by Rob J Meijer
Tales of shrouded history
Atheist Afterlife
Rob J Meijer
Copyright 2015 Rob J Meijer
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Acknowledgement
First and foremost I would like to thank my very dearest of friends (who I shall not name here) for allowing me to use her as a crucial character in this story without who, the main character in this story would have lacked depth and would have been to much of a sulky douchbag. I also thank the very valuable input and encouragement I received from my beta readers Oscar Vermaas and Phillip Ebral. I would like to thank my editor, Jackie Davis, who did an amazing job polishing my work into something I can confidently publish. I also would like to thank the talented Keith Draws for providing me with the amazing cover art that truly captures what this story conveys in a phenonamal way. Last but not least I would like to thank 'you', the reader for picking up this publication and for considering it worth your time.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Bad Tidings
Chapter 2: Old Friends
Chapter 3: Bright Darkness
Chapter 4: Contemplation
Chapter 5: New Horizons
Chapter 6: Ritual
Chapter 7: Reunion
Chapter 8: Bifröst
Chapter 1
*Bad Tidings*
“Inconvenient timing !” Those were David’s first and only thoughts after the doctor had told him the bad news. How could he complete the manuscript now that he had most likely only a few months left to live? Not a single thought about his own impending doom. He had known the message would come for a very long time. He just didn’t know when. Only the manuscript mattered to David at this point in time.
Humanity was sick, and David’s research could be just what the doctor ordered. The time David had left might still be just enough. If only his own disease would allow David to continue working at almost full capacity for the next two months. Remembering the fate that had befallen both his mother and his two elder brothers, David knew the chances of this happening now had become pretty slim. David had entered the final stages of the disease.
His work could have changed the role of science in society. It could have lead humanity into a new era. An era free of superstitions, free of charlatans preying on the vulnerable by claiming supernatural powers, and most importantly, an era free of the evils of religion.
David's parents had both been devout believers, and so had both he and his brothers. In the end David had felt a great sense of relief when he had cut all his ties to the church. How could he believe in a God that allowed his mother and his brothers to die such dreadful premature deaths? But most importantly, how could any ‘loving’ God allow David’s young daughter to be diagnosed as a carrier of the same awful disease that had killed both his Mom and his brothers?
While the death of his mother had left David with feelings of incredible anger towards God, the day his daughter Angelique was diagnosed as being in the first stage of the same devastating disease was the day David became an atheist. It was that day when David decided that religion was a plague that needed to be stopped, and David would do anything in his power to stop it.
The disease was terrible and relentless, but at least it was real and honest. Unlike the religion that his mother had clung to up until the very end. Even the last words she spoke with her battered body’s very last and painful breath carried a plea for mercy to higher powers. The priest at her burial even had the audacity and bad timing to say that God had a plan for every one of us and that there was a bigger plan behind his mom’s death. What kind of evil and sadistic God would conceive of a plan where multiple generations from one family were decimated by this slow and terrible disease?
No, there was no bigger plan, no God, no afterlife, just this existence right now, with no purpose other than handing down knowledge to the next generation. Religion? Religion was a collective delusion, a terrible disease that caused war and suffering.
David had known about the odds even before he and his wife had met. His religion though, had dictated that anticonception wasn't an option.
David loved his precious little angel Angelique with all his heart. But to know what she, too, would likely be facing, he wished he had seen the light about religion before. He and his wife should have used anticonception. Hell, even an abortion would have been a valid option if it could have spared Angelique this path of pain and suffering.
His mother and his brothers could have had a dignified end if their religious mindset had not taken away their option of choosing their own moment and manner of leaving this world. No, religion in David’s memory was a concept that was inextricably tied to guilt and suffering. An undeniable evil that David passionately desired to purge humanity from. David’ s IQ was phenomenal—he knew he was one of the smartest people on earth—and he used the full power of his intellect in his attempt to rid this planet of its terrible ailment. David was a mathematician. His work on the “Proof of absence paradox” could allow other scientists to once and for all scientifically prove the absence of anything paranormal by applying his new theorem to the result of carefully constructed experiments. David’s work was almost done, but without a manuscript ready for publication before his death, David’s theorem would most likely die with him. David had created an entirely new branch of mathematics to complete his theorem. For four years of his life he had worked on the theorem, and just when completion was within grasp, the final stage of his disease had come along to spoil things.
Religion was a terrible disease that was causing pain and suffering to countless people. It was the reason for much violence and numerous wars throughout human history. It was the reason his own mother had taken months to die a slow and painful death while her life could have ended quickly and painlessly instead.
Yes, religion was a disease much worse than the disease that was about to kill David. It was ironic that the disease that had cured David from this other disease, his religion, would now most likely not allow him to cure the rest of the world. The odds were against David finishing his manuscript before the disease would make working impossible. But that would not stop David from trying.
Chapter 2
*Old Friends*
David’s talk
with Naila had not gone the way David had hoped or expected. It had given David something much more valuable than what he could ever have hoped for, though. Naila was a dear friend and a brilliant and distinguished Wolf-prize-winning mathematician. In addition to that, Naila had acquired a PhD in a handful of other subjects, including physics and biology. When Naila had finally found time in her busy schedule to come and visit him in the hospital, David had been filled with hope about convincing her to continue his important work. If there was one scientist in this world who was intelligent and skilled enough in both mathematics and physics to complete his work with only his chaotic notes to work with, it was Naila.
David was a brilliant mathematician, but at the same time David combined his off-the-scale intelligence and fast-paced thinking with a total lack of discipline regarding work in progress. To put it bluntly, when it came to archiving his work and keeping records and indexes, David had the attention span of a toddler. On any given day, David would work on a few dozen sub-problems and other things completely unrelated to his work. At the end of the day most of his work would end up in the ‘unsorted’ segment of David's archive, often together with unrelated scribbles regarding things like an analysis of geopolitical events which David had scribbled down after reading his daily stack of international newspapers, David’s notes regarding his ongoing struggles with the creation of the perfect lamb stew recipe, notes from David’s wife regarding dry cleaning that he had forgotten to pick up during the day, and many other such pieces of paper that truly did not belong there. Effectively, the sorted part of David's archive existed mostly inside his brain.
After David had gotten the bad news, he had started to frantically work at sorting out his notes and had started putting substantial time into his paper. The final stage of the disease had gone faster than David had expected though. After only two weeks, David had lost the use of his legs, and one week later the tremors in his hands had grown so bad that it became impossible for him to continue his work on his own. In the four weeks before David was hospitalized, he had managed to burn through six assistants. He wasn’t asking them to do anything intellectually challenging, but even for doing the mundane tasks involved with sorting out David's archive under his supervision, their brains were simply working too slow for David’s diminishing patience. And what was worse, each of them, having been selected by HR based partially on their Mensa membership, had been so confident of their own mental abilities that they all refused to accept that David’s criticism as justified. Naila was David’s last hope.
Naila had been David’s only remaining true friend. Their relationship had been rather complex, though. Naila, at the time that David met her, had been something of a stowaway student. One morning, while giving the last lecture before a major examination, David had been pleasantly surprised by the fact that the attendance was significantly higher than it normally was. Being used to large numbers skipping classes, David took a few seconds to do a quick headcount: “507?!” No. that couldn’t be right! There were only 506 students enrolled in his class! A quick recount, however, confirmed it. The lecture after the exam David had discovered what happened. One pretty young dark-skinned girl that looked a tiny bit more mature than most of her classmates appeared to show absolutely no interest in the grades that David had put up near the classroom door. When confronted by David, who queried her about her lack of interest in her grade, the girl ended up admitting to him that she did not take the exam due to the fact that in fact she wasn't really one of the students. Naila turned out to be a bright morning cleaning crew member that was secretly hanging around to attend advanced math and science classes. Although Naila lacked any form of formal education, this young lady had managed to educate herself beyond what David had thought humanly possible.
What happened after that was where things had grown to become emotionally quite complex for David.
Being intrigued by her amazing story, instead of reprimanding this young girl he had gone out of his way to bend the rules for her. For the first time in his life, David realized the limits of his own intellect, and, more importantly, for the first time in his life, David realized many of his own shortcomings. This young girl without even a completed elementary school education had managed to pick up more from being a stowaway in university lectures and in the university library, than any student David had ever taught. And more, this was not your average high IQ individual. This young intelligent girl was almost like a force of nature. Alive in a way that David had not been since…, no, David would not allow his mind to go there.
David took Naila under his wing at the university, helped her get formal recognition for her incredible autodidactically-obtained knowledge and skills. Two years later Naila had obtained her first PhD under his supervision. But referring to himself as Naila’s mentor would in no way do justice to their complex relationship. Naila was 15 years younger than David, and in the academic sense David had definitely been her mentor, but in a way that really counted, she had in fact been his mentor instead.
Naila had shown David how to extract every little bit of life out of every day, even while life kept throwing horrible events at them. David treasured each and every exhilarating moment that he had the privilege of spending with this amazingly complete person. Her vibrant personality combined with her street-smart intelligence and a deep, spiritual wisdom that was sometimes quite disconcerting coming from someone her age. This was what made Naila more David’s mentor and maybe even David’s muse. In a way Naila and David were very much alike. Naila to David was the person David hoped he himself could be if only he could capture some of her attitude towards life and the misfortunes on life’s road.
David had carried a deep secret for many years. A secret that he would take with him to his grave. David loved his wife with all his heart, but for a truly long time David had been secretly and deeply in love with Naila in a way that exceeded David’s capacity to cope with his own feelings and emotions. Or had he really been in love? David had never really been in touch with his feelings. All he knew was that spending time with Naila was like a drug to him. Oh, that amazing mind and vibrant force-of-nature personality. To David, at that time, the world never moved at his pace. All those annoying narrow- and small-minded people with their excruciatingly slow mental processes.
David’ s brain had been a chaotic mess, but a fast-working chaotic mess.
Ah, those inconvenient feelings. Why did Naila have to be this vibrant and intelligent? Why of all people did it have to be this beautiful young lady, his student, that was the only person David had ever met that he could have an intelligent ‘full-speed’ discussion with about things other than science? Why did Naila have to be so amazing, and why of all people did David have to develop feelings for her that exceeded any emotion David had ever felt in his life for anything or anyone, that exceeded even David’s emotions for his beautiful wife Sarah. Luckily David's feelings had subsided now, and neither his wife nor Naila would ever need to know about them. David had realized quickly enough that he had to let go of Naila. He used his influence to create a career opportunity for her far away from him. David’s feelings for his beautiful and caring wife Sarah did not deserve to be overshadowed by his feelings for Naila. No, Naila was amazing, but at the same time she was toxic to him, a toxic addiction. And David knew how to deal with an addiction. No matter how bad it made him feel, and no matter how much David valued their friendship, Naila was a drug to him. David decided to do what he had done before in the face of addiction, he decided he had to go cold turkey. After Naila left to America, it had taken five full years for David to get her out of his system completely.
But now, after years of keeping his distance out of fear of rekindling his own, hopefully one-sided, feelings, Naila had become his last hope with respect to the completion of his work on his theorem.
Only she could make sense of his chaotic archives. Only she could complete his work if he could just convince her of the importance of getting it finished and published. Nai
la might even be the best person for doing what he could not: making the essential leap from pure math to physics. Little did he expect their six- hour long talk to go where it did. Naila, like she had done many times before in the past, had presented David with a clarity of vision that had put David’s tenacious pursuit of his paradox into a completely different perspective. Would she continue David's life work? Naila had not promised David anything regarding his work, but she was not the kind of person to commit in any professional sense. She was almost as much of a scatterbrain as David, but she had gotten to grips with it much better than David had. She had given David something else though: a sense of perspective.
After their talk, his priorities shifted significantly.
David finally, and quite possibly too late, realized he had even more important things to do. Over the last four years David had withdrawn from his own life through working on his personal crusade against religion. So much so that he had even shut out his own wife and daughter in a frantic attempt to complete his life's work before his death.
Naila had once more opened his eyes to his own limited talent for truly being alive. He discovered that no, he had probably not actually been in love with Naila. He instead might just have been in love with the feeling of being alive that Naila’s vibrant personality and their intense intellectual and spiritual discussions had brought into his life, with all the clarity of mind Naila had given him regarding life’s priorities.
David knew now what he had to do. He had to let go of his battles. There was nothing left now that David could do now regarding his life’s work. He should give his wife and daughter the farewell they both deserved. Thinking back on his life after his talk with Naila, things were put into a quite different perspective.
