Too Soon

All I do is float. It’s a joke. In life, I walked with a limp, giving me a roguish swagger (or so I liked to think, anyway. Unlike that Barbara I dated who kept suggesting I should take the stone out of my shoe). Now I glide hither and thither, as majestic as the mighty Titanic gliding across the North Atlantic Ocean. And similarly doomed. I rest here in pieces, with the ability to see everything, and the power to do nothing. Like seeing how my best friend Billy went through my address book after I died to get Barbara’s number. Well, they’re welcome to each other. He’s lost all his hair and she’s growing more of hers, but in places other than her head, if you get me. So they’ve got something follicular to talk about after all the frolicking is done at least. And I couldn’t even warn him about her third nipple.

Anyway, moving on. Just like Barbara did. As you might have noticed, it’s a wee bit crowded here. Everyone who ever died is here. Just think about that for a moment. Everyone who ever died. Right here. Except the ultra-rich who can afford reincarnation. But even they don’t get to choose what they’re reincarnated as. Henry Ford ended up as a beetle. O, sweet irony.

Think of a number. Of dead people, I’m not a magician, I don’t read minds, I hold no cards and certainly no coins. No currency is valid here. So, that number. Times it by a trillion million battalion vermillion and add a one for luck.

I was kinda famous IRL, in my little community back home at least. Now I’m a nobody. So yeah; great news folks, we finally achieve equality. Bad news: we all died for it. We’ve seen all the cycles, all the seasons, the booms, the busts, good versus evil going at it for centuries and you all keep making the same fucking mistakes. Every time you had a chance to fix things, you messed it up, or let an opportunity pass you by. I’m not talking about you personally. But maybe you personally. Most of us have skeletons in the closets, but if you had a decent send-off I would hope yours is six feet under now, or turned to ashes.

This AI thing though…is confounding some of us. We ain’t never seen anything quite like it before. Some of the higher uppers – you can make one out right now if you look up, that’s Gerald floating around the strip lights (he’s a sparky who still misses the day job) – think humanity may actually end. Victims of our own devices. Mortem ex machina. Then I guess all the seats on this spiritual plane will finally be filled.

Now, I’m afraid it is true, you are indeed stuck with the clothes you died in. So I hope those stilettos are comfortable. An exception is made for Halloween, where everybody gets to dress up.

I can see you’re feeling scared. Don’t worry – you’ll regain the power of speech in five days. It’s all part of the onboarding process. We find people tend to have a lot of questions when they die, but it’s best we just tell it like it is while you guys button it, as it’s more or less the same for everyone. In previous millennia, when we allowed the sound on, there were too many screamers. It was distracting the people who actually want to learn. You’ll find there’s a lot to take in, so we’ve condensed the salient points into this guide. Have a go at picking it up. Haha, sorry, just my little joke. You’ll be able to do it one day, maybe. Give it a few hundred years or so. Some of the lucky ones eventually gain the ability to grasp but there’s too many clowns who use it to freak out the people they didn’t like (or rather, the ancestors of the people they didn’t like – some grudges really stick) by making books fall off shelves and onto their heads, rather than pick up an actual book themselves. And heaven forbid, learn something.

We don’t allow phones here. We’ve seen what they do to people. And we already crash into each other enough up here. Did I mention the overcrowding? Just checking that you’re keeping up. We are ghosts. Not zombies.

Just going to fix this sticker on you with your name on it, then you can take a seat with the new recruits. The introductory video from our C.E.O. (Chief Ectoplasm Officer) will commence in approximately 15 minutes, giving you a chance to read the stickers of the others around you if you so wish, but you’ll probably never see each other again. It’s up to you what you do with your spare time. And you’re going to quickly discover you’ve got a lot of it.

You’ll be allocated a place to haunt. This is done entirely randomly, it doesn’t matter if it’s a place you’ve got no ties to, it’s just important that you scare the bejesus out of anyone living in it now. This is how future ghosts learn to be humble.

In a similarly randomised fashion, you will be allocated a mentor. It’s usually someone from the generation before yours, meaning they’re someone who’s settled in but the sheen of being freshly dead hasn’t quite worn off for them yet. Hopefully their enthusiasm will be an inspiration.

There will be a half hour break for refreshments. A lesson in acknowledging what can be seen, not touched. And it’s always your favourite food. I had to stare at a platter of barbecue ribs and cookie dough ice-cream for thirty goddam minutes when I first got up here, a reminder both of what I can never have again…and also of what helped to put me here in this state, I guess.

Off you go now, try a little practise glide maybe. It’ll help take the pressure off those heels perhaps. And don’t worry about tripping up, I mean, what’s the worst that could happen, you die? Haha, oh if you could see the look on your face. Too soon?