The Things We Learn When We're Dead

by Charlie Laidlaw

  Irene waved airily and sailed past, not pausing in her stride. Lorna raised a hand at the group before rushing back into Irene’s wake. A few smiled and waved back without speaking. Among them, Lorna recognised a Brad Pitt, a George Clooney, two Sean Penns, and a Claudia Schiffer.

  Pacing on, Lorna heard a symphony of whispers behind her back.

  ‘They are,’ said Irene, ‘as curious about you as you must be about them. Hardly surprising, really. We don’t get many visitors and as your arrival had not been predicted it has, understandably, given rise to speculation. In time, you’ll get to meet everyone. Right now, that’s not important.’

  Lorna glanced over her shoulder, but they had turned a gradual corner and the small group was lost to sight.

  ‘We reproduced your body at the moment of your death,’ Irene continued, marching onwards. ‘We thought it best if you woke up in your old skin, as it were. Less traumatic, don’t you agree?’ Lorna said nothing, panting with effort. ‘However, as you may have guessed, in Heaven you can also be anybody you’d like to be. A character from history, perhaps? A person plucked from your imagination? Your choice, Lorna. Although you can, of course, remain as you are.’

  Irene looked her up and down, making it unpleasantly clear that she thought a makeover might be appropriate. Until now, her looks had never much bothered Lorna. She was who she was, end of story.

  ‘Rock and film stars are very popular, as you will have noticed. Hollywood provides a great deal of our entertainment and Earth’s film stars are therefore also quite big here, although they do go in and out of fashion. For example, after Four Weddings and a Funeral, the Hugh Grant was quite a popular look. Then it went out of favour until Notting Hill and Love Actually. Somewhere in Personnel, there’s a Charlton Heston, I believe, who continues to watch reruns of Ben-Hur.’ Irene shook her head, clearly mystified at this absurdity. ‘Personally, along with a number of others on this facility, I found Titanic extremely moving. For now, I have adopted the persona of its star.’

  She paced on. ‘The film did, I suppose, strike a chord.’

  ‘Actually, an iceberg,’ said Lorna from behind.

  Irene stopped and turned, looking suddenly pleased. Lorna was being granted a rare smile. ‘A joke, Lorna!’ She clasped Lorna’s shoulders in both hands. ‘Not a very good joke, but a joke nevertheless. That indicates progress, by the way. Humour is generally the last faculty to integrate. Actually, you will find that Heaven and Titanic have rather a lot in common.’

  Irene dropped her hands to her sides but didn’t elaborate. ‘Any thoughts, Lorna? I mean, about who you’d like to be? Who among all womankind is your ideal of physical perfection?’ Irene was daring her, playing a game.

  Lorna didn’t know; everything was too new and confusing. She had been Lorna Love for too long to suddenly desert her familiar self. To do so would feel like betrayal. She had died and been reborn and she owed it to herself to remain herself, at least for the time being. Then she might think about it, although she rather doubted it. She wouldn’t know how to be an actress or a supermodel, even a pretend one.

  ‘Maybe in time, Irene. But not now, not yet.’

  Irene nodded, the smile fading from Kate Winslet’s face. Lorna wondered if she might have inadvertently offended her. ‘Biologically,’ Irene informed her, ‘you are now therefore at the precise age at which you killed yourself.’

  Lorna, affronted and shocked, felt her hands tremble.

  A silence, Irene looking at her evenly. The smile was gone.

  ‘But I didn’t,’ said Lorna, her mouth dry and cold perspiration wetting her hairline. ‘It was an accident.’

  Irene was frowning. ‘If that’s what you want to believe then, young Lorna, it was an accident.’

  Irene was muddling things up, a trick of chemistry and electrical discharge.

  ‘Of course I’m sure!’

  ‘Then I apologise, Lorna. If you say so, I must have been mistaken. An accident, of course it was.’

  For no real reason, Lorna felt chilled. It came from inside, but was reflected in Irene’s eyes, now hard and glassy. ‘The transference of memory can only be accomplished in its entirety,’ said Irene. ‘It wouldn’t be right for us to pick and choose your memories, would it? What you did in life is your affair entirely. In Heaven, sweetie, we don’t make judgements on others, and we don’t expect them to make judgements about us. It’s up to you, not us, to choose which bits to forget.’

  ‘It’s not something I would have forgotten.’

  Irene raised an eyebrow. ‘Regeneration takes time, Lorna, and memories can at first be jumbled. The integration of brain and body is a complex process and doesn’t happen overnight.’

  ‘I didn’t kill myself!’ shouted Lorna.

  ‘I have apologised, petal. For now, let’s leave it at that, shall we? Anyway, we’re there.’ Irene touched a small blue panel on the wall beside her, a white door soundlessly opening, and pushed her gently through the doorway.

  Lorna found herself in the same book-lined room that they’d left a minute or an hour before; the same view from the observation window, the same fireplace crackling and throwing shadows, the grandmother clock ticking away the seconds; everything the same except for the old man in a cream tracksuit standing by the fire, hands clasped behind His back.

  ‘We went for a walk,’ explained Irene with a small but unapologetic shrug, and lit a cigarette.

  * * *

  I didn’t kill myself, she told herself over and over. It was something she positively, instinctively knew, but it didn’t explain the clamminess on her forehead or her shaking hands. She could recall the pavement slipping from her shoes, the panic as she stumbled into the road. She hadn’t wanted it to happen, but it had – so Irene was horribly wrong. Now, in the presence of God, confused and angry, she felt like a child again. Too many years on her knees in church had left her unprepared to meet God standing up. To be loved by God you had to worship him, not shake his hand and allow him to take your arm and settle you on a high-backed chair by the window.

  ‘I’m God,’ said God, sitting on a chair opposite. Between them was a small table on which lay plates of sandwiches. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’ He indicated the table. ‘I thought you might be hungry.’

  Lorna bit her lip, her mind temporarily blank. She had no idea what to say to him, or why Irene had been so disparaging. In Heaven, were you allowed to be rude about God? Strangely, he looked familiar, but Lorna couldn’t place where she’d seen him before. His grey hair was still tied in a ponytail, and he was wearing the same cream tracksuit. She could have sworn that, like the male nurse, he was speaking in a gentle Scottish accent.

  ‘I realise, young Lorna, that everything must seem strange to you. For a start, this place.’ He indicated the wood-panelled room with one hand. ‘We just thought that it might be nice if you woke up somewhere familiar, didn’t we, Irene?’

  Irene had kicked off her shoes and was sitting by the fire, flicking ash into the flames. She imperceptivity shrugged, the merest rise of her shoulders.

  Lorna found her voice, although it was no more than a whisper. ‘God, Irene says I killed myself. But I didn’t. It was an accident!’

  ‘Are you sure?’ God leaned back in his chair and cast a sideways glance at Irene, who was staring moodily into the fire and not seeming to pay any attention. He looked about eighty, with a deeply-lined face and a straggly beard that he endlessly stroked. Above his nose were blue eyes that twinkled mischievously.

  Lorna nodded.

  ‘But you can’t really remember, can you?’

  Lorna took a deep breath and exhaled raggedly. ‘It’s not something I would do. I couldn’t!’ She wanted to cry, despite whatever chemicals were being pumped into the air supply.

  ‘OK, then maybe Irene was wrong,’ said God, to a loud snort from the fireplace. God cast an irritated glance at Irene, who was still staring fixedly into the fireplace. ‘She often is, you know,’ he confided, leaning across the tabl
e, to a louder snort from Irene.

  ‘So you believe me?’ asked Lorna.

  He spread out his hands. ‘I have absolutely no reason not to believe you, young Lorna.’ He smiled and leaned back in his chair. ‘Does that make you feel better?’

  After a few moments and another deep breath, she nodded.

  ‘In which case,’ said God, ‘let’s leave the subject of your untimely demise, shall we?’ His voice was definitely Scottish, and he did remind her of someone. ‘Sandwich?’ He held out a plate. ‘Tuna and cucumber, I think. And what about a cup of tea? Or something stronger? A bit early for me, but don’t let me stop you. In Heaven, we don’t have many rules, do we, Irene?’

  Again the sideways tilt of his head, looking to the fireplace for support. Irene merely flicked her cigarette butt into the flames. Lorna’s mouth was too dry for food; her hands, bunched tight in her lap, were shaking too violently to hold a teacup. She didn’t know what to say or how to behave. In his baggy tracksuit and beads, God might not seem like God, but apparently he was.

  ‘You are on a research facility, young Lorna,’ said God, popping a dainty triangle of tuna and cucumber sandwich into his mouth. It took him some moments to masticate, swallow, and dab his mouth with a serviette. ‘That much Irene will have told you. A HVN-class facility, to be precise, and a marvel of technology when she was launched. A bit long in the tooth now, I suppose, although she still functions perfectly well. It stands for Hyperspace Vehicular Navigator, by the way.’

  ‘Not a very snappy name,’ said Irene, ‘but that’s committees for you.’

  ‘Our mission,’ God continued, ‘was to chart a particular quadrant of the galaxy and search for signs of life.’ Lorna, sitting still in her chair, hands still shaking, felt a groundswell of panic. ‘Just like yours, we are also a curious race. We wanted to find out if we were alone in the universe.’ God smiled. ‘We decided to find out.’

  This much Lorna could understand, panic rising further. Heaven isn’t Heaven, Heaven is a badly-named alien spaceship.

  God again, eyes twinkling. ‘Normally, Lorna, a spacecraft can only fly across lightspeed in a straight line. Did you know that?’

  Irene, lighting up, coughed gently. ‘I really don’t think that Lorna wants a flying lesson, God.’

  ‘No? Well, perhaps you’re right.’ Agitated, he stroked his beard, looking thoughtful. ‘Anyway, in hyperspace you can’t just dodge things ... not like in one of your aeroplanes. Travelling in a straight line means you can’t avoid what lies ahead. Of course, we have all sorts of fail-safe systems on board that should, in theory, have protected us. Alas, for reasons that I don’t understand, they didn’t.’

  ‘God flew us too close to a black hole,’ said Irene, flicking ash.

  ‘I most certainly did not!’ God glared at her.

  ‘The harmonics along our flight path ...’

  ‘... did not indicate a gravitational anomaly.’

  Lorna decided that she was keeping it together rather well considering she was not only dead but on an alien spaceship, with God having an argument with one of his crew.

  ‘God,’ she asked, ‘who are you?’

  ‘God is God,’ said Irene, firelight playing on her hair, ‘although that absolutely doesn’t make him infallible.’

  ‘I am the ship’s captain,’ said God, ignoring Irene. ‘It’s my rank, Lorna.’

  ‘What, like a sergeant or a general?’

  God smiled, displaying perfect teeth. ‘More exalted than the former, but not quite as important as the latter. But I am the commanding officer of everything that you survey.’

  ‘Then you’re not a real God,’ said Lorna, struck by contradictions. If he wasn’t God, then where was the real God?

  ‘Alas, he is,’ said Irene, standing, and seemed to press a hidden button on the book-lined wall. A portion of the bookcase slid silently open to reveal a small back-lit compartment roughly the same dimensions as a microwave oven. Irene extracted two long glasses of pale liquid. ‘White wine and soda,’ she informed Lorna, handing over a glass. ‘It’s what I told God you’d prefer, but would he listen?’ She shook her head in exasperation.

  Strangely, it was exactly what Lorna wanted, although she had no idea how Irene knew, or how she had ordered it or what pair of unseen hands had prepared it. She had met God only to find that he was the wrong God. She had ended up in a Heaven, but the wrong one.

  God was rubbing his hands together and examining the plate of sandwiches. Choosing beef and horseradish, he popped the small triangle into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. ‘They are rather good,’ he informed Lorna, dabbing his mouth, then looked outwards to the sea of stars beyond the glass.

  Lorna waited for him to continue. Her hands had stopped shaking. ‘Two weeks into our mission, and while on a routine flight nowhere near a black hole, we encountered a large gravitational well.’

  ‘A worm-hole,’ said Irene, ‘and you were warned about it! The science officer warned you about it! The navigation officer warned you about it! I warned you about it!’

  ‘A worm-hole, Lorna,’ said God loudly, speaking over Irene, ‘is a temporary phenomenon that joins a black hole to a white star. The huge forces that it generates are capable of creating a shift in the very fabric of the time-space matrix.’ God saw that his explanation was falling on scientifically deaf ears, while casting a bleak glance at Irene who was again pretending not to be listening.

  Lorna had understood every tenth word.

  ‘We were caught in a temporal fluctuation.’ He again glanced at Irene, seemingly daring her to contradict him. ‘A highly unusual occurrence, even in relative proximity to a black hole.’ He sighed, raised his arms, and then let them drop to the table where they made the plates rattle. ‘One minute we knew where we were, the next we had been transported through time and space to a completely unfamiliar part of the universe.’

  Lorna sipped at her glass, seeing her reflection in clinking ice.

  God continued in a softer voice. ‘Our mission, Lorna, should only have lasted a few months. Instead, we have been here for many thousands of years.’

  ‘But this is a spaceship.’ In her experience, gleaned from TV and the cinema, spaceships could fly across any universe, however large, and still be home for tea.

  ‘The gravitational forces that close to a black hole are quite considerable,’ said Irene with some emphasis, her feet now up on the coffee table, wine-and-soda glass balanced on her knee. ‘We suffered some structural damage.’

  ‘And catastrophic damage to our main engines,’ added God. ‘No hope of repair, so no chance of getting home – not under our own steam, anyway. All we could do was sit and wait for rescue, which we’ve been doing ever since. Our distress signals have gone unanswered.’

  Lorna waited for God to say more, but he seemed content merely to stare outwards at star systems that Heaven could presumably once have reached in the blink of an eye.

  ‘And wait, and wait, and wait,’ said Irene. ‘It’s what we do best, Lorna. Doing fuck-all.’

  Trinity

  It was what Lorna was accused of doing, or not doing, by her flatmate, finding Lorna curled in a ball on the sofa and a small sea of tissues eddying across the floor. It was late afternoon and a chill wind was blowing from the north. Suzie unwrapped a woollen scarf and hung it on a peg beside the door, then her coat, all the while looking at her foetal friend, her mouth in a thin line. Lorna had her hands over her face, looking at Suzie through chinks between fingers. She didn’t want a lecture. She didn’t even want to talk to her.

  ‘Lorna, you’ve got to snap out of it.’

  ‘I can’t, Suze. Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t? Christ, it’s stuffy in here.’ Suzie opened a window, letting in an arctic blast. ‘Have you eaten anything?’

  Lorna couldn’t remember. ‘Probably not.’

  ‘What, all day?’

  ‘Suze, I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Then why don’t we go out for a
pizza? Lorna, you can’t stay stuck in here forever.’ Luigi’s, just down the street, was a favourite haunt. In it they had celebrated birthdays, whispered secrets, shared notes about prospective boyfriends. It held memories, mostly good ones.

  But it was warm inside the flat. She didn’t want to go outside. She didn’t want to see other faces. She might bump into him, and that would be a disaster. At the same time, thinking about him, it seemed to her as if he was filling up less of her mind’s eye. She supposed that was a good sign, reaching for another tissue.

  ‘You can’t stay like this, Lorna. Crying your eyes out, doing fuck-all.’ Suzie’s patience was wearing thin.

  ‘I’m not doing fuck-all.’

  ‘Then what are you doing? Studying? I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’m having a holiday,’ said Lorna, feeling persecuted.

  ‘That’s just crap.’

  ‘It’s not crap. It’s how I feel.’

  ‘Then why not see someone at the health centre? Listen, Lorna, I’m going to make an appointment for you. If you feel this bad, you’ve got to speak to someone!’

  ‘And be given a bucketful of pills? No thank you.’

  ‘I’ll make the appointment anyway.’

  ‘I don’t need to see a bloody doctor!’

  Suzie sighed, at her wits end, but running out of cheery suggestions. ‘I’m. Still. Making. You. An. Appointment.’ When Suzie started talking in disjointed words, it was time to surrender.

  Lorna sighed, stretching her feet out on the sofa.

  ‘I’ll make you a sandwich,’ suggested Suzie.

  ‘Suzie, really, I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You’ve got to eat, babe.’

  ‘Suze, this is just a temporary blip. I know I’m not handling things very well, but I’ll be fine. Just give me a few days, OK?’