Click. The doors swung open allowing her to slowly shuffle in past them. As she inched her way through, a man from behind John came sprinting towards the opening. His feet crossed the threshold and he exploded into a cloud of dust. The little old woman was unaware of the tragedy that happened just feet behind her. Instead she was fixated on the goal in front of her. The door slowly clicked shut again.
The old woman disappeared from John’s view, fading back into nothing as she headed further across the span. The others went back to the business of testing keys, one by one being denied. John was up. This time he prayed that his key would work. Deep down, he could sense that it wouldn’t, that he didn’t deserve such an easy and safe passage to the magical tea house.
There was no surprise then when the key wouldn’t even fit into the lock. He would have known that if he had looked at the gate while waiting in line instead of watching those be denied. His hopefulness blinded him to what had been obvious all along. Moving on he made sure to look at the style of the locks before standing in line. There were five styles that kept repeating, and then every once in a while, he would see one that was completely different than the rest.
One of the more modern looking bridges had a keypad with the alphabet as buttons. He wondered to himself how someone could know the combination since everyone he saw was carrying a key. Curiosity got the best of him, so he sat cross-legged in the grass and waited for someone to attempt to open the gate. Most came and went, but there were a few that wondered how the lock would be opened, and as the curious crowd grew, conversations started about the lives the people held before. The crowd grew quickly until there were over a hundred people waiting contently for a person to attempt the keypad entrance.
A young man, no older than 15 or 16, walked up to the lock. He looked over at the large crowd in a state of wonder. “Why are you all here?” he asked.
A girl, no older than the boy, was the first to pipe up. “We all have keys. This lock has no key. We wondered how anyone would enter. How do you know the code?”
“At first I was so scared,” he said. “I saw all the locks and everyone with keys. I searched and searched to find mine. Then I finally worked up the courage to ask someone where they found their key. Person after person told me that when they got here, it was in their hand. I had nothing. How would I get to the house? We all want to get to the house. So, I walked and walked. Then it started calling to me. The code has been in my life, it was there my whole life. I was one of the only ones who understood it, and in life no one could understand me.”
He stared at all of them for a second. Hid demeanor changed right before their eyes. His still calmness went away and he began to twitch slightly. His arms flapped, and he yelped. The ability to tell any of his secrets was gone, and he no longer looked into the direction of the people, instead he stared off into nothingness. A woman near John began to cry into her hands. “Thank god,” she whispered over and over.
The young man made his way back to the pad, and the further he was from the crowd the easier and more confident his steps became. He typed six letters into the pad and the doors swung open. As he faded away into the mist some of the members of the crowd shouted in his direction. “What was the word?” they screamed. “You need to tell us.”
John looked over at the crying woman, who was now being held by a very large woman who looked as though she was made for hugging. She was stroking the crying woman’s hair, and shushing her as she pushed her into her pillow like body. Even John, who had very little contact with people in life, knew these were not tears of sorrow, but those of joy. That young man held a secret that this woman somehow shared, and his transition had opened the floodgates of tears. Relief. That was what he saw.
For the first time ever, John felt compelled to get involved in someone else’s business. He had spent his life observing others, but going out of his way to avoid actually participating in the moments. Walking up to the woman, his hands were shaking. He reached out and rubbed her back gently. The words came without John having to think. It was as if all the knowledge of the world existed here if you just opened yourself to it. “You know he will be okay when he gets here. I am sure he is as brave as that young man.”
She pulled out of her embrace with the other woman to turn and see John’s face. “Thank you,” she sniffled as she pulled John in for a hug. “I think I can look for my lock now. I was waiting. I just wasn’t sure. Thank you for stopping. I wouldn’t have seen this without you.”
John hadn’t realized at first, but she had been the first person to sit next to him as he waited. The hug felt warm and genuine. It made him wish he had participated more in life. Maybe he could have had more hugs like this one. The woman let go first, because John may have never let go. He didn’t want this moment to end. “You’ll be okay, John. We all will.”
He wanted to thank her for that, but she walked away before he could try. He figured it was probably time for him to go back to his search, too. The crowd quickly dispersed, as if it had never been. John tried a few more locks that looked like they matched the style of his key. Anything modern was out. Anything small was out. Only old bulky locks would do, and the four he had found so far had been a bust.
Then he saw another curious sight. There was a gate, but behind it there was no bridge. On closer inspection, he saw there was no lock. Just a small sign.
“End of the line.”
The watcher in John couldn’t help himself. He wasn’t ever going to make any progress if he kept stopping to see what the others were doing. But this was so different, he couldn’t will himself to move on until he saw if there was anyone who could fly or float across the hole. This time no one stopped to watch with John. The area had a feeling that washed over you that he was sure was keeping the others moving. As he sat there, it felt like tiny bugs were crawling up and down his arms and legs.
This wasn’t enough to stop John from waiting. He had sat through more uncomfortable situations then this to avoid engaging in life. Hours passed, then days, or it felt like that was the amount of time that was ticking by. It was hard to measure time in the supernatural realm. John wouldn’t be moved. The longer he waited, the more determined he became to see this play out. He was imagining all kinds of scenarios where someone with abilities unheard of in the living world would come along and find their way across the span.
He had laid back in the grass and was watching the puffy white clouds drift by when he finally heard a rustle in the grass. Shooting up, John saw an angry man approaching the gate. The man held a ring filled with keys. Hundreds of keys, clacking about in his hand as he stood at the edge of the hole. “Very funny, you sick son of a bitch,” the man hissed.
The keys arched high in the sky as he tossed them over the edge. John gasped as they fell out of view. This made the man turn towards him. “What are you looking at?” he screamed in John’s direction. “Ain’t you ever seen a dead man walking?”
John tried to decipher what that meant until the man did the unthinkable. He stepped right off the ledge. There was no floating or flying. He fell like a stone to the bottom of the hole. John didn’t want to know what was down there, because he was positive it wasn’t good. Now he knew why the others had avoided this place. This was the gate of the damned. John rubbed his key between his fingers and smiled. He wasn’t damned, and that was enough.
After a few more failed attempts, John began to notice a pattern. Good or bad, old or new, it was a series of opposites around the ultimate good in the center. John decided he was not bad enough to deserve one of the dreaded broken bridges, but he wondered if he was good enough to deserve one of the better ones. The answer called to him like a song. Its melody was haunting and deep. John needed to find the oldest bridge in the realm.
This was the bridge of the watchers. Those who had spent their lives not really living, but watching others take all the risks. Walking with a purpose, John passed right by a
ll of the other gates. A picture of his gate formed in his mind and he no longer had any uncertainty. There it was, all the way back at the beginning. It was kind of poetic that he could have been on the other side if he had just tried the first gate he saw. It was yet another failure to launch on John’s part.
The gate was old and rusted. The lock was many times larger than the others he had seen as he walked the edge of the hole. His key easily fit inside and turned with a rusted squeak. Unlike the other gates, John had to push his open. The bridge on the other side was petrifying. It wasn’t new and modern, or old and rickety. It was a series of stones floating in place. The further they were from the edge the closer they were together.
The first stone looked impossible to get to from where he stood. He wasn’t sure he could jump that far. Then he made the mistake of looking down. John’s heart raced harder as he saw the fate of those at the bottom of the pit. It was a sea of endless torment. You couldn’t make out the individual beings, but could see the pain swirling around in the pool of black that churned violently below. There was no way he would accept ending up there, not with a chance to get to that beacon of light.
He just had to make the jump. This was John’s leap of faith. The one he had been unwilling to take when he was still alive. But he stood there paralyzed, unable to push himself to try something that wasn’t a sure thing. He just stood there like a statue. The fear of ending up in the dark swirling abyss below had frozen him. Then, fingers reached out and intertwined with his own.
He looked to his side and the woman from the keypad was there. She was staring straight ahead. “We can do this if we go together, John.”
“How do you know my name?”
“You know mine too, just listen to the truth in the air around us.”
John closed his eyes and focused on the sound of the soft rumblings, the same ones that allowed him to find his gate. Flashes of a time before life itself swirled in his head. Mary. He knew her name now. They had been together before their time on earth. Visions of moments that they had lived together played out like a movie. She squeezed his hand, and he twirled a finger gently in a circle on her palm. He knew they had been together for eons. Time itself always tried to separate them, but they always managed to find each other.
“How did your key fit? You lived life. This bridge is a punishment for my refusal to live mine.”
“My key didn’t fit. It didn’t have to. It wasn’t locked. I pushed the gate and it swung open. When we separated, I felt like I was ripped in two. I knew I needed to find you again, but you had taken off too quick for me to catch back up to you. I feel better now that you’re with me. I am glad you didn’t jump yet.”
“I couldn’t,” he confessed.
She was quiet for a minute. A breeze blew through their hair. She squeezed his hand one more time and turned to look at him again. “John, look in my eyes. We can do this. We have done scarier things together, including spending a lifetime apart. If this is the end of all the trials, I need you to be there with me. I don’t want to be there alone.”
She turned back to face the bridge. “You shouldn’t be here. I saw another try to go into a gate where he didn’t belong. He disintegrated,” John replied.
“Wherever you are, that is where I belong. Even if that means it’s at the bottom of this pit. We need to go, John. We need to do this before I lose my nerve.”
He wanted to be strong for her. He may not be able to leap for himself, but he could do it for her. “You’re right, Mary. Now or never. On the count of three. One...Two...Three!”
They bent their knees and pushed off the ground as hard as they could. There was never a doubt. They were going to make it, and as they landed the rest of the stones pulled together allowing them to walk hand in hand across the expanse. “Thank you, Mary,” he said as he pulled her into an embrace. “I will never let them separate us again. You are my heart.”
“And you are my soul,” she whispered as she tucked into his chest.
The Survey
Day in and day out, millions of people all over the world go to work. Not because they wake up passionate about whatever job they may be headed out to, it was more likely because bills have to be paid and food isn’t free. So, John, like those millions, got up and headed out for work yet again. It was a beautiful Wednesday morning in the middle of fall. The sky was clear and the air was crisp. John was blessed to live in a place where fall meant God’s paintbrush came down and painted the trees a rainbow of reds, oranges, and yellows.
John didn’t notice the beauty in the world around him that morning. He was unaware that this would be his last chance to enjoy the feel of wind on his skin, or the irritation of sun shining too brightly in his eyes. His main focus was getting to work on time. His boss was a ball buster when it came to punctuality. Which was weird because he had little care about job performance, but show up one minute late and he would make your life a living hell. John managed to clock in with two minutes to spare.
Wrapping himself in his apron, John pushed the cart filled with boxes of produce out to the supermarket floor. He didn’t particularly like his job, but he didn’t hate it either. There was something calming about making oversized pyramids of fruit and vegetables. Plus, it paid the bills. Once the cart was empty John would have to go to the back to refill it before beginning again. That was when the accident happened. A large flat of cans slipped loose above John’s head as he was loading up the fruit below. The stockroom floor and walls looked like Jackson Pollock had graced them with a visit.
It was instant and painless for John, but for his co-workers it was traumatizing. Three people quit in the weeks after John’s death. They were unwilling to continue the day in, day out push at something they didn’t love. Life was too short. They went off to start a successful internet adventure blog. All three of them credited John’s life and death as being the catalyst that created the change in their lives. John created more change in the world in the time after his death than he ever did in the 45 years that he lived.
“Welcome to the Lifetime Experience Survey. You have been randomly selected to complete a survey of your lifetime experience before exiting your life.” A woman spoke to John on a computer screen. He was sitting in a chair in a closet of a room. There was nothing but John, a chair, and the computer, not that there was room for anything else. “Please type your name, birthdate, and region of existence into the form.”
John did as he was told. John always did as he was told. He learned early on that putting up a fight was useless, especially in situations like this where there wasn’t anyone to fight with.
“Thank you,” she said after he pressed enter. “John Robert Thompson. Age 45. Region America. Is this correct? Press Y or N.”
“Thank you. Now that we have your basic information, the purpose of this survey is to understand the lifetime experience through the eyes of our participants. Our goal is to provide an ever-evolving set of circumstances that lead to the most enjoyable and realistic experience available. Questions 1 through 20 will be yes or no questions. These are set up for us to understand which lifetime experience you purchased.”
John answered questions about his gender, social status, childhood, and education.
“Thank you. We see you took part in a basic package experience. While we hope that you enjoyed the basic experience, we hope that you will consider upgrading to the premium or platinum packages for your next visit with us. Questions 21 through 30 are designed to address your individual concerns and suggestions. We here at Lifetime Experience feel your opinion is important and all your suggestions are reviewed by one of our customer care representatives. These are opinion based and we invite you to use as much detail to describe your experience as you can. The changes that we’ve implemented based on the comments we have received on earlier feedback surveys have led to a higher customer satisfaction rating. You may very well see your suggestions in actio
n the next time you use Lifetime Experience.”
“Question 21. At any time, did you feel that you wished to end your lifetime experience prematurely? If yes, why?”
John thought back on his time alive. He was determined to answer each question as honestly as possible. There was only one time where I felt the need to exit the program early. I was a teenager and felt as though those in my peer group hated me. I felt misunderstood and treated unfairly. Things seemed like they would never get better.
“Question 22. Were you aware that you were in the experience at any time? If yes, when.”
No. I never knew that the experiences that I had were part of the lifetime experience.
“Question 23. Were you able to fulfill the wishes that you had within the experience? If no, why?”
No. I went into the experience to branch out and learn to take more risks. I felt this would help me socially and professionally. Due to my inability to recognize that I was in a simulation, I reverted back to my default personality and did not grow.
“Question 24. What was the best part of your lifetime experience?”
Night. The amount of programming that went into the night sky was impressive. Each and every star and planet shining in the sky was a work of art. I only wish that the programmers could remove the light pollution from the ground and allow the population to see the full extent of their work again. Tat particular glitch is rather annoying.
“Question 25. If you could change only one thing from your experience, what would it be and why?”
The Many Afterlives of John Robert Thompson Page 3
