A Beginner’s Guide to Sea Monsters, Messenger Angels, and Other Management Mishaps #8

Prologue

Joe sat in his small office, which was tucked away in a far corner of heaven, and contemplated the equations scattered across his once pristine white walls. There were numbers, lines, occasional words, and symbols that very few angels would be able to make sense of.

Then again, very few angels had a name like Joe.

Not that that’s the only difference between me and other angels, Joe thought, but he cut that line of reasoning right off. Nope. He did not think about… it.

Best to contemplate the white walls scattered with equations in front of him instead.

He often wished he could have something other than white in his office. Maybe walls the color of the sky from topside. Not that he’d ever been topside to visit the mortal souls, but he’d seen it. He’d done plenty of spying on mortal souls while he was going about his work.

He was, after all, saving the entire universe.

Not that anyone really knew what he was up to.

Which was just fine with Joe. If no one knew, then no one could interfere. There had already been one unfortunate incident where an angel had tried to stop his work, but luckily he had managed to set things in motion to thwart that plan.

He contemplated the equations in front of him again, sighing. This next pairing was going to be difficult indeed. Probably the most difficult one yet, just because of the nature of things. Nevertheless, the universe called for this pairing.

As Joe watched, a few of the symbols on his wall changed.

Ah, it looked like Yah and Luce were up to some of their own plotting, changing things about minutely.

Not that he should really call them by such familiar names, since he’d never met either one.

But Joe had done a bit of spying on them as well.

Not that he meant to spy on them, really, but they were apparently invested in the creation of soulmates as well, so sometimes the soulmates ended up in their presence.

Joe just really liked to see the outcome of all his hard work. And if he watched Yah and Luce a bit more than was strictly necessary, well… who could blame him? Really, it was in the interest of the work he was doing. Saving the universe and all that.

At least he knew the higher ups approved of his work, even if no one had ever said so. No one visited Joe. Most of the time, he thought his existence was entirely forgotten. Which was probably for the best, after all, since he was… whatever he was.

Joe sighed. Enough contemplation. Time to get the next pairing in motion.

This would be tricky indeed, and he’d probably need to get the leadership team involved, which he really hated doing.

Especially since he figured he’d eventually have his work cut out for him there, as well.

But one step at a time, and the first step involved one very uptight angel and one very lackadaisical demon.

The problem was how to throw them together, but he thought that he had a solution for that.

An official memo from the DoS ought to do it.

The leadership team loved official memos.

If Joe had made up the DoS (short for Department of Soulmates), well, no one needed to know that.

It was what he was doing, and if he happened to be the only member of the department, well, that made him the director, didn’t it?

The leadership team loved titles and abbreviations, and no one would ever admit they didn’t know what it meant. It would work out perfectly.

Joe felt rather bad about getting Gabriel, the messenger archangel, in a spot of trouble, but he had to do something to throw those two together, and it would never happen otherwise. He still had some minor doubts, but…

He looked at the equations again. Yes, it was irrefutable. They were soulmates. Such opposites, and yet they were destined for each other. Hopefully they’d be able to get out of their own way enough to see it.

He hadn’t had a soulmate pair fail yet, but it was always a possibility.

And if that happened… Joe didn’t like to think what would happen to the cracks in the universe if two soulmates rejected the bond.

So much work had already been done that perhaps it wouldn’t be apocalyptic, but he just couldn’t be sure.

He really didn’t want to run the math on it either.

After all, Joe was an optimist. Surely it would all work out. Look at how much had already been accomplished.

With that, he got out his tablet and began composing his very official looking memo to the leadership team, his head bent over his pristine white desk, his bright white angel wings flared out behind him, and his tail, which he tried very hard not to think about, curled up under his angelic robes, well out of sight.

After all, only demons had tails.

It’s not like anyone ever came to visit Joe, but if they did, all they would see was a perfect angel sitting in a pristine white room with lots of equations. No demon tails in sight. No pretty blue walls. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Just a regular, perfectly typical angel named Joe saving the universe.