Heaven on Earth

HEAVEN ON EARTH

by Noel K Hannan

<well its kind of big but not as big as where you live of course :)>

<what are the people like>

<really kind really nice except for my science teacher :(>

<know what you mean me too :( :( !!!!!! do you like living in heaven>

<why are we at war when were friends>

< :( :( I hate the war we may be friends but others arent>

<so do I>

Jessica crouches over the thinscreen of her notebook computer, the blue glow illuminating her face in the darkness. The power was cut two hours ago at eight pm, as she listened to Doctor Zenith’s cool music show on her radio, and the snow-covered trailer park was plunged into freezing darkness. Jessica’s notebook battery has a lifespan of two hours. Sadly, she signs off to her chatnet friend, and closes the screen.

Ten pm. Nothing moves outside, except snow blown by the wind. Here on the Montana-Canada border, there isn’t much else. Ten pm, and Jessica’s father still isn’t home. Oh, she knows where he is, alright, down at the truck stop, where they don’t mind illegally exchanging government food cards for bourbon and Bud. He’ll have plenty of both inside him when he gets back - if he gets back. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s had to venture out into a blizzard huddled in three arctic parkas, and drag him back from some ditch where he had fallen, drunk, letting the snow cover and smother him. If he was violent, if he hit her or touched her when he was drunk, she could hate him. It would be easier, simpler, to live like that. Hate is blinding, pure and satisfying, focusing. But he was a kind man, a good man, a good father, if a bit lazy. And always drunk.

It gets so cold at night. The welfare office in Kicker Creek is meagerly funded and can only afford to power the trailer park for ten hours a day. Jessica clambers out of her bunk that is piled so high with quilts, unzipped sleeping bags and army surplus parkas that it is like sleeping in a giant vice, and paces the floor of the trailer, trying to keep warm. These trailers are not built for arctic conditions, nor are they built for living in for two straight years. She remembers the day they came here with twenty other families (strange, she doesn’t think that a single one had a mom and a pop), shifted out of their town after an Amtrak had derailed and spilled something nasty into the air. Twenty families - maybe sixty people - from a town of eight hundred. Where did everyone else go? Jessica questioned her father, in his rare sober moments, her teachers at the transit camp’s ‘school’. searched the WorldNet for references to the disaster, looked up old classmates and neighbours whose WorldNet addresses she knew. Nothing. It is as if they had never existed. Even the people here with her in the trailer park choose to forget, as if some vast conspiracy was slowly wiping their brains. Either that, or they are doing it gladly themselves, with bourbon and jazz-dust.

There is knock at the door. Jessica stops dancing around. Maybe it is Pop, lost his key. Maybe it is the old lady from next door (the trailers are parked mere centimetres from each other), woken by her movements. Maybe...... maybe she better answer it.

It’s a policeman. She hasn’t seen one of them in a long time, not since they were hustled out of their home by more of them than she had ever seen before. This one is good-looking and young, no more than five years on top of her fifteen. He has snow in his eyelashes and on the lank fringe of hair that hangs across his forehead, peeking out from under his fur cap that bears the star of the Montana Sheriff’s Department. She smiles at him. His jaw twitches. She notices he has something in his hands, something he is gripping so tight that it’s turning his knuckles white. It is her father’s baseball cap, the army green one with the legend USAAF RIYADH 91 - DESERT SHIELD emblazoned in worn gold. There are no questions, no statements. She sinks to the threadbare nylon carpet of the trailer, and cries.

<tell me more about heaven>

<well I was born here so I don’t know any other place but I love it :) :) its so peaceful and there are so many interesting people and things to learn and stuff to do all the time>

<would you like to visit earth>

>yes I would love to I watch it all the time from my bedroom window but I cant>

<why not>

<that really sucks>

<yeah it does earth is really beautiful youre really lucky to live there>

<sometimes I guess>

<but you have a beautiful family and a horse and dogs and live on a ranch>

<was it something I said if it was I didnt mean it dont go yet crystal dont go :( :(>

There are five girls in the transit camp under the age of fifteen who have children of their own, so Jessica’s unfortunate tragedy is not met with much sympathy. Another young orphan, so what, she’s fit and strong, good looking girl, she’ll be okay, aren’t they all, she’ll know what to do, she won’t starve. Some of the single men in the camp begin to look at her in that strange sort of way when she’s digging snow away from her door or fetching groceries from the truck stop, and she realises the slender protection that her father’s presence offered her. She cries when she thinks about the amount of food she can buy now he’s not using the welfare tokens for alcohol. Has she any right not to feel guilty? With the extra tokens she can buy fuel for the little heater in the trailer, but the fumes make her feel dizzy and sick if she leaves it on all night. Life is a little more bearable, but those eyes are watching, and chemical tension is in the air. Jessica Dorff yeah Max Dorff’s girl shame about old Max, I was with him that night, good looking girl, needs taking care of, shouldn’t be on her own, hey move in before someone else does, good looking girl like I said. And the talk filters back and the eyes watch when she fetches groceries and she knows she must get the fuck out of this place, sooner rather than later.

<sorry I left in such a hurry last time no offence meant>

<none taken any problems you wanna tell me about>

<got a lifetime>

<hey its what im here for whats the matter horses off their food :)>

<there are no horses there is no ranch no dogs no mom and pop>

<dont understand crystal whats happened to it all tornado whisk it all away to oz :)>

<no joke starchild not gone never were>

<hey we all make stuff up online no problem>

<not a whole life a whole identity thats for the gamenets and immersion worlds>

<then who are you>

<you really want to know>

<youll be a nice person whoever you are I just know>

<you really dont mind>

<as long as you dont turn out to be a marine whos about to come up and invade heaven>

<no im not im jessica dorff fifteen years old from montana newly orphaned and soon to be homeless still want to talk to me>

<of course of course of course newly orphaned :( :( :(>

<dont remember mom she died when I was three pop went into the snow the other night and never came back>

<im sorry>

<dont be im eating better now and warmer too>

<what>

<dont worry sick joke>

<didnt think you were but dont spoil the illusion ive had just about as many shocks as I can take this week just dont tell me you dont live in heaven>

<good good good got room for a trainee angel up there>

<always room for angels in heaven what you got in mind>

<need a place to live starchild heaven seems as good a place as any>

<isn’t easy living here jessica its not like earth>

<then it sounds good to me>

<alright seems like were going to meet after all are you really serious>

<more than ive ever been about anything in my whole life>

<good now make sure you save this file because im going to tell you what youve got to do>

Jessica steps outside the trailer into crisp Montana midnight air. It has stopped snowing for the first time in days and a starfield as dense as astronomy maps blankets the sky. Somewhere, among those lights, is Heaven, the rebel space station and independent colony that most of the governments of Earth are at war with, and are trying hard to knock from the sky because of its pirate media onslaughts, its salvaging of dead satellites for raw material, its very existence seems to cause most offence. If Jessica follows the incredible, loopy, adventurous instructions contained in Starchild’s email on her hard disk, this is where she will be going tonight. She shoulders her pack - her father’s old military ALICE pack, incongruously desert drab - containing a sleeping bag, a few books, a change of clothing and her precious, precious notebook, jams down the Desert Shield baseball cap over her blonde ponytail, and leaves this damned place. As she heads north on the truck road, she hears the wind catch the door of her trailer, left open, and slams a gunfire rat-a-tat-tat, warning the park of her moonlight flit. But no one follows, and she doesn’t look back.

The Canadian border is a little over ten kilometers from the trailer park. Not a great distance, but far enough in the early hours of the morning, in freezing temperatures, for a fifteen year old girl in sneakers, jeans, a duvet jacket and rucksack. Jessica scuffs wearily through the deep drifts by the side of the road as thirty-wheelers plough by north and south, drenching her with slush. Just to add insult, it begins to snow again.

She doesn’t know how she’s going to get across the border. Starchild was not too specific about how, just where and when. She knows the border is heavily guarded these days, like the one in the south has always been. Relationships between Canada and the USA have deteriorated alarmingly in recent years, mainly due to Canada’s overt support for Heaven, its UN vetoes of any planned actions against her, and its failure to act on the use of Canadian territory to launch and land Heaven’s only planetary-capable craft, the shuttle Gabriel. Australia is the other main offender - the site near Ayer’s Rock is practically Heaven’s spaceport. Heaven uses the two sites, alongside a handful of others scattered around the globe, to ferry supplies and new citizens - like Jessica - into orbit.

She kicks along in the snow, until she sees a sign that reads CANADA - 1KM, adorned with the stars ‘n’ bars and Canada’s red maple leaf. The back of the sign is solid with a half-metre of snow, frozen into a block. The road ahead is dead straight and flat. She sees the flashing red taillights of a thirty-wheeler through the gloom and the unmistakable, retina-burning blue of emergency vehicles of some kind, parked off to either side. She has reached the border. Now what?

She could make a detour into the woods, try to cross at a point far from the border guards, but she knows there will be high chainlink, motion detectors, infrared cameras. She’s a teenage girl, for chrissake, not a commando. Her mind races with ideas. Try a passport? She hasn’t got one. Try to run through? They would shoot her in the back. Offer to suck a dick? They’d probably let her do it, then shoot her in the back, and bury her in a shallow ditch. Shame on you, Jessica Dorff. Your daddy flew B52s over Baghdad in ‘91. You can do better than that.

She stumbles on to the checkpoint. The thirty-wheeler is still parked there, engine idling and cab door open, driver stood in moonboots and parka conversing with heavily-clad troopers cradling weapons. The big vehicle obscures the heavy barrier barring the road north. The troopers and the driver share a joke, harsh male laughter carried on the wind. The scene is lit with the stark glare of the truck’s headlights reflected in a landscape of pure white, and the metronome flashes of the blue lights from the trooper’s cruiser parked just off the road, freezing the tableau every few seconds. Everyone is preoccupied. Jessica darts to the back of the truck and clambers up on to the big fender. Her rucksack prevents her from sitting comfortably so she unshoulders it and places it beside her. This is so simple, how can it possibly work? All she has to do is sit tight and wait for the truck to get moving. All the truck has to do is move through the barrier. All the troopers have to do is not look up for the ten seconds or so it will take for Jessica to leave America and enter Canada, and within a hundred metres they would not dare fire at her. All it will take is..... a miracle.

The driver exchanges jokes with the troopers for what seems like an eternity. She’s glad he’s so friendly with them, otherwise they might have wanted to search the vehicle. The deep thrum of the diesel engine changes note and the truck moves forward with a jerk. Jessica is almost dislodged, and clutches her rucksack grimly. The truck rumbles under the raised barrier. Jessica is crouched with her legs tucked underneath her, holding on to a cold metal handle with one gloved hand, her rucksack with the other. She sees the troopers, flashed in cold blue, facing away, headlights approaching from the south occupying their attention. Thank God! Then the truck hits a rut in the road and her rucksack leaps from her grip and crashes into the wet snow on the road. For a few long seconds she stares at it receding, watching the torch beam from one of the trooper’s weapons swing on to it, alerted. She thinks of what she will lose if she lets it go - her father’s old shemagh, her copy of Stephen King’s The Stand, her notebook - her notebook! The thought of never speaking to Starchild ever again focuses her thoughts, and she dives headlong off the fender, landing in a soft drift to the side of the road. As the truck moves on, oblivious, to the freedom of Canada, Jessica lies in the snow, hearing heavy booted footfalls close in on her, hoarse shouts to Lie still! Lie still! and the flash of beams in her face. These troopers have no qualms about violating fifty metres of Canadian territory. So close, she thinks, so close.

Ushka MacTiernan peers forward through the cracked glass of the periscope, through darkness and flurrying snow, the headlights of his armoured personnel carrier coning and stabbing along the road. He sees the bright blue flares of the troopers’ vehicle and the figures moving about in the half-light.

“Aye aye aye,” he says over the intercom. “Heads up, flower children, looks like we got trouble from the Man.”

He pops the heavy padded hatch above his head and swings it open, stands on his seat and emerges waist-deep from the cupola. in place of the original vehicle’s machine gun there is a flagpole and a pennant bearing the maple leaf of the Canadian flag, snapping in the midnight wind. MacTiernan pulls his shemagh up around his neck and ties it across his face, squinting into the snow. He wears a stars ‘n’ stripes football helmet and a full beard.

“Slow it down, Animal,” he says to his driver. “We may be Canucks but we ain’t exactly legal, now what I mean?”

Animal the APC driver, who has not emerged from his cab in the vehicle for the duration of their three day journey (MacTiernan dreads to think what state he’s in), grunts an assent. MacTiernan glances behind him as the wheeled APC ‘s gearbox whines its way down through the ratios. A hundred metres behind them is a converted Greyhound bus, and behind that a motley collection of jeeps, trucks, buses, RVs, APVs and even a few hardy individuals on quad bikes. A hundred souls in all, some just along for the ride, some just here for the party, but some, like MacTiernan, on their way to Heaven. He swings around in the cupola and sees the looks of surprise on the troopers’ faces, caught in the headlights of a psychedelic painted ex-Soviet Army BTR-60 armoured personnel carrier. The two troopers are holding a young girl between them. She is slumped in their arms but his clinging grimly to a battered desert camo rucksack.

Aye aye aye, thinks MacTiernan. Trouble.

“What the fuck is that?” says one of the troopers, looking up at the big vehicle with the pink peace symbol sprayed across its hull and a Canadian flag snapping in his face. The other vehicles slowly draw up behind it, one by one. Soon there is a line of assorted vehicles stretching away into the distance.

Jessica blinks snow from her eyes and looks up. The first thing she sees is a big bear of a man climbing out of the APC. He is wearing a stars and stripes football helmet with a communication cable hanging from it. He jumps to the ground in front of her, crunching snow under enormous combat boots. Even without his onion-skin layers of military and oil-riggers clothing he would be big - she can see that from the huge ruddy face hiding behind his snow-rimed beard. He has animated grey-blue eyes, penetrating, intelligent, kindly. He slowly takes off the football helmet,. He is completely bald underneath.

“Ushka MacTiernan,” he says. She doesn’t recognise it as his name, right at that moment. It sounds more like a greeting, or maybe a curse, in some forgotten language. “At your service. Shaman, warrior, teacher. Three parts Celt to one part Inuit. Or three fingers of Irish whiskey to one ice cube, if you please.”

Jessica giggles. The troopers stiffen nervously. The big man, this Ushka MacTiernan, looks like he eats state troopers for breakfast. Actually, he’s a vegetarian. And a pacifist.

“You a Canadian citizen?” asks one of the troopers redundantly, eyes narrowing and fingering the cloth of the hanging flag. A growl emits over the noise of the APC’s humming engine.

“You got a dog in there or something?”

“It would be quite a dog,” says MacTiernan, “that could drive a BTR-60. Were you to know of such a dog, I would like to own him. Perhaps he would be easier to house train than our own Animal.”

The troopers exchange nervous glances. One looks down the line of vehicles. People are hanging out of windows, getting out and stretching legs.

“Y’all Canadian citizens?” the trooper repeats. They still have tight hold of Jessica’s arms. MacTiernan notices this.

“Every one. Would you like to check all our passports?”

The trooper waves his free hand. “No, no, that won’t be necessary. We’d be here all fucking night. Where you headed?”

MacTiernan lets out a booming laugh. “Can’t you guess man? The Festival of Lost Souls, of course.”

“Fucking hippy festival,” spits the other trooper. “Drugs - sex - loud music - Heaven hippies - shit, we oughtta bust every car open and - “

MacTiernan smiles and waves his hand nonchalantly. “That’s not a good idea.”

The trooper who seems concerned blinks twice, mechanically.

“Like I said, we’d be here all fucking night,” says the trooper.

MacTiernan nods, smiling. He winks conspiratorially at Jessica.

“And this young lady, who seems such a lost little soul, she can join our happy band.”

Jessica’s heart jumps. Surely they won’t fall for that! She looks up at the trooper gripping her arm. He appears to be trying to exchange a look with his comrade, but his neck muscles aren’t working.

“She can go with you,” he says, releasing her arm. She scurries to MacTiernan’s side, still clutching her rucksack. He backs away from the border crossing, bowing slightly, and silently ushers Jessica into the back of the APC. A huge bulbous armoured door painted with the silhouette of a black raven groans open. Inside, faintly lit by instrument dials and tiny interior bulbs, she can see a multitude of faces, young, old, bearded, painted, all kinds staring out at her. MacTiernan bundles her in, and seconds later they are racing across the border into Canada.

Jessica lies very still on the floor of the APC. A hot, sweet, muggy air is thick inside. She feels a little giddy. She looks up and sees MacTiernan beaming down at her from his seat in the cupola.

“What was that all about?” she asks. “That trick you pulled on the state troopers. What are you, Obi Wan Kenobi or something?”

MacTiernan laughs.

“Something like that.” He peers through the periscope to his front, then turns back to her. “Welcome to Canada. Want to go to a party?”

<its incredible>

<then why are you wasting time talking to me about it go and enjoy yourself>

<they had a tent set up with worldnet terminals I just had to log on and tell you all about it>

<it sounds fantastic I thought youd like it how is MacTiernan by the way>

<ushka I love him he saved me from the state police hes so clever and funny and handsome>

<hey dont go getting a crush on him now hes got work to do when we get him up here>

<when do we go starchild whats the plan whats happening>

<well find out soon enough just have fun and enjoy your last night on earth>

Jessica steps from the computer-radiated warmth of the WorldNet tent into technicolour chaos. The Festival of Lost Souls is in full swing on the crushed pebble beach of a vast lake. It is a crystal clear night, moon and starlight reflected in the mirror surface of the water. Sharp smell of pine in the air, along with aromatic firewood, alcohol and burning herbs. Snow compacted on the ground. Out on a small island in the lake, a ten metre high wicker man burns. Jessica draws a cold breath and watches hundreds of people dancing on a stilted wooden jetty that thrusts out into the lake, strobed by lasers and the glow of a giant video screen to the beat of ear-shattering music and the rantings of Doctor Zenith, connected by downlink and sending his vibes from over eight hundred kilometres above them. She feels the bass line in her breastbone. Others meander through the town of tents thrown up in the space between the lake and the woodline. Here there are jugglers and acrobats, healers and therapists, tattoo parlours and food sellers, meditation pyramids and temporary stone circles. A naked man - a naked man, in this cold! - covered in bright yellow grease wanders by on stilts, twice his natural height. Overhead, helicopters chatter, searchlights sweeping the beach, but this is Canada, not America, and the police here are just keeping an eye open. They know that the Festival of Lost Souls has become inextricably linked with Heaven. Who knows what tricks the damn Yankees might try to pull.

Jessica remembers what Starchild told her and goes to look for MacTiernan. On the way she has drink of hot mulled wine. It is the first time she has tasted alcohol, like many children of alcoholics she has shied away from it. Now, it seems appropriate. She has something to eat, something tasty and curried but meat-free, and listens to a didgeridoo recital in a shallow arena scraped from the beach. She has another drink. She looks again for MacTiernan, has another drink, beer this time, so cold it makes her chest contract, watches a fire eater and singes her face, has another drink, and another, and another, and .........

“Aye aye aye,” says MacTiernan, his big face splitting in a grin. “One lost soul, a little worse for wear.”

Jessica is lying on her back on the pebbly beach. She had been watching the full moon directly overhead, picking out craters and seas, muttering the names to herself, (“Mare Crisium, Mare Serenitatis, Mare Frigoris”) when all of a sudden the moon turned into Ushka MacTiernan’s head. Or so she thinks. Her duvet jacket is unzipped and all she has on underneath is a white singlet top. MacTiernan hauls her to her feet. Her head pounds in rhythm with the music.

“Very fetching,” he comments dryly, pointing at her chest. She is embarrassed, thinking she has aroused him, but when she glances down she sees the livid weal of a fresh tattoo on the upper swell of her left breast. A cartoon representation of an angel with wings spread. It hurts like mad. Jessica leans on MacTiernan’s big arm for support and vomits noisily onto the pebbles.

“Could have been worse,” MacTiernan says. “Could have lost your virginity.”

“Too late for that,” Jessica mutters, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth.

MacTiernan looks across the mirror lake and sees torch flashes among the pines on the opposite side.

“Aye aye aye,” he says, grabbing her hand. “Come on, little angel. We’ve got a flight to catch.”

It can’t be, Jessica keeps muttering to herself. It can’t be real. This is for launch pads and Cape Clinton and America, not the middle of a pine forest in Canada. In a clearing no bigger than her trailer park back in Montana is a circular concrete hardpan, its centre blackened with a starfish-shaped weal of carbon. And on that hardpan sits Gabriel, Heaven’s only planetary capable shuttle, its lifeline with Mother Earth, engines steaming in the cold night air. Jessica grips MacTiernan’s hand involuntarily as a figure approaches them, a man in a jumpsuit and bandanna with a little submachinegun hanging idly by a nylon sling from his shoulder. Behind them are thirty or more people, all with rucksacks or grip bags.

“Don’t forget the phrase your friend told you,” MacTiernan whispers in her ear. “Or they won’t let you on board. I can’t help you now.”

“Can’t you do the Jedi mind trick again?” Jessica asks, gripping his hand.

MacTiernan grins. “That’s for stormtroopers only. These are the rebels.”

In the background, men work hard loading big plastic cartons into Gabriel’s rear bay. Others crouch in the woods with their guns, watching. the man in the jumpsuit moves up the line of people, listening to pass phrases and checking them off on a small PDA unit. Before he reaches Jessica and MacTiernan there is a fracas with a young couple whose pass phrase does not match up. They run off into the woods, back in the direction of the Festival of Lost Souls. Gabriel’s Angels do not give chase or shoot at them - that’s not their style. Optimistic stowaways or American spies, Jessica is not sure. The man in the jumpsuit reaches her.

“‘As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness round about it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming bronze’,” Jessica recites confidently. The man checks his PDA and nods her onward. She walks slowly toward Gabriel, dragging her feet, waiting for MacTiernan to clear and catch her up. Instead of a pass phrase he exchanges slaps and shoves and jokes with them man - MacTiernan has traveled his route many times before. He follows Jessica and throws his arm around her shoulder.

“You want the window seat? It’s quite a ride.”

Jessica feels a pang of regret as the blue-green curve of Earth sweeps up past the cabin porthole. She is strapped securely into a vertical seat with a complex of nylon straps, and has just experienced mind-numbing g-forces, a force that lessens as Gabriel climbs on its tail of fire and escapes the bonds of gravity. Earth...... she wonders if she’ll ever go back there. If she becomes a citizen of Heaven, and the war rages on, then the answer is no. Whatever happens, she is committed now. Too late for regrets.

MacTiernan sits next to her, snoring loudly. He has been asleep since ten minutes after their departure. Before he dozed off he told her about his year teaching at the Shamanic Academy and how she must come and see him when she settles in. No more mathematics and English, how about bone-divining and herbal medicine? He says she has the eyes of a shamaness - clear blue, to see all the way to the future.

She watches the Earth recede as Gabriel vectors on its approach to Heaven. She is treated to the merest, heart-stopping glimpse of the station, a vast chaotic, organic superstructure, corrugated pods, domes of hydroponic units, the waving prehensile tubes of docking arms - and the Gabriel vectors again on to an approach path, and the view is gone. She feels a great weight lift from her chest. Free of gravity, at least. Symbolically, free of everything.

Heaven’s Welcome Bay 4 is a busy hive of activity. Gabriel will change crews and make two more trips Dirtside in the next twenty four hours. Quick turnarounds are essential. Passengers and freight are unloaded with equal lack of ceremony.

MacTiernan kisses Jessica on the cheek. “I’m home again. Zerogee suits a big man like me. Don’t forget to come and see me.” And he is gone like a forest wraith. Jessica is alone in the docking bay, clinging to the steel rings mounted on the walls as enormous plastic cartons, weighing several tons on Earth, are pushed through the air with ease by slightly-built men and women. A young black girl with a thick, colourful dreadlocked ponytail watches from a balcony above. Above? Jessica realises she’s going to have to rethink some of her terms of reference. She realises she is floating in the centre of a wide tube that extends above and below her, with an equal tube running left to right. She is at the junction point of four corridors.

“You’d better move from there,” the black girl calls. “Those cartons may be weightless, but they can still crush you.”

Jessica begins to climb up the rungs toward the girl, pushing her rucksack ahead of her.

“No, not like that, you’ll take forever. Kick away from the wall and swim. Yes, swim. That’s it.”

Jessica does as she’s told. There is something about the girl’s voice, her manner of speech, that sounds familiar. As nears her the girl puts out her hand, stopping Jessica from floating off up the tube.

“Jessica?”

“Starchild?”

“Actually my name is Afrika. Afrika Marko. Pleased to meet you.”

Jessica’s eyes fly wide. “You’re Afrika Marko? President Marko’s daughter? Wow! I never knew - “

“I never told you. People tend to treat you differently when your father is President of Heaven.”

Jessica smiles. “I guess so.”

Afrika floats in front of Jessica’s face. She is strangely proportioned to Jessica’s eyes - wide shoulders and strong arms, slim waisted and painfully thin legs tucked and strapped beneath her. Maybe she would have been at a disadvantage in a wheelchair in a Montana schoolyard, but here she looks graceful, capable. Appropriate. She is also stunningly beautiful.

“Welcome to Heaven,” she says, leading Jessica by the hand. Jessica follows, gladly. The angel on her breast throbs, reassuring her this not a dream. “Are you ready for a little more truth now?”

FIN