"That little imp took it with him, the little b------. He could have left it with me if he wanted to," I replied tartly. "I don't care if I don't learn it as well. I just want the general ideas; the ins and outs of how heaven works!"
Without a word, she took my hand and we faded into another office-like area with many middle-aged souls. There were also many large rooms with rows of tables instead of one large table. In the very center was what looked like a welcoming desk with souls in line apparently waiting for some sort of service.
Irene let me take it all in for a short while, then she led me towards one of the smaller rooms that looked like a large office. The wall behind the young soul sitting at the desk was like a mural. I studied it closely as we took seats near the door and waited for him to finish the task he was diligently working on when we floated in. It was three dimensional, and changed from one scene to another like a hologram.
"How may I help you?" the soul at the desk asked shortly. Irene said, "My husband, Ian Burns, wants to know how heaven works. He wants a quick overview first, and the details later. Do you have a suitable teacher for him?"
The soul behind the desk looked about 3 or 4 years old. He studied me for a while then replied, "He may do best with a small, advanced group. One of his friends just signed up for a course that started a short while ago. He should be able to catch up with them in no time."
"Which friend?" I asked excitedly. I had given up on any of them being curious enough to want to learn any more than necessary.
"Larry Curmutt. He said you and your son inspired him. He said he last saw you heading down the conveyor belt." The boy-administrator was smiling broadly now. "You really do have a powerful sense of adventure. Very admirable. We want to do everything in our power to enable you to use that drive to its fullest potential, but you may need to try to contain it a bit from time to time." He came from behind his desk and shook my hand. "Let me show you where they are."
We floated into the large area that I now knew to be the Education Department. We followed him into a small classroom where a child of 7 or 8 was setting up a large tablet on an easel as several adults hovered above the chairs arranged in rows.
“This diagram is a schematic of how different tasks are organized in heaven,” the boy-teacher said as he unfurled the top sheet to reveal a maze of lines and dots. "This is not a hard-and-fast system as there is much overlap, and rapid changes with little notice occur quite frequently. But it will help us get the general idea of the different ways we can work for the advancement of effective gold in genes."
He pointed to the lower right hand corner where there was a picture of an older couple. "This is where we find the preschoolers. They have enough gold to do good deeds in limited types of dream as they sleep. Many of them have enough silver to cause some difficulty in handling even the most straight-forward of dreams, however. That's where the deAger's come in. They are to aid in the process of silver leaching so that dream jobs can be assigned more safely."
"The little devils!" I exclaimed before I could censor myself. Julia and Karl and all the others knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they got me so angry and off balance when I first arrived. It was NOT a misunderstanding. I had been had by the precious little angels.
The teacher grinned broadly and the others spun around so fast they twisted at the waist before their bottom halves had time to catch up.
"Ian, you old f--t! I was sure you were dead! Well, maybe not dead, but gone forever!" Larry said as he rushed to me and gave me a hug. "I am SO glad to see you!"
The others didn’t look at all familiar, but they didn’t seem to be annoyed by this interruption. The instructor nodded, acknowledging my presence. "Interesting reaction, Ian. Please, come join us.” He motioned to the others and asked, "Would you like to be introduced to one other, or just learn who is who as we go along?"
"Oh, we'll learn as we go along," Larry butted in. "Get busy explaining your indignation, you old crank!" He was so happy to see me you'd have thought he hadn't seen me in twenty years, not just a few days. Or so.
“I don’t need to explain anything to anyone,” I muttered under my breath; my jaw set and eyes narrowed. I didn’t like the looks of this snot of a teacher, and the others looked like doting puppies. Despite Larry’s presence, I turned to request a different assignment. My expression changed instantly when I saw both Irene and the boy-administrator were gone!
Larry saw my reaction to being ‘left at the door’ so to speak, and burst into laughter, which didn’t help my mood one bit. The instructor grinned a hellishly annoying grin, and motioned for me to sit down.
"Steve, Ian can be an aggravating old b------. Just ignore him," Larry managed to get out between chuckles. A yellow feather drifted out of his mouth.
I hovered at the door for a bit trying to decide whether to leave or stay; my expression a stony glare. Larry whispered, “They’re an interesting, intelligent bunch, Ian. You’ll get along just fine. And Steve does have a less formal side. Stay and give us a chance.”
“What the h---. What do I have to lose?” I growled. “Just stop laughing at me before I deck you,” I added through clenched teeth. I followed him to the chairs, and hovered over the one next to his.
“Welcome, Mr. Burns. We are reviewing the various job opportunities available to souls here in heaven. We had just begun to cover older adult positions. I don’t think you’ve missed too much of importance since we basically just got through introductory business,” Steve said too sweetly for my liking. I sneered in response. He just smiled and turned back to his diagram.
"Once sufficient silver is lost, the dream team can assign more difficult jobs. Anyone who wants to stay at the level of preschool is free to do so as long as she or he desires. It is a relatively stress free existence, and useful as well. However, should a twinge of curiosity or ambition strike, the next steps are always available to all who are willing to part with more of their silver. And there are easier ways to rid yourselves of your silver than the emotionally painful ways you have encountered to date." He smiled, looking at me as he said this last statement.
"If your motives are sufficiently strong, you can destroy your silver’s power with the sheer will of your gold DNA. It can be denatured into a glob of useless particles so that it can never function again. And with skill, it can actually be transformed into gold. I'll get into these methodologies at a later date. I just wanted to let you know about it so that you don't feel proceeding with your quest for knowledge is always going to be painful. It is not necessarily so. It is your choice."
I was now conditioned to cringe at the phrase 'it's your choice'. ‘What if I don't like the choices being offered? Is that really a choice?’ I felt very bitter.
Steve looked around the class. “I sense a few of you have questions related to communication with people on earth. Would you like to proceed to the topic of methods of interaction before continuing with other career options?”
“I’d definitely like to know more about communication,” one of the men said. “Some of the dreams I went on were exceedingly frustrating because of failure of communication.”
“Okay, then. Let’s move on to Communications 1001,” Steve replied.31
Steve replaced the original tablet with a smaller one, and opened it to a page with columns.
"I know Ian, at least, is not fond of physics, and George knows more than I do given his earthly career in NASA. So I'll keep the science of what we do to a minimum, and focus on the 'how to' aspect of using our heavenly ‘equipment'." He turned to the chart and pointed to the first column, headed EARTH, and wrote, ‘electronics’. "On earth, people now use computers and cell phones to send messages. Not so long ago, they had only mastered the wavelengths needed for radio and TV. As they figured out how much control of the invisible forces on earth they could harness, communication got easier and quicker."
He pointed to the third column, headed HEAVEN, and wrote ‘minds’ and explained, "Here in heaven, we can harness these unseen forces without the need for mechanical or electronic devices. Our mind reading here is comparable to the walkie-talkie for beginners on earth. Our skills improve as we become younger, and we eventually improve our ability to communicate to the level of cell phones and wireless Internet without needing any of the hardware. It’s as if we have a Personal Guidance System hardwired into our beings.”
"The broad middle column is the one we will concentrate on now. It is how heaven communicates with earth." He sighed, and continued, "And it is NOT easy. It’s like trying to communicate in two entirely different language systems."
"There are five general categories of people's receptiveness to our thought waves. The first group is people who take the world very literally, and basically don't listen to any input that is not tangible. They go by the book. They look to others for the answers to the moral and ethical issues they confront in their lives. They are not prone to introspection." He wrote to the left of the first line, ‘Literal, grounded’, to the right of that he wrote ‘airwaves, wind’ as he explained, "The only way we can communicate with them is by trying to disturb the air around them so that they can literally feel a change in their environment."
"The second group is people who use their intuition in their daily lives. They are able to look at different situations and make decisions based on their experiences. They vary greatly in the amount of trust they have in these decisions, however."
"They have a remnant of the piece of the fuzz they were born with in their Ligaments of Teres. We are able to communicate with this bit of heaven on earth by way of our slower, unmyelinated thought tracks. The catch is that the person has to be in tune with his 'gut feelings' in order to hear us.” He wrote ‘sound transmissions, whispers’ in the second column to the right of ‘intuitive’. “It's sort of like having a radio, but not turning it on at all times. And some people have better radios than others and can pick up our thoughts with more clarity. Those with radios with lots of static are less likely to trust their gut feelings."
"The third group is people who have used their remnant so much and so well that it has overflowed the ligament, and entered the person's bloodstream. These people not only use intuition often and well, they are also tuned in to their feelings. Given situations with various choices, they use their hearts as well as their gut in making a decision. They are ALMOST able to understand us when we think on our myelinated, faster tracks, and so more can be communicated more quickly." He wrote ‘thought waves’ on the chart next to ‘feeling’.
"The more advanced souls have to take over with this third group, since our thoughts are actually entering the person's circulation. We have to be careful of how much silver DNA may still be functioning in the soul doing the communication. We need to avoid contamination which could cause confusion. If any silver thoughts are picked up by the person instead of good, gold thoughts, the person will feel conflicted. If that happens often enough, the person is less able to trust his or her heart and feelings. So, until you are at a young enough age, you will not be expected to communicate with people of this receptivity."
"The fourth group is people who ‘pray’ open-mindedly. They let their thoughts be fluid so that our thoughts can influence them more directly. They easily pick up our fast track thoughts with more and more clarity as they improve with time and practice. Only the absolutely silver free souls can be used to communicate with them safely. They basically are just conduits for the power behind the fuzz to do the actual communication. They facilitate the flow, almost like an antenna, to keep the person well tuned in. They also protect the person from being hijacked by the silver forces. The Manipulators sometimes can sense a person with an open mind and try to beat us to him or her. Sort of like a hacker can intercept wireless communications. When that happens, if the person doesn’t pick up that something is amiss, we do our best to interfere with the frequencies until he or she ‘tunes out’.”
He wrote ‘wireless’ on the chart next to ‘open, fluid’ and again sighed heavily. "Unfortunately, the hackers are successful far more often than one would imagine. At all levels of communication.”
“But more about that later,” Steve said, then continued: "This brings us to the next group of people who are unfortunate enough to tune in to the paranormal. Some are just too curious for their own good. They are fascinated with the possibility of foreseeing the future, and end up getting trapped by silver. By the time they are aware they are in communication with counter forces, they are unable to escape the evil influences. The gold dominated people who have been trapped are the least difficult rescue. The people whose gold and silver make-up is about even are more difficult.”
“The most difficult group of people to detach from this connection is the silver dominated group who delve into the paranormal with their heart and soul, and practically worship the devil. They are almost impossible to save. Usually any gold that had been in them to start with is severely drained of its power.” Steve paused then added sadly, “We are rarely able to save that bit of gold.”
"We try to convince them not to choose hell. They are not PURE silver. They still have some gold so we try to bring them here, or at least convince them to stay on earth, where we can continue attempts to help them. If they are brought here when they die, we have a decent chance to save the gold they still have in them, but it is not an easy task. Many of them end up causing the ruptures in the pods some of you may have noticed. They are so uncomfortable here that they can't be reached even in their bubbles. The silver in them festers until the soul explodes. The silver eventually all degrades, and the gold that had been in them goes up to the fuzz, but the individual’s identity is lost forever."
I thought about how Pat and Gail thought I would choose to become a zit. "Do any other types of souls ever explode in a zit, um, er bubble?" I asked.
Steve smiled. "Yes. Interesting that you should ask. People in general who have more silver than gold can choose to explode rather than exist here in heaven. They have a very hard time with the transparency and lack of control over others. But they usually don't choose to form a ‘zit’ as you call them. Some of them actually turn out to be rather helpful, overall." I smiled back a bit sheepishly. ‘I had really come close, hadn't I?’ I thought. Steve nodded his answer.
Steve surveyed the group, and asked, "Anyone for a break before I go on to the ways we can tell which group the person with which we are dealing is closest to fitting into, and how one person can go from one group to another in the same thought?"
We all quickly agreed.
I wanted to find Irene and ask her about Susan and Cindy and the kids. I tried to figure out the best place to find Irene. I wondered if she went back to the nursery.
Steve suggested I think really hard about wanting her to find me, and she may be able to come here, but after a few minutes, it was obviously not working.
"She must be busy. Try Julia or Karl." Steve didn't seem worried, so I didn't worry about something gone wrong. I thought hard about Julia instead.
It still took awhile, but Julia did finally appear. "Mr. Burns! You look years younger!" she exclaimed happily.
I felt the top of my head. It was full of hair. "What color is it?" I wondered. I didn't start turning gray until my 40's.
"It's gray, but there’s so much of it!" She was smiling with twinkles in her eyes. "You've lost more than twenty years already! That's got to be a record!" A small pink butterfly flitted out of her mouth with this compliment.
"How could it be a record, dearie. I know of several saintly souls who lost 50 years on arrival. Be honest in your flattery if you want it to mean anything." I felt rather paternalistic.
Julia blushed. "I meant for someone of you silver content. Most souls with as much silver as you usually take years to lose even one year. Your gold must be really potent."
"I owe a large part of my success to you, little one.” I had forgotten how irritated I felt when I learned just what her job entailed. Besides, if it weren’t for her and the others, I would have ended up as a popped zit.
"So, you want to find Irene, then?" Julia asked me sweetly.
"Why yes I do, dearie. Do you happen to know where she may be?" I responded with mock politeness.
"She's on a rather complex job at the moment. Would you like to go watch?" Julia's smile had a hint of sadness.
I thought about asking her for more information before agreeing to go, given her tendency to have tricks up her sleeve, but decided to let her get away with it. "Sure. Let's go."
Julia took my hand, and we faded out, reappearing at Susan and Sam's house. Susan was crying, alone, in her bedroom. A newspaper was strewn across her bed. From the headlines, it must have been just after September 11, 2001. Irene was hovering over Susan.
I looked at Julia with a puzzled expression.
"Susan is trying desperately to deal with Lenny's almost certain death. So far, he’s not been found, but they know he was in the North Tower when it collapsed. Irene is waiting for her to tune in so that she can comfort her and relay a sense of some of the details."
I then saw a truly amazing sight. Irene literally melted into Susan. Susan stopped crying. A tiny smile appeared on her lips. She sighed, then whispered, "Thanks, Mom. I needed that."
"Irene just gave her a large dose of 'warm and fuzzy' in a heavenly hug," Julia whispered, a large grin on her face as tears trickling down across her dimples.
Eventually, Irene reemerged, and Susan went into the bathroom to wash her face. "But why?" she asked her puffyeyed image in the mirror and started crying all over again. Irene went to her and hugged her neck, very like the hug she gave me, but much more tender. Irene was crying almost as hard as Susan.
I looked at Julia. Her tears were flowing freely. I was crying, too, despite trying to conjure up all the hammocks on earth. I looked back over at Susan and Irene, and whispered, "I'd like to go over to them." Julia nodded and gave me a little push on my elbow.
By the time I reached Irene and Susan, I was crying like a baby, audible sobs and all. I cried harder than the worst time in my bubble.
We cried for what could have been hours. No more words were spoken, but much was communicated. Somehow Susan could sense that I was there. She smiled and thought ‘so you’re managing in heaven, then. How's heaven managing with you?’
‘You little booger,’ I thought with a smile as I recalled Irene’s description of the rather rumpled angel Susan’s kids put on my casket.
Susan managed to get herself together eventually. She finished packing to return to New York. She had rushed to be with Lenny’s family immediately after the catastrophe, but came home for a short while to get things in order so that she could go back and stay as long as Cindy and the kids needed her.
Sam and their young teens sat waiting downstairs, their eyes just as puffy as Susan's. It was more than heartbreaking. It was more pain than I could bear to watch and feel. I wished I could do more. I gave the kids hugs, and put my arm around Sam. They didn't seem to notice, but I felt a bit better. After Irene was through giving her much more potent hugs, she returned to me. We hugged. And cried. And cried.
The next thing I knew, we were on that mossy bank by the river, back in heaven. Still crying. Still hugging. I had felt more painful emotion with this exposure than I had felt in my entire life AND death so far. I ached with grief. Grief for Cindy. Grief for Susan. Grief for the kids. Grief for Sam. Grief for the world.
I thought about Lenny, and what he must have gone through in his last moments on earth. It must have felt like hell. A pang of fear ran through me at the thought. ‘And now he may be stuck in hell forever!’
"It will take time, but he will eventually be able to join us here in heaven. Try not to worry.” Irene sighed. “We need more people who are at least as receptive as Susan."
I remembered some of Steve's lecture on the groups of people in terms of their receptivity. Susan was probably in the bloodstream group.
"Actually, she’s in the most advanced group, Ian. Remember way back in college when she tried to teach you to meditate?" Irene laughed, remembering the time herself. "You WERE hysterical to watch, by the way."
"Well, if everyone wouldn't have been watching me, I could have done it!" I responded defensively.
"Well, anyway, Susan mastered heavenly communication way back then. After I died, she perfected it. It has really been wonderful being able to communicate with her all this time. We actually feel closer now than when I was alive." Irene had a dreamy look on her face.
"Why didn't I know about it?" I asked before I gave myself time to realize the answer myself. Of course Susan wouldn't tell me. I'd have thought she was crazy. I did anyway.
"Not even Sam knows. Not very many people are receptive enough to even begin to understand what she is able to do. Some fellow meditators are the only people she can confide in. She can hint at it when she talks with some of her friends who have mastered the ability to have fluid thoughts, and sense some guidance through lots of static. But if she were to tell any of her usual friends the clarity with which she can understand me and others who come to guide her, they'd think she'd need to see a shrink!" Irene smiled at the irony of that statement. Susan WAS a shrink. "But mostly, she doesn't talk about her ability because of how much it sounds like the misled people who claim to have talked to God and have a divine mission. She knows that's not how heaven communicates with people. She knows heaven’s guidance is much more subtle and diffuse. It's more feeling than actual thoughts. She can feel her thoughts being guided by us, or by the energy of the high. And she feels at peace with what she decides to do or say based on that guidance. She has even been able to sense the warmth of the fuzzy high without the help of any of us souls from time to time."
I knew Susan was a perpetually happy person. I thought it was just her nature. ‘Now I know where she got, and gets, her strength.’ I almost burst with pride! "That's some daughter we have, huh, Irene. She's amazing." I looked at Irene and leaned over and planted a kiss on her cheek. "Thanks to you."
Irene helped me fade back to the classroom, gave me a gentle kiss on the cheek, and faded out. Steve was at the front of the class, preparing the next lesson. One by one, the others returned, each looking nicely refreshed. I didn’t feel very refreshed. I felt as if my emotions had just been mixed in a blender, on puree.
It didn’t take long for everyone to return, and the lessons promptly resumed.
"Each of you learns best by using different skill sets you had finely honed for use in your earthly lives, so try to bear with me as I try to use each of your methods to review our last lesson." Steve sighed, and stood deep in thought for quite some time.
"Sheila, I may need your input. If you see me headed down a path that is not productive, please let me know." He looked each of us straight in the eyes for a short while. His gaze was uncomfortable for Larry and the small guy. It was less so for the tall skinny guy and the dowdy woman, Shirley. It was impossible for me. I wondered why he didn't need to look at Sheila.
"She’s familiar with all the different types of learning skills. She was a dean at a major college before she died. She will be able to understand my explanations in all the forms." He smiled and added, "So if you would, Ian, try a bit harder to let me see the best way to help you to understand."
I managed to look him in the eyes for maybe ten seconds. Actually, I sorta looked THROUGH him instead of at him. Making eye contact with people I was in charge of and had control over on earth was easy. Even some of my wimpier bosses were easy to 'stare down'. But not Steve. Knowing Steve could literally see into my soul was eerie.
Finally, he was ready to begin. "Now for the gods and goddesses. This is quite a lengthy topic. I'll try to hit the highlights for now, and if you are interested in more specifics, I can refer you to the proper teacher and classroom to learn more, when possible."
He turned to the last page in his chart. It was covered with names of not only the Greek and Roman gods, but also names of some of the mystical characters on things like Tarot cards and other paranormal games. Various names for the devil were also listed. "This is the list for the AngloSaxon/Christian/Jewish cultures. There are many more for the other cultures of the world, but we will limit our discussion to those more familiar to us."
"The names help us to keep the various forms of evil somewhat categorized, but there’s much overlap. The gods are much more flexible than this list would have us believe, but it gives us a starting point to begin to try to understand the many facets of evil."
"The most familiar to us is Satan, otherwise known as Lucifer or the Devil. He embodies total evil. He stands for greed, hate, jealousy, violence, torture for the joy of causing pain, conflict for the sake of conflict, and general selfcenteredness. Different cultures give these traits personalities with different names, but they are all basically describing the ‘devil’ itself. We won’t get bogged down learning all the various names and functions, as we would not come away with much useful information.”
“To understand the basics of how good and evil function, I’ll go into a bit of how dark matter and dark energy work. Not too much, but at least some for the more scientifically oriented among us.” Steve nodded to the little guy as he said this.
“I don’t want to know how evil works! I just want to know how to fight it!” I felt severely frustrated with the pace of this lesson.
Steve chuckled. “Ian, you really are a driven soul. You have a unique combination of gold and silver particles in your DNA. Your DNA consists of high energy, fast spinning, up quarks and down quarks, and if you can harness the power in them, you will be able to do a tremendous number of transformations of silver to gold."
Larry couldn't control his snickers. Between the snorts of suppressed laughter, he managed to say,” You sure are right about one thing, Steve. Ian is definitely FULL of quirks!" The others were somewhat better able to suppress their chuckles, as they could sense that Steve was not especially pleased with the comment. He wasn’t angry, but he didn’t join in with the gaiety.
He waited until Larry had settled down, then he explained, "Quarks are one of the many pieces of matter described in particle physics. The physicists as a group seem to have a rather warped sense of humor. They choose names for the particles with the mindset of a child discovering a new bug in his backyard, if you ask me. They describe strange quarks and charm quarks that are in different 'flavor' families. There are bosons (NOT bozos) and leptons, neutrinos and muons. Physicists are a creative and generally happy bunch. But, getting back to the point, Ian's 'quarks' are in need of reining in a bit, and we can practice some of the methods of conversion by helping him to do so."
"We basically need to help Ian pair up his down quarks with his up quarks so that the spins cancel each other out at just the right point. We can help him convert the fast spinning gold particles into slow, calm, strong gold particles using the energy of his many fast spinning silver particles." He paused, then added, "The reason the rest of you don't need to do this yourselves is that you are all less internally conflicted. Your gold is not spinning wildly amongst wildly spinning silver. Your gold is calmer and more stable, and your silver is not as abundant. You are all more at peace with yourselves."
"Now, we will delve into the 'how-to' part of the lesson.”
“About time,” I scowled. “And stop using me as a guinea pig, you little a------.” I added through gritted teeth.
Steve looked at me with that bratty smirk and asked, "Have you noticed you've been feeling a bit like a yo-yo since you've died, Ian?"
Now that he mentioned it, I did. And it had been and is maddening. "That's because everybody's been driving me to drink since I've been here! And the Watering Hole only has fake alcohol, for C----- S---! I’m not going to put up with this s---!” I stood up to leave, glaring at Steve as my daggers zoomed through him.
Steve continued to smile, and motioned for the others to stand as well, giving them a wink and a nod. For some odd reason, they were not in the least bit worried about my large, dark dagger. Instead they began imitating my huffiness, but with an overwhelming sense of humorous mischief.
I hovered in disbelief. ‘Have they all lost their minds? Am I surrounded by idiots?’ I found myself distracted by my c