There was laughter. A dove flew in the air and settled on the shoulder of a young boy. A 20-something Sit'aman laughed as she lifted the boy in the air. As the pigeon struggled to balance itself on top of the rising boy, it decided to perch on her shoulders instead.

"Oh my God... She is so..." Tears filled Emmanuel's eyes, "Young?" Enoch asked. Emmanuel nodded, holding back his tears as hard as he could.

"She is happy." Emmanuel said as he turned towards his mentor: "But. I don't understand it, rabbi. She did not believe in a supreme creator, she always worshipped Amen-Re and the Council of Gods, she was an Egyptian!" Emmanuel lamented.

"Did she do that, Emmanuel? Did she tell you that it was what she did?" Enoch asked. Emmanuel stuttered: "I don't know."

Enoch: "Neither do I. In fact, she might have been an avid idol worshipper, but she might've also done so much good in the world that her idolatry balanced with her good. That is why The Eternal Energy is the only judge. Mind you, most mothers gain priority access to the Upper Repository because of the extra selflessness they put into their children. One thing's for certain though, she believed in a heaven that is why she is here..."

"Who is he?" Emmanuel interrupted.

"The boy?" Enoch asked, looking towards the direction that Emmanuel was facing. "In the Upper Repository," Enoch explained "You are obliged the things that you loved in your life. In her case, she loved children, and she got her wish." Emmanuel exhaled but stopped halfway: "She died when I was six. Do you think that is why she didn't wish me as her son?"

Enoch sighed and didn't reply.

They watched the two play.

Finally, Enoch pat Emmanuel on the back. "Let's go, Emmanuel."

They started to walk away.

An angry voice shouted: "You came all the way here and didn't even bother saying hello to me?" Emmanuel turned around. He didn't know what to say.

The beautiful woman walked towards him and stood a foot away from him. She had an angry frown on her face, she looked like she was about to slap him.

"I..." Emmanuel stuttered. The woman hugged him so hard he thought his bones (if angels had any) would get crushed. "An angel! Look at you!" She smiled at him.

Emmanuel stuttered: "I… I didn't think, you...." She frowned: "What? Recognize you? Or Love you? Of course I did!" She smiled that soft smile that Emmanuel always knew and they gazed into each other's eyes as if it was the first time in a thousand years that they have been reunited.

"Come let me show you something." She said finally.

As they saw the city gates in the distance, the smell of olives instantly hit Emmanuel’s nose.

Enoch, Emmanuel and Sit'aman walked through the city of Edenim . It was a very articulate city. There were ivory pillars everywhere, some taller than others. Each one had a beautiful garden of palm, apple, olive or berry trees, and other types of trees and shrubs that he couldn't recognize.

Some even had forests of trees, some had gigantic water pots with bright lotus plants towering from their centers, but every one of those homes looked different, as if accentuating the personalities of those who resided in them.

As for the residents, there were many men and women, some clad in white robes, some clad in black cloaks. Some had strange flailing hair, some were hard to recognize as men or women, some had strange metal rings on their eyebrows and lips; they seemed like odd tribal symbols.

Emmanuel thought that he would only see only one standard of people. An "archetype". Instead, he saw thousands of different combinations of all human races. Actually, here, no one could tell the difference from one another by looking at their clothes, skin color or accessories worn, rather they differentiated each other by personality and how much one glowed with love from within.

As they walked towards the center of the city, Emmanuel noted that in the distance there was a circular pad in the sky on which several old and young men and women sat around and discussed things, it looked like a forum of some sort. In the background or in front of them (it was hard to tell from that angle) he saw a gigantic tree that seemed to unrealistically be of an extremely thick girth, that didn’t make sense because its width was longer than the width of the city, yet it seemed to visually occupy the width of the forum!!

The people below the sky pad looked on to the forum with resolute silence and admiration, listening to the discussions.

"Those," Enoch pointed towards the forum as he noticed Emmanuel's quizzing look, "Are the people blessed to have the Holy Spirit of Gabriel with them when they were on Earth, well, with the exception of prophets of course."

Enoch continued: "They are thinkers, scholars, poets, artists, scientists and many others. They actually reside in the Second Heaven in a city called Sophia, but sometimes come down here to share Universal Knowledge, or just bicker about wisdom with the Edenimians."

Enoch pointed at one of them, he had thick curly black hair and wandering dark eyes: "Michelangelo Buonarroti. He is the current Fraternal Elder. Well, his arch-psyche would exist before your own time actually, so you wouldn't know him."

Enoch thought for a moment, trying to remember the names of those he could recognize then pointed at someone else: "That’s Xenophanes over there. My mentor, a former angel known as Raziel was his mentor as well and he was one of the first to use the arch-science to attempt to prove the existence of the Eternal Energy."

Emmanuel looked at him quizzically: "What sort of science would prove the existence of God?"

Enoch looked at him with a frown, thinking he would figure that one out on his own: "Philosophy, my brother. It is the one science that the demons truly tried to eradicate. The first Sophists suffered greatly under the philosophical inquisitions, and one of the other greats, standing there in the corner alone, his name is Socrates. He too, was killed by the poisons of the forces of evil, his name I shall never forget, a Satan named Locan from the tribe Eljenn. Remember that name." Enoch looked at him then sighed: "Never mind, forget I just said that."

As they walked away, Socrates, noticing Emmanuel from the corner of his eye looked back at Emmanuel and motioned for him to come with a commanding "You there!"

Emmanuel looked around as if unsure of whether it was himself that was being called.

Enoch stopped: "What is it?" He asked.

Emmanuel walked towards the forum, still a little befuddled. Socrates floated forward and descended his platform and stopped a few feet away from him.

"You are no angel." Socrates declared with confidence.

Emmanuel nodded: "I am human actually." Socrates smiled and gave Emmanuel a hug: "Good. Finally someone who will listen. Bureaucracy will be the destruction of the universe!" Emmanuel wondered if that was a joke, it certainly sounded like it was intended to be.

"Listen. Democracy is NOT the answer. None of these idiots will listen!" Emmanuel looked at Enoch with a puzzled look. Why was he talking to him about politics? And why was he throwing insults? Was that even allowed in heaven?

"You tell me, why would a charismatic royal idiot be chosen rather than a poor wise hermit? Which among the two could serve as a better and more just ruler?"

Emmanuel shook his head: "The hermit I suppose." Socrates nodded: "Right! If the criterion for becoming elected was popularity rather than knowledge, then God help your country-men, even the greatest forum cannot help such a nation! Therefore, young one, the rule must be held in the hands of the Sophists and the successors be chosen by a vote of the Sophists themselves!"

Plato shouted from the sky pad: "My brother! That will never work! The citizens MUST be appeased otherwise there will be a revolution! It is inevitable! My case still stands, Timocracy is the answer!"

Socrates shook his fists in the air: "If we were back on Earth, old friend, I would strangle you with my bare hands!!!"

Michaelangelo tried warily to calm the up-heaving forum; it looked as if this wasn’t the first time that he had to cope with it.

Plato now approached the two and pushed Socrates playfully out of the way. "You need to tell your people," He started, pointing at Emmanuel as a father points at his child when wanting to teach something that in his opinion would be crucial. "That God isn’t a person that just sits in heaven and waits for people to worship him," Plato spoke. "He is like the sun, he spreads his lights and it removes the darkness of ignorance, and replaces it with the light of knowledge. It is your predilection on whether to rollick in the sunlight or despond in the darkness. But if you choose to rollick in the sunlight, you will be enlightened. So good and evil are just an enlivening way of saying Knowledge and Ignorance. That’s why during our lives on Earth, none of us believed in Heaven, only Wisdom. So we sit in the Library; that is our home." Plato said with a serious, deeply thoughtful look.

Emmanuel couldn’t help but feel a great sense of admiration towards these two Sophists now that they’ve spoken to him.

Plato floated back to the forum and Socrates followed, nodding and mumbling to each other, finally in agreement of something.

Socrates laughed as he aerially walked towards the sky pad but pointed a finger towards Emmanuel: "Listen to no one but yourself, sad one. You have the keys."

With those words, Emmanuel realized that Socrates picked him out because, quite simply, everyone else was smiling. He was the only person in Edenim with an unhappy face!

Sit'aman grabbed Emmanuel's hands and led him away: "Don't pay attention to that old fool; he spent all his time on earth thinking, that's why he has lost his mind."

Enoch laughed.

"I heard that, Sit'aman!" Socrates shouted with a grimace, "You can forget getting that special pass to Sophia now! I won't let you in!"

Sit'aman and the forum burst out laughing.

"What Library was Plato talking about?" Emmanuel asked, turning around at Enoch and a bit annoyed that he couldn’t see any such buildings nearby.

"There!" Enoch said, pointing towards the forum. Emmanuel nodded, not really understanding why they would call the forum a library and just walked on.

As Emmanuel walked, he felt a rejuvenating feeling inside him, it told him to let go of his bindings and be free to express his emotions of love and care. He wanted to sing his feelings, after all, everything was so bright and perfect, and why wouldn't he be happy?? But he wasn’t. He sighed instead. Maybe this wasn't his place. The day that he sings here, that is when he’ll know that he actually belongs here.

"There!" Sit'aman pointed towards a massive cistern that was surrounded by ivory stairs. Its size was as large as fifteen alpha pyramids. As they walked up the stairs, he noticed that the water that was contained therein was golden-colored.

Several people sat on the edges and played with the water, others (they seemed like couples in love) walked on the water, holding their hands, enjoying the serenity of the beautiful calm waters. And in the middle of the cistern was a single beautiful lotus plant protruding outwards majestically with its dozen-or-so long petals. Emmanuel looked at it with admiration.

Enoch smiled, seemingly looking at the same thing that Emmanuel was: "The first time I looked at it, I saw a temple column protruding from the center of the water." Emmanuel looked at Enoch with a nod.

"Then I realized it is actually a fountain. It is an object that shoots water in the air and at the top, comes back down, forming a top that looks similar to a column’s capital." Emmanuel looked back towards the center of the cistern and the image of the lotus morphed into the image of a "fountain" its waters shot upwards and came back down with its golden waters exactly as Enoch described it.

"Of course, I didn't know what a fountain was back then, and since you were brought up in the desert, neither did you." Emmanuel turned around and tried to look back into those gardens. Sure enough, those big water pots with lotus plants in them were in fact, fountains, only he hadn’t realized it.

"Why didn't I see it for what it was?" Emmanuel asked. It was an innocent question for a newcomer to this alternate level of reality.

"You did, Emmanuel. You need to let go of your attachment to perceiving things for what they are. One thing can be many things but seen by different people as different things depending on personal preferences and experiences. In the words of the Sophist Richard Avedon, "Every picture is accurate; none of them is the truth.", therefore, perception in this reality is unimportant, only essence is."

Emmanuel looked at Enoch with a sudden insight then looked back towards the Sophists’ forum. Enoch wasn’t pointing towards the forum, he was pointing at the tree! In fact, the tree wasn’t there anymore, it was a gigantic castle. Emmanuel could see that it sat in the distance, probably a few miles outside of Edenim towards the East. Emmanuel stood there staring in sheer disbelief at its enormousness.

Enoch approached with a smile. "I apologize about that as well. You get so used to seeing it that you forget that newcomers can only see it as the Tree of Knowledge. You saw a tree because you were looking through the walls of the library and seeing the thousands of branches, or wings of the library. The leaves that you saw on the tree were the books that were contained in those wings. One Sophist gave it the name "Library of Babel" and that name stuck. It is actually located in the second level of heaven, but it is so large that it manifests itself here as well, only by sight though.

"What is it a library of?" Emmanuel asked, trying to figure out how wide the building was but realizing that it extended beyond the horizon. It couldn’t possibly be only a library!

"Well. Every book, scroll and stone tablet ever written in existence," Enoch said with an assiduous nod, "Every painting, every theory, every song, every poem, every mantra, every verse, every sonnet and every story; even those that only went as far as an idea and was never given the opportunity to be written down. And it contains the analyses, criticism and commentary on each one, and the commentaries of the commentaries." Enoch explained with a monotone. It sounded like he was saying it for the hundredth time or so.

Emmanuel shook his head in disbelief as this new piece of information sank in. There’s more to this "Upper Repository" than he ever imagined, he thought to himself.

They walked towards Sit'aman.

Sit'aman sat by the edge of the cistern, the two men turned at her as she spoke: "Originally, this cistern was a gift to the last prophet. He resides in the Third Heaven now. But he decided to donate it to Edenim so that all of us can use it equally; he truly is The Blessed."

She played with the water as she sat. Against the surface of the water, a picture formed. It was the picture of a young man who was fencing with his life long friend Minios.

"You are right," Sit'aman said. "I was angry; when you were born, you left a small scar inside me, and I bled, slowly, over the years. I hated you for it, very much. My husband, a Hebrew, was killed during his slavery and that made it harder for me to raise you on my own."

She sighed as she looked around: "You know, he was nowhere to be found here. Ironic, since he is the one who taught me about the God of Joseph and Abraham and that to worship him truly was not to pay soul-less lip service, but to love everyone else, because loving His children, is loving Him... I later found out that he was in fact a hypocrite; he cunningly worshipped the idol Amen-Re, so that the Egyptian officers could reward him with a few silver coins every day. Had I known, I would've thrown the coins back in his face."

She sighed, "Anyway. The only thing that appeased me after the long painful days is that at night, after asking God to forgive me for hating you... I prayed that you'd grow up to be intelligent, blessed with divine knowledge and strength..." She filled her hands with the water and drank it. "So sweet." She said.

Emmanuel: "And after you died..."

"My death was not in vain," She declared. "I learnt here from Enoch." She pointed at Enoch with a grateful smile. "That I got what I wished for, that is why I died."

"What?!" Emmanuel asked.

Enoch sighed: "It is very complicated to understand, Emmanuel... But simply put, her prayer was so powerful that to her, it meant that she wanted it to be fulfilled no matter what the cost. It was her life as the cost, because when she died from her hemorrhaging and you had no more parents or next of kin to care of you, Egyptian law required you to be taken into the care of the Palace, in this case, Amarna, where you met Minios and were thus able to acquire wisdom and strength from him, himself a priest of Amen-Re in training."

Emmanuel shook his head with utter disbelief: "What kind of cost is that? It doesn't make sense! She DIED so I can gain strength and wisdom?! In return for growing up without a blood mother?! I suffered because of that!"

Enoch sighed: "My brother, no one said life was easy. Neither is death." Sit'aman smiled and held Emmanuel's hand. "Look at you now, an angel! I recognized you from your eyes, Manuel."

Enoch sighed: "Well I'll leave the two of you alone for...."

Emmanuel grabbed Enoch by the shoulder. "No."

Sit'aman blinked. Emmanuel shook his head as he looked to the ground: "No, I think I am done here. I have seen enough." He walked away.

Sit'aman stood there... And suddenly, as hard as dropping a glass vase to the floor, her heart dropped, and a sad tear formed.

"You did this?" He asked Enoch with a clearly angry voice. Enoch shook his head: "It doesn’t matter who did it. It is what she wanted, Emmanuel, let go of your simple three dimensional thinking and think in terms of time as a whole rather than a one-directional line. It was inevitable because it was the best for everyone involved!"

"Not to her!" Emmanuel shouted. "She barely had time to enjoy life! What was the point of taking her through all of that?!"

Enoch looked at Emmanuel with a sigh and wished that he would smarten up.

There was an awkward silence for a few minutes.

"I need to see her, Enoch..." Emmanuel said, finally. "But... I am afraid that I know her fate."

Enoch nodded: "No one knew why you were killed. Two years later and after falling into serious depression, your wife poured poison into a cup, drank it and died." Emmanuel covered his face with hands.

"Damn it!" He shouted.

Several people turned around and looked at the angel and the old man with confused looks.

"That is suicide. And those people end up in Limbo for ever." Enoch said.

Emmanuel: "I know this might sound unusual but is there any price I can pay to get her to come here, to be forgiven? I don't care if you have to rip me out of existence!"

Enoch shook his head: "I am afraid not. The only being capable of forgiving people is The Eternal Energy, but it has already been decreed that she be tormented for ever. If there ever was a recluse, then it would've already happened and I am afraid, it hasn't."

Emmanuel cried.

Enoch: "Do you still wish to see her?"

"Yes." Emmanuel said. "If I am to make a choice, I would have to see her."

Enoch: "Well, I cannot come with you then. My angelic form cannot go into the lower negative frequencies, only you in your demonic form can. I shall be here if you need me."

With those last words, he disappeared, everything disappeared. It seemed that Emmanuel was falling through a dark hole, the darkness engulfed his eyes. And everything was gone.

(Continued...)