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FULCRUM NEGRO is one of the three living people who knows there’s a portal into the path to Heaven located in Soul City. It’s found inside the Lake of Roses, which, by some geological miracle, is over twenty times saltier than the ocean. When the sun is high the water takes on the color of a red rose. Because of the high salt content everyone floats in the lake, but Fulcrum alone can swim deep into it. Here he begins his journeys to Heaven.
Fulcrum’s body can squeeze through the nodes that separate this plane and the others because he is a breatharian. Some people are vegetarians, some are fruitarians, and a rare few absorb all they need for sustenance from the air. The more solid food you eat—the more dead things you bring into your body—the more difficult it becomes to get your physical form through the nodes separating the planes known as Heaven and Hell and Here. Still, most breatharians cannot travel between the planes. Fulcrum was rare even among breatharians: he had never eaten anything in his entire life.
He dove in and stroked his way to the bottom of the lake, where he found a hole that he swam through, and soon the magical red of the Lake of Roses gave way to the ethereal blue of the River Jordan, which lies on the outskirts of the afterworld. Fulcrum swam for half a day until he came to the river’s end. There he found the Desert of Doubt, a vast, windy wasteland that surrounds Heaven that you cross in minutes or millennia, depending on God’s plan for you. This is where Death deposits souls bound for Heaven, but everyone doesn’t make it all the way. The Desert of Doubt is a test every new soul has to face, a journey of spiritual endurance. There is no physical path out of the Desert of Doubt. God just wants to see you continue pushing forward despite the absence of any reason to have faith. With no clues, no roads, and no help, the weak of faith come to believe the journey is endless or pointless and give up and spend eternity there. But the faithful continue on even after there seems no reason to do so, and eventually God smiles on them and they discover Eternal Road and a plush chariot, a sweet-looking low-swinging chariot that’s chauffeured by an angel who takes them straight into Heaven. And when they reach Heaven they find a gigantic flat field filled with happy, naked souls and nothing else. A beautiful, sunny, pastoral, open space—just a light sprinkling of grass, but no trees, no flowers, no hills. Heaven is a sort of spectacular nothingness, notable for what it is not.
Fulcrum, a veteran of The Path, usually needed five days to get to Heaven, but he was burning to see Granmama and completed the trip in under three days. Fulcrum stepped from the chariot and into the field. An angel pointed out Granmama. Her long life and deep faith had led God to speed her through The Path. She’d arrived just moments after her death and was now laughing with Dizzy Gillespie. When she saw Fulcrum she burst into tears.
“When I first got here, I thought, there’s nothing here,” she said. “This ain’t no Promised Land. But as I walked through the field I realized I was naked and didn’t want clothes. And then I realized I didn’t want anything at all.”
“There ain’t nothin here,” Dizzy said, “cuz there’s no need. We’re all happy with what we have. That’s what you call peace.”
“Have you met God?” Fulcrum said.
“Yes,” Granmama said. “Wow.”
“That’s the only word that fits,” Dizzy said.
“Anything like what you imagined She’d be?” Fulcrum said.
“Not at all.”
“Was it a short talk?”
“Yeah, but it was right on time.”
“Amen.”