The last — and toughest — decision Eve and Donnie had to make over that Monopoly board was what to tell Luka and Chet.
They knew, by all indications, what Luka and Chet didn't: They were pregnant, and her baby almost certainly will be the last human soul to enter an Earthly vessel before the turn.
Donnie drew a Chance card.
"Going to see my homies!" he exclaimed, dropping his dog in jail.
"So, Gabriel doesn't know for sure, though, right?" he asked as Eve rolled the dice.
Fuck. Illinois. Again.
She took a swig from the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels and forked over half of what was left of her dwindling colorful cash.
"It's a math thing," she answered. "He can't be a hundred percent, any more than we can. He said, at the very last second, right as the kid is crowning, Godzilla could eat her, and then it could be ages before it all lines up again."
Well, Gabriel didn't put it quite like that.
The details were foggy, but Eve remembered him saying that free will and quantum uncertainty dictate that nothing is truly decided "until it is."
Eve was just way too buzzed to try and explain that to Donnie.
The important part was that Gabriel was as sure as an Elohim could be.
"When you've been doing this for a few billion years or so, you tend to get a feel for it," he told her dryly.
On every world, with every species, there were always signs the turn was approaching: sudden spikes in mortality rates, sharp dips in live childbirths, unrest — there was always unrest — and then it was just a matter of running the numbers.
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Souls are assigned at conception and take ownership of the vessel at birth. During those months, when the baby vessel is completely reliant on its mother for sustenance and secluded from all but her soul, the awaiting soul is encouraged to "watch" the miraculous process, to begin bonding to the vessel and to its future mom.
So, as soon as Chet's little swimmer found Luka's egg, Gabriel knew the soul that would inhabit the bouncing baby boy growing inside her.
Yes, it was to be a little boy — another detail Eve and Donnie had no business knowing.
It didn't take much for Gabriel to extrapolate the available data and narrow down the likely moment of the birth of Luka's baby and the total number of mothers that would be in labor at that precise moment — information he wouldn't divulge.
"That algorithm is above your pay grade," he told an inquisitive Eve.
Regardless of the equation, the result was enough to convince Gabriel and his Elohim brethren that the "trumpets" of humanity's temperament would sound with the first breath of Luka's first child.
Some would say giving birth to that child is Luka's destiny, but in reality, it was just the luck of the draw.
If humanity's hum was synced with Paradise's, it would be the most significant, most celebrated moment in all human history.
Unfortunately, given humanity's current collective mood, the harmonic resonance that is all but guaranteed to emanate from Earth on that day of birth will likely sound to the universal expanse like a stray wet cat in heat.
Within moments, Earth will stretch and yawn, and somewhere — could be anywhere on the planet, really — millions of people will be flicked off her creaking bed like a smelly pair of socks. Or she might stomp her foot and tear apart the Pacific Ring of Fire.
There was just no way to know.
Now, none of that will be Luka's fault, or the fault of that beautiful baby and its eternally precious soul.
It just is what it is.
So, Eve argued, Luka and Chet deserved to experience the joy she knew they'd feel of being new, expecting, first-time parents and feeling the baby kick and all those things Eve never got to experience.
Luka should have the chance to pee on a stick and watch it change her life and figure out the perfect way to tell Chet he's going to be a daddy.
"What am I supposed to tell them, Donnie?" Eve asked. "You're preggers, and, oh, yeah, if the Earth didn't move when you made the little bundle, it's gonna fucking boogie when it's born? Is that really what I'm supposed to tell them?"
That, Donnie thought, would be hilarious, and the two of them snorted with drunken, desperate laughter for a good two minutes.
"Ohhhh, this is so fucked up," Donnie groaned at last.
"But they gotta know," he added. "They need all the facts. What fucking crazy-ass story would we have to come up with to keep it from them? And how pissed would they be if they figured it out?"
"We gotta get these fuckers ready," Donnie said. "It sucks, but the baby shower is going to have to wait. I don't know, maybe it'll make them stronger, but if it makes them fall apart, we have to know that, too."
He was right. She knew he was right. And with a stop on Marvin Gardens, she was broke.
Game over.