Andrew was late. On arriving at the Brobdingragian building in which was located the room in which the moving finger testily tapped a tattoo waiting to record Andrew’s future and move on he found that the Devil had placed a number of human obstacles at the doorway in order to vex him further. He patiently allowed the entire bloody herd through, smiling a genial greeting at each while he pumped the heat out of his shirt and caught the breath that had escaped him on his jog.
Andrew registered his arrival at the front desk and allowed himself a moment to enjoy the air conditioned interior of the building as he quickly arranged his clothes and hair. The girl at the desk (who seemed as at all times to occupy the wrong amount of space, a smaller space than would be required by her five feet and six inches and fifty-five kilograms), observing the effect of clocks upon Andrew’s facial muscles, assured him that Mr. Brobdingrag would understand that things happen and he had nothing to worry about. Andrew had not heard this over the roar and rush of his thoughts and was not assured.
Andrew leapt the stairs two or three at a time to the third floor where the lifts stopped (as the lowest floors were added late). He wrestled his breath back into him on his ride to the sixth floor where he was informed that the interviews had been moved to the seventh floor. He called the lift back but immediately reconsidered and leapt the final flight of stairs in stead, one, two, or three at a time.
He entered the corridor at whose far end stood a humble door which, as it approached, steadily grew in height and breadth and other dimensions too which are perceptible only by senses that are kept torpid except in times of stress. Now menacing in its stature the door seemed to dare Andrew to just give it an excuse to lamp him. Fighting for control of his terror Andrew tapped a glass pane on the door two times with a knuckle and turned the knob then immediately turned the knob back around when a voice from inside commanded him that
‘You will wait outside until called like everybody else!’
and a second voice confirmed ‘Like everybody else.’
Andrew spun on his right heel, then his left, then his right again and dropped into a chair amongst many empty chairs along the sides of the corridor to wait to be called. He felt the phantom thigh of the applicant who had earlier sat in the next chair press against his own flesh-and-bone thigh. He winced with an embarrassment which felt no less real for the fact that its cause was not - then he imagined it again. The pain was slightly enjoyable. He imagined the pressure of a stranger’s thigh against his again, each thigh informing the outline of the other, taking each other’s shape, competing for and almost occupying the same space, each thigh sharing the heat of its blood with the blood of a stranger.. He was snatched from his reverie by the sound of a door being opened aggressively.
‘Is that the boy who didn’t show up?’ called a disembodied voice across a distance.
‘Well? Are you?’ said at least the head and hand of a man.
‘No- I mean yes, and I’m sorry about that. I mean I am here now though. Better late than never!’ was Andrew’s attempt at establishing rapport.
‘Best to be on time really. I cannot abide poor time keeping. Shows a lack of respect, yes? Well in you come then.’
The arm of the hand of the man stretched to swing the door to ninety degrees, revealing the rest of a man behind it. Andrew pushed himself out of his chair and in the same motion stepped towards the door to follow the man inside. A ceiling fan blew currents of stale air around the room. Vibrant paper in weighted stacks ached to take wing. Countless specks of matter emerged dancing within beams of sunlight and were annihilated on venturing beyond. The man took his position at a desk behind which two others were already sat and Andrew placed himself in a chair facing them.
‘Nobody told you that you could sit down,’ said one of the men, Kunst, with his chin resting on his interlaced fingers and his gaze directed through his eyebrows.
Andrew stood up again as quickly as if he had found the chair occupied. ‘No you’re right, sorry,’ he said to the floor.
‘Alright. You may sit,’ said Kunst. Andrew sat.
‘And I’m sorry, again, er, for the belatedness of my, er..’ said part of Andrew’s voice.
‘Sorry? Speak up boy,’ said the second man, Fugger. Andrew cleared his throat and began again.
‘I was just saying, again that I’m..’
‘Don’t you raise your voice at us,’ said the third man, Harding, efficiently using one forefinger simultaneously to wag disapprovingly and point accusingly.
‘No manners at all,’ said Fugger from behind closed eyelids. ‘Taking this tone with us after failing to respect our time - for which he would have apologized by now, assuming a modicum of decency.’
The other two nodded in concurrence.
‘I wasn’t..’
‘You really think you’re special, don’t you?’ sneered Harding along his finger.
‘No I..’
‘You think you can roll in here any time you please, insult us, antagonize us, and disrupt our work. Well I’ll just rise above it,’ said Kunst.
‘I’m not trying to contradict you sir, but..’
‘Are you now, in my own building, to my own face, accusing me of being a liar?’ roared Kunst, who had to be bodily restrained by the other two.
‘Do you see what you’ve done? Do you see?’ pleaded Harding, baring his sclera and gingiva. But Andrew did not.
Above this scene another drama had been playing out to an audience of none until one by one the three men took notice of the increasingly chaotic motion of the ceiling fan and its visibly loosening bolt. All three men silently fixed their gaze on the fan, one still attempting to pounce across the desk, the others struggling with the arms of the first, all unable to act in the face of inevitability. The single bolt on whose permanence the fan relied finally came loose. The three men each cowered into their chairs under their own arms. Curious, Andrew also raised his face to the falling fan. The muscles of his face sought refuge at the back of his head as he cried out ‘Allahu akbar!’ which ended in a gurgle as the fan, still turning, continued towards the ground via Andrew.
The three men each peeked a timid eye at the scene then sat upright and straightened their clothes, laughing with relief.
‘Saved, by God’s mercy!’ said Harding breathlessly.
‘Shame about young, er, who was it?’ said Fugger.
‘O yes terrible shame, terrible. Right I believe that was the last one. Call Brenda up here and get this cleaned up, then how about drinks at the club?’ suggested Kunst while removing all of his clothes which he placed next to Harding’s, both sets neatly folded, on the desk.
‘Already on it,’ said Fugger, holding a telephone to his head with one hand while undoing his shirt buttons and tie with the other. ‘Yes darling, I need you to call the Large Team to the seventh floor for a Situation Green, would that be alright? Okay I’ll leave it with you, bye, bye.’
=================
‘No he didn’t. What, a ceiling fan?’
‘Seriously, I’m telling you. It made salami of him. Sorry.’ The speaker pulled a face at Andrew which they hoped resembled a human face when displaying sympathy. Andrew only wanted to know where he was and how he got there. He thought he’d be dead or at least mildly injured and still being abused by three baffling men.
‘O you have died bab. There’s no reviving you, you need a resurrection and a really good plastic surgeon. Sorry, that was too blunt wasn't it?’
It was an angel who was speaking to him. There were two angels, like oblong suns. The three were surrounded by total emptiness, the emptiness of the view behind one’s own head. The size of the angels and their distance from Andrew could not easily be determined. Andrew tried to shield as much of their brightness with his hands as he could but to no use.
The angel continued. ‘It should have been impossible really. I guess it was a miracle! No that’s not funny, I shouldn’t laugh. But hey there’s another way you’re one-in-a-gajillion. I don’t know if you’ve got this yet but we’re angels, hi! You’re dead and this is where we decide whether you go to Paradise, very nice, or Jahannam which you'll probably know as Hell, that’s the one where you definitely don’t want to be. So we were actually meant to take you to Hell but because you chose to do your little deathbed conversion, if you like, you’re spending eternity in Paradise! How lucky are you!’
Andrew was being fed more information than he had hitherto ever had to process at once. Even he could tell how far reaching must be the implications of a death by miracle. Hell and Paradise were real after all. There were angels and an afterlife in which he had retained what seemed to be his body. He was dead. Deathbed conversions work. A falling ceiling fan really can kill. (Would his mum sue the manufacturer?)
By now Andrew’s eyes had begun to adjust to the powerful light radiated by the angels. He had become able faintly to discern the shapes of their bodies. They were almost humanoid or at least anthropoid. At times he felt he was able to apprehend the forms of them without his senses. He felt that their long bones were scantily wrapped in meat from various origins and their distant eyes contained a palpable malevolence. Andrew was primarily troubled by the matter of Hell and asked for clarity on this.
‘I could have sworn they got prophets didn’t they?’ inquired one angel of the other.
‘Loads of them. And holy books. Don’t tell me this is all a surprise to you. O bab,’ said the second angel and made a pouty face which did not adequately convey sympathy.
Andrew stammered ‘I wasn’t really much into religion..’
‘It’s one of those!’ laughed an angel, striking together the tip segments of their forelimbs in a display of mirth and delight. ‘Bless. Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. The Boss makes you like that, no interest in it. If I didn’t already know that it’s all part of the big plan I’d think it was such an unfair trick. But that’s not for us to say.’
‘Not for us to say,’ echoed the other angel.
‘You really don’t know then do you? So when you die you’re taken to live forever in either of two places decided by us based on the Boss’s rules. Some of you, if you kept your nose clean when you were alive, get to live in a lovely garden that the Boss made just for you. And some unfortunately do get the dirty end of the stick because they still choose to break the rules - and that’s fine, how you live your life is up to you - and those have to work for the Boss forever.’
On remembering that a human will often display their emotional state on their face in encrypted form and noticing for the first time the stunned expression which Andrew’s face had held since his arrival an angel told him ‘Cheer up! None of that matters now anyway because you’re already through the loophole! We just need to tick a few more boxes and then we’re away. Now, firstly. Who is your god?’
Andrew stammered ‘um I don’t really know, my mum and dad weren’t religious so I’m not. I've never been to church but I guess I’ve always felt there’s got to be something..’
An angel made a gesture to indicate that Andrew could now cease waffling. ‘Yourself then, that’s not a problem. So that Allahu akbar as you died..?’
Andrew shrugged. ‘Must have heard it somewhere. It’s funny what comes out sometimes. My aunt Jean, who never swears, right..’
‘Okay that’s all fine and next- o you've answered this one. Okay finally- Who is your prophet?’
‘I dunno. Never knew I needed one.’
‘Okay not applicable, not a problem at all.’
The angel sucked air through their teeth as a show of sympathy and tapped a clipboard with a pen, both of which they had not been holding until that moment.
‘So I’m afraid this means that we are still going to have to put you through Hell for a short while, really sorry. Since you were naughty the whole time until your deathbed conversion, didn’t even believe in the Boss, um. But it’s only for a quick few hundred million years, just to clean you up. You’ll be done before you know it’s started!’
‘What- so I am going to Hell?’ asked Andrew, surprised that his mind was still more or less intact under all of these elastic forces.
‘Just for a bit. I promise you’ll be in and out and then you’ll have the rest of eternity to enjoy Paradise without all that gross sin on you’.
Dragging his feet, Andrew followed the angel into Jahannam. The ambient heat cooked his eyes nearly instantly. ‘Aw, never mind. You’re not going to need them here anyway,’ said the angel and they were right. So strange to light was this place that the darkness hungrily devoured all light radiated by the angel who had disappeared into the uniform black of their surroundings, though their light was intense enough to disintegrate baryonic matter. Andrew sobbed with the pain and the sorrow.
From the time Andrew became aware of the angel’s absence the physical pain was almost bearable in comparison to the profound loneliness that was to define his existence and world for eons to come, though his skin regenerated even while it burned away, denying him even the mercy of the loss of his pain receptors. It soon became clear that the ground that heaved and shifted and repeatedly caused him to trip and stumble had been built from the living bodies of others in his position. Those twigs must have been fingers. Those rocks must have been skulls. It was living viscera into which his feet had been sticking, not mud. But he felt no love for or from any of them.
There was no quantum of time in Jahannam. The passing of a moment did not reduce the weight of the time still ahead as any measure of time was identical to any other, effectively smearing the past and future into a present with no end. Experience did not harden Andrew against pain. When it is not absolute pain may create negative spaces wherein which there might exist oases of certain singular pleasures. Jahannam permitted only pain. Pain had assumed permanent occupancy of Andrew’s awareness into its narrowest crannies, had mineralized him atom by atom, permitting nothing of the person he had once been. He had become reduced beyond an abject beast. He was a machine dedicated to the sole task of suffering.
As death would be extravagant it and therefore also permanent injury were strictly forbidden in Jahannam. With the right sight the design of Jahannam might be regarded as elegant, perhaps even beautiful. Provided the fuel production plants remained operational indefinitely Jahannam was a self-sustaining power plant that renewed its own fuel.
The environment of Jahannam was designed with conditions that caused the growth of healing cancer in every tissue of the bodies of its inhabitants. This cancer was fed with Jahannam’s own surplus energy which was infinite over eternity. Strictly speaking their organs maintained homeostasis by growing cancer at the rate at which they burnt away, they did not and were unable truly to regenerate lost limbs and organs.
As Andrew burned his body healed itself haphazardly. At times he was compelled to ambulate on flesh that was not meant for that purpose. His organs regrew in new shapes and positions every time and not necessarily in their correct layer order. When he stood still he would heal to the ground and risk fusing his body with the great mass of bodies eternally to oscillate in place into and out of existence. As Andrew wandered sometimes he would step off the edge of the ground and fall through empty space for thousands of years like a burning meteor that can never be spent and does not shine.
But finally, as he was bound to be, Andrew was transported whence he had been taken. His ego restored, he fought with every limb and tooth against whatever was happening to him.
‘Fuck off fucking fuck the fucking fuck right fucking off-’
‘Hey hey hey easy tiger. Take as much time as you need to readjust. I told you didn’t I, you’d be out before you knew you’d been in. Come on now. You did smashing.’
The angel filled Andrew’s body with a sort of photic vapour which recalled to him the sensation of a sip of hot tea. Andrew’s pupils gradually became still under his closed lids. His limbs desisted in violence. His breaths gradually slowed and deepened. He became aware of the tension in his every muscle by its gradual dissolution. He remembered that he was Andrew.
‘That would have been your job forever,’ an angel told Andrew after a considered period of time. ‘So how that world works is it eats suffering and produces heat. That’s why the Boss made you in the first place.' The angel suppressed a giggle. 'Actually it’s why He made your whole universe. You’re really good at making pain and the Boss needed loads of that.’
With great difficulty Andrew’s mind held its integrity. The angel continued.
‘I say He needs your pain. What He really wants is the heat that He gets from your pain. Where the Boss lives, there’s nothing, less than what you’re thinking of when you think of nothing. It’s an absolute vacuum. Do you know what the temperature is in an absolute vacuum? It’s absolute zero. So He did something about it.’
‘Right..’ said Andrew.
‘Hm,’ said the angel, a giggle fighting them back. ‘A lot of you come here thinking that the Boss made Hell to punish them. As if you’re that important, no offense bab! It’s the other way around. Hell came first, He only made you to keep it hot. At one time that was all any of you did, forever. One day I guess He had a crisis of conscience about it all and decided that you deserved a choice, He even started going by a new name which we think really suits the new Him. Then blah blah blah, you’re going to Paradise.’
Andrew’s mind valiantly struggled on against the assault.
‘I guess once He got to know you He became fond of you, ah. Now all you’ve got to do is believe in Him before you die- that’s all it takes! Then in stead of working for Him you get to live in a special world that He made just for you. Obviously He can’t make it too easy or else you’ll all be taking advantage. You’re actually one of a really tiny really lucky group. Right well I think you’re all set. Have a happy eternity!’
Before his mind completely rent Andrew was already in Paradise. Immediately on his arrival the atmosphere closely embraced him under its reassuring bosom. Pearlescent rivers cut courses that flew in the face of the physics that Andrew took for granted. Shining birds whose feathers took on a different set of colours at every angle plucked and cooked themselves at the moment they were struck by their empathy for appetite. Buds of manifest joy opened and closed in untold numbers, unable to be contained.
The ground could be limited to two dimensions if that was the sort of ground that was preferred, or it could have any number, various in extent and curvature, and provide as much freedom of movement as one desired. Andrew could reach forwards and tap himself on the back, should the notion strike him. The strength and direction of gravity could be adjusted at will, allowing Andrew to catch currents of air in his outstretched palms and swim the atmosphere.
Even here there were flora and fauna, agarics and songbirds and kinds never experienced before. The atoms of this world were colonial quanta of consciousness that adored Andrew. With every drink Andrew made communion with the love and bliss that suffused the material of this world. Filaments materialized before his eyes and self-spun into strings which sang for his delight. Agentic thoughts and words tumbled about one another like energetic children at play. Cheery and chatty paving stones patterned with luminous ever-minifying fractals anticipated his footsteps and placed themselves beneath his feet.
This world and its qualities were not perceived but known objectively, including qualities for which there exist no senses to perceive. Wherever Andrew turned there were hues and timbres and fragrances which he had never experienced, though the constant novelty was neither tedious nor overwhelming as Andrew was detached from all context.
And for the first time since infancy Andrew was at peace. On other scattered occasions in his life he had been naïvely convinced that he was at peace and if he truly had been then he now neither knew nor cared as he had no recollection of those or any past events. The memory of his time in Jahannam remained on an island of neurons isolated from his consciousness, like all of his memories. Nothing of the past held any significance any longer.
Occasionally Andrew would spontaneously erupt with gratitude and he would sing in praise of the One True God who had made all of this. Merciful must be He who would allow a sinner such as Andrew to exist at all. All praises to Allah who is Ar-Rahman the most merciful, the most compassionate. All praises to Ar-Rahman who would allow a sinner such as Andrew to cool himself against the wall of Paradise. And when Andrew sang all things, the ground, and the plants, and the air, and the very space, also sang. And Allah who is Ar-Rahman was pleased that His mercy was so celebrated.