by Kit Duncan
"First things first, I guess," Silas said, and he started walking toward the little house in the distance. He stopped, turned around, and said, "Hey! Are you coming or do I have to call in some angels and have you flown there?"
"So, there are angels around here?" I asked, catching up with him. He had a spry pace for an old man.
"Angels? Here in Paradise? Nah. I was just teasing," and then he thought a second and added, "Well, maybe a few."
"So, are there angels in Heaven, then?" I asked.
"Angels in Heaven?" he repeated me again. "Yes, yes, there are quite a few. Most of them are on Earth, though, and most of the other planets, and there's usually a few wondering around Paradise, every now and then even the Basement, but yeah, I saw a mess of them during Heaven's last Open House."
"Heaven has Open Houses?"
"Why, sure they do!" he retorted. "About every ninety-eight years or so. They give a big party, all sorts of games and tours. A real celestial carnival! All of the three spheres give Open Houses."
"The three spheres?" I asked.
"Yeah," Silas answered. "The Three Spheres of Eternity. Heaven, Paradise, and…."
"Hell?"
Silas stopped and looked at me. "We call it the Basement."
"And this Basement has an Open House, too?"
We resumed walking toward Silas' house. "Yeah, they do," he said, "but most of us don't attend. Air conditioning don't work half the time, and the residents have the worst manners. But I'd encourage anyone to go at least once, just to see it. Helps deter folks from taking up residence there, you know."
We reached the house, and Silas sat down on a rocking chair on the front porch. He motioned for me to sit on the wicker next to him, and I did.
"But how do you go to Hell, I mean the Basement, once you've been assigned to Heaven or Paradise?" I asked.
"What do you think this is, eternity?" Silas asked, then he laughed and added. "Well, yes, this is eternity. But assignments to residences are always temporary. You can't have free will and permanent status, you know."
I hadn't thought about that. Eternal assignments, I had always figured, were permanent assignments. You lived, you died, you went to your eternal reward, or your eternal punishment. I said as much to Silas.
"Oh, no," he corrected me, and I waited for him to add something else, but he didn't.
"So, then," I asked, "How do you get to Heaven?"
Silas frowned at my ignorance. "Same as you get anywhere else. The way you walk takes you where you're going. Here, have a peach," he offered me a bowl of fruit from the table next to him.
"No, thanks," I declined politely.
"You'll be hungry," he warned. "Better have a bite."
"Hungry?" I repeated. "I thought I was a spirit. Spirits don't have hunger pangs."
Without warning, Silas reached with his other hand and pinched me sharply on my leg.
"Ouch!" I screamed. "Why'd you do that?"
"That feel spiritual to you?" he asked.
"That felt painful," I scowled, rubbing my leg.
"That's the trouble with you newbies," Silas said, still extending the bowl toward me. "You think in black and white, either, or. When you were alive, were you not both physical as well as spiritual?"
"I suppose I was," I said, and reached for a peach. Silas set the bowl back on the table.
"Well, then, there you have it." he looked out across his meadow, satisfied he had adequately made his point.
He had not made his point. I was more confused than ever.
"I don't get it," I said. "How can I feel anything if I'm dead."
"Oh, balderdash," Silas said. "Some people go through their whole lives not feeling anything. Of course, most of those folks aren't going to feel much in eternity, either. But you felt things when you were alive, didn't you? Why would you think you'd not feel anything now?"
"You're confusing physical feelings with emotional feelings," I challenged him.
"Not as much difference in the two as you might imagine," he countered. "Eat your peach. Careful for the pit - we don't get a lot of dentists in Paradise."
I ate quietly, wiped the juice from my mouth with the back of my hand. Without being asked, Silas handed me a wet cloth.
"Are they in the Basement or Heaven?" I asked.
"Who?"
"Dentists."
"Well," Silas answered slowly, thoughtfully. "A good many of them are in the Basement, and a good many of them are in Heaven. There's something disturbing about people who earn their living inflicting pain, isn't there? But Dentists are extremists. They administer terrible pain and they relieve terrible pain. It's quite a dichotomy for them. They don't all handle it very well. Which is why, as a profession, they have one of the highest suicide rates."
"So the Basement has electricity?" I wondered out loud.
"What?" Silas asked. "Oh, that," he answered. "The air conditioning. No. That's just a figure of speech. It's stifling down there! No windows. No light, except little greenish shadows. And the noise is blistering on the ears. All that moaning and complaining and bickering and yelling and screaming and crying. And then there's the gnashing of the teeth. Oh, that's annoying! But that's what most of them did when they were alive, and we generally keep doing what we did when we were alive when we get done living."
He paused a bit, then added, "I don't know that much about the Basement, though. I only went to their Open House once, and I left early. One day I'm going to get the stomach to take the tour, just so I know. But there are things I don't care to know yet."
"You ever meet someone who's lived there?" I asked.
"A few folks," Silas said. "But they don't like to talk about it, and I don't pry."
"So," I looked around me, "Where are all the other people?"
"What other people?" Silas looked around with me.
"The other folks who live in Paradise."
"Oh," he answered. "Some of them live in town, some of them are visiting friends and relatives in other towns. Some of them live in other towns. A group left yesterday for Vlurispor. I think that's how you say it."
"Vlurispor?" I repeated the word as best I could, but I don't think I got the accent mark right. "Where's that?"
"Not sure," Silas said. "Two or three galaxies away from Earth, maybe four, I don't know exactly. I overheard some folks at the general store talking about it last week."
"So it's a planet?"
"Yes, yes," he answered, obviously not very interested. "A planet."
"With life on it?"
"Yes, I imagine so. I don't reckon folks would care to go there otherwise, do you?"
"I suppose not," I conceded. I thought a little while before asking my next question. "So where do the aliens go when they die?"
"What aliens?" Silas asked.
"The ones on other planets that support life."
"Same places as we do," he said, and there was a little impatience laced in his words. "Heaven, Paradise, or the Basement. And we do not call them 'aliens.'"
"What do we call them?"
"People. We call them people."
"Don't they look different than us, though?"
"Well," Silas said, and he seemed more interested in the conversation now. "They don't look all that different than the folks on Earth. They have similar variations of skin and hair color, facial features, follicle textures, that kind of thing." He interrupted himself and added, "No, I take that back. There's one planet whose people are born with kind of an orange skin and white hair, and as they get older their hair turns blonde or light brown and the skin becomes kind of a mocha color. Their eyes are either purple or green. Very attractive adults, but the babies are butt ugly."
"So this group from Paradise headed for Vlurispor," I said, and I think I pronounced it a little better this time. "Are they going to visit or to stay?"
"Reincarnating, of course. You don't get to just visit life, you know. You gotta commit a lifetime to living or you don't get to go."
"So they're going
to live lives as," I searched for the right noun, "Vlurisporians?"
"That's what I was told."
"And so there's such a thing as reincarnation?"
"Oh, absolutely. Every major culture and religion knows that, though they may call it something different. Some folks call it being 'born again,' though they don't always understand the pragmatic dimension of the phrase. But maybe we can discuss this another time," Silas said. "I'm tired. I think I'll take a nap."
And with a slight nod the old man slumped back into his rocking chair and was soon snoring.
CHAPTER THREE