chapter 11
Uri sat in his sparse apartment surrounded by the items that he’d collected through the millennia. He thought back to his various assignments. He remembered each one, since Eden. Once he and his brothers realized that times were changing, they needed to change along with them to fit in, so they each got some sort of storage system.
For Uri, it was a box car. He kept it loaded with clothing, books, and mementoes of certain assignments. He kept the items until they were hopelessly out of date, no longer of use, or rotten. It was a weakness he indulged in.
When he began a new assignment, the box car was shipped to him, and he unloaded it into new lodgings. It usually worked out well for him and kept him from having to start over from scratch each assignment.
This assignment was still a puzzle, though. He could not figure out what this woman’s destiny was. The fact that the Boss wouldn’t tell him, was an enigma in itself, although Uri knew from millennia of experience not to question the Boss. He knew best in all situations, and it did no good to question.
Heather was special, though. Uri could see that. He just didn’t see any special talents, or ideas, or world-changing events in her future. He didn’t see anything in her future, and that bothered him. Not that that meant she didn’t have a future. It just bothered him that he couldn’t see it. He could usually see some sort of future for his targets. That was the point of his job here. To show the target their future, if they chose a certain path…
Heather’s admissions to him last night about her family had managed to stir something inside Uri that he hadn’t felt in thousands of years. Empathy.
He used to empathize with the humans long ago. But their sins became too numerous, too vicious, too immoral. Humans had become corrupt, greedy, and weak in Uri’s eyes. He continued to do the work he was created to do because he didn’t know anything else. But while his motivations were ethereal, his targets' motivations were much less so. It had been a long time since one of his assignments had fulfilled their destiny to please God, instead of going for the fame involved. Uri longed for something more, but he had no idea what.
He could see what He had been talking about with her sacrifices though. Heather had the compassion that most of humankind, in his experience, was lacking. She housed her addicted sister, who surely didn’t appreciate her efforts. She took care of her addle-brained mother, who would never be in her right mind again. She grieved for the lost father and brother, silently, so she could continue to care for the others in her family and make sure that they survived. And she did it without question. There was no other option for Heather. Uri could see that this was a sacrifice that she would make, given other choices.
But she did it by stripping for money.
Reconciling the two personas, compassionate Heather with sinful Heaven, was difficult for Uri. Granted, he hadn’t asked her much about the stripping, so he didn’t know the whole story there. He knew he was generalizing with her.
Her stage name was Heaven. How ironic.
She was the closest to Paradise that Uri had ever been with a human’s touch. He didn’t understand it.
When she had rested her head on his chest last night, he had found himself enveloped in a cocoon of pleasure. Pleasure unlike anything he’d ever known before. He longed to feel it again.
Uri stood and paced around his cramped apartment, fingering relics he’d held onto for one reason or another. He had a lock of Anne’s hair, held together by a decaying ribbon. He had letters, papers, and books from various authors and composers, which needed to be packed away in some of that acid-free paper before they rotted into oblivion. He had a telephone from Mr. Bell, just as he had an iPhone from Steve Jobs. In fact, Steve had given him the phone because Uri had one from Alexander. He hadn't wanted to be outdone. Uri had a piece of a conveyer belt that Henry Ford had created, enabling him to mass produce his automobile so cheaply. He had a shirt from Dr. King.
They were souvenirs. That’s all. He didn’t particularly need them to remember each target, but he kept them nonetheless. Today, he was glad that he had souvenirs, because he wanted to give Heather something. He’d never felt the desire to do that before and wasn’t sure what it meant.
The Boss had told him to follow his instincts. And here he was looking through his knick-knacks for something in particular. Once he found it, he breathed a sigh of relief and set it aside for the next time he saw Heather.