It is the year 2086. A white building stood about 10 stories high. A Red cross hung in the middle. Rain was splattering across the sign. The thunderous lightning arced and flashed across the dark clouds. Strawberry-sized rain pelted an ambulance van that was pulling into the bays of the emergency department, and the back metal red doors burst open. Two doctors dressed in green and blue scrubs, one standing six feet tall and lanky, and the other looking like he just got out of medical school, exited the emergency doors. The tall scrub doctor asked, "What do we have?" Taking his stethoscope to Liston to check his heart rhythms.

"We found the patient stating he had pain that increased with palpation, but we did not note any obvious trauma to his chest. The patient stated that the pain also increases when taking a deep breath, and he has clear lung sounds in all fields" The EMT tech pushed the stretcher through the back of the ambulance as he read his stats off like he was actioning his dad's porn stash: "Patient's vital signs are: BP: 148/110, HR: 58, RR: 14, SpO2: 99% RA."

The stretcher banged and opened ER bay one. The two registered nurses, already dressed in their yellow BIO tops, said, “Alright on three, one, two, three”. They all lifted and helped move the heart attack patient to the hospital bed. The EMT tech grabbed their stretchers, and as the tech left, he said “I hope he makes it through”.

The ER Bay was ten feet by ten feet in the center. Alex’s unconscious body lay, and several nurses and two doctors were spread around him. Medical supplies lay strewn across the checkered floor. Machines began to give the long tone of no heart beating.

The nurse shouted, “He’s going into V-Tech; get the paddles and charge to 200”.

He heard faint whispers and shouting, and then he thought he had heard a female voice saying to let go, but it was just his ears popping.

Gates the size of giant cumulus clouds and pearl in color. Swung open and closed to each soul granted access. Unfortunately for Alex, the gates stayed closed. Two archangels walked to either side of him and placed their hands on his shoulders. They escorted him to Pater, who was at the podium. “I’m sorry, Alex, but I need you to come with me, please”. Peter said as he gestured him to his podium. He allowed his subordinate to continue to process.

The podium was eight feet tall and made of a multitude of colors and ornate gemstones. Stairs were coming out of it on the right side. Behind the huge thing was a secret access panel with gems that acted like buttons. Peter looked behind his podium and pressed one of the multitude of buttons behind his stand. As the button was pressed, the right side of the massive pearly gates opened.

As he was escorted through a large white hallway that stood clear to the ceiling, there was no ceiling, or it looked like there wasn’t. Clouds seem to come through, but looking closer, the structure isn’t even attached. It almost seemed like a construct. He was about to ask, but the hallway ended as quickly as it began. As he entered the room, a golden throne appeared behind him. Not so much appeared, but he noticed that the hallway led out from the left side of the throne. The throne room was rounded; an estimation of the size of the room was like being able to comfortably fit five Grand Canyons back to back and five side by side going up and still have room for a blue giant star. About twenty feet up, there are 100 evenly spread-out angels around the circular structure, with ten of these circular rings going up, with the last one just going up past the head of God. They all sang prayers and prayed. Each with a different message for God. Clouds seemed to drift all around the choir of angels.

A loud, booming voice sounded as he greeted him and Peter. "Well, hello there, Alex. I haven’t seen you since you died the first time on Earth in 2018. You two, thank you for escorting them to me. You may wait outside the Thorne room.” He said it in earnest. The two angels left, leaving Peter and Alex.

God was enormous; he seemed to have the feel of a friendly uncle. Other than that, not much could be said, but what struck Alex was that he could shrink his appearance to a much more manageable size. “So you are probably wondering why you are not burning in Hell? Well, the last time you were here, we made a bet, and it seems that you upheld it. In fact, if I remember correctly, you found the true origin of my family lineage. For that, I will allow you to take eight of my precious golden apples." He explained

Alex remembered exactly what he was talking about; he had to go through great lengths to obtain rare documents. Ones that had been raided before he was born. He hunted down each and every one of those ancient scrolls. Some had been degraded, but due to advances in technology, The most fragile of the scrolls had not completely been turned to sand. Could be scanned, and through a set of advanced decryption codes and analyzing ancient languages, we found clues and fragments of words. But it would have seemed that he had found the correct answer.

The three of them sat on what the room produced—chairs of some sort. The throne seemed to produce a copy of a smaller version. Almost like a lazy boy recliner. In fact, it was a lazy boy recliner.

God must have noticed the stare. “Oh yeah, the last time you were here, you said, “The throne was something awful,” if I remember correctly. So I have been using the thing ever since”.

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Peter slammed a hand to his forehead and just walked away. “I’m going to help my apprentice. Good luck, Alex, God." He just shook his head and left.

The two of them just laughed. When they finished, God asked him a favor: "Look, Alex, I have a favor to ask. I was wondering if you could end the apocalypse”? he said.

Alex froze in place. He thought he didn’t hear him correctly, so he asked, “Did you say end the apocalypse”?

“Oh yes, you heard correctly”. He looked down at the floor. He seemed to be thinking about something he hadn’t thought of until seven days ago. “You see, I’ve lost most of my strength; the angels have mostly been running around heaven”. He placed his arms on his legs and leaned forward. "Damn Lucifer, he has corrupted more humans; each time a soul is corrupted, I lose a fraction of my power. In total, I’ve lost seven point eighty-three billion souls to Lucifer”. He breathed out, relaxed his posture, and fell back.

"Wait, are you saying that Lucifer is now more powerful than all of Heaven and you combined”. He stood up as he shouted the words. Two archangels came storming in, clad in their heavenly armor. It looked Roman in design. But the metal looked exactly like the gates of heaven. One was carrying a medieval flail and appeared to be female. The second was male and carried a pointed lance.

God waved them off, and Alex sat down. They both sipped on ambrosia. The drink was pure white, with hints of honey and sweet, fruity flavors of berries. One sip, and Alex was already feeling like the room was spinning just to spite him. God looked over at Alex and busted out laughing. He placed a hand on him, and the shoulder began to glow. The effects of the nectar were being pulled from him.

“So sorry, I almost forgot," God said.

….

Alex seemed to just be staring into Peter's eyes. The room and the choir of angels began to sing a different song, and two of the throne rooms seemed to change color as though you could see the outside.

“Sorry for the sudden change; this room changes when the sun sets in your part of the world. Anyway, it’s not a big universe; it’s actually quite small enough for two galaxies to fit inside it. But this is where I have to leave you. Peter can escort you to my garden to pick some apples. There, you and anyone you choose will become just like I am, and then you can build your own garden”.

God and Alex talked for what seemed to Alex to be almost a year, but in reality it was only five minutes. They walked down a long hall, gleaming in pearlescent illumination. The garden was encircled by the hallway; there were four hallways that led to the garden. The garden seemed to be massive as well. Lush in a vibrant variety. There were millions of trees known to humanity, and some that humanity hadn’t seen. That went for the ancient extinction flowers, plants, and even the grass itself. The grass was a vibrant rainbow of individual blades of grass. The one thing that caught his eye was three trees in the middle of the whole garden. The one on the left was filled with what looked like normal red apples; the second one in the middle had golden apples; and the third tree had what looked to be a quince tree. The third tree he had no knowledge of As they walked through the garden, the three trees looked to be in a circle and not in a line.

A female principality dressed in white linen robes was climbing down the tree; she had a basket of golden fruit. She seemed to drop and catch each branch like a monkey. She landed on the ground and quickly walked to Alex, Peter, and the two other angels. One of them gave her a sheepish, sly smile. As she was about to smile back, Alex whistled and said, "So this place must be the fabled Eden. I had a feeling this thing was up here. In all the texts, it stated that it was on earth”.

“Hello is how I start each conversation, Alexander, and my name is Arella. I tend this garden with an absent monkey, it would seem”. She corrected him: “The texts were made by humans. Plus, any proof you have is just speculation”.

"This Apple human is the same one used by Odin himself. As you know, he too was human, and by eating the apple, he gained Godhood.", She held her hand up, holding a golden apple. The shimmering gold reflected Alex’s inverted, distorted image of himself. "This Alex is what will help you in your journey to fight Lucifer, helping you save us, God, humanity, and even the fallen ones”. Her eyes began to fill with tears. “You see, Lucifer ate from the quince tree. The tree will corrupt any immortal who eats from it. The corruption spread through his body and transformed him into a seven-headed dragon. When our brother Michael gave his life to defeat Lucifer, he was split into three evil entities. You already know them as Beelzebub, Moloch, and Satan”.

She handed him the apple and told him to eat. He took the apple bite, and a mouth-watering sensation exploded in his mouth. It was all of his senses at full blast. When he finished the first bite, the sensation dulled to almost nothing. He took another bite, and again, his senses were blasted to full blast, but this time his soul was beginning to turn into a physical substance; more than that, his eyes could focus and see individual cells form. But as soon as he swallowed, his vision seemed to zoom out, and the sensation disappeared but was still kind of weirdly there. Like having your whole body go numb and feel thousands of individual needle pricks. He decided to just completely decorate the rest of the apple, but when he did, he crumbled over, and the sensation of almost ecstasy flooded his now fully formed body. He held back the most painful erection his body had ever sustained.

The angels around him began to almost faint and waver. He held them up, and they almost instantly felt better. He wondered what brought that on. He could feel the presence of the three angels. The only one he could not sense was Peter. He let it go because he didn’t know what to make of it.

“If that is all Arella, then we must go back with God”. The two angels took him and Peter back to the throne room. God stood there at the same height as Alex. He looked at him and at the three angels behind him. God seemed to smile, looked at Alex, and told him, “So it would seem she told you part of the story. If you do end this war, let whatever angel would like to go with you. In the meantime, I’ll send you my blacksmith; he was the one who fashioned the Michigan sword and every weapon and armor here”.

Over a third decided to go with him. They dressed in their armor, packed, and prepared to go to hell. These were God's most feared warriors. He was also sending Arella with her basket of apples.

God's most famous blacksmiths fashioned Alex an obsidian sword with a blade length of forty-two inches. The blade curved and was adorned with a black leather-wrapped scabbard. He instantly recognized it as a samurai sword.

"This sword was fashioned for you; we used the Japanese design because you liked it, and it also holds numerous special abilities”. He explained, "It can trap the souls of beings you find evil”. He kneeled in front of him as he presented him with the katana.

Alex accepted the gift and analyzed the hilt of the sword. There was an Enochian script written and illuminated in a faint blue. He figured that this was the spell that gave it the ability. He then inspected the sheath. The leather was braided all around the wooden scabbard.

Alex fixed the katana to his belt. It was created so that the attachment could morph into any hook or clasp the wearer needed. He turned to face his small band of angels and the poet Virgil. He looked over at God and tipped his head to acknowledge the poet. God explained, "He might help you on your way to the underworld."

"Well, I guess I can assume that The Divine Comedy is true and Dante actually went on an adventure. Well, I guess I can ask Virgil in this new world." Alex began to notice his mind opening to the secrets of the universe, and he also knew what was waiting beyond this universe's hope.