The Dissertation, page 56
part #2 of Tinieblas Series
When this world was but sparsely populated and the “death” roll relatively small, each new arrival was met personally, often by someone from his own tribe or village. Later, participants in Creative Arts were asked to design an area whose very ambience might tranquilize arriving spirits and dispose them favorably to the next world. Motifs from terrestrial nature were drawn on; a sylvan-pastoral set was conceived and fashioned. It served quite handsomely until about two thousand years ago, when a group of artists, architects, and artisans, all of them reared in cities, sold the Director on a renovation along urban lines: gold-paved boulevards, alabaster palaces, pearly gates, the whole schmeer. In this design Reception was the subject of numerous visions by residents of this world and became the basis for a popular notion of the Christian heaven, Urbs Syon Aurea, Jerusalem the Golden—just as its earlier décor had given men the notion of Elysian Fields. Like everything of any note done anywhere, this renovation was criticized, particularly during the last two centuries by spirits associated while in this life with the Romantic Movement, More importantly, the Director of Astral Activities and his staff noted growing nostalgia on the part of residents of this world for the disappearing natural environment. In consequence it was determined that an urban setting no longer provided Reception the most tranquilizing surroundings possible and a second renovation was ordered under the general direction of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Richard Wagner, and Walt Disney. The new facilities had been in operation for about five months when I arrived in the Beyond.
Spirits emerge from the swirling darkness between this world and the next onto a vast cloud prairie pavilioned at wide intervals in pastel-tinted silks which float in place, weightless and unbuoyed. A perpetually dawn sky domes over head; a calm sea shimmers in the distance. Faint breezes bear the strains of the Performing Arts First Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus rendering such works as Handel’s Messiah and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, as well as works unheard in this world, new works composed expressly for Reception by Bach Verdi, Wagner himself, and others. I have never known and cannot imagine a more inspiring audio-visual experience.
I arrived, of course, in the company of my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt. At first I felt a deep reluctance to leave the vicinity of my body, which lay in the subcellar of La Bondadosa Prison, bleeding desultorily from its ears and gaped at in annoyance by Colonel Atila Guadaña, but my three female companions were in a great rush to be gone from that place of groom, and so, after a moment, I fled with them up through the stone floors of the prison, into the night sky, and out across the gulf between the worlds of flesh and spirit. I had cause for relief at leaving this world behind. I knew a great deal, most of it good, about where I was headed. And how could I be worried or distraught, wrapped as I was in the love of those three ladies? But even the most wretched ghost—alone, untimely torn out of an easy life, all ignorant, and gibbering in terror—must surely feel calmed and uplifted emerging on that bright, harmonious scene. I stared about, wide-eyed. My three companions smiled at me and at each other, taking joy in my childlike wonder. And all about us streamed a multitude of spirits at once newly “dead” and newly “born.”
A breeze bore us to the nearest pavilion, which was staffed, my aunt Rosario told me, with guides trained in Good Works. Their function is to discover the language of each arriving spirit, to see each on the breeze conveyor to the appropriate pavilion, and generally to dispense care and loving kindness. They wear flag emblems or native costume and are unfailingly tender to new arrivals, many of whom importune them in panicky shouts and wailings, despite the soothing light that flows through the translucent silks above. Special guides collect the spirits of unaccompanied infants and children, who go on to an extension pavilion of Childhood staffed with senior participants from Parent. Debilitated spirits, those too worn out or maimed by their life here to face the future for a time, are sent to a rest pavilion run by personnel of Sleep.
The several hundred orientation pavilions, each of which functions in a separate language, differ in size but not in form—this according to an acquaintance of my grandmother Rebeca’s whom we met in the Spanish-speaking pavilion, which is about ten hectares in area. The cloud floor is dotted all over with low circular platforms on which musicians and other artists perform, inducing new arrivals to collect about them. Every so often the entertainment at one or another platform ceases, and an official of Reception delivers a little lecture on the organization of the next world. The reader of these notes will already possess more information than is contained in this orientation, which merely covers basics: One’s life in the next world is not determined by one’s life in this one. The cardinal principle of astral existence is individual freedom. A fresh start is available for all who wish one, or continuity for those who prefer that. Every human activity is offered. One or another may be fully occupied and fulfillment hence deferred, but time is plentiful. Recyclement into terrestrial existence is a possible option. One may look in on loved ones still on earth. The individual is limited only by his or her talents, directed only by his or her interests. Facilities for self-improvement are abundant. Personal counseling is provided. Above all, there is nothing to fear. Spirits may move on to their first interview as they desire. The lecturer steps down; entertainment resumes.
My alert examiners will have remarked the contrast between the haphazard fashion in which one enters this world and the orderliness of Reception. Despite the constant influx of spirits, there is no confusion, no sense of urgency. Accordingly, I lingered to chat, via Rebeca’s interpretation, with her acquaintance, a Chinese acrobat whom she had met the year before in a Performing Arts mime class and who had been entertaining new arrivals since the opening of Reception’s present facilities. He had worked in many of the pavilions, the largest of which, he said, was devoted to the English language since Chinese speakers were handled according to dialect. The best audiences were in the children’s pavilion. He and his troupe had done so well there that they had been picked to play an extended gig in Childhood beginning shortly. It was not until I saw the respect he paid my grandmother that I realized what a very great star she has already become. I commented on this to her as we moved toward the interviewing area, and she shrugged with the charming false modesty common to primas.
“I’ve had some good roles, and Ling is a sweet boy. But you should have seen how they all fawned over your father. He was the real star of the family, and he threw it all away!”
There were, it seemed, about a thousand interviewers on duty, each at a teleprinter console. We found one, an Argentine by his accent, who had no queue of spirits waiting for him but only a single interviewee, to whom he was explaining the procedure for applying to activities, all of which is handled in Selection. As we waited, my mother pointed out a device resembling a napkin ring mounted on a rod and wondered what it was for: there had been nothing like it in the old Reception halls when she passed through eight years before. My aunt Rosario, who as a Guardian Spirit had been briefed on the new facilities before they opened, explained it as an identifier.
Every spirit, she said, is separate and distinct. The Directorate maintains a file on each, entering each incarnation. Formerly, Reception officials took the arriving spirit’s current name and birth data, but there were always mix ups, most of them created by spirits who refused to trust the basic orientation and who, fearing dispatch into some sort of hell, gave false information.
“Now you pass through the ring, and the central computer picks up identifying data and prints out a record of your avatars and any other pertinent information.”
I had no trouble passing through when my turn came. I merely aimed at the ring and whooshed through without a trace of constriction. The teleprinter began to thump at once and went on for above a minute. When it had stopped, the Argentine turned up the paper and tore it off.
I learned I had had four incarnations prior to this one, three of them male and two of these scholars of sorts. Then he came to current data.
“Fuertes, Camilo. Tinieblan. Student. Born 1950.”
I nodded.
“You hold a confirmed admission to Learning … revoked … hmm … reconfirmed today.” He looked up and smiled. “Congratulations, Señor Fuertes! Learning is a marvelous activity. I hope to go there myself someday. It’s, uh, rather an honor to have a confirmed admission waiting for one. You may report there immediately if you wish, though you may care to pass by Selection to get an idea of what Learning’s like.”
“I have an idea. But I don’t think I’ll go straight on. There’s another activity I’d like to spend some time in first.”
He blinked. “Really? That’s odd. It says here you made an unconscious application to Learning more than a decade back. I don’t—”
At that point a red light began flashing on his console. The teleprinter thumped again. “Hold on,” he said. “There’s something …”
He read the new print-out without removing it from the machine and pressed a button on his console. “Señor Fuertes. I’m afraid you’re going to have to see my supervisor.”
92. What had happened
What had happened, disconcerted examiners, was that my body had continued functioning. Did you perhaps assume that when my head meloned onto the stone floor of Bondadosa Prison, when my spirit jumped out, my body had quit functioning? I confess I had assumed as much myself, though you would have made no such assumption had you read Note 81 with care. Did you then, having made one false assumption, further assume that since I have returned to this world and resumed work on this dissertation—which, by the way, I shall soon come to Sunburst to defend—I am presently a reincarnation of myself? If so, you are more foolish than I thought. No one is ever incarnated twice in the same avatar. That goes for Jesus of Nazareth along with everyone else. His spirit has been reincarnated twice since the Crucifixion, once as the Dominican lay brother Martín de Porres (1579-1639, canonized 1962), presently as a nurse in Bangladesh. His spirit continues to serve Good Works in both worlds. But none of his avatars, not even the most famous of them, will ever be replayed. I journeyed to the next world and returned, still as Camilo Fuertes, but that was because my body stayed in business.
I’ve said a lot about the spirit, all of it worth saying in this materialistic age, but I intend no denigration of the body, certainly not of the particular body my spirit lodges in at present. If any of my statements in these notes imply such disrespect, I herewith disavow them! The body is a marvelous contraption—not built to last, unfortunately, but that’s the great part of its charm. The whole excitement of this life is in the tensions generated when your immortal spirit has to ride about in your flower-fragile, disposable flesh frame. Those people with a talent for this life—and I don’t claim to be among them—manage to keep the tensions nicely balanced. The spirit mustn’t truckle to the flesh, but mustn’t be a despot either. Therefore, among the several reforms I have resolved to institute since tripping to the Beyond—most of which, nosy examiners, are none of your concern—is to allow my body greater participation in my life.
How forlorn my body looked sprawled on the prison floor! How arrogant of my spirit to lead it into bondage and abuse, and then bail out as soon as things looked bleak! True enough, I did feel a great reluctance to abandon the poor forked thing entirely, and herein I was reacting normally, for while the spirit is often jarred from the body when the latter is badly injured, it will rarely range very far away until the body quits. And my body is no quitter. It lay ostensibly inert. It seemed shrunken, as lifeless bodies do. I was specially struck by the tininess of my private parts—which are of perfectly acceptable dimensions, snickering examiners; perfectly acceptable, let me assure you (and your wife, Dr. Grimes, and your daughter, Professor Lilywhite, if they are reading!), but which appeared at that moment to have shriveled almost to nothingness. Despite appearances, however, my body hadn’t quit. My heart was pumping, my lungs bellowsing, my brain sending electro-chemical dispatches—all very weakly, it is true, but nonetheless courageously, since it was getting no aid or comfort from my spirit. I can only say in partial exculpation that I should never have left its vicinity but that my mother, grandmother, and aunt wished to be off.
And how bravely it hung in through all those months! How handsomely it is recuperating now! It will be sound as a barrel in a week or two, nothing the worse for the whole miserable experience (saving, of course, the absence of a toe, which had to be snipped off). I shall have it playing tennis inside the month. I have already had it up on my good wife for a prance—doctor’s advice he damned!—whereat it performed most nobly, taking all the jumps without a wheeze. At this instant it is generously repaying me in pleasure for being allowed to soak the sunshine of this terrace. Denigrate the body? Never again! Certainly not this one. This is a very fine body. I shall not see its like in a dozen incarnations.
My body, then, remained in business, as the central computer of Astral Records had divined and verified. I learned later, after my return to earth, that at about the time I entered the first pavilion of Reception, my body was being bustled toward San Bruno Hospital, for while I might be a boon to the Tinieblan Revolutionary Government as a confessed subversive, I would be a headache to it as a corpse. This was because my wife, Elizabeth (whose own excellent body reclines, basted in Coppertone, a few feet from me now), raised a heady stink over her arrest and my imprisonment through her congressman uncle (Justin C. Cleaver, Rep., N.Y.); because the wire services transposed the story into Spanish and flashed it back to Central America; because President Esclepio Varón read it, remarked my name, and ordered his ambassador in Ciudad Tinieblas to make inquiries—all of which had been going on while I was in La Bondadosa, though of course I had no inkling of it. So the Tinieblan Revolutionary Government couldn’t afford to garbage me. So my body was getting help to stay in business. So the Argentine interviewer’s supervisor was put out.
“You shouldn’t have come here in the first place,” she told me. “You should go back at once!”
She was a large, strongly-lung’d woman, imposing at first sight in her dawn-pink double-breasted Chief Receptionist’s uniform, but quite evidently a product of the seniority (as opposed to the merit) system of promotion. This problem didn’t come up in the old days, she declared. She’d been with Reception for seven centuries, and for most of that time one had known when a spirit arrived that its avatar was done with and the work of processing it wouldn’t go to waste. In the old days if a spirit was knocked out of its body, it either jumped right back inside or lost its avatar, but nowadays terrestrial doctors had the gall to keep spiritless bodies functioning for years. Spirits, of course, wouldn’t reenter grossly damaged bodies and would in the end tire of hanging round them, would take off for Reception, would demand their right to select activities, always reserving their right to zoom back into their earthly bodies should these improve in status. Records got botched. A pernicious mood of disorder and uncertainty was engendered. And the morale of hard. working personnel in Reception and Selection inevitably suffered, since for all they knew, the effort put in on processing might be entirely wasted. She went on as if the whole science of medicine had been concocted as a personal affront to her. “As for you, your case is outrageous! You haven’t been moping round a hospital for months, watching them drip plasma or whatever into your body! You ran off like a coward! You must go back at once and stay near your body till life is gone from it for good!”
She might have bulldozed a more diffident person. Or one less resolute. I felt a strong nostalgia for my body, and when I learned it was still functioning, the feeling deepened. Furthermore, though for all I knew my body was still in Bondadosa Prison, the course of action I’d resolved on was hardly less scary than returning there. But I am neither diffident nor irresolute. You have gleaned that much by now, dear examiners, if you have any wit at all, and that overbearing Chief Receptionist was not denied a demonstration of my character. I thanked her for advising me of my rights, I bowed to her with exaggerated gallantry and plucked the print-out from her trembling hand. I took my mother’s and my grandmother’s arms, beamed at Rosario, and said, “Lead on to Selection, won’t you, Auntie.” And with that the four of us breezed off.
93. Selection
The numberless pavilions of Selection range by the shore of that same placid sea which I saw glimmering far off when I first entered the next world. The adjective “numberless” is accurate enough. They extend left and right from the exits of Reception in a convincing illusion of infinity, and I met no one who could tell me exactly how many of them there are.
Each activity, Victim alone excepted, maintains a pavilion, the largest of the ones I saw being that of Astral Service. It floats immediately opposite the entranceway and is about a kilometer in diameter. Each pavilion contains exhibition areas with displays representing what the particular activity involves. According to my mother, these are exceedingly well done, and many new arrivals spend months visiting them, much more like tourists at a world’s fair than prospective applicants. I could readily believe this last, for the crowds were fantastic. At least ten thousand spirits packed the open mall before the War pavilion watching a company of ceremonial guards from one of the Eastern League armies relieve a company from the Western League, while the queue at the Orgies and Abominations pavilion coiled entirely around it. The conveyors were similarly congested. We took the upper one, which branches left from the entrance, putting the pavilions on our right, and were at once sardined in a press of spirits, most of whom were jabbering excitedly in a babel of tongues. Recognizing English, I struck up a conversation with a Negro family of five from Alabama, who had been whisked into the next world together by a tornado nearly a year earlier and who had spent the whole time since wandering about Selection, “just seeing the sights,” as the mother put it. The father advised me not to miss the Childhood pavilion, “where they let you try on a kid’s body,” at which his children of course sneered.
