Son of Man

The scenery kept changing around me as Everywhere began to evolve. Moreover, my awareness of Everywhere had been tremendously enhanced. If before I could only look upon a tiny portion of a small sea with my eyes, now I was suddenly aware of the entire ocean. I could see the entire world all at once, and it wasn’t straining at all. I could see mankind’s thoughts. Of course, I quickly realized that I wasn’t looking at the world I was aware of. I was looking upon something far, far more ancient.

In one place, a group of inadequately clad men were hunting a beast with sharpened sticks. In another, a group of men and women were bowing before an immense bonfire. Ah, that place feels… different. It almost felt as if it was giving me energy… but that didn’t make sense. Only the Lord gained energy from worship, and they didn’t even seem to be worshiping the Lord specifically. The scenery of Everywhere changed once more.

“The wickedness of man is great on Earth. The imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart is once more only continuously evil.”

The young man I had seen earlier was ‘standing next to me’ and speaking, in the figurative sense. He continued.

“I will destroy both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have raised them.”

But then I realised… he wasn’t the only one speaking. I was speaking the same words, and yet at the same time I wasn’t saying anything at all. While I was confounded by this feeling, I watched as heavy rain began to fall across the world. The scene changed once more, and all at once immense pain hit me that I hadn’t felt since I was impaled by the Lahat Chereb.

It hurts. Everything hurts. Is this what it feels like to die?

I was no longer in Everywhere. I was hung from a wooden cross, and my body wasn’t my own. I could feel a beard weighing down my chin. Before I could process the changes, however, the scenery changed once more. At once, I realised that my awareness of Everywhere had returned to null. Looking around, I could see two people speaking in front of me… Michael, and my father – Apollyon.

===

Apollyon sighed.

“You really want to restrict the vessel’s ability to use miracles? That runs against the goal of having them gather followers, does it not?”

Michael glared back at him.

“You know nothing, Apollyon. The Lord does not need rational belief, but faith. The Lord cannot exist on the basis of concrete thought, he may only exist in the domain of the undefined. By using the power of miracle in a world of unholy sciences, they will attempt to define the Lord, and in doing so will only hasten his demise.”

Apollyon grimaced slightly.

“Even so, we would have to actively tamper with the vessel’s mind to restrain them like that, that seems-”

Michael cut Apollyon off before he could finish.

“We are already interfering with their mind by planning to use them to temporarily eliminate the Father, are we not?”

“…”

Apollyon had no reply. It was true. By eliminating the Father, who was by far the greatest burden on the Holy Trinity’s resources, they would be able to concentrate on the Son until the Lord could be recompleted. Apollyon finally closed his eyes, having decided to follow along.

“Is this not blasphemy?”

Michael gave a sharp laugh.

“Ha! Blasphemy would be to leave the Father as he is! He is decaying far too quickly. We must protect his honour. Should we fail to act, then the Lord will cease to exist, Angel of the Abyss.”

“The Father is the Lord.”

“And at the same time, he is not. The Spirit and the Son have not rejected this plan.”

“….”

Apollyon could do nothing but glare at Michael. Both metaphorical and literal sparks flew between them for a moment, before Apollyon turned his glass-covered eyes from Michael and gave a silent prayer.

“Please, Lord. Forgive me for this greatest sin. I-”

Michael sneered at Apollyon and cut him off.

“We will not succeed in Armageddon with useless whelps like you.”

Apollyon, having stopped his prayer, locked eyes with Michael.

“Lucifer said the same.”

“….”

“Michael, we must both forever live with this sin.”

Apollyon paused, seemingly looking somewhere far away.

“One day, I pray that the Son of Man might forgive us.”

===

I laughed. The memories continued to flood in, and I continued to laugh. I couldn’t stop. I had been laughing for so long that my throat began to run dry. Frankly, it was hilarious. All of my work, and all of my life, I had been preparing for something that I wasn’t supposed to succeed in in the first place. I could only find the sheer bitter irony of the situation unbearably funny. So, for a while, I pushed my other feelings aside and simply laughed.

After I had finally got that out of my system, I turned to the pigeon standing beside me in this room. I had returned to my time, and now I remembered everything. I was ‘the Lord’ who I had spent my entire life being told I needed to serve wholeheartedly. Feelings began to bubble up again, but I pushed them down.

“What was the point of all of that, Spirit? Why couldn’t you just build faith normally….”

“That wouldn’t work. Faith built through miracles in a world with this level of technology is only temporary.”

The Spirit ‘responded’, but it was correct. From my new understanding, God’s ‘divinity’ existed as a product of the combined faith of mankind in the concept of gods throughout its history, though it was strongest when concentrated on the Lord specifically. In some sense, the Lord could be considered to be a parasitic life form that fed upon human belief. The Lord – and myself as an extension – could not exist without genuine faith.

“But you tricked the Father. Isn’t that basically suicide?”

“We’re still fine.”

That was true. I sighed and gave up trying to figure out the details of that for the moment.

“What now?”

“Go to the coast. Faith may be built there.”

I guess that makes sense. If I just go to the coast, which is severely underdeveloped, then things will work out better for faith-building. But still….

“Why did you trick me?”

“Would you have preferred to know you were the God the Son while you were humiliating yourself to proselyte?”

“… Then, why did my father-”

“Because he wished to save God.”

And before I could ask for any elaboration, the Spirit was gone, and time had returned. On top of that, my apartment was now empty. Not in the sense that it had no furniture, but, rather, in the sense that it was no longer connected to Everywhere.

“Son of Man, huh?”

I lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling. The feelings I'd been suppressing – betrayal, frustration, anger – finally bubbled over, though one stood above the rest. Now that I was no longer under the puppeteering of the angel’s design, I could understand. Ah… I’m afraid. I realised my own feelings. From the very beginning, no matter how much I participated in strategy games with humans, no matter how much I played with them at parties, and no matter how much fun I had talking to them, I would never be able to erase that fear. My life depended on their belief, but they could only ever see it as a joke. My life was never my own.

And then, I remembered the Great Flood. I had done that. All parts of the Trinity – the Spirit, the Son, and the Father, are equally God. As God, I had actively permitted the ending of tens of thousands of lives in that flood. And now, I was going to try to use that to build faith? It was a cruel joke.

“Dammit.”

What did I do to deserve this? I was marked to do this from the moment I came into being. I was born into a mortal body for the purpose of saving a dying god, and now I’m told that I am that dying god myself. It’s bullshit. I rolled over onto my side on the cold floor. I knew what I needed to do, but I simply didn’t want to do it.

It was time for me to leave Strait, most likely forever.