Chapter 13: Tracking

RENA

All of which leads to the present. Well, sort of. While we knew it might be awhile before we found Alethea, the actual process of tracking her down was a daunting task. This is part of why we spent so much time developing humanity, we wanted to get aid to this task. The necklace that I gave Alethea before she left this world to be reborn had a unique signature. In addition to creating religions, I also developed spy networks all across the Earth. With the use of technology, I had the sensor from my necklace copied and mass produced as a rather innocuous charm, a crucifix. The charm would simply swing quickly like a pendulum if it found a child that met the description. And so, I staffed every hospital with at least one of my agents. Of course, there was always the option that the child could be born at home. So I helped make a law that all children needed birth certificates issued at hospitals.

I really did have spies enough to populate an entire town. But I wasn't part of the CIA or FBI or anything like that. Rather, it was a loosely governed private organization, where all members wore these cross necklaces in order to seek out my savior, the one who would free us from the evil of Belial. Using old power of the divine art and the latest technology, I knew it would only be a matter of time before I discovered the object of my search. But centuries had passed with no results. I wasn't told this would happen soon though, so I had no reason to expect an easy wait. In fact in the 3.3 million years of supposed human history, and the 300 million years of actual human history, 200 million of those I spent waiting after Pangaea broke up, and 250 million years ago was when the Great Dying was caused by demons (they killed nearly everything off, not just humans). While I could be killed, I had eternal life. And so I played a long game of helping human evolve after the demons killed off everything but the lowest life forms.

They weren't kidding in Daniel when they said that the kingdom of God could not be overthrown. Jesus established this kingdom, and even though he himself had died, even though all humans were killed off, even though most of the world was hit by the demonic equivalent of nuclear energy, humans were reborn on this Earth again and again, foiling all attempts to snuff them out. Neither could the Earth be totally destroyed. All they succeeding in doing was destroying history, but nothing was truly lost. The story of Noah was not about a flood, but the restoration of human life. The story of Babel was about humans under demonic rule, where everyone was forced to build monstrous towers. And yet, humans were restored, in much the same way as the valley of dry bones.

Long story short, it was a long wait even for humans to show up again, and then to be civilized enough that Alethea would be reborn. This gave ample time to come up with a system for tracking her. The world map blipped in a place called Sharon Court (Sharon Ct) in Richmond, Virginia. I had expected for Alethea to be born, but I guess I had misunderstood the spell. The child was found crying by the side of the road and taken to the nearest hospital. Our agent there was Sister Benedict.

BENEDICT

All was according to plan. Soon the child would be stabbed and with that, Belial promised me power beyond belief. I had collected the child from his parents (though they told me that they had found the child along the road and wanted to adopt), and was reaching for the scalpel...

RENA

I never trusted Sister Benedict. But I kept her in the agency precisely because she was driven and sure to find a child that fit the description. So when I saw the blip, I rushed over immediately with the fastest transport I could find, which in this case was a Gate. No sooner did she try to stab the child than I immolated her with Foxfire, and the scalpel clattered to the floor unused. This was my most powerful effect because it was one of the few that could burn away possessing demonic influence from a person's body or defeat demons themselves. In two thousand years since being powerless against demons, I had finally mastered it. It was very painful though, meaning that when the people who had left the baby walked in, they saw what appeared to be me burning a nurse alive. After telling them, "Wait, no, it's not what it looks like!" I proceeded to show them that Foxfire couldn't actually hurt humans unless they were under demonic influence. Not that they were any less freaked out by the fact that I could use magic.

And actually it's harder than it seems to actually become under demonic influence. We see all these films where demons possess someone forcibly or tempt them, or some other cliched and misunderstood aspect of demons. Well, I'm happy to tell you that it doesn't work this way. But unfortunately, the way it works means you can be tempted without ever coming into contact with a demon.

Allow me to explain. Contrary to stories that Satan goes around tempting people and then taking their souls, Satan is actually an accusing angel. But even if we are speaking of true demons like Belial, such a thing still doesn't play out that way. Our souls are given by God and cannot be taken (we can only be tricked into thinking our souls are gone and that we are condemned), nor can our bodies be taken without permission. Likewise, human evil exists on its own, with or without demonic possession. To become possessed requires either great willingness or great weakness. Willingness is easy to explain. You can be possessed by using a ouija board, or by trying to trade for political power or money, or by using certain branches of sorcery. As for weakness, a person got possessed if they were depressed, lonely, seeking vengeance, or obsessed.

In any case, she wasn't possessed anymore, and would soon be arrested for attempted murder of a child. But the parents were another story. They wanted me to leave, and the child himself was crying inconsolably. Poor thing. He was traumatized! "Hey, hey, take it easy! The nurse was trying to kill this child," I explained, "In fact, if you keep him, there's a risk that you might be killed."

The man seemed angry, "We have been trying since we were twenty. Ten years! And the adoption agency wouldn't agree to give us a child because I don't have a steady job." I had money from my work in spying, as did all the agents of mine. I made it by helping small corporations do investigations. And occasionally, I helped jealous husbands. Over the years, I had built up quite a tidy sum. It was time to use it. All of it. I had lost her before, and so I gave up everything I had to get her back. Well, him now. "No worries! This should cover you to adopt a baby." More than that, it was enough that they would not have to work again until retirement. I recommended that he put the money in the bank in small yearly increments or just keeping it in a safe or something. Since it was a gift, anything too visible would screw with their taxes.

The exchange was made. From there, I delivered him to my most trusted allies within the agency, both of which had knowledge of the divine art. Alexander was a talented priest, while Bianca was an agent who we used whenever someone saw a UFO or something. "Rewrite Memory!" she said to the couple, making them forget this whole event. As far as they knew, they had met at the hospital to check whether she was pregnant and had once again been disappointed. We removed the nurse's unconscious body from the area while they were blinking and Bianca was telling them recent events before pretending to be hospital administration. She recommended that next they go to the adoption clinic. They chose a teenage girl who looked like she hadn't been picked by anyone. That girl would later care for them in their old age.

While I wanted the child now called Emett to know about me eventually, right now was dangerous, so Bianca tried to erase his memory. Again and again she tried, but to no avail. The child, even at a young age, demonstrated that he could recopy complicated maps. A photographic memory. Moreover, when I tried to use magic to revise the timeline to test whether we could trick him with the Mandela Effect, it proved ineffective. As a simple test, I went back in time, and this time the merged copy of me didn't draw a map for him, but still told him to recopy the map. After a moment, he proved that his memory was effectively rippleproof. I tried this several other times over the years, as did Belial, but there was always the same result. Even though everyone else said he remembered wrong, he maintained what he remembered. I suspected it had something to do with the ritual and being reborn outside of time. But I wasn't sure.

What was somewhat effective were different types of therapy. We employed a therapist to spend years in hypnosis and conditioning until he instead remembered that the source of his tears were a maternal grandmother dying, not witnessing his own attempted murder and someone being zapped by magic. Autumntwig also cast a number of illusions on him to replace his real memories with false onces. I fear that I damaged his mind with this approach. Over the years, I noticed that his memories from the past life kept bleeding through, along with strange reactions to people based on his early childhood. We did manage to get him to focus on new memories but repeatedly showing him pictures and other props, which we coupled with powerful illusion. For the most part, he lost this perfect memory, which I felt was more a curse than a blessing to him anyway. But even with his mind screwed up by illusions any attempt to alter the timeline had no effect on him. Autumntwig and Arboria stayed with him, in order to watch after him. They posed as older brother and sister, even though Autumntwig was technically a girl. For most of his adult life, these "siblings" were under a powerful glamour, while the gnome was also feeding him illusions. Autumntwig was there to keep his memories normal, at least until he accepted these new memories, while Arboria had a different mission. This new Alethea needed a friend. Emett was so fragile after the even that unless he had some way of forming relationships, no amount of false images would be enough to prevent permanent damage. Gradually, this became the job of both girls. Rough and ready Autumntwig would teach him wrestling, and at one point, how supply and demand worked. To help him explain to himself why he felt like a girl, she would dress him in drag for a short play as a child. Arboria taught him Taoism, just as she taught a whole section of the world. In this case, she claimed that an ex-boyfriend left behind a copy of the Tao te Ching. For the most part, he grew up as a normal kid. I was a recurring friend of his, trying to keep him company and be a good companion, since I knew his life would be extremely rough until he was an adult. I appeared in several forms, but it became increasingly difficult as he got older. As a boy, he wasn't interested in me, as most males by this point were increasingly interested in sports and similar things. And as a girl, I wasn't much good to him either, on account that male hormones were finally making him attracted to women. This attraction was at odds with his former body, and would make him remember. We still needed time! I had given him Ritalin as a child, acting as a school medic, which had the effect of subduing him and getting him to focus on school rather than too much on other details (such as the oddity of his reality). During his early teens, we used low voltage electricity magic on him to get his body to shake , then diagnosed him as having seizures. This particular drug was needed to suppress some of his emotions. After four years, and a trip to South Africa, we declared him "symptom free" and allowed him to finally stop taking them. He was lonely and depressed, and it wasn't good for him to be alone, regardless of risk. And after an attempted ask for a date blew up in his face, he stopped taking the Ritalin too, recognizing that the drug seemed to make him nervous and awkward. Other than that, you know the rest. He first noticed me in college when he was off both medicines. He focused on me for quite awhile, trying to come to some sort of conclusion. For anyone else, it would be creepy, but for me, it was kind of flattering. That was the start of all of this, when I finally knew he noticed me out of all other people.

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