How many of you guess who the characters are before you reach the end?
***
Somewhere between Israel and Palestine, somewhere where there was no fighting, no dying, and – best of all – no one shouting about how someone else had to die for the good of their religion, there was a little café. By common agreement, it was neutral ground and none of the various armed forces had smashed their way through it, looking for anything that might pose a threat to their people. The two men met at an outside table, under a single palm tree that had been old when man had been young, and smiled at each other.
“So,” the first one said, finally, “here you are at last.”
“I had to come,” the second one said. “My father insisted on it.”
There was a long pause as the two men considered how embarrassing fathers could be when it came to their sons following in their footsteps.
“You’re not late,” the first one said. “I do wish that you’d stayed away.”
“You can talk,” the second one retorted. “Everyone knows what you are.”
“Except the people,” the first one pointed out. “Your father told them everything about me, and yet…do they notice? Do they care?”
The second one grinned, suddenly. “There is more in the life of my father’s children than you and your father understand,” he said. “We were born to a destiny, you and I…”
“Were we?” The first one asked. “I never asked to be born.”
“Nor did I,” the second one agreed. “I came here and I even died for them.”
The sound of firing in the distance disturbed neither man not at all. “You did,” the first one said. “You did…and yet, what did it do for them? You came to their world, showed them what a little love and compassion could do, and then they hung you on a cross and killed you.”
“I came back,” the second one said. “They couldn’t kill me for long. My father willed that I lived again.”
“And again,” the first one said. “You know what they did to your mother?”
The second one nodded slowly. “And yet, they too will have their chance to rise up to paradise,” he said. “Your father offered me all the temptations and yet, I resisted, secure in my father’s love.”
“We had nothing to do with that,” the first man said. “Your…human father conceived” – he snickered, as one does at a pun that isn’t really funny – “of the idea himself.”
“I know,” the second man said. “Do you think I would be talking with you if I thought that you had organised it?”
“We were not allowed to interfere,” the first man said. “Your father’s will, or mine. In the end, does it even matter?”
“Whatever happens, happens by my father’s will,” the second man said. Another round of firing, in the distance, completely passed them by. Neither of them cared much for the fighting, although for different reasons. It simply wasn't important. “Your father could not touch me before I was ready, even though human agency.”
“But does it matter?”
“We were born to a destiny,” the second man repeated. “You and I have that in common…”
The first man smiled at the concept. “I don’t think that either of us really wants it to happen,” he said. He leaned forward, appearing as a mature man in his early thirties, and smiled. “Do you want to take up your role, as laid down by your father?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Did I have a choice?” The first man asked. “I was brought into this world by a poor witch who summoned my father into this world. She died giving birth to me. I wanted to be normal, to have a normal human life, to live, to love and to die…and yet, I have to complete my destiny.”
“I have pity for you,” the second man said. “I bear you no ill-will. You had no choice at all in the matter.”
“Nor do you,” the first man said. “Are you happy with that?”
“We were born to take our part in the endless conflict,” the second man said. “Do you believe that we can escape?”
“Your father created the human race and he gave it free will,” the first man said. “No devil has ever risen to Earth and told a human to commit a sin. No such interference would be allowed. They choose to rise and fall by their own merits. Is that suddenly such a bad idea that ones such as you and I have to be involved?”
He nodded over in the distance towards a rising column of smoke. “I’m not going to make the world worse,” he said. “Nothing I can come up with is worse than what humans do to themselves, but suddenly we get our marching orders and the world declares for you and I. What choice do they have?”
The second man frowned. “They always have the choice…”
“It’s going to be stacked against them from the start,” the first man insisted. He snapped his fingers and his cup refilled itself. “They’re going to proclaim me you!”
He stared at the first man. “I will perform for them, as they will demand, and they will believe in me,” he insisted. “What choice will they have?”
“We have no choice,” the second man repeated. “We have to rise to power and we have to fight…”
“Why?” The first man asked. “Why do we care about the war? What does it matter, now, which of them was right?” He smiled. “Why can’t we just walk away from it all?”
The second man sighed. “We’re the children of our fathers,” he said. “We cannot just abandon what we are.”
“This is Earth, the land of free will,” the first man said. “Here, we can walk away from them, from their destiny, because we have free will. People go to hell because they deserve it, but us? We never deserved any of this!”
He stood up. “It’s already written that I will stand for President of America in the next two years and my election will be a certainty,” he said. “I am not going to stand. I’m going to walk away from it all and become a human, living and dying as one of them. Without me, there will be no war and no Armageddon. You won’t be needed.”
“No,” Jesus said. “I could walk away too. Perhaps do good works in some isolated part of the world. And the human race goes on, as always.”
“Free will,” the Antichrist said. “How can our fathers hold an Armageddon if nobody came?”
When the waiter came around to take their orders, there was nobody there.