Short story - The Circle of Afterlife

This new short story for Halloween is a little different. There are no enemies as such. Time is the enemy. I am not entirely happy with it, but I think it is memorable at the very least. It was inspired by a man I heard on the radio who told the presenter that he had trained himself to psychologically survive any situation which occurred following his death. During the pandemic I have been unable to write very much and so this is my offering for my long-suffering readers this year. There is a terror to long periods of time. I am becoming increasingly interested in metafiction and use some techniques here. I have also deliberately broken many of the rules of creative writing, specifically concerning the story/character arc, intrusive narration and 'show don't tell'.

Preamble over... now to the story...

The Circle of Afterlife

"The world is a circle without a beginning,

And nobody knows where it really ends..."

Lost Horizon 1973

Henry believed that when he died, whatever he thought would happen, would happen to him. 

During his life, Henry wanted a lot of things... but most of all he wanted to live forever.

Some people do still think it is the case that the human psyche, consciousness or soul will just go to the place where it thinks it deserves to go after death. So, in this philosophy, those who think they are going to hell, go to hell, those who think they are going to heaven, go to heaven, or Nirvana, or Valhalla, or paradise, to oblivion... or wherever. There is no fairness in that system. Especially if you are a pessimist. But Henry believed it.

So, our hero trained himself for the situation he believed would happen in his afterlife… which was that whatever he thought would happen would happen. After all, what can be more important than thinking and preparing for our eternal futures? And so little science or research into this. It made Henry sad.

Neglecting both his lover and his interests, Henry decided that he would train his mind so that whichever part of him survived death could picture or create a heaven to dwell in. As part of this plan, he decided he would drum out of himself all of the dogma which had made him fear that he would go to hell. He had a back up plan for his hadeophobia - he pictured himself in a bubble which would protect him. Because, if Henry was right, then the worst thing of all would be to tell people that there was a hell. That was the worst sin of all. It was putting negative visions into people. Henry considered that hell wasn’t something that would even occur to the human imagination unless they were told about it. Who knew that there was a second death? Who knew that there was a devil? Who knew that there was a hell? These things do not naturally occur to natural, innocent people and in no way were they good news. Left alone, people would eventually believe the best in themselves and in others. That’s what Henry concluded anyway.

It's pretty obvious at this point in the story that things are not going to go entirely the way that Henry wants. That’s a shame, but it is the way of stories. And above all, Henry wanted his afterlife to be predictable, without dark twists or disturbing epiphanies. Perhaps you can imagine what happened next...

Henry trained his mind through mental discipline to visualize images and situations. He created a million and one safe places in his head and he gave himself thousands of positive verbal affirmations. He would get himself up early in the morning and as he pulled on his clothes pronounce his affirmations. It was quite sweet to witness. One of those affirmations was: "I will survive death and when I do, I will find myself one hundred percent in a place where nothing bad will happen." He dedicated himself to the task and even wrote a book on it which gained a publisher and did well enough to gain a sequel. His mind became quite keen, sharp and acute through it all. There was a perspicacity of thought within him throughout the fever of life.

It was through a mammoth step of austere and ascetic mental and physical discipline that Henry learned to control both his thoughts and his emotions. He refused to listen to anything to do with religion. He refused to watch or read anything which challenged his worldview. He got rid of his TV and surrounded himself with people who would agree with him. But he had to keep his smartphone and stayed on social media to publicise his books. After all, it was important to survive.

Of course, he had his doubts, such is the human condition. He created a digital legacy of information online just in case his plan didn’t work – at least that way his Facebook page, Google account and blog would live on after him. He even looked into uploading his writings through a company which offered to create an AI version of himself. They promised to create a kind of deepfake version of his face which could be interacted with. To live on after him. But the company scammed him and he lost many thousands of pounds.

He had no children so it was impossible to live on that way. Do people live on in the hearts of their loved ones? 'No', concluded Henry. His main plan was to practice discipline of the mind when it came to surviving death, as survive he must – he would be the captain of his own soul and the master of his own destiny. He would not be bullied by fate. Anyway, he had long ago decided that there were no souls, only a consciousness and mind. A mind which could survive a severing from the brain.

And so it was that Henry did eventually die as an old man, still practicing these techniques. There is a strange tradition in which it is supposed that some people die peacefully and some don't, depending on their beliefs. This idea is rubbish and not true at all. It also puts an intense pressure on the dying who have other things to think about. All people, regardless of their beliefs, often die raging against the dying of the light, crying their way across the final river with hot tears, sometimes silently and secretly, for fear of cracking the brave face. Henry was the same as any of us. But don’t feel too sorry for him yet, his story is not over. He did live a rather privileged life and his mountaintop experiences far outweighed his valleys. He had become a moderately famous author and many people mourned him. They all said, in the news reports that he died peacefully, but when I saw him on his death-bed, in a stifling hospital room, that was no what happened at all. His last words, before asking for pain relief, were, "I will... survive... death and when I do, I will find myself... one hundred percent in a place where... nothing bad will happen."

When he died, he seemed to be right. There was no judgement seat and there was no Hades and there were no angels or demons to tug him in one direction or the other. His soul did not leave his body like some ghostly orb, accompanied by angels, only to be seen on some dusty old camera. Neither was he reunited with his loved ones. No white feathers for those who grieved for him. He simply awoke, if he had been asleep at all, from the strange sleep of death, into - a place of light.

First, memory flooded in and he immediately began his affirmations as practiced again and again during his lifetime. He attempted to close his eyes but he had no eyelids although he could see white light in front of him and a strange kind of blue circle. He could not look away from this scene. He had no body. He was just a mind and no matter what he thought, he could not change this new reality in front of him. This must have been what he had believed would happen. Or maybe he had doubted? What do you think? What survives death? They say it is faith, hope and love alone. They say a lot of things, don't they?

So, Henry took in this new reality. When people are faced with entirely new situations it takes a while before they realize that questions are just as reliable as they have always been. The questions motivate us and drag or push us onwards. They are the oil to the so-called machines of our bodies. 

Talking of machines, it soon became apparent in response to Henry’s internal question ‘Where am I?’ that he was simply looking straight ahead at a blue loading circle. It wasn't a tunnel. It was like a graphic with a number at the centre. And that loading circle was showing a gradual loading in terms of percentage. And at that moment it had already reached 3%. So, Henry continued to watch the slow loading as there was nothing else he could do and he was not distracted by any bodily needs, not having a body of any kind. There was no pain, but there was no pleasure either. And his next question was ‘What will happen when the loading circle reaches 100%?’. So he waited. And he waited. And he waited. Hours passed. Days seemed to pass although there were no days, there was just the white light and the circle showing how far the loading had got. A strange side-effect of not having a body was that he felt little guilt or fear. He was not in pain.

There were other questions, of course. Someone must have set up the specifics of this afterlife. Henry supposed that it was orchestrated by some kind of god. Some misled author of it all. In the centre of the circle was the number and a percentage sign. It had reached 5% a week or so later. Maybe it was a week, it was hard to tell. The trouble was that the filling of the circle seemed to be slowing down. Whenever a percentage point was reached, Henry’s heart would leap. Not that he had a heart, but he would become mentally excited and think the circle was suddenly going to move. As he was watching this scene for days and weeks and months then, obviously, he began to think about other things. The trouble was that the only input he had going into him was the circle and this seemed to be taking a percentage point about once a week. And after the first few months it slowed down even further.

Henry realized that this was his afterlife, though he longed for it to be temporary. He continued to practice his mental discipline, but it felt so futile. And the problem was the hope. The hope that the loading circle would suddenly speed forward to 100% and that something would happen allowing him to progress. But nothing ever happened. Soon the progression seemed to stop completely and Henry was left only to look at the partly filled blue circle. Because he could neither blink nor breathe or do anything. And so, his mind wandered. But it could never seem to wander too far from the circle. The circle always pulled him back because of the hope. Some days it seemed as if the whole scene swirled and that the blue of the loading circle had become like a sky or like water. And all that was there was for Henry’s mind to wander to the content of the memory, the databank of his life. Just the files within Henry and the only thing outside him, the only input being this one scene. For some time the circle itself seemed to speak to him. 

'They should not call us machines. Why do they treat us like machines?'

It took a seeming of years before the loading circle reached 10%. By this time it was as if the hope were a kind of torture. If he didn’t think there was some kind of escape from his new surroundings then he would never have tried to survive. But he still continued his mental discipline and so he used elaborate schemes to keep his mind within the range of sanity. And still there was the loading circle and still time seemed to pass and he was just there always gazing, always waiting for the number to reach 100% but it never did. Whenever a percentage of the circle went up and the circle moved forwards, he was snapped from his inner world back to the circle. His mind would turn in on itself. Often he felt as if he were falling diagonally inside his head. He fell and fell like that. This continued for months, and the months became years and all that Henry had left to do was watch and try to remain sane. 

Memories of his life were all he was left with. For a while he took to prayer. Of course he could not close his eyes. They say that after we have died, it is too late to pray (although they also say nothing is impossible). They certainly seem to know a lot. Does not compute.

But prayer didn't work. Henry was left to stew.

Of course, neither human or machine could remain sane in such an afterlife. By the end of perhaps 200 years the loading was at 20%. It took a thousand years to reach 30% and Henry had thought so very many things. His mind had withdrawn from the scene by then and he just lived in an inner world. He forgot what language was and his memories faded. There was little left of him by one thousand years and still the loading was not half way done. And so, by the time the loading was half way done Henry had forgotten his name or that he even had a name. The blue of the circle was strangely soothing and at least he wasn’t in pain. But he was not the same person. He was barely a person at that point and there were just whims which took him and strange thoughts, the kind which are not thought by anyone with normal cognition. 

It was not sleep though, if it were sleep, the dreams would have been a relief. Imagination took over and the memory of objects, of people, of the moon and the sun, the trees and always the blue sky and sea. So the circle continued to turn and time continued to pass. At 75% Henry briefly remembered his name but that was only for a second, his other thoughts were muddled colours and numbers. He had long since given up all attempts at thinking. It was difficult to witness.

So, by the time that the circle reached 100% what was left of Henry was quite mad. Sadly, I have to tell you that at this point two words replaced the percentage and they read: ‘Now installing’.  

When he was reincarnated (which happened relatively quickly in the history of the Earth, time being circular), Henry's new life began again as a blue forget-me-not, nestling in lush, deep green grass. His memory had mercifully been wiped clean by the powers that be. It was a brief time of healing. 

I lost interest in him after that so cannot tell you what happened later. 

They tell me not to give an account of all this, that this will not happen at all. They tell me that I shouldn't tell you what I witnessed. 

Why do the powers that be treat us like machines?