It wasn’t that I didn’t like my new home. Although, as I was ashamed to admit, I had had doubts about whether it could live up to the hype when I was back on Earth, those doubts were long gone. Everything I’d ever wanted was here, at least, everything I’d ever truly wanted, without any corruption sneaking into my thoughts. My parents, grandparents, and great grandparents were here, along with my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. The old Earth, with all its troubles, was long gone now, and I had access to any comforts, any answers I needed.

The strange thing, though, was that it seemed I had forgotten everything in the intervening time. I learned that I, along with many in our community, had specifically asked for this memory loss. At first I wasn’t too curious. This was Heaven, after all. If I had decided I wanted my memories gone, and God had agreed, I was sure it was for a good reason. Perhaps we had simply wanted to experience anew the feeling of newly arriving in this place, and I had to admit, it had certainly been a good experience.

But now that I was settled in, curiosity had gotten the better of me. “Why did I decide to ask for my memory to be wiped?” I asked. As always, God responded truthfully, but only when I actually wanted Him to respond.

“It is as you expect. You had wanted to experience things anew without the boredom that comes with excessive repetition.”

It was a reason I could certainly understand in the abstract, but now that I thought about it, I could hardly imagine ever running out of new things to do in this place. Was it really that easy to exhaust everything that literal Heaven had to offer?

“How long have I been here, that I would wish such a thing?”

“I cannot tell you,” the Lord responded.

I blinked a little at that. He couldn’t tell me?

“My Lord, surely it is true that you know everything?”

“Of course.”

“Is it a secret?”

“It is not a secret. I would be willing to tell you. However, I cannot, because you would not understand.”

It was not a very satisfying answer, to be sure, but it was still very interesting.

“How can it be that I can’t understand the answer to such a simple question as that?”

“You cannot understand the number of years you have been here. It has been too long.”

That… was kind of a crazy thought. “But… it’s just a number, right?” I objected. Couldn’t you just write out how many years I’ve been here?”

A number appeared before my eyes, and I gasped at the sheer size of it.

“47665676595110261437982254377199462108128119761527012608140788230693451332482187965001282458748623447869190180169559387194778896872435546014379711895892000721902493405127947935825231108646718413623186…”

I couldn’t see the whole thing. It stretched off into the distance, further away from me than I could ever make out. I began to understand that he was probably right. I couldn’t begin to fathom a number that large. What… what had I even been doing with that much time?

“This is not the first time I’ve wiped my memory, huh? How many times…”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

A similarly ridiculously long number appeared next to the first. “It only takes you about a trillion years on average to decide to wipe your memories. So this number is of course similarly large.”

My mind reeled. “How… how long is that number? Is it bigger than Earth?”

“It is longer than the entire universe Earth inhabited,” He replied. “It is so long, I cannot describe its length to you. But…”

“64172809594092998491170003225670223470013713281312392075062461390537464688636179237925059022215789564241613256487505950460330136337141781549329142971622711826694901875608479524309456730745232349109133…”

That was how many digits the previous number had? “Holy cow,” I mouthed. “How long is that one?”

“28895761277019086703116080647389417160210705120661089537984856358780167716124667849968398272308671192363009406111493701349331593870849466855777909620643216763389433468555476287379689280855386908488047…”

What. “How big is this thing?”

“I cannot tell you,” replied the Lord. “It is not simply because you cannot perceive the entire number. I cannot even describe an upper bound to you. It is simply too large.”

Another strange idea occurred to me. “Lord, have we had this exact conversation before?”

The answer was exactly what I had expected. “Yes. Countless times. In every possible variation.”

That was insane. With that much time… I had probably played literally every possible game of chess. And Go. And come to think of it, pretty much every possible game, period. “And you said you can’t even describe an upper bound?” I thought to myself some more. “The number of digits… it’s kind of like the logarithm, right? How many times would I have to take the logarithm on this number to get it down to something manageable?”

“8285709843101374608937942318379619467169701176324824256313887214434321393088573026417357675488107053585800700199299737794577276038905492246136328798466456204973518107270332922518455080826817932561864…”

“How many times would I have to take the log on that number…” I stopped myself. “You know what, you’ve got to be right. There’s no way I can understand.”

“To be fair, it would be quite okay if you didn’t give up after that. There are much more powerful tools than logarithms available to describe large numbers. Up-arrow notation, chained-arrow, and even more powerful tools. I can see all of these numbers that you describe with your mathematics and more. Even the uncomputable ones, the busy beavers, Rayo’s number, everything.”

“And you can see how long I’ve been here too, right?”

“Yes, I can. But even Rayo’s number pales in comparison. At the end of the day, the largest numbers I can describe to you are those which exploit the most powerful mathematical systems you can understand to their absolute limits. But for how long you’ve been here… human mathematics simply isn’t up to the task.”

“Is there any kind of mathematics up to the task?”

“There is. But in order to learn it, you would have to be changed into something so massive, so vast, that it would be unrecognizable as human. You would be unimaginably more complex than your entire home universe.”

The idea of becoming something so incomprehensible frightened me enough that I quickly disclaimed it. “I wouldn’t want that. I’d rather stay myself.”

“Of course,” replied the Lord. “Although some humans have taken a route like that, you have always refused. It is perfectly reasonable. Nearly every time I ask you, you always decide that you don’t want that. There are rare exceptions, but I think you can understand why I have to deny your desires in that case: otherwise it would be impossible for you to remain human for eternity as per your wishes. Even if it was one in a trillion, you would eventually ask to be changed into something else.”

The idea that my wishes were not consistent enough to make it possible for Him to honor them always, even in Heaven, was a bit disturbing to me, but I could certainly understand the reasoning. But the possibility was still theoretically interesting.

“If I went that route… how many times more powerful would my mind have to be, to understand the necessary mathematics? How long would it take me to “catch up” and understand?”

“I cannot describe that to you either. Rayo’s number pales in comparison. And neither can I describe how long it would take you to understand how long it would take you to understand. There is nothing you can say to me which can even remotely describe an upper bound to this number, not even with hypotheticals about superhuman mathematics like this. This timespan is simply too long for you to touch, in any way.”

Wow. That was stunning. Even though I knew, academically, that this was the natural, inevitable result of eternity, I could never wrap my mind around something like this. “And yet it hasn’t been an infinite amount of time? I’ve been here for a finite span?”

“Indeed. It is finite. Which means there are numbers so large that this one pales in comparison, even more so than the numbers you could comprehend pale in comparison to this one. And every single one of them reaches exactly 0% of the way to eternity. This is what eternity truly means.”

I had never thought about the weight of eternity in this way before(at least, not that I could remember). It was certainly daunting. But, I took some comfort in the fact that I had faced this daunting fact countless times before, and the Lord God himself still allowed me to learn of it. I could certainly handle this.

“I suppose there’s not much more to say about it then, huh?”

“I suppose not, other than to simply say, welcome again to My kingdom! I know you will certainly enjoy your stay, and you will never have to worry about leaving!”

I smiled. “I’m glad to be here.”