”

  “This is a very big universe and yours is a very small world and you are a very small part of it. And a lot of things happen that have absolutely nothing to do with you. This is one of those things.”

  “A lot of people have died already. A lot more are at risk. Surely that makes it something to do with us?”

  “That part does, yes. And I and my brothers and sisters are sorry for that. But in the end, those things are all what the doctor would call side effects. The true illness is of my people.”

  “Angels?”

  “Yes.”

  At least she'd said it, and he was grateful for that. She'd said it before and each time he'd heard it he all but gasped with wonder at the thought that he was with an angel. Until he'd looked and seen a white haired woman of advancing years. It just didn't seem right. He'd asked before and been told that he saw only what he expected to see, and comprehended only what his mind was capable of comprehending. But that didn't really feel like an answer to him.

  “They don't feel like side effects. They feel like prophecy. The nephilim is reborn, that which all angels fear, and the wicked are being swept from the Earth.”

  “You really don't get metaphor do you Bishop?” She stared at him looking slightly vexed. A teacher with a difficult child. But at least her hands weren't on her hips and she wasn't waving her finger at him

  “William is not a nephilim. He never was. And no one would care if he was. I wouldn't be here. A war wouldn't be raging between the Fallen and the Walkers as you would call us. Between those who refuse to obey and those who obey but can't quite commit themselves to unquestioning obedience. William here is far more dangerous than that – though not to you. To us. William is human. He will always be human no matter what happens to him. He is a chooser. He is the first of your people to be able to see the path and choose which road to take. And that is what scares my siblings.”

  “Look, long story short as you say. My kind travel three paths. There are those who obey without question, those who refuse, and those who want to obey but can't quite commit themselves to absolute obedience. The Choir, the Fallen and the Walkers in your terms. I am a Walker.”

  “The Choir obey and so we see little of them as they carry out His work. They're busy. On Earth though there are mostly only the Fallen and the Walkers. Walkers like myself obey, but we cannot overcome our doubts completely. Our goal is simply to live our lives in peace and happiness, much like most humans. But the Fallen refuse to obey. They do not like laws and restrictions of any sort. They like total freedom. In your terms I suppose they would be like one of your motorcycle gangs. Rebels. Still, most of them also just want to live their lives in peace and happiness. And they only need one thing to do that. To know that they are right not to obey. In their minds that is everything. And that's what this is all about.”

  “It has nothing to do with power or the end of the world. There will be no floods. It also has nothing to do with the Father's wrath. He doesn't do wrath. It is only about showing the Fallen whether they made the right decision to refuse Him or not. Whether their choices are based on innate wisdom or false pride.” She seemed very certain on that point. In fact she almost seemed to be telling him off. Or perhaps she was just lecturing him. That was the kinder interpretation.

  “So eight hundred years ago more or less Raphael came to Earth and gave an artist a lock of his hair for inspiration. The Choir does that sort of thing. They seek to inspire and lead from a position of loving authority. They seek to obey the Father's wishes absolutely and without question.”

  “Now maybe he should have taken the hair back afterwards, or maybe not. I don't know. It's not given to me to know. But I know that even the Choir are only human for want of a better term. They do as they are told and they do the best they can. But they don't always get things perfectly right. They're only angels after all. We all are.”

  Only angels? The bishop nearly choked as he heard her say that. It almost sounded like sacrilege. And yet logically he knew she was right. There was only one perfect being.

  “Now roll the clock forward eight hundred years. The doctor here lost his wife and conceived his insane plan.”

  “He is a perfect example of your kind. Lacking in knowledge, limited in understanding, but still dreaming. Sometimes dreaming dreams so large that they consume him. He also has free will – the one thing in the universe that can make even a mortal man of limited knowledge unpredictable. And often infuriating. It can stuff up the lives of everyone all around.” She smiled once more, as if suggesting it was some sort of joke. But it didn't sound very funny to him.

  “So anyway he dreamed his mad dream and William began his transformation.”

  “When William did that every angel knew it. Whether of the Choir, the Fallen or the Walkers we knew. We always know when a brother or a sister is conceived. It happens so seldom that when it does it's a big thing. We are in the end, one giant family. But in this case the conception was wrong, twisted. And we all knew that too. We felt the unnatural nature of it.”

  “So curious and close by I went to see. So did some of my disobedient brothers.” That stopped the bishop in a hurry as he realised what she'd just said, and what it meant.

  “The Fallen just went visiting? Shouldn't they be in hell? Locked away?”

  “Why?” She stared at him as though he was asking another stupid question. “Are they criminals of some sort?”

  “But -.” He tried to object but he couldn't. He didn't know how to explain to an angel that she was wrong.

  “They aren't demons from your movies. They don't possess people and cause wide scale death and destruction. Your people can do that for themselves. Those that do will be held to account by the Choir and they know that. We have laws that we must obey. Laws that some of them have broken. They will be held to account for what they have done here. But most have committed no crimes. They have simply refused to obey. And that is not a crime. It is a failure. People, even angels are allowed to fail.”

  “Oh!” The bishop was floored for a moment, not knowing what to think. But then he realised there was nothing to think about. The faith wasn't about angels, fallen or otherwise. It was about the Son of God. And what she was saying went well with what some of the saints had said about evil. That there was no such thing. It was just the absence of good. And so maybe the Fallen were just those who had an absence of obedie
nce. It was something to ponder when he had some time. But for the moment he just had to listen.

  “When they realised what William was, and more importantly what he could do, my brothers grew frightened. Fear is often one of the most powerful emotions. And they knew the fear that William would choose the Choir. That he would choose obedience over freedom.”

  “That frightened them because if he did that, if the first human being to have that choice chose against them, it would undermine them. It would be like seeing the truth in the eyes of a child and knowing your words to be a lie. It would show them that their choice not to obey had been a mistake. It had been wrong. And at the heart of all those who refuse to obey is the belief that they are right not to. That their freedom to choose their own destiny separate from the Father, even going against his wishes, is the right one. Not one based on false pride and arrogance.”

  “That would hurt them in a way that I don't think you can fully comprehend. But imagine the outrage that a bike gang member would feel if his son when he reached maturity suddenly decided to turn his back on the open road and freedom, rejected everything he stood for, and decided to become a policeman. The shock and humiliation would be overwhelming. Then assume that this would be a hundred times worse.”

  “So they struck, creating a sink hole and hoping to end the threat before it began. They would rather live in ignorance than risk hearing the truth.”

  “I was there too, drawn by the conception, and for a while I didn't know what to do. I was curious about him and I felt the bond of kinship but I didn't know whether William should be saved or not. If he could be. I didn't even know who he was. And in any case there were many others who needed help and I could not stop my brothers' evil. So I left his life in the hands of fate as I tried to help as many as I could. He would escape or he would not. He would come to me and I would help him or he would not.”

  “And then chance or the Father intervened. I have no knowledge of which. As I was helping others to safety in the corridor, the building shifted, and I was thrown into William. It was a surprise to finally meet my new brother. But the true surprise was when he, thinking that I was the frail one, tried to help me. Instinctively he reached out and held me to him as he ran. And in that moment I knew that the Fallen had a very great reason to fear his decision. And I knew I had to save him. He is my brother.”

  “And ever since then it's been the same. The Fallen have been gathering in numbers, and some of them who fear his decision have been desperately trying to kill him. Bringing together all the strength they can find.”

  “Walkers like myself have been protecting him. He is our brother after all. We must protect him for that reason, and because we have also been instructed to protect him. We have also kept him in the dark as to what's happening because we have been instructed to do that. We don't know which way he will choose but we know he must be allowed to choose, and it must be his choice with no influence from us. And that is my promise to him; that he will live to choose.”

  “And the Choir have been looking on as well, pretending that they're not interested, but truly they are.”

  And there the Bishop thought suddenly, she wasn't talking to him. Her words were aimed at the Choir who were apparently listening in. It was a strange thing. He often talked to the skies or his garden, but never really knew if anyone was listening. But she was an angel, of whatever stripe. And she knew.

  “And what happens afterwards?”

  The bishop finally got around to asking the important question. The only one that probably mattered in the end. Someone had to ask it. Even if she was right and this wasn't the end of days they had to know.

  “Then it's over. Whatever William chooses it's over. If he chooses to refuse to obey the Fallen will be over the moon. They will crow about it for millennia. And they will take it as proof that they have chosen the right path. That freedom triumphs over obedience. The Choir will be saddened but will not shift. And my people will be left questioning where we go from here.”

  “If he chooses to obey the Fallen will be crushed. They will try to deny its importance of course, pretend it doesn't mean anything, but it will hurt. It will hurt terribly. As terribly as the pain a parent feels when he does wrong in front of his child and sees that disappointment in their eyes. The Choir will welcome him with open arms. And once more my people will be left with questions.”

  “But either way humans will be untouched. This will all go away. And if we are able we will fix what has been damaged. Heal those who have been harmed.”

  “And in time I suppose someone will write all this down and it will become another holy book that people will read and not understand. The message will be lost. And in a thousand years it will have something to do with sin and punishment and Martians or whatever else your people can dream up.”

  “That seems harsh.”

  The bishop would have said more except that he was suddenly overcome with disbelief as he realised he was trying to tell an angel what was right and what wasn't. She might not be one of the Choir, though at least as far as he could tell she wasn't Fallen either. But still she was an angel. To tell her how things were was more than presumptuous.

  “To you. But it doesn't matter. Only one thing does. None of this can get back to William. He has a choice to make and we cannot influence it in any way. Not your people. Not mine. His choice must be absolutely purely of his own free will.”

  “I won't tell him.”

  But even as he spoke a part of the bishop was wondering if he should. Because it seemed like an opportunity to do something great and good. To get William to choose the right way and make the world a better place. It was a chance maybe to make something good out of all this pain.

  “No you won't.” Elia stared at him a little sadly. “I'm sorry to have to do this to you Bishop, but in the end this is too important for meddling no matter how well-meaning. Neither by you nor us. We are all commanded in this matter. So I'm passing on something of that command to you.”

  Something in the way she looked at him then seemed to change; he wasn't quite sure how. And he was sure she was speaking to him as well, but her lips weren't moving and the words he heard he didn't hear with his ears. Neither did he understand them.

  But he did understand two things. The first was that he would not tell William anything. He could not. The second was that he had been commanded not to. An angel had spoken to him and told him of God's will. That was a big thing. After a life time of belief without ever hearing a single word of instruction from the Lord, it was momentous. And she apologised for doing it? She had no reason.

  The moment she finished he fell to his knees before her, filled with awe. And tears streaming down his cheeks he thanked her.

  He would not tell. Not because the ability had been taken from him. But because he had been commanded. He had waited a lifetime for that.

  Chapter Thirty Seven.

  The end came more suddenly than Will would have imagined possible. One moment he was standing there thinking about not very much at all and the next there was silence. Complete silence. Not the silence that his ears would register, but the silence from his body. Not silence – peace.

  Until then he hadn't known it was noisy. Filled with such fury and frantic activity. He hadn't understood that it was. Everything had just been normal. But suddenly it wasn't. Everything slowed down in a heartbeat. Became calm. His heart wasn't pumping as hard or as fast as it had been. His breathing became smoother, less hurried, when he hadn't even known it had been hurried. In fact he could hardly feel it at all. Nothing was tingling, not the tips of his wings, not his guts. He wasn't hot any more either, though again he hadn't known until then that he had been.

  It was as though he'd been running too fast all this time. But no more. Whatever the engines were that had been running flat out inside him they had settled back into their perfect rhythm. He'd reached some sort of perfect state where everything was suddenly as it should be.

  It came as a r
elief. If nothing else it meant that it was over. There was no more for him to have to go through. No more pain. No more fear of what was coming. And somehow through it all he had remained himself. He was still the same man. He might look different, his brain might not work quite as it had. But he was still William Simons. And that had always been his darkest fear. That he would lose himself.

  Will breathed a sigh of relief, perhaps a little more loudly than he'd intended, and everyone stared at him. They were jumpy even though it had been peaceful since the escape. Other than for the madman with the gun that was. They were all worried that the Fallen would find them, and one and all were terrified of what would happen when they did. Despite what Elia had said, fallen angels or demons did not sound like people they wanted to meet, and they all knew they were coming.

  Why he didn't know. No one did. They only knew that they would come when his transformation was complete. So now they would come.