Duties Not As Advertised

The tired man slumped into his chair, pressing the cold can of soda to his temple. “Mister President,” the general standing on the other side of the desk said. “Please, we need your decision.”

It had been Lance’s dream ever since he was little. “One day, I’m going to be the president!” he’d told his parents when he was five. How naïve he’d been back then, spending his days imagining just how he’d change the world.

And that wide-eyed idealism had been with him in college, as he’d worked stocking the shelves of a grocery store to pay his tuition. He’d often daydream while working, though he was of course a little less callow than he’d been as a small child. Still, he just knew he could make a difference.

He’d been thinking about that on the day he accidentally bumped into one of the store’s customers, a dashing young rogue of an anthropology student who had been walking over to ask him about the sale on chickpeas they were having.

On the day of his wedding, his head was swimming with visions of him and Blake standing in front of the White House on his inauguration day. The two had joined the Log Cabin Republicans the day after returning from their honeymoon, immediately beginning Lance’s political career.

He’d become a state rep first, then moved to the halls of Congress. Then he’d been the state’s governor. Then he’d run for Senate, losing the first time but winning the second. He’d stayed there for a couple terms, earning recognition on the national stage for his work.

And then the time came. He ran for President when he was in his early fifties. He dominated the debate stage, handily winning his party’s nomination. Then the main race was upon them. His opponent was tenacious, but in the end, he was even more so.

“God Bless America!” had been the last line of his victory speech. The irony of that wasn’t lost on the President as he sat there, regarding his top generals.

How had it all happened? Well, it had been decades, or maybe centuries was the right word, in the making. If he’d known about it before running for office, he wouldn’t have. But here he was.

On the day he was sworn in, he entered the Oval Office, and his national security team came in for a final briefing, alongside his predecessor’s team. They looked pretty serious. “Come on, folks. What’s with all the somber looks? What’s next, time to reveal the aliens or something?”

“The aliens come next, my boy,” a voice had said. 

It was a voice he hadn’t heard in years, but he recognized it immediately. “Jerry?” he’d asked. What on Earth was his department manager from the grocery store doing here, in a top secret briefing?

“The one and only, more or less,” Jerry had answered.

What followed had been the biggest mind screw of his life. God was real, as were most of the gods who’d preceded him. They’d all been created by what Jerry called the Divine Spark, a trait that existed in humans that allowed their beliefs to shape the world. A trait that had grown increasingly weak, due to the way the angels had been devouring human souls.

Jerry – not just a department manager, but apparently the very first god to ever exist – had been secretly siphoning off the power of Heaven itself and returning it to humans. And sometime between the start of Lance’s campaign and its victorious conclusion, the angels had discovered his plot.

The clock was ticking. Jerry and the parts of the government working with him had realized that it was only a matter of time before the powers in Heaven would launch an attack on Earth. Jerry guessed it would be sooner, rather than later, as they would want to destroy their creators before the humans gained enough strength to stand against them.

And where was God in all of this? Jerry wasn’t sure. He’d been silent for well over a millennia. Asleep, bound, indifferent? Any or all of the above. Not even his spies could get close enough to find out.

So, instead of his dreams of enacting wonderful changes to improve the lives and secure the liberties of the American people as the first openly gay President, Lance’s job turned out to be putting on a brave face and doing what he could to prevent the people of the United States from realizing just how close to the end of days they were, all while the shadowy, hidden part of the government prepared for the inevitable.

And inevitable it was. The angels had appeared over a number of cities throughout the world. Jerusalem had been the first, but almost immediately after, the massive angel had appeared standing over Los Angeles – the city of angels. And it had been there that the swarm of lesser angels had begun their attack.

It was hideous and terrifying. He could still remember the sight of that reporter getting torn to shreds and devoured on camera by a trio of eyeball-covered cherubim while the whole world watched.

Soldiers had been deployed, and, thanks to the American belief in the power of the gun apparently, they’d been moderately successful against the lesser angels. But even the most powerful conventional weapons had been useless against the higher tier angels. And that was before the ivory-masked archangel was considered.

That thing had withstood a barrage of missiles from stealth fighters without a scratch. Even the purpose built Anti-Angel weapons had been unable to harm it, though they’d at least done well enough against the seraphim.

The massive being had spoken a few words in an ancient language, and a hundred soldiers turned into pillars of salt. So that’s why Lance found himself here, in a bunker, having to make this terrible decision.

“Jerry, will this work?” he asked.

The ancient being in the beige sweater vest shrugged. “I wish I could tell you, my boy. Had you asked me this a thousand years ago? I would have said yes. But there’s no real way to gauge quite how much power Gabriel has absorbed personally. It’s not impossible. If enough people believe it’ll work, then it might just. But just like how bullets aren’t working in most of the rest of the world, it’s all a matter of the strength of your belief.”

Lance Rupert Baldwin, quite possibly the last President of the United States of America, took a deep breath and looked at his generals. “Do it. May our children forgive us.”

He watched intently over the next twenty minutes as the stealth bomber deployed and made its way to Los Angeles. There was a roiling pain in the pit of his stomach as it deployed the nuclear bomb. And he could barely breathe as he waited for visual confirmation from spotters a few miles away.

“The target remains,” came the desperate voice at the other end of the line.

“So that’s it. We’re done. Humanity has no hope against those things.”

Jerry chuckled. “My boy, when did I ever give you that impression? There’s always hope. I made sure of that, best as I could.”

“How? How can we possibly win against something that can tank a hit from a nuclear missile without a scratch?”

“Oh, that? It’s pretty simple. We invade Heaven, find their master. Free or kill Him, depending on what’s going on. Then we probably need to destroy Heaven. All while fighting a war against those who have sided with the angels. And, if we’re lucky, we’ll have found the final warrior I empowered for this very conflict by then. The strongest of them all, The Black Knight.”

“You think that’s simple?”

“Compared to what I’ve had to do so far? Yes, simpler by degrees, my boy.” Jerry laughed bitterly. “Of course, just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean it’s gonna be easy.”

Lance sighed, then drank down the remains of his now warm cola. “Why didn’t you stop me, all those years ago, when I told you I was going to become President?”

Jerry shrugged. “Honestly? Back then, I never thought you could win.”