Rhea woke in a small room, not unlike her own bedroom: back before she left home for college... In fact when she thought about it, it was identical to the room she had, had when she was a teenager.
Credible, her once most favorite group were playing softly in the background, and that was definitely wrong… she never played them softly; her parents would testify to that, and there was the scene outside the window. It was a view of the Alle’e’en Mountains where she had spent the years before her marriage. They were not only in a different place to her home; they were on a different planet? Was this death, a montage of all the good memories?
Another memory flashed across her mind and she apprehensively reached for the fresh pink sheet covering her body and anxiously pushed it down.
She was wearing what had once been her favorite nightgown as a child. It was neither demure nor sexy, but exactly as she remembered it, just very comfortable. Slowly she unbuttoned the front and stared at her naked body.
Where there had been the horrific injury was now soft, slightly tanned flesh.
Hesitantly, almost reluctantly she reached to her stomach; half expecting her insides to explode out into the terrible gash she remembered. Instead it felt soft, more softer than it had felt in a… in a long time.
Her senses filled with excitement as she caressed harder thinking she felt, both physically and mentally better than after any beauty treatment she had ever taken. So the mystics were right and this was death; it was nothing like what she had expected or feared, but it was something she could live with… Rhea smiled, there were some things that would never quite sound the same… He mind was so absorbed that it was a shock as she realized she was not alone. Embarrassed she grabbed for the sheet and pulled it up under her chin.
“Excuse me?” she said self-consciously and in surprise. “Who are you and what are you doing in my room?”
Again she wanted to smile. It was not her room, she knew that and neither was an abrupt challenge the way to talk to some… some apparition from the afterlife?”
“Sorry,” said the young woman “I should have coughed or something, to let you know I was here, shouldn’t I?”
“Yes… I suppose you…” Rhea hesitated, what was the protocol after life ended? “Is… this… this Valhalla?”
The woman giggled, “They said you would ask that?”
“Oh… they did?” Rhea felt deflated
At that moment there was a knock on the door: the woman looked at Rhea. “Are you ready to see visitors?”
“Visitors,” Rhea smiled. “Here? I suppose I am”
“Come in,” said the woman in a higher tone.
A man entered, and glanced around the room. “Good…” he said, smiling pleasantly while looking out of the window as if for some confirmation. “…Morning, Ms. Thain.”
“And a good morning to you Mr…”
“Santouri.”
She nodded politely.
“You are comfortable?”
“Perfectly, but I’d like an explanation?”
“Why you are here?”
“Yes… I assume I am dead?”
For a moment Santouri and the woman passed some unspoken agreement. “Dead well yes… and no, but not in the sense that you are implying.”
Rhea looked at them bewildered. “My understanding of ancient mysticism tells me that only purgatory lies between life and death, and…” she gestured out of the window. “This hardly looks like somewhere I will spend eternal damnation… unless your suddenly going to make it all disappear and land me in the middle of a flow of lava,” A horrible feeling came over her, “Your not going to take it all away are you?” she said in growing dread.
Santouri looked out of the window. “To be truthful at a word this can all disappear, but I find such a place as you propose hardly appealing.”
Rhea looked at him blankly
“You will have to take my word for it that this is always a difficult time, and any explanation I can give raises more questions than it answers, but you have a scientific mind professor; have you not?”
There was only one answer. “I have always thought so.”
“Then assume you have a cut on your arm, you attend a paramedic. It is treated and forgotten?”
“If your suggesting what I think you are, then I should remind you that some ‘cuts’,” she winced at the thought of her own wounds. “Are… are impossible to treat.”
“On the contrary,” he said firmly. “Think as a scientist, not as a human. Would a primate undertake open-heart surgery? “.
“I’m not sure I like your implication, and I am trying, but it comes back to the same; destroyed flesh is destroyed flesh.”
“Nothing is destroyed in the universe only its form changes, you know that.”
“I do as a scientific concept, but it hardly can be thought of in that way when were talking about the destruction of a living organism.”
“But it can, as long as the paramedic is sufficiently… advanced in the application of treatment.”
“Raising the dead passes over to spiritualism, not advanced medical treatments.”
“True, but you were not dead.”
“Were? ‘.
“Or are, ever.”
“I see,” she said without being totally sincere. “I distinctly remember myself being… at the very least, at deaths door?”
“And so you were, but the… can I say spark of life? Had not been extinguished.”
“Okay…” Rhea sighed in thought. “One moment I have horrific injuries, and I’m as good as… finished, and moments away from a colossal explosion. The next I’m here safe… I assume I’m safe?” She looked at them both.
The girl grinned and Santouri nodded.
“A lot of people I know have died… are they here?”
“No.”
Rhea felt a wave of sadness sweep over her. “Then why me?”
“This may sound odd, but you are an experiment… to… to see if we can improve how things turn out?”
It sounded much more than odd, but life was life, no matter how it was given. “So I’m at a place that can not exist in reality, and in perfect health. Now excuse me but my scientific mind is having just the slightest problem getting around this?”
“Then it will if you consider it in this way. I belong to a civilization with medical capabilities beyond your imagination and the ability to pluck you instantly from any place and time of our choosing.”
She looked at them in amazement. “If you put it that way it explains it everything?”
Rhea - Prequel Page 3