Gosh, Dad! Is that really you? Are you up there?
Where did you think I’d end up?
Well you know . . .
Actually, I’m down there too. That’s the way the system works. You get bifurcated.
Not sure what that means . . .
It is pretty simple. Odd that none of the world’s religions ever hit upon it. There’s good and evil in all of us. So we get bifurcated — split in two. You see, I am both up here and down there at the same time. Every soul gets bifurcated. You will too.
Is more of you . . . ?
Nah, they don’t bother with percentages. And there’s no need to worry about that part of me that’s up here. Even if it’s as boring as all heaven — it ain’t hell. But enough about my situation, I want to find out what’s going on in your neck of the woods.
You mean you don’t know? You can’t see that?
No. We’re pretty isolated up here. They want us to focus on the spiritual side of death. They don’t want us to get distracted by all the nonsense that goes on back on Terra firma. Some of us get to make calls. But the technology is primitive and most of the calls never get through. I’ve tried to reach you a bunch of times.
You should have left a message. Are you guys doing digital or analog?
Only God is analog, son. God and infinity. The rest is all digital even if the bits are very, very tiny.
And you don’t have Internet?
Are you serious? We don’t have radio or TV or newspapers and we certainly don’t have Internet.
Yeah, that figures, because if you did you wouldn’t have to ask what I am doing. It’s all on the Internet. It’s all on the web.
Everything?
My short stories and my music and now I’ve got my graphic art site looking pretty good. If you had Internet you could google me and find it all. Isn’t that pretty amazing?
If you think so, but what about the intangibles?
What intangibles?
Your feelings, for example. Love, sorrow, emotional highs and lows and all that stuff. Is that on the Internet too?
Ha. No. But can’t you read my mind, even?
Of course I can! You are thinking about tits and asses most of the day.
Dad, are you really allowed to use language like that up there?
It’s not my language, son — it’s yours. I’m communicating with you as an apparition in your brain. We are far beyond language up here. Anyhow, I was just messin’ with you. I can’t read your mind.
Well then we are equally in the dark. Because I can’t read my mind either. All I know is what it lets me know, and I am sure that it’s constantly leading me astray and feeding me erroneous information. It would have been nice to get some insight from you. Your lack of super powers is a big disappointment.
I gotta hang up. I’m running out of credits.
How do you get credits?
By being good — not getting into trouble.
You can get into trouble in Heaven?
Sure can — you can get into trouble anywhere.
See you there one day, I guess?
Sorry kid, it don’t work that way. You get thrown in together with a bunch of strangers up here. Nobody knows nobody. We’re just a bunch of anonymous blobs, like a Mooney mass marriage.
You don’t make it sound like much fun?
Of, course not. If people got the impression that this place really was some kind of paradise, no one would want to stick around on earth and water the plants.
One more thing before you go, Dad . . . Dad? . . . Dad, you there?