Common Ground (The Common Ground Trilogy Book 1) (26 page)

Random students passed us on our way back to his office and every time they did, Professor Woodward’s voice dropped slightly. I knew he wanted to keep it all secret, but I knew that nobody would have believed what he was saying if they even heard it.

“Nevertheless, we quickly grew accustomed to our situation and continued on with our lives. We continued migrating, meeting and living amongst new and exciting people for a while. But, as time went on, we began to wonder what our purpose was in the world. We were endowed with supernatural powers, but yet we didn’t understand what we were supposed to do with such gifts. It wasn’t until some of our kind started to get frustrated with our stagnant and repetitive lifestyle that we discovered another power we all shared. Can you guess what that is Zoe?” he asked me.

His question caught me off guard. I was so tuned in to his story that I almost had forgotten he was talking to me. For a second, I had no idea how to respond. But when my stomach churned unpleasantly, reminding me of what I’d just experienced, the answer dawned on me.

“Time travel,” I said awkwardly.

“Exactly right,” he smiled.

At that point, we had reached Professor Woodward’s building. He stopped talking when a group of students came scrambling out the door. After working our way through the crowds and up the stairs, we reentered his office, where Annabelle was on the phone. She gave me a soft smile and wink while I passed. Professor Woodward escorted me into his office and closed the door behind him. We sat back down in the leather chairs and faced each other.

“Getting back to where we were,” he said, crossing his legs. “You’re right, time travel was the second and final power everyone possessed. We all had the ability to travel through time, but there was a glitch in the system. Instead of being able to jump freely to any point in time, we discovered that some of us could only travel to the past, while the others could solely jump to the future. For the first time in our existence, we encountered a situation where we were all bound by limitation and it wasn’t received very well.”

“What happened?” I whispered.

“The ability to time travel became a dividing line. We were no longer equals. There was now a physical force that separated and caused us to break into two different entities. Things remained peaceful between both sides, but we found ourselves getting more comfortable with those of us who shared the same abilities. It was at that point when both groups started to wonder if having the gift of time travel was the key to figuring out our purpose on Common Ground. Over the course of many years, each side spent time traveling throughout the past and future, looking for any clues that would help us put the pieces of our world together, so to speak.”

“Did anyone find anything?”

“Yes, but they weren’t physical clues. Those who could jump to the future saw how violent and deadly the human race became over the course of history. They decided that our powers were given to us so that someday we could use them to control humans in order to maintain peace.”

“What about the others?” I asked. “What could they possibly have discovered in the past that would help?”

“We didn’t necessarily discover anything. Instead, we were able to witness the human capacity for peace and love, and see how humans have always maintained the ability to be peaceful. With that, we concluded that our powers were to be used to help make humans better people and avoid confrontations before they began.”

“But those are pretty different philosophies Professor,” I said, sitting up a little straighter. “I mean, one side thinks it’s better to use powers to control humans whereas the other side believes it’s better to use abilities to help humans. It just doesn’t sound right. It makes it seem like humans were supposed to be pawns in your game.”

“That’s an astute observation Zoe,” he said, smiling. “Since both sides were so persistent that their hypothesis was correct, it started to divide us all on a much deeper level. Ultimately, we grew so divided that both entities decided to give themselves names in order to separate from the others. The group that traveled back in time was the beginning of what we today know as angels and the future jumping group became known as demons.”

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined listening to a story about the formulation of angels and demons resulting from arguments over the purpose of special abilities. Even though Professor Woodward implied that time travel and the use of abilities caused the rift between both groups, I had a feeling their problems ran much deeper than that.

“However, remembering that our rules didn’t allow for the use of powers in front of or against humans, the whole debate became insignificant and as a result, time went on and things calmed down between the two groups. Both angels and demons continued to travel through time, sharing information with the other side, which actually helped us learn quite a bit more about the human race. Even after thousands of years, we were constantly surprised by the diversity and uniqueness of humans.”

At that point, my brain started to feel full. The more I heard, the harder the information became to digest. I was falling deeper and deeper into this new world, and it was starting to become overwhelming. I pulled my eyes from Professor Woodward and glanced down at my hands, which had started rubbing together uneasily.

“But growing closer to and better understanding humans had repercussions that none of us ever saw coming. Don’t forget that before we discovered our ability to time travel, we moved around so frequently, we were hardly able to learn and study human behavior. During our travels, many of us started to see the powers humans had that we didn’t possess. Many angels and demons actually grew jealous.”

“Jealous?” I choked. “Angels and demons have all the power in the world! What could they possibly be jealous about?”

“Zoe, imagine living the same life, over and over again for tens and thousands of years with no end in sight” he said sternly. “We took our ability to live eternally for granted because we never experienced meaningful and lasting relationships. The beauty of mortality is that everything in the world is special because any day could be the last. As angels and demons, we didn’t have that capacity to love so deeply or understand heartfelt connections. Once we started to realize humans held powers that we could only dream about, many of our kind grew restless.”

“But what could you do?” I asked. “If you were all immortal, you were stuck with that life. You couldn’t become mortal, could you?”

For the first time that day, Professor Woodward looked flustered. I slouched back in my chair, unsure if I had said something out of line. It was impossible to know where the respect line was anymore.

“Professor?”

“Yes,” he finally responded, almost inaudibly.

Even though he looked much older than 21, I never even thought about what had happened to make him age so much. The pieces were all connecting slowly, but I needed more.

“How?” I asked carefully.

He sighed heavily. “Over time, the restlessness many angels and demons felt grew into bitterness about our system, most importantly, towards the three laws we had lived by for tens of thousands of years. Some angels and demons ultimately decided that if they couldn’t become mortal and experience everything a human could, they would at least try and make some changes to our world in order to add some excitement. This same group of individuals eventually chose to violate our sacred rules and see what would happen as a result. It was their rebellious mentality which resulted in the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it.”

“I’m confused,” I responded quickly. “If demons can travel to the future, wouldn’t they have been able to foresee that eventually both races would become restless?” 

“The future is not set in stone Zoe,” he said firmly. “Even angels and demons have free will; we just didn’t know it at the time because we had lived the same responsible life for so long. But, we found that out the hard way and our world changed forever because of it.”

Professor Woodward continued to look troubled. It seemed that reliving old memories tore deeply at him but he continued to go further into the story. Even with his discomfort, I couldn’t help but grow more curious.

“What’d they do?” I asked, back on the edge of my seat.

“Let’s just say that many of the angels and demons decided that if they couldn’t be human, they wanted to at least act human,” he said, suddenly turning his eyes towards the windows that looked out over the desert behind his office.

“Act human? What could they possibly do-” I cut myself off when the answer came to me instantly.

I was speechless. My eyes grew wide and Professor Woodward looked back at me, looking very somber. What was already a strange and odd world had just gotten wilder.

“It was the most human act we knew of that none of us had experienced,” he said quietly. “There weren’t many who were that rebellious, but there were enough. A majority of us didn’t even know that some had engaged in the act until we started to see physical changes we’d never seen before.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“They started to age,” he said softly. “Their hair slowly turned gray, wrinkles began to cover their face and even their abilities lost some potency.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Are you telling me that having sex took away their immortality?”

Professor Woodward nodded. “Once everyone figured it out, more and more started to engage in the act. There was finally a way out of the world that had grown so boring and tedious. It got to the point where more than half of our entire race had chosen a mortal life and that made those of us who abstained nervous. Because a majority of our people became mortal, we started to worry that our population would dwindle significantly.”

“But what about children?” I asked.

The question caused my heart to ache and I suddenly felt very sad. I looked away from Professor Woodward and started looking aimlessly around his office, not wanting him to see my emotional shift. I could feel tears slowly building behind my eyes and for a moment, I felt like getting up and leaving.

“That’s what happened,” he said, snapping me out of my funk. “Even though the rule was in place to keep our numbers constant, we weren’t sure if we could actually have children. It was all precautionary. We saw that humans were able to have children and thought that it was safer to not even test the concept.”

Every mention of children kept bringing my parents back to the forefront of my mind. I had to take a few shallow breaths to compose myself before I turned back to him.

“We discovered that the moment any of us engaged in relations, our immortality was stripped and we could start to age. That caused many of our kind to become much more human, which included the ability to become pregnant. As a result, a good portion of our population chose mortality and many of them ended up having more than one child. Those children were then born immortal and given the choice to remain that way or become more human at some point.”

When he finished, he sat there in silence, staring blankly at the floor between us. His demeanor had changed dramatically since the beginning of our talk. The silent break had given me time to put everything together he had told me up to that point. All of the history and details had answered so many questions, but the more I thought about it, the more frustrated I became. Any energy that had built up from his story dissipated quickly. There was something missing.

“Professor,” I said slowly. He lifted his head and looked like he’d been pulled from hypnosis.

“Yes Zoe?”

“I’m confused again.”

“About?”

“Well, everything you’ve said so far has helped me understand more about the world you’ve told me about, but I still don’t see where I fit into all of it. If my father was an angel and my mother a demon, what does that make me?”

“To explain that, you’ll have to be patient with me a bit longer,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I knew you’d ask that and I’m almost there, but there’s a little more you have to understand before I tell you.”

I didn’t know how much longer I could wait. After sitting there for almost an hour and learning about a completely new world, my patience had started to wane. I’d gotten so many answers, but the biggest questions still sat on my mind. I snorted softly under my breath and waited.

He waited for a moment before he spoke again. “Once angels and demons started becoming mortal, those of us who remained pure started to study how the process worked. We discovered that even though they were mortal, angels and demons were still resistant to death in a strange way. Some of our subjects actually reported to us that they’d been involved in accidents that would easily have killed normal human beings and were able to walk away from it practically unscathed.”

“I don’t get it,” I said shortly.

Professor Woodward leaned forward in his seat and looked much more intense than before. “What I’m saying is that even though they technically lost their immortality, they were all still unable to be killed. They aged and lost some powers, but they were still resistant to physical injury.”

“How could that be?”

“We quickly noticed that when angels and demons began aging, they disbanded from their groups and settled in with humans. When this happened, the relationships they formed with humans became close and very strong. For hundreds of years, those of us that remained immortal studied these relationships and ended up finding some bizarre correlations between the humans and our mortal people.”