Bored to Tears

I was granted an audience to tour the grounds, the gardens, the streets and the facilities of what turns out to be our universal afterlife, where we are all going to end up before this earth is slated for destruction due to age, to self-elimination of humankind, or due to the action generally slowing down. (Word from the top is: if humans find a way to survive the deadly chaotic cluster-fuck that is outer-space, and are not eliminated by climate change, he's going to pull another full out divine intervention and just flush the whole thing out. I had a talk with the big guy while I was up there, and he seemed a bit perturbed by the U.S. Space Program. He kept saying "How the heck am I going to kill people in outer space? No floods... nothing! Not even air!" I got a chance to hear him talk about the disproportionate amount of money the U.S. spends on it's space program, in comparison to the quality of life it's inhabitants are afforded. He just kept repeating, "Irresponsible, God-dammit! Poor people everywhere and you're building billion dollar toys!"

I think he was just frustrated about how he was going to kill them if they space-colonized, though. I genuinely felt bad for the guy. He had a plan, and for probably the 20th time, it wasn't working out the way he had expected.

Heaven (or New-Earth, as they called it there), was a decent place. People generally kept to their own, much like Earth but more accentuated by the fact that there were fewer people, less places for them to go, and within a neighborhood you would have Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and all other religions mashed together, the majority of which were still living with a sense of bitter shock that their counterparts were allowed in in the first place. I never checked up on the rules for acceptance into Heaven. There were definitely people missing, but some of the people that were there were completely unexpected- like Janis Joplin. I was perfectly thrilled to see here, but for the life of me could not locate a bit of ink or a scrap of paper, rendering me unable to get an autograph. I'm not usually an autograph guy, but for fucks sake... Janis Joplin.

The weather was decent. We had a few light showers, and for several hours my robe would be damp and uncomfortable. Honestly I would rather spend a week in Monterey, but it wasn't terrible, and at least it was interesting.

 I would say it was a mildly enlightening visit. There are a few details that I have been asked not to divulge (in the way that God asks sometimes- the way that means 'if you tell anybody I will seriously fuck you up'). I do, however, have one item to pass on about the goings on in the afterlife. This is the issue of digital displays.

Digital displays are not visible from a separate lifetime. On Earth, people are constantly being spied on by bored and curious onlookers from Heaven. These voyeuristic people watchers often pass their infinite time by watching their loved ones, their hated ones, or people that they don't even know. They watch them eat, they watch them fight, they watch them have sex. They watch them play music, they watch them break the law, they watch them do their jobs, they watch them perform in plays, they watch them sing in the shower. But digital displays, due to some scientific disconnect having to do with the faculties of Earth-watching that they somehow have, and the way that digital information is displayed on a screen, cannot be seen at all. They appear to Heaven-dwellers as glowing yellowish panels. Some of them have attempted to get around this by watching TV shows get filmed, or movies get shot, or reading what the critics say when they find somebody with a newspaper open to the Entertainment page, but, needless to say, this is hardly a substitute for an episode of 30 Rock.

On Earth, the internet revolution has massively driven people out of their lives and into the nethersphere of digital mind-fuck. 50 years ago, TV watching was perhaps a thing, but it accounted for only a fraction of life lived. Currently, a person can work, socialize, date, and play on the idiot-box, and what they do outside of that life is only the drab and monotonous, the uncreative aspects of sustenance and sleep. With the advent of mind-reading technology, quite soon we may be able to take the chemical, the fleshy, and the analog out of even those specks of verbal communication we are forced to engage in. When I am shoved aside in the subway by some jerk-wad who's not paying attention, I will hold up my iphone 55G, and through it I will relay a thought. On Jerk-wad's Iphone 55G, a message will be transmitted directly to his brain, indicating my precise location, and he will hear my voice in his head "WTF MF-er?" And what did my mom see when she was watching me lovingly from on high, trying to watch over her little boy, all grown up and on his way to work in the government-owned robot-doctor factory for the Motherland' socialized death-care industry in the Divided Kenyan Republic of Obama (or Kenya 2, as we call it then)? She will see a slightly perturbed look into a glowing yellow panel, and the guy next to me look into his own panel, and then a few minutes of heavy breathing as we both stare into our panels, perhaps exchanging blows in virtual reality, perhaps just yelling at each-other, or maybe even having gay sex, all digitally, and all invisibly.

It is so sad to think about them up there. They would love it if we would pick up a picture book once in a while. They would really love it if we would go engage in an activity. It could be cooking. When I visited Heaven, the people up there were already a bit bored. It was already a bit crowded, and any attractions had enormous lines and short turns. The cafeterias at least had conversation about Earth, because then there were still some things going on. Plays still happen, sports are still played, people still communicate verbally, people still have sex because our not quite yet communist government has not made it illegal yet. We are still something to watch, something to talk about up there. But will we be for long? And when this generation dies, will Heaven really be anything desirable at all? Or would it just be wiser to find the secret to an opt-out?