CHAPTER 44 - ROAD TO REDEMPTION

I watch the sunshine scatter millions of minute particles in the inner solar system. Farther still, I feel for the black blotches in the galaxy.

‘Surprisingly dusty for an empty place, isn’t it?’ Gabriel says as I peer at dark clouds of dust that block out the starlight from beyond. He is back. Perhaps he never left. I am so rusted, I cannot reply. He sits beside me. Lost in the contemplation of the teeming galaxies, I believe my seclusion will never end. I feel part of this world and contemplate its wonderful phenomena with candour - collapsing novas and stellar bombs, comets and crystals, frozen stars and blue moons. I shudder before the beauty of a spherical nebula that envelops a single star like a cocoon.

‘Before long, loved one, you shall serve your penance anew.’

‘Within a man?’

‘Fatefully.’

‘Why not within a wolf or an eagle? Must I take pleasure in inflicting pain to satisfy your god?’

‘Man does not kill, torture, and destroy without reason.’

‘What reason? You are mad to think that the beings humans contain are malevolent. There is nothing sinister about us!’

‘Patience, loved one. Soon, all will become clear.’

His words offend me. I think of Ao and push them out of my mind, and wonder about the world’s laws. I suspect they mirror something built deep within its structure and resent their chilling impersonality that makes the sky seem strange and somewhat like a solid thing behind which lies oblivion.

‘How can so few laws account for the endless diversity and profusion of creations? How can they account for Nature’s constant renewed ingenuity in thwarting inertia and chaos?’

Sensing my distress, Gabriel says, ‘Come! Let us uncover the secrets of life.’

Taking my hand into his, we slide down the chemical levels and behold a mysterious dance. Mindless molecules endlessly travel across the cell to meet their partners they swing to the right place, at the right time. Orchestrated with breathtaking fidelity and performed with exquisite precision, these perfectly directed ballets seduce me. No overseer supervises their activities - the molecules push, pull and knock into each other blindly, rebound and embrace unthinkingly, doing what they have to do.

As we peer through the membrane that secures the cell from the outside, he points at the message that floats in silence in its heart, written in atoms, strung together into twin pearl necklaces entwined in mutual embrace - the music score of the symphony of life: a grand orchestral piece, with millions of musicians playing billions of notes.

Conjuring up the vision of the two helical strings, the angel unravels them and lays them out. It looks like a ladder.

‘The handrails - the two unwound helixes - merely perform a scaffolding role,’ he explains, ‘The rungs, on the other hand, are pregnant with meaning. They direct the making of all living things - not only their distinctive look, but their behaviour and feelings.’

‘Where does this message come from?’

‘Surely from the living being’s environment.’

‘Its home?’

‘Not only.’ His long undulating hair frames his pale face. ‘All of Nature, the universe.’

‘Has the universe created life on purpose?’

‘Matter has an innate tendency to grope toward life, and favours its coming. Once existence of some sort has established itself, the rest takes off easily.’ He draws my attention back to the molecules. ‘Look at them dance.’

‘Does something compel them to create life?’

‘When a dog digs up a buried bone, is it its intention to retrieve it?’

He waits for my answer; I have none.

‘There is much more to discover.’ Seeing his wings beat furiously, I prepare myself to fly off, but we do not rise. Instead, everything around us changes - volcanoes explode; celestial thunderbolts flash in the troubled sky. It is beautiful and terrifying. Numerous craters form circular lakes filled with rainwater. The sea covers and uncovers thousands of lagoons and shallows, pulled back and forth by gigantic tides.

‘Where are we?’

‘At the very same place, but countless ages in the past. Look: Earth spins so fast, night follows day in moments. See how much closer the moon is.’ Gabriel unclasps my hand. His wings rise and fall. ‘Observe well, loved one, and you will find the answers to your questions.’ He leaps and ascends high in the sky.

For ages, my mind is still until it dawns upon me: the world has become the dwelling of a single kind of life that came to Earth riding a small comet. The gaseous body had crashed next to me and exposed deep microbe-infested strata. In the smouldering debris of the fallen star, I witness a stubborn bacterium envelop a particle of food before swallowing it. Had the germ expected to consume it?

As I fall deeper and deeper into the times of yore, the world turns into a Hadean inferno aglow with primeval heat. Fireballs hit the Earth and the moon. Rock vapour blankets the planet, blotting out the sun for ages, killing the land and the sea. Whenever free of cloud, the sun drenches the planet in lethal rays.

Temperatures rise until the seas boil dry and the rocks melt to incalculable depths. Seething lava oozes into the sulphurous underworld, where deep-living microbes swarm in brimstone. Earth’s smouldering skin spews forth streams of searing fluid. For time untold, wave upon wave of flaming balls plough the terrestrial flesh, raising awesome tsunamis of molten rock. Aeons after aeons, deep beneath the sea, on the dark ocean floor, where Earth’s crust stretches and tears, far from air and sunlight, existence struggles to establish itself before burning to cinders. As I sense the last spark of life fade away, the moon breaks apart.

A final meteorite shakes the Earth. The sky is clear and moonless. The air is pure. Life is back.

Blocks of rock tear themselves from the planet’s churning crust. Soon, it is smaller than its yet unborn moon. When it finally crumbles, its decomposition looks like an explosion in slow motion, hurling the primordial asteroids and comets back into the far reaches of space.

The last remains of Earth mingle with the debris composing magnificent rings around the swollen sun. A cloud of life drifts around the sun for a while and then vanishes.

Enormous stretches of time have elapsed since I hung, stranded in a ring of turbulent dust. I cannot imagine a greater isolation.

Yet when the nebular cloud disperses and its molecules drift away, I find myself light-years from the nearest star. A black abyss surrounds me, a yawning void stretching in all directions, populated by a few stray atoms and an occasional fleet of cosmic rays.

I wait, I wait and then, I turn toward the last thing left - I peer into emptiness.

At first, it seems quite placid and featureless like the surface of an ocean seen from high altitudes. Taking an ever-deeper look, I discover the vacuum seethes with restless chaos and rhythmic fluctuations. Far from being smooth, transient caves and tunnels riddle the apparent nothingness, endlessly sucking in and spitting out infinitesimal bundles of energy.

A looming mass of rocks and ice breaks my meditation. Increasingly dirty snowballs appear and slip by. As I cross a cloud of elusive comets, I imagine myself riding to the stars astride a dark lump of matter, laughing merrily while Ao swims and dances around me.

I linger, lost in the spiral arm of the galaxy. Eventually, a solitary grain of matter travels through the vast expanse of space. Propelled by starlight, this minute particle covered with fluffy snow and ice crystals drifts unimpeded across the galaxy and comes to rest next to me.

Encased in a protective coat, it betrays no overt sign of life. The cold is so intense its very molecules have ceased to move. Just as I wait, so does the spore. I feel love for this shrivelled, dehydrated and dormant seed and wonder which one of us will wait longest.

I conjure images of the nascent Earth, immersed in a rain of seeds. When the oceans cool down, this sleeping beauty will slowly drift to the safety and tenderness of soft loam.

‘Do you know whether you will become a flower or a tree?’ I look away from the insignificant creature and stare at the fathomless unknown. ‘This universe crawls with life.’

‘To be sure, ’tis pregnant with life,’ Gabriel says, back from his unexplained journey. ‘Everything yearns to exist.’

Yes, consciousness was fated to arise. Eyes riveted upon myriads of dazzling beacons, each one brighter than a thousand galaxies, I imagine fantastic engines pump evolution towards awareness and wonder if the universe directed the synthesis of the mind knowing what a thinking being was beforehand.

‘I am pleased.’ He unfurls his wings and starts flapping them with vigour. ‘You have a better understanding of the workings of the world. We may return.’

‘I have learned much, angel, but hardly enough.’ His wings lose their fine contours. ‘What does the universe seek to accomplish?’

‘By creating consciousness, it engineers its own brain and mirror.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘To discover itself.’ Gliding beside me, his powerful wings barely move. ‘Aware of itself, it may decide its own fate.’ Behind him, I recognize the familiar mountain peaks. I am back in the meadow, suspended in mid-air beside my tree.

Distracted by something that catches his attention Gabriel listens to the forest. Gusts of wind whistle through the weeds and the tall trunks. Birds cry out and flap away; small animals scatter. Startled deer lightly spring over moss-covered roots and around bushes. Mere paces away a doe throws itself into an elastic curtain of creepers, entangling itself in its terror. A single howl pierces the green darkness.

A pack of ashen grey wolves rushes by in a whirlpool of dead leaves. Unnoticed, the deer plays dead.

‘Beloved, the time has come to redeem yourself and to fulfil your destiny.’