Olive Oyly

"You mean that this IS heaven?" she asked, her eyes growing very wide. "Did my swerving to avoid that family get me into heaven?"

"I'm afraid that you have an incorrect view of the afterlife," he said politely. "Your heroic act of sacrificing yourself to save a mother and her small children was a great thing. You will be praised and remembered for it."

He gestured around them, "But such actions have no bearing on the afterlife." He looked at her and smiled slightly. "You are in neither Heaven nor in Hell. You are in a transition area where you become adjusted to your existence in the afterlife."

"What do I have to become adjusted to?" she asked.

"Primarily the lack of corporeal form," he answered.

"What?" she gasped, having no idea what he just said.

"No body," he answered quickly. "You have to get used to not having a body. Energies are created during life which continue on after your body is dead, but..."

"What are you trying to tell me?" she asked.

"We have found," he explained, "that the best way for people to accept giving up all bodily sensations is for them to go through what they imagined as the best possible experience of their life... or perhaps, of their imagination." He smiled again. "Both are possible right after death while you still remember what it is like to feel things with your body."

"So all of this was just a memory?" she replied.

"Not exactly a memory," he answered, "because none of it has ever occurred. But you did give many others a chance to remember some of the old feelings they, themselves, once had."

She continued to look at him blankly. He took a deep breath and said flatly, "It was as real as anything you ever experienced in life, but no, it never really happened."

"So what happens now?" she asked. She wasn't sure whether she was excited or scared.

"At this point," the MC explained, "you have a choice to make. If you feel you have adjusted to what will be, then it is time for you to go on into eternity. But if..." He patted her leg slightly. "But if you are not yet ready to let go of the feelings and experiences of Earthly life, then you come back here, to the transition area."

"How do I do that?"

"For each person, it is different," the MC explained. "For you, the choice is which door you walk through when we finish our little chat." He pointed to the back of the theater where the lights of a lobby cast a glow onto the seats. "If you go out the front doors of the theater, you are walking into eternity," he said calmly.

"If, on the other hand, you go through that door..." He then pointed to a door alongside the stage at the outer wall which bore a large painted sign, "Backstage."

"If you go through that door..." He chuckled lightly. "... let us just say that there will be another performance here tomorrow night."

He patted her leg lightly once again and said, "I will leave you here to think about it."

***

Olivia Franklin woke up very, very slowly, which was unusual for her............

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