Billy Goes to Heaven, Part 2

(*Note – You may want to begin with Part #1 below)

As God and I began our tour of Heaven I had to find out more while I had the chance.
“Here’s something I always wondered about: pain, struggle and death. What’s that all about?” This was going to be interesting
“There were two ways to do this, as usual.” He said. “I could create all of you in a constant state of bliss, telling me how great I am. But that gets boring really fast. So, I chose the other. I allowed all of you to work it out on your own. Much more interesting don’t you think?”
We were drawing closer to a series of strange mountains; each a different color and each shaped roughly the same, like huge mounds.
“So you’re saying we have free will? We can make our own choices?” I continued.
“Oh sure. You can do what you want. It’s just that having created the bow, the arrow, the wind and the target, I know exactly what’s going to happen every time.”
“Wait a minute.” I said, “You can’t know everything. You can’t know the path of every drop of water, every bug, every human whim, every nutty move someone might make.”
He smiled smugly, "Of course I can. I’m God. I created all of this. To be more accurate, I am all of this. Everything that is going on is Me going on.”
Now I had him, “You can’t know that I was going to do this.” I said . Quickly I swung the palm of my hand up to dope-slap myself on the forehead. His hand hit his forehead at exactly the same time as mine. I made a face at Him. I screwed my mouth up to one side and squinched one eye closed and made an um-mum-mum sound like I was gagging. But he was in my face with exactly the same expression only with an exact copy of my own face like a mirror image. A couple of seconds later he morphed back to his own face.
“Pretty good don’t you think?” he said.
As we approached the hills I noticed that they resembled huge mile-high piles with no trees or structures.
“These are the seven hills of heaven.” He said proudly.
They were each of a different color and texture. One was brown, one multi-colored, one gleaming silver, bronze and gold and one, amazingly, was completely translucent and sparkling. They all looked somehow familiar but I couldn’t identify why. He pointed to the brown one.
“This is Mount Wallet. It’s all of the lost wallets, purses and moneybags. That colored one is Sock hill."
I caught myself slack-jawed again.
“That silver one,” He continued, “is Key Hill. This is where they end up. That beautiful one is Glass Mountain. Millions of contact lenses and spectacles, one each. That orange one is Mount Pencil. We get a lot of those. There’s Loose Change Mountain and that smaller one is T.V. Remote Hill. It’s pretty new.”
“I don’t understand. Where did this all come from?”
God looked down and replied in a soft voice, “There are still some wrinkles in the space/time continuum. And for some reason they act like tiny black holes. They settle into places like the hidden corners of clothes dryers and sofas and desk drawers and glove compartments. So, this is all of the stuff that humans have lost over the eons. We’ve got a pair of Ben Franklin’s spectacles and Einstein’s door key. Actually, we have several of those, and, one of Cleopatra’s socks. Hey, who knew? We even have the key to Pandora’s Box. Too bad she didn’t lose it a little sooner.”
He was obviously proud of his collection.
“I have one more thing to show you.”
He led me down some stone steps into a dark underground, lit only by oil torches. We descended into a dank, rather large hall full of almost identical little men with long wisps of scraggly, white hair and smudged white robes. They were all laboring over little candlelit desks with parchment and quill pens, mumbling to themselves. They appeared to have been there for ages.
“This is They.” He announced waving toward the room.
“They? What do you mean, they?” Yet another puzzle.
“You’ve heard ‘ they say; a stitch in time saves nine’? Well, this is They.”
I leaned closer to one of the little men and listened.
“A rolling stone gathers no lichens.” He said under his breath as he looked to the ceiling for inspiration. “No, no, that’s not it” He continued, “Let’s see, a rolling rock gathers no moss. No, no, no” he muttered in frustration.
I said to no one in particular, “ I always wondered where all that stuff came from.”
We returned to the surface where a table was waiting for us complete with lunch.
“You know God, I have just realized that if I had designed the universe, it wouldn’t have turned out nearly as interesting as this.”
God looked pleased as we began eating.
“This pizza is terrific.” I said. “What kind is it?”
God smiled and said, “Polish . . . with chocolate sprinkles.”