Face the Unknown

At Whit's End, Renee Carter has been mulling over her friend Jules Kendall's news that she has become a Christian, and their conversation turns to heaven and what comes next after this life. Renee remembers hearing that Mr. Whittaker once created an Imagination Station program showing what heaven is like, though nothing like it appears in Mabel's database. When she discovers a case of old micro-floppies and mini-discs, she decides to load them into the portable Imagination Station in her lab. "Life after death, here I come!" she declares.

Inside the program, Renee is greeted by Leonid Sepanov, a nineteenth-century Russian philosopher whose book she has studied. He offers to guide her to her greatest desire, and suddenly she is at the Nobel Prize ceremony, winning the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. Delighted, she accepts her medal while Leonid proclaims that her breakthrough reveals mathematics as the true deity that will save the world. To demonstrate, Renee works through the famous three-doors problem: one door leads to a wonderful place with great rewards, two lead to certain doom, and the math proves that switching doors after one is revealed improves her odds. Her calculation is correct, and she steps confidently through her chosen door, only to find herself right back at the Nobel ceremony. The scene repeats again and again, and what began as glorious becomes tiresome, then frightening. No matter which door she picks, every one loops back to the same stage, and the computer refuses to end the program. Leonid taunts her that someone has changed the rules and asks how math can save everything when it cannot even save her. When Renee protests that this is not heaven, he replies chillingly, "Who said anything about heaven?" This endless loop is the perfect future she programmed for herself, exactly what she deserves. Terrified, Renee finally breaks free of the program and flees her lab.

Meanwhile, the angel Malachi takes Connie Kendall on an adventure of her own, right in downtown Odyssey. When she looks closely at the ordinary shoppers, Connie is astonished to see people as they truly are: body, spirit, and soul, each one a swirling mixture of brilliant light and deep darkness. "There is no such thing as an ordinary person," Malachi tells her. Every encounter, however small, helps either the light or the darkness grow in a person's heart. At McAlister Park he shows her a girl glowing brightly on the swings, because of a tiny kindness Connie showed her at the grocery store and barely remembers. Then he points out another girl shrouded in darkness, who sat unnoticed in a corner booth at Whit's End while a distracted Connie, preoccupied with her own future, forgot her order for the fourth time. Malachi assures Connie that thinking about the future is good, and that God's plans for her are good, but she must never forget the adventure of the here and now, where simple acts of kindness are the greatest adventure of all. Then he departs, telling her that even though her memory of the vision will fade, she will know what to do by remembering Jesus in her heart.

Connie wakes from what seems like a nap at the Riley Cummings Farm to a frantic call from Jules: Renee never showed up to open Whit's End. Rushing in, Connie's first act is to dish up a free double scoop of raspberry ripple for the forgotten little girl, apologizing warmly. When Jules asks why, Connie says, "I just needed to brighten her day." But Renee still cannot be reached, and the story ends at the bus station, where Renee quietly buys a one-way ticket to Chicago.