Barakiel

The job sucked. No lie.
The cheap computer monitor never worked right, but he looked at it anyway since the dirty beige cubicle walls were even worse -- especially since they made him take down the Sigil poster, last year. (It apparently upset one of the ladies with the beehive hair who worked in HR.)
The phone rang all day, every day, and delivered straight to his ear whining complaints in all sorts of accents. Why is the shipment late? (Because the company guarantees overnight delivery, but only pays for 2nd Day....) Why didn't we get all the parts we ordered (Because the company never keeps a full inventory on hand, since it costs too much....) Why did the drawbar for this lathe start to neck after only 1000 hours? (Because Bobby Dahl, the owner, is cheap and would never pay for quality anything....)
But, hey, it's a job and the pay is above average for someone who can lie to customers as well as he does, and that's important since the unemployment rate for high school grads is more than double that for college grads.
(He'd tried college. Sat on his butt every Friday and Saturday night for two semesters, reading about a bunch of irrelevant crap that wouldn't make him rich, so he could attend a droning lecture about more irrelevant crap from a professor who thought tenure was the best goal in life. No thanks.)
Kimmie swung by, on her way out, and poked her head over his cubicle to say, "Hi, Jimmy!" Best part of the job, really, and one of the two things (the paycheck was the other) that kept him coming in to this pest-hole. Pretty ginger with slightly crooked teeth, who kept dating one loser salesman after another. He'd treat her better, if only she could see that.
Time to go home, finally. The swing shift paid a differential (the paycheck...) which meant he actually saw a few stars, sometimes, between all the drab concrete industrial buildings in the business park, as he shuffled over to his old black Charger. It still looked okay, but the engine was slowly falling apart, and he hated wasting the hundred-dollar bills needed to glue it back together.
He hadn't bothered to look at the stars, much, in the four years since he'd bailed on college and found this job. That changed, a couple months ago, when the four other Earths popped up, out of nowhere, and wasn't that a kick in the head? He got home and switched on the TV, and watched the same college professor talking-heads yap their mouths on the cable news channels. Apparently, there still weren't any of them who had any idea how it happened. Useless morons.
But some of the other news? Now, that was interesting. That had potential.
He dropped his tv dinner tray on top of the pile of garbage (need to take that out, tomorrow...), dumped his fork in the sink with all the others, and made his way down to the basement of this crappy rental house.
No apartment for him. He needed the basement. The black walls ate the light reflected by the chalice and the athame on the altar. The light came from the LED overheads, above the six gleaming, polished monitors (no flickering crap, here -- the eyefinity monitors attached to a hand-built, water-cooled, overclocked i7-3960x driving a Linux box with the latest Tor and its own T-1). The ebony walls created a stark contrast with the shimmering silver Sigil of Baphomet on the wall. The symbols of his desire lay in their proper places, undisturbed.
Nobody ever came down here. His parents wondered why he never invited them over. They'd freak out, and call Reverend Dougie (idiot...) and tell him their son worshipped Satan.
What crap. There is no "Satan." There is no God. Everyone is the god in their own lives, and this is his place to be that god. Here, in this pure. clean space, he was able to set aside "James David Grossman," and become his true self.
Barakiel, the Angel of Lightning. The Name he gave to his Carnal Self.
Barakiel had long since cracked the passwords on the company computers, and used the data there to hack the systems of the customers. The customer systems, in turn, had led to some pretty interesting places. Barakiel knew a lot of things about a lot of people, some if it not so nice. Some of it... lucrative.
It was amazing how Bobby Dahl spent some of the money he didn't put back in the company.
Jimmy Grossman had no idea how to use information like that. Barakiel did, though.
Barakiel moved into the black grotto, focused his will, and the computer fans whined as it powered up. Barakiel focused his will, and the LEDs on the alter flicked to life.
Barakiel moved to the altar, and gazed at the benjamin, and the printed specs of the Alfa 4C, and the grainy photo of the ginger girl with slightly crooked teeth.
Barakiel focused his will.
Category:Five Earths - Vignettes