Albert watched Eleanor leave the apartment building and turn the corner out of his sight. This was the drag end of Simple City; no one lived here unless they could not afford to live somewhere else, and no one walked these streets alone unless they had no where to belong.
He had been on Earth for long enough now to see how greed and ambition carved the routes of evil in humanity, sculpting the best democracies that money could buy so the rich became the super-rich, and the poor paid dearly. Back home, everything was equal. He missed home.
Humanity troubled Albert, but not Mortimer, who read a newspaper in disgusted distraction in the passenger seat.
“I cannot believe these morons have not worked out what crop circles are yet.” He flicked in contempt to the next page. “And look at this! Another bloody UFO story! What do you think the next headline will be? Scientists find darkness to be absence of light, perhaps?”
“If you have nothing good to say Mortimer, try not to say anything.”
Mortimer creased down the paper in despair. “We are on a rock with a bunch of heavily armed and seriously under developed monkeys, who still get excited about flat screen technology! Do tell me when I should blow up the first balloon!” Mortimer heaved a deep sigh of frustration. “Why are we just sitting here waiting for something to happen?”
“Sooner or later something will happen.” Replied Albert with zero conviction.
“Sooner or later?” Mortimer mocked him in despair. “Back in the good old days we would have descended on mass with Chariots of Fire and trumpets calling out our charge! We’ve lost our touch.”
Albert sighed, tired of the same debate. “It is sad to see you, of all beings, lose your faith in the cause of humanity.”
“I have not lost my faith! It is impossible to lose your faith in something you never had faith in! Humans are nasty, counter-productive violence ridden SCUM. They even hate themselves, and who would blame them? They still use God as a justification to blow seven shades of crap out of each other. Pure evil.”
“We used God for the same reason, back in the good old days.”
Mortimer raged. “Oh no you don’t! There is not one similarity between our race and theirs! If it were not for us they would have no concept of right or wrong, they would have no concept of afterlife, they would have no idea about how good exists.”
“They would have found out sooner or later.”
“There you go again. I’ll give you a £1000 if you give me one example of something useful that this race of miscreants have ever added to the universal consciousness.”
Albert struggled for minutes to come up with no answer.
“I rest my case.” Said Mortimer smugly. “I can’t believe we came here to defend these ungrateful little bottom feeders from a fate worse than Hell! We should have let them rot!”
Albert did a rare thing, and lost his patience. “We came here to find the Prize, the war between demons and angels only began because of the Prize. We didn’t come here for them, we came here for us, and we stayed here because the Prize is still here. At least be honest if you are not going to demonstrate any other kind of virtue. Your theories on this species maybe sound, but they have been caught up in our crossfire for so long that I am not surprised they are all screwed up! She is different and not to be under estimated. It is foolish to judge a book by its cover.”
“If books weren’t meant to be judged by their covers, why would people give stories titles?”
“You forget she is not all human. She is half Church of Nine. Andrew McGrew was her father. It makes all the difference.”
Mortimer had a new spanner in his works to consider. “It makes no difference,” he said, needing to convince himself more than his partner. “She will need to use the clue sooner or later and she will open that envelope. And when that moment comes, I will take no prisoners. Once we have the Prize this world is going to be part of the Kingdom of Heaven once more, even if I have to kill every single human on this planet myself.”
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