Authors: Cliff Hicks
He straightened up a little, glancing nervously at his partner, who was keeping his eyes on Jake very intently, like a recruit in boot camp. “Uh, since we opened this section, seven years ago, sir.”
“And before that?” Jake asked, tapping his foot impatiently.
“Before that I was in training, and before that I was a guard back on Earth, sir.”
Jake had to pause a second at that, but tried very hard not to let his surprise show on his face. Of course, it made sense – to keep the angel population up and at a manageable rate to deal with the constant influx of people, they would need to be growing the ranks of the angels every day, but he hadn’t actually considered where they would be coming from. But now that he knew this, he felt a lot more confident. Angels with flaming swords raining sulfur and brimstone down on sinners was a lot scarier image than some halfwit getting his sword after a two-week training course. And, to be fair, he had a much easier time imagining this guy being a rent-a-cop at a megastore somewhere than standing watch at a military post. What had seemed like battle readiness on first glance was painfully obvious as arrogant bravado now. Security guards seemed to be the same no matter where you went, even Heaven. “And what, exactly, did you guard?”
“Uh, a mall, sir.” Bingo.
“And how did you die?”
The angel looked sheepishly at his sandals, sighing. “I was shot trying to foil a robbery.”
“I
see
.” Jake regarded the angel with as much disdain as he could summon to his face. “Unsuccessfully, clearly.” Jake shook his head with disappointment. “Do you have
any
idea how long I’ve been at this job?”
“Nosir.” The angel’s voice had dropped to almost a whisper, a child being admonished at a school.
“I’ve been on this beat since the Germans were making their
first
attempt to conquer Earth, so somehow I think I’m slightly more qualified to decide what does and does not require paperwork, don’t you?”
“Yessir.”
Jake frowned, his face looking more than a little angry. “What was that?”
“YES SIR!” the guard barked out, that instinct of self-preservation taking over and the desire to please his superior suddenly becoming the only important thing in his mind. (That, and how much of his mental facilities he was going to have to dedicate to not soiling his toga in fear. The answer was more than he’d liked.)
“Good,” Jake said, smoothing out his robe. “I’d hate to have to send you into one of the pottery classes.” He could see the guard blanch at that. “We won’t have this conversation again if I have to pass this way, will we?”
“Nosir.”
“Good.” Jake paused, glancing at his fingernails as if inspecting them for imaginary dirt before he looked at the guard with a bit of condescending amusement. “Now, are you going to open the door or am I going to have to do it myself?”
The two angels practically tripped over one another, moving to open the doors for him. “Sorrysir.”
Jake shook his head a little disappointedly once more, much to the guards chagrin, as he stepped through and looked around. He’d stepped into a room that resembled a train station, with tunnels heading off in various directions, each with a sign above it that offered some cryptic information on where it lead. The signs read things like “Records,” “Processing,” “Interpretation,” “Reformation” and, of course, “Human Resources.” Predictably, the entire room was built in the same white-on-white-on-white-with-shades-of-white-and-white-highlights temperament that colored then entire place. The letters on the sign were a shade of grey that almost seemed indignant, as if the letters themselves would be white if they had any say in the matter. Jake idly wondered if the letters had once been gold and just faded over time, or if no one could be bothered to find large amounts of gold to color what were, in essence, utilitarian signs.
Of course, none of the signs said “Exit.” Jake could hear the pamphlet in his head – “Why would anyone want to leave? After all, this is Heaven!” Like all sales brochures, it was filled with half-truths at best. He’d have to take it up with the writer, assuming he ever found him. Even Heaven, it seemed, had a marketing team. How marketing people didn’t go straight to Hell was a little perplexing to Jake. Perhaps it was too full of lawyers.
He still didn’t really have a plan, other than to get himself out of Heaven. Frankly, that itself was more initiative than Jake had typically showed when he was alive, so he felt somehow obligated to carry it through in his afterlife, or whatever this was.
And, frankly,
anything
was better than macaroni paintings.
While Jake weighed his options, he wondered in all seriousness what Hell was like. Even though his exposure to the population of Heaven had been somewhat controlled, he pondered how much worse Hell could be. Heaven was an arts and crafts project. This, of course, meant the whole lake of fire, burning and torture could also just be PR. Maybe Hell was simply boring or dull. Jake would gladly take boring or dull over an infinite repetitious monotony of self-help tapes. Or, was it that it was that much worse than Heaven, and that not only was the whole spiel true, it was worse than that? Could Hell be a place where they had taken torture and made it a new art form? Could they really do the kinds of hideous things the Greeks had dreamed up to keep their kids in line? Rolling stones up mountains, always losing the ones you loved, enduring the same torture day in and day out?
Of course, now that Jake thought about
that
, he had to wonder if that wouldn’t get a little boring too… Really, after say a year of rolling the same rock up the same hill over and over again, wouldn’t you learn that you weren’t ever going to make it, and that that was the point? Wouldn’t you simply stop rolling? And if you did, what would they do to you then? After you’d watched your loved ones die a number of times, you’d get desensitized to it… How did they make things continually worse in Hell? Jake found himself very curious now, but figured at the rate he was going, he just might find out. Sure, everyone had said Heaven loved them but parents love all their children, even the bad ones they have to punish. And if locking up angels wasn’t enough to get you sent to Hell, what was?
He needed to keep moving. He needed to keep looking in rooms and doors and places, find himself an out. He needed to see what lay outside of Heaven. The concept he’d always been taught as a boy was that Heaven was everywhere. So, he asked himself, how does one get out of everywhere? (And what would you find there, other than a Zen jokebook?)
He had slipped down a few hallways before he saw a sign that was taped onto a wall, with the word “Orientation” and a big arrow, pointing towards one of the doors. It wasn’t an exit, but maybe they would tell him where one was. Perhaps he could convince them he was a somewhat bumbling supervisor who was going to check on the Cherubim at work on Earth. He wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to sell this, but he figured with enough confidence, he’d be fine. It had worked so far.
He stepped through the archway and into a big, auditorium like room, and for only a brief moment, Jake had to wonder how many kinds of white stone and wood there were, because surely they were all represented here. It was a smorgasbord of types and shades of white, in a multitude of textures and contours, which was exciting in and of itself.
People littered about in the seats, while the five angels at the front of the stage seemed to be gossiping among themselves. One of them, a woman with silver hair that must have surely been black on Earth as she had a Middle Eastern complexion, noticed Jake moving into the room and brightened up considerably. “Ah, there’s our last one,” she said, nodding to her colleagues up on the stage, as they moved to line up. “Welcome to orientation. My name is Saresh, and these are my colleagues Alan, Hans, Rachelle and Skip.”
Skip? Jake couldn’t believe it… there was an angel named Skip. He wasn’t much a fan of the Bible, but he was almost certain there was no angel named Skip mentioned anywhere within its covers. Oh right, he thought to himself, people doing jobs, not actual angels created by God. It still took a little bit of wrapping his head around from time to time. But still, he thought to himself, you’d think they consider getting more serious names in management. How could anyone be expected to listen respectfully to an angel named Skip? (Or even a human named Skip? Was it short for something? It had to be, but of what? Skiphonimous?)
“We’re here to give you the basic rundown on what you’re going to need. Those of you who have been chosen for block management, move to the left side of the auditorium. Those of you who have been chosen for soul transport and/or control, move to the right side of the auditorium.” People looked up at her, a little blankly. “
Your
right, not mine.” Then they started to move.
Jake wasn’t exactly sure where he should go, but he glanced at the two groups and realized he had to make a split-second decision. Clearly, however, transportation seemed a more likely option for him to get out, so he moved to the transport and control side, noticing that he was surrounded by only two kinds of people – very large, beefy men and short men and women. He did his best to try and puff up, to make himself look stronger than he was. But no one seemed to take much notice of him either way. In fact, they weren’t even counting who was on which side. So very trusting. Or, more likely, they just didn’t care, like everyone else in Heaven.
“Thank you,” Saresh said to them. “Now, let’s get started with the actual orientation. As you know, you have been chosen to be upgraded to angel status. As you undoubtedly know, this honor is granted only to an elite few who have been heavily screened.” Which, Jake thought to himself with a sense of irony, was why they had checked his ID so carefully, which was to say not at all. But, as before, the people around him were enraptured with what they were being told. He was starting to wonder if anyone in Heaven could think for themselves, or if the entire place was on autopilot.
“You are going to be given your manual, your equipment and your halo at the end of this training. You are to use this with care. You will also be given the name and location of your superior officer, whom you must report in to within two celestial hours after completing this course.”
Over the next few hours, Jake listened to yet another boring lecture, as each of the angels in turn stepped up, talked a little bit about themselves and talked about their specialty. Most of it was boring administration, but it did explain why Jake wasn’t quite as pacified as most of the other people he encountered.
They were being drugged.
When Jake first arrived, he was told quite clearly he didn’t need to eat, sleep or drink, and yet the angels insisted on bringing “snacks” by every day. These were little candies that were given out once a day. Jake remembered them telling him that he didn’t have to eat, so had declined to have one. The angels were none too pleased about that, and began trying to pressure him to have one over the next few days. And so Jake began teaching himself how to palm small objects over his spare time. A bit of pottery here, a few paintbrushes there, until one day, when the angels seemed to be getting more and more politely annoyed, they seemed ready to try and make him have one. (The ridiculousness of the idea of being held down and force fed candy in Heaven was not lost on him.)
The angels had told him, in what seemed to be their last ditch effort to avoid doing real work, that Jake really needed to eat the snack, or they would have to take more drastic steps to ensure his well being. So Jake had sighed, smiled a little bit, taken one, then mocked throwing it into his mouth while he palmed it, swallowing the imaginary candy to their satisfaction. Of course, the angels never gave it a second thought – they assumed he had eaten it and passively fallen in line with all the other people. Which, of course, he hadn’t. He’d simply started emulating the others. The nail that sticks out gets hammered.
Finally, the orientation lectures seemed to be winding down, as Skip, the last of the lecturers moved to stand up at the podium. Jake peered carefully at him – Skip was a big man, bulky and muscular without being lumbering, and his halo was scratched or tarnished, it was hard to see. There were tattoos on both of his exposed biceps, and he kept his hair tightly shorn, almost shaved down to the scalp. He also had wings, which clearly marked him as one of the Erelim. Skip paused as he stared out at them, placing both of his hands on the podium before addressing Jake’s half of the room, completely ignoring the other half. The shorter members of Jake’s side, who were clearly chosen to be Cherubim, had been taken away to another room a little earlier.