If Eve could remember the details of their seven days together, she would know that Gabriel found her amusing.

Questions. She had so many questions.

Once she calmed down and her brain processed her new reality, she rattled them off with enthusiasm.

"Who shot JFK?"

"The CIA."

"Who killed Marilyn Monroe?"

"Same answer."

"Did we land on the moon?"

"Yes, but not when you think you did."

"Why are you dressed like Adam Ant?"

Gabriel laughed at that one.

"You can't see me in my true form," he told her.

Eve's head spun to reruns of "Supernatural."

"My eyes would burn out of my skull?" she asked.

He laughed again, a full-bodied laugh that struck Eve with its honesty.

"No," he assured her. "You literally wouldn't be able to see me. I am..."

He struggled to find the simplest terms.

"Energy, light... it can behave in surprising ways, correct?" he asked.

Eve nodded. "The double-slit experiment," she said.

"Right," Gabriel replied. "Good."

"Well, there are some frequencies — many of them, truthfully — that humans have yet to discover, mainly because they cannot yet perceive their existence," he explained. "I am mostly made of one of those frequencies, the same way that human vessels are mostly comprised of water. You haven't yet developed the senses needed to fully see me."

She took a second to absorb the information, then circled back to her original thought. "But why Adam Ant's wardrobe?"

"You really don't know?" he asked, smiling again. "Think back..."

He wanted to know if she could access memories like that at will. It could prove important later.

Eve searched her mind. She loved Adam Ant, for sure, when she was a kid. She was, what? Thirteen when "Strip" hit the charts? And that New Romantic look. She went all-in on that for a while...

And that was about the time...

"I first saw you when I was 13," Eve said.

Thirteen was the first difficult year Eve could remember having.

With the onset of her period, Eve went from a "sensitive" child to a hormonal hurricane. More than a week before "Mr. Monthly" arrived, she would teeter on the edge of an emotional black hole. When it finally "visited," she spent a full week crippled with cramps and migraines. And for at least three days after, she was struggling to gain her energy back, only for the PMS to start pummeling her again.

Her body, Eve was convinced at the time, was betraying her, and her mood swings grew increasingly...

"Dark," Eve whispered aloud. "I was really in a dark place, and..."

"In all that internal chemical chaos," Gabriel reminded her, "the neural pathways to your more intuitive gifts went through a growth. Suddenly, you sensed me."

"And it scared the shit out of me!" Eve gasped.

"I was 'Darkness' from that moment on," he chuckled.

"Because you looked like a shadow person," she said. "Like a big shadow watching me."

"That's about as closely as your brain can approximate my form," he said. "So, I looked at the posters on your wall..."

"And you chose Adam Ant?" Eve shook with laughter. "From then on, I imagined you as a pirate."

"Boy George seemed less ideal," Gabriel chuckled.

"Do you watch everyone?" Eve needed to know.

"Yes," he answered simply. "I am Elohim. It is what we do."

"Why?"

"Because you wouldn't leave a bunch of mischievous children unattended, would you?" he asked. "No telling what they would get up to."

It really is that simple. Gabriel wanted her to understand that.

Humans in this epoch had an extraordinary penchant for overcomplicating everything, and he needed Eve to know that they do it because they were conditioned by some wayward souls to do so.

Eve, meanwhile, wanted to dish.

"What is the one thing that humans have ridiculously wrong that really irks you?" she asked.

"Elohim don't get irked," Gabriel replied, knowing she knew that wasn't a real answer.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

He sighed. It was a delicate thing, deciding what he should share and what information humans needed to gather on their own.

Nothing was off-limits in the Guff, and anything already known to humans on Earth was fair game. But there was a wide gray area that was left to the Elohims' discretion, and you never wanted to divulge something that could knock human development off course.

The "Prime Directive" Gene Roddenberry imagined was a remarkable insight into the way things operate. The souls of science fiction writers, like the scientists who inspired them, were among those who often honed in on the natural order of things. They, along with the musicians and actors and poets and painters of their world, were the ones most likely to access memories from their respites in the Guff.

Consciously, they likely remembered nothing of the unknown things they learned while there, but, as with souls of all species, everything was recorded for them on a deeply subconscious level, available to them once they were evolved enough to access it.

Described as "epiphanies," "deja vous," and "your conscience," the information that is recalled often manifests both in times of great need and great creativity.

Of course, the Elohim, having known every one of those human souls for millions of years, knew which to go to with a whisper in the ear if they needed to get a message out to humanity.

It was always hit and miss, and the message would almost always get garbled, like a child's game of telephone, but eventually, someone — an Albert Einstein or a Nikolai Tesla or a Bob Dylan — would credit an ethereal "muse" and say what needed to be said.

Eve, Gabriel could tell, was genuinely interested in his opinion on something, and it was so rare that a wide-eyed human, confronted with what so many of them think is a myth, ever cared to know how he felt about anything that didn't directly relate to their eternal well-being...

She likely wouldn't remember his answer, so really, why not enjoy the moment?

And if she did retrieve the memories on her own, Gabriel thought, would that really be such a bad thing? Doesn't she already sense it on some level?

"Fallen angels," he replied, enunciating each syllable with a smirk. "The entire premise is preposterous."

"Details," Eve pressed. "Be specific."

"Alright then," Gabriel said, warming up to his favorite rant. "Why did God supposedly flood Noah's world?"

Eve thought for a moment. "The angels coveted the human females, went all Barry White on them, and their offspring — the Nephilim — were giants who started eating them? Which is weird, because didn't David take one out with a slingshot?"

"See, there is so much wrong with that statement, I don't know where to begin," Gabriel huffed. "First, it's a physical impossibility."

"What part?"

"All of it," Gabriel said. "We. Are not. The same. You were created in our image, as we were created in God's image."

"Image," he stressed. "You were based on us, given versions of our abilities and traits tailored to your unique being. But you are a completely different life form, wholly incompatible, especially on a reproductive level. It would be like you trying to mate with a palm tree. It would never occur to us to even attempt something so absurd."

That made Eve giggle, but Gabriel was just getting started.

"And if it were possible, which I assure you, it isn't, why would our offspring be vile, cannibalistic, bloodthirsty beasts?" he asked.

"Well, that's easy," Eve said. "You broke God's rules when you banged our bitches. Nothing good was going to come of that."

She was enjoying this.

Was it weird that she was enjoying this? Shouldn't she be awestruck and terrified? But Gabriel was astonishingly easy to talk to, and he was funny. That tickled her no end. Archangels are funny fuckers! Who knew?

"We would never 'bang' you," Gabriel told her. "I don't want to bruise your delicate human ego, but you're not exactly our type. Beautiful. Humans are beautiful. But I suspect we believe you to be beautiful in the same way you believe a kitten is beautiful, or a daisy, or a really fluffy bunny.

"And the idea that we would be jealous of God's love for you..." Gabriel's voice trailed off and he looked down. "It's really so tragic that so many of you've been led to believe that.'

"Eve," he said, looking at her in earnest, "God Himself looked upon us, we who had been at His side for the birth of every wondrous thing He has created, and He loved us so that He created you and allowed me and six of my brethren to be witnesses to your magnificent journey to Paradise.

"Search your heart, Eve. Can you think of a greater honor, a greater responsibility, or a greater show of appreciation from the One who created All?"

Eve felt tears welling up in her eyes, and she wasn't sure why. It was just such a breathtaking thought.

"We could never be anything but humbled and proud and profoundly moved by God's love for you, because it is a reflection of His love for us," he said softly.

"Only the developing mind of an Earthbound child would be so arrogant as to think an ancient being of light would betray not only his Lord but his own soul for such a primitive pleasure," he said gently.

"Which is why pride is a sin?" Eve was thinking aloud again. "But you just said you took pride in us."

He smiled patiently. She was asking the right questions, as he knew she would.

"Pride is another word whose meaning has been manipulated," Gabriel answered. "And 'sin' is a human construct.

"Are there behaviors that are less desirable in an evolved human soul? Of course. And in time, you will all come to realize that and will act accordingly. But the notion of a 'mortal sin' that will condemn your soul for eternity? You only believe that because you are still incapable of seeing the larger picture.

"You still cling to the merits and failures of a single lifetime," Gabriel said. "You still believe that the fate of your eternal soul rests only on you and what you do, typically, in less than 100 years of living. You are disconnected from each other, and you've forgotten that the Butterfly Effect is very real.

"We have watched each of you live so many lives, and there are so many still to come for you all. What you see as unforgivable, we see as a difficult misstep from a much broader lesson that you will, in time, master. What you see as your own mortality, we know is nothing more than the changing of a pair of shoes in the grand scheme of things.

"Pride in a job well done, pride in those around you, pride in your own ability to accomplish any goal or realize any dream... that's not a bad thing," he said. "Hubris, on the other hand, the belief that you are superior to others, that you could flirt with an angel of the Lord, for example, and start a heavenly war between those who see you, for the most part, as precocious teenagers...

"That is a trait that is neither appealing or helpful to anyone," Gabriel agreed. "But even that, we know, will eventually fade from cognitive human behavior, the same way I knew you'd eventually grow up and stop picking your nose."

Again, Eve found herself laughing. Then another dot floated through her mind, and she needed to connect it while she had the chance.

"Lucifer?" she asked.

"The greatest wrap-up smear ever conceived and executed on the unsuspecting masses," Gabriel said with more than a tinge of... irkiness?

Yes, Eve decided, this irked the Elohim.

"Lucifer is no different than I," Gabriel said. "He was chosen to watch humanity just like I was, like Michael, Uriel, Chamuel, Raphael, Jophiel. He became quite close to his charges at the end of the last epoch. He believed more than any of us that, at most, in another turn or two, humanity would be raptured. He enjoyed being among them."

"After the flood, he encouraged humans to remember all they knew, to embrace the challenge they were facing and stay the course," he continued wistfully. "And that made him a problem for the humans who wanted to take humanity on a different path."

"Eve, you are familiar with the idea of projection, right?" he asked. "You're doing something you know is beneath you, so you accuse others of doing the same?"

Familiar with it? It had been elevated to a sport in America.

Eve nodded.

"Every self-indulgent obsession, every tantrum they wished to throw before God, every untamed desire for control and debauchery the newly established ruling class on Earth craved," Gabriel said, "was projected onto Lucifer.

"His name became synonymous with torment and manipulation. He became the reason for all that held humanity back. It was he who wished to trap souls away from God's grace. It was he, not them, who rejected God's plan, who challenged God, and who would, without their protection, possess human souls and break their spirits, with the sole purpose of 'irking,' as you put it, his Creator.

"It was so ridiculous, we honestly thought it would blow over," he admitted. "Who could believe that God would create a creature that was destined to do the things they accused Lucifer of doing? Why would God Almighty wish for such a thing to exist — an irredeemable creation of such power, capable only of destruction and chaos and pain to everything He loved?

"Cui bono?" he asked. "Ask yourself who benefited from such dogma?"

"Lucifer's very name struck fear into the people he was to guide," Gabriel said. "His reputation was, it became clear, unfixable. He knew he could never successfully carry out God's purpose for him or for humanity when they ran screaming from him in terror or crawling to him out of some twisted sense of rebellious allegiance.

"So he did what was best for the humans who hated him — he put in for a job transfer," Gabriel said. "Zadkiel joined us, and Lucifer is in another world where he is faithfully serving the souls in his keep."

Eve blinked. A lot. Rapidly.

"They are stories, Eve, stories that, if analyzed unemotionally, with logic, fall apart," Gabriel said. "Stories that have been told by people who created them as a means to insert themselves between the rest of humanity and their connection to God, to us, and to each other.

"And they have become the stories that have informed a great deal of genuinely well-meaning, faithful human souls for a very long time," he said.

"Understand, this isn't about one religion," Gabriel told her. "The Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths represent nearly four billion human souls, and they have been cajoled and coerced, sometimes on pain of death, into believing they are each other's mortal enemy.

"To unlearn that now, much of humanity will have to unwind all they believe they know of their Creator, of their Savior, of their prophets and 'holy' texts, and of their enemies. They will have to question the things they have come to know are true as plainly as they know the sky is blue.

"And how will they begin that process if they are prevented from ever learning anything different? If they do not know to question what they are told?" he asked. "Because that, we fear, is what is at stake for humanity in the coming turn.

"The same obstinate souls — the same few who cannot imagine a Paradise more glorious than the material comforts they have amassed for themselves; who cannot conceive of a God more powerful than the power they wield on Earth over His creations —

"They will decide in large part who will survive the cataclysm, and when the dust settles, they will swiftly emerge from this turn intact, and with the means to ensure the only knowledge available to any who are left to repopulate the planet will fall from the fruitless branches of their rotting tree.

"So you, the little family you have embraced, and those like you, elsewhere... you must survive this turn. You must take what you know into the next."

"You must be humanity's teachers," Gabriel told Eve, "because there is a very real, very human Darkness descending on the souls in your world, Eve. So you few who know the true way have got to be their light."