Thou Shalt Not Kiss

VIII: On the Firmament

Saint Zolestine takes a break from her duties on the Ethereal Almanac and rises from where she's been sitting. On the Almanac, Authorities-rank Seraphim like her keep an exhaustive record of the history of mankind. Thrones-level Seraphim, meanwhile, are charged with the herculean task of updating the Book of Deeds and the Book of Life, infinite lists of the names and acts of every person who deserves entry to Heaven, including the last 144,000.

She walks over to the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of her dwelling in Chrysolyte Tower and looks down at all the zipping Seraphim in flight, crisscrossing between the towers covered in green, yellow, red and brown ivy. Down below, on street level, the flow of Seraphim would be thicker, like a healthy circulation of blood in the smaller arteries and capillaries.

"You know, Zoe," her hand-cherub, Sanatkumara, speaks from behind her, "you're lucky I'm not a specimen of Canis familiaris or I'd be demanding daily walks. It's a lovely sunny day outside. The temperature's a pleasant 22 degrees Celsius and you're stuck in here working."

Sanatkumara means "eternal youth" and indeed, like all cherubs, he's small and chubby. He also has a cherub's signature bladelike wings that allow him to hover like a buzzing insect. He's constantly in flight and barely lands or sits.

"You've got your wish," Saint Zolestine tells him without looking over her shoulder. "I'm finally going back down to Terra on the morrow."

"I made a wish for you, not a death wish."

"Be that as it may, I can't remain an armchair liaison forever."

"You can if the armchair's perched on a cliff."

"Check that my off-realm God armor is fully charged and complies with level-1safety standards."

"And of course, you dismiss me with a command," Sanatkumara grumbles but flies off to do as he's told. "I'm not a fluxing djinn, you know..."

Saint Zolestine ponders the abstract purpose of her trip, which she has kept secret from her male guardian, her personal confessor and even from Sanatkumara.

A century and a half ago, in the late twentieth century, the mortals sent Voyager 1 and 2 to the vast emptiness of the cosmos. Each interstellar probe carried within it what was called a "Golden Record"; a 12-inch phonograph record that was made of gold-plated copper to prevent corrosion and was designed to last a billion years. A Golden Record contained sounds and images of Terra curated by American astrophysicist Carl Sagan. The idea was to portray the diversity and vibrancy of life on the planet.

The Golden Records, touted as an interstellar message to any advanced space-faring civilization, were merely a publicity stunt to drum up support for the Voyager missions. They were akin to a message in a bottle cast out into the ocean of the great beyond. Apart from sound, images had been electronically encoded onto the Records: diagrams of mathematical and physical quantities, the Solar System, DNA and the evolution of vertebrates, and drawings of a naked Terran male and female.

Naturally, Saint Zolestine's kind, the Caeligradus sapiens, wouldn't come into the picture until a full century after, and thus they were not represented on the Gold Records. Then again, she supposes they were, after a fashion. What of the two "God's image" species being quite identical from the perspective of anatomy, especially when Seraph halos and wings are retracted. Without a doubt though, no Seraph would ever have consented to having their likeness preserved without raiment.

Late-twentieth-century Terra holds endless fascination for Saint Zolestine. It's widely believed amongst the Seraphim that this particular juncture in time was the closest to a golden age that the human civilization ever had. What interests Saint Zolestine the most about the Voyager Records is the criteria by which Carl Sagan and the NASA committee curated their contents; selection and exclusion being opposite sides of the same coin. Inscribed onto the Records were 118 photographs, 90 minutes of international music, greetings in 55 Terran languages and one whale song, and a variety of natural sounds such as those made by surf, wind, thunder, rain, frogs, birds, dogs and so on. Equitably, the photographs were not only those of mankind but also some of animals, insects, plants and landscapes.