Leviticus sat at his desk and stared at the monitor. He was just one of thousands, maybe even millions of Angels sitting in cubicles at that very moment, working away at the day’s tasks. Most of his coworkers actually seemed to like their jobs. Most of them hadn't been at it nearly as long as he had, but even the few that had still seemed to believe in what they were doing. Leviticus wasn't sure when he had stopped believing, but he knew it had been a long, long time ago. He no longer went out with the other Angels after work to drink and talk about the good work they had done, the little coups they had scored in the name of righteousness. He faked it just enough to stay below suspicion and did his job just well enough to keep it. After all, it could always get worse – even Heaven needed janitors.
Today he wasn't even pretending to work; he just couldn't bring himself to care. Bits and pieces of Mestoph's plan kept swirling around in his head, making it hard to concentrate. All he could think about were Omens and Prophecies. Mestoph had been right: he was tired, sick and tired. Worse still, he was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Leviticus had once been a major player on the world stage, hobnobbing with Jesus and his apostles, doing the work of the Lord and feeling good about it. But the glory days of plotting and scheming on Earth in the name of the Lord were long behind him. After Judas, things just hadn't been the same. With their orchestration of that great betrayal, Freewill Industries had shown that they could play the same games too. And if they so chose they could play them better.
Once upon a time, Leviticus had been Jesus's forward reconnaissance during his Spreading the Word of the Lord tour, checking out cities and towns to see how desperate they were for a miracle, how gullible they might be and how they would react if something completely unexplainable happened. The last thing they needed was to find a receptive town only to have them freak out when Jesus did one of his patented parlor tricks and string him up. Not that it hadn’t ever happened. They’d had to sneak out of Bethphage like thieves in the night because they had been accused of being thieves in the day for stealing a donkey. It seemed that claiming the Lord needed it was not an acceptable form of currency in Bethphage. They did, of course, steal the donkey on their way out.
Jesus was arrested in Ephraim for being a warlock after he made a dead chicken dance—in hindsight they probably shouldn’t have used a cooked one that people had already eaten from—and Leviticus and Judas had to break him out of jail before they stoned him the next morning. The townspeople would have stoned him that night, but they were too busy vomiting reanimated pieces of chicken.
They all had to sneak out of Caesarea Philippi after a string of suicides were attributed to Jesus. He had given a sermon while floating off the edge of a nearby cliff, stating it was his faith in God that kept him aloft. He had meant it to be metaphorical, but when a dozen bodies were found at the bottom of the cliff the next day, it wasn’t hard to find someone to blame.
After they had been run out of enough places, they had realized they had to keep that sort of thing to a minimum or the rumors of his failures would outpace the rumors of his miracles. There were only so many small, backwater towns back in that day that you could wipe out before people started getting a bit suspicious. That was before CNN and the internet, when there were such things as secrets and privacy.
Judas' betrayal was a complete surprise to everyone in Heaven, Inc, and a bigger surprise to Jesus himself. They had been close friends, and he took it very personally. The two of them hadn't spoken since; when he got back to Heaven, he made sure Judas never worked in the upper echelon again. That's not to say that Heaven, Inc. didn't spin it all the best way possible. It had helped jump-start a whole new religion, which to be honest was what Jesus and his apostles had been trying rather futilely to do the whole time. However, let’s not confuse getting most of what Heaven, Inc. wanted with having the plan backfire on Freewill International. They had proved without a doubt that despite the fact that they didn't have divine or otherworldly powers, they could play on our level—and they could play well. It was a big coming out party for them and it set them up for life.
Nowadays Leviticus sat in front of a computer screen and looked for things. Not just things, but things that made sense. He looked for patterns, trends, and shifts in just about everything. He was looking for what he called investment opportunities. He scoured newspapers, local news channels, social networks, and occasionally eavesdropped on coffee shop banter. If he noticed the sentiment toward a particular politician was shifting, or that people were suddenly becoming interested in locally grown produce, or if people were tired of shows about nothing but doctors fucking, then he would write up reports for God to check out every morning and decide where to shift their focus.
God would arrange for a sex scandal involving one politician to draw attention away from another one of his that was falling behind in the polls. God would plant the seed of an idea in a filmmaker’s mind that a documentary about the evils of the agriculture industry was needed, and plant another seed in an organic farmer’s mind who was rather savvy in the art of public speaking and could slip a few “Thank Gods” and “Praise the Lords” innocuously in his interview. Individually they would only count for fractions of a percent gains in the hearts and minds of the public, but a few fractions here and there, day in and day out added up.
Or they would, if there weren't someone in Hell Industries doing exactly the same thing. Some days Leviticus was ahead of the game, and some days his counterpart, whom he liked to imagine was a mind-numbingly boring demon named Carl who had gone to Hell for tax evasion, came out ahead. It was yet another example of the futility of everything they did, and the unending stalemate that had stricken progress toward The End.
Being a member of Team Jesus had gotten him the job he now loathed, but at the time it had been a big win for him. Leviticus had jumped up from ramen noodles to steak overnight. He moved from a small, windowless basement apartment to a swanky, top-floor pad in one of the nicer urban areas near the center of Heaven Two thousand years later, he was still in the same spot, working just hard enough to keep his head above water.
It wasn’t until Leviticus had met Mestoph on one of his rare on-Earth assignments—Leviticus was trying to stop an uprising in Kenya while Mestoph was trying to start it— that he found someone else felt the same way. After weeks in a stalemate, they had met at a Demon bar in the middle of the desert to talk things out since. After a few drinks, they had both been complaining about how pointless their jobs really were. It had shocked him, and at first even worried him, to find a kindred spirit in a Demon, but seeing as everyone else had swallowed the Heavenly Kool-Aid without a question, he couldn’t be picky about where his friends came from.
Thinking of all the times they had bitched and moaned about how much they hated their jobs made Leviticus a bit melancholy and more than a bit angry. Finally, he sighed and jumped to his feet.
“Fuck this!” he said, louder than he had intended, and walked away from his desk and his job. A few of the Angels in the cubicles surrounding him looked up from their work, giving him a confused or disappointed look, but then felt it was probably better if they didn’t pry. They hunkered back down to business and pretended they didn’t see him storm off, mumbling to himself.
Leviticus spent the next hour walking aimlessly through the headquarters of Heaven, Inc. Though he wasn’t sure why, he took a detour by one of the supply closets, where he picked up one of those white, disposable haz-mat bunny suits, a large fire extinguisher, and an a gas mask (the World War II kind with the long hose that had a scrubber attached to the end) and walked with unknown intent but fully protected from any hazardous waste he might encounter when he got to wherever he was heading. He nonchalantly interrupted a department meeting when he used a conference room as a shortcut. The people in the meeting just stared, mouths agape but silent. He wondered if that was what happened when people went postal; they just suddenly found themselves with a gun and a pile of bodies, sparing only the cute receptionist so she could say what a quiet person they were when the news anchor interviewed her.
Leviticus finally realized where he was going. He cursed out loud as he found himself standing in the long, gleaming white hallway that ended in the Research and Development department of Heaven Inc, where the Prophecies were housed. The labs were soundproof, fireproof, bulletproof, waterproof, and Demon-proof. He might as well try and steal the Ark of the Covenant or Mary Magdalene's virginity—although supposedly that had been stolen more than once. The thought of stealing a whore’s virginity brought a slight grin to his face behind his gas mask, but the sobriety of the situation hit him, and his scowl returned. It was the same scowl that had popped on his face the second Mestoph had told him about stealing the Prophecy.
"Steal a Prophecy, Leviticus." said Leviticus, in a high-pitched mimicry of Mestoph's Demonic accent, which sounded kind of like a mix of Creole and South African with a dash of German: in other words, exactly like Klingon. Leviticus wondered how people had described the Demonic tongue before Star Trek. He shook his head, trying to focus. As ridiculous as Mestoph's plan was, it was his only hope for getting out—and hope was something he hadn't had in a long time. He needed a break, even if it was only the bleak hope of actually getting out of the End of the World business. Leviticus took a step toward the door, and then another, until finally he was walking down the long hallway.
His footsteps echoed loudly in the stark, bleached white hallways. So loudly he just knew someone would hear him at the guard post on the other side of the thick glass doors that lead to the R&D department. Up until he opened those doors, he could always turn back. Once he was in, there was no calling it off; he would be punished whether or not he stole even so much as a stapler.
Only the highest ranking Angels in the Heaven Inc. hierarchy were allowed inside the department. Whatever they did in there, it was not for mortal eyes or rank-and-file Angels like Leviticus. Even those who worked in R&D were allowed only severely limited and monitored access to the general population of Heaven for fear of letting secrets slip. Most mingled, married, or fooled around within the R&D pool, which created a semi-incestuous, House of Plantagenet-style twisted but elite circle. How Mestoph had learned about the Secure-Signed Prophecies was beyond Leviticus—and probably beyond Mestoph, for all he knew.
His thoughts had taken him all the way to automatic sliding-glass door that lead into the R&D department. He punched the code Mestoph had given him into the keypad, and the magnetic locks released and the door slid open. Leviticus was pretty sure he didn’t want to know where or how Mestoph had gotten the code. Now, only a manned security booth and a second set of doors stood between him and labs. The security guard, who had been watching some weird Japanese game show that involved being blindfolded and sticking your head into a box of bugs or Jell-O or something else equally pointless on one of the security monitors, glanced at Leviticus and turned back, nonplussed. It was a second or two before the guard turned back around, the perplexing image having taken a while to register in his rather simple brain. Leviticus stood in front of the security guard wearing the now foggy gas mask and paper bunny suit and was carrying the fire extinguisher in one hand and the hose in the other. Leviticus pointed the hose at the guard before he could push an alarm, pull a gun, or scream, and released a thick, white gas that quickly filled the anteroom.
The guard had been trying to stand, and the noxious Halon chemicals finally suffocated him just as he reached his full height. He crumpled back to the ground in a sad little arc. Leviticus reached over and turned off the monitor with the annoying game show. At the same time the guard’s soul, wispy and mostly transparent, rose from his body and up to eye level with Leviticus.
“I was watching that, asshole,” said the guard just before he faded away.
If the guard had been a decent person, he would be back in Heaven and on the job in no time, but Leviticus decided not to think too much about that now. He dropped the fire extinguisher, stepped over the body of the guard, and stared at an array of buttons at the security console. After poring over the buttons, none of which were labeled, he finally found a buzzer underneath the desk. Hedging his bets that it was more like a pawn shop in a seedy neighborhood than a silent alarm in a bank, he hit the button.
The second glass door slid open. The door quickly whooshed closed again after he stepped through, leaving Leviticus to suddenly wonder how he was supposed to get back out. He would have to worry about that on the way back.
After he had walked around a few corners, he ripped the long, trailing hose off of the gas mask so that he could finally get some air that wasn't hot and damp. He would keep the mask itself on in hopes that he could hide his identity from the security cameras and any staff who might be hanging around to get in some late night brown-nosing or just stealing office supplies. If he actually did run into anyone, he was almost certainly screwed since he knew he wasn't supposed to be there, and they definitely knew he wasn't supposed to be there. Leviticus wasn't much of a fighter and didn't figure he could take out anyone in hand-to-hand combat—and wasn't sure he wanted to—before they pulled an alarm or just shot him themselves. For all he knew, everyone in R&D was an ex-Swiss Guard, carried an SG 552 Commando assault rifle, and was just itching to spill some holy blood.
He tried to put such thoughts out of his mind as he navigated his way through the maze of hallways, offices, and conference rooms that made up the enormous Research and Development wing. Mestoph had sketched out a relatively accurate map for him, but it only had the direct route he needed to reach the Prophecy Research Lab. He passed by doors with seemingly innocuous signs on them such as Origami Papal Hat Development, God's Glorious Light Tanning Bed Testing, and one rather long sign that read: Completely Innocent Stuff That Couldn't Possibly Harm Anyone But You Should Still Stay Away Research. Then there were the more ominous or confusing ones like Time-Traveling Monkey Paradox Reduction, Wildlife Weaponization Foundation, and Vaginal Exorcism Training.
Along the walls were various trophy cases with awards for All-Saints Softball tournaments, Angels of the Month, and Wii Bowling League—the kind of thing that probably littered the trophy cases of any large company on Earth. However, there were also certificates of congratulation and small plaques of merit covering a wide range of oddities. There was one that said Least Number of Resurrections, which had a bronze Angel holding his own severed and haloed head while giving a thumbs up. Another said Most Fatal Wounds Caused By Non-Standard Office Supplies; that one had a giant bronzed carrot comically impaling an Angel. Next to that was a Best Satan-So-Fat Joke award with a morbidly obese, bronzed Satan atop a small wooden base. There was even a Best Use of Skylab Before It Crashed award, which had a small caption that indicated the winning idea was a Kegerator.
There were also safety-oriented signs and banners that listed the number of days since an unintentional Apocalypse had been averted (which currently read one, though the record was in the triple digits). Another sign showed the number of days since the last Transporter accident (also at one) with a tally of total accidents underneath that had been covered up with cardboard. Leviticus took that to mean it either could no longer count high enough or the number was just too embarrassing. Finally, there was an odd one that was a small chalk board on an unlabeled door that said "Number of Days Since Santa Rampage" (it was at thirteen, with the previous record being twelve) that looked like it got erased relatively frequently.
After a while Leviticus stopped reading the signs and plaques because they seemed either too ridiculous or too disturbing to be true—or so he told himself.
He looked down at his sketchily sketched map of the R&D department and realized he was at the X that marked the spot. In front of him was a stark white, unmarked door, but on the map it was labeled as the lab he was looking for. He looked at the map again and retraced his route, just to be sure. He was hoping he was wrong.
The stark door was stark in its starkest possibility. In fact, at this moment it wasn’t even a door, just a white, solid metal rectangle. There was no knob, handle, keyhole, lock, latch, keypad, button, or even a drive-through speaker to yell at. It was at this point that Leviticus considered abandoning the plan—the plan that had passed the point of no return ten minutes prior—and going home to await his impending arrest. Then he heard a noise that told him he wouldn’t have to do much waiting. Echoing down the hallway, though how far he couldn’t tell, was the unmistakable sound of footsteps.
Leviticus froze. He’d been fairly convinced he’d get caught to begin with, and this just proved his suspicion. As the footsteps got closer, his survival instincts kicked in and he began to look for a place to hide. He went down the hallway, trying several doors before one finally opened and he slipped in, closing the door and locking it behind him.
He looked around the long, narrow room that seemed to stretch out further than the eye could see. It was filled with row after row of thick-glassed vats containing a nearly transparent blue liquid that looked like a thick version of the cleaning solution barbers stuck their scissors and combs in. Suspended within the liquid of each vat, of which there had to be thousands, was what appeared to be a living and breathing Santa Claus. Running to each vat were various tubes, some with fluids flowing in and some with fluids flowing out. In one tube was a single wire that every so often would arc with electricity, which in turn would cause the Santa Claus to twitch mildly.
Although they all wore the trademark red clothes and hat, no two Santas appeared to be alike. They were all of varying size, build, and color. A few had what seemed like randomly substituted appendages: snakes instead of arms, a toaster instead of a head, pogo sticks instead of legs. One looked more like a Swiss Army knife than Santa Claus, with its left hand being a corkscrew, the right a can opener, its legs a fork and spoon, and in place of its head was the empty spot where a pair of tweezers or toothpick should've been—but, like most Swiss Army knives, it was missing. Leviticus wondered where it could have gone since it wasn't anywhere in the vat.
He listened at the door for the footsteps. Instead, as he put his ear to the door, the handle jiggled. Leviticus jumped back, startled, and assumed a fake karate pose. Behind him, one of the more normal although rather short Santas began sloshing around in his tank. Leviticus could hear keys in the door now, and he began looking around for some place to hide. A few rows away was an enormous, muscular Santa wearing red Santa pants and typical Santa hat but without a shirt so as to show off his incredibly ripped abs. Leviticus ran for that vat and slid behind it, hoping the bulk of the Santanator would hide him. The door opened and a guard dressed in what looked like riot gear walked through; several of the Santas twitched as he came in. Leviticus noticed that he carried a large, futuristic looking rifle that was probably devised specially for the R&D guards.
The guard walked in and looked around, eyeballing several of the Santas with an oddly pleased smile on his face. He locked the door, set his riot helmet and rifle against the wall, near the door, then turned back toward the rows of Santas as he rubbed his hands together in a look of glee that made Leviticus nervous. He was about 5' 10" with a build that suggested he had been in excellent shape about ten years ago but had let things go recently. He had a short, but not quite buzzed, haircut that was typical of military types, but with a goatee and mustache of deep reddish brown that showed he was a little more lax than your average special-ops wannabe. Despite having lost his ripped physique, he still had the habit of walking with his arms and chest puffed out like a bulldog as he drifted from one vat to another. He was probably the kind of guy who, while he was alive, spent all his time talking about what a big shot he had been in high school. The guard tapped a vat at random, causing an eagle-headed Santa to flinch.
Leviticus suddenly recognized the creepy smile as that of a kid who enjoyed torturing neighborhood cats and dogs. The guard made what seemed like a well-rehearsed tour of his favorite Santas, tapping and knocking on the glass as he passed. He, of course, stopped in front of the massively muscular Santa behind which Leviticus was hiding. Leviticus slid down, trying make himself smaller and hid in the tangle of tubes. The Santanator twitched and jerked more rapidly as the guard approached. The guard pulled a pronged baton out of a holster on his belt. He hit a button built into the handle and a loud, clicking arc of electricity shot between the prongs, sending Santanator into a slow, sloshy fury.
All of the vats were secured to the floor by four large bolts, one at each corner of the base. As the Santanator moved in the thick liquid, the vat jostled slightly, and Leviticus noticed that the bolts had loosened considerably, probably a result of a long history of the hulking Santa being teased and tortured by the guard. Leviticus tried to twist the nut off the bolt with his bare fingers. It was still tight enough to make it difficult to unscrew bare handed, but in between rounds of taunting and sloshing he was able to get one and then a second nut unscrewed.
The guard’s taunting escalated, and the thick blue liquid began to slosh out of the top of the vat where it was open to the air. The guard stuck the tip of the stun baton into an overflow pipe. An enormous and sickening smile grew on his face, and then he pressed the button to send a jolt of electricity into the highly conductive fluid. The Santanator let out an eerie, bubbly scream, braced against the walls of the vat, and jerked back and forth.
Leviticus wasn’t sure how far this game would progress and what would happen when the guard tired of taunting this particular Santa. He felt this was his only window of opportunity to take matters into his own hands. He decided to give chance a little help and timed a full-shouldered shove against the vat.
The movement caught the attention of the guard who let out a dumbfounded "Whuh?," but his sudden attention to detail was too late, as Leviticus and Santanator had pushed the vat past the tipping point. It began a free fall that seemed to happen in slow motion. As a wave of thick blue liquid spilled over the edge of the vat, Leviticus thought it was an image of David and Goliath in reverse. A sick, sadistic David and a tortured, genetically altered Goliath in red velvet pants and a fur-trimmed hat.
Leviticus shook the image from his mind as the vat hit the hard tiles and shattered, leaving a slick-wet monster Santa Claus covered in glass shards curled up on the floor. Leviticus looked down at the Santanator and then up at the guard, who followed suit by looking down at the hulk and then up at Leviticus.
"What have you done?" said the guard, scared, confused, and outraged all at once. His swirl of emotions didn't last long as Santanator stood up, grabbed the guard by his head, lifted him off the ground, and then smashed him against the next nearest vat in rapid succession. Leviticus heard a sickeningly wet thump-crush and then a piercing shattering as the guard’s head collapsed and the vat of the Swiss Army Santa spider-webbed and shattered, sending another wave of the blue stuff out across the floor.
Leviticus jumped back, bumping into the vat behind him, and stared at the unfolding scene. Santanator turned to look at Leviticus and paused for several seconds, which seemed eternities each, and then smiled.
"Merry fucking Christmas!" it said and then took off running toward the door, taking it off its hinges with a shoulder and continuing down the hall. Leviticus stood as still as possible as the Swiss Army Santa began to jump and jitter on the ground where it landed, trying to get up. Since it had no real arms or legs, it skittered as the various tools swung and flailed until finally, by pure dumb luck, it managed to jump upright on its fork and spoon legs. Instead of walking, it rolled around like a cartwheeling child, bumping into anything and everything as it went. Leviticus couldn't tell if it could see where it was going or if it was blindly moving around the narrow room. Finally, the Swiss Army Santa built up some speed and rolled toward the door; however, it missed by several feet, and the sharp-hooked can opener arm impaled itself into the wall, where it struggled to free itself.
The sound of an alarm brought Leviticus out of his paralysis. Santanator had no doubt finally brought the attention of security down on him. Feeling his chance to steal the Prophecy being yanked away from him, Leviticus came up with a quick plan. He pulled off the easy to remove pieces riot gear from the body of the former sadistic security guard, which was mostly just the vest, tactical cargo pants, and a thin navy blue jacket with "Security" written on the back in big yellow letters, replaced the hoseless gas mask with the riot helmet, and grabbed the futuristic rifle.
As Leviticus picked up the futuristic rifle, which hummed with a subtle vibration as if it were purring softly, Swiss Army Santa managed to leverage its spoon leg against the wall and jerk itself free. It dislodged with enough force to throw it backwards into the nearest Santa vat, shattering the glass and freeing yet another Santa. It revved up its cartwheeling and this time made it out of the door, missing Leviticus by only inches. Left standing in the shattered remains of the newly broken vat was a tiny Santa with the disproportionate body of a dwarf but the head of a normal-sized human. Slapped somewhat crooked on that head was a mouth at least three times larger than normal. It was currently smiling at Leviticus.
After a minute of the two staring each other down, the tiny, cartoonish Santa opened its mouth, which seemed to suddenly take up more surface than it had head for. Hidden inside was a jet engine. This was not immediately apparent to Leviticus, because he had never expected to see a jet engine within the mouth of anything, let alone a two-foot dwarf Santa Claus. As the rotor within the Santa's mouth began to turn, the concept became much clearer and more frightening, and Leviticus expected the diminutive Santa to hurtle forward at some insane speed nearing that of light, or sound at the very least. Instead, the opposite began to happen as tiny bits of debris near the Santa were sucked up and into its mouth. The tiny engine quickly gained speed, and soon larger items were being pulled toward the nexus of swirling debris that disappeared into the mouth of the Vacuum Santa.
By the time the danger that he was in finally dawned on him, which was easily excusable considering the absurdity of everything that had happened in the last several minutes, Leviticus was already sliding toward the Santa's mouth on the slick blue liquid all over the floor. He managed to grab onto one of the tubes leading into a vat with one hand as his feet were swept out from under him. The suction had grown to the point where the tube had gone taught, leaving him flailing wildly in the air. The tube was slippery with vat goo, and Leviticus could feel himself slowly sliding closer to the turbine Santa.
Not knowing how much more suction the Vacuum Santa was capable of, and even less sure of his ability to continue hanging on to the slippery tube, Leviticus did the only thing he knew to do—he killed Santa Claus. Leviticus leveled the rifle and pulled the trigger. He squeezed his eyes shut as he squeezed the trigger and had a brief moment of disappointment when he heard absolutely nothing. Not pew-pew, nor bang-bang, nor even a Heaven-shattering kaboom. Instead there was silence, absolute and complete. Not even the sound of the roaring engine of Vacuum Santa could be heard.
When Leviticus slammed down on the floor in a splash of blue goop, he finally opened his eyes. In a straight line from his feet and all the way to the end of the long room was a path of debris and ashy dust, as if a giant bowling ball of energy had hit Vacuum Santa and then kept going. This imaginary bowling ball of doom had not only turned everything it touched into dust, but also left a wake of slightly less destructive destruction, in which vats and the various apparatus that supported them were shattered and twisted into pretzely, knotted shapes. Flopping around on the floor were dozens of stunned Santas, as well as many that remained motionless and likely dead. At the thought of an army of mutant Santas rampaging through the halls—So that’s what the sign meant, he thought—Leviticus bolted from the Hall of Santas, wishing that Santanator had not busted the door off the hinge. He ran down the R&D hallway, where the sound of the alarms rang in his ears, again reminding him that a full security force would be there any moment.
Once again he stood in front of the stark white door, which had been his whole reason for coming. Leviticus pushed on the door and nothing happened. It didn’t even give in a little like most doors. He tried pushing harder but was met with the same result. Pushing turned into pounding and pounding turned into him running full tilt at the door with his shoulder like the Santanator, only to find himself stopped suddenly and painfully.
“Please open?” asked Leviticus, but the door neither opened nor replied.
“Open, damn you!”
Again, the door did nothing.
“Fine, you want to do this the hard way? But you’re going to regret this,” Leviticus warned the door, though he hoped that he wasn't about to make a tragic mistake.
Leviticus aimed the futuristic rifle at the door and paused, giving the completely inanimate door one last chance to comply, and then pulled the trigger. Again there was total silence, one so loud that it drowned out the klaxon of the alarms. This time, however, Leviticus did not close his eyes, which allowed him to see a large green ball of swirly, glowy energy grow at the tip of the rifle and then hurtle toward the door at an amazing speed…only to hit the door and then fall straight to the floor with no effect. The swirly-twirly ball sat on the floor, motionless except for its internal swirling and twirling.
"Oh come on!" Leviticus screamed.
In a mild tantrum, he went to kick at the ball of energy.
It wasn't until he was committed fully to the kick that he thought kicking a ball of energy that had taken out a room full of Santas in bottles was probably a really bad idea. Luckily for him the ball dissipated, and his foot connected, poorly and at a painful angle, with the door. At the force of the rather feeble kick, the door creaked and then slowly toppled over into the room. Leviticus looked around, a small part of him hoping that someone was around to witness his amazing feat of strength.
In reality, the ball of energy had hit with incredible force, but unbeknownst to Leviticus the projectile was designed specifically for Santa suppression and to not cause any damage to the infrastructure of the R&D department. Regardless, there's no way to negate the laws of physics, even in Heaven, and the substantial force of the impact was enough—though just barely—to weaken what was an unimaginably strong and secure door.
Leviticus marched into the lab with an air of righteousness, as if he were Caesar marching triumphantly into Rome after victory at the Battle of Munda. He strolled over to a pedestal where three glass scroll cases rested on velvet pads beneath a glass display. Within each scroll case was a rolled-up prototype of the Secure-Signed Prophecies that he and Mestoph were after.
The Santa rampage had been a rather fortuitous event, considering the acquisition of the rifle. Leviticus had no idea the rifle was the only way he could've gotten into the lab without a code. Nor did he know that if the alarms hadn’t already been blaring when he smashed the display case and swiped a single scroll, they definitely would be now. He slid the glass case underneath his riot vest and turned around to see a security guard walk into the room.
"All clear?' the guard asked a panicked and bewildered Leviticus.
"Uhh...yeah," he said hesitantly as Leviticus realized he was not, in fact, busted. “…All clear. Only minor damage.”
"Alright, continue your sweep of the corridor." ordered the guard, clearly his superior—for the moment at least.
The guard turned and walked further down the corridor with. Leviticus followed soon after. He saw the Superior Officer take off at a full run as a giant purple lizard with a Santa hat and ill-fitting red pants scurried down an intersecting corridor. A screaming guard hung on to the lizard’s neck. Leviticus took advantage of the distraction and went the opposite direction, back toward the way he had entered R&D. Once he was certain the way was clear, he, too, took off into a full run, letting off another shot of the futuristic rifle as he neared the sealed-off area of the guard post. The green ball swirly-twirlied its way down the corridor and smashed through the glass on his end of the guard post. The concussion that followed shattered the glass wall, and door to the guard booth, and obliterated all the equipment in the room. When the energy ball hit the opposite wall, it thudded to the floor and stopped.
Leviticus peeled off the pieces of stolen guard apparel, making sure to stick the scroll case deep into the pockets of his robe, and threw them into the green energy ball that still sat swirling on the floor. He’d become rather fond of the rifle and felt a pang of remorse at having to part with it. No evidence, he thought and tossed it into the energy ball as he ran off.
Behind him, a small supernova bloomed out from the center of the glowing energy orb, the result of all the unstable ammo within the rifle reacting and chain-reacting, and ripped a small, mostly innocuous hole in time.
Leviticus ran down the hallways of headquarters with an enormous smile on his face, jumping up to hit exit signs and clapping, hooting, and high-fiving people as he passed. He was living high on adrenaline and excitement, like a kid who had just won his high school championship. He felt free and alive like he hadn’t in at least two thousand years, and the thought that he might be able to feel this way forever prolonged the euphoria all the way out the front doors of Heaven Inc., hopefully for the last time.
God sat at his desk in an office that looked like it could have been a smoking room in a Victorian mansion, backlit by a large window that looked onto the rainbow farms of Heaven. Peter sat opposite God in one of two extremely comfortable chairs that Herman Miller had made for God when he first arrived. The chair was an odd mix of 1950’s euro-mod and 17th century French that worked well with each other and the formal opulence of the rest of the office. Peter was in charge of Research and Development for Heaven Inc. and looked like he should play a Roman senator in a Masterpiece Theater rendition of Titus Andronicus. He had the extremely short, bowl-cut black hair, the prominent bent nose, and the British accent that were all mandatory to get into a PBS production of anything Roman.
God looked like your grandfather. Good or bad, God looked like everyone’s grandfather.
Peter had just finished filling God in on the situation. He looked out the window and saw hundreds of little people—actual little people, as in midgets, dwarfs, leprechauns and so on—climbing up and down ladders to inspect the light readings and structural integrity of each rainbow. God had only nodded in understanding when Peter had finished. Several seconds had passed, and he hadn’t started yelling. God wasn’t mad at Peter; it could have happened to anyone. God leaned back in his dark brown leather chair, which was dotted by large, brass buttons. The seat creaked in a soft and melodic way that pleased God. He steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and looked up at a tapestry on the walnut paneled wall that depicted The Fall of the Angel Lucifer. The artist, an old woman who had lived during the 11th or 12th century—God couldn’t remember anymore—had portrayed Satan as a leathery looking half-bat, half-man creature that He had always thought was a little unfair to Lucifer. Not unfair enough to change it, but He still felt that people misunderstood His relationship with Satan. After all, He had His uses. This thought gave God an idea, and He leaned over the intercom on his Brazilian tulipwood Louis XIV desk.
“Mary?” God asked.
“Yes, God?” came a scratchy voice on the other end of the intercom.
“Mary, can you get Peter on the phone?”
“R&D Peter or St. Peter?”
“You just let R&D Peter into my office five minutes ago,” said God.
“Yes?”
“And you haven’t seen him walk out,” explained God.
“So…?”
“St. Peter," God said, sounding somewhat exasperated but trying to hide it.
God looked up from the intercom at R&D Peter, who only shrugged.
“She’s your son’s girlfriend. Or one of them.”
“My son, in all his glory, is like a one-man rock band on tour. The groupies, the parties, only he hasn’t performed in two thousand years,” said God. He sighed. “You part a sea and suddenly you’re a miracle worker."
“Wasn’t that Moses?” asked Peter
“Huh?”
“The Red Sea. That wasn’t your son, that was Moses.” explained Peter
“Oh…then what did Jesus do?” asked God, genuinely bewildered.
“Died for their Sins?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, that is kinda something," said God
“Wasn’t that the point, Sir? You sent your only son to die for mankind.”
God shook His head. “No, I sent my only son because he was getting in the way. Showboating and upstaging me at board meetings.”
“Well, I hate to be the one to break it, but that kind of backfired.” said Peter, laughing uncomfortably. There was a long, awkward silence. Peter wasn’t sure if he had insulted God since conversation with Him was full of such odd pauses. When you’ve been around for all eternity, prompt responses aren’t really a priority.
“God? St. Peter is here to see you” blurted Mary’s voice from the intercom.
“Send him in,” commanded God.
The buzz of the intercom died. Then a lock clicked, two panels of the wall slid apart, and in walked a gorilla of a man. He was well over six feet tall and at least 220 lbs. of bristling muscle. He was wearing a well-tailored suit of fine black wool with subtle silver pinstripes. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back in a way that made him look like a finely dressed Russian mobster gorilla. St. Peter was Chief of Security for Heaven Inc, and no one got in without his say so.
God stood up and gripped St. Peter’s massive hand. The pressure of the saint’s grip made Him wince slightly.
"God, Peter,” said St. Peter as he nodded to each and took a seat, barely fitting in the chair. “What can I do for you, gentleman?”
God nodded to R&D Peter, who said, “Well, we think there’s a breach in security.”
St. Peter’s brow arched and his muscles tensed visibly beneath his suit. He took a deep breath and then spoke, “No one gets in unless they’re on the list.” he said seriously.
God and R&D Peter glanced at each other. God spoke up, “Yeah. And you do a great job. Problem isn’t the incoming but the outgoing."
St. Peter looked back and forth between God and R&D Peter. “But the list, it’s only for who comes in. No one ever mentioned anything about keeping them in. This is Heaven, not prison—or Hell Industries.”
“True. But it’s not so much who got out, but…what,” said God.
“The Titans!” exclaimed St. Peter, standing up and almost out the door already.
“Sit down. The Titans are under the ocean where we left them” said God. St. Peter reluctantly sat back down, relaxing only slightly.
God pushed a button on his desk, and one of the walls slid open to reveal a large monitor. The grainy security footage showed a robed Angel with a gas mask walk into a guard booth and kill a man with a fire extinguisher. The footage blinked from one vantage point to another as the figure walked down the hallway. The footage skipped a large chunk of time, and suddenly alarms were going off and the Angel was now dressed in parts of a security guard outfit and holding what St. Peter assumed was a GLObE, or Geodesic Laserized Object Emitter. The figure shot the gun and then kicked the door down, which looked impressive on film. The next camera showed the inside of a lab, where the figure smashed and then stole a large glass vial.
R&D Peter turned toward St. Peter. “As you can see, a Prophecy has gone missing.” He said. St. Peter’s arm swung so fast that R&D Peter nearly rolled backwards out of his seat, afraid he was about to get punched.
“Protocol: St. Peter 12 Red,” St. Peter said into a hidden microphone on the cuff of his sleeve. Alarms went off a second later. The dimly lit office suddenly went incredibly bright, and the large window overlooking the rainbow farm went black as barriers slid down over the glass.
“Sweet Fuck!” God screamed, “Cancel the lockdown; it’s already gone.”
St. Peter sighed. “Cancel St. Peter 12 Red. Authorization: God Is Good” he said to his sleeve.
The alarms immediately went silent, the lighting dimmed back to normal, and the barriers raised, showing once more the brilliant rainbows growing in the light mist that surrounded the Farm.
“We think we know who took it. What we can’t figure is why and how he did it. Also, we don’t know where he is now,” said R&D Peter.
“Give me a name.” said St. Peter.
“Leviticus,” said God.
“Luh…vit…uhh…kus…” St. Peter said, grinding syllables through his clenched teeth.
“Now St. Peter, we know you and Leviticus have had run-ins in the past, so don’t use this as justification to get revenge. There’s probably a really good reason for what he might have done,” said God.
“Yeah, St. Peter. We think he did it. We’re not sure. That’s your job. Find out, without a doubt, and then find out why," said R&D Peter.
St. Peter took a deep breath before speaking. “If I can prove he did it…can I kill him?”
God and R&D Peter looked at each other and laughed.
“Well, of course. If he’s guilty, ice the fucker.” God said, holding his fingers like a gun, gangsta sideways.
R&D Peter sighed, grateful that St. Peter hadn't asked about the missing footage. Not being privy to everything that went on in R&D had always been a sore spot for St. Peter. Plus, he didn't want to have to explain all the Santas.