You die alone.

Now you are shins-deep in illuminated turquoise. Your body feels more alive than ever, but your heart is empty.

A quiet waterfall feeds into the pool, its own source of light. Phosphorescent leaves the size of elephant ears crowd the cliffs. Above, stars of all colors fill a purple-tinted sky.

At the pool’s edge, a middle-aged woman in dark gold robes is working on a painting. She regards her easel with a satisfied stare, then looks over at you with patient eyes and a pursed smile.

This isn’t a dream.

You look down. You’re wearing a robe, too—your favorite color. When you look back at the woman, her paintbrush and painting are gone, like a magic trick. You ask her if this is heaven.

The woman’s eyes wander a moment. She inhales quietly, pauses, then speaks in a deep voice. “Some call it that.”

Your shoulders arch to a slump. You sit in the shallow water, curl up, and start to cry. The woman listens as you moan about how you followed some of your dreams. You accomplished a thing or two, had some fun, yet you feel hollow. Wasted some time on the wrong people. At some point, you gave up on finding love; it wasn’t supposed to be like that.

The woman nods occasionally, her neck-length, silver hair bobbing each time she moves her head. She allows you to wipe your eyes, then asks, “Would you care to follow me? There’s something I’d like you to see.”

* * *

The trail through the jungle is cream-colored, like foam under your bare feet. The foliage is thick and arches above the trail like a tunnel, but the lime-green luminescence of the leaves keeps the path well-lit.

A cacophony of hoots and chirps echoes between the trees: monkeys, birds, insects, or none of the above. Hexagons of thick, golden silk stretch between the branches overhead. The yellow and black arthropods on those webs appear more crab than spider.

“My name is Nath,” the woman says as she guides you along the path. “On Earth, I lived long ago, along the body of water your generation calls the Nile.”

So she’s human—ancient Egyptian, maybe?

“Not quite,” Nath says. “My people existed about six thousand years before the dynastic Egyptians. We were gatherers, mostly. I spent my days harvesting wild barley by the flood plain.”

This makes your head spin—the notion that entire cultures rose and fell in the millennia before the pharaohs, who themselves reigned for thousands of years.

You ask if you’re understanding this clearly: that, essentially, every human who ever existed throughout time gets placed on this world after they die.

“Yes,” says the guide. “The same is true for every animal, plant, fungus, and organism who ever existed in our Local Group of galaxies within the last approximate two-point-five billion years.”

Your head spins faster; Nath has just confirmed the existence of aliens.

“After death,” she continues, “all creatures are placed on worlds depending on their atmospheric and ecological requirements. Presently, you and I are on a structure intended to house species who enjoy a warm nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere.”

Questions continue to flood your mind, but before you can ask, the trail ends and the jungle opens into a wide cobblestone walkway. Along the walkway runs a bustling stream filled with the same luminescent turquoise from the pool where you woke. On the other side of the stream, a small prairie breaks up another rolling junglescape. There, a herd of deer munches away at unmanicured shrubs, unconcerned by your presence.

One of the deer, you notice, is not a deer at all. It is dark red in color, with two pairs of spiral horns and oversized eyes that protrude like goggles from its narrow head.

“See the grass those animals are eating?” Nath asks. “It is all synthesized—non-living matter meant to nourish and taste like food. The same is true for animal prey. A predator’s needs are met by hunting non-thinking, non-feeling biological robots. Meanwhile, the prey species are on their own islands or their own worlds, consuming their own synthesized forms of nourishment.”

When you ask how that could be possible, Nath says you’ve seen it already on Earth.

“Consider how humans have evolved alongside animals as companions. We fed them, played with them. The animals thrived like this because their evolutionary needs were met in a non-violent capacity. Predation may be natural, but the Preservers have the technology to separate the links of the food chain. They ensure survival need not equate to suffering.”

Preservers—are they the ones responsible for all of this? Beings capable of creating worlds without suffering?

Nath pivots away from the stream and starts strolling down the path. Apparently the deer were not what she wanted you to see. You reach out to ask where you are going, but she is already well down the walkway.

Across the stream, you see the alien deer nuzzling its neck up against one of the Earth deer—lovers, perhaps. How might that work in the afterlife, you wonder.

* * *

As you follow Nath down the path’s gentle bends, you gaze fondly at the vistas on the other side of the stream where cottages of modest sizes and various shapes dot the riverbank—pyramids, mounds, burrows, blocks. The structures blend with the surrounding foliage like a part of the ecosystem, noticeable only by the soft glow of windows in their walls or roofs.

Nath says these are the homes of people like you. The Preservers will grant you such a dwelling, should you wish it.

You ask if anyone has ever met these “Preservers.”

Nath lifts her shoulders, folds her hands behind her back so the sleeves of her robe touch. The tone of her voice seems to harmonize with the flow of the river.

“Some have.”

You ask what they look like, but Nath does not provide a detailed answer.

“Some say the Preservers may take any form they wish. Others say they have no physical form at all. Either way, we have reason to believe they are the most advanced civilization to exist in our corner of the universe.”

Just a corner—the Local Group, as she mentioned before—but why not the entire universe, you ask.

“Hmm. Due to the laws of physics, I presume. Nothing can travel faster than light. Gravity is pulling the Local Group’s seventy-three galactic bodies toward one another. Simultaneously, the space between the Local Group and the rest of the universe’s galaxy clusters is expanding faster than light can keep up.”

You say her explanation doesn’t make sense, but she reassures you the universe does not make sense any other way.

As if to seek more evidence of her claim, Nath starts scanning the night sky with her finger. Moments later, that finger extends to a point. “Do you see that star there? The little, blue, bright one?”

You look up and see the pinprick of platinum-blue standing out amongst all the reds. Before, you had to squint to see the stars, but not anymore.

“That is the star your people call Sirius. Mine call it Sa’aptat. It is the brightest star seen from Earth, but from our present location, it is not quite as bright.”

In other words, the same star, but from a different position in the galaxy.

“When a human dies,” she continues, “the Preservers transfer that individual’s soul—or consciousness, if you prefer—to the closest compatible world to Earth. The transferred soul travels as radiation, which means it is limited by the speed of light. Once the soul arrives, the Preservers insert it into a version of that soul’s preferred bodily form.” She gestures toward you and your new body with an upturned palm. “What I mean to say is, if the Preservers were capable of transferring data faster than light—if they had the whole universe to work with—then why would they resurrect us so close to home?”

You shrug. Makes sense.

“Besides,” Nath continues, “our Milky Way has received plenty of immigrants from other Local Group galaxies, but never beyond. Many Andromedans, many Triangulans . . . I once met a pair of molluscoids who came all the way from the Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular Galaxy. A three-point-four million light-year trip, over in a flash for them. Pleasant couple, those two.”

So, not only are intelligent aliens zipping between galaxies like summer homes, but the aliens are falling in love.

“Yes. Aliens fall in love. Humans, too, believe it or not.”

Apparently your guide is capable of sass. She slows her pace, trying to gauge your reaction. So you give her one.

You rant about your ill-fortuned pursuits in the name of love on Earth: rejection after rejection after rejection. The breakups, the missed opportunities, the ones who got away. The endless dating app disappointments, the soul-sucking swiping. You tell her you don’t believe in love—not for yourself, at least. Wasn’t meant to be. Love is just a word for something that causes more pain than it’s worth.

“The Preservers would agree with you,” Nath comments. “Love is, indeed, a word. A word for the chemistry in the brain of certain sentient species that prompts said beings to form stable partnerships to ensure the passage of genetic material into future generations . . .”

Not exactly encouraging, but you let her continue.

“. . . but it is also so much more than that, for we have the privilege to define love. We must look at love for what it is, this most sacred of properties which emerges from self-aware consciousness. It is a reaction produced because separate souls are not only so fortunate to exist, but so blessed as to find one another and interact. Love is chemistry. Love is math. Same as everything else in the universe. We are privileged to realize this.”

You try to ignore Nath’s mystic generalizations, and you change the topic.

* * *

Your next question might be controversial, but you ask it anyway: What right do the Preservers have to resurrect people’s souls? What if someone doesn’t want to be rebirthed on a strange, glowing jungle world a few light-years away?

Nath nods. “Every sentient soul is given the option to embrace finality any time they choose. Some choose sooner than others, but none forever. Usually after two or three centuries of lived experience, most humans feel . . . satisfied. Ready for quiet.”

As for Nath herself, she has been in this afterlife for—you try the math—ten, eleven thousand Earth years, at least. As she puts it, much of that time was spent traveling, zipping between stars. “Going on dates,” she calls it. Time, from her perspective, passed quickly like this.

There is more to it than that, though—something keeping her around. You ask what that thing is.

Nath holds in a loving chuckle; perfect wrinkles stack around her mouth. “Love, mostly.”

You roll your eyes—this again.

She looks at you with an understanding frown. “You’ve been hurt, on Earth. Looking for love.”

You can’t tell if it’s a statement or a question. This old woman can’t possibly know what you’ve been through: your backlog of broken hearts, the litanies of lonely nights, all the dating apps you downloaded and deleted and redownloaded and redeleted in vain. It all led to an apathy in your later years—an acceptance of solitude. Your eyes water as you elaborate on the horrors of love, the rates of divorce, the countless miserables in their inescapable couplings, the sheer number of people who abuse their supposed loved ones emotionally, physically.

Eleven millennia of emotional history flickers in Nath’s eyes; you see she is no stranger to the misfortune of mismatched relationships.

Her gravelly tone is deeper now, slower, as if talking about death. “My partner on Earth was a violent man. And I use the word ‘partner’ very loosely. Fortunately, ours is a large galaxy cluster. The Preservers ensure I never need to see him again.”

Kept apart, like predator and prey. Unfortunately, this means the Preservers believe every soul, no matter how vile, goes to heaven.

Your guide goes on to explain how relationships often involve the wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Not everyone is lucky enough to find a compatible partner during a mortal life.

“Love is a gambit,” she says. “People are deceptive, to others and often to themselves. We think that is the reason the Preservers have placed something on each of these worlds to help us along. To help us find our partners.”

You can no longer conceal the sparkle in your eye. It was as Nath said earlier: Love is math. It makes sense that a civilization such as the Preservers, god-like beings who can rescue and revive the soul of every organism, can also calculate the perfect romantic partner—someone better for you than anyone else on Earth.

Could Nath be talking about . . . a soulmate?

“Some call it that,” she says. Then she gazes down the path over a dip in the foliage where, in the heart of a distant valley, a luminescent tower stands, a vast lighthouse against the backdrop of the cosmos.

* * *

The stream becomes rapids and the rapids become waterfalls. Soon the cobblestone path deviates from the water, becoming a series of switchbacks that twists into the jungle valley.

Through an opening in the jungle, you see the tower in its entirety: a pale silhouette, wide at the top as it is at the bottom, more column than spire. A white glow, the color of stars, pours from its summit and melds with the Milky Way. That same light pours down the tower’s walls like veins, a colorless glow that contrasts with the valley’s fluorescent green. Somehow, that tower will help you find your soulmate.

“We call it a Font,” Nath says. “There are a few Fonts on each of the Preservers’ habitable worlds. Non-mobile or non-terrestrial beings have their worlds’ Fonts presented in different forms.”

Hearing this makes you pause: Aliens use the Font, too.

Across the valley, additional paths curve down faraway slopes. On those paths you see other figures, none of them humanoid, but with a nonetheless meandering pace in their movements. Above, creatures glide through the sky toward the tower’s summit, like bats, or moths, or eagles. Each of these are souls like you led by guides like Nath, all going to the same place—to find their soulmate.

The switchbacks relent. The cobblestone path you’ve been walking on feeds into an expansive, circular plaza in the heart of the valley. In the center of the plaza stands the tower, taller and grander than any structure on Earth.

The river makes appearance again, running through a canal feeding in a straight shot toward the tower. The water, however, has lost its turquoise color since you last saw it, becoming paler the closer it gets to the tower, but still emitting the same luminescent energy.

A line of statues—dozens, hundreds—adorn the edge of the canal, each taking the shape of a different unrecognizable creature. Aliens.

One statue has a rotund body like a pig and a nose like an elephant.

Another is a sculpture made of wood, and portrays a many-legged amalgam of twisting, gnarled roots. Its head—if it can be called a head—consists of a wide, flat jaw topped with bulbous, compound eyes.

The next statue is made of stone, a long, lizard-like body low to the ground. Its limbs and fingers are elongated and thin, and a crown of feathers adorns its narrow head. This species is elegant—beautiful, even.

Amongst these indecipherable figures (amongst which some have no Earthly analog), a pale marble statue takes a more familiar form: bipedal, upright, hominid. A human woman, naked and powerful, crafted intricately in pale marble. Perhaps one of the great ancient Greek sculptors made this statue. Or, maybe, the artist was a person who didn’t get to create art in their time on Earth.

Nath stands at your side, regarding the human statue with equal admiration. “These statues represent the sentient species compatible with this world’s Font. We like to think of them as monuments to the organisms capable of feeling true love—and suffering true heartbreak.”

In the distance, you see movement between rows of far-off statues beside the other canals. These are the others: alien shapes filtering in from the other paths of the valley, bobbing or slinking or trotting their way to the foot of the tower. The word “pilgrimage” comes to mind.

As you make your approach, you see your fellow pilgrims more clearly in the glow of the Font. Among the aliens are large land crustaceans; grunting fungi-covered marmots walking on fat haunches; elegant mantids the size of horses. You can tell which amongst each pair is the guide and which is the newly revived soul based on the latter’s dawdling pace and meandering gaze. They, too, are in awe at the other aliens, yourself included. Some, however, are without a guide—alone, navigating with more confidence, their oculars or optics or feelers set on the path before them.

Amongst these alien shapes, you see a familiar one: large, dark eyes filled with uncertainty. Your heart skips a beat when these human eyes meet yours, and the gaze lingers before being lost in a crowd of indecipherable beings.

Infatuation.

You see Nath’s smile in the corner of your eye—she knew you hadn’t given up on love. Not entirely.

She asks if you wish to begin your ascent. You look up at the tower with a gulp, then step into the crowd and join the lovelorn pilgrimage.

* * *

The ascent up the Font proves a pleasant hike, and you feel no exhaustion. You see many souls hiking up the tower’s spiraling path, but none coming down. No point in asking why; you know you’ll have an answer soon.

More statues line the outer edge of the path. Some are repeating species, but no two statues are the same material or style, implying each statue is crafted by a different artist, possibly from a different culture within its respective species.

Near the top of the tower, you see the final statue: an ornate sculpture of a human man carved from iron.

A pair of cat-sized, moth-like beings flutter down, perch beside the statue, and begin regarding it with curious awe. Scratchy chittering sounds come from their mouths and wings, and somehow you understand these words; the guide is explaining to their pilgrim what Nath has already explained to you.

At last, the tower’s spiral path curves to its end. The summit is flat, a vast platform in the center of which stretches a wide pool like the caldera of a great volcano. A luminous white quintessence fills the caldera, more energy than liquid, as beams of milky plasma bleed into the night like spotlights. Under the surface of the pool, dark shapes move like hazy, shifting inkblots.

Nath guides you around the circumference of the Font, taking you to the other side of the platform away from most of the other pilgrims. You cannot pull your eyes from the Font, nor from the other aliens who are poking their tongues or branches or tails into the Font’s star-colored liquid.

Nath stops at the far side of the platform. Fewer pilgrims crowd this area, but a nearby solitary alien catches your eye. It is one of the slim, feather-crowned lizards whose statues you’d noticed earlier. The reptile’s feathers pop from their neck like an arrangement of flowers, while blanket-like robes drape around their back like a saddle, covering most of their torso. Could they have had their heart broken, too?

You watch as your reptilian neighbor dips a thin claw into the Font. The moment their pointed finger touches the liquid, several of the shadowy inkblots rise from the depths and coalesce on the surface in the form of indecipherable glyphs. The lizard briefly studies the glyphs before inserting their claw into the water once again to swish up additional inkblots from the depths.

Nath appears at your side and asks if you want to give it a try.

You sidestep toward the Font to stare into its silky light, but not for long before looking back to Nath with a question. Earlier, she implied she had found love—enough to keep her going for millennia. Was the Font how she found that love?

Her cheeks turn large and round, as if she can’t help but smile. “His name is Gălă-gi′na, He is a member of the Cherokee tribe. He lived during the latter half of your thirteenth century. He loves music, and I love him for that.”

Hearing this warms your heart; you are genuinely excited for your guide that she found love, yet simultaneously concerned by the fact that it took her so many millennia to do so.

“Do you remember when I told you most people take a few centuries before they choose to embrace finality?” Nath asks. “Truth be told, it is not always a matter of when one wishes to die, rather it is more a matter of finding the person one wishes to die with.”

But why did it take her so long to find that person—almost eleven thousand years before her soulmate was even born?

“I loved others in my time,” she says, “and they loved me. They helped me trust again, which led me to this point. To Gălă-gi′na.”

. . . Others?

But the Font was supposed to help you find your soulmate. You use those words: the perfect partner. The one.

Nath takes a moment to analyze the distress in your tone, then points her chin to the feathered lizard still studying the inky glyphs floating in the Font. The reptile extends a claw toward one of the glyphs, hesitates, then dips their entire arm into the liquid.

The glyphs react—not just one, but all of them. They latch to the lizard’s arm with inky tendrils, wrap up their shoulder, pulse through their body. The Font’s light lifts from the liquid like a wave to engulf the reptile’s limb. But the reptile is not frightened.

You turn to Nath, mouth agape, awaiting an explanation, and when you look back to the feather-crowned neighbor, they are gone, replaced by a mist of light. Gazing across the Font, you see other beings dipping their limbs into the water, turning into aerosols of energy dispersing to the stars.

“They’ve made their choice,” Nath says, the Font illuminating her smile.

Choice? What choice could there possibly be?

You lower to your knees, flatten a palm over the Font’s star-colored quintessence, like checking the heat on a stove. The energy warms your skin, invigorates your heart, something like optimism.

You move your hand closer. Your heart taps aggressively at your sternum. You gulp, then use three fingertips to give the light a swish.

The subsurface inkblots react immediately, rising to the surface like goldfish, taking shape, thickening into familiar letters. Words.

No—names.

You read each of them as they form, visible as text on paper. Many are from cultures you don’t recognize, from alphabets and lexicons you’ve never seen before but are legible nonetheless.

You gesture for Nath to approach. She walks up and teeters over your shoulder to peek at the names. “Those are your potential soulmates,” she says.

But soulmate means one person, you protest. Surely the Preservers have sorted out which of these names is better for you than all the rest. Nath said it herself: Love is math.

“Love is math,” your guide reasserts, “but there is no single equation.” The Font presents you with potentially compatible partners, individuals with some overlapping interests or personalities. That is as far as it can take you. The rest is for you to discover.”

You protest further; you don’t know who these people are, or if they’ll even be attracted to you.

“They will be,” Nath says, “and you will be attracted to them, inside and out. The Font has that much figured out, but that is the easy part. The trick is finding the spark. You will learn more about them, your feelings will grow, until that spark becomes a fire. And then, if it is meant to be, that feeling is only the beginning.”

This makes you scoff. You’d felt those emotions before: loving a person so much that their presence is a drug and their absence is a withdrawal. The chemicals at work. But you’re not capable of those emotions.

Not anymore.

* * *

You reach down to flip another finger through the Font, causing another slurry of inkblots to emerge on the surface. This batch consists of additional unfamiliar alphabets and pictograms, one of which translates to “Nimble-Tail.”

Nath raises her eyebrows as if something about the new names impresses her. “Based on the diversity of names you have stirred up, it appears you are far more capable of love than you have convinced yourself to believe.”

You shake your head. The Preservers were supposed to make this easy. They were supposed to have the perfect someone, your soulmate, waiting for you. Instead, you get a cluster of names floating in a pool—cultures, species, sexes you never knew existed, much less realized you were compatible with. More uncertainty, more work, more dating, you say. The Font is just a big, mystical-looking dating app.

Nath’s brow arches; she raises her tone with you for the first time. “And? If one is so lucky to find companionship, it does not matter the mechanism or method. One would be foolish to refuse the opportunities the universe presents them for finding a thing so cherished as love. Believe me, your generation’s dating technology is a significant improvement to Earth’s courting rituals in the millennia before.”

But how many people must you date until you find the right partner? How many unrequited sentiments? How many breakups, how many divorces, how much heartbreak, how much more pain must you endure? Maybe you would be better off spending the afterlife in solitude, as you did your life, because searching for companionship just wasn’t worth the pain.

“I think I know what is holding you back,” your guide says. “It’s this . . . notion you harbor, the insistence of your soulmate being a singular, epitomal individual.”

You look at her with mildly restored interest. She continues.

“Your hope to find ‘the one’ implies that you are expecting someone else to conform perfectly to you, and that you will not have to change. But listen to me closely: that is not love. In truth, love is purely about what you can do for another.”

You exhale as you contemplate your guide’s words. You stand up, turn away from the Font, and lumber toward the edge of the summit where you gaze upon the landscape of turquoise rivers filtering through emerald hills. Over the horizon, the Milky Way pours into the sky like a fountain. Moments later, Nath reappears at your side, and you gaze upon the cosmic vista together.

“Do you recall what I told you about the deer?” she asks.

You don’t look at her, simply nod.

“It is fascinating,” she says, “how the Preservers have managed to subvert predation. An afterlife free of physical suffering. They can terraform worlds, create new worlds from scratch, replicate the consciousness of every organism in our galaxy cluster at the exact moment of death. They have solved the mysteries of time, gravity, and matter, yet they cannot figure out love.” She pauses. High in the sky, a single pink meteor streaks across the atmosphere. “Failure is likely, and pain is inevitable. This is because pain and love are two sides of the same coin. Whether someone returns your sentiment or not—whether they fall in love with you for only a moment or forever, the suffering of love is a pain the Preservers cannot subvert. Whatever love is, it is a force that cannot be simulated. It cannot be feigned. Because then it would not be love.”

A rigid law of the universe. Like the speed of light.

“However,” Nath continues, “you must realize everyone you meet is searching for the same fulfillment you are—fellow pilgrims of love. Each soul who touches the Font has received the same wisdom I have shared with you. Success hinges on all parties to be of equal understanding of this theory of radical empathy: that love is not about finding your soulmate; it is about working to become one. Love is not about you; it is about others. You must hold yourself accountable, as your potential partners would themselves. This may require a great deal of practice and exploration. I cannot promise it will be easy. I cannot promise you will ever find someone, no matter how long you search, and even if you do, the pain may never stop. But I can promise you one thing. . . .” She makes eye contact; her smile warms you as she puts a firm hand on your shoulder, and the light squeeze she gives you is enough to convince you before the words even come out of her mouth: “Love is worth looking for.”

You smile back. You cry again—tears of hope this time.

Love . . . could it be the Preservers’ motivation? Could it be the force they are preserving?

Nath’s head bobbles, barely a nod. She opens her mouth, searches for words, then provides an answer: “What I can say is . . . once we know this feeling . . . once we experience this beautiful byproduct of the universe, this pinnacle of cosmic complexity—I am talking about the pure, unfiltered ecstasy of reciprocated love—it becomes that much easier to practice love toward every other organism, and every object, and all matter and energy in the universe. To give them an opportunity to experience that same love. That is the goal, at least.”

The meaning of life, you ask.

“Some call it that.”

Absorbing Nath’s words, you glance one final time upon the vista: the glowing jungle world beneath unfamiliar constellations in a familiar galaxy.

When you approach the Font again, the names from before are still floating patiently on the surface. You kneel and swish up an additional batch anyway. The new names draw your eye as they coalesce on the surface, and your heart skips as you read them.

You turn to Nath. The last you ever see of your guide is her signature smile—the smile that tells you love exists.

Then you face the Font, and you make your choice.

First your fingertip, then your hand, then your forearm. You glow with excitement as the Font accepts you, its names wrapping your limb, body, soul. You feel a hint of it already: love, as you become radiance, and go on dates at the speed of light.