Tag Archives: Nonfiction

Date Published: June 24, 2025

Publisher: BlackBox

EXCERPT

Takeoff

Let’s say today’s the last day of your life. 24 hours and you’re history. Dead. So, what’s your “end”-game?

If you didn’t know you had an expiration date, this is the guide for you. A ‘how-to” manual. 

A “how-to” for the end of the world––YOUR world. For tomorrow you’re going to lose all the things that “everyone” thinks important: dwelling, family, job, possessions. Everything and everybody. Gone for good. Gone!

It doesn’t matter if you’re a billionaire or a bum, a celebrity or a nobody, an introvert or a people person. There’s no escaping the end of your story.

Oh, if this is “getting to you,” if you’re thinking of hanging up or switching channels––don’t!  None of this is hypothetical. 

You’re going to die no matter what. For sure. The “tomorrow” could be 10 seconds or 109 seconds from now. You can’t know. Which means you need to be always “ready.”

So let’s head to the boarding gate.

Oh, and by the way, my name is Melchizedek. You can call me Mel.

Flight Announcements

Welcome aboard the flight to “the other side.”

We haven’t taken off yet. Time for the safety instructions.

So here’s a checklist of items that are entirely irrelevant “going forward”: 

• date of birth
• country of citizenship
• constitutional rights
• human and all other “rights” 
• separation of church and state 
• legal problems and issues 
• frequent flyer miles 
• bank account balances 
• mortgage or rent payments 
• stock market holdings and investment portfolios
• employment status 
• health and life insurance policies
  health condition
• education level
• personal and professional accomplishments
• expertise in science or economics or computer programming or any other domain
• academic reputation
• entertainment or music industry or sports world achievements
• influencer status
• wokeness
• gun rights
• sexual orientation
• gender identity
• reproductive rights
• climate change
• becoming a billionaire
• business building prowess
• super AI

OK, now perhaps you’re mad, beside yourself.

At least I’m not a loser, you say. I tried my best. Even if I didn’t think about the “end,” I still lived life to the fullest. So what if it’s all temporary? Better to do something with the hand you’re dealt than to sit around moaning and groaning about the end. I have no regrets and no one’s going to “shame” me for not sinking into depression and despair.

Well, excuse me!

Sorry partner! Nothing personal here. This is not about the way you lived your life–at least not yet!

It’s about facing reality at every level. And we’ve only just begun.

Let’s look at it from another angle. Like it or not, you’ve been brainwashed, snowed, taken to the cleaners. You’re living in an illusion. 

And it’s easy to demonstrate the deception. 

People joke that you can’t take “it” with you. Except it’s no joke. It’s a hard fact that when “you” die, your earthly possessions remain earth-bound. Equally, it’s a hard fact that you will die. Finally, in a ten plus billion-year-old universe, all of recorded human history, a few thousand years, is a nano-second. Here for an instant, gone tomorrow, forgotten forever. 

Like it never was.

But does anyone speak of this? Do you think of it? No. Not ever.

You hear the news, go to school, get a job, all the while never being told about the oblivion right ahead. 

There are no cover stories, blaring headlines, breaking news bulletins, viral social media posts, power-packed podcasts, about the one thing that matters most: the imminent and all but immediate end of everything. 

You’re going full speed ahead–to nowhere!

Doesn’t anyone know? Anyone care? Total separation, total aloneness, total end. Inexorable. Inescapable. In your face.

This is Reality 101.

Been There, Never Done That

OK, enough about you.

It’s time to check out the Seven Stages of Grief table–shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, acceptance.  

Take shock, denial, anger. 

Shock – The abyss of annihilation is headed your way. Unthinkable yet undeniable.

Denial – Let’s not think about it. Eat, drink and be merry.  Merry?

Anger – Who brought up this topic? Focus on the here and now. Abstractions are for losers.

Well, here’s the bad news. No matter how much you deny it or how angry you are, you can’t escape “death’s dateless night.” Check the obituary section. Even as you read this sentence, over one hundred people have left us. And you’re on the same hit list.

Everything you’ve achieved and become is destined for decimation. It will be as if you’ve never been. The here and now is here now but gone forever tomorrow. No, “you” don’t actually live on in your legacy or your family. You as an individual will not make it once your time has come.

So, snap out of it! And let’s get down to business.

Let’s skip past the bargaining, depression and testing. Assuming you finally accept it, how can you deal with your impending departure? This death threat.

The Other Side

Which brings us to a question you might now take seriously: what happens when you die?

This is where we talk about a map of the multiverse. Because, let’s face it, we live in a multiverse. 

Not the kind of multiverse the scientists talk about–various physical worlds with radically different physical laws. That’s so yesterday when you die–because death means physical realms are no longer the point.

No, the multiverse is about the kinds of dimensions that make up reality––the physical, the non-physical, the physical integrated with the non-physical, the spatial, the non-spatial, the biologically living, the non-living, the time-bound of the physical kind, the time-bound of the non-physical kind and a lot more.

I know, I know. You say, there’s no proof of dimensions other than those we encounter on Planet Earth. And nothing happens “after” death. It’s Poof! And we vanish. Never to be seen again.

Boy, I wish you were right! But, nope, there are no final exits, no “end of the matter.”

Sorry to say, there’s a final reckoning.

A “phase transition” of a final kind.

How do I know?

You’ll see.

But, first, fasten your seatbelts folks.

About the Author

 R.A. Varghese is the author and/or editor of various books on the interface of
science, philosophy, and religion. His Cosmos, Bios, Theos, included
contributions from 24 Nobel Prize-winning scientists. Time magazine called
Cosmos “the year’s most intriguing book about God.” Cosmic Beginnings and
Human Ends, a subsequent work, won a Templeton Book Prize for “Outstanding
Books in Science and Natural Theology.” His The Wonder of the World was
endorsed by leading thinkers include two Nobelists and was the subject of an
Associated Press story. He co-authored There is a God―How the World’s Most
Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind with Antony Flew (a book translated into
Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Russian, and Arabic). His The Missing Link
(2013), includes contributions from three Nobel Prize winners and scientists
from Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale. Varghese was a panelist at the
science and religion forum in the Parliament of World Religions held in
Chicago in 1993 and an invitee and participant in the Millennium World Peace
Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders held at the United Nations in August
2000. Varghese has been interviewed on numerous radio and TV shows. He has
also been profiled in different print publications.

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