“But my soul is not whole, is it, Virgil? It remains divided. You promised me—”
The Light appeared before him as a luminescent blue apparition — the same apparition he had witnessed communicating with Dawn Patel. As he watched, it constricted into the human form of a woman. She was wearing the same outfit she had worn in the scorched Polaroid, her wavy blond hair falling past her shoulders down to the small of her back.
Patricia Ann Segal smiled at her long-lost soul mate. “Hey, baby.”
“Oh God…” Patrick collapsed to his knees, tears flowing from his eyes as he hugged her about the waist, the emptiness in his heart instantly replaced by boundless joy.
Virgil beamed a cherubic smile. “The reunification of soul mates is a force of Light that cannot be denied, greater even than the parting of the Red Sea.”
Trish drew Shep to his feet. He kissed her face. He inhaled her pheromones, the flesh of his whiskered cheeks warmed by her touch.
The old man watched the couple like a proud parent. “Women tend to complete their spiritual correction sooner than their male counterparts. A woman’s soul may reside in the Upper Realm while she attempts to assist her soul mate in his own correction.”
Shep pulled back from his embrace. “What about our little girl?”
“She has already returned.” Trish gazed into his eyes. “What does your heart tell you?”
“Oh gosh… it’s Dawn! The Patels’ daughter… she harbors our little girl’s soul.”
“I’ve kept a watchful eye on her… and you.”
“Trish… I’ve done such terrible things. I joined the military to avenge your death. I committed murder. I brought darkness into the lives of others.” His body trembling, Shep turned to Virgil and prostrated himself, hugging the old man’s boots to his chest. “I’m sorry, God, please forgive me!”
“Your repentance has been accepted, my son.”
Shep wiped back tears. Regaining his feet, he took his soul mate’s hand. “Will we be together?”
“Soon. Your soul must be cleansed before it reenters the Upper Realm, but the burden has been lessened by your selfless actions over the last twenty-four hours. The more Light a soul desires and receives, the higher it ascends. Everything you see around you, all that exists and that evolved to exist in the physical world of time and mortality was created so that the soul could spiritually transform itself from a receiver to a giver and earn its immortality and fulfillment in the Endless. This is the reality you requested as the Vessel, Adam, the request granted by the Creator because He loves His children unconditionally.”
“If He loves us so much, why is there so much hatred in the world? So much violence? So much pain and suffering.”
“As we discussed earlier, in order to earn the endless fulfillment, there must be free will. To challenge free will, there must be an Adversary. An opposing team. And the game cannot be fixed, or the prize has no meaning. The Adversary is the human ego at the genetic level, referred to in the Creation story as the consumption of the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Lust, gluttony, avarice, wrath, violence, fraud, greed, and treachery… all are symptoms of the ego, every selfish act diverting the Creator’s Light to Satan. Sin is man’s refusal to become what man was destined to be. If man would simply expand his own vessel by using the tools he was given, there would never be suffering in this world again.”
“And how do we do that?”
“By expanding your vessel to allow more Light in. By loving thy neighbor as thy self in the same way the Creator loves each of His children — unconditionally. Love is a weapon of the Light, it has the power to eradicate all forms of darkness. Spirituality isn't about just being nice, Patrick, it's about transforming one’s not-so-nice qualities. When you offer love even to your enemies, you destroy their darkness and hatred. What's more, you cast out the darkness inside yourself. What is left in the aftermath are two souls who now recognize the spark of divinity they both share. Think about that. It is not the positive trait that flips on the Light switch; the Light goes on when one identifies, uproots, and transforms their own reactive negative characteristics. When a mass majority of people reach this magnitude of understanding, then endless fulfillment and immortality shall be had for all. Conversely, when collective negative actions rise to a critical juncture, the Angel of Death is granted free rein, and even the righteous shall suffer.”
“Is that what’s happening here, Virgil? Has evil run so amok that humanity needs another do-over?”
The old man turned somber. “The generation of Noah was stubborn and bold enough to sin openly. The generation of the flood has returned.”
“Then… I really was Noah?”
“The soul that inhabits your existence as Patrick Shepherd also shared the physical being that was Noah, a righteous man born in a time of greed and corruption. You and your soul mate, Naamah, have returned to witness the end of another generation.”
Shep squeezed Trish’s hand, his face flushing red. “You’re not really going to wipe out 6 billion people?”
“Six million or 6 billion, in either case the Creator does not destroy. Man has become his own instrument of destruction. His desire to feed from the Tree of Knowledge without restriction, his insistence on receiving for the self alone… it is these acts that have summoned the Angel of Death to stalk the Earth, just as it did 666 years ago during the last pandemic.”
“But you could stop it, you could end the insanity. You talk about mankind being proactive, what about you? What about that Holocaust story you told me!”
“The story was yours.”
Patrick’s face paled. His body trembled. “The boy you spoke of?”
“It was your life, Patrick, your second deployment, as you call it. What you experienced was the severity of Noah’s tikkun. You lost your entire family at Auschwitz. Your soul mate perished there as well.”
“And you did nothing? While innocent children were being tossed into ovens. While planes were being flown into buildings—”
“—and innocent families were being slaughtered by American soldiers? As I said, God is not a verb, Patrick. The Light flows, regardless of intent. It’s all about free will. Those who live their lives by the Creator’s laws remain protected. A miracle of salvation at this juncture would be interpreted as a religious happening. In the end, it would lead to the very war you seek to avert, serving Satan, who continues to grow stronger through these acts of darkness.”
“I don’t care! Noah may have stood idly by while you drowned the world, but I won’t. You and I… we had a covenant after the flood. The ark was our covenant. You promised never to destroy humanity again!”
“It is not the Creator that will destroy humanity, Patrick. Behold.”
The brown swirl of clouds parted to the west, revealing three dark helicopters frozen in time over the Hudson River. “Man is responsible for this flood. And through his actions, Satan’s power grows.”
Virgil pointed to the edge of the construction pit, where the Angel of Death had materialized. The male Grim Reaper had been impaled by his female counterpart’s scythe, the blade buried in the base of the being’s barren skull.
“What happened to him? How can you slay… an angel?”
“Every element of creation maintains a male and female aspect. So it is with the Angel of Death. Each Reaper, both male and female, was born human into the physical world. When it is time for a Reaper to move on, they select their replacement from among the living. The female aspect of death, strengthened by the corruption of man, no longer remains held in check. Unless humanity is terminated, she shall walk the Earth unabated and poison the Malchut so that no Light can ever be again revealed in this dimension.”