"Where am I?"
Fen Chiang could not explain where he had ended up. He didn't even rember how he got there. It was all so... surreal.
The place looked like a finely decorated room, but it was made of sothing... incomprehensible. It didn't even seem to be matter at all. And the light... it was just absurd. It seed that there was both light and darkness at the sa ti, as if the two of them were just one!
Not to ntion the size of the room. Sotis it seed very small, a mont later it beca enormous.
Even ti seed to have ceased to function properly. When Fen Chiang tried to rember how long he had been in the hall, sotis it felt like a few seconds to him, in other tis entire years and even centuries.
There was therefore nothing he could do but continue walking hoping to find soone, even if the space in that place was so distorted that it did not even give him the perception of going straight.
After several hours of walking (or maybe a few minutes, or maybe a few millennia, who knows) he finally found sothing that broke the stagnant atmosphere of the place: in the center of the room there were two armchairs, and on one of them there was a figure.
Did it look like... a woman? It was a woman, right?
Fen Chiang couldn't say for sure. The features seed delicate and feminine, but at the sa ti retained a kind of authority and harshness typical of n. Her hair was long and silky and shone with a thousand colors, but not as if it were struck by the light, but as if it were themselves the source of the light.
The body was wrapped in a pearly white robe that covered her from the shoulders to the feet, leaving only her arms and head uncovered. The end result was an almost incomprehensible entity, which is also supported by the fact that she seed to emanate a strange force: even though she was the sa size as him, to Fen Chiang she seed as big as the entire universe and beyond.
The man had many mixed feelings towards the person in front of him. He felt he must be afraid of her, his instincts dictating it, but at the sa ti he felt an unfathomable peace and calm as he approached. Her smile was magnetic and her eyes looked like a mother's as she watches her baby in the crib. It was impossible not to feel so kind of protection and tranquility in her presence.
Fen Chiang could only define that woman as beautiful and terrifying at the sa ti.
When he was next to the armchairs, the woman finally spoke. "You arrived. I've been waiting for you" she said.
Fen Chiang felt like faint at hearing that voice: it was subtle and sweet, but at the sa ti firm and authoritative, as if every elent would have had to respond to every command of that woman; moreover, it did not even seem to be a normal voice, but at the sa ti it seed the union of billions of other voices and also the total absence of a voice.
It made no sense, yet Fen Chiang had no other way to describe it.
Seeing that the woman did not say anything, he understood that she wanted him to speak. A myriad of questions ford in his mind: where were they? What was that place? Who was she? Why was he there?
Yet the words that ford on his lips were only: "What happened?"
"Don't you rember?" the woman asked without changing her expression in the slightest.
"No! I..." Fen Chiang started to say, but then he stopped. Like a flash, images appeared before his eyes: he intent on driving a car with a woman beside him laughing at so joke, and in the back seat a girl six or seven years old, and then... a big truck that suddenly ca upon him. The revelation hit him like an arrow. "I'm dead?"
"Condolences" the woman replied, and then she looked at the chair in front of her. "Sit down. I like to talk to everyone who cos here"
chanically Fen Chiang sat down. All his body was tremblig. He was shaken like never in his life. "My daughter... my wife..."
"They are fine. The truck only hit the part of the car where the driver was. Your wife and daughter survived with just minor injuries" the woman explained. "Maybe you will be heartened to know that your death wasn't without purpose. The driver of the truck was an alcoholic, but after what he did he got remorse.
To make up for his mistake, he not only supported your family with dical bills, but he also changed his life. For the thirty years following your death he gave thousands of talks on the dangers of drunk driving and helped many people, including teenagers, to get out of alcoholism and other addictions"
"Oh... well, good for him" Fen Chiang whispered. In a way, he was a little relieved. "And my family, how...?"
"... how did they deal with your death? Initially bad, for obvious reasons: mourning is still mourning. However, they managed to move forward. Your wife started her own business and created an animal protection company in your honor" Fen Chiang was moved by those words: he rembered that in life he had loved nature and animals very much.
"Your daughter, on the other hand, had to face all the difficulties of growing up without a father, but she always stood up against adversity. She has beco a strong and commanding woman and married a guy she t at her university, rather shy but gifted with great talent. They are both paleontologists, you know... your daughter inherited your passion for dinosaurs"
Yes, dinosaurs were also sothing Fen Chiang loved very much in life. Now the anxiety and fear were completely gone: even though he knew that under normal circumstances he should have had to be gripped by anguish, he could not help but calm down next to this strange woman. His only concern was the future of his loved ones, and now that he knew everything was fine, he could rest easy.
"Wait!" he exclaid when he realized sothing. "How do you know all this? How long have I been dead?"
The woman burst out laughing, a crystalline laugh that made Fen Chiang's heart tremble. "How long? There is no 'how long' here, little child. Ti, like space, is a characteristic of the universe where you existed when you were alive. But here we are outside that universe, consequently we are also outside its ti stream. Here, past, present and future are one.
If you at this mont passed over, you would et both your ancestors and your descendants of all ages, even if from the perspective of your universe you are just dead"
"Oh, I understand". Falsehood: he didn't understand anything! "So I could also et my family?"
"If you pass over, yes"
"What do you an by 'passing over'?"
"Going to the afterlife, of course! What do you expect, that you can stay here forever? Your idea of 'eternal rest' is a bit boring" the woman laughed again.
Fen Chiang was confused. "I don't understand anything" he admitted.
"It's normal"
"But who are you? If it's not rude to ask"
The woman made a movent that looked like a shrug, but that single movent was enough to make Fen Chiang feel as if the entire universe had just shaken. "My na is made up of letters and sounds that would be impossible for you to hear or pronounce. If we want to make a rough translation, it would an 'all nas and no nas'.
However, I am called by many nas by the thousand creatures of the thousand worlds of the thousands mortal universes that I created. In your world humans refer to as God"
Fen Chiang was shocked. "Wait... God is a woman!?" he exclaid without thinking.
The deity barely moved her eyelids, another movent that seed to make the whole creation tremble. "I'm not really a woman. I contain in all the existing genres and at the sa ti none. However, I admit that my current form can rember the female exponents of the human race, so you can safely refer to as a woman. It is not important, after all"
Fen Chiang was astonished. "But so you are..."
"... the one who created the universe, all things visible and invisible, etc. etc. Yes, it's really " the woman anticipated.
"And if now I passed over..."
".... you would go to Heaven, at least until you decide to leave"
"Leave? What do you an?"
"That generally no soul stays in Heaven too long... generally not more than a few billion centuries". God seed amused. "You see, Heaven is a perfect world to live in, free from defects and without thoughts. However, too much perfection gets tired in the long run.
Souls begin to feel the lack of that unpredictability, that lack of security, of those life goals that were set in the mortal world, and even of the failures and pains, which are still sothing that makes people grow. So, when they want, they can reincarnate and start a new life"
"Oh... Ok, that's clear" Fen Chiang felt he finally understood sothing. Indeed, the idea of a perfect life, devoid of that spice that characterized the unknown, did not appeal to him very much. "Sorry, is this not a risk? I an, if in their second life they did sothing wrong that they hadn't done in the previous life, wouldn't they end up in Hell or sothing like that?"
"And even if it were? Life is always a risk, right? That's exactly why it is so beautiful" laughed God. "Anyway there is no risk in this case. Even in Hell no soul remains forever"
"For real!?". This Fen Chiang was not expecting it.
"Of course! Which parent would punish his children for all eternity? Or which judge would condemn a person forever, without even giving him the chance of go out for good behavior?" God looked annoyed for the first ti. "The idea of 'eternal punishnt' is a nonsense that human beings have invented to better ward off cris...
we can say that it is more or less on the sa level as the Boogeyman with which parents scare children to make them sleep at night. In reality, a soul remains in Hell only when it has not sincerely repented of all its mistakes. So take a few months, others millions of years, but in the end everyone realizes how much harm they have done with their actions.
At that point they just reincarnate and have a second chance"
"Wow... well, it actually makes sense" Fen Chiang said. He rembered that when he was alive he had not been particularly religious, but he had always found the idea of eternal punishnt or eternal bliss ridiculous. If God was indeed the creator of all things, and therefore their parent as well, why would she (or he? They? How the hell should call her?) have had to make her (his?
Their? Aaaaah, who cares) children suffer for eternity? It was just silly and petty.
As he mulled over this, Fen Chiang thought of sothing. "But does this an that I could have already reincarnated?"
God smiled. "Of course! You've done it four tis already"
"Four!?"
"Exactly. In your first life you were a dragon from a universe not far away from your old one. In the second, you were a powerful conquering general in a universe where intergalactic empires reigned. In the third..."
"Wait, wait!" Fen Chiang was blown away. "In what sense other universes? Are there parallel universes?"
"Of course! There are more than a hundred billion of them!" God answered, then she put a finger to her mouth. Her hand was white and shone with pure light, and her movent seed to have raised a wave so imnse that it covered the whole reality. "And this brings us to why I wanted to talk to you"
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