In a galaxy far, far away, millions of light years away from Earth to be exact, God, El, sat at a simple wooden table in a comfortable chair. His makeshift workplace was located on a small island of what could be called a tropical paradise. It just looked very different from what one would imagine on Earth. The beach's sand resembled a blend of soft pink and sky blue. The water of the ocean, which began a few feet from where he worked, was more purple than the blue so well known and loved on Earth. El was pleased with the physical form he had chosen some time ago. He looked like a fit man somewhere in his fifties, with silver-gray hair in a short ponytail and a trimmed, slightly longer silver-gray beard and mustache. He wore a colorful Hawaiian shirt, short khaki cargo pants, sandals, and white socks.
In front of him on the small table was the message Gabriel had sent him, to which he had already replied. His gaze was fixed on the note, and he had read it at least ten times. Just as many times, he had wondered if the answer he had sent back was clear enough. For the last two millennia, here on this island, he had shut himself off from the rest of his universe. To contemplate his own timeless existence. The more time passed, the more he seemed to doubt. With his eyes on Gabriel's message, no, Gabe, for it seemed that his children had developed some sort of penchant for abbreviating their names. He had always called them by their full names because those were the names he and his wife had given their children. He had never thought that they might like to be called something else. A way that did not detract from their full names but seemed to give them more pleasure, a way that made addressing each other more intimate. Gabe, Mi, Raffa, Rae Rae, Jo. At first, the realization that they didn't use their full names had irritated him. Why would they do that? Why would they drop the divine EL, or of God? They were true children of God; why would they want to avoid being addressed as being of God? This irritation quickly disappeared, however, as he felt the warmth with which they addressed each other. They were not denying that they were of God; they were fully acknowledging that they were children of God. It was simply their way of addressing their brothers and sisters. He also realized that there was more warmth and love in it than in the way his wife and he had ever addressed their children. For the first time in his timeless existence, El began to wonder if he had made mistakes. One of the first doubts was whether it had been a mistake to shut himself off from everything and everyone for thousands of years here on this island. Yes, he had time, and he had created space in his consciousness for self-reflection. But had he not locked himself in an echo chamber where he heard only his own voice and words, where he confirmed himself in all his own thinking?
El had turned off his omniscience because he did not want to hear voices in his head other than his own. Because he didn't want to see images in his head other than those he conjured up himself. This shutting off had happened gradually. More and more people began to live on Earth, and some of them thought it was a good idea to share everything they did with him first. Then there was the Revolution of the Lightbringer and the chaos among the angelic voices that debacle had wrought. Then the fall of Samael, the infernal screams of pain that echoed in his head, followed by centuries of messages of hopelessness and loneliness. Until finally this had turned into his son's endless tirade against him. Piece by piece, he had eliminated all of this until the accusatory messages from his youngest son, Jesus, began to come through, in which doubt was clearly audible from time to time. God was angry with his youngest son. How dare he question his plan? The rightness and greatness of that plan. El, of course, knew what was coming, how it would end, and had shut himself off before it got to this point so as not to hear the last pleas, the last words of Yeshua.
Gabriel's urgent message had changed that. He had briefly turned on his omniscience to take a quick scan of heaven and earth. The sudden flood of voices, thoughts, and images had made him dizzy, almost nauseous. When he thought he knew what he needed to know about what was happening and had happened in Heaven during his absence, he had quickly closed himself off again. What he had seen made him anything but cheerful, and what he had unwittingly received from humanity on Earth made him immensely sad. How had the situation in Heaven deteriorated to such an extent that Michael had to engage in a daily struggle to maintain harmony and happiness among the three factions of angels? How had humanity become so deranged that such atrocities had been and were being committed in His name? That humanity was literally an ant fart away from destroying itself and the entire planet He had given them. Omniscience can be a blessing. It can also be a curse. Certainly, there were now nearly eight billion souls roaming the Earth. He shuddered at the number and resolved never to use his omniscience fully again. Eight billion people meant an infinite number of possible timelines. Each of those people made a number of decisions in a day. Something as simple as a person taking a joyride, coming to a fork in the road, and having to decide whether to turn left or right created two possible timelines for him to see in his omniscience. That's eight billion times x decisions in a day? Add to that the vagaries of Mother Nature, and his mind would be so preoccupied with all the possible timelines that there would be no room left for other important things. Not to mention the so-called butterfly effect, as humans had so neatly dubbed it. Thousands of light-years away from Earth, two huge pieces of space debris, remnants of the time when galaxies and their planets were forming, collided, and a few million years later, the dinosaurs had a kind of light show. Unfortunately, they were not able to tell their descendants about it.
His brief scan of Heaven, Earth, and the Celestials had given El pause for thought. His first reaction had been anger, enough to cause a severe tropical storm near his small island. An anger he had quickly swallowed. A small voice in his head told him that he was to blame for the stagnation in Heaven, for the indecisiveness of his Celestials, and for the sometimes-dangerous tendencies of some of his children. Michael, his prince of heaven, was tired. His general, his best warrior, the leader all angels looked up to, had a ridiculously low energy level after two thousand years. How long could he last before either throwing in the towel or simply making short work of the band of zealots who threatened the peace of Heaven on an almost daily basis? Knowing Michael, the latter option was the most obvious. A massacre in Heaven by a prince driven to extremes, with dozens of angels destroyed as a direct result. And what of those damned fools who had gathered around Amenadiel? Zealots who longed for the old days when he, El, ruled as a vengeful god and tried to push humanity in a certain direction with a brutal hand. Heaven was in chaos, not open chaos with rebellions and violence, but chaos nonetheless. This thought led El to the greatest surprise and question mark of all. A boy of thirteen, a Nephilim, the son of his rebel son Samael, no Lucifer, for he had taken his title as his name. The rebel he had banished to Hell to rule his own kingdom. The son who was once his successor, his heir. The son, who was a rebel by nature and who, without even knowing it, was doing the exact opposite of what El had expected of him with his new kingdom and his time on Earth. On the one hand, he did not want to be a king, and on the other hand, he did not seem to have lost a shred of his essence as the Lightbringer when he was on Earth. The arrangement El had made with Lucifer at the time of their tug-of-war over Job also did not work out as he had expected. El had thought that by giving Lucifer dominion over man and earth, Lucifer would use that power. He watched from the shadows and enjoyed when people proved what great things they were capable of. He enjoyed their music, their art, and their free thought as they rejected Him El of their own free will and sought their own way. He now lived in a city called the City of Angels. He had made real friends over the centuries, mostly with people who were already as free-thinking as he was. And now again, now that he had more or less decided to settle down on Earth permanently, he had gathered a small circle of friends around him. And one of those friends was helping him understand the world better and learn to deal with the traumas for which he, El, was largely responsible. This one friend now seemed to be pregnant with none other than Amenadiel's child, and this baby seemed to herald his arrival. The thought of Amenadiel gave him a headache. He had never given the order to drag Lucifer back to Hell when he was on Earth. On the other hand, he had never told his angels that he did not want Lucifer to reside on Earth from time to time, if only to see if he would ever begin to abuse his power over humanity. Lucifer had killed Uriel. El had strictly forbidden his Angels to kill, and his first reaction was to punish Lucifer, to exterminate him. However, that feeling was quickly tempered when he saw why Lucifer had done it. He had killed his brother in order to save innocents. To save his wife, his estranged wife, because Uriel was determined to kill Talia. Was Talia his estranged wife? Was she not, as people called it, his ex-wife? Yes, she had exaggerated her desire to destroy his project. But did he go too far in banishing her to hell? Shouldn't he have tried to explain to her what he was doing instead of demanding unconditional acceptance? Had he gone wrong with his two prototypes, Lilith and Adam? Wasn't Adam too much like him? A man who needed to be able to build things and therefore needed to have his hands free without explaining what he was building. Wasn't Lilith based too much on Talia? A strong woman with her own will, her own desires, and her own dreams who did not simply accept her role in Adam's life? Had he therefore banished her to Hell as the very first human, where she became the archmother of some of the demons? Was that why he had created Eve, so that she would be more easily molded to serve Adam? Talia was no longer in Hell; she was not even in this universe. She was out of his sight and influence. Wasn't that a better solution than Hell? Then why did he feel so alone now that he knew she was out of his reach?
However, it was the other Nephilim, the son of Lucifer, who posed a significant challenge. No matter what El tried, he could not scan the boy. He was able to gather fragments of information, but not much more. He understood that the boy was mischievous and always looking for fun. But his innermost and deepest thoughts remained hidden from God. He had also noticed immediately that this boy had not grown up in this universe because Michael wanted to protect him at all costs from the zealots in Heaven. The boy had not grown up in his universe, and Talia was no longer in his universe. The conclusion was obvious: the boy knew Talia. Was he perhaps the key to restoring the connection he now lacked? El sensed that this Alexander was not only tied to the thrones of Heaven as the son of an angel, and that he had claimed the throne of Hell so that his father could finally be free. The boy was surrounded by the power of other thrones and gods. The mix of forces made El a little dizzy as he tried to penetrate the boy's core but was resolutely rebuffed. There was no being in the universe that could resist the power of God; there was nothing in this universe that could resist a deep scan of God. This boy, however, deflected his powers as if they were nothing. This boy, this child, had brought two of his archangels to their knees simply by using the divine power of his voice. He had put a mark on the temperamental Muriel so that she was now bound to heaven and could not leave it. Only the boy could restore her liberty but gave El space to do it as well. Why? Was this some kind of olive branch the boy was extending to him? A sign that his coming was not hostile and, at the same time, a sign of the power he possessed and his will to use that power. Speaking of power, he had let Amenadiel fall. In this universe, the power to cause the fall of an angel was a power reserved for God, and God alone. Yet this boy had stripped the oh-so-proud Angel not only of his supernatural powers but also of the use of his wings. Amenadiel may have been an archangel, but for the moment he was as powerful as any human soul in heaven. Insignificant compared to his brothers and sisters. Something that many of those siblings would certainly make him feel and experience.
El had never been nervous, let alone fearful. But the powers surrounding this Alexander were so unfamiliar that they were now causing him to learn two completely new emotions. Now that he had turned off his omniscience, a question came to El that he had never asked before:
"Is this the future?"
He manifested a glass of wine and continued to think:
"Was I so wrong in the past? Was I so blinded by my own ambitions that I didn't see, didn't want to see, what was happening, what I was losing? Is this boy a threat to my throne? And if so, would that be so bad?"
He drained his glass:
"Humanity, my project will destroy itself. I could blame Lucifer for giving them free will too soon. But that would be short-sighted, for I myself planned to do the same thing a little later. It would only have delayed the inevitable. This cursed project, it caused chaos in Silver City; it caused Talia's disappearance. Eighty percent of my children would rather not see me return, or they do not care if I am there or not, as long as peace is kept. Those who want me back do so in the hope that I will destroy humanity and punish their brothers and sisters, or worse, destroy the Lightbringer."
El refilled his glass, drank quietly, and came to a decision:
"It is time for me to return!"