A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife Read online

  His reply astonished me: He had already written extensively on the Afterlife—and he enclosed an amount of material equal to all that I had produced so far! I say that I was astonished, but I should add that I was not dumbfounded or anything remotely like it. After all, I’d thought of Tom precisely because I’d noticed a resonance between his work and mine; if I was writing on the Afterlife, why should I be amazed that he was doing the same? It was only later on, as they began to accumulate, that the coincidences began to seem uncanny.

  The correspondences between Tom’s vision of the Afterlife and mine were remarkable. For example, both assumed the existence of a small, popular guidebook; in his material, it was referred to as The Little Book, and as soon as I saw it I became convinced (wishful thinking, perhaps) that this was the title of the book I’d seen in my dream. Both of us saw the Afterlife as “ordinary” and “unheavenly.” Undoubtedly the most important correspondence occurred in the matter of the “peopling” of the Afterlife. In my dream “reading” of Catnach’s guidebook, I had seen that three distinct types of shades existed on the Other Side. One type, the most prominent, was made up of people who were recognizably “us.” These, in Tom’s Little Book, were identified as Regulars. The two other types, of which I had been unable to form a clear picture, were named by Tom Husks and Adepts. Although I’d been unable to form a clear picture of them until then, I recognized them at once from his descriptions. (Again, perhaps “wishful thinking.”) More important, I knew who they were—and Tom did not. Tom could see that they existed and could describe them but was unable to identify them, was unable to explain what they were doing in the Afterlife. In this instance and many others, each of us possessed a key piece of data that the other lacked.

  We were, in addition, complementary on a broader level. As I’ve said, I was aware of portions of the book that were “dark” to me, because they were texts that Catnach had imported from “alien” sources. These texts, inaccessible to me, were already in Tom Whalen’s files. Where he’d “seen” them, I don’t know; I’ve never asked and don’t plan to ask.

  I described earlier the coded images that can only be decoded by an unfocused stare. I should have added that they can only be decoded by a binocular stare. With Tom at work, I had, in effect, attained binocular vision. The “code” had been broken, and I was now once again able to access the text of Catnach’s little book.

  Work went smoothly for another two weeks.

  By that time I was becoming a little irked by Delores’s absence from the post office. I’m a fusspot in this regard and like to see people where I’m used to seeing them. So, when I arrived to pick up my mail on Saturday, I confronted the young woman who was filling in for Delores during her vacation.

  “When is Delores going to be back?” I demanded to know.

  She gazed at me solemnly and said: “Delores is dead.”

  I gawked at her, thunderstruck.

  “She was killed in an auto accident in Tallahassee, right at the beginning of her vacation. Her husband brought in this clipping from the newspaper.”

  Taped to the wall right beside me was a two-inch obituary, which included the surprising fact that Delores, whom I’d taken to be in her late forties, had been sixty-seven at the time of her death. I retreated in a funk.

  I couldn’t recall the exact date on which Delores had visited my dreams to urge me to write a guide for newcomers to the Afterlife and to offer me her help with it. It was certainly after the beginning of her vacation, since I remembered thinking I would tell her about the dream when she returned.

  I like to think that I’m a rational and nonsuperstitious person, but I’m afraid I was initially inclined to be profoundly unnerved by this eerie coincidence. Put nakedly, the question was this: Had I received in my dream an actual, firsthand account of what it’s like to arrive in the Afterlife (people are “very confused at first,” Delores had told me)? I was at first unable to answer that question the way I wanted to answer it, which was with a confident No! Don’t be ridiculous!

  Later that same day I received a new batch of material from Tom Whalen, including a new entry for the Q & A section. The question Tom sent was: “What is the smoke I see on the horizon? Are those whales? Is that an ocean?” I hadn’t told Tom about my dream of the “Leviathan,” and therefore hadn’t shared with him my perception that it was “the fountainhead of the Afterlife.”

  At this point, I’m ashamed to say, I lost my nerve. I immediately sat down and wrote Tom a letter suggesting that it might be best to shut down our collaboration, citing minor discrepancies between “his version” and “my version” and offering the feeble opinion that I might not be sufficiently “great-souled” for such an enterprise (whatever that might mean). Luckily for us both (and for the book), he wrote back immediately to reassure me that the discrepancies I’d noted were of slight importance (as was the case, of course) and should be handled in whatever way I thought best.

  For the time being, however, I wanted nothing more to do with the project. Besides, I had to get back to work on Providence, which I had promised myself would be finished in the spring of 1993.

  After a few weeks of work, I fulfilled that promise.

  In the interval I visited Delores’s post office every Saturday and reexamined the obituary taped to the wall beside the window. (It was still taped there at this writing.) Gradually I began to frame a new hypothesis, based on the fact that this obituary had been taped to the wall for at least two weeks before my attention was drawn to it. Perhaps, this hypothesis suggested, it was there even before I had my dream about Delores. If so, my eye had certainly fallen upon it. Although I had utterly no conscious awareness that Delores was dead, is it possible that I had unconsciously registered the fact of her death and then worked this into a dream about her? It’s not inconceivable that, while I was digging mail out of my box, someone a few feet away at the window was saying, “I can’t believe it! Delores is dead?” I certainly heard no such thing … but then I wasn’t listening for such a thing; my mind was on my mail. Even so, those syllables, if uttered, could conceivably have entered my subconscious, where they might have been processed for presentation to me as a dream. Implausible as this sounds, it’s certainly more plausible than receiving a visit from a ghost ready to help me write a book on the Afterlife.

  In any case, by the time I was ready to resume work on The Little Book I had regained my nerve. One thing was certain, however: The book needed a very different sort of introduction from the one I had originally planned.

  This is it.

  Daniel Quinn

  June, 1993

  CHAPTER 1

  BASIC

  QUESTIONS

  ANSWERED

  Q. What am I doing here? I feel totally disoriented and helpless.

  A. This is normal for the newly dead and will pass. Your circumstances have changed as drastically as it is possible for circumstances to change. Every single one of us felt this way initially. Every single one of us eventually learned the ropes and regained our sense of balance and self-possession. The Little Book is designed to serve as a ready first aid to this objective.

  Q. What’s wrong with my legs? It’s as though they were made of rubber.

  A. You have what is popularly known as the staggers, which we all have when we arrive in the Afterlife. You’ll be back to normal in a few days.

  Q. Exactly where am I?

  A. In life, it seemed to you that you inhabited a universe of stars, galaxies, and so on, and you located yourself as an individual on the planet Earth, on one of its continents or islands, perhaps in one of its cities. In your stay in that universe, this seemed “normal.” A quick look round will convince you that you no longer inhabit that universe. It’s said that we inhabit “another dimension” or “a parallel universe,” but these phrases have no precise meaning. Basically, you’re somewhere else, and this somewhere else will soon seem completely normal to you.

  Q. But everything already looks completely nor
mal.

  A. Our environment is locally psycho-reactive, which is to say that it responds to our individual expectations in ways that are not explainable in ordinary causal terms. If you are, let us say, an American urbanite of the 1990s, your surroundings will almost certainly look and function like a sort of idealized American city of that era. If, on the other hand, you are a Kayapo Indian of the 1990s, your surroundings will look and function like a rain forest in the interior of Brazil.

  Q. Is this heaven then?

  A. Some believe so. Some argue that it cannot be, since no divine presence makes itself felt. Some believe it to be a purgatory from which some or all of us will eventually be delivered. Even in the Afterlife, questions remain.

  Q. Why do people call this place Detroit [Nepal, Havana, Beijing, Hong Kong, Sheffield, Nebraska]? It isn’t at all the way I remember it.

  A. Place names in the Afterlife are not subject to any objective standard. Several large French cities are named Paris, and they are not all in the same general area (not, in other words, all in “France”). Shades in your area (or at least some of them) have adopted the habit of calling it Detroit (or whatever). It doesn’t mean much of anything. Humor them—or call it whatever you please (maybe you’ll start a new trend).

  Q. Are maps available?

  A. Yes, and they are delightful to look upon. Maps as small as your thumb, maps as large as the landscape. Minutely detailed maps with names of places you’ve never been. Glorious maps, filigreed, flagged, annotated, and totally impractical.

  Q. Why is it always overcast? Doesn’t the sun ever shine?

  A. It isn’t “overcast,” and there is no sun to shine. The light (and the alternation of “day” and “night”) is assumed to be our environment’s response to our expectations of it. Finicky speakers say that we experience light (and the rest of the Afterlife), not that light (or anything else in the Afterlife) exists. If you would prefer to pass your time entirely in the “day,” you will want to search out one of the so-called Northern Cities, where “the sun shines twenty-four hours a day.”

  Q. What is my body made of?

  A. The nature of matter in this continuum (including the matter in your body) is as mysterious as the nature of matter in the continuum we knew when alive. Clearly our bodies are not as “substantial” as in life—not as heavy or impermeable.

  Q. I thought memory was a brain function, pure and simple. How can I have memories if I don’t have a brain?

  A. You clearly do have a brain, just as you clearly have arms, legs, eyes, nose, hair, and so on. All the organs are there, though their function may or may not be.

  Q. I don’t have any feeling of hunger, but I’ve seen people eating. Will I get hungry later?

  A. Food is not a necessity in the Afterlife. “Eating” (it has to be enclosed in quotation marks) is an experience quite unlike the one you knew in life. Try it, and spare me the necessity of describing something you will inevitably experience for yourself.

  Q. What about sleep? Do people sleep here?

  A. People rest, doze, tune out, power down, and, yes, sleep (though neurologists insist that none of these states actually correspond to what the living call sleep). Some find they have no need of it, some spend as much time at it as they can. It continues to provide a handy means of ending a tiresome visit: “I have to go home and sleep now, thank you. Auf Wiedersehen!”

  Q. What’s the proper way to talk about things here? Do you call people ghosts or spirits or what?

  A. You may call people people. People are called ghosts or shades only in a semi-jocular or casual way, except when referring to their former status, as in, “Today I met the shade of my second cousin Alf.” (Most people, however, would simply say, “Today I met my second cousin Alf.”) You will seldom hear people refer to us as spirits. Most people think of spirits as bodiless beings (which we are clearly not).

  Q. Do people refer to themselves as dead?

  A. We often refer to ourselves collectively as “the dead” but as individuals seldom think of ourselves as such, since we are manifestly alive (though in a somewhat attenuated form). We say, “I live two streets over,” “This is not a bad life we have here,” “I live for my work,” “I prefer to live alone,” and so on.

  Q. I worry that, being a newcomer, I may inadvertently violate some custom or give offense to someone. Are there guides to etiquette and good manners?

  A. Such guides exist, though they were more in evidence in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. In general, the good manners you practiced in life will serve perfectly well here. Special customs do not seem to arise among the dead; if you think about it, you’ll see that the conditions and occasions that fostered the development of customs in life are largely absent here.

  Q. I heard someone talk about “losing his head.” What does this mean?

  A. Losing your head is a sort of jocular euphemism for dying; the reference is of course to decapitation. When in a few days or weeks you have recovered from the shock of “losing your head,” it will be said that you “have your head on”—in other words, are once again whole.

  Q. An awful lot of people I see in the street look and act like lunatics. Many of them tell me they don’t know who they are. What’s the story here?

  A. To answer briefly: Standards of normalcy are somewhat different in the Afterlife. For more on this, see Chapter Three, “Neighbors in the Afterlife.”

  Q. But I’ve heard people talk about a Bedlam here in the Afterlife as if it were a real lunatic asylum. Is there such a place, or is this just a rumor?

  A. People who in life inhabited Bucharest or Baltimore “wake up” in the Afterlife in a place that seems to them very like Bucharest or Baltimore. The same is true of people who in life inhabited London’s Bethlem Hospital, the madhouse known popularly as Bedlam. Thus Bedlam is as “real” as any other place in the Afterlife; its inhabitants tend to be lunatics, just as the inhabitants of “Dublin” tend to be Irish. Since their environment is psycho-reactive in exactly the same way ours is, Bedlam is veritably a bedlam, operating under its own chaotic and delusional laws.

  Q. Where should I go? Should I “check in” someplace?

  A. No, there is no special procedure or induction for newcomers.

  Q. But where am I supposed to stay?

  A. You will eventually want to find a space of your own, of course, but your present-felt need for shelter is more psychological than physical. I mean that you’re not in any danger (as you might well be in the same circumstances in life). You don’t in fact need protection from either the elements or the people around you.

  Q. Can I just go where I please then?

  A. For the most part, yes. No one “owns” the Afterlife or any part of it. On the other hand, people tend to make the space around them their own, and this is something you will want to respect. For more on this subject, see Chapter Three.

  Q. How do I get around? Is there mass transit? Cabs? Bicycles?

  A. Mostly by means of bipedal locomotion. Look around you and you’ll see few if any vehicles. A bicycle, perhaps, yes, but no cars, or if cars, then doubtless Phantasms, invariably blue in color, which vanish when approached. Carts, wheelbarrows, and rickshaws are seen, but their function is probably ornamental since one seldom sees them in use. For the most part, we walk. And walk and walk. “Where are you going?” “Down the road.” No one says “up” the road. We walk, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, occasionally we run. In the streets, in the so-called malls, on the road. We walk and walk. But as often, simply stand. Stand and stare, or not stare.

  Q. Will the clothes I have on eventually wear out?

  A. Yes, but that’s not a cause for worry. Stores (in the sense of “accumulations of goods”) are found everywhere in the Afterlife, and you are at liberty to take what you want from them. To be honest, you may never find the clothes you like when you’re looking for them. For example, you may want to wear dungarees but can only find, in your size, an evening gown, al
beit a quite lovely one. In the end, what you wear simply doesn’t matter; soon enough you’ll lose your self-consciousness about such things.

  Q. If I had an addiction to, say, coffee, sweets, cigarettes, illegal substances of a variety of sorts, will my addiction still be with me, and if so, how will I satisfy my need?

  A. Desires come and go. Desires fade. One hypothesis, avidly promoted by Professors Burroughs, Bradley, and Lee, is that the Afterlife is in itself a kind of addiction, a hallucinatory high with no side effects. Appealing as this hypothesis is to some (and you’re welcome to it if you wish), it bears little relationship to the facts.

  Q. You mentioned “professors.” Are there universities in the Afterlife?

  A. No degree-offering institutions exist. Titles such as Professor or Doctor are usually carried over from one’s previous existence, though you may of course call yourself whatever you please.

  Q. What is the smoke I see on the horizon?1 Are those whales? Is that an ocean?

  A. If you see the “whales,” you’re rare. Few people do, but enough “sightings” have occurred to warrant extensive study of the subject. No, what you see are not whales or smoke or even an ocean, though that withdrawing roar does resemble the sound of waves receding from a shore. Pozler theorizes, in a manner reminiscent of Hoyle’s Steady State theory of the universe, that this is the primordial matter from which the Afterlife takes its sustenance. The most advanced hypothesis put forth to date is that what you are seeing are tachyons, particles that travel faster than light. Physicists are proposing that if they are tachyons and tachyons form the base matter of the Afterlife, then we are traveling faster than light, thus accounting for the fact that no one grows old here. Husks decay, yes, and skin falls off the bodies of some; but in general nothing truly ages.

  Q. Can death occur in the Afterlife, and if so, is there a life after Afterlife?