The Impossible Interview

A journalist wakes up in a timeless place, summoned—or dragged—to what appears to be the scoop of a lifetime: an interview with God and another with his adversary. The answers he receives bring no comfort to anyone; they merely lay bare, with an almost elegant coolness, the disaster we have built. When he finally understands where he is and what is happening, he no longer has the right to ask follow-up questions. Only to choose.

 

PROLOGUE

The place where no one tells you that you are no longer alive

The last thing I remember from “before” is vulgar: a pain in my chest, a ringing in my ears, and the computer screen blurring as I tried to finish a paragraph. There was no tunnel, no voices, no choirs. Only a brutal, sudden cut.

Then, this.

I woke up in a room with no defined walls. It wasn’t white, nor black: it was like being inside a fog shaped like a room. There were no windows, no visible door. It wasn’t cold, it wasn’t hot. I noticed something that should have alarmed me more: I was breathing, but I didn’t need air.

My reaction was professional, not spiritual:

“I must be in a coma. This is a hallucination. The brain is doing what it can with what’s left.”

And then, the voice.

—It’s not a hallucination.

It didn’t boom. It didn’t come from above. Nor from outside. It was as if someone had spoken inside my thoughts without asking permission.

—Who…? —I asked, by reflex.

—Call me whatever you want. You’ve used enough names writing about me already.

I saw no figure. No beard, no robe, no symbol. Only a new quality in the space: presence. Something that wasn’t there a second before.

It was my journalist’s brain that reacted first:

“This is a source. An impossible source. But a source.”

And the question that had been floating in the back of my mind for years appeared on its own, unfiltered:

—Can I interview you?

The answer was immediate, yet unhurried:

—That’s why you’re here.

Only then did I notice the detail that, in retrospect, was obvious: I had no recognizable body, but I had clear consciousness, memory, lucidity.
And an uncomfortable certainty, still denied: something had definitively broken “on the other side.” 

But I did what I’ve done all my life: I pulled out my mental notebook and started asking questions.

1. Interview with God

The one who doesn't push, waits

Q. When life began, did you already know how man would end up?

G. I don't write endings. I set processes in motion. I activate laws. Nature is not a toy; it is a free organism. If I manipulated it whimsically, I would kill it. Humanity arises from that process: intelligence, affection, contradiction, the ability to harm and to repair.

I don't make puppets. I give freedom and I wait.

Q. And while you wait, what do you do?

G. I uphold that being exists. The rest is your task.

Q. From down here, it feels like silence.

G. There is no silence. There is noise. If man learned to be silent outwardly and inwardly, he would discover that he does not need me to shout at him. Many of the things you call “conscience,” “moral clarity,” “that knot in your stomach when you do something wrong,” are my voice. They are not phrases, they are insistences.

Q. So the obvious question: if you are good, why do you allow the abominable? Wars, genocides, children torn from their parents, economies designed to crush the vulnerable...

G. Because freedom is not a theoretical embellishment.

If man is to be able to choose good, he must be able to choose evil. If I eliminate the possibility of the abominable, I eliminate the authenticity of good.
And then you would be an experiment, not a story.

Human life is a moral laboratory. It does not guarantee success, it guarantees testing. Pain is not my plan; it is a consequence of freedom in the hands of creatures who have not yet learned to use it.

Q. That sounds very correct... for someone who isn't suffering.

Silence. But it wasn't indifference. It was something closer to gravity.

G. I do not minimize suffering. I bear it with you.

What I will not do is annul freedom to prevent you from harming yourselves. That would be to deny you the possibility of becoming truly good. You must be able to deny me, hate me, blaspheme me... so that you can also choose something different with full knowledge.

Q. Is the world near its end?

G. Every world has always been near its end. But this one has decided to accelerate.

It has turned nature into fuel for a blind machine. It has built an economy whose logic only a few understand, and which requires most people not to understand it in order to subdue them. It has left politics in the hands of wounded, insecure animals, with delusions of saviors, of messiahs who have come to redeem their peoples, and of course, with microphones, caudillos who love their reflection more than their people. And it has normalized the idea that anything that does not produce immediate returns is an impediment.

You don't need a meteorite. You just need to keep going as you are.

Q. Is there a point of no return?

G. There always is... until there isn't.

The Earth has patience, not infinitude. Social systems have resilience, not immortality. You are tearing pieces off the ship to feed the fireplace in the living room.

Q. Will we ever see paradise on Earth?

G. Not in the sense you expect: a perfect state administered from above.

The closest you will get are moments: a child's smile, an act of justice no one sees, a hand that holds when it's inconvenient, a truth spoken despite the cost.

Paradise is not a place; it is the quality of certain acts. And no one can decree them by law.

Q. Where are you while all this is happening?

G. Within every decision made against one's own ego, for the sake of another.
Within every gesture that breaks the cycle of revenge, resentment, or pure self-interest.

The problem is that you look at screens more than faces. And you choose leaders who promise you don't have to mature or worse, they deny you education, they dull your common sense and they limit, at all costs, your capacity for analysis, the correct one, of course.

Q. Who are the enemies of the soul today?

G. Those who teach you to confuse value with price. Those who educate for consumption, not for responsibility.

Those who preach that “everything is relative” until they lose a child; then, mysteriously, they feel that something objective has been broken. And, above all, the self when it demands to be the center of everything.

Q. And hope? Not the one printed on a banner, but the real one.

G. Real hope is not optimism. It is a kind of clear-sighted obedience: continuing to do good when nothing indicates it will work; continuing to speak the truth when everything advises silence; continuing to care when calculation says it's not worth it.

It is a minority, but it is contagious.

Q. Will man one day see the dream of paradise fulfilled?

G. Not as a fixed photograph. But every time someone gives up vengeance, every time a corrupt person decides not to sign, every time a father asks for forgiveness instead of imposing, every time a poor person shares the little they have, paradise flickers for an instant on Earth. And that is not lost, even if you forget it.

The voice fell silent. The room was just that again: a room.

• There was no farewell.
• There was no “go in peace.”
• Only an uncomfortable certainty: it had not been a dream.
• And another: I wasn't going back anywhere.

2.  Interview with Nataivel

The one who offers shortcuts

The second time there was no announcement. Only the appearance of a red door, a red I had never seen in the world: it wasn't paint, it was as if the wood was impregnated with dried blood and old wine.

The door opened towards me without me touching it.

Inside, the scene was different: a large living room, with almost black walls, lit only by the fire in a low fireplace. An aged leather armchair in front of the fire. And him.

Perfect black suit, without a wrinkle. Dark gray shirt, no tie. Long hair, tied back in a low ponytail. Thick beard, but meticulously groomed with an almost surgical obsession. In his right hand, a cane with a metallic handle: the head of an indefinable creature, a mix of feline and serpent, polished to a shine.

And the eyes.

Amber.
With vertical, feline pupils, like those of a great predator at rest.
He didn't blink.

 —Nataivel, I presume —I said, more to test my voice than out of bravery.

He barely smiled.

—Men are creative with names. You and others have called me worse than that. I’ll stick with this one, and we’ll let it pass.

He sat down without asking if he could. The fire seemed to grow a little as he settled in. I remained standing for a few seconds, wondering if I was facing a monster, a politician, or a very well-dressed old man. Finally, I sat across from him.

I pulled out the notebook I no longer had. Old habit: the gesture appeared just the same.

—I want to ask you some questions —I said.

—And I want to have some fun —he replied—. We're even. Ask away.

Q. Why fire? It’s impossible not to associate it with you.

Nataivel. Fire is not punishment. It is a teacher of evidence.
It does not purify. It shows you what you are and what you did, without anesthesia.
Hell is not an underground place with cauldrons; it is the naked intensity of your decisions, without excuses or distractions.

Q. Does that mean man creates his own hell?

N. From day one. I just make sure not to put it out.

Q. So, to the core: what is evil, to you?

N. Evil is the shortcut.

You want to get somewhere—security, power, pleasure, recognition—but you don’t want to pay the real cost of getting there: time, work, renunciation, discipline, truth.

Evil makes you an offer: “I’ll get you there just the same, but faster and without effort. There are only small conditions.”

I don't invent desire.

I don't invent wounds.

I merely point to the door that says “Fast Lane.” Most people walk through it on their own.

Q. Is man inherently evil?

N. No… Um, wait, I don't know. Look, the devil knows more for being old than for being a devil, but I still haven't reached a conclusive theory. From what I've seen and followed many throughout the ages; I have the impression that man, meaning human beings, male and female, are born with an empty memory, let's say. But I'm coming to the conclusion that a being has a certain ease for applying evil very quickly and effectively. Which leads me to tell you that humans may not be born evil, but they have a certain tendency to let themselves be carried away down that path without much effort to resist it. We see it in very basic and mundane examples: you need to sabotage your co-worker to get promoted, for hierarchy, certain power, and of course, the indispensable money. You speak ill of them, whether true or not, and you gain the superior's favor. But that's not enough; the superior also partakes in these behavioral models and connects perfectly with the individual. This is an extremely crude and cheap example, but let's say you follow my idea; and I could name a million four hundred thousand five hundred examples in two million seven hundred thousand situations. It's very easy for human beings to activate themselves to do evil, however minimal, but conversely, activating themselves to do good, without ensuring it's impossible, requires more effort. Do you understand the example?

Man is immature by nature. And immaturity is fertile ground: he wants everything, now, without cost. He wants to be loved without loving, respected without respecting, free without taking responsibility for the consequences.

What makes man evil is not his essence; it's his relationship with other men, when he sees in them only stepping stones, obstacles, or mirrors in which to admire himself.

P. Let's talk about something more concrete: the economy. Today, many feel it's a language designed not to be understood.

N. Because it is.

A truly understandable economy would make certain abuses more difficult.
An economy turned into jargon, into a technical cult, into unquestionable numbers, is any elite's wet dream.

The beauty of the current system is that it turns predation into “efficiency” and precariousness into “collateral damage.”

And you accept it because you fear losing your job more than losing your soul.

P. And the politicians? The caudillos who drag fanatical masses.

N. They are my most diligent students.

Let's take a few random names —Latin American, so the reader understands the human map I'm talking about—: Chávez, Castro, Correa, Maduro, Ortega. Allow me to pause here for a minute, because these characters are fascinating in their misery. To me, who I am, nothing usually surprises me… and yet, delving into the minds and hearts of a couple of them, I found something revealing. Some are not moved —at least not primarily— by money, nor by the voracity to fill their own or others' pockets. No. What dominates them is something more primary and corrosive: hunger for power, the need to feel adored, that toxic idolatry that emanates from those who kiss their feet, convinced they are facing a savior.

They are, in their imagination, a mix of Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, and Genghis Khan. Believe me: they are truly extraordinary in their degeneracy. Disgusting, that's why I love them.

And they're not just in the southern part of the map. In the north, you have one —I could almost say he's my right-hand man— who speaks English, has an improbable orange skin, and the worst haircut modern civilization has ever known. He's perfect. Another example? Terrible: hairless, with a gaze that breaks you just by holding it.

They change the language, they change the flag, they change the anthem. But the equation is always the same, invariable, almost mathematical:
overflowing ego + simple narrative + clear enemy + a great speech (profound… for those who still believe it).

For the others —the few who don't buy into it— those same speeches are nothing more than rhetorical trinkets, cheap commotions wrapped in solemnity.

They promise you that you won't need to grow up; that it's enough to hate the rich, the right enemy, and applaud at the right moment. And you, delighted, give up your freedom while they cut your rights, give you subsidies, assure you a future paid for by the state… then of course, they win elections. Just look at them on their first day in office. These clowns don't need me to put horns on them. A good communication team is enough.

P. Structural pain: useless wars, children torn from their parents at borders, families emotionally broken, systems that seem designed to generate loneliness. What do you see there?

N. I see systemic coherence.

If you build a world where the highest value is performance and utility, sooner or later everything that doesn't perform becomes expendable: the sick, the old, children, the weak, the sensitive.

Everything is packaged with reassuring words: "readjustment," "security," "necessary reform," "efficiency." But underneath there is only an old idea: what is in the way, is discarded.

P. What place does real love occupy in that world? Not the romantic love manipulated by songs, but true love.

For the first time, he lowered his gaze. Not to the fire, but to an intermediate zone.

N. True love is a serious problem for me.
In its authentic version, it is non-negotiable: it does not buy, it does not sell, it does not manipulate, it understands, even when it is impossible, it forgives, when it is worth it and has its counterpart face to face, destroyed from their core, asking for forgiveness from the heart, not from the vocal cords.

It cannot be explained in terms of utility. It goes against the system that I have worked so hard to refine.

Real love demands time, sacrifice, fidelity, vulnerability, truth, and none of that is popular. But those few people who achieve the compendium of everything that forms love with integrity, with those I cannot, they will not be subdued, and to be honest, I don't waste my time there. But I remain calm, because I have countless others who are corruptible with just a snap of the fingers.

Fortunately —for me— they almost always substitute it with something else: dependence, obsession, need for validation, sex used as anesthesia… They dress it up as “love” and contaminate it with fear, control, blackmail. That, I know how to work with.

When love appears in its pure form —rarely— and as I told you before, I simply don't get involved. Not because I can't, but because I'm not interested in wasting effort where I've already lost the bet.

P. You spoke of a bet with God when man was created. Would you repeat it?

He smiled with a calm that chilled something I no longer should have: blood.

N. We are repeating it right now.

Look in your pocket.

Instinctively, I reached for my phone. It wasn't there. But I saw it anyway: endless notifications, recycled outrage, cheap dopamine arranged in a carousel.

“I no longer need to tempt you personally,” he continued.

You notify yourself.

3. Between interviews

The suspicion

I don't know how much time passed between one conversation and another. Here, time is not a line; it is a sensation that comes and goes. What I do know is that when I was alone again, for the first time I looked at myself.

And I discovered something brutal: I had no body, but I had the same identity as always. The same fears, the same areas of cynicism, the same cowardice disguised as prudence, the same prides I had learned to mask as discernment.

God had spoken like one who delivers a diagnosis without anesthesia.
Nataivel had spoken like one who boasts about the balance sheet of an expanding business.

And I was in the middle.

It was then that the possibility I had denied from the beginning ceased to be theory: perhaps I was already dead.

And these interviews were not a prize.

They were a mirror.

4. God and Nataivel

What they say when they no longer have to convince anyone

I didn't see how he entered. Suddenly he was there. Not as a figure, but as luminous density. Nataivel did not get up.

“Are you still waiting for them to learn?” he asked, without greeting.

“I'm still waiting for them to choose,” the presence replied.

“I grant you that some try,” Nataivel conceded. “But the others make noise, they make money, they make history.”

“Noise is not a criterion. Money isn't either. History, even less so.”

“You gave them freedom, and I gave them shortcuts,” Nataivel retorted. “Don't say I didn't warn you.” 

“And yet, there is always someone who rejects the shortcut,” said the voice. “Someone who remains silent when they could destroy another with a phrase. Someone who returns money that no one claims. Someone who keeps a promise that no one remembers anymore. That is enough for the world not to end today.” 

Silence. The fire crackled as if it understood.

“You're still waiting,” Nataivel said, almost with weariness.

“I wait as long as someone does good when it's not convenient,” God replied.

There was no thunder. There was no lightning.

Only an ancient tension, as if I were witnessing a conversation that has been repeating itself with minimal variations for millennia.

5.   The Two Doors

The moment the journalist understands

When I woke up—if one can speak of waking up here—I was no longer in the fiery hall or the misty room. I was in a narrow corridor, with no visible ceiling, no recognizable floor, but firm beneath my feet that were not feet.

Before me, two doors.

The one on the left: a white light, silent, unadorned, no written promises, no religious symbols. Just light. Not blinding; firm.

The one on the right: a clean darkness, no moving shadows, no screams, no flames. Just a serene blackness, like an empty theater before a show.

Behind me, God's voice. Not with a judging tone; with a tone of simple observation.

“You already know who you are.”

Beside me, Nataivel's presence. No staff this time, no fire. Just him.

“And you already know what you want,” he added, without irony.

Then I understood. Everything.

I was not a spectator of a theological debate.

I was the test case.Another man, evaluated not by his articles, not by his political opinions, not by his moral speeches, but by the real texture of his decisions. By the times I chose good when it wasn't convenient… and the many times I chose the shortcut disguised as prudence, convenience, or “that's just how life is.”

The interviews had been a courtesy, or an elegant trap:
the final exposition of the rules, when there's no longer time to rewrite the game.

“What's behind each door?” I asked. The journalist's reflex still remained. 

God answered first:

“Behind one, what you always sought when you didn't know its name.
Behind the other, what you always were when no one was watching.”

Nataivel barely smiled.

“You don't need more information. This isn't a multiple-choice test. It's a mirror.”

I felt fear. Not of fire, nor of punishment, nor of demons. Fear of something simpler: of being forever fixed in what I truly am, without excuses, without context, without the “but understand me, it was difficult.”

I took a step.

The corridor neither shortened nor lengthened. The doors did not move. No one pushed me. No one stopped me.

Another step.

I could already touch both doors with the hands I no longer had.
I closed my eyes, to do something human in a place where it might no longer matter.

And I reached out my hand towards one of them.

I will not say which one.

That piece of information, for the first time in my life, does not belong to any reader. That decision and that free will are mine alone, and I take them with me.

CODA

Questions for those who are still alive

If you've made it this far, you know: this isn't an otherworldly chronicle. It's a mirror disguised as a story.

The interview is not mine. It's yours.

So, before you keep scrolling, answer — not to me, but to yourself — some uncomfortable questions:

• When did you start calling "normal" what you know deep down is moral mediocrity?
• How many times have you chosen the shortcut, knowing perfectly well there was a slower but cleaner path?
• How many crucial decisions in your life did you make thinking about the common good… and how many did you make to avoid too much discomfort?
• When was the last time you did something right that was not convenient for you?
• How much of what outrages you is real, and how much is merely the pleasure of feeling better than others?
• How many leaders, strongmen, gurus, or "spiritual guides" have you followed just because they promised you wouldn't have to mature?
• If two doors were to open before you today, could you truly look at yourself and say, without embellishment: "I know which one I deserve"?

God usually doesn't shout.

Nataivel doesn't usually show up in a suit and cane.

Most of the time, conversations with them are more like something awkward and silent:

•       That feeling of disgust when you betray your own principles;
•        That strange peace when you do the right thing even if no one knows;
•        That slight nausea when you find yourself enjoying another's downfall.

You don't need to die to know which door you're walking towards.
You're already saying it every day, quietly, with your actions.

And, as the voice in the corridor told me:

“You already know who you are.”

The question is whether you still have time to correct the route before the doors appear and there are no more interviews, no explanations, no editorials. Just truth. And choice.