Confessions from The Pearly Gates
“I am a cosmological entity” I usually declare when I feel like being particularly honest. “When do I get to go to heaven?” One of you once boldly asked of me. I like the chutzpah. Most humans are pathetically meek after dying. It is very sad. “Sort of like a gatekeeper to the doors of the heavens?” A bright chap had once cleverly observed. Of course not. There is no heaven and if you don’t count the earth, there is no hell either as we all know. That is unless you want them to exist. But he didn’t know that and never will. Everyone has a different religion. None is more true than the other. Well, everything only exists for you. No, not in the sort of way you imagine. The Lord knows I have had much more animated conversations with dwellers of other planets. Everything exists solely for “you”. You are not special though. You are so pathetically naive you are never gonna even know what happened or even read this. “Which way is heaven then?” a Christian had once irritably asked me. The clergy always have the shortest temper. “Onward my child” I replied benevolently. I, of course, manifested to him in the form of Saint Peter. That one is quite a common form indeed. These standard conversations often get boring. Of course, I was talking to several people in that instant. They didn’t know that. Oh, mankind. Always thinking it is so special. I was talking to multiple people at once because time is not linear here. There are points in time but they don’t precede or succeed each other. They just are. If you’re wondering, yes I did try to give Einstein hints to a unified theory. Time, as you know it is purely a construct for the mortals. Man is certainly mortal. A species still in its infancy and yet loves to ramble on and on as if it possesses the key to all existence (I would skip the fedora once I listen to a super-intelligent species mock me for it but man never learns.) The ones I love are those that get the wind knocked out of them because their religion is true. “You mean… there is a God?” A Muslim woman had on one occasion questioned me. “Well of course. Isn’t that who you have always been praying to?” I asked, slightly bewildered. “No… yes” she replied and then I sent her to heaven. Speaking of Islam, how I appear to the people of the book is always of great fascination to me. How does a monotheist imagine a non-god cosmological entity? It is usually a brightly colored blob if you’re wondering. Art admirers are interesting too. Bouguereau idolizers flatter me very much. I like the Hindus. Of course, they see me as Yamaraja, the god of death. They ask good questions, sometimes. Well, humanity asks good questions, sometimes. Unlike me, my overlords don’t hold a very favourable opinion of the polytheists. They say it is too computationally intensive to simulate multiple gods. “What about the atheists?” you would ask (I am not a determinist. You all are just hopelessly predictable.) Well, I usually give them a choice. “You were wrong about the non-existence of a god. Tell me the nature of the deity correctly and I may grant you heaven.” That is my way of tricking them into revealing their perception of the supernatural. The agnostics almost always blurt out details of the Abrahamic god. Perpetual fence-sitters yet so desperately ordinary. But it is fine. As I said, no religion is any truer than the next. How true is each religion then? Don’t ask stupid questions. Some fringe ideologies are more amusing still. I have met a handful of Satanists in my time here. There was a whole fiasco of their faces burning off in the scorching noon of hell. “What is the meaning of life?” a persistent unemployed young man with a convoluted name once interrogated me. He must have been french, called himself a “philosopher”. I replied “I do not know. I am not the omniscient one.” The good thing with atheists is that I don’t have to keep up the facade of any religion. “Make more cookies and be kinder?” I took a gander. He laughed and went on his way too.
