PASSE-PARTOUT: Interlude
In the beginning, God(s) created the universe(s). And each universe was created in God’(s’) own logic. Every decision spawned another universe, each universe spawning universes in turn. There were big bangs, there were big whispers. Some universes died before they could let loose the light of their God(s). Some universes exploded but decimated themselves in the primeval burst. But God(s) continued on, creating and creating, moving left when they could have moved right, each turn flickering another sphere of stars into being. Creating Heavens, creating Hells, each one distinctly different from the others, in infinitely minute and grand ways.
And in this way, existence continued. In some cosmoses, there was no Devil, no Satan. In others there were millions. In some existences, there was no religion, no God, no afterlife: God had left or felt differently. In others, you could live a billion lifetimes, being recreated over and over again until the electrons themselves fell away. In some, the world was a giant hamster wheel, the same lives being lived over and over, the same mistakes being made, the same missed trains. In some of those universes, the infinite populations did not know they walked the wheel, in others, the living chose the same mistakes ad infinitum, and yet were aware that they did so.
Each individual in each universe, cognizant or not, in their turn each created infinite universes where the mistakes they made disappeared, or where they and their loved ones lived forever—infinite happiness or infinite misery. To know that this person or that person could be suffering some ghastly torment forever, over and over, and not just that person, but the infinite versions of that person, is maddening.
Some Gods chose to hide each universe from its kin, fixing a great chasm between them, each universe would never know the others existed (never mind that the same applied to God(s) themselves.) The universes then lived as if they were “only.” Their denizens lived, some peacefully, others violent in ways that stretch the ideas of even their God(s). Some believed in Heaven and Hell (and the various states in between) only to dissolve to dust at death. Others did not, and were, ultimately, very surprised. Some Heavens were astounding in the eyes of God. Some Hells were vile beyond nature, because God had shunned them, or even worse, because He paid them very, very close attention.
Others let the masses see. Those universes inevitably went mad, or rebellious, or grew dissatisfied, or grew immense in knowledge but not wisdom, but yet, inevitably, all would try to travel across, to move to other realities, and, inevitably, would fail, tearing the worlds apart, or tearing themselves apart, or choosing to be a race of hermits after seeing what was across the void.
Sometimes God(s) questioned whether there was a god. He would try to press his awful hand through the transparent and opaque film that separated Him and his question and Him and his question. At times, he walks through the cosmos, and try to catch a glimpse of his shadow, but each and every world he created shone with the reflection of his eternal light. God knew no shadow, and he would never know what the shape, or color, it might contain.
In this, His creations felt more at ease with dark, with looking at the dark silhouettes—reflections of infinite decisions that occur only a Planck’s length away from their harbored breaths. They felt that something more existed because of the blank space or dark matter or the way that a hand felt gentler caressed across a brow than in the intolerable gap caused by two hands that so want to hold each other that the film between them grows flimsy and a push of a trillion other hands that connected in their own bright moments floods into the world and our hearts grow weary of working against infinity.
In some universes, God has left, the Devil (if there happened to be one) didn’t stay long after and they are left to our own devices. But, even then the myriad choices of God resonate after (s)he is gone. Sad, misbegotten wretches walk along streets or swim in boiling rivers and scream (or bubble) “Where is God? Why am I here?” or “Repent! The end is near!” They sit at the bedsides of their loved ones and pray a deep prayer to God, ignorant that miracles exist because God turned right, then he left. That billions (quadrillions?) of years ago, the motion of God’s feet across the skin of the world set in motion the miracle of Mother Mary on a piece of toast. They pray not to God, but to God’s footprints, his exhalation, his quiet and abandoned space. They don’t know that, in some universes, they will encounter a heaven that’s been abandoned, dusty and still, with untold numbers of souls wandering around in the near dark, the only light emanating from the spark of life given to them from God having created the first protein, the first amino acid when he shifted the world just so because He was trying to catch a glimpse of his shadow.
What is a figment of your imagination? You—sitting there reading this on a page, a screen, the air of water that surrounds you—you cast a figment into protein and it takes shape through electricity. How do you know that what you have thought does not now exist somewhere where the film had grown thin, and they peer at you through the worlds? The Devil, in all his hideous nature, was a figment in God’s imagination, cast into spirit and flesh. And, what of Him (or Her) (or They)?
Is physics ignorant of the Adversary? What of his decisions? He chose not to trifle with one person but chose another; in the universe that was thus created, both know torment in their life. Both choose for good and for bad. And another universe is created. And each sad particle of the damned moves, creating infinite universes of the damned who were created only for damnation. There is a universe where Judas never forsook the Christ. Indeed, there is a universe where Judas never met the Savior, having never been born to be the chosen one.
In some reality, just a half Planck-step away, there is a Hell unimaginable. Fire and torment, the worm, the dark, they don’t exist there, being torments palpable. Lovecraft himself, in his unmentionable horrors, would blanche in knowing that it existed. And, yet, exist it does and in its horrors, seethes against the film.
Pray. Pray to God. He does exist. If not in this place, then in another. And if your God does not listen, then perhaps another will. Pray for Paul. Pray for Jamey. Pray for Amos. Pray for Isla, for poor Isla. For, realize that this story may not end here, but spirals into millions upon millions of stories of brick and sky and bone in an infinity of infinities.