Heavenly Pow Wow
copyright © 2020 by Robert L. Blau

So God called a meeting of the archangels to address the earthly crisis.  Crises.  Satan attended ex officio.  As presumed Chief Crisis Generator.

"I have called this emergency meeting of the Heavenly Council," said God in the beginning, "to address the earthly crisis.  Crises.  You all know of what I speak:  war, racism, xenophobia, sexism, religious hatred, destruction of the planetary ecosystem, slavery, abuse of the weak, greed.  Every kind of bigotry, hatred, and violence.  You give them freedom of choice, and look what they do with it!"

"Tolja it wouldn't work," mumbled Satan.

God fixed him with an all-seeing eye.  "What do you have to say for yourself?" He fumed.

"Me?" shrugged Satan. "Don't look at me.  I wish I had the malevolence, deceitfulness, and spiteful ... creativity of those creatures.  I must bow to my masters in evil."

"I think some good old fashioned smiting is called for," suggested Michael. "Remind the little bastards who's Boss, I shouldn't wonder."

"Maybe it's just time to admit defeat," said Gabriel. "The experiment failed.  Wipe 'em all out and start over."

"Er, there is a bit of a problem about that," said God. "I did promise not to do that again, you may remember ..."

"Ah, but that was just flooding," scoffed Gabriel. "How about a nice asteroid strike, eh?  Or similar."

"Seems a bit ... out of the spirit of the thing," God replied.  But He seemed to be thinking about it.

"Wait, wait!" said Raphael, waving his hand. "I have a great idea.  Just listen to this.  Why don't You send down a pandemic?"

"Doesn't sound any better than a flood or an asteroid," said God uncertainly.

"Hear me out," urged Raphael. "I'm not talking about something that will wipe them out.  Don't get me wrong.  It has to be nasty enough to afflict a few million people and kill ... maybe a million.  So they know we aren't kidding around.  But think about what's going to happen ..."

"Sounds like the equivalent of a mid-tier smiting," said Michael, "but why play around with germs when we have the good ol' Wrath of God to fry their butts?"

"No, no!" insisted Raphael. "Listenlistenlisten!  The pandemic will be the common enemy!  Ir will overwhelm their healthcare systems and cripple their transportation and break their economies!  And isolate them and make them stay at home!  That will give the environment a break, for starters!  Then they'll realize that all humans are the same!  The pandemic will be the great leveler!  It will kill rich and poor, strong and weak, mighty and lowly alike!  They will realize that they are interdependent!  They will probably come up with some slogan like, 'We're all in this together!'  It will mean the end of political bickering because here will be an existential threat to humankind that has absolutely nothing political about it!"

The other archangels were impressed.  Even God was impressed.

"It'll never work," said Satan. "Look, you don't know how these yahoos think.  I do.  I'm down there among them every day, getting my hands dirty.  First, they'll make it political.  Every political party will blame every other political party for the pandemic so they can make points for the next election.  Some more than others, but still.  The rich and powerful will use their wealth and power to protect themselves and put the poorer and weaker in harm's way.  And they'll use the pandemic to entrench their wealth and power.  Like busting unions in return for giving work to desperate people.  Hey, don't look at me like that.  I didn't teach them this stuff.  I'm just a humble neophyte learning at the masters' feet."

So they went with the plan, but Satan never gets invited to these kinds of meetings anymore.