“I’m bringing my friends over from England,” she said, mostly to herself. “Tadfield’s too small for them now.”

“Your apocalypse children?” 

“Them,”

“Right. Them.”

“And I’m gonna send them a literal owl’s letter.”

Clusters of people discussed machine learning with the fervent despair formerly associated with medieval theology, which smoothly merged in the rhythm of the niche ambient background music. The founder, meekly looking up, seemed to have just developed a new kind of lethal social anxiety.

“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “Agnes would’ve loved LessWrong.”

“For their fascination of doom prophecy and terrible social skills？”

“No, for the Newcomb’s problem. Or rather she invented it first and Newcomb just rediscovered the problem.”

There’s a rainbow of wristbands flickering with genuinely feigned laughter and waving of arms. Anathema’s and Newton’s are lavender with pale blue dots on it, which means “we are monogamous partners at least for now, thank you very much.”

“And this,” said Newton, gesturing around at the investors, the founders, the ocean, the half-built school prospectus (Cooler than Hogwarts!) open on Anathema’s laptop, “this is normal now, is it?”

Anathema contemplated for a while, chewing a slice of peach.

“No,” she said at last. “But normality’s always been oversold.” 

Their hands briefly touched, lavender over lavender.

Hell, 2023

It is said that every demon has one or two favorite sins. For Hastur it was wrath. For Beelzebub, gluttony and envy. Even Crowley the not-so-demonic demon had his pride.

Eric had found it easy to determine. They didn’t particularly covet food or other things or other’s things. 

They didn’t crave for promotion, being the “disposable demons” is just fine.

They weren’t easily irritated, though they had been constantly irritating their superiors by pointing out their obvious stupidity.

That’s not something to be proud of, Eric thought, it’s just their duty. 

There had to be some frank and responsible guys in this mess of toxic bureaucracy. And they were the most useful and diligent demons in hell, the opposite of sloth. Again, not something to be proud of.

The only sin left was lust, and Eric embraced it whole-heartedly despite being mostly autosexual. Back when he was an angel, Eric were expected to have a moral compass, but they just turned out to be selfish enough to fell from Heaven where sodomy was banned.

Five million instances of Eric made love to each other 24 / 7 while another one million read and wrote and filmed pornography. Every day their obscene fornication with a million blasphemous kinks beyond human comprehension had generated a constant stream of sin towards Hell’s metaphysical bottomless pit. 

So, it’s a certainty that an instance of Eric read Project Lawful, a rational fanfic of Pathfinder which happened to contain some erotica. And he empathized a lot with the female protagonist Carrisa Sevar who was initially loyal to a Hell, which was unfortunately still slightly more competent than their Hell. She’s really good at sex, also.

But wait a minute — did she actually decided to depose Asmodeus in order to fix her Hell?

Heaven, 2023

"You idiot… We could've been… us…"

It still hurt whenever Aziraphale looked at the globe in Heaven, knowing there’s a delicate little bookshop surrounded by fine restaurants serving scrumptious delicacies, untainted with boresome bureaucracy of biblical beings. 

Immaculate place, I dare say. Almost a sanctuary. A place where my heart belongs to. Wish I was there, not here, however…

However…

A hurt and stressed yet still functional Aziraphale cast a glance to the Book of Life. It’s still there, rested upon its pedestal, as from the Beginning. As till the End.

It was said by some angels that it does not merely contain the world — it is the world, in a different metaphysical substrate. Is that platonic? Or from newer theories proposed by mortals?

None of this would make sense to his Lord. She may smile at this, nonetheless. 

The pages shifted softly beneath invisible winds. Galaxies, nebulas, solar systems, planets, lands, cities, streets, buildings, people.

Somewhere within those innumerate complex layers of text and symbol and story there existed Soho, and within Soho there existed a little bookshop, and within the little bookshop there existed a chair Crowley used to occupy, being intolerably adorable when intoxicated by a little bottle of fine wine.