A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3) (3 page)

The Creature pulled the fabric of space-time past itself on all sides like an unraveling shroud, sliding the universe around its own extra-spatial location beyond the lower five heavens. Time on its “created universe” side dilated to a crawl within the living liquid-metal of its glassy transit bubble. Inside that shape-shifting transport compartment, a man and a Watcher continued their age-long discussion while hours slipped by as centuries outside the Creature’s protective pouch. The Watcher felt it best to keep the man occupied. The man’s feelings were still a mystery.

None of this would have been visible f
rom the Creature’s “created universe” side, even from a hypothetical second “window-gate creature” that slid space like a multi-dimensional sheet, parallel to the first creature, at the same rate of speed. Relative velocities would normally make two such synchronized objects perfectly visible to one another, but the Watcher had ensured that conditions would be anything but normal from here on out.

The man—a Seer named Q’Enukki from
the Prime World that would someday be called
Planet
Earth
—had just been significantly enhanced. His body and brain remained physically unchanged—for now. The non-material information code sequences that operated his brain—his
mind
—on the other hand, had been upgraded to use more of the brain’s original design capacity than was usually wise for humans in his condition.

The Watcher
, whose name was Samuille, had extraordinary orders from above, however—extraordinary orders for an extraordinary mission.

Q’Enukki could now perceive and process
information from his senses in two additional dimensions. Until now, his mind had operated in a “back-up mode” that inhibited most sensory input from the higher dimensions—as was the rule since Curse Protocols had been imposed on the universe as a safety mode. This had blinded humanity for their own good to much of what went on around them—similar to when parents protected their children from information they lacked the maturity to handle.

Samuille had no experience parenting, but he
had seen the principle in action enough to know that love often demanded it.

However, Samuille’s orders concerning Q’Enukki were unique.

As for the Watcher’s gate-window-creature and its transit bubble, transparency was a simple thing compared to down-loading new operational mind-code into a fragile mortal human brain. People were not just machines, after all.

Samuille projected orders to his unseen
navigators to decelerate the surrounding space until the only thing moving parallel to their nexus was a giant comet whose gravity signature the Creature-window recognized.

Then he returned his full attention to Q’Enukki.

Samuille could tell—through eyes that detected infrared, ultraviolet, gamma, and x-ray parts of the light spectrum as easily as humans saw colors—that his charge was transfixed first by the approaching super-comet, and then by the growing blue bead of the planet Tiamatu. Q’Enukki absorbed more information than his mind had ever processed before, as images and spoken words about the imminent event must have bombarded him simultaneously from future and past.
Ahh, the physics of Meaning…

Something was wrong.

Q’Enukki’s energy field became severely agitated and began destabilizing fast.
His enhancements! All-knowing
E’Yahavah, please give me wisdom! I cannot tell what he is thinking! Is he seeing something of which I cannot grasp the significance?

The eternal side of the
Gate-window-creature opened and closed so softly that Samuille barely noticed the momentary shifting of frames-of-reference. He knew Q’Enukki could not have sensed it, even with his enhancements. That mind-coding still had multiple redundant blocks on it. The Watcher could not be certain his charge might not sense the new presence inside the transit bubble, but he doubted it. Samuille had not expected direct intervention, simply the Breath of El-N’Lil in his thoughts.

The Word-Speaker
spoke directly into his mind,
“Do not fear, Samuille. He is having a severe crisis of trust, which is not surprising. He fears we will leave the Earth completely dead, as Tiamatu has always been dead. I do not fault him for this; we are so grieved with his people, and with those of yours who violated their place, that the universe and upper heavens cannot contain it. My Word, which tasted sweet when he prophesied it to a simpler generation, now grows bitter in his stomach the more its full implications unfold. So, yes, it is not surprising he should feel this way!”

Samuille felt trapped
by conflicting directives.
What do I do?

“
Speak to him with voice, not mind-projection. Hold nothing back, if asked, but reassure him that I will leave him children in a world they can survive on; that despite the approaching terrors, my promises stand.”

Samuille had no trouble understanding the intensity of his Master’s grief, but that
the Word-Speaker should identify with the man’s failing—which seemed to be building for some kind of dark outburst—rather than take offense at it, mystified him.
“As you command, my El.”

“Do
not fear,” Samuille said to Q’Enukki, “E’Yahavah has promised you that the Earth shall not become a dead world, though it will be close.”

Q’Enukki clenched his teeth and screamed, “E’Yahavah could have stopped all this at any time! What could possibly be worth subjecting an entire universe to such drawn out agony at such an unthinkable cost?”

Horror compressed Samuille like a squeezing fist. Something huge and dark instantly blocked his future-past-layered sight and shrouded Q’Enukki like a black cloud.
I somehow said things wrong! He’s going over! He is giving up entirely! This is unthinkable! Unbearable!

The
Word Speaker stood behind Samuille and gripped the frightened Watcher’s shoulder.
“Do for him as I do for you.”

Samuille reached out a warm hand to grip Q’Enukki’s shoulder, as the man broke down and wept. The Watcher’s terror vanished, replaced by a deep empathic sadness that he now knew all humans sensitive to the Great Loss must share. It came
as a sonorous music, modulating the wavelength of Q’Enukki’s aurora, heartbreaking and beautiful, alien, and beyond anything the Watcher had ever experienced. Already the man’s mind ordered the patterns into a creative lament, the content of which was unreadable, though the aurora patterns matched the signature profile for deep grief.

“Some explaining is in order, Samuille.”

Master, you do not owe any explanations…

“I give one
to him nonetheless. It is an expression of love.”

Samuille gathered his thoughts and said to Q’Enukki; “
You
are worth it, my friend—you and others like you.”

The man said, “How can that be?”

Samuille’s words flowed through him like cool water. “When faced with the choice between expressing his love through creation and no further expression of love outside his own continuum, E’Yahavah chose to create others with the potential to share his love. Yet love has no meaning without choice. Although the Creator knew his sentient creatures would choose to reject him and bring horrendous consequences upon themselves and their cosmos, he deemed that the greater evil would be for him not to create.”

Q’Enukki’s aur
ora began to collapse as he responded. “How can that be the greater evil? It is not as if E’Yahavah needs the likes of us! We create nothing that does not twist into something hideous!”

The Watcher neared panic for the first time in his long life, but the One behind him held him steady.
“It is true that E’Yahavah does not need. That does not mean he has no love beyond the continuum of A’Nu, El-N’Lil, and the Word-Speaker.”

Q’Enukki’s
aurora began to stabilize just a little. “Please explain.”

“That’s it, Samuille.
Keep your voice steady…”

“The
E’Yahavah Eluhar built into their creation a mysterious aspect of their own nature that my order does not understand completely—the ability to bring good out of evil in spite of evil’s intent. E’Yahavah did not directly create evil, nor was it programmed into sentient creations, though a sentient creature could choose it. But E’Yahavah knew the self-evident; that once other beings are created with the capacity of real choice, it is only a matter of time before some of them will make the wrong one and bring devastating consequences into the entire created system.”

Q’Enukki said, “Death and decay.”

“Yes. That is why E’Yahavah limited the choices of created ones and built into the system a restorative program based solely on his own promise to pay the ultimate price. I have only limited knowledge of this program, but I assure you it exists. You have already seen select parts of it.”

“I do not understand. I do not wish to accuse the Divine Name, but if this is so, then isn’t creating any being with the ability to make real choices effectively the same as creating evil?”

“Only if creating evil is the goal. A man may do great good, knowing that many shall take advantage of his acts to do evil. Should he therefore do no good? A father provides good gifts for his children, who then may build on that good or use their benefits to evil ends. Should fathers give nothing to their children? For a creature to choose against the nature of the Great God is for that creature to fall into evil and take on its nature. It has real consequences that eventually reach a point of no return.

“E’Yahavah cursed the cosmos so that it would fit humanity’s fallen nature for a time. Evil is not the goal. Since humanity did not restrain evil when it would have been easier to do so, E’Yahavah’s
wrath falls so that all whom he shall recover can be born and restored in the times yet to come. For the Creator shall bring forth good even out of this deep evil that humanity has chosen. He will execute his program and redeem some of his creation.”

“Which part?” Q’Enukki asked. “They are altogether
as I am—futile and empty!”

Samuille said,
“The First Mother’s conception was multiplied to include the Basilisk’s seed as well as the Divine. Neither group is full yet. All are human, none truly hybrid, despite distortions done to their creation codes. Even animal-human chimeras fall on either the human side or the animal, though men cannot often tell which, and fail even to ask the question. Our Master considers you and those like you to be worth far more than anything or anyone that might be lost in the Curse. Yet each person’s ability to choose their master becomes real.”

Q’Enukki’s voice cracked.
“How?”

“Although E’Yahavah knows the outcome and has chosen those who are his; men who are trapped in the realm of space, velocity, and linear time must have the chance to demonstrate for themselves and their world which side of the struggle they are on. It is at that point—the beforehand choice made by the Divine Name in the rescue of some
, and the real human decision to return to him or flee—that language paradoxes between the eternal and the temporal are most felt. It is the intersection where time meets eternity. But we must stop this discussion for now.”

“Why?”

“Because the time has come for the end to begin.”

The Word-Speaker of E’Yahavah squeezed Samuille’s shoulder.
“Not yet. We can wait a moment longer. There is more.”

Q’Enukki
seemed to wrestle with uneasy thoughts—Samuille saw beyond the color spectrum of white light and thus noticed the shifting of quickfire discharges inside the man’s brain.

The Word-Speaker projected into Samuille’s mind, while shielding his thoughts from the man.
“He does not want to countermand you, and by extension, me. Invite him to speak.”

Samuille gently squeezed the Seer’s shoulder, as E’Yahavah had done to him. “I sense there is something more. Perhaps the ‘beginning of the end’ can wait long enough for us to resolve whatever troubles you.”

Q’Enukki gave a nervous laugh. “It is not the things I do not understand about what you have told me that trouble me, but the things I do understand.”

The words came through Samuille more than from him
, for his own understanding grew with their expression. “Does E’Yahavah promise to restore Aeden, perfect and good, as in the beginning?”

“Yes, perfect and good.”

“No; he promises something better.”

Q’Enukki energy field spiked. “What could possibly be better than goodness and perfection
restored?”

Samuille said, “Goodness and perfection with
compassionate understanding. In the beginning, there was no moral flaw in creation and it all functioned in harmony, yes, but it is one thing for E’Yahavah to create perfect automatons programmed to obey a perfect law; it is quite another to produce other beings who are also creative and who internally shun the monstrousness of sin freely and deeply. There is a difference between the goodness at Creation and the goodness that comes only after Redemption.”

“What is that difference?”

Samuille paused, letting the words fill him like a vessel. “I’m told that the Good at Creation was perfectionistic and must forever guard against the deviant choices of any created others. The Good at Redemption however, empathizes and restores the ‘others’ from ruin—the ‘others’ understand the folly of sin in their deepest parts and have no desire to return there. They appreciate
meaning
and E’Yahavah’s friendship from enlarged hearts. ”