On the 103rd floor of the Lacon Holding Company, a small hall holding a bank of elevators fills with a low shrill noise. The sound deepens with the approach of the third elevator car on the left, stopping when the car stops. The doors open and Joan Bennett, young and polished, rushes in. She pushes the button for the 120th floor. She starts tapping her foot as the doors slowly close. The elevator begins to move upward and the sound of groaning metal stops her foot, but her tapping resumes as the elevator stops at the next floor.
Joan glares at the janitor who enters.
"Morning ma'am," he says timidly.
"Good morning, " Joan bitingly returns. She stares at his name tag, which declares him 'Joe', while he looks at the ceiling of the car.
The elevator resumes its ascent and the metal groans louder.
"Don't sound right miss, excuse me," says Joe reaching for the emergency stop.
"Don't you dare!" shouts Joan. "I'm late for an important meeting!"
Joe cringes and pulls back his hand.
The car travels three floors before slowing to a stop.
Joe takes a deep breath and says, "Please get off now, miss."
But his words fall on deaf ears when the executive walking in says, "Morning, Joan, ready for the merger?" Without waiting for an answer, he turns toward the doors.
"Morning, Dave," Joan says to his back.
Joe fidgets. He knows of at least two outstanding lawsuits for faulty construction on the I-beam that supports the elevator's frame. The metal groan grows ever louder and deeper. The car is jarred by reverberation. His worry turns to panic. The elevator picks up speed.
"Hell's the matter with this thing?" Dave bellows.
Joan looks around as if awakening from a dream. It's the first time in days that she hasn't thought solely of the merger.
"Sounds like the load bearing beam is breakin' up," Joe says. "Don'tcha worry, the braking system will catch us." He reaches for the emergency stop once more as the reverberation turns into an ear-shattering shriek. His bowels let loose in fear. 'Marie, I love you. I'll hold you in my arms all night tonight,' he thinks.
A sprite straddles a beam on the elevator top - the beam that in a millisecond will give in to fatigue and pressure. He kicks his legs while he watches the humans below. How funny they are! Forever scurrying around in their little lives, preoccupied by things that don't matter at all, while the big stuff hides out in plain sight. He giggles and sings his favorite nonsensical chant, "Life in death and death in life, it's always the same, it's all that remains…"
The beam breaks. It snaps back with enough force to break the cables connecting the car to the counterweight. The emergency braking system fails. The car falls. All three passengers fly through the air and smack against the roof.
"Joan, I can't… move… we gonna… die?" Dave Metzer croaks.
Joan thinks of her kids. Her mind chants, 'I'm not ready to die… I'm not ready to die…' To Joe and Dave she says, "Oh! Oh! Oh!"
Joe is holding Marie for the last time in his mind.
The elevator car picks up speed.
The sprite stands. It radiates its special brand of electrons and the passengers brains light up - each crevasse aglow, every synapse firing. Their crashing fate is forgotten. They leave their bodies stuck to the top of the elevator car and fly in harmonious light up toward the sprite. En route, each life is relived and the uncertainty, longing, and doubts of their lives are resolved. By the time they reach the sprite they are at peace.
The sprite smiles and raises his arms high. He swings round and with each circle their reality shifts.
The first circle reveals the building they are in - one hundred and forty stories of people busily living. Every live thing; from Sue crying quietly in a bathroom stall, to Bill flirting in a break room, to a rat in the wall, is surrounded by out-of-sight light. Each light ball radiates a tiny strand of its light to the other living lights.
Joe looks back at his own life light trailing back to his body. "Home," he says. His body, his elevator, and his building grow translucent.
The second circle reveals the solar system. Fiery Sol rotating its planets around and around. Dave cries out with joy - Earth is so abundant with life it glows! And humanity! He sees it whole! How it reaches as it grows and decays, deludes and enlightens! He sees love, hate, brutality, kindness…
"Home," Dave says as the sprite circles once more.
The third circle reveals the galaxy. The massive center rotates each of its hundreds of thousands of stars in an ever-widening spiral. Superimposed on the spiral, like a relief map done in luminous paint, is life. Life everywhere and each life is connected by the thin life line. Vast amounts of non-earthly life lines reach out to the them. The human souls cry out their own humanity in the awe and confusion of the onslaught.
Joan follows her light trail back to Sol, sitting lonely on an outer rim. "Home," she says.
The fourth and final circle reveals all; the universe in its grand design. They see no matter. The galaxies and clusters of galaxies and super-clusters of galaxies each with their billions upon billions of stars and planets appear, then disappear, from scale. Remaining is the radiance which is the center of all things living. Sparkling, glorious, filling the heavens. They become one with life, one with the universe, one with the never-ending moment of ALL - which is God, and eternity.
They are home, as they always were. There is no more Joan or Joe or Dave yet each has become more than they could ever have imagined, as life and death hit.