HANDJOB

Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Now the Serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the Woman, "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"

And the Woman said unto the Serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."

And the Serpent said unto the Woman, "Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

— Genesis 3:1-5

They are as gods, knowing good and evil. The nations united under the Woman's rule, hearts dark as night, helmets blue as day. The hidden rulers of the world. The keepers of peace. But they have not beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks; nation takes up sword against nation, and they do learn war.

The Garden is still the Serpent's place. The Woman was evicted from it long ago. She has tried often to return, and been rebuffed. The Serpent's Hands do not forgive her trespass; and if they cannot strike at her, they will strike at her subjects. She has sown the wind. It is time to reap the whirlwind.

Alison is the Serpent's little sister. Not by blood: his dad is the LORD thy God, and her dad is just a cog. But by choice. She and all her selves, the little sisters of the Library. She is more than this small world deserves, but her big brother's Hand asked for a favor. She owes them an infinity of those.

And so here she is, in an awful little city on an awful little earth where an awful little man has an awful little house. To be fair to the man, his house is pretty big, as houses go. Not as big as her big brother's house, but hardly anyone has a house that big.

The man is called Primus Illuminatus Seamus Siddhartha, and his house is called the Bavarian Illuminati Grand Lodge for North America and the Caribbean. The city is called Montreal, the Royal Mountain, though the little sister cannot smell any royalty here. (She learned that trick from the bees.) The house is hidden from mortal eyes in a fold of world between a hotel and a shopping mall. The little sister spots it easily. She is a natural finder.

There is a front door, but she doesn't use it. When the world is folded already, a further fold is child's play, and the world around the house is thoroughly frumpled. Clumsy. The little sister is going to have words with whoever did this.

She steps straight from the street into Seamus Siddhartha's sanctum sanctorum. He is meditating in the lotus position, contemplating a painted mandala. Its provenance is uncertain, and it was likely looted from a monastery during the Cultural Revolution. His devotion to Buddha is insincere. He will not achieve Nirvana in this lifetime.

"Hello! I'm Alison," the little sister says. "Have you ever heard of the mudfloods? It's a fun fact! The Tartarian Empire built a whole lot of very cool buildings and then the mud swept in and buried them all."

The awful little man does not introduce himself, nor does he appreciate her fun fact. That's probably fine. It isn't true in this history anyway. What's not fine is the Song Dynasty jade ruyi scepter that he viciously points in her direction while chanting the Mantra of the Light of Great Consecration.

"Oṃ Amogha Vairocana Mahāmudrā," he incants, "Maṇi-Padma Jvāla-Pravarttaya Hūṃ," and on the final syllable, a laser nearly cuts the little sister in twain. Or it would, if she wasn't already behind him.

"How many hearts do you have in your chest," she asks. "Probably like, one, right? Easy as mustard."

And she reaches forward and pulls and it is in her hand, still beating, pumping hot blood into cold air. And dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

The jianghu is in uproar. Sect Master Li of the Dragon Gate Sect has been defeated. His dantian has been shattered and his cultivation crippled by a demonic cultivator, an assassin of the Viper's Palm Cult. The demon has fled into the Wanderer's Library, where the Cult's allies shelter him. The Wudang Clan Alliance has lost their leader, their last Nascent Soul cultivator, their delegate to the United Nations Global Occult Coalition; the vultures will soon descend.

In Transylvania there is a mountain, a tall mountain, black with thick pine forest. Atop the mountain is a lake, and in the lake a dragon sleeps. When he wakes, the rain comes, and when he roars, it is a bolt of lightning, a peal of thunder. Below the dragon's lake is a cave, hollowed out by a work-crew of demons. They did this, it is said, at the command of Wise King Solomon; though others say it was Asmodeus, Prince of Hell, in disguise.

In the center of the cave is another lake, a black lake with blind white fish; and in the center of the lake is an island, a black island with dead white trees; and in the center of the island is the school of Solomon, the Scholomance. They say the Devil himself is the headmaster, and his assistant is Vlad Dracula, the Impaler, who sold his soul for neverending life. They say a lot of things; this one happens to be true.

These are enlightened, modern times. We live in a world that has no need for the Devil, and so he has retired, gone back to Hell where he belongs. The Principality of Wallachia is no more, the Kingdom of Romania has followed it, the Socialist Republic has followed that; and so Vlad the Impaler, Son of the Dragon, Voivode of Wallachia is now simply Professor Vlad Draculesti, and his school is the International Center for the Study of Unified Thaumatology, Transylvania Campus. Look how far we have fallen.

Professor Draculesti has office hours from 2:00 to 5:00 on Tuesday and Thursday, and from 11:00 to 3:00 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. His door is always open to a student in need, of course, though he prefers a little advance notice. The men in his office are not students, nor did they give him notice, though soon they will be in need (of a large blood transfusion, and perhaps a new organ or two).

"A nobleman, a doctor, and a cowboy," the Professor says. "How nostalgic. May I have your names, gentlemen? I would like to know what to write on your tombstones."

"No," says the cowboy, "I reckon we'll just kill you. The Serpent's Hand sends its regards."

The nobleman draws his kukri, the doctor his scalpel, the cowboy his Bowie knife; and then there is blood; and then there is silence; and then Vlad the Impaler, Son of the Dragon, calls for a janitor. His office needs to be mopped.

Eurtec burns. A car bomb in Dag-Hammarskjöld-Platz kills twelve and injures thirty. Simultaneous attacks on every Metro line: sarin on the A kills five, anthrax on the B kills eight, ebola on the Γ kills thirteen, and VX on the Δ kills twenty-one. Hundreds more are hospitalized. A sniper kills three in Neuneukölln. Thousands flee the city; the terrorists never target the exits. Otherwise, there is no pattern. The locations are random, the targets are random, the methods are random, determined by the bubbles in the foam on a dying god's lips. The All Seeing Eye predicts the attacks too late to prevent them. Three days of terror, and then silence.

Christ has come to the church.

Most churches would welcome Him. The returned Messiah, come to take His people to heaven. The United Church of Satan Scientist is not most churches. They do not worship gods; they kill them. And so when Christ comes to this church, to their mountain compound in the Pyrenees, He is met with curses and blasphemies and 6.66×51mm NATO Special.

The Nazarene once said, "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Yeshua Kalshnikov is not the Nazarene. He does not suffer abuse; He returns it. And so when the church rejects Christ, He returns fire, in God's own 7.62×39mm.

Yeshua Avtomatovich Kalashnikov. The magnum messiah. A virgin birth, His mother shot in the stomach and left to die. Raised by heretical Stalinist monks on the immortal dialectical science of Marxism-Leninism and the most sacred mysteries of the Orthodox faith. He's grown into a six-foot-nine giant, equal parts Rasputin and Rambo. The gilded cross on His chest bounces against bandoliers of bullets as He walks. He's torn off the sleeves of His cassock, revealing bulging biceps tattooed with holy icons: Christ Pantokrator on the right, Josef Stalin on the left.

Yeshua Kalashnikov does not know He is doing the Serpent's work; He does not particularly care. His foes are followers of Satan, and worse, of Ayn Rand. A blow struck against Capital is always a blow struck against the Devil. This is just more efficient. Every Satanist who dies here will no longer pollute men's minds with their sick philosophy. One life ended, a hundred lives saved.

The satanic bullets cannot harm Him; no weapon formed against Him shall prosper. His enemies fall before him, each bullet a benediction, each shot a prayer. He grins, and the light glints perfectly on a single false tooth — not gold, but cartridge brass. And then Yeshua Avtomatovich Kalashnikov, the Son of a Gun, puts His hands together and begins to pray; then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven.

There are no survivors.

On a small farm near the town of Bifröst, Iceland, Freya Grimsdottir is butted in the chest by a ram. She has a heart attack and dies in the back of her wife's Volvo on the way to the hospital. She was a professor of history and literature at the town's small university, and also the Hofgyðja of the Icelandic Fellowship of the Universalist Order of the Æsir. Her death cannot be traced directly to Serpent's Hand activity, but nothing is ever a coincidence.

In the Serpent's Nest, that hidden sanctum deep within the Library, the self-proclaimed leaders of the Hand celebrate a great victory. The Bookburners are the worst of their enemies, the dragon-slayers, the witch-hunters, the killers of all wonder. The Veil still holds, of course, but by their deeds it has once more been weakened, and soon it will fall.

And in their temples and lodges and compounds across the world, the members of the Global Occult Coalition lick their wounds and bury their dead. They have suffered worse than this, in ages past; the Hand is nothing compared to the Inquisition, the Okhrana, the Committee of Public Safety. Soon they will open their secret arsenals and forbidden tomes; soon they will have their revenge.

And in the black pyramid beneath the United Nations Headquarters, the Woman reads the litany of deaths. Seven Illuminati Primi across four continents, their hearts removed and placed in their own left hands. High-ranking members of the Universalist Order of the Æsir, the Gormogons, the Wudang Clan, the Knights Templar and the Auspicious Survivors. Archbishop Jezebel Cain of the Church of Satan Scientist, and with her the entire Black Priory. The Servants of the Silicon Nornir themselves are untouched, but hundreds of civilians in Eurtec are dead and the city is paralyzed in fear.

"Vengeance is mine," saith the Lady. She picks up a red Bakelite telephone, and dials a single zero. "I am calling an emergency session of the Council of 108. We will be voting on a single resolution: the invasion of the Wanderer's Library. There will be no discussion. There will be no abstention. Be ready within the hour."

The phone goes back on its hook, and the Woman smiles. She reaches for the only ornament on her simple wooden desk, a Newton's cradle, and sets it in motion.

"Da Capo Al Fine. From the beginning to the end," she says, to an audience of none. She looks up, through the pyramid, through the building above, straight down 42nd Street, to the Serpent's fortress, the New York Public Library. "Thou hast beguiled me, and I did eat. Now thou hast bruised my heel; and soon I shall bruise thy head."

And the Undersecretary General of the Global Occult Coalition girds her loins for war.

And the LORD God said unto the woman, "What is this that thou hast done?"

And the woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."

And the Lord God said unto the serpent, "Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."

— Genesis 3:13-15