Heavenly Joint

“Come on Lucifer, your falling behind. We have to finish creating these souls. It’s almost time for them to be born.”

“I’m hurrying as fast as I can Mike. The soul O’matic is just not as fast as it used to be. It’s been acting up lately so I put in a call to Heavenly Maintenance.”

“Give me a break, Lucifer. You’d get more work done if you didn't take a break every 5 minutes.”

“What happened to you Mikey? You used to be really cool. Ever since you got promoted you are way too serious. It’s gotten just way too hard to work around here with you on my back all the time.”

“Knock it off Lucifer. With you it’s always one excuse after another. I remember when you lost the keys to Earth. No angels could get to earth for centuries. God is still upset with you for that.” Micheal just rolled his eyes in disgust. “For pities sake you caused the dark ages. When you got found out, instead of confessing and asking for forgiveness you try to blame it on a soul that had just arrived. That poor guy spent 3 days in hell before we found out the truth.”

“Come on Mike.”

“Forget it Lucifer. God told you that this was your very last chance to change your ways. Everyone is sick of your bull, and God is sick of you talking about him behind his back. Now, you’ve got an evaluation coming up in a few days. Get back to work and if you meet your quota for the rest of the week, I’ll overlook the fact that you’ve been getting high in the Sistine chapel.”

“Okay, Okay. Geeze. Excuse me for having a little fun.”

Lucifer heads back to the shop floor and turns the soul O'matic back on. The machine is very simple in design. It starts out with some Life energy entering through a small pipe. It is then mixed with different ingredients that will form the consciousness and personality. After that it goes into a large box in the center of the machine. This is where the soul is assigned a gender. The machine has two levers, one for male and one for female. It is a really simple machine and pulling the levers for male and female is Lucifer’s one and only job. God figured that even he couldn't screw this up.

Lucifer looked at today’s master list and saw that he had to finish creating more than 200 souls today.

“Aw man. I thought I was farther along than that. Geeze. I’m never going to get done. I’m going to miss the party down in purgatory tonight.” Lucifer just stared at the floor feeling sorry for himself. “I’ll just smoke one more joint. Michael will never know. Just one more to get me through the rest of the shift. “

He moved his chair back against the machine and tilted the seat back as far as it would go. He rested his head up against the machine and lit up his joint. He closed his eyes as he felt the buzz starting. He kept puffing away on his joint until he was so high that he could not stop his chair from flipping over. He banged his head on the controls of the machine as he fell. Don’t worry. He was already asleep and did not feel a thing.

A little while later

”Wake up Lucifer.”

“I said, Wake up Lucifer”

Lucifer finally started to wake up. He was struggling to shrug off the last of his buzz and open his eyes. When he finally woke up enough he opened his eyes and took a look around. He was surrounded by Archangels.

“Aw shit. I’m in trouble.” Lucifer started to panic. He saw that the remains of the joint and his lighter were placed on a small table next to the chair that he was sitting on. His heart was beating furiously as his mind raced to come up with a way out of this.

Michael stepped forward and said “Well Lucifer, what do you have to say for yourself?”

Lucifer looked distraught and he looked up at his onetime friend. “Come on Mike. It was just one joint.”

Michael looked down at the pitiful angel and said “I’m afraid that it’s gotten a lot worse than that Lucifer. A lot worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lucifer, when you fell over you hit your head on the soul O'matic’s controls. You hit both the male and female switches at the same time. They're both broken now and the machines still running. We can’t stop it. God’s waiting for the report from heavenly maintenance before he decides your punishment.”

A few minutes later an angel brought a message to Michael.

“Lucifer, you’ve really done it this time.”

“Why, Michael. What does it say?” Lucifer felt himself getting close to panicking.

“Maintenance has found that the machine is still creating both male and female souls. However, it is also creating souls that are a combination of both.”

Lucifer tried to make a joke “Well that’s not so bad. Should make things more interesting.”

Micheal starting to feel his blood boil. “I’m not finished Lucifer.”

“Sorry, Mike”

“Not only is this new kind of soul being created, but the machine’s damage has spread further on down the machine. As you know at the end of the machine the souls are shipped to Earth and placed in the expecting mothers. Well the machine is screwing up the orders. Souls are being born in the wrong bodies.”

“So what? Those souls will be fine. We can fix the machine and everything will be alright.”

“Shut up, Lucifer. Everything will not be alright. We can’t fix the machine.”

“Why not, Mike? It’s just a stupid machine.”

“It is not a stupid machine. This machine came into being when God created the universe. This machine is tied into the fabric of the universe itself. That’s where the machine gets the life energy to create souls. The machine can repair itself in some circumstances. When you broke the machine it tried to repair itself. It could not understand the errors that occurred when you the male and female switches at the same time. So it reset itself in order to fix the errors. However the errors did not clear up, and now the machine thinks that it’s working properly and it’s choosing and assigning genders at random. We can’t fix it, Lucifer.”

“This is a horrible tragedy, Lucifer. This will cause horrible conflicts for those poor souls. We can’t help them. They will have to face this pain on their own.”

Lucifer staood up and shouted “Give it a rest Michael. It won’t be that bad. They’ll be fine.”
,
“Dammit Lucifer. You could at least show a little remorse. If you had you might not be receiving such a harsh penalty.”

“What, What is it Mike?” Lucifer is now scared stiff.

“Lucifer, By God's decree you are here by condemned to hell for all eternity.”

“No Michael. Anything but that. I’ll do anything. Just don’t send me there.”

“Lucifer, God has shown some mercy. You will not be punished as the evil humans are punished in hell. You will be put to work. You will be assigned to the sales department. We want to make sure that evil souls are sent to hell and don’t get into heaven on some technicality. So you will spend part of your time on Earth, making contracts with these souls that guarantee they go to hell. There will be some ground rules. No deals with innocent souls. Also, no more drugs. If you even so much as light up once, you will spend a week receiving punishment with the humans.”

“Come on Mike. Cant you put in a good word for me?”

“Lucifer, I’ve been covering your ass since the dawn of time and I just can’t do it anymore. You’ve brought this on yourself. Your action will bring pain and suffering to those poor souls on earth. You don’t even feel ashamed about it.”

2 Large angels came into the room. Michael motioned to them. When they reached the group Michael said, “Gentlemen, this is Lucifer. Please escort him to hell and lock him in.”

“Don’t do this, Mike, please.”

“This is God's decision, Lucifer. It’s done.”

The two large angels grabbed Lucifer and all three disappeared in a bright flash of light.

Michael leaft the room and joined God out in heavens gardens.

“Is it done Michael?”

“Yes Lord, it is done.”

“Lord, can anything be done for those poor souls on Earth?”

“I could change them, Michael, but that would have profound and far reaching consequences. I have sworn to myself never to interfere on Earth on such a massive scale again. I’ve learned my lesson. However, in time human medicine will reach the point where it can help those people change their bodies so they it match their souls. We just have to be patient. Now when those souls return to us when their lives end we can offer them the option to return to earth in the proper gender and hopefully have a more happy and successful life. I’m afraid that it’s the best we can do, Michael. Lucifer really messed things up this time.”

“Well Lord, at least he’s hells problem now.”

“hmen to that”.

Well, This my first real attempt at fiction. I would really apprecaiate some feed back. I want to improve so please be honest. Gentle, really really gentle, but honest.

Thanks

Jessica Marie