Heaven and Hell (64 page)

As Chris bid goodbye to his mother and his favorite animal friend, he was full of optimism. “I’ll try to be back by this evening,” he said.

Jennifer stood on the porch, trying not to be too emotional. As she watched him vanish, though, tears came to her eyes. Within her heart a terrible dread was welling up. She had the feeling that he would not be coming back this evening or tomorrow. She wondered if she would ever see him again.

Over 70 minutes had passed by the time Chris stepped from the portal and walked back into Johann’s home. He found Johann, Nick, and David in the back yard making their final preparations. Johann turned to see Chris step out the back door.

“Two minutes late,” he said, placing a metal case through the hatchway of the craft. “I was starting to become concerned.”

“I still wish I could go,” complained David, stepping back as the last piece of equipment was loaded on board.

Johann shook his head. “We’ve been all over this before. Someone has to remain here and monitor the landing site from my study. I’ll need you to remain in constant contact with us and keep us informed as to the progress of the angels and any demons that might wander into the area. If you’re not going to do that, then this mission is in jeopardy, we will be flying blind.”

“OK, I’ll do it,” replied David, his tone apologetic. “I just wanted to see this place for myself.”

“Maybe next time,” replied Nick, climbing through the hatchway and into the Spirit.

Johann and Chris followed quickly behind. The main hatchway of the Spirit didn’t have hinges, and it didn’t close in the conventional sense. The rectangular opening simply vanished, replaced by smooth crystal. Within the craft, Nick had already taken his seat at the controls. The high-backed chair sat on a circular platform about 3 feet high surrounded by a railing of clear crystal. A steep stairway gave him access to this place of honor.

Before him, the control panel was amazingly simple. A large glass sphere and two smaller ones were built into the control panel. A wide range of complex readouts was suspended in midair in front of him like so many holograms. He scanned them carefully and apparently liked what he saw. On the lower deck level, below Nick’s command level, there were eight chairs arranged in a circle. Chris noticed that none of the chairs had a seatbelt; but he decided not to question it. There just wasn’t time to waste.

“The best seats in the house,” Johann said, pointing to the two chairs before them.

Chris sat down, a bit nervous, and Johann sat in the chair to his left.

For nearly ten minutes Johann said very little. The only conversations were between Nick and David, who was monitoring the whole operation from the study. Chris turned to see a holographic projection of the youth among the other readouts; he was going over checklists, confirming readings, and so on. At least in that respect, this launch seemed similar to those he had seen on television. Yet right now, time seemed to be dragging on. Chris was anxious to get underway.

There was no announcement made, no fanfare, only a soft hum as the craft slowly lifted off the ground. The metallic landing gear retracted, rendering the craft a perfect sphere, moving swiftly into the sky. The trees fell away, giving Chris an unobstructed horizon. It dawned on him that he had never truly seen Heaven from the air. He wondered what it would look like. The answer—very much like Earth. The forested landscape dropped away quickly. They passed through a layer of widely scattered clouds. A river came into view and a large meadow to the north, yet no cities or towns met his eye.

“Passing 10,000 meters,” announced Nick, momentarily looking away from the controls.

“Will we be able to see Zion on the way up?” asked Chris scanning the spectacular panorama below.

“No. Heaven isn’t quite like Earth. For example, you couldn’t reach Zion from either your home or mine if you couldn’t form the portal. It is not a part of the same world. Heaven is many worlds, each a little bit out of phase with the other.”

“Out of phase?” asked Chris. “I remember your saying something like that about the image of Serena in the crystal, yet I don’t have a clue as to what it means.”

“It’s a bit difficult to explain,” replied Johann, gazing up at the ever-darkening sky. Perhaps I’ll go into it later.”

“1,000 kilometers an hour, 25,000 meters,” announced Nick, who seemed very busy flying the craft.

The sky above faded to black, making way for the stars of night, even as the daylight sky became a narrowing band of blue below them. The Spirit was hurtling headlong into space, yet Chris could barely detect any motion.

“A few words about going through the dimensional barrier,” said Johann, turning to Chris. “I’m telling you right now that it’s not the most pleasant experience. It can be visually stunning, but it can leave you feeling queasy in the stomach for a minute or two. Your up, your down, and your sideways are no longer what they were—they become concepts assigned to entirely different physical dimensions.”

“At times, even some of the physical laws and universal constants change, and our bodies have to adjust to these changes. I’m not at all certain that our old bodies would even have withstood the shock, but our glorified bodies, they mange just fine.”

Chris wasn’t certain that he understood what Johann was talking about, but he did understand the queasy part. Flying used to do it to him all the time. He enjoyed the view, but he didn’t like what it did to his stomach. He wondered why Johann had waited until now to break this news to him.

“We’ve never been through this particular dimensional barrier,” continued Johann, “but I can’t imagine it will be any different. Just don’t become upset if it gets a little bit bumpy, we will get through.”

Chris nodded, as he turned toward the incredible vista beyond the glass sphere. “Out of the blue and into the black,” he murmured, remembering the words of an old rock song. That they were; the blackness of space was all around them now. He’d always wondered what it was like out here, now he knew. All he had to do was die, to experience it all for himself. The thought brought a slight smile to his face.

“We’re two minutes to the dimensional barrier,” warned Nick, glancing down at his two passengers. “This should be interesting.”

“It is always necessary to travel into space when you form a dimensional corridor such as this,” noted Johann. “We can’t form one on the ground. The wormhole left momentarily in our wake would wreak havoc on everything around. Air, bushes, trees, nearby people, would all be sucked in and then deposited who knows where. It was one of the ground rules set by the Father before He allowed us to embark upon these ventures into the vast unknown.”

“Right,” confirmed Nick, “He didn’t want His children leaving a mess behind when they were playing.” Nick glanced at the readouts. “We’re just passing an altitude of five hundred kilometers, speed eighteen-thousand kilometers per hour, one minute to go.”

Chris was becoming increasingly nervous. “How does this thing fly? You know, it’s strange, but I forgot to even ask.”

“We create a very small spatial distortion directly above the craft, a tiny gravity well in the midst of space time,” said Nick, keeping his attention focused on the displays in front of him. When we’re on the ground it has to be a very small one, lest we disturb the surface around us as well. In deep space we can create a much larger distortion, accelerate to nearly the speed of light in but a few minutes. Crossing the barrier from one dimension to another involves very much the same principle, but on a far grander scale. Here we go.”

Chris felt a falling sensation, yet it seemed as if he was falling upward. The world behind him dropped away at an accelerated pace, the hum grew in volume and pitch.

“Opening capacitor relays to standby,” said Nick, “we don’t want to lose power at a critical moment. Coordinates laid in. Making the jump, now.”

Behind them, the globe of this version, this phase of Heaven, dropped away to insignificance. There was a momentary flash of light that seemed to come from everywhere. In that instant the stars vanished. Ethereal streams of light materialized out of the blackness, glowing tenuous clouds swept past them. They lent a range of kaleidoscopic color to the inside of the Spirit as they plunged deeper into the ethereal realm. Beyond the sphere, streaming clouds of color, clouds alive with coursing threads of lightning, shot past. With them came an increasing turbulence that made Chris sick to his stomach.

“Is it always like this?” he asked, closing his eyes for a moment.

“It is never like this,” replied Johann, gazing wide-eyed at the awesome spectacle. “I can’t even begin to explain what it is we are seeing.”

“I am recording it,” said Nick. “We can analyze the data later.”

For several minutes they passed through the realm of ethereal storms. Yet the light around them, even the electrical power within these titanic maelstroms, was fading, giving way to profound darkness.

“The spatial energy field set up by God’s Holy Spirit is fading,” noted Nick, “we’re switching to internal power. We’re on our own from here.”

Chris felt a queasiness in the pit of his stomach not associated with the turbulence that had now past. It was the sense of being without God’s Holy Spirit, without His presence. They were moving into a realm where He was not. True, they had brought a portion of the power of that Spirit within the temporal capacitor, but that couldn’t replace the actual presence of God. Chris closed his eyes. The absence of God’s Holy Spirit was almost unbearable to him. It gave rise to a terrible sense of loneliness, even hopelessness.

There was a slight shudder as the sphere was flooded with amber illumination. Chris opened his eyes to see a disk of light ahead. It had the appearance of the sun yet far less luminous, far redder. Until recently, it was the only star in a realm of total darkness.

Some distance to its right, Chris spotted a small thin crescent of a world, reflecting the light of the distant star. That crescent was slowly growing as they drew nearer.

“Gentlemen, I welcome you to outer darkness and the world of Hell,” announced Nick. “We’re right on schedule, right on course. Speed ten thousand kilometers per second and decelerating.

Estimated arrival time thirty-seven minutes.”

Johann stared at the world before them. “Let us hope that satan does not monitor the space around this prison world of his too carefully. Our entrance into this space would have been pretty hard to miss, wormholes usually are. One of our most important advantages is surprise. We need to get in and out as quickly as possible if we’re to make this plan work.”

Chris gazed out in silence at the rapidly growing crescent. Serena was down there. He offered a silent prayer for their success, yet he wondered if God heard it.

Serena had changed clothes, snatched up the few possessions that meant anything to her, and was preparing to make her way to the great room. She looked back on the tiny cavern room she had called home these past few months. She willed the crystal in the ceiling to fade a final time. She would not be coming this way again.

As she made her way back to the great room, she was certain that she heard voices. A bolt of fear shot through her as she cautiously peered around the corner to see Abaddon talking with five other dark angels. They were not demons with leathery wings, but angels with dark, feathered wings and faces not unlike that of human men.

“It is a terrible thing that has descended upon us,” said one of the angels, speaking in the angelic tongue. “Satan has become completely obsessed with finding Serena Farnsworth. From north to south, from east to west, he has sent his minions in search of her. Then he became convinced that it was one of us who had aided her escape. Four days ago he issued an ultimatum. We were either to pledge our unconditional allegiance to him, or face a fate similar to that of the humans, eternal torment.”