Talar

The Keeper known to her kind as FireHeart had long been searching the various universes for one special being. That she had at last found him in the person of a mortal creature called Simon Spicer seemed to her a most satisfactory culmination of her mission.
Spice (as his few friends called him) knew nothing of the Keeper’s search. He did not even suspect her presence in his vicinity for she was an entity with no form or substance that human senses could detect. She belonged to an order of beings born in the early light of Creation whose task it was to maintain the motions of the bodies that compose the cosmos.
Because their laws prohibited contact with the worlds they sustained (lest their presence inadvertently disrupt the natural development of the worlds), the Keepers went about their duties unperceived by the other inhabitants of Creation. Unseen, unknown, aloof, immensely powerful, linked to each other by chains of collective thought, the Keepers labored harmoniously as ages of ages unrolled. Then one of their number yielded to a craving for uncertainty and hazard, delights forbidden the Keepers lest they undermine the Order's dedication to its essential task.
Succumbing to temptation, the aberrant Keeper broke the ties of aggregate intellect that bound him to his colleagues. He changed his Keeper name, LightLover, to one of his own choosing: ShadowCaster. Then, in defiance of Keeper law, he descended upon a world called Talar— and claimed it for himself.
The Keepers moved swiftly to regain control of their rebellious comrade. From stations in space they scanned Talar in search of ShadowCaster. If they could find him, they knew they could overwhelm him with their combined will.
But ShadowCaster eluded them. Concealing his authentic self by some means that baffled his former colleagues, he sent forth emanations of his mind to play with his stolen world. He populated Talar with evil spirits and beasts. He made ruins of cities. He taught large segments of the populace to scorn their own gods—and to worship him instead.
The Keepers, unable to locate their brother, and barred from pursuing him, could only watch in anguish as ShadowCaster's net crept over the stricken world. Meanwhile they sent one of their number, FireHeart, to seek among the galaxies for one whom they might send to Talar on their behalf.
The being they sought had to possess certain specific characteristics. Physically he (or she) had to resemble, if not completely duplicate, the denizens of Talar. He, or she, had to possess the potential to grasp quickly the techniques of minding, a species of non-oral communication. The individual sought also had to possess a highly unusual combination of psychological and corporeal traits, even if latent. These included curiosity, imagination, ferocity, a certain amount of rationality, a capacity for fear, rage, love, conceit, skepticism, forethought, and sexual passion, as well as a proclivity for self-preservation—and an efficient digestive system. The one sought also had to be of no significance to his or her own world—and had to volunteer for the mission offered. But above all else the one sought had to be dead. Recently dead, and dead from natural causes.
Thus when Keeper FireHeart, after much frustration, came upon Simon Spicer she knew she had located the object of her chase. Unfortunately, though Spice met every other criterion of her search, he was still alive. But FireHeart, observing his lifestyle and his general health concluded that, one way or another, Spice himself would soon remove this impediment. And so, unperceived, she hung around—and prepared to receive her quarry when the inevitable occurred.
Meanwhile, an oblivious Spice continued along the ever-narrowing path he had chosen as his life. Although he was only thirty-five by chronological reckoning, disappointment had aged him beyond his years. His long hair and short beard showed more gray than black. Though a tall man, he tended to slump at the shoulders—and this imparted a defeated aspect to him. He made a meager living as an instructor in history and literature at a community college in Maine. With his faded and melancholy good looks, ragged hair, and streaky beard, many of his uncritical and inexperienced students saw him as a romantic figure. They had heard murky bits and pieces of his life: that his beloved young wife had died in a plane crash years earlier, leaving him unable to love again; that he had—long ago—been a well-regarded poet, but no longer wrote poetry; that he drank heavily; that he lived in isolation, brooding in a decrepit house far off-campus. Possessed of only these few facts, it was little wonder that the impressionable among his young charges thought Spice mysterious, a character from a Gothic novel. This view of him often provided Spice with sardonic amusement.
Although his students might think him picturesque, Spice himself—in the chambers of his soul where self-knowledge resided—recognized that he was really a lonely and skeptical man, afraid of both death and life, and resentful of the happiness that others seemed to enjoy in a world that continually rejected him. In certain dark hours Spice even admitted to himself that he secretly yearned for the things that he professed to scorn: love and the esteem of his fellow beings. But he knew also that he had no talent for achieving those blessings. So he had given up further attempts to do so. Now he tried to protect himself from further hurt by sheltering behind a wall of cynicism. But there was no shelter from the regret that clung to his heart like a nest of stinging wasps.
Of late, Spice had begun to feel the frozen fingers of mortality squeezing his core—so much so that he had taken to daily booze to thaw them away. Thus he was almost, but not quite, drunk one chilly twilight in March when he went out for a walk after a supper of fried hot dogs, canned beans, and rye whisky.
The road he walked along on that chill March evening was a rutted country track that cut through dense woods still mottled with patches of snow left over from the fierce Maine winter. There was no one about. Not even the rustle of a field mouse disturbed the silence. Suddenly Spice became aware of a buzzing in his head. He stopped. His heart began to gallop. He felt weak and light-headed. His eyes blurred. He decided to return to his house. But he found he was unable to move. Then he felt himself topple over backward onto the mud of the lane. Helpless, he stared up at the darkening sky. Unable even to blink his eyes, he beheld the first indifferent stars of the night. With amazement he realized that he was dying. He felt little physical pain, aside from a headache, but the regret in his heart rose into his throat, choking him with a ball of unshed tears. All at once a brilliant light—stark white—appeared in the sky above him. It enveloped him in a cone of radiance. He thought, so the bit about the bright light is true. Abruptly the full meaning of his looming end came to him. He would have no more chances to renew himself. He would never be anything more than the miserable loser he was now, at this last moment of his existence. Suddenly the ball of pain in his throat loosened. He began to cry, grieving over the wasteland of his life. Why hadn't he found some way to become the man he might have been? Why had he refused to live?
Cradled within his luminous cocoon, he felt his body begin to rise. Slowly, inexorably, he ascended toward what he now saw was the pulsating source of the light: a sphere of intense whiteness like a beating heart of pure energy. Terror seized him. He thought, Judgment Day, Divine Wrath. Dreading what awaited him, he entered that heart of whiteness beating above him—and he passed through it into another realm.