Gustavo had not expected it to be a long narrow room with whitewashed walls. Indeed he had not expected anything at all. One minute he had been lying heavily sedated in a hospital bed, the next he had been standing in front of a very large door with the words ALL NEW ARRIVALS THIS WAY PLEASE embossed in gold script above it. 

 

An elderly man wearing a knee length white cotton coat immediately advanced to greet him. “Welcome,” he said. “My name is Harold but most people call me Dickie.”

 

Gustavo held out his hand expecting the man to shake it but he said, “We don’t do that here, I’m afraid. We find words are sufficient in themselves as icebreakers. And in any case we lack the kind of corporeality you have become used to. Would you care to take a seat please?”

 

Gustavo nonetheless found his nether regions slotted very comfortably into one of the two upholstered reclining chairs Dickie had indicated. “My name is Gustavo but most people call me Gus,” he introduced himself. “I have a couple of questions that I hope you may be able to answer, Dickie?”

 

Dickie had begun to ferret about in a desk drawer. In due course he took a clipboard out, joined Gus at the seat opposite and handed it over together with a pen. “Yes please feel free to fire away,” said Dickie in his thick Yorkshire accent.

 

But when Gus read the heading on the papers attached to the clipboard he discovered his first question to be already answered. “Welcome to the Afterlife,” it announced, “and we trust your stay with us here will be a very happy one. Your front of house guide is authorised to induct you into our organisation and his first task will be to ask you to complete an evaluation relating to your experience in the physical life. We request all newcomers to do this immediately on arrival because most tend to forget the details very quickly. Your answers will be fed directly to our strategic development committee so we ask that you address them all and try to be as candidly honest as possible. Please note there are no right or wrong answers and no rewards or punishments given as a consequence of your submission.”

 

“So the Afterlife is regulated by a committee,” asked Gus, “and not by God, as many humans assume?”

 

“Human conceptualisations of the deity still tend to be very primitive,” replied Dickie with a shrug.

 

“Why are you wearing that garment?” Gus continued. “It looks like the sort of thing a scientist might wear in a laboratory.”

 

This seemed to amuse Dickie. “It is actually a cricket umpire’s uniform,” he smiled. “That was how I eked out my days after I finished playing.” Gus found this revelation comforting as he had liked watching cricket, finding solace in its slow predictable rhythms and gentlemanly rivalry. “But please excuse me now. I have some other business to attend to,” apologised the house guide. “Just ring that bell when you are finished and I shall return.”

 

Gus watched him walk towards a door in the wall then, without attempting to open it, just evaporate into the space and disappear. This ocular trick of the light so disconcerted Gus he could not help but stride over to the place to see how the effect was achieved. The door seemed like an ordinary wooden fixture with a metal handle, however. When no amount of tugging or twisting, afforded access he returned to the chair where he had left the clipboard and proceeded to read through the text which went as follows:

 

On a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 means NOT REALLY AT ALL and 5 means VERY VERY MUCH SO please insert a score in the box after each of these seven questions.

• How far did the enjoyable experiences outnumber the distressing ones?

• How painlessly did you transition from childhood to adulthood?

• How easily did you find people who shared common values with yourself and for whom as a consequence you actively felt love and affection?

• How well did any religious or ethical belief system you may have adopted sustain you when the going got tough?

• If someone not yet born were to ask you how much you would recommend a lifetime as a human being how would you reply?

 

Now just two more questions and we are done. Answer in your own words but using no more than 113 of them please.

• Reflecting on our service delivery process and the quality of life experience you received, what things might have been improved?

• Looking ahead now to your future in the Afterlife, is there any particular activity or career direction you have in mind?

 

Gus struggled to get his head around this exercise. It reminded him a bit of the questionnaire that was texted to you by the company that supplied television and wifi to your house after you had phoned in to complain about the loss of a satellite signal or a streaming app and their engineer had intervened to sort out the mess – or indeed failed which was most often the case. He felt in a bind. He did not want to offend or inadvertently blot some poor penpushing minion’s copybook, on the other hand he wanted to be truthful. Perhaps the best strategy, he reflected, was to go middle for diddle with the first five questions? So he eventually pencilled a 3 into every box, only immediately to feel irritated by his cowardice and to erase them with the rubber at the end of the writing implement. These were far from easy questions to honestly answer, he anguished. How do you quantify stuff like pain and distress anyway? Nobody he knew ever discussed it and if you brought the subject up in social circles people either smirked knowingly to themselves or called you a wuss. 

 

It was during these mental deliberations that Gus suddenly noticed a device on one of the walls that appeared to be made out of transparent tubing, most probably glass he assumed. Shaped geometrically like a circle that had been vertically elongated it contained a purple liquid that dripped at a constant rate downwards from one end where it joined the main stream with the result that the liquid moved constantly in an anticlockwise direction. A bit like a snake, he considered, in endless pursuit of its own tail. Aesthetically a very pretty ornament that had hypnotic qualities if you stared at it for too long. “If you shook the bell, I didn’t hear it,” announced Dickie, suddenly rematerialising in front of the door.

 

“I haven’t finished,” explained Gus. “Indeed I’ve hardly got started. I suggest you go and finish your cigarette or whatever you were doing out there.”

 

“Not finished?” blustered Dickie incredulously. “The flowmeter’s done more ‘n four circuits since I left!”

 

“What’s that to me?” objected Gus. “It’s not that I haven’t been trying. Strict honesty and accuracy are not easy to equate.”

 

“I see,” muttered the host, now visibly relaxing his facial muscles. “You’re one of those, are you? Nobody bloody warned me.”

 

“One of what?” asked Gus peevishly.

 

“One of those that tries too hard,” replied Dickie. “A Boycott, I call them. Gets yer head down too earnestly and loses track of the state of the game.”

 

“So what is the state of the game?” demanded Gus sarcastically. “Do the celestial councillors require honesty or their tummies tickled?” Surprisingly Dickie took no offence at this. He slipped into the seat opposite and stroked his chin musingly. He appeared to Gus to have all the time in the world despite his protestations to the contrary. “So what’s the purpose of that gadget if it isn’t for measuring time?”

 

“It measures the quality of interactive experience,” answered Dickie with a glance in the direction his guest was pointing.

 

“Oh yeah? And how does it do that exactly?” pondered Gus.

 

“By reminding us that Creation works in a perpetual circle from inflation to deflation and back again,” explained Dickie. “Get it now?”

 

“I’ll take you word for it, Dickie,” said Gus. “And as we’re becoming better acquainted, maybe you could tell me why a man named Harold comes to be called Dickie?”

 

“Because my surname is Bird,” answered Dickie. “I gave up on trying to put the jokers right.”

Gus mulled the name over and eventually a light came on in the back of his mind. “You used to be the governor of international cricket umpires, if I’m not mistaken,” he said. “The doyen of the profession. Your raised index finger never lied.”

 

“Kind of you to say so,” smiled Dickie. “I never took a bribe, if that’s what you mean. But let’s get down to business. You’re not the first who gets writer’s block when reading this questionnaire and you won’t be the last. So why don’t you tell me what’s causing it?”

 

“Well to start at the end with question seven, er what was it now?” answered Gus.

 

“Looking ahead to your future in the Afterlife,” prompted the host.

 

“It sounds like your CEO or whatever he calls himself is going to expect me to work for a living?” said Gus. 

 

“But you are not living,” corrected Dickie. “You have what is euphemistically called passed away. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

 

“Alright then – work for my board and upkeep in whatever state of being or non being you lot call this,” said Gus impatiently. 

 

“Is that such an abhorrent idea to you then?” asked Dickie.

 

“It may or may not be, depending on the options available,” answered Gus craftily. At this point in the conversation Dickie seemed to become distracted by a voice speaking to him either telepathically or through an invisible device. He cupped a hand over his left ear, nodding and grunting as the briefing proceeded. “I assumed we were having a private conversation. Is someone listening in on us?” Gus observed.

 

“My supervisor,” nodded Dickie. “But no need to worry, he’s given me an A2 clearance to be candid with you. That’s very unusual. It’s the second highest security clearance category and indicates you may be a candidate for fast track advancement through the Afterlife. Obviously you have at least one sponsor on the other side of the Pearly Gates who has some serious clout with the celestial committee. So without further semantical jousting please hear me out – ”

 

“You mean there’s an A1 security clearance category then?” interrupted Gus.

 

“Indeed but I am not privy to that, I’m afraid,” confessed Gus who then without further ado proceeded to explain everything he knew about the divine plan. It went as follows:

 

The celestial committee have become increasingly concerned about the behaviour of the human race with the result that a root and branch review of worldly matters has been established. It’s called The Deus Ex Machina project. DEM for short. Once this has finished it is anticipated that major structural changes will be implemented. These are likely to include the abolition of developmental principles such as Evolution, gender differentiation and Free Will. What will replace them is not yet precisely clear but several options are under consideration. In particular the CC have decreed that the so-called Enlightenment after a promising start has not proceeded in a way that is congenial to the survival of the planet Earth as a fertile habitat.  Crucial natural resources are being depleted and/or poisoned. Greed and barbarity have not only become normative but are now widely revered as the key indicators of technologically self-sustaining civilisation. Despite its numerous achievements Science has now become anything but a dispassionate and objective activity. Science is organised around money and Mammon. Science is embraced when it serves the interests of capital and frequently ignored when it does not. So to take one instance of this that disappoints the CC, medical scientists despite brilliant innovations in transplant surgery, anesthetics, vaccines etc have so far been unable to identify a crucial organ of the body known here as the soul. It is concluded therefore that scientists in general are not looking for it. Their paymasters have decided either that no such organ exists, being a myth created by religious practitioners, or that even if it does, no profit can be made out of the discovery.

 

“Although I’ve never been conventionally religious,” Gus interjected at this point, “I’ve always believed that I must have a soul.”

 

“That’s almost certainly why you’re here,” said Dickie, “and not in the waste disposal department of our facility.”

 

Gus felt an unexpected frisson of pride that he had been declared fit for recycling purposes but took care to disguise his feelings from the host. He wanted to know what the sonorous sounding Deus Ex Machina project had in store for him but remained aware that he might have to box clever to find out. “Nature is red in tooth and claw,” he observed. “Surely it must have been obvious to the CC all those aeons ago – correction, all those trillions of cycles of the flowmetre ago – that to employ evolution and free will as innate drivers of planetary growth would end up in some dire catastrophe?”

 

“It’s easy to say that in hindsight,” Dickie replied. “Experiments can take unpredictable directions. Who would have thought in the 1970s that the serene game of cricket would degenerate into a limited overs slog fest presided over by players in luridly coloured pyjamas?”

 

“Fair point,” agreed Gus. “But it’s hard, nay impossible for me to imagine now how the established human system of laissez-faire barbarity might be overthrown from above and replaced by another one. Are you authorised to tell me? And might I be expected to play a part in the revolution – if that’s the correct term?” 

 

A long silence ensued during which Gus assumed from the host’s facial expressions that he was being given another briefing by his supervisor. “You might be assigned to the front line,” Dickie piped up eventually, “but first the CC wants to see how well you fit in and comply with their way of doing things. Maybe start you off in the fields? That’s where the majority of our new arrivals labour.”

 

Gus didn’t like the sound of that. He had always been an office man by profession, fiddling with spreadsheets and numbers. The thought of physical labour in a field, sweaty and backbreaking monotonous work with the agricultural peasantry, made his stomach churn. “Are there any other employment options?” he asked hopefully.

 

“One or two,” replied Dickie. “But the fields here are not at all comparable to yon earthly ones. It’s the place where we manufacture all the chemical elements out of which the material universe is constructed. Most people find the work very relaxing, a bit like knitting in front of the telly. There’s comfort in it. Are you aware of how ordinary Chinese folk get to join their Communist Party?”

 

“It’s a one party state, isn’t it?” said Gus. “The people don’t have any other choice.”

 

“Actually they do – which is not to join – and anyway people have to be asked by the politburo first. You can’t just rock up at head office and fill in a membership subscription form. Heavens no! The movement would become contaminated with all sorts of riffraff,” Dickie corrected him censorially. “Anyway the Chinese procedure is coincidentally almost identical to the way our CC operates . Once you have demonstrated that you are properly committed to celestial values the word gets back to the head honchoes and somebody is sent to tap you discreetly on the shoulder and ask you to join the movement.” 

 

That doesn’t sound very democratic, Gus thought but decided to keep the opinion under wraps in case it afforded him a black mark. Unfortunately Dickie picked up on this equivocation like a bloodhound on the scent. “You look a bit dubious,” he frowned sternly as if at a batsman who, having just been given out, refused to walk back to the pavilion.

 

“Look, mate, cut me some slack, will you please?” countered Gus. “This is all a bit of a shock to me. One minute I’m in hospital having what I’m told is a fairly routine operation and the next I’m in the Afterlife listening to you wittering away fifteen to the dozen.”

 

“By gum, lad I didn’t realise your passing had been as sudden as that,” admitted Dickie contritely. “But it’s just that there’s a queue building up out there on the forecourt and I have induction targets I’m expected to meet. And deaduns don’t like to be kept waiting in limbo too long.” The supervisor must have communicated something just then, perhaps a verification of Gus’s words, because the host’s attitude ameliorated completely. “I’m told we can dispense with the questionnaire,” Dickie continued. “Do you have any other matters you wish to get off your chest before I take you to your habitation quarters?”

 

“I don’t think the human race would take well to the imposition of a system of asexual reproduction,” Gus considered. “People have become addicted to a bit of rumpy-pumpy. In fact that’s just about the only thing that makes life worth living for them. How exactly would it be implemented anyway?”

 

“Nice question,” grinned Dickie, “but well above my pay grade, so to speak. All I know is we have an advisory sub-committee working on it. You might find yourself appointed to it if sex is one of your special interests?”

 

“It used to be,” recalled Gus nostalgically. “Are there many of these sub-committees then?”

 

“You better believe it,” shrugged Dickie. “The Deus Ex Machina project seems to spawn think tanks like soft Mick. So shall we make a move then? You’re probably eager to freshen up? Take a nice hot bath to ease the rigor mortis out of your system?” 

 

Gus found himself being ushered towards the door previously used by Dickie to dematerialise. Suddenly a distinctly male figure came through it, dressed in cricket whites and wearing a baggy green cap on his head. “G’day, mate!” he greeted Gus. “We’ll have a few tinnies once you’ve settled in.”

 

“This is Shane,” explained Dickie. “He’s been sent to relieve me. Come along now. It will take you a few attempts before you master the technique. Just place your hands on my shoulders or thereabouts and follow me through.”

 

Once the maneuver was completed Dickie found himself in a tunnel with a sloping curved ceiling of the kind you might find in the London underground railway network. “I recognised that bloke,” said Gus. “The best leg break bowler I ever saw. What a loss he was to the sport!”

 

“He’s slotted into the Afterlife very neatly,” agreed Dickie. “Never got a bad word to say about anyone. Divides his responsibilities between newcomer induction and the recreation and games sub-committee.”

 

“Really? I wouldn’t mind having a go at that if the sex and reproduction one is fully subscribed?” suggested Gus.

 

As they continued along the tunnel the light source emanating from its terminal point seemed to gradually get brighter so Dickie found himself unable to stare straight into the glare. Every now and then he noticed a neon sign indicating the location of one of the DEM think tanks with an access door notched into the wall beneath it. “I can hear people talking,” he advised Dickie just after they passed one that read REINCARNATION. “It’s mainly mumbling though. It’s impossible to make sense of it.”

 

“You must be imagining it,” replied the other. “This walkway has been sound proofed to prevent noise pollution from disturbing whatever positive ideas are being generated in these labs.” Gus suddenly halted, cupping his hand to right ear. “What was that?” asked his companion and the question seemed to echo away as if across vast distances and only then did Gus notice that Dickie himself had receded with it until he had shrunk to the size of an ant and the tunnel with him. The whole of the Afterlife had begun to spin, caught up in a vortex of dazzlingly bright light and as the vivid kaleidoscopic fragments reconstituted themselves into the close-up image of a surgically masked face staring down at him.

 

“His eyelids are opening,” a voice declared. “He’s definitely back with us.” A second masked face came into focus and then he heard other murmurs that sounded borderline triumphant. 

 

A week later Gus was convalescing at home in front of the television when his wife, Edna, scurried in from the kitchen. “You left your phone in the hallway,” she said. “Didn’t you hear it ringing? Anyway I answered it.” She thrust the thing into his hands. “Someone called Dickie.”

 

“Hullo? Who is this?” he asked into the device.

 

“Don’t you remember me then?” came back the reply. The caller sounded slightly offended.

 

“It’s alright, love,” said Gus to his wife who lingered on the threshold of the room as if anticipating an explanation. “It’s just someone from the tennis club wanting a hit. You carry on.”

 

“Tell them to ring back in a couple of month’s time,” she snapped. “No vigorous exercise for you til mid September. Doctor’s orders!”

 

“Did you hear that?” asked Gus as Edna returned to her domestic chores, pulling the living room door closed behind her. “I’m under house arrest following a slightly bungled operation on my heart.”

 

“That’s why I’m ringing you,” said Dickie. “Is the coast clear to talk?” 

 

“Yeah. If the background noises sound familiar to you, that’s because I’m watching a live test match from Headingley,” replied Gus.

 

“Look, I haven’t got long to natter,” explained Dickie. “There’s just been a devastating earthquake in Asia and it’s all hands to the pump here. Are you going to sue the surgeons who cocked up?”

 

“No chance,” replied Gus. “My missus wants to, mind you. ‘Your heart stopped for two minutes!’ she keeps reminding me. ‘That must be worth half a million in anybody’s language.’ But I see it differently. Those poor NHS buggers have been overworked and under-resourced for decades. Mistakes are bound to creep in. Forgive and forget, I say. I’ve got a generous pension and a second chance at spending it.” 

 

“That’s going to be music to my supervisor’s ears,” said Dickie. “He’s been talking to the CC and they want to offer you a deal. It’s more than generous in my opinion. Have you told anybody yet about your brush with the boneyard?”

 

“Of course! How could I not do?” answered Gus. “I’ve got a family and friends.”

 

“No, I mean your near death experience,” Dickie corrected himself. “Your visit to the Afterlife? Have you blabbed to anyone about that?”

 

“Just Edna,” said Gus, “and she split her sides laughing. Instantly dismissed it as an anaesthetically induced dream. Why do you ask?”

 

“Excellent. You keep mutt about it from now on,” said Dickie. “No self-published memoirs, no radio interviews. If your fellow creatures get wind of the Deus Ex Machina project there’s no telling how violently they might react.”

 

“Towards me you mean?” asked Gus.

 

“No. The worst they’d do to you is lock you up in a mental hospital,” said Dickie. “I’m talking about pogroms breaking out against the spiritually sensitive, you know the mystically enlightened. They exist as minorities in every religious movement.”

 

“If you say so,” conceded Gus, who knew as much about mystical enlightenment as he did about string theory. “So what’s the deal I’m being offered?”

 

“Next time you come to the Afterlife, I mean properly, to stay like,” explained Dickie, “there’ll be no form filling bollocks or delays. You’ll be fast-tracked straight onto any think tank of your choice. No serving an apprenticeship labouring in the fields. And you will be given a plush three bedroom villa with panoramic views of the celestial ocean. You can have your friends come to stay. The deceased ones I mean, of course.”

 

“Got a good few of those nowadays!” snorted Gus with delight. “Not that I’m thinking of joining you any time soon.”

 

When Edna came back in the living room with a plate of sandwiches and a cup of tea on a tray for her husband to enjoy while play was suspended for the lunch break, she found him in an unusually serene mood. “You’re spoiling me, Edna,” he said. “It’s I who should be waiting on you.”

 

“Tell me something,” she asked after a few minutes, “wasn’t the man you say you met in your Afterlife dream also called Dickie?”

 

She expected him to correct her on the use of the word dream as he had already done quite adamantly several times before but he simply replied, “Yes, quite a coincidence, isn’t it? I suppose the names and people who belong to our real experience of life have a way of filtering into our sleeping consciousness.” 

 

And as the weeks passed she noticed increasingly more significant changes in his behaviour. No longer did he swear at the television screen when a dodgy politician or media influencer appeared to promote some appalling distortion of the truth. No longer did he foul mouth all those millions of subscribers to the right wing tabloid press who believed whatever headline hit them between the eyes every morning. No longer did he scowl at religious evangelists who came knocking on the door and chase them away with a flea in their ear. On the contrary he often dawdled with them on the doorstep, asking questions about their faith. He served her breakfast in bed and invariably cooked dinner at night. Always an avid reader Edna noticed his taste had developed in an unexpected direction. Names like Hildegard of Bingham and Julian of Norwich cropped up on the covers of the books Gus left lying around. Then on her birthday he gave her a beautiful enamel wall plaque engraved with the words, All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. But when she tried to reopen the conversation about his near death experience he amicably refused to budge from the line Edna had imposed on him since his return home from the hospital.

 

 By the time Gus expired from a heart attack three and a half years later Edna had, of course, sleuthed out that nobody known as Dickie belonged to the tennis club or ever had done so. The edge of her grief was therefore somewhat diminished. They had been together over fifty years and raised two children. All good things must come to an end, she philosophised. And her own firmly closed mind had gradually inched open a centimetres. If her husband had after all found friends in the Afterlife, she too would not be long delayed in meeting them. Amongst Gus’s family and close associates there ensued much speculation about why he had mellowed so much in the last few years of his life. Edna said nothing to enlighten them. Who would have believed her anyway? Her explanation would have been privately dismissed as the ravings of a bereaved widow. Those who attended the funeral heard Dolly Parton’s rendition of I Will Always Love You as they entered the Unitarian chapel and ABBA’s I Have A Dream as they filed out. Those lyrics would have to suffice as comfort for those who grieved with her.