Your Orisons May Be Recorded by Laurie Penny

All prayers are answered, but sometimes the answer is no.
    And sometimes the answer is: “Let me talk to my manager and get back to you.”
    â€œReally,” the caller is saying, “I’ve been donating to the church for years. Going every Sunday. He wanted that. He wanted us to get married there. It’s legal now. Honestly, I expected better service, but I think persuading him to come home is the least you can do at this point.” The client’s voice shakes a little with frustration. “Amen,” he adds.
    â€œI understand your frustration,” I say. “I really do understand, and I appreciate your patience, Mr. Rimington-Pounder.”
    Across the desk, Grem, my cubicle buddy, collapses in a fit of silent laughter. Gremory is a demon, so he’s allowed to laugh at the unfortunate, including the unfortunately-named.
    I try to explain to Mr. Rimington-Pounder, as gently as possible, that prayer is not a vending machine, where you pop in a certain amount of devotion and miracles drop into your hands.
    â€œIs there—” the client moistens his lips. “Is there someone higher up the chain I can talk to?”
    â€œCertainly, sir,” I say, in my best friendly call center assistant voice. “Let me just put you on hold for a moment.”
    I press the mute button and roll my eyes at Gremory.
    â€œLet me guess,” says Grem, “Rimjob wants to speak to someone higher up?”
    I nod. Of course he wants to speak to someone higher up. Everyone wants to speak to someone higher up. But you can’t speak to the manager.
    The manager is absent.
    I take Mr. Rimington-Pounder off hold and adopt a different voice, a man’s voice. Something broad and comforting and Midwestern. Authoritative.
    â€œWhat can I do for you, sir?” I ask. The client is soothed by this voice. I let him talk. I follow protocol and offer a lot of unspecified redemption without actually promising anything at all.
    Human beings are generally confused. That’s where we come in. Mainly, as the floor supervisor explained in a recent slideshow presentation, humans are confused about wants and needs. They’re always on their knees begging for things they want rather than asking for things they need. It’s very important to steer them away from the wants and speak to the needs, not that we could solve them, because—as the supervisor explained—that would just be too easy.
    Wants and needs. Of all the indignities of flesh, I’m really glad that problem doesn’t apply to me.
    I know exactly what I want.
    That’s my problem.
    *   *   *
    Where is this place?
    Somewhere overhead. Somewhere between thought and memory. You might catch a glimpse of it from the window of an airplane, with the dawn burning in over the endless blankets of cloud and all the lights dim in the cabin. You might tell yourself you didn’t see what you saw.
    Do angels walk in the clouds?
    Not if we can help it. It’s damp and full of weather balloons.
    But can you peer through the mists rolling around the lower levels of heaven? Did you see the endless tower blocks of human resources tangle through the curds of cumulonimbus, in the deathless place where they serve Him night and day in His temple with monthly production goals and customer satisfaction surveys?
    Angels work. Of course we do. We’re all on zero-hour contracts. Time, after all, is a human idea.
    We get twenty-five minutes of it for lunch, with deductions for any bathroom or smoke stops we might have taken. Hating your boss is also a human idea.
    The day everything changes, I spend my lunch in the break room with Gremory. There are many rooms in my Father’s house, but only one with a functioning coffee machine.
    Gremory wears his hair long and shaggy, which is against regulations, but he has the highest client satisfaction rate on our floor. He has this ability to be nice to every caller without