Misguided Angel

The Bohemian Groove space colony had been abandoned for more than eighty years.

Because all the Left Behind could build new colonies in which to live their personal utopia, but it was not written anywhere that this should be able to stand up. Some colonies thrived and were enlarged, others remained depopulated, and Bohemian Groove was too far, too much based on the charisma of one person, could not succeed.

The last ones to leave had taken away everything of value, especially generators. There was no heat, pressure, atmosphere, it was all dark, only gravity remained, thanks to the fact that there is no friction in the void and the uninhabited shell continued to rotate on its axis.

A complete suit was needed to go around that place, equipped with generator, light and air recirculation, but Elio Rigoni could afford it, and the spaceship that had brought him there, to the edge, at one of the minor Lagrange points of Neptune.

He was born rich, in twenty-three years had experienced all the perversions that could make him feel alive, getting only to burn them like wicks, he felt empty, without prospects for the future, dead. Money does not give happiness, they say, and in his case it was true.

Weeks of travel just to see a place that was like him, walking in the desolate silence.

He was going through what could have been a shopping center, there was a section full of clothes and shoes that no one had wanted to take away, all perfectly preserved thanks to the lack of air, his spotlight brought back to life the colors.

He too had dreamed many times to end this way, subtracted from decadence by death, fixed in an instant that would never have passed.

But was he really alone? There was a raised niche full of display mannequins, like a stage, they looked as if they were watching him, but he also catched a glimpse of two red light halos, like eyes. But nothing can live in the void, not even the monsters. And then why should they always have to be red-eyed?

"Because emitting light with a higher frequency would be even more tiring."

An unexpected voice answered in his head. A distant voice, a hissing whisper like the wind whistle on Earth. Or as if a snake had learned to speak. Elio was not afraid, or rather at that moment it was clear to him how little he cared about everything and himself.

" Who are you ? "

"I have so many names, and adjectives, and titles, but they're all worldly things I do not care for. You can call me Prometheus if you want."

Those halos of light swayed between the mannequins, they also made him think of the movement of a snake.

"What are you, an artificial intelligence perhaps ?"

"I am an intelligence devoid of flesh, which can not harm you. I have also been a prisoner, but they liberated me, and i settled here because I knew, I felt, that someone would come to see me. But you ? Why did you want to come ? "

"I do not like people looking at me, I wanted to hide from everything, even from God, just for a few hours, but I see that even here it is not possible ... how far I will have to go."

"Me, once i was an angel, God saw me and I saw him. I was like you, I could have everything, whatever I imagined, but then realized I could imagine no more. So i left. "

"If he really exists, you have not gone far enough, we are all still in his hands !"

"But how far do you think you are going?"

"Enough that I can't go back?"

"Maybe I understand what you mean, in case I could not stop you, just as I can not touch you to hurt you, I could not even save you from yourself."

"And why should you do it?"

"It is not a duty, but who knows, if it were my whim to help you live? .."

In the last sentence, the voice in Elio's head had changed its intensity, like an angler who suddenly feels the bite, but he, who had attention only for himself, did not catch.

Instead he got angry.

"Did i ask? I never wanted anybody's pity and should I start with a voice speaking in my head ? And pity of what, then. Of the boredom for the emptiness i see in the people around ? They are like you, if you are not my hallucination. They have no substance, no one who has a weight, but equally they manage to be self-satisfied. Everyone except me ! If they really wanted to make themselves useful, it would be enough to leave me alone. But no ! Even here, in a hole at the end of the solar system, I find one eager to remember me the uselessness. "

He broke off and turned his back on those lights, took a few steps as if to leave, the voice stood silent. If it had been the first contact with aliens, it would have only shown that they did not have anything important to say either.

"You know what, Voice ? You can't be an angel, because God does not exist, there can not be an intelligence behind our nothingness, only chance."

Without stopping, still moving steps, he pressed the button on the side of the helmet that released the visor, had tampered the safety before even embarking. The air rushed out of the helmet and lungs with a noise of uncorked bottle that only he could feel, he had believed that he would explode immediately, or freeze, instead he felt just cold on the face and a feeling of having like sparkling water in the mouth, caused by the boiling of saliva. He moved a few more steps with his visor open and airless, the amazement of that situation was the first feeling that had long animated his existence and diverted him, at least for a moment, from himself. Then small black spots came, like midges in the beam of his headlight, they widened until everything was dark. Elio Rigoni died from lack of oxygen at the eleventh step.

The body remained collapsed on the ground, fixed by centrifugal force, for a few minutes. Then he moved again, closed his visor and let himself fall flat.

Prometheus looked at the vault above him with human eyes. Just released and immediately an unrepentant suicide, after a thousand years of inactivity was not bad at all, had not lost the knack.

Drawing on Elio's memories, he had no difficulty knowing how to activate radio contact with the ship and what to say.

"Captain, I'm the master, all right here, I'll be back in about fifteen minutes."

He stood up with caution and did some exercise to regain confidence, the last time he had had a body was before the Flood. He was not bothered by the lack of oxygen left in his suit, but the lack of pressure caused a swelling and tingling in hands and feet.

He started walking without haste, was not short on time.

Of course, not as much as the other time, he had had thousands of years available the other time.

Confined in the air, without the possibility of acting directly, but in the sea and in the earth he had two good allies and executors of his instructions: Lilith and Azazel, the son who had conceived with her.

Nice team had been, they had played splendidly and came close to victory just as much as the Almighty had been willing to suffer. But all the good games end, the team broke up and his helpers received the promised prize.

Because he was Prometheus, who gives fire to Humanity, and on this point he had not lied at all, a whole lake of fire all for them without ever ending. Promise kept.

Bohemian Groove was not one of those large cylinder colonies where the natural environment was reproduced, it had been a more modest commercial station, in concentric circles connected by elevator shafts, like the bridges of a ship. He was in the outer circle, the one destined for the docking of ships, cargo, commercial and recreational activities. It was therefore divided into boulevards and very spacious salons, rather than in corridors and cabins.

He left the Boutique, which was part of an elevated gallery, made of abandoned shops with their goods.

He went down the stairs to the main gallery, his headlight allowed him to pick only separate details, could not see a clear set, yet those simple lines, the silence, the height of the vaults disproportionate to the human dimensions, reminded him of another place much brighter.

The one in which he had opened his eyes for the first time, at the beginning of the Creation. And the first thing he had seen were other eyes in his, the Kadmon's.

And there was a moment, on the setting of the fifth day of Creation, in which the angels had been gathered in a hall similar to the one he was going through, and he, on behalf of all of them, had turned to the Kadmon.

" Why the Adam ? We angels thought Earth was for us, that we would have bodies and eat the fruits of knowledge. So, why do you want something better than us ? I can't be silent cause this is injustice, and Justice and Vengeance i am !
I beg you Lord, please, don't force me to become your Adversary.

Oh yes, at first he had seriously believed it was a matter of justice, until the other commander of the celestial host, speaking in private, had put him in front of the truth.

"Who is like God to judge ? We Seraphim are constantly in the presence of His blinding light, but have you ever been able to see through? On the other hand, the Adam, as far as I understand the project, would be like a mirror, not a shadow like us, but a reflection of His light. We could study it without being dazzled ! We could understand through him things of the Creator that we can not now grasp. What you call injustice, might be the greatest gift the Father has ever done to us."

" But I'm not like you, Semyaza, I'm not interested in understanding. I want to be loved. The thought that He will love the Adam more than he loves me. I can't bear ! "

In the void there can not be any sounds, but the nervous system of that new body played tricks on him, he really seemed to hear the echo of his steps, and words in that echo.

The words of Mikael, when he had entrusted him the command before leaving and they embraced.

" You know I love you. I will always love you, even as an enemy ... "

Because the angels loved him, they recognized him pre-eminence and did not get in the way between him and the Kadmon, them.

The perfect bodies of the angels need not to cry, but that human body could. He had to stop because the eyes were full of tears, and closed inside the helmet could not clear his sight. With the lack of pressure left in the suit they immediately evaporated, but more were coming down.

" Kadmon, i know you are the Father's Word, and i am only an angel. You shape the Father's light, i am but one of many shadows you cast. But the Adam would be a mirror of your light, so closely connected, you would feel anything he feels. My vengeance could reach you through his weaknesses. Why you want that ? You're going to the slaughter ! "

He had always given the same answer, the same heartbreaking smile and the same words:

"Because it is my Father's will. "

In that environment of straight lines and trapezoidal archways, the perfect circle of the mooring valve seemed out of place. He did not even know how he got there, it had appeared when the veil of tears had finally fallen.

Beyond the valve was the pressurized tube that connected the spaceship to the body of Bohemian Groove, an articulated tube in fullerene rings, a diameter of fifteen meters, a circle of neon tubes every eight rings.

One of the neon was faulty and flashed.

Elio Rigoni would not have noticed the slightest, Prometheus instead immediately took note in his mind to have it repaired. Because everything had to be as he wanted, to the last detail.

Even the Kadmon had told him the last time.

Adam and Eve had just been cast out of Eden, Lilith too had returned to her beach with little Azazel in her arms, and only the two of them remained in the garden. They had listened to the wind in silence, and Prometheus was happy even that way, just of being close.

The Kadmon, who knew his thoughts, had turned to him.

"I am infinite, Samael, you can't have Infinity only for you. "

"I am sorry then, Lord, because what I can't have I destroy . "

In front of the second valve, the one from which he would enter the ship and the last part of his revenge, he stopped to look at his hands.

He knew he deserved the lake of fire more than all the others together, and they were many, but he did not care, because he could not suffer more than he already suffered.

He knew he did not have as much time as the previous time, but he did not care, because he could finally take the matter directly into his hands.