© Anna-Karin 2000-2001
The next morning:
Everybody have awakened and are about as clear in the head as one can expect to be at 5.30 in the morning. Kenneth is loading the last of the stuff into the car with the aid of Gabriel, while Anna-Karin checks if everything has been closed, locked or turned off.
Kenneth: I thought this was below you for some reason.
Gabriel: The sooner we get out of here the sooner we get to Rome.
Kenneth: About that; You haven't happened to include breaks for sleeping somewhere in our schedule have you? I mean; I'm the only one who's got a driving licence, and I can't drive for like 24 hours straight with only meal breaks to rest.
Gabriel: You won't have to sleep. There's a thing I can do for you.
With that Gabriel steps close to Kenneth and lifts his hand to the man's face.
Gabriel: This won't hurt.
Gabriel pinches together the nostrils of the man with one hand while holding his chin in the other. He then puts his mouth over Kenneth's mouth. Kenneth feels how something seems to breeze from Gabriel's mouth into his own and from there into his lungs and from there flowing out into the rest of his body.
Behind them Anna-Karin walks out of the house unnoticed. She sees what's happening but shakes her head.
Anna-Karin: Now that was one of the more nasty kisses I've seen and I have seen a few. Well everything checked, twice, and securedley locked. Thrice.
Kenneth gasps for breath and feels a bit wobbly. Then he feels great.
Kenneth: What did you do?
Gabriel: I placed some of myself inside you. That will allow you to go without sleep for as long as I need you to drive me to Rome.
Anna-Karin: Better than coffee.
Gabriel: What is it with you and coffee?
They drive the whole day through Sweden, from Borås in the west of Sweden, and arrive to the town of Helsingborg in the south of Sweden in the late afternoon. There they take the ferry to Helsingör in Denmark. By evening they have arrived to Germany. At a hotel near the Danish-German border Anna-Karin and Kenneth use the public facilities.
Kenneth is shaving as Gabriel watches. Kenneth talks while loking at Gabriel in the mirror.
Kenneth: Why are you watching me like that?
Gabriel: Because it might be useful knowing how to shave, the motions, the order in which things are done. It's part of the camouflage really. I mean, this isn't my real form. At home, in the place you call Heaven, I don't have a real form or shape, but when walking the Earth I must have a shape, a form, in order to be able to communicate with you people.
Kenneth: So you are studying me, like an actor would do, so you can do everything right, if necessary.
Gabriel: Yes.
Kenneth: So what are your real form then?
Gabriel: I can't describe it very well. I don't know if there are any words for it. But I think that the closest would be if I said like a sentient, non-corporeal energy.
Kenneth: Like a soul mabye?
Gabriel does not answer but looks a bit surprised. That was something he hadn't thought of much. Mabye there were more to these monkeys than it seemed.
Kenneth: Do you want to know why I wanted to kill myself?
Gabriel: No, but tell me anyway.
Kenneth: Thanks. I need to get this of my heart.
Kenneth go to sit down on the floor. Gabriel join him.
Kenneth: I am the first one to earn real big bucks in my family. I am the first one to have a degree, masters, and my parents are proud of me. Or they were until my boss found out that I had been loosing a large amount of money on the stock market. A loss I had managed to cover up by juggling the numbers around. So I had to pay back everything, and I got fired. I told my parents why I hade been fired and they were so dissapointed. I broke their hearts. They had hoped that I would be something really great. They didn't say so but I could see it. In their eyes. And then all I had was my car, so I decided that I'd be better off dead.
Gabriel can't think of anything clever to say so he just rises and walks away to the car. Kenneth grabs his things and follow him.
Anna-Karin is waiting.
Kenneth drive the whole night, while Anna-Karin sleeps in the back seat, and in the morning the trio takes a break near a small town in the south of Germany. Anna-Karin makes breakfast.
Anna-Karin: So it's soup and bread for the humans and coffee for the angel.
Kenneth: Thanks. Gonna be happy when we reach Rome. A real meal instead of all these powder-soups.
Anna-Karin: Think of the money we save. We can spend it on meals in Rome.
Gabriel: You won't have much time for pleasure. This is a serious matter.
Kenneth: We know.
They drive over the border to Austria and drives through the country in one day. By nightfall they are far into Italy.
Gabriel gets more fidgety and nervous as they gets closer and closer to Rome.
In the morning they have come to the outskirts of Rome. They drive to an abandoned factory site and parks the car there.
Gabriel: Here is a good place as any. No-one will come here to look for us.
Anna-Karin: Now what?
Gabriel: Now I'll call my troops, or at least as many as I can spare from the battlefields in Heaven. Then I'll have a war council.
Kenneth: Can we participate?
Gabriel: Of course! We do have a deal.
Anna-Karin: And you are going to tell us about the codex Uzriel.
Gabriel: Yes.