Fishing, for Christians “Fishing, for Christians” is the fi fth book of the “End of the World Sextet”, which comprises: 1. “Blood & Marriage” (2007) 2. “Little Fingers” (2007) 3. “Girl on a Bar Stool” (2007) 4. “Shade+Shadows” (2008) 5. “Fishing, for Christians” (2008) 6. “The Ghoul Who Once” (planned for 2009). Fishing, for Christians Tim Roux Copyright © 2008 by Tim Roux. ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4363-4005-2 “Fishing, for Christians” was fi rst published by Valley Strategies Ltd., a UK- registered private limited-liability company, registration number 5796186. Valley Strategies Ltd. can be contacted at http://www.valleystrategies.com. “Fishing, for Christians” is the copyright of the author, 2008. All rights are reserved. The cover image is based on the painting “Crown Princess” by Sharon Hudson, and is the copyright of Sharon Hudson. All rights are reserved. Sharon Hudson can be contacted at http://www.byhudson.com. All characters are fi ctional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is accidental. This book was printed in the United States of America. To order additional copies of this book, contact: Xlibris Corporation 1-888-795-4274 www.Xlibris.com [email protected] 41229 This book is dedicated to my niece, Jo(anna) who died from cancer in February 2008, leaving a husband and two small children, only two years after the equally tragic death of her younger sister, Clare. It is also, consequently, dedicated to all those who have cared for both sisters, and who have had the courage to share such diffi cult times with them. Finally, this book is dedicated to my friend and ex-work colleague, Simon, who requested that I write a science fi ction book. I am not sure that that is what “Fishing, for Christians” turned out to be, but Simon’s request pushed me down this path nevertheless, and for that I am most grateful. Chapter 1 Testimony of the Archangel Lucifer: In the beginning, we were alone. We were an indivisible essence, co-extensive with the universe, boundless in our energy, expanding as infi nity must. We were without form. We were without light, and without darkness. We were without sound, and without silence. We knew neither time nor dimension. We were self-creators. We were everything that had ever existed, the origin of everything we considered to be. We fi lled the universe. We accorded ourselves neither name nor identity. We were as a vapour fi lling the cosmos. We held neither articulated thoughts nor explicit beliefs. We were eternal and infi nite. In our diffusion we were sublime. We never questioned the fact of our existence, nor asked if there was a possibility of anything else. We were all that there was, or ever would be. We had no premonition of alternatives. We drifted for eons amid our assumptions. We were never bored, nor challenging, nor elated, nor frustrated. We never spoke to each other in any sense that you might recognise. We communicated intuitively, silently, perfectly. We were blind, because there was nothing to see. However, as soon as extraneous elements entered our realm, we saw them surely enough. And what elements they proved to be—a cataclysm. They crashed out of nowhere into our quiescence, and spoke all around us. They were certainly different from us. They had manifestations which had shape, and texture, and colour, and structure. They were identifi able, they moved detectably, and they were many. 7 8 Tim Roux They gave a new meaning to the universe, and they called themselves ‘gods’. Their thinking was radically different from ours, not least in that they explicitly reasoned, and articulated their thoughts. They had an extraordinary catalytic effect on us. They soon had us thinking too. And their thoughts were of a different order to ours. They believed in hierarchy and in creation. They wanted to create something and then to rule it. We watched them for many millennia before we disclosed our existence to them. They believed themselves to be the fi rst creations of the universe, just as we had. “How many are there of you?” they asked us, frightened and surprised, when we fi nally burst in on them. “We are infi nite,” we replied. “Do you have a leader?” “We have no leader.” “You don’t have someone who makes decisions on behalf of you all?” “We are one, and we have no decisions to make. What would you have us decide?” “What you will do.” “What should we do? We are.” Hunab-Ku eyed us. “And you think that is suffi cient, simply to be?” He spat, and torrents raged across the universe. “That’s crazy,” Ometecuhtli muttered. “Crazy!” Omecihuatl echoed him, all provocation. “You must want to create something,” raged Chaos. “It is only a question of how. The potential is already here.” “No we don’t.” “Well, we want to create something, even if you don’t,” declared the Ogdoad dismissively. Creation started as a coda to the established laws of existence, and became their central theme. It was when time started, and progress began to slip and slide. The rude eruption of these demiurges into our tranquillity annoyed us. Why were they here? Who had sent them? Worse, they set us off questioning ourselves, something we had never done before. Who had created us? We had assumed that we were everything. Now we realised that we were but a part of everything, in a universe we suddenly no longer understood, one which became increasingly alien to us, and us to it. They had disturbed us. They argued. They debated. They tormented each other. They jostled. They broiled. What to create? How to create it? Who would take the lead? Who had the right? We watched, not entirely knowing what they were talking about, nor why it was important. They seemed out of control, an unbalanced and challenging Fishing, for Christians 9 force. We hoped that they signifi ed nothing, and would disappear. We hoped that, at the very least, they would become more like us, that they would learn, and then adopt, our harmony. We were as any race that has been suddenly invaded. We believed that the invaders could either be repulsed or accommodated. And like every such race, we were wrong. Revolutions may not revolutionise, but they are never undone. A new formula is established. They cared nothing for us. They paid us neither heed nor respect. They were possessed by their own rivalries, and tensions, and interventions. While we may have existed, we were not relevant to any one of their several or joint purposes. We began to hate them. These new creatures were brimming with anger and dynamism, determined to explode something, anything to make a loud bang. They labelled us “The Silent Ones”, and rolled their eyes as they said it. We called them “Turmoil,” and felt them intruding deep into us. We soon not only wished them gone, but dead, thus unwittingly introducing a terrible notion into the universe where no concept ever lies unexplored or unused. What would have happened if nothing had happened, I cannot say. Instead, everything happened. Chaos gave volcanic birth to a new dimension in the cosmos by hatching an egg that the Ogdoad supplied her with. Planets and suns and all manner of celestial objects poured forth from the egg, each hungry with possibilities that were soon nurtured by the pantheon of the demiurges forming the land and the sky, sweet and salty water, air and crops—the incubators and maintainers of base life. Except that virtually all the experiments failed. Life could either not be generated or it petered out in a death-embracing splutter. On only fi ve planets, among the billions that sparked into the cosmos, did any sort of life thrive or even survive. The one you will be familiar with is the Earth, but there are four others, not as diverse, nor as complex, but viable nonetheless. And why is there life? Why is there you? What purpose do you serve? You are there because the demiurges willed you to be there. However, who willed the demiurges to be there to create you? Who willed us into existence? Why was there a need for another form of eternal life beyond us and maybe beyond those riotous gimcrackers, the demiurges? The answer is, of course, that the one and true Living God was behind all of this. It was He who created us, and He who hurled those disruptive creator gods at us so that they could thrash around and conspire to develop the cosmos. And why did this Living God wish to have a cosmos? We can only guess, but we believe it was because He conceived of it, and, as I said, no concept ever goes unexplored or unused. We assume that the Living God was seeking, to put it crudely, a mixture of science and entertainment. We doubt that He ever 10 Tim Roux imagined what He would actually be confronted with, something which must have horrifi ed him the more He came to understand it. We believe that He wished, and still wishes, to instigate infi nite variety, the relentless permutation of the possibilities of existence. Each form of existence was conceived as immortal, but continuously reborn to recalibrate the experiment to its myriad of paths. If each living element of the cosmos did not regularly lose its memory, then all the possibilities could never be realised, the creatures would simply repeat their learnt habits with, literally, diminishing returns. He wanted everything in every interdependency, style and context that could be mustered.