With another stretch, spanning millions of constellations, God pointed toward a great and open field, where barns were assembled across endless plains, filled with bison, sheep, pigs, cattle, cats, dogs, birds, and a billion small creatures that added to the beautiful dissonance of their sounds.

"This is the Bronze Heaven, where those whose sins are against lesser beings are employed."

"Lesser beings?" I asked, turning toward him, if "toward" meant anything now. "You mean animals?"

"I do. They are employed here--"

Once again, he stopped for my interjection, and I felt all the worse for it, yet not as bad as if I kept silent; "Employed? They work here? In Heaven?"

"In the Bronze Heaven, they work without toil, and enjoy the fruit of each drop of sweat. In the Bronze Heaven, they work alongside their lesser counterparts in harmony. Your kind calls their deeds "animal cruelty" yet the Bronze Heavens welcomes many and more; those who've run breeding mills, stocking the world with excess animals for profit, and those who've killed those deemed too weak to live on." He paused, letting me take in the notion that euthanasia was no less a sin that burning a puppy alive. "It is for those who've brought harm upon lesser creatures of the earth, and those who've made ill use of the bodies of those creatures." Before I could elaborate, God spoke with a voice that slid through my eardrums as if they were gossamer. "To kill a bull for its meat, and to toss the meat away is to sin. Whether the need was not great enough, or the bull was too large, it is a sin to let their blood spill in vain."

"I understand," I said through a half-lie. I know God knew of my misdeed, yet he seemed satisfied with my level of understanding with such a concept, or perhaps he understood my fear of his presence well enough to allow me to tell little white lies to the very antithesis of mistruth.

"These are the Spiral and Opaque Heavens, where poisoners, and those who've sinned against Eden are sent" he said, pointing to something out of an MC Escher painting. Two worlds were joined at a great focal point, sucking in paved tiles and chunks of land, spitting them back out on the opposite ends of forever. On one end, I saw a maypole of gatherers, prancing and jolly- they looked downright blissful, in an eternal picnic with smiles across their faces that came from loved ones.

At the other end, I saw men thin and sallow, walking through jungles of racks and shelves, all stocked with colorful beakers holding the most luminescent liquids. Those within looked to be at death's door, but they all smiled, and they all looked around in glorious wonder.

I felt tears falling down my cheek as I watched the two Houses joined by such chaos, yet standing so pure. "I have so many questions." I felt the words tumble from my lips, yet no sound escaped when faced with the unraveling planes before me.

"When the world was young, the Spiral Heaven was full of poisoners, though perhaps not in the sense you know them. To poison, to truly poison, it is a thing of the mind; a thing of ideas. True, the Spiral Heaven will take those who have used poisons upon themselves, or others, but to limit it to such was far too great; it is for those who've poisoned minds with lies and falsehoods; those who've held great and boisterous claims of grandeur, only to strike down those whom they relied upon. Poisoners of innocence and ideology, all of them, and here, they are lucid and honest.

In a paradise of tonics that sate the mind with pure lucidity, in the company of those around them, they drink their fill, free of the dishonesty and manipulation. In your layman's terms; they are cleansed." I wanted to nod, but my neck was stiff, and my tears burned red-hot against my cheeks. God continued speaking;

"What you also see if the Opaque Heaven, where we take refuge upon those who've committed sins against Eden."

"E-Eden?" The words slipped through my lips so quickly I could not think about it.

"I have given man a garden, and he forges blades, builds tools, and uses them for abuse. Those who've brought deforestation, and drought; those who've soiled the earth for their own gain. They were given paradise, and they defied a natural order for their own gain. Here, in the Opaque Heaven, they are given a world free of inequality and scarcity; a world where a humble life is afforded to them without need to work. They exist without need to plow the earth, for the morsels of their desire grow at their feet, and manna from the skies quenches their thirst."

"But why?" I sobbed, drawn into that gaping maw that shattered the two of them every moment of every second. "Why are they like this?"

And God became silent- so silent that this nexus became as cold as my grave. My tears dried in the presence of something not quite peace, but not quite wrath. "Do you know why you are here?"

"Because... because I'm dead?" I stammered out.

"Because you stood still, when Eden needed you most. When your earth needed you most."

"Am... am I going there? To the-- the Opaque Heaven?" I felt tears welling in my eyes now, like watery green emeralds I tried to form some semblance of courage, yet it melted before his silence.

"When man's poison turned upon the planet, no longer could I abide by such a separation. No longer could I ignore the great and terrible machines that dove deep into the dirt and brought cataclysmic tremors; no longer could I abide by the toxins tossed aside into the rivers, turning them into rushes of death and pollution. No longer could keep separate the two planes of sin when man brought upon great calamity, and still bickered over the fault for profits. I cannot abide!"

I knew the words he was talking about; fracking, global warming, and polluting rivers. I fell to my knees, only to watch them rent with God's furor. My body broke, piece by piece, from flesh, to muscle, to organs, to bone. The last thing I was aware of was my brain disintegrating, euphoric and content. My great sin was stagnation in the face of ruin. My great undoing was my own inaction. I am to make peace with this merge of Opaque and Spiral, and I'm glad for it- glad to know that even in his rage, God did not cast me aside to some other torment of his own device.

At first, I was lonely, but then more showed up. I greeted them all with smiles and waves, for they had need of a liaison to usher them into their new paradise. We spoke fondly of the days in Eden, and spoke of watching the world unravel before our eyes. Some reminiscence is more forlorn than I'd like, but my sorrows are sated by the friends around me; the hereafter.

I know how the world ended; not with a bang, but with our collective quiescence.