The Things We Learn When We're Dead

by Charlie Laidlaw

  ‘Of course,’ said God, looking doubtful, ‘you don’t need to make your mind up now. If you wish, we can give you more time to consider all the ramifications of your decision.’

  He was sitting in his big chair. All around were flickering screens; all were of her past. She glimpsed Tom on the rugby field, but it might have been Austin; her dad bent beneath golf clubs, but that could equally have been Joe. Between the images, other images: a mother’s anguish, a child in her arms; a US marine cradling a rifle; a London train station, with hurrying commuters and enveloping dark smoke.

  ‘I choose life,’ said Lorna.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer eternity?’ God had made a steeple of his fingers and was looking at her intently.

  A wakeful part of her mind knew that this place couldn’t exist. Eternity wasn’t therefore a real choice. Lorna shook her head.

  ‘Think carefully, young Lorna.’

  ‘I have done, God.’

  ‘No place like home, eh?’

  ‘Something like that, God.’

  ‘The food’s better here,’ he offered.

  ‘Maybe, but I’d still like to go home.’

  ‘Here, you can be whoever you want to be.’

  ‘I like being me,’ she told him. ‘I also have a friend to go back to. I need to know if she’s okay.’

  Irene fixed her with a stern look, then mellowed. ‘In which case, there is one bit of bad news.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Irene had conjured up a huge glass of white wine and soda that she now presented to Lorna. ‘Because, sweetie, you get to ride in a spaceship and I know that you don’t much like flying.’

  Lorna sipped, hearing ice against ice; it was mostly white wine. She drank some, and almost immediately felt a stab of pain in her arm. Lorna realised that God had placed a hand on her shoulder. Behind his head were jigsaw images from the past: faces she remembered, places she had visited. On one screen, Tom’s Chinese T-shirt waved damply. On another, her castle floated above its rock.

  ‘Normally, of course, I give all our visitors a task to perform,’ said God. He was frowning, unsure of himself. ‘Usually, I provide them with some useful insight to take back to Earth, something to advance your technological or medical thinking. In your case, I can’t think of a task to give you. You see, you have no scientific aptitude.’ One hand was still on her shoulder, the other on his precious beads. ‘So I have decided instead to give you a different kind of task.’ He paused, looking thoughtful. ‘You only get one life, so your task is to promise me one thing, young Lorna. Do something wonderful with yours.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said God. ‘I could, of course, try to teach you about free-electron lasers, but I doubt you’d understand.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ agreed Lorna. ‘I’m a lawyer.’

  ‘A most noble profession, I’m sure,’ said God, looking doubtful, ‘if not a very useful one.’ Behind his head, she now noticed that one TV screen was in full colour and sharp focus. It was an image of her and she was in a bed, her head immobile on a pillow. Her mother was at her side, stroking Lorna’s hair, and she wanted to tell her mum that she hadn’t meant to kill herself, but then realised that she didn’t need to because Lorna could hear heard voices, familiar voices. She wasn’t dead and had never been dead, and she could feel herself waking up.

  * * *

  From Heaven’s bridge she was taken downwards to a grey anteroom off Heaven’s flight deck and fitted into a cumbersome pressure suit that zipped down her back. Around the walls hung a variety of space suits, like in an abattoir. Lorna shivered; she hadn’t expected this. It seemed like a throwback to technologies that Heaven should have long abandoned, remembering old footage of moon landings and astronauts leaping about on its surface. On her feet were bulky red boots that clipped onto the bottom of her bulbous spacesuit.

  ‘This has all been a dream, hasn’t it?’

  God was standing behind her. Lorna felt ridiculous in the spacesuit, as if she was back wearing a green dressing gown with a cushion stuck inside and Suzie holding her hand. ‘If you say so,’ said God.

  She sat heavily on a bench that occupied the middle of the room. Around her, like headless corpses, hung other white spacesuits. ‘It has all been a dream,’ she said with more conviction, looking at the floor, looking at anything except the spacesuits.

  ‘The truth is what you choose to believe,’ replied God, one hand stroking his strings of beads, the other on one of the pressure suits, feeling down its contours.

  ‘Then that’s what I believe,’ said Lorna, still looking at the floor. ‘I’ve imagined all of this.’

  God was looking at her kindly, like her dad used to look. ‘Even me?’

  ‘Even you,’ said Lorna. ‘You couldn’t have brought me to Heaven, because Heaven only exists up here.’ She manoeuvred one heavy hand to her head and tapped it.

  ‘In which case, young Lorna, that is the truth in which you must believe.’ God didn’t seem in any way offended, seemingly content to continue tracing his fingers down the outline of the spacesuit. ‘The people who hurt your friend believed in a different kind of truth – for them, a truth that justified killing themselves and other people.’ Now God did look pained, and shook his head sadly. ‘Between those two truths, yours and theirs, an absence of faith does seem the better option.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just don’t believe in you.’

  God smiled a little sadly. ‘There’s no need to be sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask you to believe in me in the first place.’

  Sixty minutes to transition.

  Trinity, her voice seeping from every portion of the room.

  ‘Time for you to say your goodbyes,’ said God, motioning her to her feet. Then he put a hand on the small of her back and gently pushed her towards a door that had soundlessly opened, and towards the blaze of light that lay beyond.

  Beginning

  God’s hand was still on the small of her back, propelling Lorna into a light so unexpected and intense that she raised a gloved hand to her eyes to shield them, feeling at once vulnerable and terrified. The sepulchral cathedral of the flight deck had been transformed. On her previous visit, the huge cavern had seemed desolate, its giant flying machines lined up like museum displays, lights turned down low on a place where few of the crew had reason to venture. Now, artificial daylight burned from a hundred sources high on the flight-deck roof; a white and shadowless light that gave the place new purpose, burning and reflecting off polished metal, flaming like stars on the taut hulls of Heaven’s spaceships. But that wasn’t the only thing that made her stop and gasp, one bulky hand encased in a heavy glove across her mouth. Assembled in a rough semi-circle, and dressed in their best uniforms, was Heaven’s crew, Irene slightly in front. Hundreds of smiling faces now turned towards her; and then spontaneous and deafening applause in the enormous cavern of the flight deck.

  Lorna had never seen everyone in their finery before; and she now involuntarily put her other hand to her mouth as the noise lapped over and about her, felt tears prickle behind her eyes. Each in tailored blue uniforms, buttoned down the front and golden epaulettes denoting function and rank. On each lapel, the insignia of Heaven: a golden pair of wings. Behind blast-proof windows on the upper level were more faces, each had an earpiece and they were all dressed in light blue jumpsuits; behind them were serried banks of computer consoles behind which sat operatives keying in data. Lorna waddled forwards to be embraced by Irene.

  ‘We thought that we’d give you a proper send-off,’ said Irene, speaking loudly over the cacophony of sound. ‘I’m just sorry that there wasn’t time for a farewell party.’ Irene cast a dark glance at God who was carrying a space helmet in both hands. He shrugged and muttered something indistinct. ‘There again,’ said Irene, ‘you’ve only just got here.’

  Lorna was temporarily beyond words. Irene threaded her arm into Lorna’s and led her towards the rest of the ship’s crew. �
�You could have had immortality. A chance to live among the stars. It’s what you wished for when you lay dying. Your last thoughts were of a nursery rhyme. Do you remember?’

  Lorna shook her head. She remembered looking up and seeing stars, wondering if her brother was looking down and if Suzie was alive. She could recall a needle’s prick, her head being strapped into a brace, a sense of the enormity of what lay above and her own insignificance below. But no, she couldn’t recall a nursery rhyme.

  ‘But instead, you’ve chosen life,’ said Irene, offering Lorna a warm smile tinged with sadness. ‘Another chance to live out the rest of your life. On balance, I suppose, not a bad choice.’ Irene’s angel wings gleamed brightly on her tunic.

  Lorna now saw the Gemini that was being readied. Mobile arc lights had been rigged around its bulk and various umbilical lines were coiled from its wings and flanks. The first time she’d seen it, inert and immobile, she had thought it beautiful but useless; its graceful lines fluting backwards to giant exhausts that would never again feel the emptiness of space. Now, in a clear circle of white light, with crewmen making final preparations for departure, inspection hatches being closed, it had regained purpose; its hyperspace capability bristling with the power of a thousand suns.

  ‘I also get to ride in a spaceship. Not many earthlings get to do that, you know,’ she said. One moment, she seemed on the point of waking up and nothing seemed real; the next moment, wakefulness was beyond reach, and everything seemed real. Until then, Lorna had been thinking only of home and whether Suzie had pulled through. But now she could see the enormity of the journey: this wasn’t a bus or train to whisk her across town. The hull of the Gemini towered above her. ‘It is safe, isn’t it, God? Having come this far, I don’t want to be splattered across the universe.’

  With his ill-fitting tracksuit and strings of beads, God seemed the person least qualified to have a professional opinion. Among them all, only God had forsaken his dress uniform; or maybe not, she thought: perhaps his cream tracksuit is now his uniform. She also remembered his beginnings, ferrying miners between distant worlds. He would once have sat at the controls of a Gemini, seen suns rise across dark galaxies and experienced the space-time jump across lightspeed.

  God offered her a wan but reassuring smile, arc lights behind his head lending Him a halo of divinity. ‘This particular space vehicle has made over two thousand transitions. It may be old and venerable, like the rest of us, but it still functions perfectly well. So, yes, you will be absolutely safe, I assure you.’

  ‘I have God’s word on it?’

  God smiled and bowed slightly from the waist. ‘God has spoken, Lorna. I have commanded it to be safe.’

  Slightly behind him, Irene dramatically rolled her eyes, which made Lorna smile. ‘I also have something for you,’ said Irene, conjuring what looked like a golden brooch from a tunic pocket. She held it up for Lorna’s inspection.

  It was a pair of golden wings, like a butterfly, with the letters HVN embossed on its central point, the same wings that embellished everyone’s uniform. Irene pressed the badge to her flightsuit and stood back to admire it. ‘You’re now truly one of us, Lorna.’ Irene gave her wings a quick polish with her tunic sleeve.

  Lorna ran a gloved finger across her new badge of honour, once more feeling like an impostor among those who were its real inhabitants.

  ‘You’ve been in space longer than virtually anybody on Earth,’ said Irene, reading her mind, ‘and you’re also about to become one of the first human beings to travel faster than light. I’d say you’ve earned them, don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose,’ conceded Lorna.

  ‘Don’t ever suppose!’ commanded Irene. ‘Just do! That’s what you must remember, Lorna, in your new life. Suppose nothing, just get on with it. Cast your soul to the sea. Isn’t that right, God?’

  After a thoughtful pause, God nodded.

  Although Lorna hadn’t been in Heaven long enough to get to know the crew, the next minutes were a blur of farewells. She was photographed with a gang of Brad Pitts from Maintenance and a trio of Kate Mosses from Research. She even kissed a few Hugh Grants, but only on the cheek. Asim, one of the few crewmembers she’d actually talked to, deserved a special hug. Clinton was looking uncomfortable without his cigar. There were also a dozen Kate Winslets to say goodbye to, excluding Irene, and as she was passed through the crew, her progress took her ever closer to the giant flank of the Gemini. Now, she could feel its power, sense its antimatter reactors powering up, its banks of lasers generating the energy of a hundred galaxies. It seemed to shimmer, like a wild animal pulling at its leash, the air crackling with its potency. Lorna looked up at it again, smelling oil and static electricity; frightened yet elated; it alone had the power to take her home.

  At the thought of home she grew tearful again. It now seemed so close, despite still being billions of miles away, or just a flicker of her eyelids, and to then find herself in a hospital bed, with her mother stroking her hair. All the while, just behind her, with a sheepish grin on his wrinkled face was God. He hadn’t said much since her suiting-up and now seemed content merely to nod benignly at members of his crew and whistle tunelessly. His long white hair, still tied in its ponytail with an elastic band, was oddly out of place among the immaculate coiffures of his crew. He twisted and turned Lorna’s helmet in his bony hands, looking wistfully at the Gemini’s graceful hull.

  She didn’t know how long it took to say her goodbyes but one minute she was being kissed, hands clapping her shoulders, the next she was again at Irene’s side.

  ‘It’s time for you to go home, I guess,’ said Irene, ‘and time for me to have a fag. Maybe,’ she added, ‘I should give them up. Damnable habit. Maybe you should as well, Lorna.’

  Over her shoulder, Lorna saw that the rest of the crew had fallen silent. A few waved. All stood quietly, perhaps considering that her fate might ultimately be theirs. Others would have made this journey, similarly dressed in bulky pressure-suits, forsaking the stars for the vagaries of uncertain mortality. Perhaps, she thought, they’re also remembering other farewells, tearful gatherings on the flight deck in their dress uniforms, angels’ wings burnished to gleaming gold. In the silence Lorna could now hear the hum of the spaceship’s reactors and feel her scalp crawl with its electrical discharge. Like millions of ants on her skin; she shuddered, again feeling frightened.

  God had inscribed the word LOVE on her helmet in thick black lettering. He was now proudly holding the helmet towards her, like a primary child showing off his prowess to teacher. ‘All flight crew have their surnames on their helmets. Tradition, I suppose, although I can’t really remember why. Anyway, young Lorna,’ He smiled, ‘it’s time to turn around and click your heels together.’

  She looked down at her ruby red boots and tried to follow God’s commandment, her rubber soles squeaking on the floor. ‘They don’t click,’ she said.

  Then, from high in the vaulted space of Heaven’s largest cathedral, came a metallic voice announcing the imminent departure of her flight and asking for the flight deck to be cleared. A bell sounded and lights in the further extremities of the flight deck were extinguished. Red warning lights flashed on the outer hull. The ship’s crew, with waves and shouted farewells, reluctantly turned away and headed for the blast-doors.

  Lorna had only one last question. ‘It’s not important, really it’s not, but it’s been bothering me. It’s just that, well ... why did everyone keep calling me young Lorna?’

  God handed over her helmet. Despite its bulk, it was surprisingly light, and Lorna traced the letters of her name with one gloved finger. An astronaut, she thought, with my own helmet monogrammed personally by God to prove it.

  ‘It was what your parents called you when you were little,’ said God, frowning. ‘We thought that’s what you’d like to be called, didn’t we, Irene?’ He looked round to Irene for confirmation, who merely shrugged at God and then winked at Lorna. ‘You didn’t mind, did you?’ God seemed genu
inely concerned, as if at the moment of parting, he had committed some giant faux pas.

  Young Lorna? But, no, it was something else she had forgotten, despite remembering so much else. A memory blanked from consciousness, a fact made forgettable by its everyday occurrence. ‘No, of course I didn’t mind ... I was just wondering, that’s all.’

  At the foot of Gemini’s ramp was another figure in a pressure suit. On his helmet was stencilled the word FLINT. God introduced him as Gary, the best pilot in Heaven’s arsenal. ‘You’re in good hands,’ he whispered as Lorna hesitated on the ramp, her feet about to leave Heaven for the last time. ‘We’ll be watching over you, young Lorna,’ he added.

  God raised His arms wide, an arc light flaming in his hair: an image of eternity, caught in the blessing of an old man. Then he brought his arms forwards and, grinning, gave her a double thumbs-up. Shaking her head in feigned exasperation, Irene took his arm and led him away like a geriatric in a care home, God looking over his shoulder and grinning broadly.

  Lorna ascended the ramp and turned briefly at the ship’s door. Most of the flight-deck lights had now been extinguished; only the Gemini was illuminated, so that she felt like an actress at the conclusion of a play. Faces were pressed against windows on the upper levels; Lorna, the lone actor on the stage. She did try to bow, but found it impossible in the pressure-suit. Instead, she raised both arms in farewell, then turned her back on Heaven.

  From the ship’s doorway, the cramped lift took her upwards from the cargo hold to the flight deck. She knew the ship’s layout, having had the guided tour from God but, even so, with all the ship’s systems now powering up, it seemed a different place, charged with energy, its awesome power designed to shift time and space and meld them to its whim.

  Lorna was to occupy the third seat on the flight deck, just behind the captain and his co-pilot, name unknown, who was already strapped into his seat and running through pre-flight checks. He raised a gloved hand in greeting and returned to his checklist. Gary Flint strapped her securely to her seat, buckling belts over her shoulders and between her legs. Then he plugged her suit with communications and air-supply cables and, lastly, set her helmet over her head. This was what Lorna had been dreading, the moment when she was enclosed. She had always hated small spaces; she had been hopeless at hide-and-seek. Lorna could only hide in large and open places, and was always found first. The helmet clicked into place and the visor was lowered.