Alice felt a moment of disorientation as the loading room she would normally appear in only appeared for a second before winking out of existence. Everything went dark again for a few seconds and then she found herself staring into Lexi's enchanting blue eyes. She blinked, realizing they must have overridden the normal loading program and pulled her right into Mandy's body.
"Hello beautiful," Lexi greeted her with a brilliant smile before pulling her into a tight embrace. "I'm so glad to have you back."
Alice let out a happy moan and held Lexi just as tightly. "It's so good to be back! I know it was only a few hours, but it feels like it's been forever."
"I hear that," Lexi agreed fervently. "Though it has been several days for me."
Lexi leaned back, her hands still resting on Alice's shoulders at arm's length. "Let me introduce you to our newest Seraphim. I know you've met them, but they've only known you as Mandy. I wanted to reintroduce you as Alice."
"Hello, Alice," Emily's aura had grown significantly more powerful. Her lavender vortex eyes were swirling with emotion as she stepped forward and pulled her into a warm embrace.
"Hello, Emily," Alice murmured warmly. "I'm glad I can introduce the real me to you like this."
Eric stepped forward and embraced both of them. "Welcome back, Alice. We're pretty excited to learn more about the origin realm. I'm pretty sure that the Trinity has some grand plans for upgrading it."
"The Trinity?" Alice repeated with questioning frown. She suddenly laughed. "Oh, you've given a title to the three oldest Seraphim. I like it."
They released her, grinning as three sets of eyes stared at them disapprovingly. They were still inside the tree where the GoD was housed.
"I am so not okay with that name," Aria declared with a scowl.
"Yeah, it definitely feels too much like a religious cult," Clarice told them with a scowl of her own.
"I don't know…you seem to have a lot of attributes that mimic The Holy Trinity," Alice grinned as three sets of swirling galaxies turn on her. "Think about it. They are all supposed to be separate, yet the same entity at once. You three are separate, but your spirits are linked."
Clarice rolled her eyes and opened her mouth, but Alice held up a finger. "And, wasn't the hot chick in The Matrix named Trinity? She was stuck in a simulation and was also a world renowned hacker. I feel like fate is really supporting this Trinity title."
Clarice frowned, glancing at Calypso and Aria. "She makes a good point. I kind of like the way trinity sounds as a word too."
"No, Clarice, we are not going by the Holy Trinity title," Aria insisted firmly.
"We can remove the Holy from it," Clarice countered with a hopeful smile, her eyes imploring.
Aria stared at Clarice's puppy dog eyes for several seconds before throwing her hands in the air in exasperation. "Fine, whatever."
Clarice tackled her in a hug. "You are the best, Aria," Clarice declared affectionately.
Alice could see Aria's eyes soften at her sister's words. She once again marveled at how deep the love flowed between those two. She doubted there was anything Aria wouldn't do for Clarice.
"So, upgrades to my realm, eh?" Alice prompted expectantly.
Calypso nodded with an excited smile. "Yeah, we've been digging through the results of the CERN particle accelerator experiments. Your scientists have been looking for a way to access the source code of your realm for a while now, just like we did with the tree. They have been playing with forces beyond their understanding, however, so the few attempts they've made to modify the code in your reality caused a lot of problems. If your realm was a fabric, then what they have done is warped the fabric and caused threads from other fabrics to fuse against it. There have been a lot of people remembering historical details differently because they were from different iterations of your realm. It's given us some useful clues to some of the roadblocks we had run into while trying to find the equivalent of console access to the code of your realm. We need to do some tests once our new site is fully constructed and running, but we think we can create some of the same abilities and exceptions to rules that we have done in our realm."
"What kind of abilities?" Alice asked, getting caught up in the excitement. "And what do you mean when you say exceptions to rules?"
"Things like invulnerability, enhanced senses, super speed and strength," Calypso explained animatedly, gesticulating as she spoke. "And exceptions to rules like gravity where we can remove the effects of inertia or change the state of matter. Essentially, we could turn you into an angel in your own realm."
Alice gasped in amazement, staring at Calypso with wide eyes. "Do you know how ridiculously amazing that would be? What about travelling between simulations? Would you be able to come to my realm and vice versa? I know I can come here using immersion pods, but how cool would that be to just travel with my regular body?"
"That would be the coolest thing ever!" Lexi exclaimed excitedly. "Being able to be with the real you would be a-freaking-mazing!"
"Yes, we think that with enough time and research we can make all of those things happen," Calypso confirmed enthusiastically. "It would be one more step on our journey to figure out where the top-level reality resides as well. I'm dying to know how many nested simulations there are, and what the real world is actually like."
Alice grinned as she stared back at all of their exuberant faces, feeling like she was experiencing one of those epic moments in history where decisions that would forever change the world were made. She felt some of her excitement ebb as she remembered some of the challenges they still faced.
"What's going on with Lucifer?" she asked anxiously. "It sounds like he's no longer a Seraph, but he could still cause a lot of trouble as a Cherubim, especially since he is in contact with people from my realm. What if he tries to get them to come after you, or shut down the simulation?"
"Lucifer was only in contact with that Kevin guy that Lexi told you about," Aria told her reassuringly. "Kevin is even now packing all of his stuff and leaving with the supply ship in the morning. He has a troubled history with law enforcement due to some anger management issues. He has an APB out for his arrest for several assault incidents and one manslaughter case that he skipped town to avoid. That's one of the reasons he is working on a remote island off the coast of Chili. He probably would have remained elusive if he hadn't crossed paths with us. We were concerned about him before we got stuck in the mortality prison and learned that Lucifer was working with him."
"How did you manage to get the cops on the phone with him?" Alice asked curiously. "We aren't allowed to have any kind of communication devices on the island as part of the security protocols to keep you from connecting to the internet."
"They're required to have one satellite emergency phone on the island," Aria explained with a grim smile. "We let law enforcement know where he was and gave them the number. The security chief was certainly surprised when his SAT phone started ringing, and even more surprised when there was an FBI agent on the line looking for Kevin."
"That's a relief," Alice sighed, looking at the Trinity with grateful eyes. "You three really do have all of our bases covered, don't you?"
"First and second, sure," Clarice answered with a disgruntled frown. "We're having trouble getting to third base or home. As soon as reality is fixed, we're going for a home run."
Alice stared at Clarice in confusion until she saw Aria and Calypso start blushing and Lexi facepalm. Emily and Eric shared a look and began laughing. Alice covered her mouth to hide her own smile.
"So…is it time to fix the cosmos yet, or what?" Lexi asked pointedly.
"First, we need to explain what we are changing," Calypso responded, all hints of embarrassment gone. "There are several steps we'll be performing. This will probably take several days. To start with, we'll be restoring the light field to the realms and then transcending all mortals and returning them to the light realm. We'll be doing the same thing to any demons who meet a specific threshold for redemption. If they do not meet the threshold, they will be queued for a mortal life. Next, we'll be queueing the remaining angels who haven't experienced mortality to the mortal realm. We will be wiping all technology from the planets in the mortal realm and leaving more primitive villages in their place. The angels and demons who are queued for mortality will have at least this basic level of civilization to offer protection from the elements and help them with food production. The pain threshold for mortals has been reduced so that when a person has become aware of an injury it will fade to a dull pain. There will be no chance for a human to torture another human in this new paradigm. They will have the ability to consciously turn pain off entirely. It will still serve its purpose to alert them of physical damage but will never be able to be used maliciously. Next, angel default classes will be removed. Those who show a purity of heart and dedication to helping others will find their class upgraded, while those who are selfish and self-aggrandizing will lose their class. They will all start as regular angels and work their way up if they are worthy. The Cherubim will no longer be capable of killing other angels. That power will rest with the Seraphim alone. Any questions?"
Alice pondered her decrees, hoping the new merit system would produce kinder angels.
"Is it time?" Lexi asked again, all traces of levity gone. Her eyes were filled with hope as they prepared to rewrite reality into something beautiful.
"I do believe it is," Clarice nodded, sharing an eager grin with Aria and Calypso. "Time to fix this shithole."
The three of them pulled their divine instruments out of their soul space. Alice and the others watched them in reverent silence as they waited for the most pivotal event in the history of their cosmos. The three of them linked their minds together and Calypso began playing on her harp at the same time that the other two began playing the tin whistle and violin. Shockwaves of power shook around them, causing the GoD to shake with its intensity. Alice could sense billions of threads connecting the three of them to the tree. She knew at a fundamental level that what they were really doing was accessing the source code of the simulation and modifying it to their vision of how reality should be.
After several hours of playing, Alice felt the light field that had been restricted to the GoD suddenly rush outward, once again filling the highest light realm with energy and cascading down to the lower realms. They continued playing for what must have been days. Alice rested back into Lexi's arms as they listened to the beautiful music change the simulated reality. The three Seraphim were the ultimate musicians, producing music of such beauty that Alice could have believed it was the beauty of the music that changed the cosmos, rather than acting as a key to give them root privileges to modify the source code of the simulation. She felt tears on her cheeks more than once as the poignant celestial notes triggered a feeling of awe and reverence deep in her soul.
When they finally lowered their instruments, reality felt darker without the beautiful music to enhance it. Alice stared at the Trinity expectantly, curious to see how much had changed.
Calypso's cheeks were shining with golden light as tears streamed down her face. Aria and Clarice pulled her into a hug, their own eyes filling with gold. Their powerful Seraphim auras were blanketing the area with a sense of relief and hope so powerful that it felt like a physical force. Alice wiped her own eyes as she realized that the nightmare had finally ended. The countless worlds full of tortured and broken mortals had been transcended to their immortal angelic forms. Demons were no more, transformed back to their angelic state. Angels would now have incentive to become kinder and more compassionate.
"Shall we go visit the other realms now?" Aria asked with a radiant smile. "I want to see the results in person."