Not that I mind being dead. It's nothing to be saved from, really. Oh, at first believe me, I railed against it, bracing myself for whatever fight or hell lay before me. But after about an hour it seemed pretty clear to me that nothing was going to happen.

Literally, nothing happens when you are dead. To from your own view point anyway. Granted, I do not have a body to call my own anymore, but being dead feels surprisingly like being alive does. Only with less worry. And not taxes of course.

But if you can read this, and I am not at all certain that you can, I am sure taxes and bodies are not what concerns you. I imagine that if this entire experiment has managed to break through, and do what it was predicted to do, you'll want a full account of what I see, hear, feel, and the like. So, here goes.

If you could take, say, New York City, and spread it out over a galaxy, but still be able to see everything in it, that is sort of like what being dead is. I can't say that there is an over abundance of feeling love or ecstasy, but one gets the sense that it is possible to do so, if one looks around enough. I have not been much of an explorer in my life, so I suppose it stands to reason that I pretty much stay put now that I am dead.

Perhaps that is why I volunteered. I fit the description of who they were looking for perfectly. A "non-seeker" as they call people like me, with a nostalgia for the past and a desire to serve both the living and the dead in an experiment to bridge the gap between the two. So here I am, sending this message. (Seekers and religious types it would seem, are too immersed in the "otherness" to be of much use to activities like this. So they told me anyway.)

And so, if this message gets through, and you can read it, know that it isn't so bad over here, and shoot us a line back if possible. Thanks.

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Fablanta almost 12 years ago

Nice quirky little story about the 'nothing'. Only problem was the description of it being like NYC which was too mundane.

kmh289 almost 12 years ago

I kind of liked the visual I got from thinking of New York - I got a strong image of NYC from above like from an airplane with all the lights at night. Was that what you were going for Ty?

The whole story reminded me of this segment I heard on a radio show about a guy whose body stopped making testosterone because of a medical problem (it's here, if you want to listen to it: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/220/testosterone?act=0) . He said he felt no desire, no emotion, just sort of floated above everything like a god. Your narrator sounded similar.

Kinda liked the casual request for "a line" at the end. Dude's so blasé!

TyUnglebower almost 12 years ago

Thanks for the comments. I was in a way going for the visual you mentioned, in regards to using NYC as a model. Also the sort of condensed expansiveness, so indicative of the oxymoron that is many cities, but New York in particular.

TyUnglebower (joined almost 12 years ago)
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I'm a freelance writer, and I'm just experimenting with this.

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Story information

License

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

genres

fantasy speculative religious

tags

humor dry character-based

Prompt

I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead.
Prompt suggested by DoctorMikeReddy

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