Fragment

I walked into the bar looking to meet my contact. I sat down, ordered a drink and started a conversation with the bartender. He looked to be about fifty, grey haired and slightly humped back. After about twenty minutes my contact walked in and headed for a booth in the back. I was about to join him when the bartender said, "I'd leave him alone if I was were you."

"Really."

"Really."

"Thanks for the warning but I think that..."

"Yeah, I know. You're alChandler, mystical warrior across a thousand dimensions. Hero with a thousand fucking faces. You're brave, tormented and all that but you really want to leave the angel alone. Trust me on that."

"Uh, how do you know that I wanted to, that he was..."

"Because, every so often, one of you dimension hopping morons comes in here to roust the poor bastard. All he wants is to drink himself into oblivion but no, you guys show up and it's always the same spiel. I am on the quest of doom and only you can help me. He's never interested and it always goes badly."

I looked at the angel in the back. He was hitting the booze pretty hard and it didn't seem to be working for him. There was a look of infinite despair in his eyes.

"So buddy, what's his problem?"

"Certainty."

"Certainty?"

"Yeah. Look at it this way. That poor bastard knows how the universe works. He's looked into the face of fucking God. He know how creation is ordered, he know its beginning and its end. As long as he stayed in heaven things were cool. Endless contemplation of primal love and all that. But he didn't, he decided to view the creation. He came down and realized that a damn near infinite universe has no surprises. He can't unlearn what he knows and he can't die. He's trapped."

"Shit."

"Damn right shit. So if you really want to get the big guy's attention you'll drop whatever silly quest you want him to bankroll for you and give him what he wants."

"Death."

"Yep."

I thought about it for a bit. "So, how do you kill one of those things?" I said.

The bartender turned his back to me and went to another customer. "You ever find out, let me know," he said. As he walked away I realized he wasn't humped back at all.