If you can't beat them, join them.
As the twenty-first century dawned, Jordi was starting
to become desperate. Species were regularly going
extinct, habitats were going away left and right, and
the ecosystem was finally starting to show the strain
from the number of humans on the planet. The
Archangel of Animals was ready to look for a desperate
solution, when one was handed to him on a silver
platter.
Influenza-Calcutta 2009 was a nasty example of the
disease: it had (using only corporeal treatment, of
course) a 40% fatality rate, knocked survivors flat
for at least three weeks, and laughed at normal
containment methods. Better (or worse) it had a
variable incubation rate (anywhere from one week to a
month), making normal quarantine procedures insanely
difficult. The resulting pandemic would scythe
through the human population: the best case scenario
postulated the complete collapse of most human medical
infrastructures, with all that that entailed
(including additional plagues that would erupt, due to
the lack of any organized countermeasures). The worst
case suggested that the human population would
stabilize at somewhere around half a billion (if
that). Most importantly, the only ones who knew about
the oncoming disaster were Jordi's own Servitors.
Jordi doesn't like to talk about how much he was
tempted to simply keep his mouths shut about the
entire thing and Let Nature Take Its Course. Maybe he
would have done something about the upcoming pandemic
anyway. It's hard to say. The temptation would have
been so strong... but there was one problem. The
Servitors had, upon encountering this disease, also
found (through heroic, frantic effort) a reliable
vaccine. There was just enough time to duplicate it
and disseminate it among human health agencies.
Well... there was a difference between letting
humanity get decimated and actively conspiring to
decimate humanity, wasn't there? Try as he might,
Jordi couldn't quite find a justification to so
actively flaunt God's Will. He tried, though: he
tried very, very hard. But, when all was said and
done, Jordi was an Archangel, and he was not a
Damned rebel against God. He might have skirted the
line a time or two, but he couldn't force himself to
step over it. The image of the Archangel of Animals
deciding to not let humanity get wiped out is a
bemusing one, of course, but it's overshadowed by what
Jordi did next.
He went to Jean.
The Deal (as it was later called) was never fully
disclosed by either Superior, but the broad details
became fully clear. Jordi offered Jean a trade: Jean
got the vaccine (and Jordi's support) in exchange for
... the Earth. Jean could have the rest of the
Universe, but Jordi wanted the planet. Jean, after
some thought, agreed.
The combination of the coldest Archangel and the most
inhuman Archangel did not mean that the crisis was
averted, naturally: instead, it was ... used. By the
time the first plague reports had come in,
Lightning-dominated human agencies were poised to
effectively counteract the threat. There were glaring
exceptions. A shame about the outbreaks in Southern
California, of course, but when you're mobilizing
against a pandemic, sometimes quality control isn't
all that it could be. Ironic, though, that
Hollywood's blatant attempts to monopolize the first
batches of vaccine could backfire so spectacularly,
no?
Then there was that unfortunate business with mixing
politics and medicine: not that anyone intended to
hold up shipments to certain dictatorships, but
accidents happen. The inevitable conspiracy theories
were promulgated, but nobody on Earth took them
seriously: after all, every country ended up being
affected. Surely a government intending to wreck
their enemy's power structures would have avoided
wrecking their own in the process: you couldn't even
truthfully say that the medical community was behind
it all, as they had lost too many of their own before
it was all over. True, there was a lot of rioting (and
ancillary property damage) taking place at the
pandemic's height, but only the most paranoid could
suggest that they were somehow planned, worldwide...
Well, Hell could, but by then they had their own
problems. Jean and Jordi had managed to identify and
destroy the most 'public' Diabolical outposts
(including over 67% of known Tethers), and without
their most influential human pawns, the Princes were
hard-pressed to hold what they had. Jean had
logically concluded that exposing to disease any human
authority figure not provably in the service of Heaven
would be an efficient method of eliminating Diabolical
influence. Those going to Heaven would be immediately
given a vessel and sent right back down in time to
make a 'miraculous recovery': those going to Hell
anyway... well, good riddance to bad rubbish. Those
revealed as celestials by a negative reaction to the
'inoculation' were quickly identified and sent into
Trauma.
The other Archangels started screaming right about
that time, but the problem was that the method
worked. By the time that Jean and Jordi were put on
trial by a snarling Dominic, Hell was retreating from
areas formerly considered unassailable. Dominic could
thunder about willful disobedience of the Council and
Novalis could weep over the innocent lives lost all
they liked. At least half of Hell's fingers had been
pried off the metaphorical throat of Earth ... and
certain other Archangels were starting to see the
advantages in the new situation. The trial ended in
stalemate, despite the wishes of the Archangels of
Flowers and Judgement (who, nonetheless, insisted on
the ending of the controlled plagues).
The situation might have stabilized, even then, if it
wasn't for the fact that Hell took the opportunity to
promptly erupt in civil war. Saminga, swelled with
the boost to his Word, became so dangerous that he had
to be put down - but doing so claimed the lives of
many Princes (including a greatly weakened Nybbas and
most of the minor Princes) and countless demons. The
defections started about that time, too: no Prince
successfully got away, but destroying Belial and
Vapula took resources that Hell couldn't afford to
lose (including Haagenti and Valefor).
And, through all this time, Gabriel kept sounding her
Horn. By the time Armageddon came, the two sides were
wildly unmatched. It wasn't a walkover, by any means,
but Heaven prevailed.
Several centuries later, the two Archangels have
divided the universe between them (the Deal has been
expanded: Jordi gets the ecosystems, Jean gets
everything else). Most of the human race has moved
off of the planet, and is now slowly spreading across
the nearest star systems. Those that remain are
putting the finishing touches on rebuilding the
ecology. Jordi has been restoring species left and
right, using the flimsiest excuses to justify having
the needed DNA for cloning. Jean has allowed humanity
access to a variety of interstellar drives, carefully
creating rational societies that will properly develop
the new planets that they discover. Half a galaxy
over, several planets have been terraformed by
Lightning and Animals to make space for the oldest
human species.
Hell has been reclaimed: those demons that remained
after Armageddon were given the choice between
destruction and Redemption. Novalis has voluntarily
relocated there to try and bring the remaining damned
souls out of their collective self-degradation. She
has not left her self-imposed exile since the end of
Armageddon, despite all entreaties: she (and certain
others) refuses to endorse by her presence the means
used to justify this end.
It's a very pragmatic world, actually. True, there's
still a lot of dissension on how this victory was
accomplished, but there's also the fact that, all in
all, Heaven won. There were a lot of deaths, true,
and some of them weren't particularly justified, but
the humans involved are either in Heaven or being
ministered to in Hell. Surely the ends justified the
means, in this one case. This was the best way things
could have turned out: this was the only way things
could have turned out. In hindsight, there wasn't any
other way to win.
There couldn't have been any other way to win ...
could there?
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