6

As if kicked square in the back while sitting on a steel rail, she is flung forward in an arc, leaving her body (“Bye, body!”) behind where it kneels, careening straight through the floor, through blackness, then streaking stars in some kind of copyrighted warp drive effect, then faster as the stars turn technicolor; some kind of really intense pressure in the chest–or is it the head–and the spinning gets faster and faster and more nauseating until shapes and edges begin to emerge stroboscopically.

She emerges, in medias res, dreamlike, already walking through the corridor of lit glass bricks. A claustrophobic hallway, as wide as it is tall, that can just fit her frame–all surfaces constructed of square, translucent tiles, behind each of which a slightly different color glows. She seems to be floating and walking at the same time; but never mind that, where am I headed? We will guide you!, say the imp children, who scuttle up from behind and grab each of her hands–Oh yes, I have hands still–and lead her forward, down the hall at a skipping pace. Well, imp children they are, alright, not exactly trustworthy or evil-seeming; and she considers shrinking back, but the boy, who has her by the right hand, turns and goads, “Come on!”

They skip on ahead a few tens of meters before it becomes evident that the hallway had in fact been going somewhere–nope, nowhere. They arrive at the edge and peer out into a disturbingly large indoor space.

The hallway has ended abruptly at a 300 meter drop; below, Amelia can see–Oh god, vertigo–that yes, this entire cavern is made of the same glowing bricks. Nothing on the floor at all, which stretches another 300 by 600 meters, before meeting the walls, which continue up again at least a kilometer. Just one giant rectangular cuboid, glass bricks twinkling on the ceiling, so high above. The children tug her hands and move to jump off the ledge; Amelia’s body dry heaves in the other world. The girl points to a tiny, dark square across the void–No, we can’t make that jump! The imp girl looks up at Amelia seriously. “We’re trying to take you where you want to go! We already know.”

Amelia considers this statement, but with a one, two, wheee!—they’ve already thrown themselves off the ledge, taking her along in a swinging motion. Except the trio are not falling–Oh yes, dream logic–in fact, they are soaring up, and up, across this vast, surreally beautiful–oddly deficient of echoes–indoor court in which the gods might play racquetball. Amelia lets go of the imp children and does a twist in the air, spreading out her arms like a penguin in corkscrew. The children laugh and somersault; the boy spins about the Y-axis, limbs outstretched like a starfish; the three of them continue their upward journey.

Wait, we’re going to miss the window down there–but the children have already sailed up ahead and above, towards the chimney hole that turns out to have been embedded in the ceiling. Amelia, filled with determination, superwomans in a beeline after them.

She flies up and through the hole–at least as wide as a football pitch, surrounded by a clean, square rim which protrudes from the ceiling like an upside-down, very large mansion with inner courtyard. Picking up speed as the colorful chimney narrows progressively, darkens—I guess I don’t have to hold out my hand like this. Amelia narrows her eyes, strains up above–ahead?–at the pinprick of light in the distance.

~

The children are gone. She has been sailing for what feels like hours through darkness, the walls now only as wide as a bus. But the square ahead is bright, bright white, a beacon. She readies for the final push–Does flying in a dream tire you out?–and accelerates. The square is arriving fast, one quick breath and—

She pops out of another square ring, which surrounds the dark well from which she has emerged. And just as well that the flight’s over; at this point, the opening is only a few meters wide. She launches out of it like a firework, drifts, and comes to slowly land in, well, Heaven.

To use Justin Roczniak’s term, every-fuckin’-thing here is made of renderite. Gleaming white, with a light layer of Poly(methyl methacrylat)ic sheen over it all. Is it plastic? Polished stone? Painted metal? The living will never know.

NOW RISE–finished folding her wings, or being knighted, Amelia looks up from the accolade pose and rises off her left knee. She’s in a magnificent courtyard of renderite, cheery blue sky above; Doric columns line either side and terminate in empty air. And betwixt the columns stand–hushed–a great compaignye of angels. They’re twiddling their fingers, anxious. Some whisper to each other, holding up four to six hands to cover their mouths.

“I HEARD you wanted to speak with ME.” At the end of the court is–Of course, zero originality?–a shiny white throne befitting Lincoln, and on it, sits God.

“Ohh, hey. Yea, ah, well; I was saying I wanted to speak with your son, if—”

“DO YOU NOT THINK WE ARE ONE AND THE SAME?”

“Well,” Amelia stammers, “I was taught that He is our Savior, uh, son of Yourself, sir—”

“WE ARE ONE AND THE SAME. I don’t know what kind of Protestant bullshit your mother has been teaching you, but I am ONE GOD, CONSUBSTANTIAL IN THREE PERSONS.

(Huh, so the Catholics were right.)

“But NO MATTER. WHAT is it you wish to know?”

“Umm—”

Ruffles of angel feathers permeate the silence. Although there are plenty of things Amelia might like to ask God, the one that’s been bugging her most since she got here is—

“Um, why can’t I look at Your face?”

She’s been slowly walking forward, towards the throne, but her progress has been retarded by the fact that every time she tries to look up at the Big Man, some kind of twitch happens, and her face is already facing the other way. This is annoying Amelia to no end, she having tried and failed to figure out what God looks like numerous times during this conversation.

Someone has brushed a renderite offering bowl off its stand; it clatters to the floor. The angels seem tense with fear.

“HAH! HA HA HA HAH. SO YOU WISH TO SEE THE FACE OF GOD, YOUNG LADY. Are you unaware how unadvisable this is?”

“I don’t know,” Amelia protests, “it’s just really a—goddamnit, excuse me—annoying me that I can’t see what you look like.”

Hushed whispers from the peanut gallery are picking up in intensity. “VERY WELL THEN! HAH HA HA HA. You may look into the face of GOD.”

“Fine, then,” looking about her defensively at the crowd, who at this point are nibbling all six of their wings in horrified anticipation. “What’s the worst that can happen; this is a dream or some shit; fuck all of you; I don’t believe in any of this anyway.”

She growls, squeezing her eyes shut, then looks up abruptly.

God starts about as you’d expect, great big Caucasian toes sticking out from renderite sandals. Up the white robe we go, white sash tied on top of it, okay–Oh, and here’s that finger that reached out to touch the guy in the painting, or, maybe it was the other one–okay, and the big white beard as expected, now—

Amelia doesn’t get a glimpse of the Man’s facial features, for what turns out to be there is a shallow, square window, inset in space itself, peering into starry blackness. Her mind registers precisely one frame of the window and somehow has time to be confused by it before its 2D pseudosurface collapses in a funnel, stars along the way spilling in, some kind of fucked Penrose wormhole developing and cutting in/out much faster than the speed of light. There is now a great goat’s horn shape plunging through the universe beyond the window, and its immense gravitational surge yanks Amelia’s soul straight out of what was already a second body. The dream-body collapses to its knees, rictus look of shock upon the face, and Amelia’s consciousness is brought along with her third, ghostly form, itself lifted up by the shock of gravity, pulled by the navel. She hovers, half translucent, featureless, nude, pulled forth by God’s Gravity and tethered back–for a moment–by something dark and brick-like that still remains in the solar plexus of her second body. Then that tether dissolves into strings, and she has no time to wave goodbye to the gathered angels before her soul is, indeed, sucked directly into the black hole which constitutes God’s face.

This is accompanied by a feeling of exquisite terror, and a rushing acceleration, beyond what any physical form could bear. She is spaghettified, sucked by the navel into this desk-sized square window, shot out and through the black hole beyond it, folding back into a cone, tugged by insane gravity, stretched; redshifted at hair and feet, which drag behind, ultraviolet and gaining in energy at the navel. The cone–now noodle–which was Amelia’s third body zoops off and down the cornucopia arc and disappears, in terror, into timeless infinitude.

~

She has been bent over the SOLA brick, stiff, white-knuckling the handles. A light splash of water and stomach acid has just grazed the nomenic part of the machine, and has soaked into polyester twists of yellow, beige, brown. Thank goodness for that hike; coffee biscuits and coffee nowhere to be found amidst the carpet.

Her spine is arched and taut–you know, how spooky zonbi look sometimes—

Amelia opens her eyes, perfectly frozen, breathing very, very deeply. Her thighs rattle, eyes begin to water, something building up inside—

She falls back once again into supta virasana, cackling along the way. A real evil, power-hungry laugh. She lets her wrists fall up to the sky, penetrating the Lindons’ veneered ceiling with pure force of will.

“Is THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT, MAN?” Ba–hahahaHAHAHAha, FUCK YOU, BITCH!!”

She’s uproarious, hugging herself, twisting right and left on the floor, crying, elated, unstoppable. Core abdominal strength caresses her up ahumanly, revenant-like, so that she is on top of the machine once more.

She gazes at it like it’s a squashed plastic army man.