“It happened about two months ago,” Paul/Lopé explained. “Nina couldn’t drive me home from my class at the Polytechnic because she’d had to leave early. My electrical engineering teacher, Professor Keenlock, offered to take me out for lunch and midday worship.” He looked me dead in the eyes. “You know, when Nina told you I didn’t talk as a kid, she also should have mentioned that I didn’t cry, either. I couldn’t tell the last time I’d cried before Professor Keenlock took me to his church. But when he did, oh gosh,” he shed a tear, “all the tears I never cried when I was little… they just came out of me.” His voice broke. “It was sublime.”

“How so?” I asked.

“I always thought that I would find my happiness by working hard and using my brain. That’s what my parents always told me. That’s how they said a person helped to make the world a better place.”

It was difficult for me to listen to Paul talk without getting a little emotional. He had a gift. It was obvious from the moment he opened his mouth. Yes, he was extraordinarily intelligent, but… his gift went beyond that. He was authentic, and frighteningly so. Every single word out of his mouth was deft and surefooted. He spoke with passion and conviction, in a way I could only dream of. Too often, when I spoke to others, I felt like I was trying to convince myself of what I was saying just as much as I was trying to convince my audience of the same. I worried people would catch whiff of my indecisiveness, my lack of surety, and my constant fears of moral impotence. I felt… fractured.

A fractured man from a fractured country.

Belief was like an atom bomb or a fusion reactor, only far more powerful and far, far more deadly. After the disastrous end of the Second Crusade, the myriad factions within the Church fractured as our First Empire fell into civil war. These coalesced around two poles: the Angelicals and the Old Believers. Both sides viewed the Empire’s collapse as a message from the Godhead. Where they were split was in what they interpreted the message to mean. The Angelicals felt it was a sign that Church reforms needed to be put in place. A motley crew of reformers, visionaries, and would-be folk-heroes lead the cause. Marvyn Gaster helped to re-envision classical theology, as did other reformers who followed in his footsteps: Aron of Bridesmouth—the great writer; Raymond, the Duke of Toole—the poet-lord who refused to persecute the Arthearts; John Candee, and so many more. The Old Believers, meanwhile, felt it was a sign that they hadn’t killed enough heretics—particularly the Angelicals. Eventually, the Angelicals won—made official by the Church’s “Resurrection” in 1622. Later, new groups professing to be the true Angelicals would emerge in response to the Resurrected Church’s excesses. Everyone else called them Neangelicals. From there, the monikers multiplied. Exangelical, Neo-Angelical, Irredemptist—the list went on.

The history of my religion was written in ashes, light, and blood; blood holy and profane. Still, I was glad that the Angelicals eventually won. The horrors the Old Believers inflicted on them… that alone made the Old Believers’ defeat a worthy cause. But it didn’t justify what they’d eventually become.

“Do you watch the news often, Dr. Howle?” Paul asked.

“Yes.” I nodded.

“Then you should see how hopeless it is for us to think our hard work can set anything right. What has hard work done for the Biyadi nationalists? Up in those faraway mountains, all they want is a land they can call their own. But their hard work doesn’t stop the great powers from sowing the canyons with minefields or blowing up hospitals with remote drone missile strikes—and all for the sake of the little bit of oil that sleeps beneath the ground. The human heart was made in Light, sir, but it was tainted by darkness. In Mu, in cities with the shiniest tech and tallest skyscrapers, people regularly shut themselves away from the world, all but giving up on life. Some actually go the distance; DAISHU released an app for digital glass to be used in windows. When a person gets too close—whether by accident, or because they want to jump to their death—an AI appears in the glass and gives the person therapy on the spot, hoping to convince them not to throw themselves away. And the Angel doesn’t want them to throw themselves away. He loves us all. He loves us, even though we don’t deserve it. We lie, cheat, steal, lust, and debauch.” He shook his head bitterly. “Just look at this country of ours! There are people still alive today who lived through Prelate Oster’s labor camps in the Riscolts or the Dawn Bayou; people who smashed stones until their tendons tore, or dug canals until their fingers bled. They’re in their twilight years, now, too afraid of Church censure to dare speak up about the persecution they suffered for daring to defy the Prelatory and its pet Church. You wanna tell them that they could have been happy if they’d just ‘worked harder’?” Paul sniffled. “No amount of happy thoughts and good deeds can wipe the evil off the human heart. It just takes one person to ruin everything. And that’s why we need the Angel’s help. That’s why we need the Love that’s stronger than Hate. We need Him, Doctor. It’s the most important message anyone will ever hear.”

I sighed quietly.

Honest men rarely made good debaters. They were doomed the instant an unrighteous cause fell into their lap. It was an unfortunate truth that human psychology was more drawn to aura than to substance. Good rhetoric abounds with loaded questions. Few figures were as dangerous as bad faith’s wisest masterminds.

Judging by Paul’s rhetorical stylings, it was a safe bet to assume he’d been swept up by a Neangelical congregation of some sort. The only people who reliably used the phrase “the Prelatory and its pet Church” were militant atheists, an Oatsman in a particularly bad mood, or old-school Irredemptists. It couldn’t have been the Oatsman; Oatsman weren’t keen on creating rifts in families, or in anything else, for that matter. They viewed themselves as being like farmers of oats; it was their charge to bear the slings and arrows of the world as they suffered for the sake of their congregations, and for the moral and spiritual development of mankind. In the Prelatory’s eyes, their chief crimes were their indefatigable dedication to a non-violence and their stubborn insistence that, alongside Unction, the highest form of spiritual experience was communal discussion and debate—their so-called Winnowings, in which the chaff of mankind’s sins and errors could be stripped away from the soul by breath of faith, love, light, and reason. It almost goes without saying that the Prelatory had systematically eradicated nearly all of Trenton’s Oatsman congregations, exactly as Paul had described—not to mention any other Neangelicals who dared oppose the Prelate’s Angel-given authority.

The Irredemptists, though…

“What I learned, Doctor,” Paul continued, but then he paused for a moment to stare at one of his hands. “What… what I learned is that the Testaments shatter any self-justification we could ever dare to have,” he said. “And more than that: I heard the Angel speak to me. From across time and space, He spoke to me. ‘None of you can be your own savior.’ That’s what He said. ‘All of you are sinners: the scientists, the harlots, the tax collectors, the politicians; businessmen, Luminers; Presidents and Kings; parents and children; the artists, the dreamers; the guilty and the innocent. As your bodies rot, your souls die from within. All of you are suffering, and it hurts me so, for the way out is so simple and clear. There’s only one difference: the murderers and the tax collectors already know that they cannot save themselves. But you, child of pride, and you… Lopé: you still believe you can.’ And, of course, He was right. I had to stop being a child of pride. I had to stop being Lopé.”

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By now, Nina was quivering with rage. It stormed about her in metallic blues, golds, and greens, making her hair quiver.

“How can you say something like that, Lu?” she said, whispering in disbelief. “You’re not a murderer…”

And then the boy did exactly what he should not have done.

“But that’s what’s so beautiful, Nina,” he said, smiling at his sister. “Scripture offers us hope, and that hope is the only real hope that any of us have. The Godhead loves us. All of us. You could kill your own children in cold blood, and They would still love you. When I was a child of pride, I tried to earn my sense of meaning through academics; through all the kinds of achievement within my reach, but it was never enough. And of course it wasn’t! The Testaments say we are lost, too damaged by sin to choose good of our own free will. That’s the beauty of the Angel’s message: we don’t deserve mercy for our sins, but the Angel loves us, regardless. He does not love us because we are good; He loves us because He is good. He is Goodness itself. Through His Fall, the Angel became our rescuer. We are broken; we cannot earn salvation, but still, He freely gives it to us. So many so-called ‘true believers’ like to skirt over that fact.” He shook his head. “Not Eastern ‘Demptists, though. We know that only the Truth can set us free.”

Eastern ‘Demptists? I knew it!

If only it had been a victory worth reveling in. This was going to be a tough nut to crack, assuming it could even be cracked.

Eastern ‘Demptists—short for Irredemptists—were the most resilient strain of Neangelicalism known to man. The EDs had branched off from the main Irredemptist population after the majority of the Irredemptist congregations voted against Prelate Sheen’s dictum that all Trentonian religious establishments had to accede to the Angelical Church and acknowledge its supremacy. They only turned against the regime at the last possible moment, and, even then, only because it was clear that the population preferred the version of Prelate Zinker that had been blown to smithereens by several kilos of plastic explosives. The only reason civil society hadn’t lumped the Eastern ‘Demptists in with wackadoodles like the Innocents was because the EDs betrayed their own and released copious records of the regime’s wrongdoings. The release of the Eskin Papers and the subsequent indictment of the Prelatory’s enablers served a crucial role in the unofficial ecumenical campaign to distance all forms of the faith from the regime’s tyranny. It was the one time in history when a rising tide did lift all boats.

I couldn’t think about it without getting riled up. They were shameless and power hungry. A true contagion. They’d happily come for your children. They’d snip away at every root a person had: their language, their culture, their values, their traditions… and they’d do it all with a smile on their face.

I cleared my throat, hoping to cover up the sores Paul’s words were ripping open. The emotional wounds were still just as raw as the day they’d been cut into me. It was like I was a teenager all over again. What would have been an ordinary Divulgence session with my priest instead turned into an ugly back-and-forth, my heartbroken rebuttals against his presumptuous apologetics.

Dana’s schizophrenia? Her death from nosocomial pneumonia? They’d tried to justify that as being proof of the Godhead’s righteousness; as being part of the great “plan”; as living proof of the Angel’s ever-burning love.

“That’s why I’m trying so hard, Nina,” Paul continued. “I want you and Mama and Papi to join me. You’re still lost. It’s just like Father Donovan said: being saved is the greatest gift of all. I wouldn’t be a good brother if I didn’t want to share it with you. All you need to do is let His Light into your life. It won’t be like old times; it will be even better. Every day will be bright, I promise. Please,” he pleaded, “just let Him into your heart.”

The storm opened wide.

“Bacco!” Nina shouted, rising to her feet. Before my lagging body could react, Nina lunged forward and slapped her brother on the face, near the eyes.

A great wind blew through the room, tousling clothes and hair. Cabinets slammed open and shut, flailing in the unseen golden filaments that wound so furiously around the room.

The siblings’ faces couldn’t have been more different. Both were wide-eyed, but that was all. For once, Nina’s horror turned inward. She stared at her hands, and then at me, and her brother, and at her surroundings.

“What the hell is happening to me!?” she cried, shivering in fright. She ran her fingers through her hair, as if her head was about to explode.

But Lopé/Paul? He stared in wonder. It was as if he was seeing a beatific vision. He wept—and for once, they weren’t crocodile tears.

Slowly, after first gently wiping his hand over the reddened patch of skin that had borne the brunt of Nina’s blow, the boy got to his knees to kneel on the vinyl floor. He made the Bond-sign repeatedly, muttering prayers under his breath. And then he looked up at his big sister.

“Nina,” he said, so softly, I could barely hear it. “Look at this.” He smiled like the Sun. “This is a miracle. It’s a sign. It’s the Angel. His Love is already in you. All you need to do is believe, and you’ll be happy, and we’ll be together again.”

“You know what? No,” she said, “I don’t care what’s happening to me. I want Lu back! Give him back to me!”

White motes spun around Nina, shooting sparks into the air. She started pulling her arm back again, likely in preparation for another blow. This time, though, I managed to lurched off my stool and grab Nina before she could strike him. I held her as gently as I could, clasping her upper arms.

For the moment, the sight of her pain drowned out my fear that I might infect her.

I pleaded with her. “Please, Nina, just breathe. Calm down, please.” For a moment, she rebelled against my touch, but I held firm, and soon, she stilled. The white motes vanished from my sight.

Carefully, I stepped back and looked into her hazel-green eyes. My terror at the thought of something terrible happening was slowly beginning to ebb.

And then the little pod-person said the worst possible thing he could have said in that situation.

“But please, Nina,” he said, very politely, “don’t call me Lu. My name is Paul now.”

The air around Nina positively glowed as a cold wind began to blow.

Oh, fudge.