by Rhys Hughes
He pondered. Why had the secret police decided to harass him after all this time? There had been better opportunities in the past. Might it be connected with his invasion of the church? That made sense. It was the only answer. And why had they decided to disguise themselves as an assortment of priests, bishops and cardinals? It seemed too elaborate and theatrical. Almost heresy.
He lay in bed, naked and without blankets, staring up at the ceiling. A bamboo blind covered the window, but it was broken in several places and the headlamps of passing cars cast thin rays onto the far wall. He could almost convince himself the noise of ceaseless traffic was the roar of surf, but the muffled sounds from the adjacent rooms in this tenement block had no escapist analogue. They were a jumble of illogical shouts, screams of pain or despair, indefinable shufflings and the harsh clatter of unwashed pots, pans and artificial limbs. He wondered if the landlord had secretly leased this honeycomb of bitter humanity to an experimental hospital. This might explain the drilling and the odour of ammonia that seeped through the floorboards.
The ceiling was mapped with cracks. He had observed these spreading and meeting up over time. Now the process appeared to be accelerating. A low groaning note shook flakes of plaster down onto his sweating skin. A single huge fissure grew in the exact centre of the ceiling, dividing it in half. This was no illusion. It really was happening. There was a dull sound of joists sliding over bricks and the roof began to part to expose the sky. He wanted to blink but felt compelled to stare fixedly. Now the ceiling had been drawn completely back and the cold night air rushed in to envelop his damp and coated limbs. But shivering was beyond him. With a cry of horror that was so timid it was almost a squeal of delight, he watched as something fell directly toward him. It came from the stars, unfurling as it plunged, snapping to an end a few inches above his face and swaying like a chaotic pendulum.
A rope ladder. He reached out. Its rungs were chill with the touch of space. He steadied it and pulled himself erect. Now he was sitting up and feeling the vibrations of the firmament. They were gentle but insistent, like the hunger pangs of God. He stood and placed one foot on the bottom rung, but before he could commence climbing, the ladder began to be drawn up. He held on tight. He passed out of the house, high above the roof and chimney, into a chasm between the clouds. There were a few stars directly above. But no moon. Now he was dangling over Swansea and racing into the unknown zenith. He quivered slightly. His breath froze not into mist but into a solid cone that fractured with an audible tinkle and rained down in shards like tiny teeth.
The gap between the clouds grew wider. Soon the sky was completely clear. He saw the curvature of the Earth below and the hard burn of the other planets to the side. He whistled but there was no air and no sound. Yet he was still alive. Now he saw the ladder was drawing him towards a rent in space. A gash darker than the tapestry of normal vacuum that opened like the discoloured lips that live between the legs of a strange girl. And he was received by it. He started to scream silently, but the other side was warm and bright, another universe, one in which the colour of nothingness was white and the stars were black. The ladder stopped and he realised that the floor of this cosmos was solid. He had passed through a mystic portal into a dimension of infinite flatness. Stepping off, he tottered briefly on the rim of the gash.
When he had recovered his balance and regained the remnants of his reason, he moved forward and studied his surroundings. A realm devoid of features greeted him. There was a line in the distance, like a hair on the length of the horizon, and he made for that. It was many miles distant. As he approached, he saw it was a wall. Soon this grew high and unscalable; it was constructed not from bricks but as a single piece. He noticed the gate, no taller than the rest of the wall and gleaming like slightly soiled linen. It consisted of a large number of thin bars of a substance like ivory. On the other side, leaning nonchalantly and gazing at him with amused approval, a fat man with a curly beard uttered a few words of ironic encouragement.
“Nice walk. Love the irregular steps.”
“I am very nervous.”
“So you should be. Are you Tennyson Jones?”
“Yes. Why am I here?”
“You passed the interview. Congratulations! It was very dramatic to threaten them with a crossbow. I guess you were trying to prove you are no pushover?”
“I don’t understand anything.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ve got the job! Heavenly Safety Officer. About time we had one.”
“Does Paradise exist inside this wall?”
“No, outside. The barrier surrounds the portal that leads from the material cosmos to the spiritual. The gap expands to admit objects of varying sizes. A few are enormous, which explains the large area of the enclosure you are currently standing in.”
“But this really is Heaven?”
“Yes. Also known as the Afterlife or Elysium. Or the Celestial Realm. Sometimes the Domain of Bliss. And that’s what it is, if your idea of bliss is thoroughly rotten.”
“Are you Saint Peter?”
“No, I’m his replacement. He became disturbed. Stress of a boring task, standing here endlessly, letting in or refusing entry to souls and the occasional new worker.”
“So who are you?”
The fat man laughed and took a key from his belt. He opened the grimy gate and stood aside.
“My name is Herod. Enter and I’ll show you around.”
The moment Tennyson Jones crossed the threshold, he was saturated with a sense of unstable peace, a contentment that seemed about to end with violence at any given moment. It was a hard feeling to stomach. Herod was aware of his agitation, for he anticipated each pang with his own grimace, but he cared to make no other allowances for it. He took his charge by the elbow and led him from the wall. The landscape was still almost featureless. Flat ground with only a few bumps in the distance, too irregular to be termed hills.
Herod clattered as he walked; he was awkward in his attire, but seemed profoundly at ease with himself, not arrogant or stiff. The calm of a regal but jaded personality. Leaning closer, he announced:
“It’s my task to give you an official tour, make sure you settle in to your first day of work.”
“But why do you need a Heavenly Safety Officer? Isn’t everything already perfect up here?”
“We are in the middle of a crisis. One of the worst problems Heaven has faced. Apocalyptic.”
“Something to do with the Devil?”
“Not at all. The children. They are more dangerous than anything from Hell, which doesn’t really exist anyway.”
“You refer to the massacre of the first born? A shameful act in my opinion. A blot on your reputation.”
Herod smirked. “All in the past. Forgiven and forgotten. I’m talking about the problem we have now. The giant babies. Massive brats. Colossal infants.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. But we are wasting time. I have transportation here for both of us. Our vehicle is a donkey. The holiest means of motion. Recall who rode it into Jerusalem? It gave this particular beast a seal of approval. Product endorsement. Everything he does, the clothes he wears, the wine he drinks, becomes special.”
“I don’t see any animals.”
“I have it here. A bit worse for wear.”
Reaching into hidden pockets and secret inner folds of his robes, Herod drew out a bone. Then a second. He placed these down and fitted them together. He repeated the procedure. The skeleton was constructed like a reversal of decomposition, a mockery of time. It stood erect and grinned in the manner of many things without lips or choice. Tennyson witnessed this partial rebirth with a disappointment no less wide than the cosmic spaces he had recently traversed.
“I thought life in Heaven was eternal?”
Herod nodded. “So it is. But this donkey lost all its flesh in a bizarre accident. The meat is still alive, wherever it is now, and so are the bones. They have carried very heavy men in previous centuries
. We shall ride together.”
He mounted the exposed spine, adjusting his considerable weight on the edges of the vertebrae with a perverse sigh of satisfaction. “Nothing like it for the unmentionable itch!”
Then he beckoned for Tennyson to follow his example. With the addition of a second passenger, the donkey buckled, but soon regained its shape. It made no organic sound; no lungs breathed, no stomach rumbled. Its hooves clicked hollowly on the anaemic terrain like the keys of a broken organ. When it lurched, Tennyson clung desperately to the fat of Herod’s waist, which was slippery and cold and smelled of simple sweat. But the perfume on his robes was complex, a combination of scents less sensible than roses, blood and dung.
“Truth is our destination!” cried Herod. He dug his heels into the ribs of his mount to urge it on.
And so it increased its pace until they had achieved a formidable velocity. Now the landscape altered gradually. They passed the irregular bumps, which moved slowly and silently, altering height and outline. Then came a few unremarkable towers. The roofs of modest houses were next. Herod explained that these lands lay on the edges of Paradise. He spoke of Heaven as having many attributes. One of them was a warped sort of familiarity, which itself is the genesis of contempt. Then he played with this word. Genesis. He held it on the edge of his blubbery lower lip and vibrated it with his upper. He repeated it over and over until Tennyson tearfully begged him to cease.
Herod giggled. “Don’t you read the Bible?”
“I know a little about it.”
“Not good enough! I can recite many different versions in numerous languages. Word perfect. That’s because I am employed by God. And now so are you! Aren’t you willing to learn more? What does the Bible actually say about Heaven? Can you guess?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well it says a lot of things, some of them contradictory. The word for Heaven is often used as a general term for anything that exists above the land of your world. But it is also employed to mean the solid dome of the sky itself. There are windows set in this vault that open to let the rain fall, for there is an ocean beyond the sky. Heaven is an inverted bowl that rests on the pillars of the horizon. These pillars can be shaken. The stars are tiny lamps, perhaps suspended on strings. This dome is incredibly strong, but one day will be smashed. Heaven is also the region above the sky where God has built storehouses for snow, hail and wind. It’s all there in the books of Genesis, Job, Isaiah, Matthew and the Psalms. Check for yourself. But that is geography rather than mysticism.”
“I assume Heaven is much more?”
“Yes, it is a spiritual dimension too. The abode of angels and the best and most obedient human beings. That’s the idea. But in fact there is no Hell and everybody ends up in Heaven when they die. Yet it is the sovereign state of God. His home. It is located higher than anything else and all Towers of Babel, even those powered by oxygen and hydrogen in liquid form and guided by computers, are futile in scope, energy and direction. It is a sin of outrageous pride to attempt to reach Heaven without an invitation. But you are safe; you have been given a job. We are heading towards the capital city now, but you won’t see God. It isn’t permitted. He spends his time sitting on an invisible throne surrounded by members of his court. Angels come in different castes, but they aren’t proper individuals. They tend to be very dull on their own, like wasps separated from a nest.”
“Do the dead humans who come here change? Do they become stupefied with grace and sycophancy?”
“No. They remain ordinary men and women. But all at the same age. Thirty-three. Identical for everybody. Why that particular number of years? Because Jesus was crucified when he was thirty-three. And in Heaven we shall be like him. If you are a century old when you die, your life will be rewound. That’s what the Bible says. So it must be true. I am thirty-three. And now so are you.”
“I don’t recall reading any of that.”
Herod yawned. “1 John 3:2.”
Tennyson let his doubts recede. “Setting the same age for everyone sounds reasonable, but what about those people who die on Earth before reaching the age of thirty-three? What about them?”
Herod was genuinely impressed. “You’ve stated our big problem on your own! I knew you were the right man for the job!”
“So what’s the answer?”
“See for yourself. Look straight ahead!”
Tennyson blinked. “What?”
It was a huge capstan rising directly out of the white ground. The figures that worked it were bedraggled angels. Their feathers trailed in the dust. There was no need for overseer or whip for they were driven by blind obedience and extreme dedication. As they pushed the spokes of the massive machine, they wound a thick cable around a spool. This cable was connected to the horizon and vibrated with a menacing note. Pausing for a minute, Herod observed the toil with a slight grin. He was trying not to enjoy the suffering. He jabbed his heels into the donkey again and they cantered away, following the line of the cable, reaching out occasionally to touch it and absorb the low note, the music racing up their arms and into their hearts. Now there were other sounds. A vile scraping from ahead and above this a pulsing giggle that was monumental and completely mindless.
Something emerged over the horizon and approached them more slowly than they moved toward it, but their combined velocities meant it was soon recognisable. A baby. Forty feet high at least. And as ugly as any infant viewed objectively. It was sitting but its feet had been bound together. This is what the angels were dragging across Heaven. It stopped giggling and began bawling instead. Huge globules of acidic spittle, many containing curls of warm milk like tortured flatworms, flew out and hit them or passed through the frame of the donkey, breaking apart on the edges of its bones, causing it to slip and kick and foam at the fleshless mouth by default, for some of this saliva was driven into its chattering jaw. Herod steered the beast away; and the magnified infant and its pointless tantrum slid past harmlessly.
Tennyson asked simply, “Why?”
Herod replied, “There’s a good reason for this operation. There are too many babies in the nurseries. They need to be segregated, dispersed around the celestial territories. Too much mass has been gathered in too small an area. It creates surplus gravitational fields. Angels in flight have reported difficulties in maintaining altitude. The babies are behind it and they may even destroy everything.”
“And this is now my responsibility?”
“Don’t panic. You’re not expected to settle in fast. You’re the first Heavenly Safety Officer we’ve ever had. There are no precedents for your behaviour. We have to make it up as you go along.”
“How can I possibly deal with giant immortal babies?”
“Wait until you see one of the nurseries.”
“Is that where we’re going?”
“Yes. And at this rate, we’ll be there for feeding time. That’s a sight, sure enough. Gross!”
“What will those angels do with that particular child?”
“When they have finished reeling it in, they will cut open the top layer of the surface of Heaven and push it under the fabric of spiritual spacetime. Then they will sew it up again.”
“Is that what all those irregular bumps are? Massive babies trapped inside the floor of Heaven?”
“Yes, between the dimensions. In Limbo!”
Tennyson thought he felt sick, but it was just a trapped laugh, an immense, bitter laugh, a laugh bigger than his utter mouth.
It appeared that Heaven was creating itself around them, but they were simply moving closer into the finished regions. There were more towers and towns, roads and a few trees. The capital city was still a long way off, but a green glow on the horizon betrayed its existence, somewhere close to infinity. Healthy angels soared overhead. There were many other capstans, some in motion, a few abandoned. The moving hills also became more frequent; one knocked down a town as they passed. There were people too, all thirty-three years old. But there were a few figures th
at seemed wrong. They were both younger and bigger than the majority. There was a direct relation between youth and size. Tennyson decided to question his guide on this point.
Herod was obliging. He replied:
“If you had read the Bible, you would appreciate that at the end of time there will be a new Heaven to replace the old. This suggests the old one isn’t quite good enough. And in fact it isn’t. God didn’t really know what he was doing when he designed it. There was no model. He made mistakes. He has learned from his errors. One of these errors is a flaw in the process of extrapolation of outer identity for souls which expire before their thirty-third birthday.”
“What is the nature of this error?”
“Instead of accelerating age, the process magnifies form. It is automatic and can’t be reversed. It switched itself on when everyone was still flushed after the successful crucifixion of Jesus. It had been set to activate itself then, and it did. Everybody who died after that time but who was younger than this minimum threshold age was physically blown out of all proportion.”
“Is that really so bad?”
“Consider this. If a man is 22 when he dies, then he is two-thirds of the way to being 33. So his age needs to be increased by another half of what it already is. Eleven years. But the automatic system doesn’t do that. It doesn’t extrapolate his outer identity into what for him is the future. Instead, because of a technical hitch, it adds half his size to his frame. If he is six feet tall, his soul is stretched another three feet. He remains only 22 years old in Heaven, but must pass the rest of eternity nine feet high!”
Tennyson gulped. “And if he is only eleven when he dies? His age needs to be tripled? But instead his size is tripled? So if he is five feet high, he will be fifteen feet here?”
