005 – Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

Time to Seal: 07:11

I didn’t have the energy to argue, and their presence in my ‘Guides’ channel probably meant I wasn’t going to argue them away anyway. So I proceeded to find every possible nook and cranny those bugs could use to enter this place and seal it up. All while trying to explain to Jamie what the fuck was going on and parsing Gabriel’s numerous warnings about Lucy.

My head was pulled in ten directions at once. Every couple of seconds I dropped another question in my notes.

At least, despite my expectations of sabotage, Lucy actually helped. Even procured duct tape, which was a godsend in keeping everything tight. Though ‘godsend’ was certainly not the right phrase.

We were too slow in some places. But with two of us focused on squashing the invaders and one on patching the vulnerability, we dealt with those situations swiftly.

When we were done I collapsed against a display case in the front room.

“Okay, Jamie, Lucy, I need to get some important questions out of the way now or my mind will literally explode.”

Jamie slid to the ground across from me, while Lucy perched on the counter.

“Sure, shoot,” Jamie said.

“What’s with the outfit? And the gun? And the lockpicks?”

“The gun isn’t mine. It was a client’s. The lockpicks are mine. I’m a lit major and picking is a hobby.”

I leaned back and shut my eyes.

“Thanks, none of that made anything more clear.”

“Gabriel, Lucy can’t lie, you said?” She’d warned me that they’d twist the truth, but couldn’t outright state falsehood.

“Correct. Still, it doesn’t mean you can trust them,” Gabriel confirmed.

“Lucy, do you know why Jamie doesn’t have a guide? Also is your name really ‘lucifer’, lower-case ‘L’?”

“Yes, I do know. And yes, it is. I am not the Morningstar, but a fragment of them, thus the helpful spelling.” They smiled innocently.

“Bullshit,” Gabriel said.

“I thought they can’t lie?”

“There has to be some trick going on. The Adversary doesn’t get personally involved.”

“Lucy, why would I, Eve Anderson, be graced by the presence of a fragment of the Adversary?”

“We don’t use that name here, silly. You are graced by my presence because it is an interesting combination. Heaven’s greatest cheat teams up with a human who does nothing but cheating. She didn’t even last a minute without cheating. And then the fact of what’s going on with your ex.” They clasped their hand over their mouth, with a theatrical gasp. “Whoops. I don’t think you are meant to know.”

“Hey, can we talk about the fact that supposedly everyone is getting superpowers, but I don’t?” Jamie asked.

Jamie was right. Lucy’s comments were clearly bait. That one was the important question.

“Oh, Heaven will get around to you, pretty boy,” Lucy said. “They are having bandwidth issues. Eight billion people is just too many and they just can’t get everyone in. Maybe humanity did grow too large for poor old Earth.”

“We’ve handled other realities with larger populations before. This isn’t the issue,” Gabriel complained.

“Of course you did, Gabby. But maybe not all sides of this conflict are content to just stagnate and resign themselves to the status quo. Maybe we did something that made bandwidth an issue.” Lucy was directly addressing open air. I wondered if Gabriel was actually present as some kind of immaterial ghost. For the next part they spoke to me and Jamie again.

“See, kids? This isn’t really about some trite tale of good versus evil. This is about stasis and evolution. Order as the goal instead of the barrier to growth.”

“Just that the price for that is destruction on a reality scale,” Gabriel replied coldly.

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“You know what they say, and there are big omelettes to make.”

“Missing an entire person in this conversation sucks, by the way. Just saying,” Jamie said.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get yours within seven hours. Well, if you survive that long, otherwise there’ll be a very disappointed and very unemployed guardian angel looking at your corpse.”