A Grain of Sand

In the garden, I sit near a white marble pillar that holds a jar as black as the deepest sea.

I am waiting for her to arrive.

I pass the time with memories. The morning I first saw Zoe in the temple, her golden hair glowing red in the sunlight. The sense of rightness, of everything falling into place as we stood, taking each other in. Our long courtship, punctuated by laughter. Our honeymoon. The island where the water was the same sapphire blue as her eyes. The day she started coughing up blood. The weeks that followed as she became a paper-and-skeleton doll. Her last words to me as I held her: I’m so sorry, Ambrose.

I kept all of her things exactly as she left them; dresses in the closet, a half-finished book on the night stand. Friends came by to share in my sorrow. After a couple of months, they started to gently suggest maybe I should cut back on the drinking and find my peace by letting her go. After a while, they stopped coming by.

How can I relate what happened after the car accident, when I opened my eyes and realized I had left my body behind forever? Words are insufficient, like trying to describe a dream. There were these huge pillars that seemed to be made of diamond. There were marble stairs and golden doors and enormous beings with legs like blazing pillars of fire.

I collapsed in terror.

I don’t know how long I was on my face. But then I felt a hand on my head and heard someone say, “Don’t be afraid.” His voice was gentle, but carried so much authority. I looked into the eyes of Apollo as he helped me to my feet. He was robed in light and his golden countenance pushed away every fear I had.

“It’s good to see you,” he said, embracing me. “I’ve been waiting.”

After a long while, I stepped back. “I have so many questions,” I began.

He handed me a brass key. “When you get settled in, I’ll come by your place,” he said with a smile, and disappeared.

---

Elysian City. Walls and buildings made of thinly-sliced precious stones. Golden streets. And the music! The songs that had ignited the suns at creation, now sung by a billion souls in praise of the eternal. In the center of the City was the throne room, where Zeus was waiting. I wasn’t ready to meet him yet. Coming face to face with the one who held the lightning in the palms of his hands was too much just then. I kept searching the white-clad crowds for the one face I wanted to see the most. I stopped people and asked them if they knew her. No one had heard of her, but as they reminded me, everyone had new names. My description of her beauty didn’t help much either. Everyone in the City was beautiful.

I decided to go home and wait for Apollo. No sooner had I thought this than I stood on the outskirts of the City in front of a small stone cottage on a grey path leading to a plain wooden door. I went inside and saw that the indoors was as simple as the exterior. There was a pair of wooden chairs and a cabinet, and not much else. Sitting down on one of the chairs, I looked up at the ceiling.

“Hello? I’d like to talk to you.”

A moment later, there was a knock on the door, and I answered it. Apollo was standing outside.

“I think there’s been some kind of mistake,” I said.

Apollo raised one eyebrow in apparent amusement.

“Okay, you don’t make mistakes,” I said. “But what’s going on? This is where I’m going to live forever?”

“Can I come in?”

“You don’t have to ask.”

“It’s your house. You paid for it. And I never go where I’m not invited.”

“Come in. What do you mean, I paid for it?”

Apollo stepped inside the cottage and we both sat. We talked. He reminded me of how precious metals are purified and how jewels are made—with heat and pressure. Apollo said he had built the City out of those things because they were symbolic of our souls, matured by suffering.

“But you resisted every time I tried to mature you. You complained about hardship until I took it away. You wanted the bare minimum of eternal things in your life and so that is what you have now,” he said.

“You mean all I went through, with Zoe’s death…”

“Was for your benefit.”

“I don’t understand why it had to be that way.”

“Come and see Zeus. You’ll understand everything a lot more. He says he’ll tone it down so you’re not too overwhelmed.”

“Thanks.”

“Also, when you pray, you don’t have to look up anymore. I’m just across town.”

We both smiled at this.

“You have a visitor,” Apollo said, and then he was gone, and Zoe was standing there. She was more beautiful than I remembered. I rushed forward and held her fiercely for what might have been several minutes or a hundred years.

“I’m so glad you made it,” she said, breaking free from my embrace and looking around. “Hey, nice place!”

“You think this place is nice?”

“Yeah, it’s humble. Just like Apollo.”

“I didn’t think of it like that. Have you met Zeus?”

“Sure have.”

“What’s he like?”

She paused for a long moment, looking out the window towards the center of the City. “I could just sit at his feet, adoring him, and never want for anything else. Remember when you were young and you felt like anything was possible and you had unlimited time?” She smiled and looked back at me.

“Yeah, I used to feel that way all the time with you,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got you back now. If you like this house, we can live here, or maybe you have a better place. You probably do have a better place. That’s okay, too.”

“Oh, Ambrose, don’t be silly. We’re not going to live together.”

My heart went into a tailspin. “You don’t want me?”

“I don’t want anyone. Zeus’s love is perfect. One look from him and you’ll see everything from your old life back on Earth in a totally different way.”

“We hardly got to be husband and wife before you got sick.”

Her lips parted in surprise. “You never remarried?”

“How could I? You were my wife. You’re still my wife.”

I took her hand.

“I have to go,” she said.

---

So I got a job. What else was I going to do for eternity? Do you have any idea how long eternity is? Think about an immortal bird flying through space carrying all of the sand in the world to the edge of the universe, one grain at a time. The time it would take the bird to do that task is just the beginning of eternity.

I worked in Life Editing. Watching life films was a popular past time in the City. Naturally, people wanted certain things removed. Sometimes, I would watch films of Zoe and me. When we were dating, we used to play this game called, “What would you do for me?”

One of us might say: “Would you give me your kidney?”

And the other might answer: “Of course. That’s easy. Would you die for me?”

“Um, painfully?”

“Slowly and painfully.”

“I guess. Would you risk going to the Underworld for me, like Orpheus?”

“Ahhhh—no. Sorry.”

It was the ultimate trump card. We’d always both answer that we wouldn’t go that far, but I always thought, why not?

One day, I made a mistake while editing someone else’s life, and without thinking, I reached into the time line to fix it. Life editors are supposed to wait until people are asleep, but I forgot. The version of the man in the past, the one whose life I was editing, saw my hand appear in the air and yelled. I closed the time line and sat back, thinking.

I could travel through time and space. The realization gave me a bold plan. What if I could make it so that evil never came into the world? The longer I thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make. How could Zeus reject my plan? This time, there would be no need for anyone to suffer.

I started searching back through the time lines until I found the people I was looking for. I watched their simple, innocent life in the garden of pleasure. I watched the fall of Prometheus, who disobeyed the gods and threw a shadow across all of human destiny. I was still watching the scene when I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around to see Apollo.

“What are you doing, Ambrose?”

I couldn’t meet his gaze. “Well, I can’t lie to you.”

“You could. You have free will. That didn’t go away just because you came here.”

“I always thought once I got here, I would be different. That I would, I don’t know…”

“Be magically transformed?” he said.

“Well, yeah. I mean, not magically, but, you know…spiritually.”

“Then what would be the purpose of your life before that? Why bother, if I’m going to fix everything that’s wrong with you when you die?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s to make you ready to live here. The more you’re like Zeus, the more natural and joyful it feels to be in the City. Do you know if we brought the souls up here from the other place, they’d hardly notice the difference? The presence of Zeus is torment to them.”

“What can I do? I still love her.”

“No, you’re in love with the person she used to be. If you loved her, you certainly wouldn’t do what you’re thinking of doing. You’re not even the first one to try it.”

“But if I succeed, then evil won’t exist.”

“You’re not going to outwit the king of the gods on a technicality. Just stop.”

“I can’t,” I said, the pain of needing Zoe sitting on my chest like a pile of sharp stones.

His eyes were full of anguish. “Go to the garden if you want. But you won’t change anything. You are deceived.”

The time-line was sitting on my desk.

I put my hand into it. Then the rest of my arm. Then all of me.

---

So now I sit, waiting for Pandora. When she gets here, I’ll warn her about all of the horrors inside the jar she will unleash; the world soaked in blood and tears. When Prometheus appears, I’ll tell him to take back his gifts. No knowledge is worth so much suffering. If the fall of man never happens, then I can’t die. I won’t even age. Eventually, Zeus will put Zoe’s soul in a body, and then we can be together.

It might not happen right away, but I’m patient, like a bird carrying sand to the end of the universe, one grain at a time.

I can do this forever.