Stephen Hawking Wakes Up

Steve Wakes Up

Steve opened his eyes. The first think that he noticed was he wasn’t wearing glasses. He appeared to be lying on his left side in a meadow. He could smell the grass. It felt warm. The sun was shining, but it wasn’t hot.

Then he noticed that it was quiet. He couldn’t hear a ventilator, the sound of which had been his constant companion for a very long time. He was breathing on his own. He tried taking a deep breath and was able to. Then he tried holding his breath for a few seconds. His body was responding to his commands.

Steve laid there for a time. He didn’t feel hungry, tired or thirsty. He felt peaceful. There was nobody bothering him or around him; no attendants or family. He was alone. But he didn’t feel lonely.

After a time, he felt a twitch in his right index finger. He tried to move it and it felt as though it did. He moved all of the fingers on his hand, then rotated his wrist. It felt as though it was working. He raised his arm and moved his hand into his field of view. He moved his fingers, clenched and unclenched his fist. It all worked.

Then he turned his attention to his feet. They felt the way that they did when he was a child, before he got sick, decades ago. He put his hand on the ground and pushed himself up to a sitting position. His toes wriggled as he moved them. He brought his hands together and then clapped them. He didn’t know what sort of dream that he was having, but it was the best one, ever.

It was only now that he became aware that he wasn’t wearing any clothing. Not a stitch. He had not a single scar from any of the medical procedures that he had had during his life.

Dare he? He took a breath, pursed his lips and blew out through them. Then he cleared his throat and said: “Hello? Is anyone there? Is this real?”

From behind him, he heard a voice. “It’s real enough. Get up on your feet, Bub.”

Steve pushed himself to his feet. He hadn’t stood up, under his own power, in over half a century. But he was standing. He hopped a couple of times, then took a short jump. If there was music, he might have tried to dance. He slumped his shoulders and then threw them back into a military posture. Everything worked.

Then he turned around and staggered at what he saw. Before him stood what appeared to be a man, dressed in all white. Shimmering white, actually. It was almost so white as to hurt his eyes. The man wasn’t overly tall or short, average height, average build. Then Steve noticed that there was a shimmering circled of gold hovering about six inches over the man’s head. At the man’s waist was what appeared to be the hilt of a sword, but there was no blade.

“Are you an angel,” Steve asked.

“Yes, and before you ask, yes, you are dead.”

“ Am I in Heaven?”

The angel shrugged. “No, and you’re not in Hell. This is Collection.” He pointed towards a line of hills in the distance. “Walk that way. You’ll come to a road. Go to the left and follow it to Processing. You’ll find out what’s what when you get there.”

“But..”

“Start walking, Bub,” the angel said. He turned and moved away. He wasn’t exactly walking, more like floating a few millimeters above the ground.

Steve started walking.

Stephen Hawking Has His First Lunch in Heaven

Steve Has Lunch

The first thing that Steve saw was a series of cafeterias, all of which indicated that they served different national cuisines. He went into one at random and similarly selected some food. He had no doubt that it would be nothing short of excellent.

Of course, there was no cashiers. Money didn’t exist in Heaven. As he left the line, he was hailed by a gray-haired man at a table.

“No, it can’t be,” Steve thought. But he went over anyway.

The man stood up and indicated that Steve should take a seat. As Steve put his tray down, the man said: “Hello, Steve, I’m Al” and he stuck out his hand.

Steve shook it and said: “I thought you might be. Nice to meet you.” As though he needed an introduction to the man who was the most famous physicist of the 20th Century. He noted that while he himself was wearing a plain white robe, Al’s robe had orange sleeves.

“It’s nice to see another physicist. I just got here a few days ago, myself,” Al said.

“A few days ago,” Steve echoed. “I thought you died sixty years ago.”

Al shrugged. “I did. But I was in a holding area. You might call it ‘purgatory’, but it was basically a processing center.”

“I didn’t know anything about any of this. How does that work,” asked Steve.

“They call it ‘Holding’. That’s where they put souls whose final disposition is in doubt. They stay there until The Powers That Be make a decision. And they aren’t in any rush. I met a Sumerian there.”

“What happens there?”

“They decide what to do with you, really. Was your life righteous enough to get into Heaven, evil enough to send you to the place that we call ‘Hell’, should you get another chance, or should you just stay there and reflect on your life’s work. And I should mention that being absolved by some religious figure for your sins counts for nothing. In point of fact, religious piety while perpetrating evil deeds gets you sent to Hell even faster.”

“I’m trying to take this all in. I didn’t believe in any of this,” Steve said. “God, Heaven, an afterlife, none of it.”

Al nodded. “By the way, we don’t use that name for Him. We refer to Him as ‘The Boss’. I understand your reaction. I didn’t believe in The Boss as a celestial judge or architect, so it was a bit of a shock to find myself in Holding.”

“Why where you there,” Steve asked.

“It was that whole atomic bomb thing. The support I lent to the Manhattan Project and that letter I sent to the President. The pursuit of knowledge is a noble thing. What one does with it is quite another.”

“And your fellow physicists on the project? What happened to them?”

“Bobbie Oppenheimer is still in Holding, what happened to him and what he did after they tested the Gadget counted for something. Ed Teller, well, he got sent down. Some others got another chance.”

Steve pondered that. “What is this ‘other chance’ that you mentioned?”

Al ate a little and then said: “You might call it reincarnation. Your soul gets wiped of all knowledge of your past and then you get to try again. Your native gifts, such as intelligence, don’t get wiped. But sometimes your past leaks through. That’s where the ‘past lives’ stuff comes from.”

It was a lot to take it. Steve hadn’t believed in a lot of what he was hearing. “But you got through.”

Al didn’t look pleased. “Not entirely. These orange stripes mean I’m on a tight probation. I do whatever they want me to do, with a smile. And there is no faking anything here. They know what’s in your mind, in your heart. You can’t fake sincerity.”

Steve looked puzzled. “You said you’ve been here for a few days. How have you learned all of this?”

“In Holding. They’re nothing if not forthright with the challenges one faces. Souls who come here directly don’t get all that information. They don’t need it. They get cured of all infirmities, all physical disabilities, they’re basically reset to their prime for mental abilities. Nothing is added, in that regard. You get a job commensurate with your abilities. If you’re a good soul, you do what you can. If not, that eventually reveals itself and down you go.”

Steve gestured towards his meal. “And this? Do we really need to eat?”

Al laughed. “No, it’s mostly for the new souls, to help them become accustomed to being here. You’ll find out that you don’t urinate or defecate, the waste products just...disappear. It’s sort of a minor miracle, I guess. It’s a tradeoff for not having to install sewage systems.”

Steve laughed. “I can’t imagine what heavenly poop would be like.”

“Me either. Anyway, go. You should find your room and then check in at your job.”

“And my tray and dishes? Where do I take them?”

Al pulled them across. “Leave them to me. It’s part of my job.”

Steve stood up and offered his hand. “It was nice to meet you.”

Al shook it. “You, too. Be good.”

“I shall.”

Steve left to find his quarters.

Stephen Hawking in Heaven

So I had this idea: What if Stephen Hawking went to Heaven. What would happen? What would he do?

This is a part of that tale. This is when he reports to his new job:

Steve at Work

Steve found a note in his new room that informed him that he was assigned to the “FCB” and that he was to report there forthwith. The note had a map on the back of it. He followed the map to a very large building. He had never seen a structure so vast. There was a sign across the front door that read “Firmament Control Bureau”.

This should be interesting, he thought. He went inside, where there as a sign directing new workers to Room 12. There, he found an angel sitting at a desk. “Hi, Steve,” the angel said. “Take a seat. Call me Fred.”

Steve did and observed the angel’s desk. It was covered with paper and scrolls. The angel made a gesture and they all disappeared.

“I suppose you’re wondering what we do here,” Fred said. “We build and maintain the firmament. The stuff that humans see when they look up. The majesty of His creation.”

Steve was struck by that he could hear the capitalization of the pronoun referring to the Almighty. But then he was staggered by a thought. “You mean that the night skies are a decoration? Heavenly wallpaper?”

Fred sighed. “Yes, and it was my idea. I convinced The Boss that it would remind humans of the wonder of Him and also keep them aware of their place in the Universe. That they were insignificant specks living on a pale blue dot in the heavens. He liked the idea and He put me in charge of it.

“It was easy, at first. Some planets, some distant stars, some nebulas. Once we got it all built, it didn’t take much of a staff to maintain it. We’d send a few comets by, some shooting stars, blow up a few distant stars now and then for a show. Easy enough.

“But then you humans got curious. You built instruments. We had to make the firmament more detailed, more mysterious. The nebula became galaxies and those had to be maintained. The comets had to come from someplace, so we built the Oort Cloud. You hypothesized the existence of black holes, so we built them. We didn’t make enough stuff for it to all work by your calculations, so we had to throw in dark matter and dark energy.

“So what we do here is stay ahead of the curve. We take top people to do that. It was Jimmy Maxwell who figured out that the act of creation, which you call ‘the Big Bang’, would leave a microwave signature, so we created that, knowing that somebody would eventually look for it. Look behind you.”

Steve turned around. The wall behind him vanished. He could see row after row of desks, so many that they disappeared in the distance, all occupied by people in robes.

Fred said: “There are six levels. We’re going to add more. And this is where you’re going to work.” The wall reappeared, Steve turned back around.

“What am I going to do, here?”

“You’re going to work in the Multiverse Prevention Office.”

“I don’t...”

Fred slammed his hand on his desk. It made a sound like a thunderclap, Steve jumped at the sound.

“Do you have any idea how much work we’ll have to do if there are other universes? The amount of work involved will make the FCB as it exists now look like a construction trailer at a building project on Earth. Even now, we’re expanding because we can’t have the Universe as it is without life in it. You humans keep making better instruments and we have to ensure that what those instruments detect is consistent with the Laws of Nature that He has established. There will be other inhabited star systems with intelligent life, which mean we’re going to have branch offices running them.”

Fred sighed. “You know, we could have avoided all this. There were once just a few colonies of humans living in caves on the African coast. Some of us told The Boss that He could just delete them and start over. But others said that humans would be manageable, so here we are.

“Anyway, Joan is your section head. She’ll show you where you’ll work and introduce you to your team.” Fred gestured, Steve turned around and beheld a somewhat sour looking woman in a white robe. She didn’t have a halo, but her robe was nicer than Steve’s.

“Get to work.” The papers reappeared on Fred’s desk. He unrolled part of a scroll and picked up a stylus.

Steve had been dismissed.