Three
“Is this necessary?” Lucca asked.
“Humor me.” The sorcerer flipped open to a spot about halfway through his strange tome. “You probably realize that this isn’t a book from our Eventuality, but one of the many others that time gave us.”
Eventualities, they were called, a name that Lucca had planted after she got tired of the old name that sounded as if it had been lifted from some pulp sci-fi codex. They were possibilities. Using a crystal to leap back and change something created a new Eventuality. There were an unfathomable number of them. In a world without crystals, the past caused the future, but with crystals, the future could also cause the past. Before the first leap and after the last one, it all collapsed down to one possibility—one Eventuality.
“One of them created a text that was very important to the people in it,” he continued. “This part is called…the Book of Job.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Well,” the sorcerer continued, flipping a few pages forward, “the story is about a man who suffers innocently. It takes place in a world ruled by a God who understands everything and everyone, and has all power. The man did nothing wrong, but God still allows him to be punished.”
“Sounds like some god.”
“All kinds of horrible things happen to the man, Job,” said the sorcerer, ignoring Lucca. “His property is attacked and destroyed, his children die, he catches the plague.”
He paused for a moment, looking mournful, then continued more quietly. “His friends tell him that he must have done something wrong to bring all this calamity upon himself. So Job does what anyone would do—he goes straight to the source and asks God, what gives?” the sorcerer finished with a smile.
“Does God answer him?”
“He does!” the sorcerer said, “well, sort of. He doesn’t tell Job why his suffering happened.”
Lucca tipped back on her chair impatiently. What was this fool trying to prove?
“And what does God say, then?”
The sorcerer began to read. “‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now your loins like a man, for I will demand of you, and you will answer me.
“‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Answer, if you have understanding. Who laid its measures, if you know? Who stretched the line upon it? On what does its foundation rest? Who laid its cornerstone, when the chorus of heaven sang together and all the stars shouted for joy?’”
The sorcerer paused, expecting a comment.
“That’s not an answer,” Lucca said dismissively. “It’s just an excuse to look past the problem. Sure, there’s some god out there who knows a lot more than you do, so just keep slaving away at your miserable life.”
The sorcerer did not reply, but read further. “‘Or who barred in Chaos with heavenly doors when it burst out from the womb—when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your surging waves be stopped?’”
“And this is God talking?”
The sorcerer nodded.
“And is there Chaos in that world, where this story was written?”
The sorcerer nodded again.
“Then what right has this so-called ‘God’ to say that? The world is still crumbling and people are still dying. He didn’t shut up Chaos and rock it to sleep like a baby, not if there’s still suffering on his watch. That’s just pathetic.”
The sorcerer’s enigmatic smile did not fade.
“It’s just nonsense,” Lucca pressed, “concocted by a miserable culture of primitive humans who couldn’t deal with the reality that people die and are forgotten.”
“You feel strongly about this,” the sorcerer observed. “I—look, just read this! ‘Where were you when I shut up Chaos?’ This is the just God’s answer to Job’s suffering?”
“It doesn’t seem very just,” the sorcerer mused. “There’s another detail I left out. Before all these catastrophes happened to Job, he was the best, most perfect, most innocent man that ever lived.”
“This is absurd,” Lucca scoffed.
The sorcerer once again responded by reading further. “‘Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place?’”
“No,” interrupted Lucca, “no one commands the morning. The Earth goes around the Sun, just as it always has.”
“Indeed,” the sorcerer agreed. “It’s almost as if whoever built our world…just left it there, and forgot about it.”
That smile. What are you trying to prove?
“‘Have you caused the dawn to know its place,’” he continued, “‘so that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it? It bends like clay under the seal, and at daybreak is dyed like a garment. Light is withheld from the wicked, and their uplifted arm is broken.’”
“The wicked?” Lucca said. “And didn’t you just say that Job was innocent and God let him come to ruin? This can’t be a god who punishes the wicked.”
“‘Have you entered into the springs of the sea?”
“Yes.”
“Walked in the recesses of the deep?’”
“Yes.”
“‘Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or…’”
The sorcerer trailed off.
“Keep going,” Lucca said.
“‘Have the gates of death been revealed to you?’” the sorcerer repeated.
“Yes. I’ve seen people die. I’ve seen nations die.”
“Gates have two sides,” the sorcerer said.
“Not death.”
“‘Have the gates of death been revealed to you?’” he repeated a third time, tenderly.