Chapter 11
In which high taxes threaten to make everyone bankrupt
AMBROSIA
So for those of you only reading this book here's how things went down in that other story about me. Until about nine or so years ago, I was living on the streets. After delving deep into my past, I had discovered that I was an incarnation of God. Like Jesus, only Jesus was the incarnation of the personal aspect of the Trinity while he lived on Earth, while I was the incarnation of the Father. As such, I effectively sent myself out on a mission to stop Belial and Estheriel. Because my life isn't screwed up enough without me subconsciously sending myself busywork, and being indirectly responsible for the creation and maintenance of the universe.
But for a long while, I didn't know this. I only knew that my birth mother gave me up for adoption because my "Father" (who was for the most part female like me, because she was me), was concerned that I was developing too many powers and would quickly become a Mary Sue. Nobody wants to be a Mary Sue.
My adopted family loved me, but they were insistent that I should conduct myself with dignity, and not show emotion. And so for quite awhile, the more emotional aspect of myself became forced aside. For the longest time, I thought that this was my evil self. As for me, certain circumstances forced me into poverty, and I wound up a beggar.
Then God called me on a quest to unlock the power of the Tao through a combination of tattoos and dance moves (so to speak, they were actually tai chi) in order to fight a demon named Belial, and gradually this "evil self" came out. I had to visit eight Oracles, each of which taught me a valuable lesson.
The first Oracle's lesson was written on a stone tablet, which read «Believe in yourself.» This power was a power over light, effectively making a tornado of radiance. The second Oracle was a live person, and he showed me a mirror to teach me a Taoist lesson about pacifism. This power reflected attacks against her. The third Oracle told me about deja vu and how it might be a sign that I'm not actually real. In retrospect, I think he might have been a huge troll, but I activated his powers when I believed in my own existence. He taught me how to affect time. After that, I went to the Isis Temple, where the Oracle of Death, Thanatos taught me about something called the Chain of Harm. The theory goes that when you hurt others, they tend to take it out on their inferiors and so on, until the overall effect was a lot of anger and hurt. After he made me fight him as well, I thought it was finally over, but then he threw me a curveball. He showed me my other self, and how much I had let my emotions ruin things around me. Unfortunately for him, this other self of mine was more interested in my love life than typical evil things like violence or murder, so his plan of turning me against myself didn't work. His power was over death, although it also had a second technique which drained energy rather than life. Then I met two Oracles in Hell and Heaven. The first taught me that there is no lesson, because we humans tend to defy rules and lessons, making things like reverse psychology effective. In fact, she could tell me not to do something, and I might learn to do that instead. From the demon Lilith, I learned powers of darkness, not evil but as a complement to light. The archangel Michael actually tried to get me to join his religion, but from him I learned (indirectly) that what one believes must be something that's part of the self. That belief is a subset of one's passion. Or something like that. His power involved a sense of determination, as it absorbed attacks and then transferred damage, as his was the power of Justice. Or Vengeance, I'm not really clear. The final Oracle was a real pain. The first meeting with him, he basically talked me out of my mission before telling me where I could find the first Oracle, after I finally regained a purpose. The second time, I had to explain to him how best to use my power. I eventually told him that if I tried to be healing everyone, I would probably exhaust myself, and if I tried to be a military figure, the potential for corruption was too great. This power was about humility and stuff. The power he showed me was to do with opening or closing my body, the power of boundaries. There was a ranged attack I could do with it too, but basically I was like a ghost or solid as a rock.
After that, I went up to a tall mountain to face myself in order to gain the ultimate power, the power of the Tao, the power of balance between my "good" side and my "evil" side. Actually, the final lesson was that this other side of me wasn't evil. Oh yes, we humans do have sins, and indeed make them worse by denial. But until I was able to love myself, I could not hope to love others.
You see, I met the child of the king of Phoenix, a boy named Nevras. He challenged me when I was being too into my own stuff, and he cheered me up when I got all emo. It was eventually through his help that I defeated Belial, discovered my divine nature, and went on to create a new version of the New Earth. You see, the world we lived in wasn't real, and so I had to fix that part. My first "child" was actually something called the Universe Egg, a cosmic keystone that allowed reality to be real. My second child, and my first as far as everyone else was involved, was a cute like purple-haired girl named Tamashii. Later, God sent me on another quest in order to fight Estheriel, an overzealous angel that thought free will was the mistake that caused Belial to rise to power. But let's not talk about how that came out. I don't want to think about that event...
But it was not only Nevras who helped me during these quests. In Shoten, I met the half-elf Aqorm (who later became a full-fledged elf through some elves performing a surgery on her) and the scholar Elias. In Aiken Monastery, I met a Druid named Zoe (well, her name was originally Anideshi, but that was a stupid name so I changed it). In all this time, I was also meeting the Oracles and unlocking my powers. There was a lot of hardship along the way, but I think I had some fun with Nevras and the others. I met Lilith the demon and Michael the archangel in Hell and Heaven, respectively. In New Earth, both of these places could be traveled to by boat or airship. It was a bit easier by dragon though, as the Island Closest to Hell was a jagged mass of mountains forming the edges of the island. I had never tried to climb this mountain range, and I probably am glad I didn't. The area surrounding Hell had a hot and miserable climate.
We also found some bonus party members. The evil wizard Yazim Jianne joined our party around the time that Belial betrayed him, and he's been with us every since. But there has always been the awkward feel of having a mad scientist sorcerer guy in our group. Yazim Jianne wasn't always like this, though. He used to have a wife named Sarai, but one of his experiments killed her. He worked for Belial to get her back. Well, sort of. He could have gone to a priest and had her resurrected, but he had some kind of hangup about pulling her soul from the Afterlife, and instead wanted to make a clone of her soul or something. And then there was Selqui, a more than slightly insane merfolk cultist in Atlantis who when we first met her, she was trying to summon an Elder Formless. Nobody can accuse us of having a group that is not multicultural, I suppose.
GOD
Beginning at the time of Noah with the first foray into genetic manipulation, and continuing with every experiment thereafter, whether scientific or magical, there was a growing sentiment among people that hybrids were not "right". Reigious teachings, whether written or oral, condemned this nearly universally. They called such things the Mark of the Beast, never realizing that this was the currency type for Hell until they replaced it with Lucre (they replaced it, because these barcodes had a tendency to create widespread amputations). More often though, these beings were regarded as spirits, or even demons. The Jews used the Shema Yisrael in order to do Exorcism. Each religion involved in this had their own sutra of Exorcism. The Hindus had their priestly caste study the Atharva Veda. The Buddhists recited verses from the Pali Canon, as well as the Metta Sutra, Dhajagga Sutra, Ratana Sutra, and especially the Āṭānāṭiya Sutra. There's also the Kuji-In, and we mustn't forget that the Inuit and other small tribes had medicine people and shamans. Catholic priests did a lot of "The power of Christ compels you" stuff. But all of this ignores some simple problems.
First, demons were not what most religions thought, they were indeed a corruption of angels, but if I intended to get rid of them all, I could have just said the word. They were part of an ecosystem, in the same way as predators in a forest hunt deer. What I didn't want was for demons to take over, but the random demon was not an unforgivable thing. The only exorcisms Jesus did were attached to people. He did not go to the Pool of Siloam and perform Exorcism so that it would no longer stir up, nor did he go to pagan shrines that had magic or local spirits and get rid of them.
The second problem with this, was that these hybrids weren't actually demons. Yes, I know that catgirls seem like they will take your soul, but the truth is they are just women with some cat genes. They haven't made a contract with Satan, they haven't pledged an oath. In many cases, they made a choice based on fear, and now have their genetic information changed. Most of these people were dying of the diseases of genetic engineering, and the religious people that were supposed to show them mercy were instead persecuting them. Did all religious people condemn them? I never said that. But we'll get to that later.
Lastly, any contract with a demon or even Satan himself? I had to verify it, in the same way a legal team verified the contracts of their subordinates. These contracts had to be legal, they needed all the proper escape clauses, and even if someone gave up their soul, there was usually a method that could be used to get it back. This is because all of the demons of Hell, while they were following their own agenda, ultimately served under me. Hell is not divided against itself, neither is my Kingdom divided, rather both served the ultimate good. The demons believed that without suffering there could be no such thing as good. They had a point. How can you know someone is beautiful for instance if everyone looked beautiful? Everyone would be ordinary. You need not only extremes in beauty but also ugliness, or people don't value beauty. And since I created all the universe, I also brought them into being. Most demons worked on one of three projects: doing evil, tempting humans, or accusing humans. Human beings like to accuse demons of the first two, while ignoring the third. Probably because humans don't like to be accused. So you see, this idea this idea that genetically altered beings were somehow agents of evil was totally wrong, because even actual "evil beings" were my creation, and I wanted them to be loved. But the prevailing suspicion was that the reason I brought the flood was that human beings were meant to stay undefiled, and this was a way in which human beings would be permanently separated from me (I brought the flood because such beings had become the majority, not because I hated them inherently). Some of them even wrote fiction about some time when I would punish any people who were genetically different by throwing them into a lake of fire. But as I told Paul when he wrote Romans, "Nothing can separate us from the love of God." Not that you humans haven't tried!
So yes, an awful lot of catgirls got punished or molested. As for other species of hybrids, some disguised themselves or learned to hide in forests, mountains, or underwater. Others took power. The lizard people in particular became involved in power over humans, first as leaders in Mayan and Inca sacrificial rites, as well as cults of Molech and Baal. They liked the taste of roast human, and so they were found of heading sacrificial cults. Later on, having lost control of the religious groups, they tried to take over government and campaign to ban religions while setting up their own religion as though it were science or common sense or something. They also found they liked to rule governments, and set up a number of secret societies to do just that. Whenever you see high taxes, especially income tax or property tax, this is the lizard people is trying to make you homeless, poor, and eventually to get you to either work to death or starve to death, so they can cook you and eat you. This is what really happens during cremation. The lizard people also run cremation centers, and cook bodies to medium rare and eat them. They later give ashes (from wood) in a small urn and expect you to believe it's a body. Anyway, these hybrids weren't inherently evil, though some definitely could be. I wanted to have a plan for these two, but instead this hybrid program was the plan of evil people. Genetic manipulation tended to make people sick.
