Chapter 24

We decide to take a more active role

When: Day 315 in the afterlife

Where: Out and about

Spring was in full swing in Midveil. Kids were singing "winter wrap up" which I guess was from a cartoon back on Earth as snow was melting. We put away the hills we had made for them and started planting our seedlings. I had been surprised to learn some industrious people had been preparing trees and things in a "greenhouse" they had made in the warehouse, and got them planted as soon as the ground was warm enough to accept them. We were plowing fields, deciding what crops to grow where, and generally enjoying being outside without freezing again. I had a new list in the library about basically "pie in the sky" type projects we could one day undertake and creating a huge dome, like you see in fiction where people live on other planets or underwater, was on it. A place where no snow would fall, so you could lie on the beach or whatever in winter in perfect comfort. We could hardly build a single modern office building at the moment but it was good to dream big. As there was no going anywhere in Midveil where it wasn't winter when it was winter, if we wanted a vacation spot we would have to make it. I figured with magic and enough people working on it one day it would be possible.

Our current houses had weathered the winter storms fairly well. Repairs of course had been done at the time but we took the opportunity to look them all over now, see what had worked and what hadn't for the future. Bad Place celestials were back, and in greater numbers, to help put up more houses and get their realm emptied of souls that no longer belonged there. They had revealed the existence of Midveil and what we represented, and the occasional trainload of souls arrived from there, people that didn't mind "roughing it" (even being outside was a paradise to someone stuck in Bad Place the last five hundred years after all) and making their houses as they went. As that's what we had to do when we first arrived, I said the more the merrier and welcomed them.

"They can put up their own houses same as we did," I told the celestial that had come to me with the idea. "We have the techniques now, and some sort of formalized process. We should try to make two story buildings now but sure, they're going to come here sooner or later so it may as well be sooner if they know what they're getting into." And any that are lucid enough to come probably were not all that bad and were not tortured very much. That's the kind we need, people who will get to work on housing and maybe know about putting up electric lines and water pipes and whatever else we need as a society. Though I'm leaning towards a home generator, based on the design that runs the portal turning magic into electric power. Much easier to deploy and no wires strung everywhere. Once we figure out how it works we can duplicate it.

This too was very organized, hundreds of thousands of years of bureaucracy at The Bad Place had allowed them to perfect organization of just about anything, so things were going smoothly. My theft of the portal technology had gone unnoticed and after months of studying it Stefan and his team were pretty sure they understood how it operated, at least well enough to activate it in the future. I had no plans to do so, as I knew it would alert Good Place just as it had when The Bad Place used it, but they wrote up a manual for it and were figuring out how to make others that might be safer or more stable. It was a good thing we had studied it, because that day Janet and Michael were hanging around as usual when she suddenly said "uh oh." We all looked around, wondering what she had meant because I didn't see anything amiss in what we were doing at the time.

"What's uh oh?" I asked her.

"Er, nothing," she hastened to assure me. "Michael can I talk with you a moment?" The two went off to talk, so we went back to our business, but they soon came back over to us.

"We have a bit of a situation here," Michael informed me. "How would you feel about a whole lot of people from Ukraine coming here in the next week or so? They would be jumping the line of course, but given their situation I feel bad leaving them in limbo to be chosen by lottery. If they can all come here together it might ease their passing. Keep families together and such."

"I don't really mind," I told him. "What's happened? Some kind of accident? Building collapse? Earthquake? Power plant meltdown? How many people are we talking about here? We can get everyone together and discuss it, maybe they can start at the next warehouse over," in the other direction as my stolen portal that is, "if there's going to be that many you're worried about it."

"There could be a few," he admitted. "Get everyone together and I can explain the situation."

"Sure. Awful forthcoming of you though, it must be big. Usually you don't want to tell us anything about what's going on down on Earth."

"You can't do anything about it, and you'll hear about it from them anyway, once they arrive," he told me.

We'll see about that.

So we got everyone together and Michael addressed them. "Everyone, it seems that Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine. There's been a lot of fighting there and the dead with enough points could come here directly. With your approval they won't have to go into stasis and can get here before those from Bad Place. Conditions there are slowly improving anyway and with almost a year of practice at magic and construction you should be able to build houses for them fairly quickly. Naturally, being from the modern world they know what machines are and can help. What do you say?"

"Go back," said one man. "Putin did what?"

"He's rolling tanks and troops into Ukraine," he explained. "Some who don't even know they are in Ukraine and have no wish to fight. But there you are. He's decided he's going to take the place by force. They are, to use a human phrase, shooting the place up, so the number of dead right now is only the beginning."

"Will it be World War Three?" he asked. "I mean they have nukes. Like everyone else, I guess."

"Indications are… cloudy," Janet reported. "Something is interfering with my statistical capability to predict the future. I can't tell you what the final result of this action will be. It's never happened before, if I had human emotions I would be… worried, right now."

A ripple went through the crowd.

"In any event, there's nothing you can do about it now," Michael told us. "You can only choose to accept these victims now, in a group as they come in, or later as part of the whole group currently in stasis."

"That is where you are wrong," I told him, stepping up beside him. "Everyone, listen to me. We have gone to Earth before, to retrieve the rogue celestials that went there to find people to torture. We could do so again. We could go down and stop this conflict before it resulted in a total war. We have the power, and we know the celestials will simply stand by and do nothing. But we aren't like them. We act. Accept these people or not, I'm fine either way, but before more are killed let's do something about it. Let's go down and show the world we exist, that the afterlife is real and killing people over land is pointless."

A cry went up from the crowd, it seemed they liked the idea. I saw smiles and raised fists, it seemed they were not against the idea of going down there and kicking Putin's-

"But- Hold on," shouted Michael. "There is no way in the Bad Place that Good Place is going to let you use the portal to Earth again. Especially not for something like this."

I laughed. "Oh Michael, did you think I was going to ask their permission? Don't let that worry you, we're not going to use theirs."

"No, impossible!" He staggered back a step as the crowd quieted again, waiting to see what he would do. "You didn't?"

"I did. The one The Bad Place used to go to Earth is under our control. Stefan?"

"It's true," he told us, working his way through the crowd. "We've been looking it over since we got it and the last time Good Place basically hobbled us using their portal. I must assume it works the same way. There's actually all sorts of options you can set when opening it. We didn't need to revert back to how we looked when we died, they set that as an option. And we can go there and appear as ghosts, or be completely unseen by them, or be 'solid' and untouchable by physical forces. There are a couple of sliders to control how physical we would be there. And there's plenty of magic on Earth too, Denice was just sealed like a celestial when she went there, and given that orb so she could do magic at all. Probably as a way of controlling her, because her magic is stronger than most. But we can turn that off too, so she could be at full strength. We could do it, go down there and save Ukraine."

"What about the language thing?" I asked.

"Yeah, setting. We can set it to basically 'program' us with any language, or give us the universal ability to speak and be understood by anyone. Like we currently enjoy. They really went out of their way to make sure we couldn't talk to anyone down there the first time."

"Of course we did," protested Michael. "To interfere in the living world? That's the most iron clad rule we have here."

"Maybe you can't," I told him. "But I fully intend to. Unless the being that made these so called rules wants to appear before me and give me some good reasons why, we're going. I'll give them, oh, to the count of ten. That should be enough for such a powerful and reasonable being, no? Here we go; One." I slowly counted to ten, and no one appeared there. "They haven't managed it, looks like they're okay with us going."

"Don't be ridiculous. You can't command the architect of the universe to just appear before you."

"I just did. Look, Michael, we can stand here and argue this all day but in the end, you yourself have pledged not to interfere with us, correct?"

"Correct," he said, looking like he was eating a lemon.

"So thank you for the information. Make whatever plans are needed to get the lost souls here as quickly as possible and get them up to speed. Meanwhile we're organizing a strike force to go to Earth and stop this senseless violence once and for all."This, and ultimately all other. "You can't interfere so please stay out of our way. Right!" I turned to the crowd. "I want three teams. One team of good magic users or physical attackers going to Earth. Go to my right if you want to be one that team. You don't have to be a fighter, but if you have good support magic to put on those that are fighting it would be helpful. One team is support and guarding the portal, only should need a few on that team. One team will welcome the new arrivals. They should go to my left. Be quick about it people, the longer we take the more people die on Earth."

The groups swiftly came together and I marched everyone down to the warehouse. Michael and Janet were just standing there, looking lost, but I had no time for them. "Are we going right away?" Ramesh asked on the way.

"By tomorrow at the latest, there's still a few things we need to do to prepare," I told him.

"Like what?"

"You'll see, let me think. We need to get this right..."

At the warehouse I called all the metal users forward first. "Right," I said to them. "Talk to me. This non-earthly metal we've got access to, can you make us some swords and shields with it?"

"Swords and shields would be fairly easy," Siew Yan answered. "But why?"

"We have to look the part," I explained. "And would taking it across the barrier turn it back into mundane metal, make it crumble, or what?"

"I think it would keep the properties it started with," Stefan decided. "But that's just speculation. The settings are for us, not for what we bring back and forth."

"Good enough for now. Metal users, get to work. I want plain but sharp swords and indestructible shields. We can make stuff like that, right? We have the metal?"

"We can make impossibly sharp swords," a man told me. "Controlling metal almost down to the molecular level with magic will do that. And we can make all of it out of that 'vibranium' stuff, swords or shield should be unbreakable and perhaps even have other properties."

"Good. I want big ones, small ones, medium sized. The guards on the gate should have really big ones. Don't need to be fancy, but if you can make them fancy without any time lost, do it."

"You got it." Fire and metal users started moving off in that direction.

"Those that can work with cloth, make us some angelic looking robes. White, obviously. Water users, we're going to change everyone that's going. We're all going to have big, white, wings. Support people, anyone not comfortable with fighting, you're coming through the portal to guard it and give us all the support magic you can manage. Make us stronger, faster, whatever you've got. We are going to blaze across any battlefield and tear the oncoming army apart. That should make them think twice about starting wars in the future." And by 'them' I mean the living.

"We're impersonating angels?" a man asked.

I snorted. "What exactly do you think we are now?" I asked him. "We aren't human. And celestials aren't the classic angel either, that's clearly a human invention."A wrong one, but there you are."One that is instantly recognizable though. With no 'real' angels to come later and ask what the heck we thought we were doing we might as well look the part. We need to get their attention, and in a big way. Using magic, slicing through tanks with our swords, everything to convince them we are from the afterlife. That fighting is pointless because you're going to have to face those you killed once again. Once they realize we can't be beaten they should turn tail and run back home, and we can announce how things really work and maybe put an end to 90% of the violence on Earth in one stroke." How did wars ever work back on Earth anyway? Every major religion has an afterlife, after all. Did soldiers just not think they would have to confront those they killed when they themselves died? Or did no one really believe in an afterlife after all, and everyone was just pretending they did?

"But we're killing," Siew Yan pointed out.

"No, we're not." I looked around. "I want that made clear before anyone steps through the portal. Smash up tanks, jeeps, even planes if you can. Tear guns out of hands, strip the soldiers naked, whatever it takes. But do not purposefully kill anyone. The same goes for us, you don't want to face the person you killed either, I would assume. Drive their armies back, yes. Head into Russia to have a few words with Putin, yes. But no killing. Got it?" We're still a part of the point system, I won't lose anyone to Bad Place because they murdered a bunch of people. We can do this without killing anybody, a solder with no gun is pointless on a battlefield. We can remove the threat they face and force them back to their home country.

I saw nods around the group.

"Good. Get to work."

And so they did. Those with the spells to control metal started working on our equipment, while I and others started working on the people. Everyone stripped down so their wings didn't destroy their clothes, and while we didn't make any major changes to how anyone looked I made sure everyone saw themselves as their best selves. A bit taller, a bit more muscular and fit, it went a long way towards selling the fact we were from the afterlife. Any features the person themselves decided on I left, figuring, why not? After all, why can't there be catgirl angels? Or bunny angels? Or unicorn angels? They don't know. It's better than wheels of fire or serpents with a zillion eyes as angels are described in the bible. Though Michael has always been cagey about his true form, and the forms of his fellow celestials. Could they have actually tried something like this in the past and it went badly? Is that why he was so against it? Why not just say that, in that case? But their mistake would then have been leaving, allowing people to then speculate and embellish the stories. We'll stick around to make sure everyone believes what we're saying.As we didn't actually weigh anything those with wings were flying around getting the hang of it, making me wonder why we hadn't thought of something like this before. We should have had wings all along, really. With some simple "toga" like garments made we were starting to look the part, and the metal magic users were having a blast going all out. They didn't just make us swords and shields, they made gauntlets, breastplates, headbands, helmets, shin guards, anything we wanted. Stefan reminded us it was all for looks, we would step through totally immune to physical forces on Earth but this was about shock and awe tactics so I approved anything that made us look more imposing. The metal was light enough, and we could be strong enough that huge swords and shields were no problem for us to handle so even the most skeptical of people would say "okay, no human could lift that and use it effectively so maybe they're telling the truth."

"Can I get a halberd instead of a sword and shield?" one person asked. "I think that would be easier to use than a sword with no training."

"Whatever you want," I told him.

"None of us have any training in a weapon!" protested another. "Being invulnerable is all well and good, but aren't we going to look like idiots waving swords around? I want to help but I don't see how I'll be able to!"

"You know magic, right?" Any spell could be useful down there after all.

"Sure."

"Then you'll be fine. I'm thinking of having a split line, front and back. Magic users in the back rank, physical attackers in the front. Everyone is to carry at least a sword at their hip so we make them believe we all could use a sword if we wanted to. If you are more comfortable in the back slinging spells, so be it. Your job is to protect the front rank and sew confusion in the battlefield as those with weapons in their hands won't be able to make the gestures and do magic. Sound reasonable?" And water users like myself can make even the most inept person look like an expert using that first spell I learned to enhance someone's knowledge of a subject.

"It does. Okay, make me a sword, a really big one! I bet we would stick it to my back with some of those really powerful magnets they have in the bin over there."

"Go nuts! But don't take too long to get ready."

It took several hours but we were finally outfitted enough to look like an angel squad ready for action. By that time new people had started arriving, rather confused by what was going on but greeted by the welcoming team. When they learned what we were about to do they gave us their full support, pleading with us to protect their homes and families that were left behind. I told them that was exactly what we had in mind and they could count on us. And I had to admit we looked pretty impressive. Our equipment, being brand new sparkled, and everyone stood tall and proud, wings folded behind them. I smiled as I looked them over and went to stand in front of them. I wouldn't want to see that force coming at me, if I was still human. Especially if I was a soldier and bullets were bouncing off the thing I was shooting at.

"I'll keep this simple, because we've not really done anything like this before," I told them. "The most important thing is to stay together. We'll form two lines once we're on Earth. Support people use whatever magic you can to help the front line. Attackers, chop up machines, guns, uniforms, but not people. Let them run, and believe me once they see our wings and bullets bouncing off us they will. We'll move as a group, I'm trusting anyone at either end of the line to watch our backs and make sure no one sneaks up on us. Otherwise, tear the battlefield up and drive Russia back to where they came from."

"Victory!" cried one man.

"Victory!" everyone shouted back.

"Let's go. I'll teleport as many as I can to the portal device and come get the rest."

"Wait, please," pleaded Michael. "Don't do this!" I saw him walking towards us, Janet beside him. "This is wrong."

"Shall I count to ten again?" I asked sweetly. "No. What's wrong is humans not knowing the truth. Squabbling over which lie they believe because of where they were born and all being equally wrong. Of attacking another country on the flimsiest of reasons and cutting short countless innocent lives. What's wrong is you having the power to stop it, of always having that power, and simply doing nothing. And for what? Following the 'rules' of some creator you've never seen? Who set up a points system that would eventually break down? Pathetic. How would human history have been different if you had come to us and told us the truth long, long ago? When the Mayans were doing human sacrifice you could have come and told them, hey, maybe don't do that? When Jews were persecuted how many lives could have been saved if you had said, actually, you're both wrong? Where would we be today? How much more advanced would we be, had we not been fighting each other all the time over which lie was the right one? Time and time again you had a chance to actually make it right on Earth. Time and time again you did not. We're not going to make that same mistake. Humans are going to know what they're getting into, what their actions are going to do to them, here in the afterlife. They are going to make fully informed decisions, maybe for the first time in our existence. I have nothing more to say to you on the subject, so I'll see you when I get back." I turned away from him.

"If you're going, at least let me come."

"What?" everyone said.