Sitting up straight, he rubbed his eyes as his senses cleared. Directly in front of him was more paper. David rolled to his knees and got to his feet. He saw that these were not ordinary pieces of white paper but photographs. And every photograph was of a child. There were banded stacks of photographs placed neatly on shelf after shelf after shelf. Three big baskets holding hundreds of loose photographs stood at the bottom of one row as if waiting to be filed. These were pictures of children of all ages and colors. There were two children in some photographs and just one in many more. David saw others had three children or four, and a few held five or six.
David stepped into an opening on his left. It was an aisle of some sort, and just beyond it stood massive racks of clothing. Walking tentatively, David approached the brightly colored materials and ran his hand over a small coat. Picking up the sleeve of another garment, he recognized it as a coat as well. In fact, he determined quickly that every single article of clothing was a coat. Large ones, small ones, coats and jackets, each on its own individual hanger. “Thousands,” David murmured, “maybe hundreds of thousands.”
David turned back toward the photographs and gasped. Standing across the aisle gave him a peripheral view of where he had awakened moments before. Close to the pictures, he had not been able to see just how high the shelves were stacked, but looking up, he could not even see a ceiling. There were shelves of photographs one on top of another stacked literally out of sight.
There were no light fixtures in this place, or any lights for that matter, and yet, somehow, everything was bathed in a soft, even glow. To his right, the aisle continued seemingly without end. To his left, the same. There seemed to be no definite structure to the building if it was, in fact, a building. Am I still dreaming? David wondered.
Noticing something different on the shelves just past the photographs, David walked slowly down the aisle almost a hundred yards until he saw wheelchairs. Thousands of wheelchairs. Lined up and on shelves. Row after row of nickel-plated, gleaming wheelchairs. Just beyond the wheelchairs were beds—double, single, king, and queen. Then bicycles—all kinds, all colors.
Across from the bicycles were legal documents of some kind. David looked closer. They were automobile titles. The papers, on shelves and bundled as the pictures had been, were spread over an area as large as ten houses and, like everything else in this place, were piled higher than he could see.
Next to the car titles were shoes of every description, each pair in its own separate cubicle. Baby shoes took up a cabinet that David guessed might be sixty or seventy yards long and who knew how high. The baby shoes were followed by cabinets filled with men’s and women’s dress shoes, galoshes, and sneakers. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of shoes, David wasn’t sure.
David was sure, however, that he had never been anywhere like this before. The temperature seemed perfect. There was no music, no smell. He had seen no support pilings of any kind or walls or people. Where am I? he thought. What is this place, and what’s with this stuff?
He continued to walk and found new aisles, but none with an end. He saw blue jeans and medicine and pictures of homes. There were heaters and marriage licenses, roofing shingles and food. Slowly, he worked his way back toward the pictures of the children.
On the way, he passed an area stacked with money. Cash in every currency and denomination. David put his hands on his hips, pursed his lips, and expelled all the air from his lungs. “This makes absolutely no sense at all,” he said aloud. Continuing, he counted two hundred and nine steps before the money was no longer beside him.
Soon, David was back where he had begun, even though he knew he had not seen nearly everything. As he turned in a complete circle, gazing all around him, a picture fluttered down from somewhere above. It landed on the floor not far from where David stood. Picking it up, he moved to place it back on a shelf but stopped. Something troubled him about the photograph.
It was a color picture of two children, a boy and a girl each around six or seven years old. They were quite obviously brother and sister, but they looked remarkably similar to Jenny, his own daughter. Their eyes were blue like Jenny’s—and Ellen’s—and the blond hair lifted into the same cowlick on the front left side.
David shook his head in wonder. He couldn’t take his eyes off the photo.
Faintly, almost in a part of his subconscious, David heard something. Glancing up sharply, he looked down the aisle where he had just been and saw a figure walking toward him. The person was moving from several hundred yards away, steadily and easily. As he approached the area that held the beds and bicycles, David could see that it was a man. He was huge. David was two inches over six feet but saw that this man would tower over him.
David eased a couple of feet to his left, feeling somewhat safer close to the stacks of pictures. He saw that the man had blond, almost golden, curly hair. It was relatively short, touching his eyebrows and just brushing his ears. He wore a robe draped over his shoulders and hanging to his knees. It was white, or maybe light. In fact, this man, who was now no more than fifty feet away, seemed to be dressed in what David could only describe as shades of light.
The man smiled a greeting as he came closer, then stopped and turned to straighten a wheelchair on his right. When he did, David’s mouth dropped open. The man had wings.
They were of the purest white and lay close to his shoulder blades. As the man bent to move the wheelchair, David could see that they ran the length of his body, the tips extending almost to the floor. As he stood again to full height, the wings folded in close to his back.
Closing the distance quickly between them, the man stopped and said, “Hello, David Ponder. I am Gabriel.”
He was as tall as David had at first thought and built like a warrior. Heavily muscled, yet somehow gentle, he was not threatening in any way. His nose was long and straight, his lips full, and the skin on his face was smooth and devoid of whiskers. But his eyes held David’s attention. They were the brightest blue he had ever seen and appeared to have been dusted with flakes of gold.
David’s mouth hung open. “You’re an angel,” he finally managed to say.
“An archangel actually.” Gabriel smiled, revealing perfectly even, white teeth. “There is a difference, you know.”
“I’m sorry, I . . . ahh . . . I really didn’t,” David stammered. “Know, I mean. That there was a difference.”
“No matter, David Ponder,” Gabriel responded. “I am honored to make your acquaintance.”
Indicating the photograph David still held in his hand, he said, “May I?”
“Oh . . . sure!” David said and gave it to him.
Gabriel looked at the picture for a moment, then showed it again to David. “Beautiful children, aren’t they?” David nodded in agreement and watched as Gabriel placed it in the basket of loose photos.
“So I am dead?” David blurted out.
Gabriel wrinkled his forehead and appeared confused. “Excuse me?”
“If I’m with you, then I must be in heaven. And if I’m in heaven, I must be dead.”
Gabriel laughed. “No, you are not dead. This is merely a brief stopover, perhaps the most important stopover, in your travel. This is the only destination all travelers have in common.”
“Have there been many travelers?” David asked.
“Relatively few,” Gabriel said, “when one considers the beginning of time as you know it and the numbers of people with whom we have dealt. But for those who are chosen to travel, an understanding of their true mission begins here, in this place. Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Martin Luther King Jr. all took a step toward destiny from where you now stand.”
“Which is where exactly?” David motioned with his hands. “What is this place?”
Gabriel held up one finger. “Not quite yet,” he said. “First, let us walk together.”
Moving slowly away from the direction in which he had come, Gabriel led David past ceiling fans and air-conditioners, tires and blan
kets, watches and pictures of animals. Just as there had been photographs of children, David saw rows and files and stacks of dog pictures, cat pictures, horses, hamsters, birds, turtles, fish, and a few animals he didn’t even recognize.
Approaching a vast area stacked neatly with monstrous rolls of carpet, Gabriel stopped, turned, and without warning, asked, “Do you consider yourself a man of faith, David Ponder?”
David frowned. Momentarily thrown, he said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows rose. “A simple question actually. Do you consider yourself a man of faith? Does faith guide your everyday actions and emotions? All men are driven by faith or fear—one or the other—for both are the same. Faith or fear is the expectation of an event that hasn’t come to pass or the belief in something that cannot be seen or touched. A man of fear lives always on the edge of insanity. A man of faith lives in perpetual reward.”
“Reward?” David said, puzzled.
Walking again, Gabriel replied, “Faith is to believe what one has not seen. The reward of faith is to see what one has believed. Do you consider yourself a man of faith, David Ponder?”
“To be honest,” David replied, “I have always thought of myself as a man of reason.”
Gabriel turned right, leading his guest down a wide aisle. “Reason never makes room for miracles; faith releases miracles. And in final comparison, faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can only be stretched so far, but faith has no limits. The only limit to your realization of tomorrow is the doubt to which you hold fast today.”
“Is it realistic for me to work and live, expecting miracles?” David asked.
Gabriel laughed. “You are quite amusing, David Ponder,” he said. “What is this word realistic? It is never used here.”
David stopped. “You are kidding, right?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said, still smiling, “I am. But it is a fact that great leaders—great achievers—are rarely realistic by other people’s standards. Somehow, these successful people, often considered strange, pick their way through life ignoring or not hearing negative expectations and emotions. Consequently, they accomplish one great thing after another, never having heard what cannot be done. That is precisely why one should never tell a young person that something cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing!”
David’s attention was momentarily diverted from Gabriel. As they walked, they passed more and more aisles of bricks, rice, computers, rocking chairs, and vast amounts of items that, as far as David could tell, had no connection. But here was something new, an area of about one hundred feet square with a single, small pedestal standing in the middle. On the pedestal, David saw as he moved closer, was a stack of papers not even a quarter of an inch high.
It had been the light that caught David’s attention. The pedestal, removed from any other item in this place, also stood in stark contrast to the soft glow that seemed to permeate every other row or shelf. A bright light focused sharply on the pedestal’s papers. As David moved slowly across the empty space, he looked up and around for the light’s source. “Hey, where is the light coming from?” he asked. Gabriel only smiled. Seeing he would receive no answer, David moved closer. “May I touch this?”
“Certainly,” Gabriel responded.
There were forty to fifty sheets of paper, some of them obviously newer, some yellowed with age. The first was a complicated mathematical equation, as was the second. The third and several other pages showed multidimensional blueprints for different machines of some sort. Scanning quickly, David saw pages of chemical equations, some that almost appeared to be recipes, and one sheet of paper, yellow and wrinkled, that held only one word in the middle. From biology classes years before, David recognized the word as a Latin name for some sort of plant.
Holding the papers in his left hand, David turned to Gabriel and said, “I don’t get it. What are these?”
“One of them,” Gabriel said as he moved toward David, “I believe it was the eighth page you looked at, is the cure for pancreatic, liver, or colon cancer.”
David stared at Gabriel. His hand, still holding the stack of papers, remained partially extended. “What?” he said.
“Yes,” Gabriel continued, “also included there is a machine that will regenerate the optic nerve, allowing even those who are blind from birth to see. A variation of that same device is blueprinted on the following page. It regenerates spinal tissue. You are holding cures and vaccinations for muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, and believe it or not, the common cold. Page twenty-six is the answer to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and page fourteen, you might be interested to know, is a liquid formula to be swabbed at the back of a child’s throat. It painlessly shrinks and removes tonsils in less than six hours.”
David was stunned. Barely able to comprehend Gabriel’s explanation, he slowly thumbed through the papers again. “But I don’t . . . ,” he started and stopped. “Am I supposed to take these?”
“No,” Gabriel said.
Flushing with anger and confusion, David sputtered, “Then what is the purpose? I mean, why . . . ?” He couldn’t find the words. Tears of exhaustion sprang to his eyes. Embarrassed and overwhelmed, David placed the papers on the pedestal and ignored the crack in his voice as he said too loudly, “What is going on? All these things . . . these cures . . . my daughter needs her tonsils taken out. Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
For several seconds, David stared open-mouthed at the angel. Then the corners of his mouth sagged and tears streamed down his face as he tried desperately to regain some sense of comprehension. Finally, David yelled, “Do you know I can’t afford the operation?”
“Yes.”
The frustration of a lifetime seemed to well out of David’s soul at that very moment. An agonized cry escaped his throat as he sank to a squatting position. With his left arm on his knee and his right fist ground into the floor, David balanced there and cried bitterly. He cried for Ellen and Jenny. He missed them. Would he ever see them again? Did he deserve to see them again? He cried for the people he had let down in his life—his parents, his friends, his coworkers—and he cried for himself.
After a few minutes had passed, David eased into a sitting position on the floor and sat with his knees bunched under his chin. Calmer now, he tried to catch his breath and wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt.
Gabriel had not moved. His face was not devoid of compassion, but he offered no physical comfort or suggestion of great sympathy.
David turned his face up to the angel and asked, “Why am I here?” Gabriel held out a hand to help David to his feet. Taking it, David stood and straightened his pants.
Gabriel smiled. “Why do you think you’re here?”
“I don’t know,” David said as he sniffed loudly.
“Then it is not time for you to know,” Gabriel said. “Come.”
They continued their walk past the pedestal. David took one last look at it as they moved out of sight. Instantly, he again noticed the incredible quantities of an endless variety of items. Some were ordinary. There were electrical cables and light bulbs. Some were not so ordinary. “What is this?” David asked, pointing to a piece of machinery as they passed.
“That bit of equipment,” Gabriel responded, “renders any moveable object collision-proof. The design is a combination of laser and sound-wave technology effective on anything from automobiles to a jumbo jet.”
David ran his fingers through his hair. “If you won’t tell me what this place is and you won’t say why I am here, then let me ask you a different question.” Gabriel nodded. “Why are all these things here?”
Brushing his hand over one of the many vacuum cleaners they were walking by, Gabriel appeared deep in thought. “What is the difference in people, David Ponder,” the angel began, “when they hit despair? Why does one person take his own life while another moves to greatness?”
??
?That didn’t answer my question,” David replied, “but I’m not sure. I’ve never really thought about it.”
Gabriel turned, still walking, with a mildly amused look on his face. “Think about it now,” he said simply.
David shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a difference in circumstances.”
“Circumstances are rulers of the weak,” Gabriel said, “but they are weapons of the wise. Must you be bent and flayed by every situation you encounter?” David frowned. Smiling, Gabriel pressed his point: “That is a question, David Ponder. Are your emotions and resolve controlled by circumstances?”
“No, they are not,” David said firmly.
“That is correct,” Gabriel nodded. “Circumstances do not push or pull. They are daily lessons to be studied and gleaned for new knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom that is applied will bring about a brighter tomorrow. A person who is depressed is spending too much time thinking about the way things are now and not enough time thinking about how he wants things to be.”
David walked on for a minute in thought, then swung his arm toward an area filled with mattresses and said, “So why are all these things here?”
Gabriel glanced at his confused pupil briefly and said, “Circumstances.”
David sighed audibly. Gabriel laughed and said, “Walk this way, David Ponder.”
David followed the angel down an aisle lined with telephones on one side and lumber on the other. Soon, they were back to David’s starting place, the area with the photographs of children. “Have I seen it all?” David asked.
“You have seen only a tiny fraction of this facility,” Gabriel answered. “A lifetime of wandering would not cover it all. And sadly, it gets bigger every day.”
David stopped near the baskets of loose pictures. Reaching in, he removed the one Gabriel had placed there earlier—the one with the two children David had found so familiar. “The boy’s name is Jason,” Gabriel said quietly. “The girl is Julia.”