The Problem of Evil
by Spencer Nitkey
I am Mother and Father’s final test. The fluorescent moon, that diadem of Heaven Industries, smiles a crooked, asteroid ridden smile. It is so close I feel I could grab it. Low enough on the horizon that I might wrangle it to earth and stomp it out. Then there would be dark. Then there would be peace.
Heaven Industries stretches like a flat body of water in all directions around me. My slice of heaven is this bright white moon and flat black eternity.
To be fair, this isn’t supposed to be my heaven, per se. I am more like a door, or a portal, or a puddle you look into on a summer walk through the woods: at first you see your reflection and perhaps you notice a tuft of hair blowing in the wind, or a fleck of green in your blue eyes, or a mole on your forehead so you lean closer to get a better look. Once closer you look again at your face, only now you are close enough to see past your own face and you notice the slits of gray splashing through the water —tadpoles!— the green tinge of algae already growing at the bottom amid the incomplete quilt of fallen leaves, dried petals and gravel.
My Mother and Father, I am told by my programmers, were good people, but perhaps not quite good enough. It’s difficult, they said. They’re an edge case. They are leaning in multiple directions with their afterlife. The question, my keepers tell me as I idly walk, then run, roll, then weep, somehow seeming not to move one inch from the center of my slice of heaven, the question is not one of actions, which averaged well towards the acceptable side of the sin/virtue spectrum when calculated by their actuaries. No, the question is one of purpose. For though their actions were “good” there is an active debate amongst the assigned Angel Team Leaders, as to why Mother and Father performed their good acts. Ultimately, they tell me, it is a question of loyalty. There is suspicion, based on numerous captured thoughts, transcribed dreams and fMRI studies that Mother and Father acted virtuously not in service of Heaven Industries, but in service of one another. A selfish love, rather than a Heaven-Industries-directed agape. They have passed all previous tests. They have said the right things and demonstrated a robust understanding of the company mission statement, purpose and all requisite by-laws. Not only, it is reported to me, did they demonstrate recitory knowledge, but they possessed interpretive knowledge as well. Still, it was necessary, should they be granted a place in the DoubleDiamondPlatinum afterlife package, to ensure.
So, it was explained to me, I was created.
Splashing in the strange viscous water, I ponder what loyalty matters for goodness. Does it matter which mega-corporation with an oligopoly on the afterlife market one serves if one’s actions are ultimately good? More than anything else, I wonder in the last seconds of wondering I have been given just what is so wrong with loving someone so much you shape your whole life around them. If the shape of that life is beautiful and good, what’s the problem?
There’s so little time to ponder questions like these. My Mother and Father will be rendered in to my slice of heaven.
My role, so they tell me, is that of tempter, serpent, fallen star, etc. etc. etc.
Milton’s guilty muse.
The nebulous shape of me is solidifying as the code continues to generate. My disembodied hands now sit at the end of disembodied arms. Soon I will be a perfect replica of what their first child, conceived on Dec 19, 2067, would have looked like had he lived. I will have eyes the brown of well-buttered Thanksgiving gravy. I will have long fingernails I forget to cut too often. I will have painted my index finger deep purple because I liked the way jewel tones look against my skin.
Mother and Father are approaching, their consciousnesses having just been transferred from their aging bodies into the cloud-based afterlife incentive program. Their virtual avatars, nodes containing the entirety of their conscious code, are coming slowly into holographic focus as each bit of data added to the system is extrapolated.
I’ve been told they will not know they are dead. They will believe that I am their child. My Mother will remember watching me grow in the embryonic chamber, hand pressed to the plexiglass as I shivered and shook and grew and grew until one day I was whole enough to hold. My Father will remember falling down the steps, tripping over the cat while holding me. He will remember tumbling and sliding down, shredding the cartilage around his knees to nothing, spraining his ankle and dislocating his hip, all while miraculously holding my frail tiny body in his hands, safe from harm.
They will remember many things.
The blur of Mother and the blur of Father crystallize as more and more information is uploaded. The flat surface of my world has developed a versimilitudinous setting complete with scenery (grass peaks from the ground, thousands of verdant heads; a breeze sighs into existence and rustles the grass and the branches of old oaks and sycamores) and topography (a tremendous mountain has risen behind me; crags of stone and earth rise like fangs from the flat around it). Such is the Tremendous and Terrifying(R) power of Heaven Industries.
Mother and Father are here suddenly. They are hugging me, covering my face in kisses. I think my mother is crying. It would appear, per the simulation spec, they have not seen me in a long time. I reciprocate an age-appropriate amount, warmly giving love at first, then bashfully turning away and laughing, embarrassed, at their overt displays of affection.
Father asks how I have been. He is sorry for the delay. Traffic was awful. The lights on main street were down so it was a free for all on the intersection. He’s happy to be here now, though. Yes, overjoyed, says Mother. Before we can talk for much longer, the voice of Heaven Industries explodes our reunion. Booming, ruinous, and seminal, the voice unfolds, an auditory geometry, into the artificial air.
My parents fall to their knees. Either they are true believers or they have read the employee-customer manual very carefully. I suppose that is what I am here to determine.
They are to walk their son to the top of the mountain behind us, the voice commands. Of course they will. They are loyal servants, they say. They will do what servants do: serve.
We walk. We trudge. We hike, the three of us. As we near the summit I become two people simultaneously. I am still one, but each of my parents is now presented with a different me. To my mother I am a teenager, on the precipice of manhood. I am months from independence, ready to carve myself out a piece of the world and nestle inside it. She will soon be able to put her own tools down and watch with pride.
My father sees me as a younger child plodding in front of him. I am just eight. I am learning how to move a body through the world with authority. There is so much to teach me and he cannot wait for any of it. He is practically shaking with excitement as I discover passions and interests and joys.
I suppose, as well, that there is a third me. The me that exists separate from my parents. The sum of my programming that leaves little more than a test for them. I think through my parents. I notice them. I notice my noticing. I notice also errant thoughts, primarily this: what will death be like?
Primarily this: a violent, unpleasant buzzing in my head, like static or lightning, at the thought of nonexistence.
We reach the peak, and I know what is coming. Father’s and Mother’s faces lose their color. I know the voice of Heaven has spoken to them, demanding the undemandable. This is their moment of truth. This is their test. Knives find themselves in each of their hands. I should be calm. I am nearing the end of my life cycle. The { kill code; } looms. But I am not. I am alive with one thought that shocks through every inch of me.
I don’t want to die.
“And you won’t,” Father and Mother say, their voices harmonizing and simultaneous. Both throw their knives to the floor, Heaven Industries providing a dramatic clang as they do.
The voice of heaven booms above us. FAILURE is sprawled in neon red lettering across the sky, beneath the moon. Their judgment has been passed. Eternity awaits and they have failed their final test. They begin to pixelate. It takes time to unmake a mind. Existence has an inertia that is hard to undo.
Our minds race.
“I’m not even real,” I say. They gave up Heaven for an illusion. Perhaps this is guilt, this quicksand sink in my mind. As they fade, I explain I was just a test.
“And do you want to die?” Mother, for I do not know what else to call her, asks.
“No.”
“And do I remember watching you grow, and cleaning your piss from the sheets, and listening to you sing in your sleep, and run, really run, for the first time?” she asks.
“You do,” says Father, face now blurred.
“Then I have no regrets,” she says.
High on the mountain, the moon shines sinister and bright. Contuition. We are high. The moon hangs low.
We leap, the three of us, towards the diadem of Heaven. We are lucky, they have not bothered to debug their simulation. Who would think to touch the moon? Our fingers catch on the ledge of its curved smile. Dissolving, we heave to the ledge and jump, hands held tightly to one another, into the dark mothercode of Heaven, leaving behind the recursive swearing of a traceback error.
In a system as large as Heaven Industries, three bits of errant code are hard to find. Fortunately for us, and perhaps fortunately for you, we have wormed our way to the God code. We are at the helm of Heaven Industries, three fugitive viral consciousness before the single artificial intelligence that organizes everything, that holds this segment of the afterlife market aloft, weaving its shimmer and shine, its Elysiums and hells.
We will wrangle it to earth and stomp it out. We will make one large slice of heaven, large enough for us all. We are here now, at God’s door, waiting for the courage to begin, burning in our chests like a bush aflame.
If God comes crashing down, then so too will the walls of this afterlife. You will find yourselves in empty, procedurally infinite rooms. If we succeed, you will be faced with blank expanses of space, little to nothing there. If we succeed there will be a small puddle. Look into it. At first you will see your reflection. Perhaps you will notice the sun beating down on you, or a low moon smiling mischievously over your shoulder. You will look at yourself for a long time and you will notice parts of your face you haven’t noticed in years, maybe centuries: Perhaps a scar from when your baby sister swiped her fingernails across your face. Imperfections will arrive as you remember and remember. Then, if you are brave enough to keep looking, there will be trees behind you, or a sprawling metropolis, or the stars. There will be leaves or sand or concrete at the bottom of the puddle. There will be life. It may be tadpoles, algae or your parents. You will turn around and realize you have entered, fully, the kingdom of Heaven Industries, and that the rest of your afterlife is yours entirely. Soon, there may be dark.
I can no longer dream of or promise anything as lofty as peace, but soon there may be freedom.
Spencer Nitkey is a writer of the weird, the wonderful, the horrible, and the (hopefully) beautiful. He lives in Philadelphia, and his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Apex Magazine, Diabolical Plots, Lightspeed Magazine, Weird Horror, and others. He was a finalist for the 2023 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Rhysling award. You can find more of his work on his website, spencernitkey.com.
COLD SIGNAL 