The Divine Farce (LeapLit)

by Michael S.A. Graziano

For a long time, I wondered if we were in heaven. An institutional heaven, with limited resources, that had slotted us into the only available accommodation. I imagined that the universal block of concrete was honeycombed with compartments, billions for the ten billion people who had ever lived and died, each stall crammed to capacity with one or two or three souls. A brilliant organizational trick, it was applied game theory. A person alone—hell. No matter how deeply reflective, no matter how self sufficient—eternal solitude—hell. Two people—as good as hell. Three people, a triangulated complexity, strife and forgiveness, alliance and conflict, a polyphonic piece of music sometimes dreadful in its dissonance, sometimes uplifting in its harmony—heaven. My optimistic theory was that any three people, crammed together for a long enough time, would eventually find a mutual harmony. The rules of heaven were minimalist. They were elegant.