Let me introduce myself, for the second time. I haven't been exactly truthful with you—with any of you. You'll see why.
My name is Simone, and I am a recording angel, and you are?
I'm kidding, I know all your names. I know your nicknames, I know the names your parents almost called you, I know the names you'd personally rather have… I record things. That's my nature. And when I say I'm an angel, I'm not puffing myself up. I literally have a self that exists outside of time, that is hard-wired for nothing but goodness and cosmic understanding, and I understand what Jeremy Bearimy is.
Now I know what you're going to say. Simone, that's nonsense! You have a life in Sydney. You have a PhD in neurology and tenure at a respectable university, and even an angel couldn't possibly fake that. I've met your parents! I've seen pictures of you from when you were little! You're human!
I'm not saying that's fake, but it is all rather arranged.
Angels can live on Earth, and we're marvelous at disguises. There's always strangers coming into town, or that queer man whose bookshop has always been there, but no one can exactly say how long. The Internet has made pasts a little harder to fabricate, but nothing impossible.
Alright. Stop goggling. I'll lay out the basics. Angels can make ourselves invisible, we can make ourselves look human. We are, by human standards, immortal. If I wanted, I could sprout the wings and the halos and the extra eyes floating all around, but you've got enough to process here.
If I may do a little bragging, we recording angels are among the most responsible of angel-kind. Take cherubim, for example. Their capacity for love and joy literally knows no bounds. That means, they never get bored. Ever. There's one cherub that's just been watching one waterfall in Japan for the past seven hundred years. And he's the odd duck, sticking around on Earth. There's about a hundred million cherubim just watching a nebulae in the Sagittarius cluster. They've got the angelic equivalent of a tailgating party, with hot dogs, nachos, mediocre beer—they're settled in for millennia.
And most angels, they don't really like Earth. Earth is messy. I knew a seraph, one day had to choose between two olive trees in an orchard. Just pick one to keep and one to destroy—long story. Anyway, this seraph, he couldn't. The olive tree on the left was so young, with hopes and dreams and it hadn't even seen out a proper decade yet—and the tree on the right, an older tree that had so much to live for, it had all its little seedlings to watch, and the seraph went nearly mad until a nephil just stepped in and blasted them both. Nephilim are not known for their patience, word to the wise.
So that's a seraph, and they're not even loving like cherubim, and they couldn't pick between two trees. Now imagine how they feel about human beings.
Nah, better to skate off when you can. How many times have I heard, oh, got a really important job over here in the next solar system, do you know someone needs to count all the asteroids around Betelgeuse, oh yes, real rush job. Even the angels who stuck around and tried their best—well, I'm sure you know, you try to help a person out, give them a good miracle to inspire them, and somehow it all gets snarled up. Whatever was most human about them, the very trait you'd hoped would save them, suddenly it's out of control or totally lost and their moral existence is royally screwed up and you've only got yourself to blame. That tailgate party in the Sagittarius cluster starts to look really attractive.
Recording angels are a bit of an exception—take me, for example. I really enjoy capturing all the nuance, the details, the context. My reports back to Headquarters are, if I may say so, rather delightful. You would probably find them a bit dry, though. I have to include the dancing of atoms on the heads of pins, the fall of every sparrow—yeah, not what you'd call 'human interest.'
But I did take an interest in you. There's a reason that I'm here, in Sydney, in the late twenty-tens, and it's not the lure of the Vegemite. (Although admittedly the fact that Australia has outlawed guns? That's very attractive to me, immortal or not.)
You four popped up on our radar. There was a timeline reset, and it had to do with you—it had everything to do with you. I wasn't sure where to focus, with the lot of you scattered on three continents—but then Eleanor flew out to meet with Chidi, which I was not expecting. But it was a place to focus. I could fit into a slot at St. John's University. As soon as I walked in the door the first time, I had tenure and history and I'd been here for years, and my colleagues knew all my jokes and how I take my coffee. And neurology? That was a pure indulgence for me—I just find the workings of the brain fascinating.
So I built a life in Sydney, and I made myself comfortable while Tahani and Jason made their ways here. And I started watching you.
But you know how they say, on the level of quantum physics, when you start observing a thing, the very observation itself changes the thing? That's true of the observer, too. I decided I was going to really live as a human, and I… I don't regret it. A trio of girlfriends in the Biology department sort of adopted me as a friend. I joined trivia night at a bar, and lost every time. Wonderful! And Eleanor, Tahani, Jason, you became my friends. And Chidi… Chidi?
I know this is hard for you, but listen. If you've had time to wonder if our relationship was real… it was. Angels and humans have been making merry together for many years, though it's usually the Nephilim who are really susceptible to humans—give 'em a pair of lovely eyes and a firmly rooted place on the time-space continuum, and they fall hard.
You, Chidi, you sell yourself short all of the time—you think sort of like an angel, like a recording angel, you see all the angles and all the aspects, the rules and the complicating factors. But you feel like a human, as you rightly should. I'm so grateful for what we had together. You've got a wonderful smile, you know that?
Oh, no, now I'm really tearing up. Give me a minute… this is why angels stopped really cavorting with humans. The mortality rate, it gets to you after a while. And locking yourself in one place in time, it just does a number on you. And I love each of you—each in a different way, because each of you has taught me something new about being human.
But I kept observing. I knew something was up, and I tried to keep at a bit of a distance so that I could better figure it out. I wasn't the only one watching you.
Okay, there's no point in being portentous, you guys already know most everything and your supernatural companions are standing right there. Michael—hello—and Janet, you must be the most advanced and complex Janet I've ever seen. I want to hear everything about how you got here, what happened in the other part of Jeremy Bearimy, why was the timeline reset? Don't skimp on the details—as a recording angel that's where I live. The littlest detail may make all the difference.
Not to be too blunt, but you guys are in a hell of a pickle. Things are looking bad, and I want to help you out, but you have to trust me, not just with your souls but with what you know. I know I lied to you and hid everything about myself, but honestly, I'm a little proud of myself, that's a very human thing to do. To only reveal bits of yourself at a time, even while you change every day.
Please don't give me that look. I may be able to help you. I know a guy.
What do you say?