By Peter Jackson
August 2016
August 2016
"What I can't believe," said Steve, "is just the brutal, mind-blowing immensity of it. This religion has been around for what, two thousand plus years? And a third of every generation--the world's population, every twenty years--you have, just, what, shooting up into the sky?"
"Well," I demurred, sipping my beer. "It may not be a full third, you know."
"Fine, twenty percent. Still, do the math. Eight billion people. Twenty percent. Every twenty years. That's one-point-six billion people every twenty years. Or eighty million people every year."
"Wait, wait. What's this with the twenty years?"
"Like a generation. A literal generation. It's every twenty years."
"Yeah, but they don't die off all at once every twenty years."
"No, but they have to go somewhere, right? So I'm thinking from the end point, instead of the beginning. All the people that die every twenty years."
"You think the whole Earth's population dies off every twenty years?"
"No, I guess not. I guess you're right."
"So--less than eighty million a year."
"Less, sure. Somewhat. But how many generations do you have on Earth at one time? Five? Maybe six? Let's say five. So we divide our figure by five. Sixteen million a year."
"That's more manageable, right? I mean, the population of heaven can take sixteen million people a year. Less than that for the first couple thousand years, too, you know. We only hit eight billion in the last couple decades."
"Okay, okay. I concede that." Steve paused. "But every twenty years, Dan. And this goes on for how long? It's been two thousand years so far. Two thousand times sixteen million, man. What even is that?"
"Thirty-two billion," I said quietly.
"Yeah. And they never die. So the current population of heaven, assuming current statistics are about average, is thirty-two billion."
We were both silent for a bit. The late summer evening wafted gently toward us, carried through the dark trees. A bank of clouds was gathering up in the night sky. I got up to get us another couple of beers. When I came back, Steve had crunched some more census numbers for heaven.
"So on the one hand, maybe I'm being generous with twenty percent of all people going to heaven. Let's say it's just five percent."
"Five? That's harsh."
"Nah. How many people actually believe in your quaint fairy tales these days anyway, Dan? I mean, I'm fond of you, but Christianity is a Hegelian construct, an anachronism from the days of imperialism and industrialism. We've outgrown it, as a species."
I smiled. "Hmm. Well, I haven't."
"Anyway. So if we're only saddled with five percent of you weirdos, and the rest of my math is about the same, then heaven is only just now cresting eight billion people. So basically it's got the same population as Earth."
"Good to know."
"Maybe. I could stand to have fewer people here, personally."
"But then again, you're a brute, Steve. An uncouth heathen."
"Yes, there is that. You're trying to change the subject. I have a huge 'but' to deliver."
("You can say that again," I muttered. Steve continued unabated.)
"So here's the thing. Christianity promises the whole Earth will be consumed by a lake of fire. Let's let that be true. And, in fact, let's borrow physics and say it's going to happen because our good old sun just happens to get hot and expand. Fortunately for us, we have a time scale on this, right? We know this will happen in around three billion years. But even before it happens, Earth will be totally uninhabitable, starting around one billion years from now."
"Actually," I said, "I did not know any of that."
"You're welcome," said Steve.
"A billion years?"
"Yes. We have around a billion years left."
"I'd better pack," I quipped. "Anyway, let me guess. More math."
"Yes."
"Another guess. Heaven's population is in what, the trillions?"
"Quadrillions. Four quadrillion, to be precise. And that's with just five percent Christians, and assuming Earth's population plateaus at only eight billion souls."
"So it's a lower bound--"
"Yes. Upper bound on this is twenty quadrillion. That's with twenty percent believers, and Earth's population averaging ten billion souls. Which to be fair, is still conservative."
I was quiet for a minute. The bats were busy diving for bugs, in the dark spaces between the trees in the yard. The sky had turned overcast and threatening, with stiff gusts of wind. No rain yet, though. Steve was poking at something on his phone.
"That's a lot of people," I said quietly.
After a pause, Steve exploded. "That's what kills me, man. How can you believe this? How is that even possible? Twenty quadrillion people? No way. Heaven is a sham. You can't just have person after person show up to this party and never die. You can't even imagine how many people you're talking about."
"Yeah."
"It's just a poorly-conceived invention, Dan. There's no way around it."
"Oh, I don't know about that. Maybe there's something we don't understand."
"What is there to misunderstand, though? We did the math!"
"Yeah." I sipped my beer again. A quadrillion is not really a sensible unit. No human can really imagine a quadrillion of anything.
Steve was still picking at his phone. Finally he clicked it off and tossed it gently on the deck table with a sigh. I was lighting a cigarette.
"So that planet we were watching," he said.
"Yeah, M76-Alpha-something-something."
Steve laughed. "Not even close. But yeah. Turns out those blips were nothing."
"No life?"
"No." He lit his cigarette in turn.
"Bummer."
"Sorry to change topics, but I just don't get it, honestly. I mean I've read the hypotheses about why we don't find life. Maybe we're early, as living beings go. Maybe it's more rare than we thought for life of our complexity to emerge. Maybe life usually exists on another plane. Maybe, maybe. Whatever." He paused, flicking an ash off the deck. "In all that space, though--why haven't we found life?"
"How many planets are out there?" I asked, with a smile in my eyes. "More than a quadrillion?"
"Oh, piss off," he laughed.
A little while later, he had to go. I saw him to the door. "Drive safe," I said. Moving around my living room, I started to pick up from the day. Toys my kids had left in the couch were replaced on the shelves; wine glasses and dishes from dinner went to the kitchen. Everything was straightened up in about half an hour. I went outside for a last glimpse of the night before heading up to bed.
I was sitting on the porch, pondering Steve's point, when the tree came down. The wind had picked up and was pressing my trees this way and that, branches whipping into a frenzy. Suddenly a big oak, leaning over the porch, snapped somewhere midway up. A giant portion of the trunk came shooting down like a missile. I remember briefly glancing up in curiosity and astonishment before everything went dark.
When I came around, literally everything was different.
I immediately gathered that I had died, or something even more unexpected had occurred. My body felt younger and stronger. My mind felt sharp and energetic. The tired, frumpy dad of three was a bright thirtysomething with a good back and strong legs. I briefly considered that I was naked, but it seemed irrelevant.
I had awoken in a pod of some sort, upright, like I'd seen in science fiction movies after people were cryogenically frozen or placed in some kind of imaginary stasis cell. The front was made completely of a curved glass, and I was apparently buckled gently against a soft, upright couch. Although I was standing, I didn't seem to be exerting any effort to stand. Even as I noticed all this, the glass casing unsealed with a hiss and slid back into the wall on my right.
There had apparently been some kind of light on in the pod, because my eyes took a moment (but it seemed a very brief moment, I noticed) to adjust to the dim exterior of my pod. I stepped out onto a narrow pathway in front of my pod. Next to my pod and stretching off to the left and right as far as I could see was a wall of similar pods; on the other side of the path, a cavernous space yawned open. Far across this opening, I saw another wall of pods stretching up above and below me as far as I could see.
"Rather impressive, don't you think?" asked a voice. I turned to see a woman approaching from several yards off. She was beautiful, and also naked, although it seemed to me I couldn't remember why either thing ever mattered.
"Yes," I agreed.
"Welcome to heaven, Dan," she said, and immediately I somehow knew her name was Theresa, and that I had died, and that somehow, this was indeed heaven.
"Thanks," I answered, confused; then: "Do I know you--"
"No," she laughed. "You'll get used to it. You just...know things, now."
"Oh."
"I'm one of the saints assigned to shepherd this seed ship," she went on. Her eyes were piercing and kind. "You're an early arrival, but not the first." She noticed my gaze returning to the wall of pods, row on row and column on column stretching back into the shadows, and she added, "And you're clearly not the last."
"Sorry," I said, "but can you back up a bit? I take it I've died?"
"--And Christ redeemed you," she immediately said. A wave of strange joy came over me at the name.
"Okay." The confusion in my eyes asked a hundred silent questions.
"You died several hundred thousand years ago. The oak tree killed you; freak accident. Your wife remarried happily. Your boys grew up well, and all three married happily. You had four grandchildren." She paused. "Of course, you now have well over a hundred thousand descendents."
I suppose I should have expected that, but I hadn't. I audibly gasped, then laughed. "So, I guess it's been a while."
She smiled good naturedly. "It's been a while."
"How's Earth doing?"
"Totally uninhabitable. That's of course what set the seed ships into motion."
"Oh? What do--" And then, suddenly, in the same way I knew her name without hearing it, I suddenly also saw the seed ships blinking into existence. A great cloud of them, each of them the size of a small moon, filled with new human bodies in these comfortable pods. A new body, a new heaven, a new Earth. I witnessed the translation, the salvation of Christ saving souls, setting them aside in a new dimension until the day of reckoning--the day of abandoning Earth--came on.
Theresa was smiling. "We are rapidly approaching our destination, which is a new Earth in a galaxy not altogether far away, in galactic terms, from our own old Milky Way."
"What will we do when we get there?"
"We'll worship and serve the Lord, Daniel."
"Oh," I said, a little flustered. That was unexpectedly...religious. "Is He there?"
"Not exactly. Not all the time. But we don't plan to stand around and sing. Hallmark cards didn't get it right, Dan. This isn't an eternal church service--it's an eternal life. We'll garden, and we'll paint. We'll build civilizations and cities and explore open land and plant crops. We'll swim the oceans and find the gems of a new world. We'll write symphonies and build masterpieces of architecture. We'll make movies and watch plays and have histories and cultures and societies that thrive and fail."
"That sounds pretty much like Earth, though. Isn't that just--the same thing we did before?"
"Yes."
And then it struck me that this time we could do it all--differently. Without sin. Without death. Without hate and malice. As immortal beings, we could travel impossible distances between the stars; what is a thousand lightyears to an infinite being? Each seed ship would leave in its wake a hundred budding Earths, and in the millions of years to come they would foster an intergalactic economy, a future swept out among the stars.
"The universe will be full of us," I breathed.
"Not quite, it turns out," she laughed.
"No?"
"Twenty quadrillion was actually an underestimate, but the universe is a very big place. Even with several billion of us on each world--and some larger worlds holding trillions--there are more places to explore, more gardens to cultivate, more stars to watch and visit, than we will ever exhaust."
"Huh," I said. "I guess Steve was wrong."
"No," she corrected me, "he was right all along. It really is immense. More so than you can possibly imagine."
