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sparkindarknessThis one came out of one of those freaky conversations. Always seem to happen to me late at night when I/friends are drunk and the talking gets surreal - even worse on the phone. I spent 3 hours in a public bar pretending to be a Russian spy smuggling arms in Azerbaijan in a Lada (yes, we were very very drunk, but it was also funny - well it SEEMED funny at the time). "You want me to smuggle 60 missiles, Comrade? All you gave me was a lada! This would never have happened if Stalin was alive! Pass me a crowbar."
Anyway, the following intro thingy (which is unlikely to be continued) came from a silly conversation like the above about celestial paper work (yes, see the very very drunk bit again) was attacked by muses.
Oh, fair warning, given the inspirational base, and after affects of the, errrr... SOURCE of the inspiration, it isn't all that shiny.
Ok, here’s the street, looks like the right address... maybe someone’s actually gotten everything right for once! Had to happen sooner or later, must be a miracle or something.
Soon now, the street looks deserted, but in a few minutes there will be a tragedy that would grieve thousands. Unless I can stop it. Possible scenarios run through my mind - a bus full of children driven off the road? A great philanthropist caught in a stupid hit and run.
Here it comes, a car going far too fast for the misty conditions. The driver some kid whose just passed his license and thinks he’s a boy racer. I take a deep breath... soon.
There, he hits the curb. There’s a screech of tires as he looses control, a flash of panic across his face as he fights the steering wheel. A truck begins to reverse into the street, not seeing the rampaging vehicle behind him. I run forwards, come on, I got to get this one right! The car careens towards the truck - it’s going to hit the back doors!
I draw in my power, concentrate and push against fate, a little pressure, and the steering wheel jerks sharply back to the right. The boy manages to pull the car back under control, and pulls to a shaky stop. I stand on the corner and grin - it worked! I can’t believe it actually worked! A complete success!
Then I hear the driver from the truck speak. “Hey kid, you blind or something!” He’s a huge man, with a fierce bushy beard.
The kid looks mortified, and a little scared, “sorry, I’m new at this...”
The man laughs. “No harm done. Tragedy averted,” I grin wider, “imagine if you’d hit! This truck’s full of finest whisky! Imagine all them thousands of desperate drunks! Tragic!” He laughs again.
Whisky?! I just pulled a divine intervention for whisky?! That does it, I don’t have to stand for this! I’m an angel of divine providence! A guardian against the darkness of evil and cruelty of fate!
With a sharp ripping sound, my long feather wings burst through my coat. I soar upwards into the sky, determined to make someone pay for this.
It never used to be like this. Apparently, anyway. I wasn’t there in the ‘good old days.’ But there was a massive reshuffle, modernisation they called it. The boss man decided there was no point in demarking all the time. Time to consolidate, centralise, better use of resources and all that crap. Of course like every CEO, he has only the vaguest clue about reality and positively revels in causing havoc, he must! So, while all the mortals continued with their standard tasks of splitting the religions up into ever more contradictory and confusing schisms, added a couple of new philosophies and generally got a whole lot wrong and messed up much of the rest; the divine host was having a massive reorganisation. All the divine messengers, guides, guardians, whatever you want to call us, were formed into one cohesive, super efficient body, with a full system of perfect organisation, labour management, accountability and perfect records. Yeah, and I’m the tooth fairy!
Most of the big players already existed in several mythos at once. The minute we were fused into one body, they were all forced to maintain only one form at a time. So when there was a couple of dozen Raphaels (or whatever you want to call him - he won’t mind, he’s too busy banging his head on his desk) there’s now only one. Course, the work load hasn’t got any lighter - actually it’s got an awful lot heavier. Can you guess how much havoc that caused?
Ah, but it gets better. You see our perfect well oiled machine of efficiency with perfect records, full accountability, yadda, yadda, yadda, actually runs on paper. Lots and lots of paper. It’s gotten beyond ridiculous - you can’t watch the fall of a sparrow now without writing out a report. Some of the old guys really can’t handle it. I’ve known Michael, lord of the Morning and Dawn, who crossed swords with the Daystar himself, collapse into tears at being made to face yet another from in triplicate.
Yup, it gets even better. Basically we’re working with all faiths, philosophies, beliefs, fill-in-the-word-of-the-day, and that the boss man rarely gives you a straight answer for anything (see? Just like a CEO); all referenced to standard moral principles and what-we-definitely-know-is-right. Right, gather that together and YOU tell me what’s a sin anymore! You tell me what deserves divine intervention, and what doesn’t! Believe me, we don’t have a clue, we’re mainly clinging to human perceptions here - hence the miraculously protected scotch. The boss man’s answer? Promote the old guys (‘our valued, experienced servants, long since deserving of recognition’) to management position. Result - everyone who actually had a clue on how to use divine energy was now saddled with mountains of paperwork and a growing number of stress disorders (we had to bodily drag Gabriel out of the cupboard he was hiding in when he saw his inbox). Oh, and no new angels were tapped to fill in the gaps - never mind that 80% of the heavenly host has become celestial bureaucrats. Even if they were all active, we’d never have enough.
So that’s the state of the divine now. A shambles. All the big wigs chained to desks. No-one really knows what we’re doing, where we should be, or what we should do when we get there, but we all know we’re going to have to fill out a bloody form about it afterwards. There are so few field angles left on Earth now, that we can’t even manage one angel per country, and believe me, the world the way it is, you want a Hell- errr... an awful lot more miracle workers than that. Oh, did I mention that us poor field angels were all low ranking singers until recently, with virtually no power? To fill in the void they just dumped a vast amount of miracle energy in us, making us as strong as the seraphim (which was way cool for about five seconds) but neglected to include the manual. Then they send us out and expect us to turn water into wine? Sorry mate, at the minute I’ll turn water into tea by way of a kettle and a tea-pot, ‘kay? And unless everyone brings a massive pack lunch, the 5,000 are just going to have to go hungry, right?
So welcome to haven, understaffed, under-skilled with too much red tape and paper pushing and no real direction, lead by a loony.
Hey, we did modernise after all!
Anyway, the following intro thingy (which is unlikely to be continued) came from a silly conversation like the above about celestial paper work (yes, see the very very drunk bit again) was attacked by muses.
Oh, fair warning, given the inspirational base, and after affects of the, errrr... SOURCE of the inspiration, it isn't all that shiny.
Ok, here’s the street, looks like the right address... maybe someone’s actually gotten everything right for once! Had to happen sooner or later, must be a miracle or something.
Soon now, the street looks deserted, but in a few minutes there will be a tragedy that would grieve thousands. Unless I can stop it. Possible scenarios run through my mind - a bus full of children driven off the road? A great philanthropist caught in a stupid hit and run.
Here it comes, a car going far too fast for the misty conditions. The driver some kid whose just passed his license and thinks he’s a boy racer. I take a deep breath... soon.
There, he hits the curb. There’s a screech of tires as he looses control, a flash of panic across his face as he fights the steering wheel. A truck begins to reverse into the street, not seeing the rampaging vehicle behind him. I run forwards, come on, I got to get this one right! The car careens towards the truck - it’s going to hit the back doors!
I draw in my power, concentrate and push against fate, a little pressure, and the steering wheel jerks sharply back to the right. The boy manages to pull the car back under control, and pulls to a shaky stop. I stand on the corner and grin - it worked! I can’t believe it actually worked! A complete success!
Then I hear the driver from the truck speak. “Hey kid, you blind or something!” He’s a huge man, with a fierce bushy beard.
The kid looks mortified, and a little scared, “sorry, I’m new at this...”
The man laughs. “No harm done. Tragedy averted,” I grin wider, “imagine if you’d hit! This truck’s full of finest whisky! Imagine all them thousands of desperate drunks! Tragic!” He laughs again.
Whisky?! I just pulled a divine intervention for whisky?! That does it, I don’t have to stand for this! I’m an angel of divine providence! A guardian against the darkness of evil and cruelty of fate!
With a sharp ripping sound, my long feather wings burst through my coat. I soar upwards into the sky, determined to make someone pay for this.
It never used to be like this. Apparently, anyway. I wasn’t there in the ‘good old days.’ But there was a massive reshuffle, modernisation they called it. The boss man decided there was no point in demarking all the time. Time to consolidate, centralise, better use of resources and all that crap. Of course like every CEO, he has only the vaguest clue about reality and positively revels in causing havoc, he must! So, while all the mortals continued with their standard tasks of splitting the religions up into ever more contradictory and confusing schisms, added a couple of new philosophies and generally got a whole lot wrong and messed up much of the rest; the divine host was having a massive reorganisation. All the divine messengers, guides, guardians, whatever you want to call us, were formed into one cohesive, super efficient body, with a full system of perfect organisation, labour management, accountability and perfect records. Yeah, and I’m the tooth fairy!
Most of the big players already existed in several mythos at once. The minute we were fused into one body, they were all forced to maintain only one form at a time. So when there was a couple of dozen Raphaels (or whatever you want to call him - he won’t mind, he’s too busy banging his head on his desk) there’s now only one. Course, the work load hasn’t got any lighter - actually it’s got an awful lot heavier. Can you guess how much havoc that caused?
Ah, but it gets better. You see our perfect well oiled machine of efficiency with perfect records, full accountability, yadda, yadda, yadda, actually runs on paper. Lots and lots of paper. It’s gotten beyond ridiculous - you can’t watch the fall of a sparrow now without writing out a report. Some of the old guys really can’t handle it. I’ve known Michael, lord of the Morning and Dawn, who crossed swords with the Daystar himself, collapse into tears at being made to face yet another from in triplicate.
Yup, it gets even better. Basically we’re working with all faiths, philosophies, beliefs, fill-in-the-word-of-the-day, and that the boss man rarely gives you a straight answer for anything (see? Just like a CEO); all referenced to standard moral principles and what-we-definitely-know-is-right. Right, gather that together and YOU tell me what’s a sin anymore! You tell me what deserves divine intervention, and what doesn’t! Believe me, we don’t have a clue, we’re mainly clinging to human perceptions here - hence the miraculously protected scotch. The boss man’s answer? Promote the old guys (‘our valued, experienced servants, long since deserving of recognition’) to management position. Result - everyone who actually had a clue on how to use divine energy was now saddled with mountains of paperwork and a growing number of stress disorders (we had to bodily drag Gabriel out of the cupboard he was hiding in when he saw his inbox). Oh, and no new angels were tapped to fill in the gaps - never mind that 80% of the heavenly host has become celestial bureaucrats. Even if they were all active, we’d never have enough.
So that’s the state of the divine now. A shambles. All the big wigs chained to desks. No-one really knows what we’re doing, where we should be, or what we should do when we get there, but we all know we’re going to have to fill out a bloody form about it afterwards. There are so few field angles left on Earth now, that we can’t even manage one angel per country, and believe me, the world the way it is, you want a Hell- errr... an awful lot more miracle workers than that. Oh, did I mention that us poor field angels were all low ranking singers until recently, with virtually no power? To fill in the void they just dumped a vast amount of miracle energy in us, making us as strong as the seraphim (which was way cool for about five seconds) but neglected to include the manual. Then they send us out and expect us to turn water into wine? Sorry mate, at the minute I’ll turn water into tea by way of a kettle and a tea-pot, ‘kay? And unless everyone brings a massive pack lunch, the 5,000 are just going to have to go hungry, right?
So welcome to haven, understaffed, under-skilled with too much red tape and paper pushing and no real direction, lead by a loony.
Hey, we did modernise after all!