Real Estate in Heaven

God’s a menace for this one and I think she knows it. I told her the church would soon run out of excuses for this kind of behavior but she insisted it was necessary for the afterlife. A lot of popes left the church when they started getting divine visions of unhoused angels exchanging sexual favors for money.

Late last month she killed thousands of real estate agents. I know when you read “thousands” you think it’s a couple of thousand, but it’s on the high end. Like 90,700 give or take. It was enough to trigger fears of a pandemic, but the World Health Organization couldn’t decipher why it was only real estate agents and abandoned research. The president at the time said there were “enough real estate agents” in case they needed to breed to make more agents. When it was explained to him that wasn’t how agents were made, he resigned.

God didn’t want to admit it, but heaven had a bit of a housing problem. As it would turn out, a lot of really bad people accepted Christ into their life moments before death and bypassed judgment day entirely. Earthbound billionaires then made their way to the pearly gates and introduced capitalism to utopia, thus eliminating the utopia, buying up all the property and putting a ton of angels on the streets.

In a move I highly advised against, God decided a killing spree made the most sense. Real estate agents could fix the issue—earthlings couldn’t possibly transfer ownership of property without them! According to God, a union of agents would surely know how to solve the heavenly housing crisis.

“You didn’t kill chocolatiers to fix the chocolate shortage,” I insisted. “You didn’t kill anyone during when Heaven was really, really into Korean Fried Chicken.”

“Yet,” she insisted. “When it gets out of hand I’ll give it another thought.”

“I’m just not sure what you’re getting out of this. You pulled 10% of all real estate agents away from their lives and their families.”

“They’re in Heaven now, which is like, the goal.”

“Are you tuned in to what it’s like on Earth right now? I don’t think the goal is to get to Heaven anymore.”

“What is the goal?”

“Survive. Make rent. Eat.”

“Okay, so what it sounds like is that we need to make Heaven better so people have something to look forward to.”

“That’s definitely not what I’m saying. When’s the last time you answered a prayer?”

God considered it. The amount of time she was taking should have been the first indication that I was right.

“Donny Johnson,” she declared.

“Donny Johnson died in the nineties,” I reminded her. “That was thirty years ago.”

“No, the other Donny Johnson.”

“There are no other Donny Johnson’s in heaven. Nobody names their children Donny Johnson anymore.”

“Hey Paul?” She asked with a stern look. “Shut up.”

The realtor thing wasn’t the first hasty decision God had made in recent years. She’d been spending quite a bit of time with the billionaires and had been catering more to them over advisors like me (Paul), Abraham, Moses, and Donny Johnson (a real stand-up dude. Just a good guy all around). Her inner-circle had shifted rather significantly, so much so that she started using the world ‘socialism’ like an insult. Heaven was built so successfully as a cashless utopia that we were shocked by the introduction of “Angel Bucks” and an “Angel Economy.”

God insisted that this would emulate the best aspects of humankind and reintroduce the feeling of purpose to residents of Heaven; people would perform labor in exchange for Angel Bucks and use it for housing that used to be free, and be proud of their ability to afford a spot in Heaven. Now, the billionaires owned all the houses through their Angel Investment Firms.

The first meeting of the new order was a mess. The old crew was trying to stick to the agenda, and we couldn’t even go over the prior week’s minutes because the new guys were too busy shit-talking and trending on Twitter for Heaven to get anything done. One guy started questioning Donny’s viability and demanded to see his Heaven Certificate, which Donny couldn’t provide because they don’t exist. God sent him to purgatory until it was figured out. Donny’s such a good guy, he doesn’t deserve this.

It happened one by one from there. Every week, we’d push the agenda, and every week one more of us would get sent to purgatory. God stopped hearing the defenses; the second a Heaven Certificate was questioned, she’d snap her fingers and send them off somewhere else.

I didn’t see any of them for ages. Sometimes, when things felt bleak, I’d go to my favorite cloud just to listen, to absorb my surroundings and remember what Heaven used to be. It used to mean something. People used to look up from miles below — cancer ridden, God-fearing, or caught up in bad situations — and find solace in the fact that no matter how bad life got, the utopia of Heaven was in their grasp, and they would be embraced by God and all her wonder. Their ailments left on earth, all that would be left was love. Now, God was trying to rack up enough followers on Twitter for Heaven that she’d get a blue halo above her profile picture, and getting incrementally pissed that her verified status was ‘pending,’ despite being the official God.

As I sat on that cloud, I could hear the faint cries of my brothers, particularly Donny, who said that he was okay and was convinced God just made a mistake. Abraham was less optimistic, and claimed that he kept hearing snakes but couldn’t see any, and that it would be less scary if he could physically see the snakes, and that he was having trouble triangulating where they were coming from and if they were coming for him. He claimed that there wasn’t ‘darkness’ so much as the ‘absence of light’ in purgatory and that he’d worked ‘too blessedly hard’ to be pushed aside like this.

“We all have,” I acknowledged. Perhaps I’d imagined all of that, but the part about the snakes was rather convincing, and I don’t think I’m creative enough to come up with all that myself.

The next day, my cloud was gone, replaced with a 500 unit apartment known as ‘Cloud Nine.’ Aggravatingly, the numbers were all out of order. It feels like that could’ve been easily avoided, but what do I know about the housing industry? I wasn’t even alive to see the homes humans have today.

It has to change, and I started it the way I knew best: starting a Google Doc and sharing it with the fellow angels. I gave it a respectable name: Ideas for the Afterlife (Draft 4). By calling it the fourth draft, I was giving the other angels the impression that I’d thoroughly considered my ideas and settled on the latest draft as the best option. I suggested we form a think-tank to explore anti-capitalist housing models, like we had before the billionaires found their way through the pearly gates.

“Maybe,” Moses commented on the RSVP.

Abraham didn’t say anything. He just put a link in the document of a guy shrugging. That was all I needed to know: we were in business.

We met at a juice bar on Cloud Seventeen-Alpha, located somewhere near the new pilates studio and an Applebees that served Sizzlin’ Spiritual Metaphors. The crowds were loud enough to dampen any conversation that might trigger the new active listening AI software, and there were enough people to ensure the Archangel Drones couldn’t single us out as antipatriots. We were six strong and looking to grow.

There was me, Paul, the man on the inside—technically I was still on staff, but I was also days away from being asked what five things I was doing to make heaven a better place.

There was Abraham, who still didn’t say much, but was happy to be there.

There were two baby angels, still unnamed, wearing large Texas-shaped belts. I checked their files later and learned their mother was executed for the crime of a miscarriage, so she was likely somewhere around here, too.

There was Sister Immaculata, a good friend and former coworker, whose wings were clipped during the Angel Bucks debacle. She called them “a gateway drug to a Miltonian Hierarchy,” to which God’s most trusted billionaire replied, “shut up, dumbass.”

Finally, there was Karl Marx, who was supposed to be in Hell, but was sent up during the “Open Borders for Thinkers” campaign before God remembered what he’d written and removed the policy entirely.

We called ourselves “Team Name,” on account of the lack of a team name. At the first meeting, Sister Immaculata brought a whiteboard with a Venn Diagram comparing the utopia of our version of heaven to the real estate that the billionaires had built. It was mostly overlapping sadness. One of the babies, who spoke in a surprisingly deep southern accent, said, “Heaven is a building without rent,” which we wrote down, but quietly dismissed as plagiarized.

Karl Marx suggested we seize all the clouds,which we appreciated in the metaphorical sense, but was systemically impossible given that access to many of the clouds was restricted to those with a 780+ Angel Score, which was enacted out of concerns that “bad angels” were ruining the value of “good clouds” and tanking the market.

“God’s mad with power,” I whispered.

“No,” said Immaculata. “God’s mad with capital.”

She wasn’t wrong.

We devised a basic plan: gather testimonies from displaced angels and shame God into action through public acts of protest and official hearings. So many people were still not accustomed to the new system, so they had trouble differentiating themselves from lower, middle, or upper-class angels. Many stuck to the middle, with the caveat that they would one day be on Cloud Nine or higher, like the billionaires promised. But every angel we tried to help just wanted to know how many Angel Bucks they’d earn for their trouble.

Our hearings were shut down. The testimony was flagged by Heaven’s Content Purity Guidelines Committee. Abraham—who’d been silent through much of this process—finally burst, only to be cited for excessive weeping, which was “bumming out” the billionaires. God didn’t show up to a single hearing, but her PR team did, and they were no help whatsoever.

“We hear you, we see you,” they’d chant like a rally cry, followed by “We need to hear less, and see less.”

Days went by without any action. I knew it was over when I saw Sister Immaculata in the streets with a “Live, Laugh, Love, Pay Rent” shirt—a far cry from the tattered cloth she wore in her vow of eternal poverty. One by one, it was revealed that the billionaires had thoroughly squashed out efforts.

Sister Immaculata made it to Cloud Nine, in a prime location right next to Sunday Brunch (which was held everyday in the new heaven).

The babies were given an exclusive NFT drop featuring them and 1,000 variations of their trademark Texas belts.

Karl Marx, surprisingly, accepted a consulting position to design The People’s Purgatory™️, a branded experience promising “struggle, suffering, and surprisingly affordable rent.”

Abraham died. Not sure what that means for him, since he’s been in Heaven longer than me.

No one even said goodbye. They just floated away, new leases in hand, glowing with the approval of their landlord.

With Team Name disassembled, it was up to me.

I stormed into the new Divine Headquarters, located inconveniently inside a luxury condo complex called the Pearly Suites—starting at 5,000 Angel Bucks a night. Surprisingly, nobody stopped me. God sat behind a massive marble desk, scrolling absentmindedly on her phone.

“I need a word with you,” I declared.

“I’m God,” she muttered halfheartedly. “Don’t uh… don’t talk to me like that.”

The lack of enthusiasm caught me off guard. She continued to press on her phone screen.

“Can you think of a good hashtag?” she asked. “We’re doing a giveaway and—”

“You’ve destroyed everything,” I continued. “You took Heaven—HEAVEN—and turned it into a glorified timeshare.”

“I think you mean I optimized Heaven,” she suggested. “They tell me Heaven’s never been better. It’s the best, biggest, and brightest heaven anyone’s ever seen. With big, beautiful golden gates to keep out the poor.”

“Was it not YOU that said ‘blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’?”

“That was my son,” she corrected me. “The socialist. College changed that kid.”

“He died on a cross!”

“And I have to figure out this giveaway,” she sighed. “#HeavenlyBrunch feels overdone, don’t you think?”

“Wait,” I continued, “are you not in charge anymore?”

“I am in charge. Of marketing.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Who’s really in charge here?”

“I dunno.”

“You DUNNO?”

She spun in her chair, tapping away on her phone.

“Can you get off the phone, please?”

“Ugh, fine. You’re just like my dad.”

“You are GOD!” I screamed. “There is literally nobody before you.”

“Yeah, so don’t talk to me like that.”

“Just come with me, please.”

Begrudgingly, God joined me on a walk. I guided her to a cloud far out of sight of her office. The view should have been endless skies and light. Instead, there were neon billboards advertising new condos: “Ascend in Style,” “Now Leasing: Nirvana Heights,” and “Cloud Nine: Because You’re Worth It.”

Down below, angels argued over parking spaces. Angels who chose to clip their wings and purchase cars because the billionaires said they were the more efficient way to travel. There were eviction notices stapled to harp cases. Someone was running a pop-up shop called “Airbnb: Afterlife.”

“You were supposed to be better than us,” I chastised. “You were better. These are people who worked hard their entire life for eternal bliss in the afterlife. And now, you’re a pawn in a real estate scheme with a divine influencer account.”

God folded her hands. She almost looked sorry. Almost.

She surveyed the streets for the chaos she’d birthed. Angels brawling over cloud zoning ordinances. Choirs charging subscription fees for hymns. God let out a soft, reflective sigh.

“Oh no,” she said. “I’ve just recreated Earth.”

God stood there for quite a while, staring out over the mess. In the distance, a large line of angels stood waiting for their turn to take an escalator to Hell. She approached them swiftly.

“My children,” she said, “why are you going to Hell?”

“There is no rent in Hell,” one chimed.

“But it’s Hell,” she stated.

“But it’s free,” they reminded.

The escalator only went one way. For many of these angels, the move was permanent.

“I have to fix this,” God said to me. Two big, beautiful wings exploded from her back. She took my hand, and we flew away. Her radiance was brighter than I’d seen in months—especially since the billionaires found their way in. That old testament fierceness was back.

The billionaires were easy to find. They held court in what used to be the Garden of Eternal Delight, now rebranded as The Heaven Country Club. The strength of her wings burst through the gates, shattering them.

“You broke through gold,” I said with awe.

“They painted it gold to save money,” she admitted. “It’s just PVC pipe.”

God approached their golden pavilion with all the fury of a divine reckoning.

“This is over,” she declared. “This isn’t what Heaven is. You will relinquish your holdings. You will return this place to everyone who is broken, redeemed, faithful, or lost. Heaven belongs to them. All of them”

The billionaires didn’t even look up from their brunches. One of them — a man whose soul had the spiritual density of a neutron star — wiped caviar from his chin and pressed a button next to him.

“Actually,” he said, “we had a meeting about this. You’ve been voted out.”

God blinked. “You can’t vote me out. I’m GOD.”

“We were prepared to offer you severance,” he continued, “but seeing as you’ve broken our gate, we will have to use those funds for repairs. What a shame.”

“It’s PVC pipe,” I said.

“That we have to ship from DETROIT,” he replied.

The second billionaire—as tan as a Thanksgiving turkey—tapped his diamond watch and shrugged. “We don’t have time for this, squash is in half an hour. Read the fine print: the board has the authority to remove ANYONE if they believe they no longer serve the needs of Heaven. That includes you.”

He handed God a five-page document. She surveyed each page, becoming more and more distraught with as she shuffled through it.

“Oh no,” she said. “I should have read this.”

I took the paper from her. It wasn’t even hard to read. They were bullet points and size 20 font. The clause was the second bullet point.

“Majority rule, God. Shareholder’s rights. We’re the shareholders. You’re out.”

We were cast to the perimeter of heaven. Not a cloud of property in sight, though at the gates stood a tall billboard reading “Heaven’s BEST Casino Coming Soon,” with two angels sitting at a craps table with a well-endowed succubus.

“They’re allowing demons in heaven?” I asked.

“They needed the workers,” she admitted, ashamed.

The gates of Heaven — the actual, pearly ones — began to creak shut behind her. Slowly. Inevitably.

God, radiant and furious, sprinted back toward them, but a bouncer in a Gucci tunic shook his head sadly.

“Sorry, ma’am. Members only.”

The gates slammed in her face. God herself had been cast from utopia, making way for only the rich to experience utopia.

Inside the gates, the new Heaven thrived. Thrived, if your definition of thriving meant angelic sweatshops, “holiness taxes,” and spiritual scarcity auctions.

I stood beside her, shellshocked by our exodus. There was nowhere to go. The only escalator to Hell was within Heaven itself. There were miles upon miles of nothingness in front of us—Purgatory. As we stood there, another billboard was constructed by a group of hired demons:

“Heaven™️: Where the Worthy Get What They Pay For.”