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years old. But there were a few figures that seemed wrong. They were both younger and bigger than the majority. There was a direct relation between youth and size. Tennyson decided to question his guide on this point.
    Herod was obliging. He replied:
    “If you had read the Bible, you would appreciate that at the end of time there will be a new Heaven to replace the old. This suggests the old one isn’t quite good enough. And in fact it isn’t. God didn’t really know what he was doing when he designed it. There was no model. He made mistakes. He has learned from his errors. One of these errors is a flaw in the process of extrapolation of outer identity for souls which expire before their thirty-third birthday.”
    “What is the nature of this error?”
    “Instead of accelerating age, the process magnifies form. It is automatic and can’t be reversed. It switched itself on when everyone was still flushed after the successful crucifixion of Jesus. It had been set to activate itself then, and it did. Everybody who died after that time but who was younger than this minimum threshold age was physically blown out of all proportion.”
    “Is that really so bad?”
    “Consider this. If a man is 22 when he dies, then he is two-thirds of the way to being 33. So his age needs to be increased by another half of what it already is. Eleven years. But the automatic system doesn’t do that. It doesn’t extrapolate his outer identity into what for him is the future. Instead, because of a technical hitch, it adds half his size to his frame. If he is six feet tall, his soul is stretched another three feet. He remains only 22 years old in Heaven, but must pass the rest of eternity nine feet high!”
    Tennyson gulped. “And if he is only eleven when he dies? His age needs to be tripled? But instead his size is tripled? So if he is five feet high, he will be fifteen feet here?”
    “Yes, and wider in proportion too.”
    “What if he is only one year old when he dies?”
    “Thirty-three times bigger in Heaven, of course. But it gets worse. There are twelve months in a year. A baby who dies when it is only one month old must be expanded 396 times. That’s 33 multiplied by 12. There are 52 weeks in a year. A baby who dies when it is one week old must be magnified 1716 times.”
    “A baby that dies on the day of its birth?”
    “That baby must be magnified 12,045 times. But still it gets worse. There are 24 hours in a day. A baby that dies in its first hour must be expanded 289,080 times. And there are 60 minutes in an hour. A baby that dies in its first minute must therefore be expanded 17,344,800 times.”
    “And a baby that dies in its first second?”
    “That one must be expanded 1,040,688,000 times. That’s more than a factor of one billion. If such a baby is a typical weight of 8 pounds at birth then its gross weight here in Heaven must be 8.3 billion pounds, which is equivalent to approximately 3,716,742 tons! The largest animal that has ever existed on Earth is the blue whale. Its typical weight is about 150 tons. The babies in question are each equivalent to 25,000 blue whales! That’s a lot of baby.”
    “A veritable mountain of slobbering infant!”
    “There are entire ranges here made out entirely of babies. And the gravitational effects, as I’ve already mentioned, are starting to become unfortunate. We’re in big trouble!”
    “And this is my job? To sort it out?”
    “Yes. I’m afraid so.”
    Tennyson fell into a depression which was unrelieved by thoughts of his sensational elevation in status. He remained quiet, musing darkly on the challenges ahead, until Herod announced they were approaching the first nursery. They had been ascending an incline for a long time, but the donkey hadn’t slowed its pace. It had no muscles to grow tired, no heart to wear out. The relentless whiteness of the ground and matching pallor of the sky had given Tennyson a condition similar to snowblindness. He couldn’t