Threshold

William lived a bitterly ordinary life. From his birth he had failed to prove himself in any way noteworthy. Neither bright nor dull, he grew up in a town that acknowledged his existence only when absolutely necessary. His family was never disappointed in him, and yet somehow seemed as though it should be, in that he never impressed them, either. A straight 'C' average student with a perfect attendance record, bland memories of his youth were easily neglected-even by himself.

It was not until the age of thirty-five years, after having established himself as a machinist at the local steel works, that William manifest any deviation from mediocrity. It was not entirely his fault, and certainly not his choice, that he came upon it. Whether fate or chance lead William to see what he did, there is only postulation. Perhaps his eyes routinely scanned the gravel parking lot of Hamilton Steel in search of stray coins-or perhaps he had become used to looking down, burdened by the seeming weight of bills, children, and a demanding wife. Why he found what he did that day is anyone's guess; the impact of his discovery is in no way mitigated.

Preparing himself for another day that was sure to make him sweat for every dollar that he earned, already anticipating the flavor of the egg salad sandwiches in the paper bag he carried, William saw God. Somewhere completely apart from an ordinary universe, the idea screamed into his head. Questions he had whispered into his pillow from the time of his earliest memory were answered before he could recall their exact wording. Revelations, glimpses into the supreme genius behind the structure of the physical world were put before his eyes without the slightest hint of confusion. Time itself seemed incapable of containing spectral display of infinitely miniscule reactions and random movements of the particles around him as he watched the world from a subatomic perspective. But before he could assimilate the vision, before he could reconcile the power and clarity of looking through the eyes of God at his everyday world, God seemingly blinked.

Grey bits of rock, embedded in mud, reclaimed his recognition. The sound of blood rushing through the countless capillaries in his head, pushing against the inner walls of his veins, confirmed his return to a one-track pathway of thought. Intense and gripping pain was slowly subsiding throughout his body. It left only a chill of numbness, fading out from his chest and finally relaxing the clenched muscles of his arms. Feeling feverish, William collapsed into the muddy gravel.

He had lain in the parking lot for less than three minutes before Todd Delaney, a journeyman's apprentice, had come to his aid. Within a half hour an ambulance was hauling him to the nearest hospital. Laying on the stretcher, listening to talk of a "heart attack" and "stabilizing his condition", the patient struggled with far more pressing matters in his mind. Still unsure of exactly what he had seen, William reflected upon the experience.

It boggled his mind in frustrating ways to think that he, for a second, had somehow known things that were now impossible to express. He did not have any concept of what words he might use to tell another person of the thoughts that had presented themselves. It was as though he had written an exhaustive and comprehensive volume on the nature of the world with a pen that had always been empty of ink. He began to realize that he was already forgetting much of what he had seen-he was watching the neuron pathways of his borrowed knowledge collapse in upon themselves and blink out of existence.

William's half-closed eyes began to further eclipse his hazy, reclined viewpoint. The paramedic and his voice seemed to drift further and further away with each of his labored breaths as he hesitantly suckled the oxygen mask. The pain, the torment of paralysis, the fear of what was rapidly becoming unknown once more, all coalesced into an ambient glow and waited as he groggily began to regain consciousness.

White. A ceiling. The odor of antiseptics and the feel of clean linen on his chest. William came back from what seemed more and more a distant horizon. Barbara, his wife, was there-sleeping upright in a chair. Startled, he made a noise that left his mouth as a dull groan. Barbara's tear-stained face jerked to life and with a single look into his eyes she had jumped up from her seat and begun shouting, "Nurse!" in a faltering voice.

In the weeks that followed William's bed gradually moved from the intensive care unit to a small room just down the hall from the elevator. Reluctantly, he gave up trying to understand what the experience and accepted the now-unanimous conclusion that he had suffered a heart attack. The doctors proved their point thoroughly, reiterating time and time again that a temporary blockage had formed in his aorta, but he would doubtless recover in no time. He had come close to dying, they said, but no longer faced any immediate danger.

While this came as a relief to Barbara, as well as her and William's two daughters, William somehow felt that his recovery would not be immediate. Despite the increasing strength and stability he felt throughout his body, somewhere in his head a void had begun to form. The questions came to him again, as apparently harmless and necessary as they had always.

"Why am I here? Where are you, God, why don't you answer me?"

A child's innocence began to return to William's interrogation; an urgent pleading for reassurance bled into his voice as he whispered in the night. Unconsciously, he began to mouth words that would trail off after the questions, words he did not intend to form or even register in his mind while he prayed.

Twenty-five days after his heart attack, nine days after he had been released from the hospital, that his voice started backing the silent words. He lay in his bed, Barbara sleeping soundly beside him, and whispered quietly the same questions he had always whispered. To his shock, he whispered the answers with them.

"Why am I here?"

"You are here because you must be."

"Where are you, God..?"

"I'm here, with you. I am your answer."

Taken aback by what he felt could only be blasphemy, William choked on the last word. His lips trembled as though he expected immediate punishment for the words he had uttered. Stunned, panicked, he reached out to Barbara's shoulder and shook her into consciousness.

"Barbara..." his words turned into a contorted growl as a familiar pain began to cloud his thoughts.

He staggered up from his bed, seeing Barbara begin to reach out for his arm.

"Bill? Bill?!" she said, rising swiftly as he staggered out of the bedroom and down the hall.

"BILL!" she repeated, rushing down the hall after him. She saw him poised by the front door, skin tone deepening into dark red shades.

It was only when he realized he was passing some unspoken point of no return that he turned to her and saw her for what she was, saw himself for what he was, and saw much more than he could fathom. Bathed in a light that could only be the presence of the divine, he saw universal existence reveal itself unfettered by the limitations of time or space. Vicariously, yet somehow incredibly personally, he experienced every joy and disgrace tied to his prodigious species-lived their lives with as much thought and feeling as they ever had-and came to the only conclusion he thought possible. He was God, a creator and summation of reality neatly packaged into one of its own creations. No doubt impeded his following actions; reaching for the doorknob and gently, exhausted by the residual exertion of billions of weary lives, turned the knob. Barbara was scrambling to call the paramedics, but he wanted no part of the continued life her efforts offered. She would understand, when her time came.

Her words he only half-heard as pulled open the door. He remembered them well enough from saying them, watching the person he now was walk out the door. "Please, please... Bill, your heart!" Despite the wretched pain he recalled from that utterance, despite the pain he now felt at hearing it through this body's ears, he stepped across the threshold and into the nocturnal silence of the neighborhood.

"Perhaps-another time," he thought aloud, watching all around him spiral off into oblivion.