Grim Reaper: End of Days

by Steve Alten

  “Stem cells. Amazing things. It’s a shame mankind waited so long to begin using them. Imagine the boundless joy that could have been spread across the world by harvesting new limbs for amputees, spinal cords for the paralyzed, organs for the decrepit, or cures for diseases — all of which were intended to challenge man’s ability to better himself. Unfortunately, the Adversary bound you to organized religion. That was Satan’s trump card, and man’s ego embraced it like opium.”

  Shep stared at Virgil, as if seeing the old man for the first time. “You really are God, aren’t you?”

  “God is a concept of man, a digestible image of a ruler on a throne, a divine entity one petitions when one wants to hit the lottery or is faced with death. I am the Creator’s desire to reveal Himself to you within the Light of Wisdom, appearing to you in a reflected finite image your mind can accept and absorb.”

  “The Light of Wisdom?”

  “The essence of existence.” Virgil’s blue eyes danced behind his rose-colored spectacles. “You wish to know how all this came to be.”

  “Please.”

  “Very well. But what I explain now are supernal matters — matters that occupy neither space or time, nor material manifestations — the very elements that dominate your senses and surroundings. There are things you may not be able to accept or grasp, yet instinctively your soul will know them to be true. Try not to fight your gut reaction by using finite logic.”

  “You’re telling me my brain’s too small to handle this.”

  “I am saying your senses are hardwired into the Malchut, the physical world. The Upper Realm is a completely different reality. It’s like you, a three-dimensional being, having to explain existence to a two-dimensional cartoon character. You’d have to limit yourself to two-dimensional vernacular in order to describe three-dimensional concepts.”

  “This is algebra, and I’m only in first grade, got it. Anything else I should know?”

  “As I said, time and space do not exist in the spiritual realm. Therefore, if I use the word ‘before,’ it refers to cause. If I say ‘after,’ it is the effect.”

  “Understood. Now tell me… what’s really out there? How did this all come to be?”

  “In the reality of the infinite, there is the Creator, there is the unknowable Essence of the Creator, and there is the Light that comes from the Creator. The Light exists in the Endless. The Light is perfection. And though you can never know the Creator, at His essence is the nature of sharing. But because there was nothing upon which to share, a reciprocal energy was necessary to complete the circuitry, in this case a Vessel to receive the Creator’s infinite Light.

  “And so the Vessel was created, and its entire purpose was to receive. And the Vessel was the unified soul. And now there were two types of Light in the Endless: The Light of Wisdom, which was the essence of existence that simply gives, and the Light of Mercy, or the Vessel, which desired only to receive. Remember the example I gave earlier? If the Light of Wisdom was the electricity circulating throughout your home, the Light of Mercy, the Vessel, would be a lamp that plugged into a wall socket to receive the energy. Without the lamp, you have no illumination, without the Light of Mercy the Light of Wisdom cannot reveal itself.”

  “Like you said earlier with Dawn, it’s like the sun. The sun radiates energy, and yet its radiance can only be seen when it reflects off a body in space… like the Earth.” Shep paused, his mind racing. “Virgil, you said you were the Creator’s desire to reveal Himself to me within the Light of Wisdom. Does that mean you are reflecting… off my Light of Mercy?”

  Virgil smiled. “Let’s return to the story of creation. In the infinite Endless that filled the entirety of existence, there was the Creator’s Light that gave unconditionally and now, through cause and effect, there was the Vessel, a repository of the unified soul and the only true creation that has ever occurred. The Torah encodes the Vessel with a name: Adam. But the Vessel Adam, like a battery, was composed of two aspects, or energies. Its male energy, positively charged protons, and its negatively charged female aspect — the electron, so named Eve in the encoded Creation story. And the Vessel had only the desire to receive, and the Light only gave, and so there was boundless fulfillment. Still, Adam lacked an awareness of its own fulfillment, for how does one appreciate a sunny day if every day is sunny? More important, how does one come to know and appreciate God if one never experiences the absence of God?”

  “So what happened?”

  “Cause and effect. As the Light continued to fill the Vessel, it passed along the Essence of the Creator, His desire to share. The Vessel, created only to receive, now desired to share, to be the cause of its own fulfillment… in essence, to be like the Creator. But the Vessel had no way of sharing; furthermore, it felt shame because it had not earned the endless Light and fulfillment it was receiving. And so, in order to be like the Creator, the Vessel shunned the Creator’s Light.

  “This act of resistance caused the Tzimtzum, the contraction. Without the Light, the Vessel contracted into a singular point of darkness within the endless World — the infinite giving birth to the finite. Suddenly without the Creator, the Vessel expanded to allow the Light back in. This sudden contraction and expansion, what you refer to as the Big Bang, was the cause that led to the physical universe, giving Einstein his time-space continuum. And yet this bubble of existence is not true reality. The true reality of existence is in the 99 percent… the Endless. What’s wrong?”

  “It feels right, it’s just hard to get my mind around this. But go on… please.”

  “When the Tzimtzum occurred, the constriction formed ten dimensions, or Sefirot. Six of these ten Sefirot compacted, enfolding into one super-dimension, the Ze’ir Anpin.”

  “Why ten dimensions? What is their purpose?”

  “The Sefirot filter the Creator’s Light. The upper three realms, known as Keter, Chochmah, and Binah, are closest to the Creator and do not exert direct influence in man’s physical realm. The bundle of six that remain just beyond man’s limited perception is the source of all knowledge and fulfillment available to mankind in this physical world. The physical world, the lowest of the ten Sefirot, is called Malchut. As immense as the universe appears, it represents a mere 1 percent of total existence, and it is a reality based upon deception, reinforced by the limitations of man’s five senses.”

  “Incredible. What about the soul?”

  “Every soul is a spark from the shattered Vessel, Adam. When the Vessel shattered, it separated the male principle, Adam, from the female principle, Eve. Just as conception in the womb is followed by the division of the cell, so too did the shattered Vessel divide, its sparks becoming male and female souls. Lesser sparks filtered down into the animal kingdom, trees, vegetation, and so forth, all the way down to every aspect of matter and energy that makes up the cosmos.”

  “But my soul is not whole, is it, Virgil? It remains divided. You promised me—”

  The Light appeared before him as a luminescent blue apparition — the same apparition he had witnessed communicating with Dawn Patel. As he watched, it constricted into the human form of a woman. She was wearing the same outfit she had worn in the scorched Polaroid, her wavy blond hair falling past her shoulders down to the small of her back.

  Patricia Ann Segal smiled at her long-lost soul mate. “Hey, baby.”

  “Oh God…” Patrick collapsed to his knees, tears flowing from his eyes as he hugged her about the waist, the emptiness in his heart instantly replaced by boundless joy.

  Virgil beamed a cherubic smile. “The reunification of soul mates is a force of Light that cannot be denied, greater even than the parting of the Red Sea.”

  Trish drew Shep to his feet. He kissed her face. He inhaled her pheromones, the flesh of his whiskered cheeks warmed by her touch.

  The old man watched the couple like a proud parent. “Women tend to complete their spiritual correction sooner than their male counterparts. A woman’s soul may reside in the Upper Realm wh
ile she attempts to assist her soul mate in his own correction.”

  Shep pulled back from his embrace. “What about our little girl?”

  “She has already returned.” Trish gazed into his eyes. “What does your heart tell you?”

  “Oh gosh… it’s Dawn! The Patels’ daughter… she harbors our little girl’s soul.”

  “I’ve kept a watchful eye on her… and you.”

  “Trish… I’ve done such terrible things. I joined the military to avenge your death. I committed murder. I brought darkness into the lives of others.” His body trembling, Shep turned to Virgil and prostrated himself, hugging the old man’s boots to his chest. “I’m sorry, God, please forgive me!”

  “Your repentance has been accepted, my son.”

  Shep wiped back tears. Regaining his feet, he took his soul mate’s hand. “Will we be together?”

  “Soon. Your soul must be cleansed before it reenters the Upper Realm, but the burden has been lessened by your selfless actions over the last twenty-four hours. The more Light a soul desires and receives, the higher it ascends. Everything you see around you, all that exists and that evolved to exist in the physical world of time and mortality was created so that the soul could spiritually transform itself from a receiver to a giver and earn its immortality and fulfillment in the Endless. This is the reality you requested as the Vessel, Adam, the request granted by the Creator because He loves His children unconditionally.”

  “If He loves us so much, why is there so much hatred in the world? So much violence? So much pain and suffering.”

  “As we discussed earlier, in order to earn the endless fulfillment, there must be free will. To challenge free will, there must be an Adversary. An opposing team. And the game cannot be fixed, or the prize has no meaning. The Adversary is the human ego at the genetic level, referred to in the Creation story as the consumption of the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Lust, gluttony, avarice, wrath, violence, fraud, greed, and treachery… all are symptoms of the ego, every selfish act diverting the Creator’s Light to Satan. Sin is man’s refusal to become what man was destined to be. If man would simply expand his own vessel by using the tools he was given, there would never be suffering in this world again.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  “By expanding your vessel to allow more Light in. By loving thy neighbor as thy self in the same way the Creator loves each of His children — unconditionally. Love is a weapon of the Light, it has the power to eradicate all forms of darkness. Spirituality isn't about just being nice, Patrick, it's about transforming one’s not-so-nice qualities. When you offer love even to your enemies, you destroy their darkness and hatred. What's more, you cast out the darkness inside yourself. What is left in the aftermath are two souls who now recognize the spark of divinity they both share. Think about that. It is not the positive trait that flips on the Light switch; the Light goes on when one identifies, uproots, and transforms their own reactive negative characteristics. When a mass majority of people reach this magnitude of understanding, then endless fulfillment and immortality shall be had for all. Conversely, when collective negative actions rise to a critical juncture, the Angel of Death is granted free rein, and even the righteous shall suffer.”

  “Is that what’s happening here, Virgil? Has evil run so amok that humanity needs another do-over?”

  The old man turned somber. “The generation of Noah was stubborn and bold enough to sin openly. The generation of the flood has returned.”

  “Then… I really was Noah?”

  “The soul that inhabits your existence as Patrick Shepherd also shared the physical being that was Noah, a righteous man born in a time of greed and corruption. You and your soul mate, Naamah, have returned to witness the end of another generation.”

  Shep squeezed Trish’s hand, his face flushing red. “You’re not really going to wipe out 6 billion people?”

  “Six million or 6 billion, in either case the Creator does not destroy. Man has become his own instrument of destruction. His desire to feed from the Tree of Knowledge without restriction, his insistence on receiving for the self alone… it is these acts that have summoned the Angel of Death to stalk the Earth, just as it did 666 years ago during the last pandemic.”

  “But you could stop it, you could end the insanity. You talk about mankind being proactive, what about you? What about that Holocaust story you told me!”

  “The story was yours.”

  Patrick’s face paled. His body trembled. “The boy you spoke of?”

  “It was your life, Patrick, your second deployment, as you call it. What you experienced was the severity of Noah’s tikkun. You lost your entire family at Auschwitz. Your soul mate perished there as well.”

  “And you did nothing? While innocent children were being tossed into ovens. While planes were being flown into buildings—”

  “—and innocent families were being slaughtered by American soldiers? As I said, God is not a verb, Patrick. The Light flows, regardless of intent. It’s all about free will. Those who live their lives by the Creator’s laws remain protected. A miracle of salvation at this juncture would be interpreted as a religious happening. In the end, it would lead to the very war you seek to avert, serving Satan, who continues to grow stronger through these acts of darkness.”

  “I don’t care! Noah may have stood idly by while you drowned the world, but I won’t. You and I… we had a covenant after the flood. The ark was our covenant. You promised never to destroy humanity again!”

  “It is not the Creator that will destroy humanity, Patrick. Behold.”

  The brown swirl of clouds parted to the west, revealing three dark helicopters frozen in time over the Hudson River. “Man is responsible for this flood. And through his actions, Satan’s power grows.”

  Virgil pointed to the edge of the construction pit, where the Angel of Death had materialized. The male Grim Reaper had been impaled by his female counterpart’s scythe, the blade buried in the base of the being’s barren skull.

  “What happened to him? How can you slay… an angel?”

  “Every element of creation maintains a male and female aspect. So it is with the Angel of Death. Each Reaper, both male and female, was born human into the physical world. When it is time for a Reaper to move on, they select their replacement from among the living. The female aspect of death, strengthened by the corruption of man, no longer remains held in check. Unless humanity is terminated, she shall walk the Earth unabated and poison the Malchut so that no Light can ever be again revealed in this dimension.”

  Shep stared at the male Reaper. The supernal creature was vibrating, its eye sockets fluttering, its life force diminishing rapidly.

  “I never completed my tikkun, did I, Virgil? Not as Noah or in Auschwitz. Not now, as Patrick Shepherd. You said each soul has four deployments.”

  “This was your last.”

  “Who else was I? A mass murderer? An alcoholic, like my father?”

  “Actually, you were a poet, a man inspired by the Light, yet lacking the discipline to keep from getting perpetually drunk on the forbidden fruit. James Douglas Morrison. His friends called him Jim.”

  “Wait… Jim Morrison of The Doors?” Patrick turned to Trish. “I was Jim Morrison?”

  The former Pamela Courson squeezed the deceased rocker’s hand.

  The old man placed his hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “Are you ready to continue your journey, son?”

  “No… just wait, wait one second. You said every soul must complete its tikkun before moving on to the Upper Realm. How can I be reunited with my soul mate in the Upper Realm if I haven’t completed my tikkun? And how can I complete my tikkun if you’re allowing this pandemic to wipe out humanity?”

  “Mankind has chosen to move away from the Light. The generation of the plague shall have no share in the World to come.”

  “So you’re simply going to allow Scythe to wipe out everyone? Just like that?”

  “God is not mank
ind’s servant. God just is. It’s man who needs to take action, not the Creator. This was the test of existence.”

  Shep balled his fists in frustration. “You know what, God? You really suck as a parent!”

  “Shep—”

  “No, Trish, He needs to hear it. You say we’re moving away from the Light? Maybe that’s your fault. Maybe we could have used some more spiritual guidance? Or how about a sign every once in a while that you’re not asleep at the wheel? Hell, it’d be nice to see a little justice in this world, too.”

  “Every soul is judged at the appropriate time. The Creator no longer micromanages, Patrick. That just leads to more religious dogma, more false prophets… more chaos.”

  “Then appoint someone who will micromanage. Give me one last deployment. Let me fulfill my tikkun… as him!” Shep pointed to the Grim Reaper.

  “Baby, no. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “He’s been following me throughout Manhattan, Trish. I think he chose me. Humanity needs someone to keep the Grim Reaper’s old lady in check… the Upper Realm needs balance to be restored in the Malchut—well, I’m volunteering. What I’m not going to do is stand by and allow all those people to die. Not this time around… no way.”

  “Know the ground rules, Patrick, before you volunteer for yet another war. The Angel of Death is a supernal being, able to access both the higher and lower worlds. There are demons out there… entities of existence that even Dante dared not imagine. Unless you remain vigilant, the forces of darkness will easily corrupt your soul.”

  “My soul mate will protect me; she’ll keep me anchored to the Light.” Shep squeezed Trish’s hand. “It’s the only way we can be together again. It’s the only way I can protect our daughter.”

  “You request this of your own free will?”

  “I do.”

  Virgil looked at Patricia, who nodded.

  “Then the covenant is made. All those you choose to save shall be fruitful and multiply, all those you choose to condemn shall perish. And when the world regains its balance, your tikkun shall be completed, and you shall be reunited in the Upper Realm with your soul mate.”