The War in Heaven (8 page)

The demographics of this place were unusual. It seemed to lack senior citizens and children. In reality, Tom couldn’t bear the thought of children in a place like this. He was thankful that he saw none. Unlike the old rock song, Hell apparently wasn’t for children.

He passed through a large cavern room filled with crude stone tables and chairs. Bedillia called it a community meeting room. He passed by another cavern room that contained looms and spinning wheels, the place where the simple clothing of these people was woven. There were even vast caverns where the stone floors had been ground up into a sort of rocky soil. Here, there were gardens filled with many varieties of fruits and vegetables. Some were familiar, others were not. The gardens were illuminated by brilliantly glowing crystals in the ceiling and irrigated from pools of water that found their source in the rocks around them.

Food was not a commodity vital for the survival of the bodies of those people who existed in this realm beyond death. But it served to placate their purely psychological need for sustenance in much the same way the consuming of water relieved their thirst. They were phantasmal sensations, realities that Tom’s mind had problems wrapping itself around. It just didn’t make sense. If you couldn’t die of hunger or thirst in this place, why would one’s body crave them? It wouldn’t, but it did. And now, in the absence of the pain that had been a constant reality on the altar, his mind was forced to confront this enigma.

But these gardens scattered throughout the caverns produced more than food. They also produced a tough stringy plant that yielded fibers that could be weaved into the brown fabric that formed the base material for all of the clothing worn here.

Tom’s mind returned to the tunnel before him. The entire complex was illuminated by huge crystal lights that seemed to grow out of the ceiling. Along the way, he was forming opinions about this place based on what he had seen. So far, he was not impressed. Bedillia spoke with confidence of their eventual overthrow of Satan. How? Who were they kidding? These people were, essentially, hiding under a rock hoping that Satan or his minions didn’t turn it over.

He’d tried to engage Bedillia in conversation along the way, but she was evasive about this place. Was she delusional? Perhaps all of these people were. Maybe it was the only thing that could prop up their crumbling sanity. Without some sort of hope, some vision, real or imagined, people perish. That was in the Bible, wasn’t it? He directed more specific questions at her. “You’ve rescued about 1,100 people over the last six years or so, right?”

“I’ve been involved in the rescue of some of them,” replied Bedillia. “Abaddon, is the real hero. He has personally rescued more people than anyone else.”

“But there has to be a plan,” said Tom. “I mean, what kinds of people do you rescue? Do you go for political leaders, scientists, philosophers, artists. who?”

“Whoever we need,” replied Bedillia. “In the early going we’ve focused on builders, engineers, scientists, and military people, lots of military people. After all, we have a war to fight.”

“So you have your own army?”

Bedillia laughed. “I wouldn’t exactly call it an army, not just yet…but of the 1,100 souls, about 400 are military types. I’ll tell you, we’ve got some of the best.”

“Like General George Patton?” asked Tom.

“No,” replied Bedillia, “he’s not here. He had placed his faith solidly in Jesus Christ throughout his career. He was a bit rough around the edges, but his heart was in the right place.”

“Well what about Napoleon or Julius Caesar?” asked Tom. “Surely, they would be excellent generals to lead this army of yours.”

Bedillia shook her head sadly. “It’s not as simple as that. You know how difficult it was for you to adjust after you were released from the altar? Now multiply that by a thousand. That much suffering does terrible things to the human mind and soul…terrible things. Four years ago, we managed to rescue the famous general, Sun Tsu, hoping that he would help us plan our strategy against Satan and his minions.”

“Who is Sun Tsu?”

“A very famous Chinese military leader from the sixth century B.C.,” replied Bedillia. “He wrote a book called
The Art of War
. You know, ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer’?”

“Oh yeah, now I know who you mean. I think it would be interesting to meet that guy.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Bedillia. “You see, he had been condemned to struggle forever in a horrible pit of what might best be described as boiling blood…in one of the hottest regions on the surface of Hell. There he was for nearly 2,600 years in horrible agony, until Abaddon swept down and rescued him. We had high hopes that after a few weeks of recuperation he might be back on his feet and ready to lead our human armies. But we were wrong. So much time in torment is enough to drive human reason and logic out of any man. What’s left is the basic instincts, mainly the desire to escape pain. He lies in his bed, resting comfortably, yet he is a human vegetable. The great military mind of Sun Tsu is long gone. That is the ultimate fate of all humanity here…to become beings who understand only horror and the need to escape their pain.”

“Ghastly,” Tom said.

“There are some who do survive their long ordeal with their minds intact,” replied Bedillia. “There is this Scotsman who lives among us, Kyle McCandish, a wonderful man, really. He burned within a blazing pit of fire, reduced to nothing more than bones, for over 300 years. Despite that awful ordeal, he is one of the pillars of this community, a man of considerable insight. There are a few from still earlier times among us, but the torments of Hell have reduced most of them to little more than shadows of their former selves. They are good citizens for the most part, thankful to be among us, but they are capable of only the most menial of tasks. They need continual guidance. The souls subjected to the torments of Hell for many hundreds of years become bundles of pain with no true consciousness … not like ours, anyway. Maybe it’s better, more merciful for them that way. I can’t imagine being tormented for eternity with my mind intact, can you?”

There were footsteps behind them, then a voice. “Dr. Carson?” Tom turned to see a thin oriental man in what looked like a brown lab coat, running to catch up with them. At first, he didn’t recognize him.

“It’s me, Bill Wong,” said the man, extending his hand. “The last time we talked was at the High Energy Physics Conference in Baltimore three years ago, remember?”

Tom accepted his hand. Of course he remembered him, now. Dr. William Wong was an expert in the area of manipulation of atoms with force fields. His theories had been, to say the least, controversial. He took liberties with the equations of Schrodinger and de Broglie that put him at odds with the majority of the scientific community. What was worse, he could support his claims with solid experimental evidence. Nothing disturbed the scientific community more than the suggestion that their long-held views of atoms might be fundamentally flawed.

He and Bill had corresponded on numerous occasions over the years. But the Dr. Wong he remembered had been a man in his early seventies,
and not in the best of health. Wong had died of cancer a good year before his own demise. Now here he was looking so much younger.

“I heard that you’d arrived,” he continued. “I’m looking forward to our collaboration on the project. I really need your help. Imagine the possibilities if we succeed; manipulating matter into any form we wish, assembling complex electronics components through the use of force fields powered by disciplined thought. It is technology largely without instrumentality, hundreds of years beyond anything we might have imagined on Earth.”

Bedillia seemed almost panicked. “Bill, he hasn’t been briefed yet. Tom has only been conscious for a couple of hours.”

“I didn’t know,” replied Bill, with a more restrained tone. “Well, Tom, we’ve got our challenges in the days ahead. Of that you may be sure. I hope you’re feeling up to it.”

With those words, Dr. Wong retreated in the direction from which he had come. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Tom could neither hold his peace nor his cool any longer.

“Bedillia, what is going on here!? You say you want my help. OK, you’ve got it, but I can’t get a straight answer from you about what you people are doing. I know only a little bit about these monsters in Satan’s service, and that’s what they are. You’re outnumbered a thousand to one, outgunned, and in enemy territory. The enemy is physically stronger than you. They have who knows how many millennia of experience under their belts. Did I miss something?”

Bedillia only shook her head.

“And you talk about victory? I’m sorry, but that dog just doesn’t hunt. I need answers, and I need them now. Come on, work with me here, Bedillia.”

Tom had expected an angry reply from Bedillia, but he didn’t get it. She just wasn’t that person anymore.

“Only Abaddon can give you those answers.”

“Then take me to him,” said Tom calmly but insistently.

“Right now?” asked Bedillia.

“Right now.”

“OK,” said Bedillia, “but I wanted you to have more time before discussing this with Abaddon. He tends to be fairly intense. I wanted you at your best when you met with him. Come on then, I’ll take you to him.”

Bedillia picked up her pace, and Tom followed. Their path took them through a series of twisting tunnels that led steadily upward. After twenty minutes, they entered a wide brightly lit tunnel with more pedestrian traffic than he had seen up to this point—humans, the strange insect-like creatures, and dark angels like those he had seen on his deliverance day. He was surprised to see a man hurrying down the corridor with what appeared to be a stack of large industrial-size blueprints under one arm and some sort of complex electronic device in the other hand. He was also surprised to see a set of metal pipes running along the ceiling overhead. They looked like electrical conduits.

The cavern walls here, hewn to much greater precision, gave him the impression of an underground high security complex. Many of the side passageways were guarded by heavy metal doors, and Tom could hear the sound of machinery in the background—including what sounded like a huge dynamo. Maybe that sound had been there all along, even in the lower caverns, but he had dismissed it as being natural. Here it was much louder.

“We call this the hub,” said Bedillia. “Life is fast paced here. People might work for days without a break. After that, they welcome the quiet solitude of the lower caverns. You’ll be working down there.” Bedillia pointed to a long wide corridor to the left. “That is where our labs are.”

“Labs where you folks are involved in manipulating matter with your minds?” deduced Tom.

Bedillia nodded. “But it’s not as simple as it sounds. We need your help.”

“You said that before,” said Tom. “I didn’t think it would be simple. But what value would there be to building things with your mind?”

“Because without it, we have no chance of defeating Satan. We can’t produce all the materials we need for the coming conflict if we can’t do that. We can’t build factories to produce what we need, we can’t conduct mining operations for the minerals we require; we lack the manpower.”

“So you think you’re going to make this pie in the sky technology work and save the day? Bedillia, I don’t want to dash your hopes, but even if you had the best minds on Earth working on the problem 24-7 with a world of resources at their disposal, it might take a century or more to perfect such a technology.”

“Tom, you are so negative,” scolded Bedillia. “We’ve already developed the technology. It works; we just need help refining it. We need you.”

By now they’d reached another wide corridor that branched off to the left. A pair of formidable metal doors guarded the entry to this rocky hallway, but they were open wide. Like all of the subterranean corridors, this one had large glowing crystals in the ceiling as light fixtures. However, these had a distinctly blue hue, compared to the yellow ones Tom had previously seen.

“This is where the dark angels live,” explained Bedillia. “The doors are usually open, but the dark angels tend to be a bit solitary. They prefer that we humans respect their privacy. That is where you will find Abaddon.”

“Can we go in?” asked Tom.

“Sure…we just don’t want to overstay our welcome, that’s all.” Bedillia entered the blue corridor, and Tom followed. “The color of the crystals is to remind us that this is their home—their special place, not ours.”

“They don’t have something personal against humans, do they?” asked Tom.

“No, of course not,” replied Bedillia. “In time, you will come to understand the angels. They are, well, different. They don’t think quite the same way we do. Oh, they like us, really they do. In fact, they are somewhat paternalistic when it comes to humans. It’s just that they prefer to interact with each other. It is really tough to get close to one of them.”

“But you have,” observed Tom, who hoped that his observation wasn’t too personal.

Bedillia looked over at him, but briefly. “Yes, I have, thanks largely to my daughter. She had a very special relationship with the angels, a very rare relationship. I’ve sort of inherited that standing. You see, Abaddon is not one for making speeches, so I become his spokeswoman when communicating with the human population here. I also become the spokeswoman for their concerns.”

“Sounds like an important position,” observed Tom, as they passed a dark angel in the corridor, who offered a friendly smile, but little more.

“I suppose,” was the reply. “My title is counselor. I take it seriously. I’d never betray Abaddon’s trust, his faith in me.”

A left turn, brought them to a partially open metal door, and behind it Tom could hear voices. They spoke a strange language that Tom had never heard before.

“This is Abaddon’s audience chamber,” whispered Bedillia. “It sounds like they are discussing important business. I really don’t want to barge in on them right this minute.”

“You understand what they are saying?” asked Tom, in a hushed tone.

Bedillia nodded. “They are speaking in the universal language of the angels. It is the language of all angels in Heaven, as well as the dark angels here.”