Most people who live or visit Achnahannet believe that the elegant Providence Boulevard ends at Providence Square, with its gardens, magnificent statues, and the breathtaking gothic Cathedral; not many know, however, that if you continue to walk past the Cathedral through a small alley, Providence Boulevard becomes Providence Street. Besides the name, Providence Boulevard and Providence Street share very little - while the boulevard is spacious, with elegant and well maintained buildings, and wide sidewalks with cafes and restaurants, and thriving with life, Providence Street is rather the opposite: narrow, dark, paved with cobblestones worn out by the centuries; although a close inspection of the buildings along the street reveals their sturdy construction and fine craftsmanship, they are nothing but a ghost of long forgotten days of prosperity. Today, cheap tenements are inhabited by poor people who cannot afford living in the newer, better parts of town.

That’s not to say that Providence Street lacks charm - if you know where to go, you can still find the hidden treasures that persist on living to remind us of better times: the bakery, the restaurant, the tailor, the shoemaker; all passed from father to son through many generations, keeping traditions of quality, pride, and attention to detail.

One of those places is a bookstore, if we can call it such - most of its books are not actually for sale, but the owner happily lets people read them, only asking for a small contribution to help “keep the lights on”. It is located right off Providence Street, a few steps down a narrow alley easily missed. The faded “Bookstore - rare books” wooden sign is barely discernible, and you must know exactly what to look for to find it. Upon entering it, you will be faced with several tables and bookshelves full of ancient books; the owner will likely be on the back, reading one of the large volumes; tall, thin, always dressed in black, which makes an impressive contrast with his long, white hair, neatly tied in a ponytail or braided. His skin looks like old parchment, with many tiny wrinkles; perhaps years of coexistence with old books was somewhat contagious, and his skin started to look like the pages of a rare book. There are a few old, dusty armchairs, surprisingly comfortable, where you can sit and read at your leisure.

“A Brief History of Light” is one of the many interesting books you can find there; it tells the story of how the Life Bearer, once praised and loved for fighting along the good side and helping the high gods, fell into disgrace and then was doomed to eternal punishment because of a simple crime: helping lower life forms. And so the story goes:

In its early days, the Universe was one; at one point, however, tiny perturbations in the fabric of the cosmos started to happen, and those evolved to become two separate forces, which we naively call “good” and “evil”. In those early times, those perturbations quickly annihilated each other, thus restoring the cosmos to its unity; however, and nobody quite remembers why this happened, at one point the perturbations started to become more permanent, until the universe was irreparably split.

There is very little record of those early days; but some of the stories were preserved and passed down generation after generation, over a period of billions of years.

Each of the universe had - and still has - conscious higher forces. For lack of a better name, we call them “God” amongst other names. But the anthropomorphic account of God we have is far from true; in reality, there are many gods, some stronger, some weaker, none with human characteristics. One could say that the interconnected randomness that surrounds us, taken in a scale large enough, becomes self aware and turns into God; this wouldn’t be too far from the truth, although the mechanism that makes the randomness develop self awareness are not known, and perhaps never will be.

The Yin-Yang symbol also gives us an important insight of what the Gods and, by extension, our Universe is structured. Before the final split, there was a battle of unimaginable proportions, when Good and Evil tried to annihilate the other and achieve full supremacy. Major and minor gods fought long and hard, and legend says that in the end what could be described as an explosion ended the final battle, separating Good and Evil and setting them apart at a vertiginous speed. But we digress; just like the black and white sides of the Yin-Yang symbol have some of the other color in them, Good and Evil are not pure: Good has traces of Evil, and Evil has traces of Good. And this leads us to the story of Morning Star.

During that epic battle, major and minor gods from Good and Evil fought each other, and Morning Star was one of the minor Gods that shined on the Good side; his skill was in his intelligence (if such human trait can be attributed to a God, even a minor one), and he knew how to put it to use to balance the battle after the initial upper hand the Evil side had on the Good side. One can conjecture that without Morning Star’s cunningness, the Good side wouldn’t have lasted until the explosion, and the Universe as we inhabit today wouldn’t exist.

It’s hard to describe the Gods of our universe without resorting to human characteristics such as love, fear or anger; this is a necessary device to help us have a faint understanding of who they are and how they operate. At any rate, the Gods let life appear in the Universe, and they also let life evolve. In fact, their small evil side had a secret pleasure in torturing life forms with cataclysms, but life turned out to be more resilient than they expected: unlike ordinary matter, it changed, evolved, and became stronger. Life and evolution, however, had no use for self awareness: it evolved up to a certain point, where it became conscious and aware of the environment around it, and it was able to respond to external stimuli, and that was enough to ensure survival. It lacked, however, that internal voice, the internal thoughts, the ability to generate responses not from external, but from internal stimuli. This was a trait only owned by the Gods, major or minor. And although life was pervasive, it never evolved past this tipping point.

Some describe this initial state of life as “paradise” - without internal thought, there is no criticism; without criticism, you take what has been offered without questioning, and simply accept it. The idyllic notion of perfection is in the eye of the beholder; if you don’t understand what death is, you believe you can live forever.

Many worlds came into existence and disappeared as the Universe took its course, and every one of them were paradise. The Gods liked this arrangement, and had no intention to help ordinary life forms evolve further, as they were afraid that those lower life forms could eventually become so advanced that they could challenge and overthrow the Gods. The scars and memories of the battle with the Evil side never faded, and they were not ready to risk annihilation. Besides, it was pleasant to take corporeal form from time to time and appear on planets bearing a diverse life form to hunt and feast - without fear of being ever challenged.

For aeons this was the norm, unchallenged. But it really bothered Morning Star, who eventually brought the issue of helping life evolve and take consciousness before the Great Assembly. Morning Star’s arguments were reasonable - the Universe was immense, it had room for all; since they were all Good, why not help life? If not for the sake of helping, at least to have additional people fighting for Good, lest another battle with Evil should happen. Needless to say, the Gods were not pleased, and Morning Star not been of such help during the primordial battle, his consciousness would have been thrown in the eternal void.

Legend says that Morning Star, despite being a minor God, was the only one who had no trace of Evil in him, so he did what he thought was the right thing to do. Surely and surreptitiously he started to mold life forms in different parts of the Universe, until after millions of years they became self-aware; very subtly in the beginning, but that initial push was enough for them to rapidly evolve that trait.

The Gods were displeased, and Morning Star was severely reprimanded. They took form and appeared to the evolving life forms and threatened them, equaling self awareness and knowledge with death, and that seemed to contain further evolution for a while. But Morning Star was not done; he escaped the vigilant eyes of the Gods and went back to the different places, giving them the fire of desire for knowledge.

Poor Morning Star. The Gods sent one of their most powerful warriors, who tied Morning Star in chains, condemning him to spend eternity in the great void. But it was too late - the fire of knowledge could no longer be extinguished, so the Gods did all they could to slow it down. Some took form and inhabited with the different life forms, giving them strict rules to be followed, rules that seem good but were nothing but disguised devices to slow down the acquisition of knowledge and further evolution. And they twisted Morning Star’s good intentions, transforming his history in a tale of caution, promising death to the ones who wanted to follow his steps.

And this is how Morning Star, perhaps the only God with no trace of Evil in him, became the representation of Evil itself. His legend took many forms, and he is known by many names, a few of each will probably ring familiar: Forethought or Prometheus; the Shining One, the Light Bearer for others. For most, however, he is known as Evil Incarnate, although the meaning of his Latin name still reflects his actual work: Lucifer.