CHAPTER ONE

Well. for hereafter’s sake. Hello! You look very comfortable sitting on that bench. It’s very private, isn’t it? You’re completely surrounded by trees and bushes. It’s nice here.

Yes. I’m the blurry outline of a man in front of you. The one you can almost see through. I’m a thinking. This is very unusual. You are receiving my thoughts. You are speaking directly to me. I’ve never been able to communicate openly with a being before. How interesting! Tell me about yourself. More important, tell me how you got here.

I haven’t heard those words used since I died. Heaven and hell have never been mentioned. We’re in the hereafter. And it’s too bad you don’t remember how you got here. That’s something I’d really like to know.

Well, I used to be Doug.

So, you’re a comedian as well as a writer. Fine. If you’re going to call me Used-To-Be-Doug, I’m going to call you Still-Sean.

Sure. I’ll answer any questions I can. But you should know that I’m on duty right now, and I’ll hardly have time to warn you when I’m summoned to a job. Some cues we have to act on immediately.

As I said, this is new, so I’ll have to think about how to let you watch me work. Seeing what I do and seeing the outcomes of my interventions should answer many of your questions.

You’ll have to be able to hear and see of course, and you’ll need explanations as well. I’ve got it! I know what I’ll do. For you, it’ll be like watching television, but with a voice-over that will give you some of the past histories and thoughts of the beings you’re seeing. Oh, and you’ll have to keep your eyes closed. If you open them, you’ll lose contact. All you’ll have to do is sit here, relax, learn, and enjoy.

Sorry. No, Still-Sean. I don’t provide beer and pretzels. You really are a comedian, aren’t you?

You didn’t think you’d have to work after you died? None of us did. None of us could ever have imagined what it’s like here in the hereafter.

We, the dead as you’d call us, are all around you. You say you’re a writer, so you’d probably use words like unsubstantial, ethereal, or intangible if you were trying to describe us. We are, quite simply, thoughts. We are the memories of all of the thoughts, feelings, and sensations of our lives.

This isn’t easy to explain. If something makes us happy, sad, or proud, for example, the memory of how those experiences made us feel when we were alive is triggered, and we feel the sensations again. We feel happy when we succeed at our work and sad when we don’t. We feel proud of an especially tricky job well done.

And we’re everywhere. We surround you. We waft through the air around you, and our job is to help when you’re in crisis. I told you I’ve never been able to communicate directly with a being before, but I do communicate with them. It’s always indirectly, though, and they’re rarely aware of it.

When beings experience stress, they send out a certain type of signal. We pick up those signals, observe, and respond. Well, the bosses pick up the signals and assign us our clients. We don’t get to choose.

But we’re also assigned clients that don’t know they need, or are going to need, our help. How the bosses find them, or how they choose, I have no idea.

And I have to say that they do a good job matching thinkers and clients. We’re always assigned clients who speak our language and who grew up with our customs.

So, yes! You are watched, and we do help. Well, as much as we can. We can’t move things or make noises like you see in the movies. What we can do is project thoughts into you. We can boost your mood, give you confidence, and even suggest solutions. We can make you think you see things that aren’t there or feel things like hunger, fatigue, and even pain. And, as I said, we feel good when we succeed. We might complain about having to work, but it really is a great job.

You thought heaven would be something like the farm where you grew up? Interesting. I like your description. I’m enjoying imagining lying on sweet-smelling grass, watching big, fluffy clouds sail slowly across a blue sky, and hearing cows and sheep in the distance. That will be a good addition to your joining when you get here. I’ll explain about joining later. And you already know that you’ll just have to forget about the having nothing to do and a long, warm summer day to do it in.

No, we can’t do that. We can’t stop beings from doing bad things if they’re firmly determined. As I said, we can only suggest. We have no power to make you do anything you don’t want to do. More to the point we, well, except for the level fours, are never assigned clients who are planning evil. I’ll explain more about that later.

You know those aha moments. Moments when you suddenly understood something or solved a problem you’d been wrestling with for ages? Times when you turned down a road that you would never have thought of turning down, and it was the best turn you ever made. That was probably one of us. Although you do have aha moments on your own, many of them come from us.

There’s my cue. Later.

Sandra Barnes was sixth in the lineup for the bus when the driver made his announcement. “Sorry, folks. We’re full. The next bus is in two hours.”

Sandra’s dark brown eyes filled with tears, and her long dark hair swung around as she turned her lithe dancer’s body back towards the terminal.

She was going to be late for the audition. There was an outside chance they’d be running late. There was an even more of an outside chance that they’d understand and fit her in at the end. This troupe had their choice of dancers, and they weren’t known to make exceptions.

But she was only dreaming. When Joe told her he’d gotten her into these auditions, she thought her luck might be changing. Fat chance! Years and years of bone-wearying, muscle-aching, poverty-inducing work, and she was no closer to her goal. She wiped a tear away from her pale cheek.

After a few steps, her overwhelming sense of dejection suddenly turned into optimism. It was as if a switch had been flipped. There could be a chance. There could be one empty seat. The driver could have missed it when he checked the first time. And if there was, she’d be standing there, ready to grab it.

Sandra turned around, walked back toward the closed door of the bus, and waited. All of the others had gone back inside, grumbling loudly all the way.

After a few minutes, the door opened, the driver stuck his head out, looked at her, and pointed towards the back of the bus. “There’s one empty seat. Do you want it?”

A very relieved Sandra rushed over and thankfully boarded the bus. Maybe her luck was changing.

I’m back. That was an unusually fast and easy job. You saw how it works. I simply sent her the idea that she shouldn’t give up and that there could be an empty seat. And I threw in a good dose of optimism.

I can’t explain it better than to say that we project a thought into our client, and they take it from there. I never know whether to use the word project or inject; they both work. Not everybody listens, and some don’t use the solutions we provide. I’ve projected good, happy thoughts and perfect solutions into a number of beings who have ignored them. The good news is that most do hear. Most do benefit from our work.

Personally, I like to check back on my clients whenever I can. I like to know the long-term outcomes of my interventions. Not all of us do. It’s a personal decision.

No, that’s something we can’t do. We all try it, of course. Once we get oriented, we find our families and watch over them. But the thing is, we’re never assigned to anyone we knew when we were alive, and we can only project into clients that are assigned to us.

That’s why I can’t understand how we can communicate. But I’m really enjoying the experience. It’s a pleasure to be telling you all about the hereafter, and all about me, and my work, of course. I like being Used-To-Be-Doug.

So, as I was saying, we’ve all tried to make contact with our loved ones. But we can’t really get through, except to make them remember us. We can make them think they see us walking towards them, but when the person gets closer, they realize that it’s just somebody who looks a bit like we used to. And we can make them suddenly remember something we said or did. We can also make them feel us standing beside them for a few seconds. Lots of little things like that. It feels good when they remember us. But it feels bad when we make them cry.

In any case, most of us try to keep an eye out for our families, and the practice is tolerated. I should add that this is only temporary. It’s not just that we change. The living change even more. I’ve been dead for many of your years, and the people I knew and loved are not the people I knew and loved anymore.

I watched over my wife for a while. I kept trying to let her know that I was thinking of her, that I missed her, and that I loved her. I kept trying to send her solutions to the problems she was having, even though I knew they couldn’t get through. But she changed so much, I stopped knowing her. She was a different being. I still have feelings of love for the woman I knew, but she doesn’t exist anymore.

More to the point, any time with family is taken away from joining. Enough said.

There’s...