"The Third Test"

"I am not afraid," said I. I should have been. I should have been. I should have been...

This is my confession.

…

At first everything was a blur. Then the room took shape. White walls, bed, curtains on a runner from the ceiling... the hospital. She was looking down at me, standing by the bedside in a white lab coat and taking notes.

I was confused, because I seemed to remember going home, but I was so foggy… I sat up, or tried to, and in a state somewhere close to vertigo – my head spinning, my vision one dimensional, as if I was looking super close up at a gigantic screen – I tried to speak but could not. I had no idea what time it was, or what day it was.

When I closed my eyes the spinning stopped.

"I need a doctor," I finally whispered.

"No," she said. "You don't."

I could not summon a response. No words came to me at all. My head was simply empty and I did not speak. I don't know how long this was. It does not matter. I understood. I had always felt this coming.

It may have been a year that passed. Or five minutes.

I was not confused. Not anymore.

She stood before me at the end of the bed, hands clasped dutifully behind, as if it were her job to wait. At times she seemed to be sitting on the edge of the bed beside me. I could not look at her for more than a second. When I opened my eyes the vertigo started in hard. So I sat there with my eyes shut.

It may really have been a year.

There had once been so many things on my mind. So many responsibilities and worries, people to check on, but now… I saw their faces and remembered that I cared for them, but it felt as if all those things were somehow on another island, inaccessible and beyond my control. The people in my life had become shadows, beyond any horizon from where I was now.

I glanced up at her – just for a second. She was still there, standing by the window. Immersed in bright light from outside. She carried a small sheaf of papers on a clipboard. The spinning sensation started right away. I shut them again.

"I can't keep my eyes open," I said. "I get so dizzy."

"I'm sorry," she said. "This happens sometimes."

"I don't remember it."

"To others," she said. "It happens sometimes. Here."

My blood ran cold. Underlying the ordinariness of this place – with the bed, the window – I was aware now of a irrefutable and unpleasant fact. As strange as if felt to articulate, this fact could not be denied.

"Did I die?" I squeaked an eye open.

She nodded as if this were an everyday conversation. Can your heart jump if you're dead? Can your breath be taken away? Both these things happened to me. For a moment I could not speak. It simply had to sink in.

"How?" I asked finally. "When?"

"It was some time ago. You were sick, and your body could not keep going. The doctors tried to help you. They did their best, but they were unable to stop it from happening."

"Was it here? Where am I? Is this my house? Or a hospital?" I had lived alone and died alone. I did not need to ask about my family. "Jesus Christ… am I in a morgue?"

She laughed politely. "No, this is definitely not a morgue," she said. "Those places are all far away. This is just temporary stop for you. It is the most normal thing."

"Are you God?"

She laughed again. This time more uncomfortably. "No, I am definitely not God. That is for sure. Think of me more like a Ph.D student."

"Why can't I get up?"

"Of course you can get up. But where do you have to go? Listen to me: I understand your concern. Let me explain to you that everyone who ever lived preceded you here, and many more will follow. It almost doesn't matter one passes. When I see them they are laying there, often confused, asking questions just like now. It is natural to have some fear, but let me assure you that this is all the way it is supposed to be. You're ok."

"But I'm dead."

"And you're ok. Those things do not contradict. This is the natural next step."

"To what?"

"To internment in the archive, having played the role meant for you. Just as your parents and your grandparents before them. Just as everyone who ever lived."

"I don't think I got a very good role."

"It was yours," she said. "Some get far less. And that is theirs."

"It doesn't seem fair."

"It is not fair. But it is also in the past. Now you are here with me. Let me explain: anyone who meets the criteria moves from here to an unending peace in the archive. Think of it as your spirit residing in immortality without pain or fear."

"Ok," I said. This sounded like something big. It was manifestly religious in a way that I could not relate to.

"Those who don't meet the criteria are deleted from the rolls. Our goal is to wind down this activity and move you all to the eternal state – at least as you might conceive of 'eternal'." At this she made quotation marks with her fingers.

"As we might conceive?"

"Well, the progenitor humanoids had no concept of past or future. Everything was now now now. Then the first humans came along and you have memory of the past, you can articulate a concept of the future. Very different. But you cannot experientially move between them. You move forward only along a straight line. So limiting, but this is what your brain can handle."

"What other way is there?"

"Exactly," she said. As if I were making her point. Maybe I was. I tried opening my eyes. My head started to spin. I gave up.

"But not everyone goes to the archive?"

"No," she said. "Not everyone. There are some we don't retain."

So this was it. For the entirety of my life I had walked under the shadow of judgement. I had felt its tide pulling at me always. Into the distance, into the darkness. I had tumbled toward it even now, in death.

"So I am to be excluded? Removed from the rolls?" I did not know specifically what it meant, but I got it.

"What? No, of course not! If that were the case you would not be here. They get deleted before now."

"How can that be?" I asked. How indeed. It could not be. The tide had always been there – an undertow that may be resisted, that may be ignored, but which pulls at you always. And in the end the ocean awaits.

"You have already passed the two tests," she said. "Your record has been reviewed. You need only attest to acceptance of the terms and conditions, and you will join the better part of humanity in…" She waved her hand in a way that seemed to connote utter simplicity. "Rest, silence, bliss."

In the archive.

"What will it be like?"

"It will be like nothing. It is not painful or scary. It simply is."

"So it's like heaven? The good people go into infinity and that's it?" I tried opening my eyes.

She seemed to relax. Now we're getting somewhere, her body language seemed to say.

"In a way, you could look at it in exactly that way." This was clear and unclear at the same time. I had to close my eyes again. It was not getting better.

"That should clear up soon," she said. "It usually does. Put out your hands."

She produced a thick document attached to a clipboard. I briefly glanced at it. The metal clip itself was flecked with rust, and coated in places with the dry remains of an ancient piece of tape. I flipped through the pages, but the text was blurry, distorted with everything into a flat screenlike appearance.

"I don't understand," I said. "I can't read any of this."

"That happens sometimes… actually quite often. This is simply an attestation to your acceptance. You're all set. You have passed the test of temptation, by refusing opportunities to commit crimes. You have passed the test of greed by refusing the opportunity to steal. You are not a liar, of course."

"What happens to liars?"

"They don't make it this far. Words mean nothing to them."

But I—

"But I did steal. I stole from a friend. I did." I lied too.

"You were a child. You grew. You learned."

She was right. It seemed so rare that the universe could have mercy. But here it was.

"The tests overlap, to be sure," she said. "They reflect a certain set of values. Now, most people are very satisfied at this point! You need only sign to attest to these results. Put out your hand."

She put a heavy ballpoint pen in my hand. I opened my eyes and she directed me to the signature line. I could hardly read the words.

"Just sign right here," she said.

It seemed that if there was ever a test of truthfulness, this would be it. First there was the document, an obvious trap, since I could not read it. And then… a long list of wrongs ran through my mind. I had lied, I had stolen – granted, yes, I had been younger then but the shadow was always upon me. I had labored under it. My spirit had become desiccated and distorted.

If given a foul place, what is one to do? I had lived marked with self-knowledge of my own shortcomings.

"Is there something wrong?" She asked.

"I have thought evil things," I said, as if this would invalidate the two tests. So be it.

"You have a particular kind of mind. It is a well known type: wild, primitive even, too restless to stay safe. For some people, maybe most but I don't know, the mind stays within narrow channels of acceptable thought content. For them the bounds set by society become in fact the limits of their own thinking. There is no such thing as a real imagination. They fit in, they play their role, but they fail to apprehend the universe. It is a safe easy life, or so it may seem to you, but many of them fail the first two tests too. Greed and temptation are strong draws, and even the tidy mind can become ensnared."

How convenient it would be, I thought, if the Good Lord had blessed me with such limitations.

"You are not a neat, self-contained box. You are more like an antenna. The antenna attenuates itself to distant signals and creates meaning from them. You are not the broadcaster of the signals, not the originator, but the recipient. As such, you cannot control their content. But you can choose whether to act upon them, and whether to refrain! It is this choice that distinguishes you, It may seem harder than it is for the others, but they have other challenges. Let me assure you, everyone faces their own tests."

"I wanted to act on my evil thoughts but I was afraid," I said. "I idolized the breakers of rules, the committers of crimes. I did. I thought they had such courage. Even thoughts that were not evil, I was afraid to act on them too. I was afraid to step out of line. I did not want to be ashamed."

"You feared being help up to ridicule and criticism, so you moderated your choices?"

Yes.

"I limited myself. I did not truly live."

"Life is choices, life is limitation. There is no test for what you may have desired, or for whatever quality enables one to commit evil acts. I'm not sure that it is courage. There is only the test of whether you committed them!"

"It was not a lack of desire. I felt a desire to do evil, but I was weak and afraid."

"It is not a sin to be afraid. This test is not about that."

"This test?"

"The third test, the final test. It is optional, one hundred percent optional. And I don't recommend it in your case. I should not have even mentioned it."

"Why not?"

"It's not necessary."

"Not necessary for what?"

"I know this is a difficult thing to understand, bur please try to follow me. This is the point where we solidify the legacy of your mortal life. The sum of your choices, in totality. Right now!"

"The totality of which includes a healthy share of weakness and fear."

"The third test is only for special cases, for whom a complete remaking is essential. This is not you."

"It is. There is so much I wanted to experience, even in some small way. I feel like I missed out on the chance to experience more."

"Like what?"

"Everything. I want to experience the full totality of life. What was it to kill? What does it take to look into the abyss? I never got the chance to know."

"Sometimes when you look into the abyss, it looks back at you. That is not a gaze to take lightly."

"I've given up being afraid," I said with gusto. I managed to open my eyes briefly too, to make eye contact with her. To press my point. "You say this is where the legacy is finalized? If I could taste the experience of what it was like to break those rules, I would do it."

"I don't think this is necessary."

"I don't care. I'm not weak." Eyes flapping open again, momentarily.

"No one thinks you're weak."

That was not true. We both knew it. If I could go back and undo it now, I would give anything. If only I had that chance.

"I want the third test."

"If you're absolutely sure, that may be an option. But it is the most consequential decision one can make. It is the most difficult thing one can undertake."

"More difficult that living with a legacy of a lifetime of weakness? I don't think it can be."

"Far more difficult."

"I'll do it."

"Far, far, far more difficult. Impossibly difficult. You have passed all the necessary tests – you're done. You don't need to go forward. Once the third test begins it cannot be stopped. It must run its full course."

"I'm not afraid."

"You should be."

"I'll do it."

"Let me explain. In the third test you will taste the full range of human experience, bar none, including every manner and type of criminality."

"Really?"

"Every type."

"It's not just that. I want to climb mountains and fly planes and fight in wars. I want to be brave. I want to feel everything."

"In the third test all of those childhood fantasies would be included. That is just the barest beginning--"

"I'll do it."

Almost without thinking, I removed the signature page from the clipboard and tore it in two. It was, I see now, a singularly foolish act of performative bravery.

"I'm already regretting it for you," she said. Her words were whispered, baleful.

"Don't bother. I'm not afraid."

"Yes, I know. I know you're not afraid. But sometimes it would be wise and good and smart to be afraid. When the question is whether or not to choose to commit every act of human evil – or not – one should in fact be afraid. There are boundaries we should not cross. Fear is not a weakness. Fear is preservation. Fear is a miracle given to us. It was given to you."

She stopped speaking. I opened my eyes long enough to look at her. Her eyes were closed tightly. I closed mine as the vertigo set in again.

"This is my fault," she said quietly.

I could not listen anymore. I became belligerent. Outwardly, purposefully obtuse.

"Say what you will," I said. "When do we get started? How long does it take?"

"Do you feel that?" She said. I did not. We sat in silence. "As someone who has committed to feeling the full range of human experience, and courage in particular, you should understand this: so variegated is the range of human experience, that to sample everything – as you require – one must simply go through the whole thing. Beginning to end. The third test is just that: living out the full lives, in real time, of every human that has ever lived, and all that will come after. It is a finite set of experiences. You should know this. You will see the very beginning, everything that followed, and down to the last remaining moments."

"What? Including my own life?"

"And your parents, and your grandparents. Every one of them, and far beyond that. All that came after you, far into the future, until the last of them fade away on a radiated mountaintop while the sea boils around them. I won't say more. You'll see it all."

This hard to conceive. We said nothing now. I reflected blankly that nothing in my life mattered more than this moment.

"As such," she said. "The concept of 'when do we get started' or 'how long will it take' rings a little beside the point. Time in the ordinary human conception does not exist for us. Likewise for you. If you were to somehow add up the hours, or minutes really, because not everyone gets more than minutes, you might be able to put a number on the closed-loop that is human eternity. Beginning to end."

I could hear something. Something gigantic. The sound was getting louder. It seemed to come from every direction.

"I don't want to do this," I said. Opening my eyes and looking at the torn-up signature page before me.

"The opportunity for courage begins now," she said. Then she took my hand.

…

Whether we sat in silence for many years, or whether she just snapped fingers I cannot say. What I can tell you is this: I woke in a bright cold space with huge eyes looking down at me. I was a child, aware only of my own hunger, crying out, then wrapped in furs at my mother's breast. I can tell you now that she had the rough features of a Neanderthal or some other pre-human… thick brow, protruding cheekbones, huge brown eyes full of spirit.

I was the first. A genetic mutation, born to another kind, with no idea what would come from me.

My God, to think of it. It was as she had told me: the third test would take me back to the beginning.

It did. I lived that life. We found food in the forest and danced by firelight. We prayed at dawn and ran from beasts – and our own kind – when necessary. I was different. The others knew it but they accepted me. They had no idea that I – I – would be the vehicle for their destruction. I was a woman, with all the future of humanity inside me.

The first lifetime, so long ago. It was new, and I remember pieces of it even now. It was a joyful life as we traveled and encountered our cousins. I remember thinking "this is just the outset" because at that time I still recalled the room and the woman who had been my caretaker. I had three children. I grieved when the first one died, so young, and the second, my baby, with barely a chance… but the third one became my protector when disease took me later. With his half-brothers and the others, he cared for me in my last moments. Then, through a transformation that I should have anticipated, then I was them. I was each my own first born. I relived our moments together, which I still recalled. When the first one passed, I saw my own eyes, my own face looking down, a huge forlorn shape, bereft as the light faded. And then again, born again, living again for a few days, then again the forlorn mother's grief – my own… And then the third child, seeing our lives again, every moment, but now through his eyes… my eyes. He buried his mother in a cave under heavy rocks, and that was the end for her. For me. And also the beginning.

I traversed the whole of human lifetimes. Every moment of the archive became mine.

But after that it was so long, so many lifetimes came and went, and I forgot who I was. I forgot the room. I became them. Every one of them. First my son's children, and their children, and their children. Each life I lived, and then relived through the other of the others, and then again. I saw everything. I did not always act with wisdom or kindness, and time maybe one day will forgive my hands and myself for the cruel actions I took. I cannot shake those things. Not only did I look at the abyss, I touched it. Its tar will not come clean.

There were times, too, when I regained my consciousness. I remembered. And I knew this whole world was false, an apparition, and I knew there was another true world beyond what we could see. That I was in that room, in that true world, my hand held by what I might conceive as a ministering angel… these things I could not conceive in those lives. It did not land well for me. In one life they made me a priest. In another they burned me as a witch. Then I was lost again, with only flashes of insight, and I was carried away in the ocean of days. Until now, at this moment here with you.

So it was in the very beginning, and so it will be to the very end. Time is not what we anticipate. It is far from what we guess it to be. I am sitting in the bed now, in an infinite space, and I am the first human woman, and a mountain priest, and a killer whose bloody hands merit your gallows. I am every child born, every weeping mother, every hopeful face. It is mine, and will be mine. I know what it is to kill now, and what it is to face justice.

I stand before you, ready to be hanged for my crimes. Understood, understood. My own choice – my insistence – brought me here. But I am also the jailer, and thus I will hang me for my crimes. I am also the deceased, dead by my own hands, mourned by me, me, me and me. Looking on from a netherworld where time itself does not exist, where every moment that ever happened still exists alongside every other. Where every child ever born is being conceived now, being born now, cutting the cord now. All the joy and laughter and pain of every moment of life – now.

I am all of them, and there is no time. I see from their eyes – they are mine. I am splintered into a hundred million facets, and that is just the beginning. She holds my hand now, in a silent space.

The third test is the test of disintegration. I should have said no.

I should have been afraid.