Dead Certain
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Swearwords: None.
Description: I'm just reassuring your readers that they're not wasting their lives – or, if they are, they'll be sent back to get it right next time.
Swearwords: None.
Description: I'm just reassuring your readers that they're not wasting their lives – or, if they are, they'll be sent back to get it right next time.
You don’t have to be here for long before you realise that the reason we forget our past lives is to save us the embarrassment of facing the idiotic way we behaved down on Earth in earlier incarnations. To be fair, some of the things we’ve worked out show great insight, considering we’re in much the same position as an ant trying to describe an elephant. Of course, most cosmologists still think there’s only one elephant. One smart insight Humans have had is the recognition that time is relative. In the simplest terms, a nanosecond is aeons long at the instant of a Big Bang but a Human decade is the blink of an eye to the Llangernyw yew.
My death was instantaneous – at least that’s what it says in the coroner’s report – but you can take my word for it that a lot happened in that instant! Life is extinct when your heart stops pumping but there is still a good deal of oxygenated blood keeping your brain alive. The body may well be collapsing but you can still see and hear – to be honest, I couldn’t hear much after the gun went off so close to me. It’s traumatic to realise that you’re dead.
It wasn’t just the speed of my demise that the coroner got wrong. She described me as an innocent bystander who just happened to be too close to the famous politician the inept assassin was targeting. I’d been here for some time before I was told that I was the intended target although the gunman was as confused as the coroner. Apparently, he arrived here a few seconds after I did but he’s already snuggled into a developing foetus. It’s unsettling to think of some proud young woman nurturing under her heart a child with the soul of an assassin.
It’s rather hard to describe ‘here’. It’s nothing at all like the idea of heaven you have down on Earth; then again, it bears no similarity to hell or purgatory. The nearest I can come is to compare it to a hotel where you’ve been sent for one night because your flight has been delayed. You hang around the lounge in five star luxury, not daring to stray too far in case you miss information about your onward connection. Conversation with fellow guests is limited to speculation about the reason for and the likely extent of the delay in finding you a new body.
It’s comfortable and the food’s good but you won’t be here long so you only unpack clean socks, pants, shirt and toilet bag. I say that the food’s good but I don’t remember eating, although I always feel that I’ve just enjoyed a cordon bleu meal. Most people don’t see this side of the afterlife when they die; their souls are sent to their new body almost before the old one is cold. There used to be a re-training section for people that had messed up the life just ended but the increase in Human population has forced that programme to be suspended.
Indeed, the pressure of numbers is so great that animal souls are being used when they’ve hardly reached the minimum standard. Ten iterations as a mammal is mandatory but they used to manage twenty – and they had a conversion course as well! There is growing concern that the increase in Humans with poorly prepared animal souls is causing cruel behaviour, particularly to children.
Nothing is decided in a rush up here! I was terminated early to take part in a field study designed to improve Human utilisation of the planet. My mentor is a bit cagey, but I get the impression that several groups will be operating on Earth over the next four or five hundred years exploring new ways of conditioning souls. It’s all to do with helping Humanity to survive. They’ve been doing it for centuries but thankfully they’ve moved on a bit from floods and pillars of salt.
It’s because of the experiment that I’m waiting in this transit area. Most souls are reborn in the first available body stopping here just long enough to have the memories of their past existences erased. You’ll no doubt have read of people claiming to be able to recall past lives but my mentor insists it is impossible. My opinion is that they certainly have the skill up here to prevent leakage between lives but they’re a bit slap-dash so I’m not surprised that a few old memories persist.
I suppose it’s natural enough that the memories of people that have lived memorable lives are most likely to survive. You’re going to remember being Cleopatra in a past incarnation more than the maid that brought the asses’ milk for the Queen’s bath. To tell the truth, I’d rather talk to the maid who’d have known all the background information and the back-stairs’ gossip. I’ll bet Cleopatra didn’t even know how many asses were needed to fill the bath! It’s the asses that have always bothered me about that story: they are singularly loud and raucous animals. They’d have to be stabled a mile away so as not to drown the mellow rattle of the sistrum serenading the Queen and I’d have thought the Egyptian heat would have soured the milk before it arrived.
My situation will be rather different. Some of my memories will remain since I have to carry information with me into the body I’ll next occupy. Mine is a high level experiment but trials are in place at all levels. One of the most interesting is using insect souls without prior conditioning through several incarnations in animals. I’d be less worried about this development if they were doing something about the child-abusers that they’ve sent down recently.
My mentor says that research is more carefully monitored than standard procedures. He freely admits that things are likely to get worse in future since fewer people are achieving the standard that frees them from the cycle of life. It is those people, of course, who are the mentors and administrators of the future.
The rest of us go on dying and being reborn. One snippet of information I picked up by shamelessly eavesdropping: mass killings are much more difficult to organise now than in the past. In the very early days when everyone but Noah was exterminated the administration paid no heed to the response of Humans. The pandemic era served them well with the Black Death still talked about with admiration. In those days no one expected rational explanations so the folk up here were never seriously questioned – ‘God’s Will’ covers a multitude of sins.
Lately the ingenuity of Human scientists has rather spoiled the global success of disease as a wholesale killer. Aids was supposed to be a major means of re-cycling souls but we managed to ameliorate the effects. Even its sponsors up here doubt that Zika virus will do much to stem the population explosion; at best it will ease the situation for a year or two until we find a cure.
As my mentor says, without wars the planet would be in a sorry state.
He’s a strange guy. Once he had picked his team he spent some time selecting an artistic way to harvest each of our souls. He decided against natural causes because he wanted us to reach here with our souls in an agitated state. His theory is that we’ll be keen as mustard after we’re reborn. He stepped off the wheel of life in the twelfth century somewhere in Tibet and he’s fascinated by modern technology.
One of his experimental team died in an aircraft accident, another in a collision with a driverless car; I was shot as an apparently innocent bystander and the fourth member was mangled when an escalator failed and she was precipitated into the mechanism.
My death sounds commonplace, I suppose, but the details were complexly choreographed. The important person the gunman believed to be the target was hurried into the lobby of the hotel I was staying at to avoid a demonstration in the street outside. Armed guards were clearing the lobby and checking the stairs prior to the politician going up in the lift to a secure room. I was descending in the manned lift and I stepped out into the lobby to be faced by three uniformed men carrying enormous guns. While I stood gawping the lift attendant came out behind me – carrying a hand gun. I raised my arms as ordered, bumping into the attendant who was about to fire at the personage. I caused him to stumble as he pulled the trigger and his shot removed most of my heart and much of my spine.
As my brain ran out of oxygen, my vision darkened. It took a surprisingly long time for me to black out. I couldn’t move and my face was on the floor but I could see boots tramping back and forth. Eventually a boot appeared right beside my head and my view point changed so I assume that he pushed me over onto my back. My vision was very dim by this stage so he didn’t have to bend down to see that I was dead.
I suppose this was the sleep of death everyone talks about but it didn’t leave a lasting impression on me. I woke, refreshed and sitting in an armchair in the lobby of the transit hotel. I had a moment of confusion because one hotel lobby looks very much like another and I remember checking that the politician and his gun-toting minders had gone. My mentor tuned into my thoughts to reassure me that I was safely deceased.
The guy in the chair next to mine – he or she was more like a presence than an actual being – chuckled at my bewilderment and told me that I’d get used to things. He or she is waiting to join a three month foetus that will discover the mathematical formula to explain dark matter. It most cases the soul joins at conception but they seem to be relaxed up here about staying away until the fourth month of the pregnancy. I’m not sure of the ethics of leaving a foetus that long without a soul.
Because I have a special mission, they’re monitoring a pregnancy at the moment. They selected a couple with a high statistical probability of providing a child with the right characteristics but they’re awaiting an analysis of the amniotic fluid before finalising my transfer. My mentor is happy enough for me to stay around here but I’m determined to move into the womb as soon as I get the go-ahead. In more relaxed times, souls sometimes waited for centuries until the ideal conception occurred – Leonardo’s soul had been waiting since the fall of Rome!
My needs are much simpler. About thirty years after my next birth, I’ll be inspired to develop a system of telepathy that will essentially make it impossible for people to tell lies. I haven’t been given any details but I presume I’ll be searching for a high-tech solution. I rather like the idea that I might be the new Geppetto ensuring that the noses of politicians attempting to lie will grow and grow.
My death was instantaneous – at least that’s what it says in the coroner’s report – but you can take my word for it that a lot happened in that instant! Life is extinct when your heart stops pumping but there is still a good deal of oxygenated blood keeping your brain alive. The body may well be collapsing but you can still see and hear – to be honest, I couldn’t hear much after the gun went off so close to me. It’s traumatic to realise that you’re dead.
It wasn’t just the speed of my demise that the coroner got wrong. She described me as an innocent bystander who just happened to be too close to the famous politician the inept assassin was targeting. I’d been here for some time before I was told that I was the intended target although the gunman was as confused as the coroner. Apparently, he arrived here a few seconds after I did but he’s already snuggled into a developing foetus. It’s unsettling to think of some proud young woman nurturing under her heart a child with the soul of an assassin.
It’s rather hard to describe ‘here’. It’s nothing at all like the idea of heaven you have down on Earth; then again, it bears no similarity to hell or purgatory. The nearest I can come is to compare it to a hotel where you’ve been sent for one night because your flight has been delayed. You hang around the lounge in five star luxury, not daring to stray too far in case you miss information about your onward connection. Conversation with fellow guests is limited to speculation about the reason for and the likely extent of the delay in finding you a new body.
It’s comfortable and the food’s good but you won’t be here long so you only unpack clean socks, pants, shirt and toilet bag. I say that the food’s good but I don’t remember eating, although I always feel that I’ve just enjoyed a cordon bleu meal. Most people don’t see this side of the afterlife when they die; their souls are sent to their new body almost before the old one is cold. There used to be a re-training section for people that had messed up the life just ended but the increase in Human population has forced that programme to be suspended.
Indeed, the pressure of numbers is so great that animal souls are being used when they’ve hardly reached the minimum standard. Ten iterations as a mammal is mandatory but they used to manage twenty – and they had a conversion course as well! There is growing concern that the increase in Humans with poorly prepared animal souls is causing cruel behaviour, particularly to children.
Nothing is decided in a rush up here! I was terminated early to take part in a field study designed to improve Human utilisation of the planet. My mentor is a bit cagey, but I get the impression that several groups will be operating on Earth over the next four or five hundred years exploring new ways of conditioning souls. It’s all to do with helping Humanity to survive. They’ve been doing it for centuries but thankfully they’ve moved on a bit from floods and pillars of salt.
It’s because of the experiment that I’m waiting in this transit area. Most souls are reborn in the first available body stopping here just long enough to have the memories of their past existences erased. You’ll no doubt have read of people claiming to be able to recall past lives but my mentor insists it is impossible. My opinion is that they certainly have the skill up here to prevent leakage between lives but they’re a bit slap-dash so I’m not surprised that a few old memories persist.
I suppose it’s natural enough that the memories of people that have lived memorable lives are most likely to survive. You’re going to remember being Cleopatra in a past incarnation more than the maid that brought the asses’ milk for the Queen’s bath. To tell the truth, I’d rather talk to the maid who’d have known all the background information and the back-stairs’ gossip. I’ll bet Cleopatra didn’t even know how many asses were needed to fill the bath! It’s the asses that have always bothered me about that story: they are singularly loud and raucous animals. They’d have to be stabled a mile away so as not to drown the mellow rattle of the sistrum serenading the Queen and I’d have thought the Egyptian heat would have soured the milk before it arrived.
My situation will be rather different. Some of my memories will remain since I have to carry information with me into the body I’ll next occupy. Mine is a high level experiment but trials are in place at all levels. One of the most interesting is using insect souls without prior conditioning through several incarnations in animals. I’d be less worried about this development if they were doing something about the child-abusers that they’ve sent down recently.
My mentor says that research is more carefully monitored than standard procedures. He freely admits that things are likely to get worse in future since fewer people are achieving the standard that frees them from the cycle of life. It is those people, of course, who are the mentors and administrators of the future.
The rest of us go on dying and being reborn. One snippet of information I picked up by shamelessly eavesdropping: mass killings are much more difficult to organise now than in the past. In the very early days when everyone but Noah was exterminated the administration paid no heed to the response of Humans. The pandemic era served them well with the Black Death still talked about with admiration. In those days no one expected rational explanations so the folk up here were never seriously questioned – ‘God’s Will’ covers a multitude of sins.
Lately the ingenuity of Human scientists has rather spoiled the global success of disease as a wholesale killer. Aids was supposed to be a major means of re-cycling souls but we managed to ameliorate the effects. Even its sponsors up here doubt that Zika virus will do much to stem the population explosion; at best it will ease the situation for a year or two until we find a cure.
As my mentor says, without wars the planet would be in a sorry state.
He’s a strange guy. Once he had picked his team he spent some time selecting an artistic way to harvest each of our souls. He decided against natural causes because he wanted us to reach here with our souls in an agitated state. His theory is that we’ll be keen as mustard after we’re reborn. He stepped off the wheel of life in the twelfth century somewhere in Tibet and he’s fascinated by modern technology.
One of his experimental team died in an aircraft accident, another in a collision with a driverless car; I was shot as an apparently innocent bystander and the fourth member was mangled when an escalator failed and she was precipitated into the mechanism.
My death sounds commonplace, I suppose, but the details were complexly choreographed. The important person the gunman believed to be the target was hurried into the lobby of the hotel I was staying at to avoid a demonstration in the street outside. Armed guards were clearing the lobby and checking the stairs prior to the politician going up in the lift to a secure room. I was descending in the manned lift and I stepped out into the lobby to be faced by three uniformed men carrying enormous guns. While I stood gawping the lift attendant came out behind me – carrying a hand gun. I raised my arms as ordered, bumping into the attendant who was about to fire at the personage. I caused him to stumble as he pulled the trigger and his shot removed most of my heart and much of my spine.
As my brain ran out of oxygen, my vision darkened. It took a surprisingly long time for me to black out. I couldn’t move and my face was on the floor but I could see boots tramping back and forth. Eventually a boot appeared right beside my head and my view point changed so I assume that he pushed me over onto my back. My vision was very dim by this stage so he didn’t have to bend down to see that I was dead.
I suppose this was the sleep of death everyone talks about but it didn’t leave a lasting impression on me. I woke, refreshed and sitting in an armchair in the lobby of the transit hotel. I had a moment of confusion because one hotel lobby looks very much like another and I remember checking that the politician and his gun-toting minders had gone. My mentor tuned into my thoughts to reassure me that I was safely deceased.
The guy in the chair next to mine – he or she was more like a presence than an actual being – chuckled at my bewilderment and told me that I’d get used to things. He or she is waiting to join a three month foetus that will discover the mathematical formula to explain dark matter. It most cases the soul joins at conception but they seem to be relaxed up here about staying away until the fourth month of the pregnancy. I’m not sure of the ethics of leaving a foetus that long without a soul.
Because I have a special mission, they’re monitoring a pregnancy at the moment. They selected a couple with a high statistical probability of providing a child with the right characteristics but they’re awaiting an analysis of the amniotic fluid before finalising my transfer. My mentor is happy enough for me to stay around here but I’m determined to move into the womb as soon as I get the go-ahead. In more relaxed times, souls sometimes waited for centuries until the ideal conception occurred – Leonardo’s soul had been waiting since the fall of Rome!
My needs are much simpler. About thirty years after my next birth, I’ll be inspired to develop a system of telepathy that will essentially make it impossible for people to tell lies. I haven’t been given any details but I presume I’ll be searching for a high-tech solution. I rather like the idea that I might be the new Geppetto ensuring that the noses of politicians attempting to lie will grow and grow.
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned eleven novels and many short stories. His eight latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty, Killing Cousins, Damaged Lives and Patriotism – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned eleven novels and many short stories. His eight latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty, Killing Cousins, Damaged Lives and Patriotism – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.