Question Sixty-Four

The room was so white it seemed to glow. So white it felt unfinished. It had no windows. Curiously enough, no lamps either. Mae was fairly sure foreign intelligence got locked up in such places.

At the far end of the room—or what seemed like the far end, though distance was doing something funny here—there was a counter. Behind it, a clerk. They appeared to be in their late twenties, though one might be deceived by the lack of shadows on their face.

Everything here was evenly lit, impossibly so. A photographer’s dream. A migraine’s too.

Mae took a deep breath and realised she couldn’t smell hot asphalt anymore. Frankly, she couldn’t smell anything at all.

She approached the desk. Her footsteps made no sound.

The clerk checked something on a sheet she could not see, then slid an ivory card across the counter.

120,384,221,706

Mae stared at it. “That’s my number?”

“It is.”

“That’s one way to make someone feel insignificant,” she murmured.

The clerk folded their hands.

“Please find the chair with said number. Your form is waiting for you there.”

Mae looked over her shoulder at the rows of identical seats. “The chair with the twelve-digit number.”

“Do take a pen with you.”

“Right. Of course.”

The clerk nudged a metal box of pens toward her.

There was a plain black one. A plain blue one. An old-fashioned fountain pen with gold embellishments. A cheap yellow one with tooth marks on the cap. Then there was a translucent purple pen with silver glitter suspended inside, tiny stars caught in the barrel, still deciding whether to sink or float.

Mae’s gaze went to it at once.

Just to make sure her hand wouldn’t.

She took the plain black pen.

Naturally.

Mae turned. The rows of chairs seemed ordinary until she started passing them. Every seat had a number. Every number was absurdly large. People sat with clipboards in their laps, bent over pages. Some wrote briskly. Some stared. One man had his forehead in his hand as if the form had given him a headache. A little girl swung her legs and filled in lines with serene concentration. No one looked at anyone else.

She found her seat. Just as she had been told, a clipboard rested on it.

At the top, in clean sans-serif: STANDARD EXPERIENCE REVIEW — FORM TE-3 (TEMPORARY OCCUPANCY).

Below, in smaller print: Please answer all 77 questions completely and honestly. Do not leave blanks. Estimated completion: at one’s pace.

Mae blinked.

Seventy-seven? This is hell.

At the desk, the clerk looked up.

She was fairly sure she did not say those out loud.

She sat down, with a foolish hope of blending into the crowd and saving the last scraps of patience the clerk might still have for her. The chair was comfortable in a way that felt manipulative.

She began.

Question 1: How would you rate your overall stay?

She found it quite amusing how they wanted her to answer such a vast question honestly and yet manage to fit it into one line.

Manageable, she ended up writing.

Question 2: Did the assigned duration feel appropriate?

She tapped the pen against the clipboard.

Did it?

She had complained often enough that things dragged. Days that had sometimes felt like they had no end. Yet there had also been weeks so brief and sharp they vanished before she even registered them.

Did she want to stay there longer? Would it have gone downhill in a few years? People usually say so.

She settled on ‘Unsure’.

Question 3: Did your departure occur at a convenient time?

She barked a short laugh before she could help it.

No one looked up, yet heat flashed up her face anyway. She bent over the form.

No.

She imagined most people would say the same.

Question 4: Were your personal effects left in acceptable order?

Probably not.

Question 5: Did your expectations match the reality of the stay?

She wrote: I didn’t have any.

That’s a lie. She had expectations. Fantasies, she called them.

Question 6: Did you find fellow occupants easy to live among?

Mostly. I may have wanted too much.

Question 7: Preferred weather conditions?

That made her pause. She hadn’t expected a question like that. Couldn’t imagine why they might be interested in such a thing.

Then again, she couldn’t imagine why they might be interested in her opinion in the first place. Given the number of reviews, they probably weren’t.

She wrote: Weather that excuses staying in.

Question 8: Favourite season?

Autumn.

Question 9: Preferred time of day?

Very early morning.

Question 10: Favourite animal?

Her mouth twitched.

Ducks.

Question 11: Favourite colour?

Her eyes flicked, treacherously, toward the clerk’s desk.

Purple.

Question 12: Which sound did you find most comforting?

She wrote: Running water.

How boring, she thought, and crossed the answer out.

After a moment, she put down: Hairdryer. Her hairdresser used to laugh about that. Said no one else got so drowsy under a blowout.

So embarrassing. Her hand flew to her answer, ready to strike again.

They won’t read it anyway.

She went on.

Question 13: Which small pleasure did you return to most often?

Duck videos.

Death, just take me already.

Question 14: Biggest disappointment?

The answer was simple. Short. She knew it.

Two letters. One word.

She wrote: Healthy food tasting bad.

The page turned.

Question 15: Did you contribute positively to the experience of others?

The change in tone felt like whiplash.

Mae stared. She wanted to say yes.

Surely there had been moments. Times people had looked genuinely grateful. Times she had helped. Times she had listened. Times she had stayed up with someone. Times she had made someone laugh so hard they snorted.

Unless they had only been polite.

Unless someone else had to clean up after her every time and she just never noticed.

She wrote: I tried to.

Then she crossed it out because it sounded like failure.

She wrote: I hope so.

Crossed that out too.

She stared until the words blurred, then printed in careful block letters: I did not always know how, but I intended to.

That looked defensive. Self-protective. As if she wanted partial credit for effort.

She drew a line through it and sat very still.

Only then did she notice how quiet it actually was. No clock ticking. No air-conditioning hum. No traffic outside.

Her hand went instinctively toward her pocket. Flat.

Right.

She looked sideways. The woman beside her—older and elegant—was answering question seven with neat handwriting.

Good. I’m slightly ahead. I can spend some more time on this question. What if I skimmed over the previous ones? No, I answered them instinctively. That’s why it was fast. If I start overthinking, will the next ones come out curated?

A chair opposite to her scraped the floor as a man stood up to turn in his paper.

Okay focus.

She looked down again. The question waited for an answer with stubborn patience.

Question 15: Did you contribute positively to the experience of others?

To my knowledge, I did.

Question 16: Did others contribute positively to your experience?

Don’t be ungrateful.

Of course.

Question 17: Did you receive appropriate assistance when necessary?

She wrote: It wasn’t necessary.

Question 18: Did you find it easier to care for others than to identify your own needs?

Wasn’t that what she was supposed to do? Put the needs of others above her own? Be a good friend, coworker, sister? It seemed silly to even ask.

She put down: Yes.

Question 19: Were you more patient with others than with yourself?

You never knew what someone was going through. Being patient with them was only natural. And she knew she wasn’t going through anything of importance.

Yes, she wrote again.

Question 20: Did you permit yourself the same margin for error you granted other people?

She frowned. The questions seemed to love circling this particular topic. Her gaze slid down the page. More questions of a similar nature appearing.

Question 21: What did you postpone until you became a better version of yourself?

Question 22: Did you believe your sadness made you ungrateful?

Question 23: Did you believe your passions made you childish?

Question 24: Did you often compare your experience with others’?

Her throat went dry. Eyes started to sting. Mae blamed the brightness.

She turned the page.

There were more.

Questions about not chasing her dreams because she thought them silly. Questions about cutting parts of herself she deemed not adult enough. Questions about not trusting her judgement and looking for the approval of others.

Mae pressed her lips together.

To her right, paper shifted.

She glanced over with all the subtlety of a student who had never cheated before.

The elegant woman’s page was different. The form asked about art. Legacy. Expression. About beauty, influence, and the shape a person leaves in other people’s lives.

Those were not her questions.

Maybe those had been on the previous page. Maybe she’d skimmed. Maybe—

She flipped back. Not there.

Flipped forward. Not there either.

A hot flush went through her.

Why didn’t I get those questions? Was I not creative enough? Not important enough? Not substantial enough to be asked what I made?

Why are mine all—

Her throat went tight.

Condescending, she thought at first. Then another thought slid in beneath it with all the grace of a knife.

Accurate.

She stood so abruptly the clipboard nearly fell. At the desk, the clerk looked up as she approached.

“Yes?”

“I think there’s been a mistake.”

They held out a hand. She gave them the pages. Their gaze moved down them without hurry.

“There is no mistake.”

“The questions are different.”

“They are meant to be.”

“No, I mean from other people’s.” She lowered her voice, suddenly certain that everyone could hear her even though no one had looked up. “I saw someone else’s form and it had—”

The clerk set the pages down.

“Are you certain it’s a different set of questions you’d like?”

Something in the way they asked it made her stomach drop, like the question itself opened a trapdoor under her feet.

A different set of questions.

Did she want to be asked about legacy? Creativity? Influence? To sit back down with a form implying she ought to have left monuments behind, shaped lives, founded movements, painted canvases big enough to matter?

Would she have known what to write?

The clerk waited.

Mae swallowed. “I just wanted to make sure it was the right one. I wouldn’t want to cause any issues later on.”

“There is no 'later on',” the clerk said. They slid the paper back to her. “Finish your review.”

She looked down.

Question twenty again:

Did you permit yourself the same margin for error you granted other people?

A strange, empty feeling filled her chest. She took the paper and sat back down without another word.

The pen moved.

No more crossed-out answers. No more trying to sound cool. No more guessing what would score her more points.

She answered like there was nothing left to defend.

Yes, I was harder on myself.

Yes, I was waiting to become someone worth living the life I wanted.

Yes, I believed I had nothing to be sad about.

Yes, I believed my passions were childish.

I compared myself all the time.

When she reached the last page, her chest felt hollowed out. She felt lighter than before.

Question 77: Would you recommend this experience to others?

She wrote: Not in the way I did it.

When she stood to return the form, her legs felt unsteady, like she had been carrying something a long way and had only just put it down.

At the desk, the clerk relieved her of both the clipboard and the pen, then began to flip through the pages. Not bothering to read it in full, it seemed. Confirming completion.

“Mae Brooks,” they said.

“Yes.”

“You skipped question sixty-four.”

Her heart jumped slightly. “I did?”

They rotated the clipboard toward her.

64. Biggest obstacle encountered?

Ah. Of course.

Of all the questions to leave blank.

The clerk gently nudged the pen box toward her.

“You may use any writing instrument.”

She almost took the black one again. Habit moved first.

Then she stopped.

The purple pen lay untouched, glitter settled in one end of the barrel like a tiny caught galaxy. Childish. Ridiculous. Completely unnecessary.

She picked it up.

It was heavier than the black one. The ink came out a deep violet that flashed silver when she moved her hand.

For question sixty-four, she wrote:

Myself.

The clerk looked at the answer, then removed the form from the clipboard and set it aside.

For the first time since she entered, Mae noticed the wall behind the desk was not a wall at all. The place extended way past what she initially thought. Distance really did something funny here.

Mae’s fingers loosened around the glitter pen. The clerk took it gently from her hand and placed it back in the box among the other ones.

Then they stepped aside, hand stretching out toward the light.

“Welcome to Afterlife.”