Chapter 32 - Conquering Gods

"Slugs! He created slugs. They can't hear! They can't speak! They can't operate machinery! I mean, are we not in the hands of a lunatic?... If I were creating a world, I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, day one! - Evil Genius - Time Bandits

Daniel's mind was reeling from the paradigm shift and could think of nothing further along this line of thought, at least not for now. He decided a new tack. "Why is it that you guys are called fallen angels or is that just propaganda from the opposition?"

Imogen smiled "Yes, we are called the fallen ones. However the propaganda lies in the reason for the naming. You are taught because we were cast down from heaven. While the Earth has and continues to be seeded from space the density of microbes are far too low for any emergent consciousness to arise. That only happened after life got going on Earth with large enough patches of high density life. Fallen like most words are relative in their description. When something is walking or flying around and it dies it drops to the ground and you call that fallen because that's about as low as its physical body can get. However the mind can survive death and can be hosted by the very bacteria that eat away at the brain and if the body has dropped in a good place, like a forest with deep leaf litter then the mind can live within that layer of bacteria and then move into the ground and be hosted by the litho-bacteria. This, of course, involves a huge slow down of thought process. So we are called fallen not because we have fallen on to the ground but because we have fallen into the ground. We have fallen further."

"And how can you prove to me that you are the good guys and that the god of Abraham is the enemy, or are some things a matter of faith?"

"If I were truly evil I would answer your question with all the arguments for and against raised by the clerics and their detractors throughout the ages and occupy your lifespan with mundane debate. At the end of your life I could say to Jesus: here is someone who spent their whole life thinking about you. Such a waste. But instead I'll take just a few minutes of your time. Consider that eventually the sun is going to expand and humanity will die if it doesn't colonise other planets. In order to travel to the stars to escape this fate you not only have to leave the Garden of Eden, but you have to leave it through the Tree of Knowledge. This gift was brought to you by Lucifer who describes himself as the Morning Star. Not the Morning Sun, but the Morning Star. We are not meant to huddle our fragile bodies around one flickering star for warmth like so many stone age teletubbies but to look up to the diamond studded night sky, declare it to be of our domain and embrace the universe as conquering gods."

"So where do I fit in? How do I know when I'm dealing with a human or a demon? It's all a bit overwhelming.", said Daniel self consciously.