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My friend John Barnabas – that’s what he’s most commonly called – has his home and office high in a jade-green tower near the center of New Jerusalem. His location doesn’t reflect his status as a Son of God in Power as such, but rather the importance of what he does for his brethren.

Like all Sons of God in Power, John Barnabas has many names. There is one name which no one else knows but himself: a password to the deepest secrets of God Almighty and the Lamb. I have such a password myself, plus more openly used names than John Barnabas or most of my other brethren. I’ve always been that way, even as a mortal. I seem to be a collector of names and nicknames. But my birth name was Christopher Alan Ralston, and that’s still the name I most commonly use. Strictly speaking, I use most often what I called myself as a child: Chris Alan. It has a certain quirky ring to it, much like its owner.

In case you haven’t guessed, my parents named me after Alan Alexander Milne (the English author) and his son Christopher Robin Milne (the inspiration for the father’s literary character Christopher Robin). And indeed as a child I looked a lot like Christopher Robin, with my barley-blond hair, bright brown eyes, sensitive features and slender frame. Christopher Robin was drawn from Christopher Milne’s life, and so Christopher Robin and I were very much alike in some ways and very different in others. According to “the Theory” (what we call a particular threefold model of personality that we find useful, even now), one could say that Christopher Robin (like his namesake) was an Idealist and I was an Inspirer. But I digress…

John Barnabas was and remains a Scientist himself. In his decision-making, he emphasizes facts and logic, while I emphasize feelings and values. While taking in information, he emphasizes Introverted Intuiting (symbolism, underlying meanings, future orientation), while I emphasize Extraverted Intuiting (“connecting the dots” among concepts in the outside world, past, present and future). His auxiliary, decision-making process is Extraverted Thinking (which deals with objective, logical criteria), while mine is Introverted Feeling (which deals with subjective, personal values). Our remaining cognitive processes alternate from there in an interesting counterpoint. This gives our relationship a mutual parent-child quality: a Pedagogue relationship, as some used to call it. In some ways, this is the very best kind of relationship for a truly close friendship.

One day – not that “day” has any real meaning around here – John Barnabas invited me to visit his office. The first thing that I noticed when I arrived was how it had been so completely redecorated. Every so often he tried something new, with the help of brethren skilled in carrying out his ideas. This time, as much as possible was based either on pentominos – twelve figures based on five squares joined side by side – or else on their three-dimensional counterparts. The floor tiles (where the floor was not carpeted) were pentominos, all of them set so that no wall and no doorway of any room ever cut through any of them. The sliding partitions between some of the rooms were made of latticework, again based on many thousands of small pentominos all perfectly joined together. The bricks used in some of the walls were made of three-dimensional pentominos, each one made of five cubes joined face to face. The effect of the whole, which included other design elements, was striking yet understated, like everything else about John Barnabas.

*This took more than a little calculation to work out,* I thought in admiration.

“I think I’m going to stick with this design, Chris Alan,” said a voice. It spoke in Idealized Hebrew, the form that Hebrew had taken after the Lamb’s return to earth. It combined the euphonic beauty of Biblical Hebrew, the syntactical clarity of Middle Hebrew and the pragmatic flexibility of Late Hebrew. John Barnabas and I share a love of Hebrew in all its forms, especially the Idealized one, and that’s what we speak when we get together.

One welcome custom had been introduced worldwide after the Lamb had set His hand to rule: a greeting with a holy kiss on the cheek, often coupled with a friendly embrace. To me it was far preferable to the handshake (“see, no weapons”) that had been customary in my own mortal culture.

“I always knew you liked pentominos as a puzzle,” I said, “but I had no idea you liked it as a potential design motif.”

“You’ll find nothing else like this in New Jerusalem, I assure you,” said John. “I checked. There’s a sizeable Pentominos Club that meets in the outskirts of town, and none of its members use the motif in architectural design. Many of them probably will soon, though; they were thrilled when I showed them my sketches. But to carry out the idea so elegantly is not what my mind’s designed for. It’s good to have real interior decorators among my colleagues. The chief designer of this layout happens to be a Protector, by the way: a very versatile one.”

“Do I know her?” Hebrew, of course, has grammatical gender, and “designer” in this case was feminine, not masculine. Also, while we Children of God are no longer sexual, we still have grammatical gender as well as our original bodily forms and mental outlooks.

“You tell me.” When he told me her name, I nodded and replied, “She was one of my best friends as a mortal – and still is. She had a real gift, even then.”

“And it’s magnified at least a thousandfold now. As the Lamb’s rule expands she gets more and more queries from the outlying areas – as the cube of the radius of His rule, of course. I was blessed to get a spot in her schedule, and she gave me her best shot.”

“So I see. But I’m guessing that you had more to show me than just a nice office.”

“Indeed. It’s in that room. Have a seat in there, while I fetch us something. What would you like?”

There are spiritual counterparts to many physical things on our plane of existence, and drinks for pleasure are among them. Two small shot glasses of the spiritual equivalent of “Irish cream” served very well. We sat down on a comfortable couch and sipped them together.

“I see you’ve indulged your love of the Golden Rectangle as well.”

“Yes, all the fixed doorways are in that proportion – and where possible, so are the dimensions of the rooms. Reconciling the constraints made by pentominos with the constraints made by phi-based geometry is possible, but not easy. Anyway, I really do think this will be a permanent style, with only very small alterations now and again.”

“What is *that* thing? Is it a door, a viewscreen, or just a full-length mirror?”

In the middle of the wall facing us, and reaching to the ceiling of it, was a simple beveled frame that appeared to be made of pure polished emerald. It had a flawless mirror within its frame; the mirror was a perfect Golden Rectangle in proportion. (< Knowing John Barnabas, it’s probably so down to the absolute limit of even Divine measurement, > I chuckled to myself.) Touch controls of some kind were set into the wall on its left.

The Portal of Light (inactive)

“*That*, Chris Alan, is what I wanted you to see, and you’re the first besides our Lords to see it. It’s the project that got me assigned to this tower, this office, in the first place. It’s been a deep secret, and it’s finally ready for use. I call it the Portal of Light.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s a doorway to the infinite possibilities of potential reality.”

John Barnabas didn’t need to explain to me (as I need to explain to you) the implications of that statement. Reality as it was before the New Heavens and New Earth was based on ten physical dimensions (three spatial, one temporal, plus six others beyond these) and four metaphysical dimensions (three trans-spatial or spiritual, one trans-temporal or eternal). While God had created but one physical Universe in reality, yet potentially there had existed an infinite number of physical Universes and an infinite number of timelines within each. It was His way of ensuring that His plan to bring many Sons to glory would work out as it should, by enabling a perfect balance between determination and free will.

To say I was astonished would be a cosmic understatement. “John Barnabus…do you understand the power of such a tool?”

“Yes. It’s probably the most powerful tool ever entrusted to the hands of a created being, at least since Lucifer’s era. It can immerse you in any state of existence that you imagine, and in infinitely more than you can imagine.”

My mind was reeling. As mortals, John Barnabas and I both had extremely vivid imaginations by human standards, and both of us had grown up in the very end of days before the Lamb’s return. In those days, technology had made possible the creation and distribution of more imaginative realms than any mortal could ever absorb – books, movies, videos, role-playing games, interactive games, and on and on. For Scientists like John Barnabas, living in an increasingly evil world, the temptation to become lost in endless fantasies sometimes had been extremely strong. I knew something about that temptation myself, for nobody is more naturally drawn to psycho-dramatic role-playing than an Inspirer.

And yet here it was: a tool that was the ultimate expression of a role-playing game, in the hands of one who had been more vulnerable than most mortals to the strengths and weaknesses of role-playing. Such an assignment (one that utterly forced the recipient to trust in his Lords and not in himself) was so in character for God and the Lamb that I shouldn’t have been surprised at it. Yet it still raised some questions in my mind.

“What would be the purpose of such a tool, here and now?”

“Have you ever wondered why God worked things out this way and not that way, Chris Alan – given all the choices He could’ve made and all the choices He could’ve allowed?”

“Isn’t that obvious? He did it for the maximum benefit of everyone involved.”

“Yes, that was the *end*, but I’m speaking of the *means*. Those are not so obvious to everyone even in the Kingdom of God – let alone among the angels. In principle, we Sons of God know all things with regard to God’s purposes. Yet since we’re created beings, we’re all still learning about the details of their execution and always will be, to the glory of God. Not everyone can explore those details in a technical way as easily as I can. This Portal is designed as a powerful way to explore the details in a non-technical, experiential way. That’s always been one of the purposes underlying legitimate speculative literature.”

“You mean parables, allegories, and the like?”

“Yes. But later forms – children’s literature, alternative history, science fiction, straight fantasy, science fantasy, even horror – could be used in that way as well, *if* the author and his audience used special care.”

My mind was returning to center as I pondered the matter. “So why, exactly, am I the third person after our Lords to see this?”

“Because I want you to be the first person to try this, Chris Alan. Not many among God’s Children would be able to bring out its full potential in a trial run as you could – and *you* are among my most treasured friends.”

Who could turn down an offer like that? We set down our glasses, rose from the couch and walked over to the Portal. John Barnabas took his White Stone (on which was inscribed his personal password), inserted it into a slot, and then withdrew it quickly. He then touched the controls, causing the Portal’s frame to glow silently from within.

“The Portal’s great strength,” he explained, “lies in its operating system, which I call TIM – that stands for Total Immersion Matrix.” He was now using English terms interspersed among the Hebrew. “You can watch events as an omniscient observer if you wish, but you can also become immersed in the narrative as a particular character. I’ve designed the Portal so that you can choose the parameters of the alternative reality that you enter – the Metacosmic Realm, as TIM calls it. But I’ve also designed the Portal so that TIM can choose the parameters for you, based on what it reads in your mind. I suspect that the latter option will often be more profitable for its users, as it will pick up on questions in their subconscious minds and key the parameters in a way that will bring out the answers they need in time.”

“Well, as long as I’m trying this, I might as well make the trip as educational as possible. I’d like TIM to choose the parameters of the Realm, but I’d prefer to be an omniscient observer of events.”

“Very well; I’ll need your White Stone for a moment.” John Barnabas inserted and withdrew it, gave it back to me, then tapped the touchscreen a few times. “The main protagonist of the narrative you’ll enter will be closely based on what TIM reads in your personality (particularly its bottom four cognitive processes, which comprised your Shadow while you were human) – but you’ll watch his interactions from the outside. I have put two limits on this trial run: the physical laws and features of the Realm (within certain limits) will be the same as those of the Universe we grew up in. The metaphysical laws will also be very similar, but they won’t be quite identical. Within those conditions, TIM will choose the parameters, again as based on what it reads in you. Is that satisfactory?”

“Perfectly.”

“One more thing.” John Barnabas looked at me with a starry twinkle in his flame-bright eyes. “In subjective time, you could be spending days, years, centuries, millennia or even eons within the Realm you inhabit. That’s up to TIM, as I’ve set him now. But when you return, you’ll return at almost the same point on our eternal plane that you left. This is due to the nature of potential reality. Make good use of your journey, and I’ll be fascinated to hear of your experiences when you return.”

“I will. So how do I begin?”

“The mirror is now fluid, not solid. Just walk on through it.”

So I did. Here is what I saw next.

(Continued in REALMWALKER 01…)

= = = = =

N.B.: I first encountered pentominos thanks to Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Imperial Earth (which features one of the 2,339 solutions to the 6-by-10 puzzle in its frontispiece). In two dimensions, there are twelve pentominos – an appropriate number for my purposes, seeing that the number twelve figures so prominently in the Hebrew-Christian Bible and in its description of New Jerusalem.