Life After Jesus' Son
Jack, the Son of the Son of God, laid down his life to save mine.
In the weeks immediately after Jack was cast into the Lake of Fire, thus destroying his soul for all eternity, I was cared for by a patient and peace-loving older Italian couple. I had previously known one of them as Eve, who was back to just being Angelo again, and he had a new partner, Francesca.
For days, all I did was cry in a dark room until I ran out of tears, then lay in bed numb until I had enough tears to cry some more. My caretakers didn't press me to talk about it, for which I was grateful. I wasn't sure which would be worse: finding out that Jack's sacrifice did nothing but spare me the destruction he suffered in my stead, or finding out he destroyed death itself and brought true eternal life to all mankind, thus validating all the suffering St. Peter put us through. And I was afraid I'd find out that Jesus was in on it all along. Or that God was in on it. In any case, I knew Angelo or Francesca would have mentioned something if Jack had by some miracle survived.
Jack wasn't coming back.
I finally found the tiniest bit of will to crawl out of bed. Angelo had been leaving home-cooked meals on the end table, and the scent of garlic and basil eventually got me to take some hesitant bites of spaghetti. It would have been delicious even if I hadn't been starving, and I felt a little bit better after I ate. I looked out the window to see I was on the second story of some kind of farmhouse in the middle of cornfields.
I scrounged around to find my jeans, and happened upon my prayer card in the pocket. I had been sainted (probably, depending on who you asked) and on the back was the prayer people were meant to recite to pray for my intercession. I had never read the whole thing before, but I read it then.
It was a pile of half-truths, pushing my story into the realm of falsehood to try and make me seem better than I really was. For instance, I hadn't "stood between Satan and the Son of the Son, calling forth the divine light." I had been too busy playing with Jack's hair because we were rolling. There was something almost comforting about the absurdity of it all. After having discovered that so much of what I considered fantasy and mythology was actually physical reality, it was reassuring to know there was still plenty of bullshit out there. But then I got to the last line.
"St. John, the one whom Jesus' Son loved, pray for us."
That sent me back to bed to cry for several more days.
There really is only so much crying a guy can do, though. I kept eating the food Angelo brought me, regaining my strength, until one day I got dressed and headed downstairs to find Angelo and Francesca in the kitchen.
"It's so good to see you out of bed," Francesca said tenderly. "Can I get you anything? I'm making breakfast, chocolate chip pancakes, if you'd like any."
"Actually," I said, "um, do either of you know where I could get some weed?"
They laughed, but not in a mean way, and said that of course they did. There was a dispensary just down the street, and Angelo would take me right after breakfast. I was back in Illinois.
I slowly began to return to the world.
And I was reborn now! To help me catch up on what I had missed, Angelo got me hooked up with a group called Afterlife Anonymous, a reorientation program for the reborn who had been away from the globe for awhile. I had been gone for a quarter of a century, and during that time, the people of the globe made great leaps forward and took huge steps back, as they do. The program was mostly framed in terms of what technology the globers hadn't discovered yet, since the wider world outside the globe was into things like resurrection tech and psychic networking, but I was able to read between the lines to piece together what had changed.
The AA meetings were split up according to when you were last in the globe, and of all the people I might have crossed paths with, it was Jayjay who ended up in my group! I'm not sure he recognized me—we only knew each other for a few weeks, and that had been decades ago. I didn't say anything to him. I figured it would only dredge up difficult memories for us both. But I did see him leave one of our meetings with two chicks under one arm and a dude under the other, so...progress?
I got myself a decent job, nothing exciting, but enough to start saving up money to rebuild my life. I never spoke with Angelo or Francesca about anything to do with Jack or the Christian pantheon, and to their credit, they helped me keep my focus on the future. Jack was gone, but I was still there, and I still had a lot of life ahead of me. At night, alone in my room, I would pull out my prayer card and weep, but I began to do that less often. The closest Angelo came to saying anything about it was one night when he caught me puffy-eyed on the porch.
"Sometimes," he said, "all we can do is be grateful for what they gave us."
That helped a lot. He'd always known what to say, even back when he was a woman. When I moved out of the farmhouse and into a place of my own, I left the prayer card behind.
I did alright by myself. I'd occasionally run into a reborn or daemon. One time, on a cross-country train ride, I ended up sitting next to a pookah who had been to Lumeria recently and was able to tell me that my family from my past life there was thriving. Hannah had remarried and would likely follow her new husband into her next life, and my children were starting to have children of their own. As far as they knew, I was dead, so I let them be. It felt a little weird to know I procreated, but I certainly wasn't the first gay dude in history to have a secret family that he never visited.
Mostly, I went out of my way to make firstborn friends. The reborn in the globe generally tried to lay low and fit in, so the only real reminder of the world outside was my ability to understand foreign languages and see apocalyptic displays (once you can see them, you realize they're all over the place!) I completely avoided churches, in part because they brought up painful memories, but also in large part because I didn't think I could resist the urge to commandeer the lectern and preach like a madman about what Jesus and the afterlife were really like. I didn't go by John or Jack—neither name felt like me anymore. I picked a new name, and I did my best to leave all that behind me.
And then I met Bob.
Now mind you, I really did love Jack, and I always would. But Bob was, in the words of Jack's Dad, my "only takes one" true love. For instance, shortly after I started sleeping with Bob—like, actual spend-the-night-snoring-and-farting sleeping with him—I realized I never wanted to wake up without him there. I had only ever shared Jack's bed once, maybe twice if you counted that night on the couch with the molly, and I figured it would have taken us fifty lifetimes before we ever shared a bed again.
Jack and I clicked because our souls were so similar, but Bob and I made each other greater because we really were quite different. Bob had hundreds of past lives behind him, more than he could recount, whereas I was technically only on my third, and in many ways had simply returned to my first. I was a turn-the-other-cheek sort of guy, but Bob was a bit more assertive in the face of opposition. Bob got me to work harder than I would have without him, and I got Bob to do a few more drugs than he would have without me. It really helped that Bob was a pagan through-and-through, and wouldn't even recognize half the folks I met during my time with Jack. Opposites attract, even when you're both dudes.
But the thing that really set Bob apart from Jack was time. Being in love is great, but the most wonderful parts of true love really only start to kick in after several years together. When people talk about laying down your life for a friend, they usually think of the great acts of heroism that kill you when you're at your most vital. But the thing about that kind of death is that you just resurrect the next day, and life moves on. Truly laying down your life for a friend is something you do one day at a time, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, shovelful by shovelful, decade after decade for a lifetime. You give yourself to him, he gives himself to you, and your souls wind together like trees planted side by side, growing until they are one tree, one soul, two very different bodies, but one in being. That is the kind of love that will carry you through death and into the life hereafter, and there is no greater.
Jack taught me how to love and be loved—often the more difficult part—but Bob let me put it all into practice. Bob and I got married and lead a long, full life together. But death had not been conquered for all eternity, and it had to come for one of us first. I did my best to ensure Bob would be cared for without me, and as I lay in the hospital dying, he never left my side. And when death came to take me, I didn't want to leave him.
I didn't want to go.
...
I awoke on the back porch swing at the Slack Lodge, a pleasant fresh breeze relieving the lingering pain of my passage. Except the porch just kept on going, stretching out to the horizon. A man stood at the wooden railing of the deck, his back to me. He was wearing a loose-fitting white linen shirt and pants, and he had beautiful long straight brown hair.
"Jack?" I asked hesitantly.
"Hey dude," Jack said, turning to face me. "Welcome to my heaven!"
I ran over to him and hugged him tightly.
"Am I dreaming?" I asked.
"Nope," Jack laughed, squeezing me back, "just recently deceased!"
With two pats on the shoulder, we stepped out of our embrace.
"But how...?" I asked.
Jack gestured out beyond the railing.
Lapping iridescent flames filled half the visible world under a perfectly blue sky. It was as if the flames themselves were pure white light, and the dancing colors their shadow.
"The Lake of Fire?" I asked.
"We call it the Curtain of Light now," Jack said. "C'mon, there's a lot to explain!"
He lead me back over to the swing and we had a seat. I barely even noticed that we were lightly holding hands.
"So, turns out Peter was full of shit," Jack began. "Big surprise there. The Lake wasn't really a Lake of Fire at all, it was a gateway! And it didn't have anything to do with sacrifice or suffering or death or anything like that." He blushed. "It actually felt kinda good going through it."
"Yeah, it seemed that way," I grinned.
"And on the other side was another whole infinite world!" Jack continued. "Pretty much just like ours. They've even got resurrection tech. They had a few more hells on their side, because they didn't have Dad—yet—but I landed in a halfway decent heaven, and figured out what was going on pretty quick.
"Not that I know exactly how all this works. I'm not a resurrectologist. But it's still all just technology, and the folks on the other side had a bit more of a handle on it than we did over here. Apparently the flames were some kind of force field that you could only pass through once. If you tried to go back, you'd just kind of float there, and resurrection tech absolutely did not work across it. So occasionally folks from one side would stumble over to the other, and then their souls would be stuck there. Since the folks on the other side knew more about all this than we did, they were better at preventing people from going through, and they didn't have an asshole like St. Peter chucking souls through to experiment, so the souls mostly flowed from our side to theirs."
"So how did you get back?" I asked.
"I'm getting there!" Jack grinned. "It turned out my passage through the Lake wasn't really anything special. I landed over there, and everything kept working the way it always had. But I guess I do have to admit that I inherited a few superpowers from Dad, and the one that really mattered for this was my ability to resurrect wherever and however I want. Most folks resurrect because someone else uses tech to bring them back, meaning they're stuck with whatever idol grabs them, but resurrection is a thing I can just do naturally. The scientists on the other side said it had something to do with my memetics, whatever that means, and that it basically works on the same principles as technological resurrection, but my abilities are a lot more versatile because they're organic. Like how it's easier to be a dragonfly than build an airplane.
"Anyway, my ability meant that I was able to resurrect across the Lake when no one else could. When I finally did, it destabilized the AR field or something like that. The Lake of Fire became the Curtain of Light, and now souls can pass freely back and forth, via resurrection or even just by hopping on a flying saucer!"
"Dude!" I exclaimed. "That's fantastic! I guess Peter was sort of right, though. I mean, sending you through the Fire was at least the key."
"Ugh, don't even suggest that," Jack said. "That asshole's already got enough of an ego about the whole thing, he doesn't need encouragement."
"Aw, man, Peter survived?" I said.
"Yeah dude, everyone did!" Jack exclaimed. "Peter. Mom. All the other damned souls that got sent to the other side. But hey, David finally found Jonathan! Everyone lives forever, dude. It's just the way of the world, nothing you can do about it."
"Probably worth the tradeoff," I said.
"Anyway," Jack continued, "Peter was still completely wrong, and nothing would have happened if I'd listened to him from the beginning, because he was missing the most important part—you!"
"Me?" I asked. "What did I have to do with anything?"
"Dude, if it weren't for you, I would have never come back," Jack said. "What the fuck else would I want over here? More family drama? Peter crowing for the rest of eternity about what a great idea it was to risk the very existence of my soul? No dude, fuck that shit. Over there I had the power to keep myself out of hell without needing to lug all of Dad's baggage around. I could have stayed on the other side for the rest of eternity and been just fine. I only resurrected back to this side to see you. You were the key that unlocked the gateway."
"Dude," I laughed, "I treasure your love for me, I love you too, and all that mushy stuff. But all I did was just stand there!"
"You were the best friend I ever had," Jack said, squeezing my hand. "You loved me, and let me love you back. And because we loved each other, a whole new infinite world opened up. Don't undersell that, dude!"
"Fair enough," I laughed, but then, with a touch of sadness, I withdrew my hand. "But, dude, I'm married..."
"I know," Jack said with a smile.
"And, like, I really love him," I said, "in that spend eternity together sort of way."
"I know!" Jack laughed. "Look, like I said, I landed in a heaven on the other side. It was not an easy place for a dude to get himself killed! Plus I had no idea if I'd even be able to resurrect back or not, the whole thing was still pretty much pure hypothesis at that point. If I hadn't slipped out to go to a bacchanal and gotten bit by a snake, it could've taken a lot longer. So by the time I got back, you were already way into Bob. Like, waaaaaaay into him. I wasn't going to get in between that. I was just happy you were happy. That's all I really needed to know."
"Yeah, but I still feel bad about it," I said. "It doesn't exactly seem fair to you..."
"Dude," Jack said, "you're my first love, not my only love. I can juggle more than one. I am a Christ, after all!"
"Fair enough!" I laughed.
"So don't worry about it," Jack insisted. "Your love for Bob is true, and when his time comes, he will resurrect right next to you in a body at its prime. You will both be welcome to stay here, but you're welcome to head out wherever you guys want. My heaven doesn't lock anyone in. I swear to Grandpa!"
"I believe you," I smiled.
"Good!" Jack said, jumping to his feet. "In the meantime, there's lots to show you! To start, there's a party on the other side tonight being thrown by some chill androids I want you to meet. C'mon, I ordered us an Exalt!"
Jack held out his hand.
"What's an Exalt?" I asked.
Jack just smiled and rolled his eyes, and I took his hand, to go find out what's really behind the Curtain.
Afterword: The Making of Jesus' Son
Next Series: In Heaven with Jesus' Son
Doing Drugs with Jesus’ Son is always free.