Phil vs. the Afterlife

For me and M and Stormy is Editing . First draft, in progress, not fit for human consumption.

"You're dead," the passionless voice said right behind him.

Phil found that ignoring crazy people drove them into homicidal rages less often than it was generally supposed. He sat up on the bed. Everything was the clinical white of hospital. There was that medicinal hospital smell in the air as well.

The side table was filled with flower arrangements and a large balloon with the words 'Get well soon' bobbed half-heartedly near the ceiling.

He frowned, he couldn't remember getting to the hospital. He hadn't been feeling well for a couple of days, but it was just a cold or something. Besides he was in his jeans and a t-shirt. If he'd been in the hospital long enough to get flowers he ought to be in a paper gown right?

"Funny, I don't feel dead," he said as he turned to face whoever it was that had spoken. Maybe it was hospital security threatening him.

"Well, you are dead," the man said. He had curly brown hair and brown eyes that were carefully neutral. He was wearing a faded pair of blue jeans and a very simple green t-shirt. His arms were crossed, and there was the beginning of a scowl playing across his lips. He wasn't very tall but his back was straight and his head was high. A little girl with big brown eyes and blonde ring curls was creeping up behind the man, holding a finger too her lips. She looked about seven or eight.

Someone was dead, there was the warning drone of a flatline in the air. Phil hadn't noticed it until just now. In fact the machine seemed to be next to the bed he was sitting on. He looked over and found that he wasn't the bed's only occupant.

"No, he's dead," Phil corrected the crazy man, pointing. It was clear that the statement hadn't been a threat and hospital security didn't dress in jeans and t-shirts. Thus his new companion was insane.

Actually the bed's other occupant did look a bit like him, paler and yellower and skinnier…and dead.

"I mean I could see how you'd make the mistake…I wonder if we're related." He stood, feeling a bit awkward sitting around on a dead guy's hospital bed. And shouldn't a doctor be bustling in soon? It was getting a bit crowded what the with the small children showing up and all. It might look a little suspicious.

The little girl chose that moment to spring at the other man, throwing her arms around his shoulders and dangling from them. "St. Peter!" she exclaimed as she did so. She giggled as she held on to him.

The man seemed completely surprised. He turned and tried to see the face of the girl on his shoulders. "Hello," his voice completely emotionless still. Finally he twisted his face just so he could see. "And what are you doing here, imp?" he asked, a very slight smile on his face.

"You're at the hospital again," she replied. "I'm always here, have you forgotten? This is my hospital." She released his shoulders and dropped to the ground. "Who's this?" She moved to the man's side and looked at Phil with wide eyed curiosity.

"I'm Philip Russel." Phil moved down to the end of the bed to have a look at the poor sap's medical chart. His name was printed at the top. Everything on it was his information. Address, phone number, insurance company, allergies. He was diagnosed as having some illness he'd never heard of before and recovering from a bad reaction to a medication. Recovering…

"Shi…" he glanced sideways at the little brown-eyed girl and bit his lower lip instead.

"That's me then…And you're St. Peter? Shouldn't you be standing by the Gates of Heaven with Santa's master list of who's naughty and who's nice?"

The man didn't smile, "No, if I stay by the gates, no one finds me. I've made it a point to make sure everyone knows their options after death." He stepped closer to Phil, "And you have options."

"Oops, I'm interupting a death. That's right, I was going to try to save someone right in this area. I'm terribly sorry. It seems I wasn't quick enough." She smiled at Phil, "but death isn't too bad really. I'm Sarah, resident angel, if you have any questions when he runs away I can help." She grabbed hold of St. Peter's hand and leaned away from him putting most of her weight on him. He responded by smiling a bit more and holding her up.

"Sarah, you really are too young to be so old." He looked at Phil again. "You have options from here. You can go to heaven. You can go to Hell. You can be reborn. You can even stay on earth. Lastly, you can become a detective. It is your choice." Sarah pulled on St. Peter's arm and twirled under it then returned to leaning.

It was by pure force of will that Phil refrained from stepping back as St. Peter stepped forward. He was fairly good at not being intimidated. The fact that St. Peter was being used as a jungle gym by the little girl was helping.

"That's ok, I hardly expected angelic intervention all things considered." Actually angels were one of the things he didn't believe in. He believed in saints, saints were just people after all. He supposed he'd believed in God in a vague sort of way, but not a Christian god with an administrative system.

"Choices are all well and good, but what does it actually mean? I'm new at this dead thing…or maybe not if there's a rebirth option. I didn't even believe in an afterlife. What would I do in heaven…or hell?……detectives?"

Phil felt like he should have a headache, maybe dead people didn't get headaches. "Do I have to pick now? You know enough people have told me to go to hell I sort of figured on an armed escort there if it turned out it existed."

Sarah giggled at Phil, "you don't have to do anything when you're dead." Then she glanced at St. Peter, "well, unless you join the detectives," she whispered loudly. Then she spun under St. Peter's arm again. St. Peter looked down at Sarah.

"You're giving me a bad reputation." Then he looked up at Phil. "You have choices. You can go to any of the forementioned places. In order for you to move between places, you will want this." He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a large pocket watch and handed it to Phil. It was red on the bottom and silver on the top. An angel was looking down in the top left corner of it and a devil was looking up in the bottom right corner. They both seemed content to be where they were, looking at the other person.

"Aren't there thousands of people dying of lung cancer every minute or something? How do you find time to personally visit them all? Do you have a staff? Do most people just sort of end up where they want to be? Or are you actually talking to all of them at once and that's why you look grumpy?" Phil examined the pocket watch like thing for a moment. It didn't look much like something that would allow for travel. Since it looked like a pocket watch he tried opening it like one. It didn't look much like a watch, it was full of buttons. Two on the top, white to the left and red to the right, and two on the bottom, blue to the left and green to the right. In the middle was a large brown button.

"What do you need with detectives in the after life? I bet I'd get reincarnated as a cockroach or something. You know I always kind of wanted to go to my own funeral, but I'm sort of afraid it would be depressing." Maybe he'd just get cremated and used as fertilizer. It wasn't like he had family to be in charge of his funeral. What did they do with the bodies of disinherited, single people? He was unprepared to be dead, he didn't have a will written out and there were probably incriminating files in his computer.

"Someone is going to go into my house and find out the only thing I have in my refrigerator is a pair of shoes and a jar of pickles." This statement elicited a giggled from Sarah.

"St. Peter is always in a hurry because there are so many people dying." The little girl looked very sad. "I keep trying to make less die but people die all the time. That's why if you get hold of him you have to hold on tight before he gets away!" To ephasize her point she wrapped her arms around his arm and hugged it tight. "He's really beautiful when he goes to heaven," she said softly as if it was a big secret, "and he always visits Jesus when he goes there."

"Sarah!" St. Peter said sharply, "Honestly!" He looked at Phil. "Yes, many people die, many all around the world. It takes a certain type of ability to take care of all of them. Yes, to an extent I have the ability to talk to them all at once. So many people die, so quickly," he looked down at the ground for a moment, a flicker of saddness flying across his face. "However," he looked back up, the steel mask back in place, "However, someone needs to take care of them, and show them where they belong. Most people end up where they need to be. Some die along the way, and others are reborn. Your choice is how you want to get there." He looked back down at Sarah, "She is the one who will explain all the details to you. My job is done, I have told you your choices and given you your watch. It is time for me to go," and he tried to get his arm away from Sarah's.

"He's not bad looking right now," Phil told Sarah and winked. He was finding it somewhat difficult not to touch any of the buttons before knowing what they did, but he didn't want to not pass go, not collect 200 dollars and go directly to cockroach. "The sort of almost smile helped." Phil wondered if that comment might be the sort of thing that would get him demoted to moss or some kind of slime mold. He decided he would definitely be ruling out reincarnation until he knew for sure.

"It was nice meeting you Pete." It had been interesting anyway. St. Peter didn't strike Phil as being particularly friendly and he hoped it was just the generally depressing nature of the job rather than some particular dislike Phil had inspired. He thought he was staying pretty rational and friendly for a new ghost.

"You're busy too though," Phil said to Sarah. "I'd hate for anyone to die because I was asking questions."

Sarah gave St. Peters arm a big kiss before releasing it, "say hi to Jesus for me," she told him before turning her attention to Phil. "No, don't worry, I only save people in this hospital and no one needs my help right now. I usually feel the need in time, but not always and sometimes there's nothing I can do. I'm not very strong yet." She smilled a little sadly. St. Peter patted her on the head a bit.

"Strength comes with time and many other things. You aren't all that old yet, and you haven't given yourself enough time." He turned away, "Have a good afterlife Phil. The middle button on the watch is to summon me if you need me for anything." He walked away and faded off through the door.

Brown for Saint Peter, it made sense. He seemed a pretty brown sort of personality, really. Very neutral, rather straight-laced and a hint of melancholy, Phil itched to do something to him. People like that always brought out the very worst in him. "So the red button must be Hell and the white one Heaven. Brown is for Pete," Phil's finger twitched, but St. Peter was a busy person and Phil hadn't though of anything to do to him yet. "So what does green do then? And what does a detective do? Bust people for unauthorized hauntings?"

"Green is for rebirth," Sarah told him. "I didn't get detectives, but detectives solve all of the cases which are not directly the responsibility of heaven or hell. Detectives are the nuetral investigators who make sure that universal rules are not broken. For example, they protect souls from permanent destruction and settle things when heaven and hell have major disagreements, things like that. Detectives get real bodies, but if those bodies are destroyed their souls are destroyed with them. It's very risky. You have to be the type who would risk your very soul to join them. I could never do that!"

"Permanent destruction," Phil gave a long whistle. "I guess I figured once you were dead you were pretty well safe from doing it again. One way or another. Of course here I stand and there I lay so that's twice I've been wrong so far." Having referred to his corpse he couldn't help but have another look.

"Let's take a walk or something, Sarah. I'm...I'm weirding myself out." He shot his body a sideways glance and slipped out the door just in time for a small flock of people in scrubs to rush right through him. It was a very unsettling feeling. He looked back and, as he'd suspected, they were grouping around him. He turned away again, not wanting to watch. They weren't going to revive him. St. Peter wouldn't go around personally seeing to the deaths of people who were going to be saved.

"That's probably one of the reasons you have the option of joining the detectives," Sarah suggested following Phil out of the room. "If you thought death was the end anyhow you probably aren't all that attached to your soul. Where would you like to go?" She skipped ahead of him, turned around and walked backwards in front of him so she could see him while she talked.

"We could go to the cafeteria, you probably aren't hungry yet, but a lot of people like to have a drink after they've died, you know, coffee, tea, hot chocolate. The first thing I drank after I died was a maraschino cherry milkshake." Sarah grinned at him, "it was so good. I'd never had one of them before. You can get almost anything once you're dead."

"Yeah, I could use a drink," Phil agreed. Though none of the mentioned offerings sounded nearly hard enough for the occasion. He supposed that he shouldn't expect an eight year old angel to come up with the sort of drink he'd have liked just then.

"You can't possibly mean the hospital cafeteria. I don't think they serve milkshakes," he paused. "And definitely not to dead people. So lead on."

"Well, actually it is the hospital cafeteria, but it's not. You see everything changes once you're dead. There's an entire staff of ghosts, and they can get you just about anything you can think of. Of course someone there has to know what it is in order to make it, but that's the only limit." As she chattered Sarah turned down a hallway to the right, then turned left about 10 steps later.

"Have you decided what you want to do, or do you have any questions? I can answer a lot of them, I've met a lot of ghosts, although there are some things I don't want to know too much about. I can still tell you who to ask though, for just about anything."

"It's kind of a big decision isn't it? I just got here after all. What if I end up somewhere I don't like?"

Phil was quiet for a moment and then came out with the question that had been bugging him since he'd been informed of his potention destinations. "What I really want to know is: why do I have a button for heaven on this thing?" Phil held up the watch. "I mean I seem to have ended up in the Christian afterlife somehow with Pete and angels and all sorts of things I didn't even believe in. I'm a gay con-artist for Chri...Pete's sake! Shouldn't I automatically be roasting while being jabbed with a pitchfork?" Not that Phil felt he deserved to be poked with sharp things for all eternity, but hanging out with the heavenly choirs didn't really seem appropriate either.

"Oh, well, a few things actually. Let me see... First thing's first, you aren't stuck anywhere except the detectives and there you're only stuck for the term of your contract unless you die. Some people call this the summer lands and heaven and hell, have different names too. There are actually a whole ton of gods, but none of them have created places to visit, that or we don't know what those places would be so they don't show up for us, I'm not sure which. Anyhow," Sarah paused to take a deep breath and pushed open a set of double doors. "Here's the cafeteria."

The cafeteria was an odd site now that Phil was dead. It was a fairly standard hospital cafeteria, but there were people all around. Some seemed more solid then others, and some of the less then solid people were happily sitting inside of the more solid ones, or on top of them. Sarah did not lead him to the cafeteria line, instead she choose a table far from most of the solid people and sat down in one of the chairs. "I hope this is okay, I don't really like to sit with the living. Now what was I saying, oh, you don't have to believe in heaven and hell for them to exist you know. People sort of started expecting them so Jesus and his brother Satan decided to build them."

Phil wouldn't have minded sitting with the living but sitting in the living seemed a bit much. He sat down across from Sarah. "Brother Satan... You know, I feel better already." Because clearly this afterlife had very little to do with Christians, despite Pete and the angel.

"Do you? That's good! I'm glad you feel better. But don't think of Satan as a good sort of person because he is definately not. He and Jesus don't get along at all. Jesus is wonderful though, you should definitely visit him if you go to heaven. He's very lonely for adult company, it's mostly only children who visit him. St. Peter is one of the few adults who visit him. He goes every time he's in heaven." Sarah said this with a tone of awe.

A boy in his mid teens approached the table. His hair was short, fluffy and light brown, and his eyes were brown and blue. The brown was in the center around the pupils and the blue around the edges. He smiled and it transformed his entire face.

"Hi Sarah," he ruffled her ring curls gently, "how is our resident angel today?"

"Just fine," she smiled, then frowned, "but I wasn't quick enough to save Philip Russel." Her eyes traveled to Phil.

The boy's eyes followed Sarah's, "Hello, my name is Nik," he offered his hand to Phil. "I'm supposed to be taking your order, but I just can't help holding conversations with my tables. Since I'm dead I figure, why not. If they fire me I can always go somewhere else. I don't really need the credits anyhow."

"Hi Nik," Phil took the boy's hand and shook it. "I go by Phil. Philip Russel is what they call me when I'm in trouble." He glanced over at Sarah. "And I'm pretty sure I'm not. Sarah is telling me all about how to be dead. I'm new at it, you know. What are credits?"

Nik pulled a chair up to the table and sat down. "Credits are the equivalent of money here, but they don't do much. Everything you really need is free."

"You need them to get a cell phone, or to do anything internet related," Sarah broke in, "oh, and to pay St. Peter if you want a body for a few hours or a day or something. You can also give them to other people for tips. That's about all they're for though."

Phil stifled a sigh. Even dead the internet wasn't free. It was a shame. Now the body sounded intriguing.

Nik glanced at Sarah quickly then looked back at Phil, his cheeks slightly pink. "Well, there are some other things, but Sarah wouldn't do any of them."

"What are you talking about Nik?" Sarah tilted her head to the side.

"You know, arrangements between individuals, you might give someone credits to get them to do something for you, or to keep them from telling people something."

"You mean like bribes and stuff right, but you shouldn't do that," Sarah responded indignantly. She looked over at Phil, "it's a bad idea to get involved in that sort of thing."

He wondered if Sarah and Nik were talking about the same sorts of arrangments between individuals. Nik looked a bit pink to have been talking about bribes.

"Of course it's a bad idea," Phil told Sarah. "People who take bribes aren't the sort you can trust to stay bought after all." Sarah wrinkled her nose a bit.

"Plus there really shouldn't be any reason to bribe people anyhow. I mean, credits can be given to other people, but you have to get a card from St. Peter in order to do that, and it can get stolen. It's better not to get involved in that at all, then there's no chance of someone taking your credits. I know you think you did some bad things in life Phil, but that doesn't mean you have to get involved with the bad people in death." Nik pulled out a small plastic card, it was shades of gray beginning lighter on one side and becoming darker vertically to the other side. It was a little like a credit card but didn't have a name or numbers on it.

"If I don't get a card then I can't use credits for anything at all. So if I'm not using them they might be better off stolen," Phil said.

"My card," he smiled and handed it to Phil. "It represents every credit I've made since death," Sarah gasped.

"Nik, you shouldn't just hand that to people!" Nik smiled.

"It's okay, I've only had it stolen twice." Sarah was frowning and shaking her head.

"What? Don't you trust me Sarah?" Phil faked a hurt look.

Phil examined the card. It was very gray. He flipped it over, it had a magnetic strip, or what looked like one, on the back. He clapped his hands together and when he moved them apart they were empty.

"Three times," he said with a grin. With a flick of his wrist the card was back in his hand. He offered it to Nik. "Just kidding." He winked at Nik. Nik laughed and accepted the card. Sarah shook her head at Phil.

"It isn't that I don't trust you, it's that I don't trust anyone with anyone else's credit's. I've heard some scary stories. People do mean things. This one man stole a girls card and used the credits to hire someone to kidnap her and take her to hell."

"Only some of the credit's, he used the others to get a body so he could have sex with her sister while she was out of the way." Nik spoke casually, "it was in the Ghostly Chronicle a couple months ago." He looked at Phil, "they were evidently girlfriend boyfriend and the relationship went sour. Hell is... an interesting place." Sarah frowned and shook her head.

"No, no, hell is a terrible place, awful. You never want to go there. Never, ever, ever." The corners of Nik's lips twitched upward, but he didn't smile. Instead he stood up, returned the chair he'd been using and put a gentle hand on Sarah's head.

"Now, don't let me upset you. Hell isn't for everyone, and the climate is awful if you're wearing too much clothing. What can I get for the two of you?" Nik slid his card into his pocket and took out a small notepad.

"I want my shake please," Sarah looked at Phil, "don't listen to him about hell. It's a bad place, full of very bad people and devils and demons."

"I want," Phil closed his eyes for a moment, trying to decide what he was craving, "a coconut mocha," was the decision. "And I'd kill for a cigarette. You know I gave up smoking because it was bad for me. Guess I didn't need to worry about that."

Phil decided to keep his curiosity about hell to himself around Sarah. He could tell she wouldn't like it and he'd never been interested in teasing little girls.

"I think I should go visit Jesus." Phil picked up the old thread of conversation instead. "No company except children and Pete. It's a terrible shame. Especially with all those people out there convinced he loves them. You'd think he'd have more company than he'd know what to do with."

"I'll see what I can do about that," Nik replied, scribbling on his paper then walking off in the direction of the kitchen.

"You would think that wouldn't you? I couldn't believe it, but when I first died I spent almost a month with him, and no one stopped by but St. Peter and tons of kids. Babies go to him automaticaly. He has to help them reincarnate. Did I forget to answer any of your questions, or do you have any others?" Sarah smiled again as if the topic of hell had never come up.

"I don't think you forgot any. I've been wondering about the food, though. Where does it come from? Are there dead farmers out there somewhere or are we eating hamburger ghosts or something?" Phil pictured a herd of slightly transparent hamburgers floating around a McDonald's and shook his head.

"The food? Well, it's made from energy. I think there's more to it than that, but I've never really been too curious. Nik might know. I do know that as a ghost you don't need a lot of food unless you start using certain abilities. I eat a lot, because I use energy to save people. The longer you're dead the more you learn to do. For example some ghosts can pick up real things, things in the human world, but that would use energy and then you would need to eat more. I'm not sure how the food get's shaped and flavored though." Nik came out of the kitchen doors and went straight to Phil.

"So we use energy to make food and eat food to replace the energy we used to make food and eat..." Clearly Phil was missing some vital point.

"You got me yelled at," he told him with a grin, "there's no smoking on duty and the boss was sure I was about to light up." He handed over a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The lighter was see through and there were tiny bright fish swimming around in the lighter fluid. There were five of them to be exact, one bright orange with a white stripe, one completely yellow, one blue with a yellow stripe, one lime green than puffed up every once in a while and a purple one with bright pink fins. "You can have the pack, but I want my lighter back. Sorry if you don't like menthols." The cigarettes were Salems in the usual bright green pack.

"Nik, you're beautiful. I apologize for getting you yelled at." Phil said, extracting a cigarette from the pack with practiced ease. He hadn't smoked in years, but from age sixteen to nineteen he'd been a smoker. "Er, unless you mind." He adressed Sarah. He let the lighter go out, having lit it without thinking. Secondhand smoke couldn't kill her at this point but that didn't mean she would like it. Sarah shrugged at him and rolled her eyes.

"It's okay, Nik smokes in front of me all the time so I'm used to it." Nik raised his eyebrows.

"You're the one who visit's me outside when I take my breaks."

"Yep."

"At any rate, I think she's given you the okay, and, it doesn't take a lot of energy to make food, so you use less energy to make, say 50 meals, then you would get eating one. Not to butt in on your conversation or anything."

"I can't exactly say smoking will make your lungs ugly since you don't have any. It does make the air foggy which is actually sort of cool," Sarah admitted.

"So theoretically," Phil paused to dangle the cigarette from his lips and light it. He passed the lighter back to Nik and took a drag before continuing, "I could learn to manifest Oreos?" And really, you never knew when an Oreo might come in handy. Phil blew a smoke ring.

"I finally learned to do that right around the time I quit smoking. It was sort of sad not being able to show it off." Nik laughed as Sarah climbed onto her chair and 'tried to catch' the smoke ring.

"Well, now that you're dead you can, but I have to warn you, dead people can do really interesting things with cigarette smoke, and a lot of them are cheating. Don't get tricked into a smoke blowing contest. As for Oreos, yes, you can learn how to manifest them. Learning takes a lot more energy then doing it of course. The more you do it the less time it takes. Speaking of manifesting, your drinks are ready, so I'll be right back." He headed toward the kitchen again.

"Are you going to have Nik teach you how to manifest Oreos?" Sarah was sitting again, her eyes studying Phil carefully.

"You think he'd teach me? You never know when an Oreo will come in handy." Phil thought that smoke ring blowing was really one of those activities that wouldn't be improved by cheating. People would know you were cheating if the smoke rings were especially interesting shapes and colors. There was no point in cheating if people could tell you were doing it. "For instance I think our friend Pete would be greatly improved by an Oreo." Sarah giggled wildly.

"St. Peter? With an Oreo?" She giggled some more. Then she shook her head, "you'd never get him to eat it. Either that or he'd eat it and then stare at you and say something about not knowing what your point was. I love St. Peter, he's so serious. He really cares about people you know. That's what makes him so grumpy. He wants to be a friendly person, but his job just doesn't allow for it. That's what I think anyhow." Nik resurfaced with their drinks and set them down.

"One maraschino cherry shake, and one coconut mocha. You two have been having way too much fun while I was gone." He started to pull his chair over again when the entire ghost population in the place fell silent. Phil felt an odd sense of sudden insignificance for no reason whatsoever which passed quickly. Nik, Sarah and most of the ghosts around were staring at the door of the cafeteria where a tall man with red skin wearing a well tailored suit stood. He had two horns curving up from his head and his eyes glowed orange. Nik put the seat back, "and it looks like I'll be busy for a bit." Then under his breath, "because no one else will take him."

"What, bad tipper?" Nik gave Phil a weak smile before walking right over to the man and offering to show him to a seat.

The joke sounded a little flat even to Phil and he rubbed the back of his neck in an attempt to make the hair stop standing on end. Insignificance was a feeling Phil experienced only very rarely and never for no particular reason. He found it very unpleasant and had a sip of his mocha to make himself feel better. He followed up with another puff of the cigarette. "I have a sudden urge to kiss Nik, I hope he isn't too long. Who's Big Red there anyway?"

Phil jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the new arrival. Sarah blinked at him for a moment. "Oh, sorry, demons always give me the creeps. That's Semiazas, one of Satan's chosen. He's in charge of fallen angels in hell." Sarah shivered, "he's been coming around here a lot lately, we're not sure why. The other servers are too scared to talk to him. Nik's the only one who can get near him without freaking out. He has a presence you know, you must have felt it. It's the power he's gained through the years," she shivered.

"Yeah, he makes my hair stand on end. Reminds me of my dad...same feeling. Seems like a weird place to come for a snack. I mean you live here and I died here but it's a bit lacking in atmosphere." It was probably nicer than Hell, but Phil imagined a lot of places fit that requirement. Personally he felt that getting to watch Nik carry food around was worth otherwise unattractive surroundings. He hoped that wasn't why Semiazas was coming around. "Poor Nik."

"When a demon comes to earth it's not for atmosphere. Demons like it in hell, it's home. I mean they might come to earth for vacation. Some of them even go to heaven for vacation," Sarah shivered, "but that's unusual. Anyhow, the way he's been coming around he's definitely working. Trying to recruit souls for hell most likely. Satan sends them to do that sort of thing, you know, trick souls into pressing the button for hell and make them believe the watch is useless after that, Or making people believe they don't deserve to go anywhere but hell, that sort of thing. Still, he's been spending a lot of time around here, so he's after someone specific. He's never tried to talk to me, so I don't think it's me." Sarah sipped her milkshake in silence for a few moments.

A hospital certainly seemed like a good place to wait around for someone to die It seemed like a lot of work to be going after one specific soul. "Must be somebody important."

"Either somebody important or more than one person. Sometimes they have goals, like a certain number of fresh souls to get, at least that's what I've heard." Nik was finally heading back to the kitchen, his face more somber than it had been since Phil had met him but other than that he seemed just fine. "So, do you like Nik?" Sarah gave Phil a strange little smile for a girl her age, the kind that suggested a particular type of like, not just, 'he's a nice person'.

"Nik has the most adorable a...ah, smile I've seen in a long time. Plus he brought me cigarettes and chocolate. It might be love." Phil gave a dramatic sigh, accompanied by an eyeflutter and grinned at Sarah. It occured to him suddenly that if Sarah was in charge of a hospital she might not actually be eight. She still seemed like the sort of person he was inclined to edit his language for and, well, she looked eight. One just didn't tell people who looked like eight-year-olds that the server had a cute ass.

"Smile huh? He does have a great smile though. Most of the regulars are after him. I tried, but he says I look too young, plus, I'm too good and too female. I have a lot of strikes against me." Her eyes were sad, "but his girlfriend did kill him, so I can see why he has a problem with girls."

"That is a pretty good excuse. I've never had a boyfriend try to kill me. Plenty of people I haven't been dating. Alhough...there was that one time I almost suffocated..." Phil cut himself off. "You do look just a bit young and you're certainly much too good for me."

Sarah sighed, "I just don't see how someone could be too good. I mean there's nothing wrong with doing the right thing is there? Nik does the right thing... I mean, I've never seen him do anything worse than smoke. He does know about all sorts of things I don't want to know about though." She trailed off. "Wait a minute, what does that have to do with you almost suffocating?" A moment later she turned red and held her hand up, "never mind, I don't want to know. I definitely don't want to know." She took a long drink of her shake while staring at the table.

"You don't want to know," Phil agreed but he looked a little bit dreamy at the memory. "That's exactly what we mean though," Phil added, poking his cigarette in her direction. It was mostly filter by this point.

"People like me, and Nik I guess, enjoy doing things that very nice people like you prefer not to think about. So you're too good, you see?" He swirled his mocha around a bit to redistribute the dregs and had bit larger sip now that it had cooled.

Nik returned to Semiazas' table with a wine glass filled with dark red liquid. He spoke with him for a few seconds and turned to leave but the demon reached across the table and put a hand on his arm. Nik's brow creased as he turned back, his eyes focused on the hand and he spoke again. Semiazas removed his hand, laughing, a deep rumble which was easily heard accross the cafeteria. Sarah turned to look at him, then turned back to Phil. "He really, really gives me the creeps. Serving him is worth a lot of credits, but you wouldn't catch me doing it. I'd quit first."

"I bet he'd just love that, too. Driving someone to quit just by sheer presence." Phil didn't like it. The demon was impossible to ignore and he scared Phil. It annoyed him. He hadn't been afraid of anything so small scale in a long time. Natural disasters sure, but something that looked more or less like a human being shouldn't be bothering him. He chewed his lip for a moment and then said to Sarah, "I don't like it."

"It? You mean him?" After a few more exchanges Nik backed far enough away from the table that he was out of the demon's reach, gave him a sarcastic looking smile then turned and hurried back to the kitchens. "I don't think Nik will be back to us for a while," Sarah's shake was nearly 3/4ths empty. "We don't have to stay here you know. We could leave and come back when Nik is on break. I know his usual break time."

"That too, but I don't like that he can just come in here and turn on the intimidation and no one can do anything about it." It made Phil want to do something about it. "He's not even that scary. He looks like a low budget horror film and I'm not going to let him ruin my first drink as a ghost."

Phil waved his hand emphatically. The cigarette flared up orange from the sudden extra oxygen and Phil yelped as it burned down to where he was holding it. He dropped the cigarette. "Damnit!" he said as he put his finger in his mouth in an attempt to cool the burn. Sarah giggled and shook her head at him.

"You should be more careful, with your cigarette and what you say. He might not look like much to you, but he's a very powerful demon. Look at his horns, that's how you can tell, the bigger the horns the stronger the demon." The horns in question were fairly impressive in size. They were so thick and long that they contributed to the B movie theory. It was hard to believe the man carried those things around all day, every day.

"For angels it's our wings that show how strong we are." It was an interesting thing for Sarah to suggest, since she didn't appear to have any wings at all. "You should see St. Peter's wings, they're huge, absolutely unbelievable." She lowered her voice to a whisper, "much more impressive then horns could ever be."

"Pete ever show them off?" Phil, finger still in his mouth, hooked his ankle around the leg of his chair and leaned down to look underneath for the cirgarette butt.

"There you are you little..." he groped around for a moment and reemerged above the table with the butt in hand. He made sure it was out by squishing it with his spit covered finger and then flicked it into a nearby trashcan.

Phil drained half of his remaining mocha in one gulp and then stood. "Actually why don't we leave? It was bad enough in here when it was just a hospital."

"Okay," Sarah slurped most of the remaining shake through her straw then stood, "I thought you weren't going to let him ruin your first drink. Where do you want to go? Let me see, there's the lobbies, the attic, the basement, but the morgue is down there so a lot of people don't like to go there." She headed out of the cafeteria door, "or we could go outside. St. Peter only opens his wings in heaven."

"It was too late. It was already ruined. I just didn't realize it until I hurt myself." Phil shook his fingers again. "Let's go outside, I could use some fresh air...er, so to speak. Sunshine!" Phil headed for the double doors.

"So what if I wanted to find someone?" Phil decided to just change the topic entirely. He knew one dead person he'd very much like to get ahold of if he could. There were also a few that might be waiting for him to hit the other side so they could find him.

"Someone who died before you? They might not be around you know, they could have reincarnated." Sarah led the way to the nearest exit. Outside the sun was shining brightly and the sky was full of fluffy white clouds. "You can ask an angel to help you. I think there are other ways, but they involve having a card for your credits, unless you use the internet. The thing is angels are very busy, so it takes a long time for them to get to individual cases."

The weather was not being properly mournful of the deeply tragic event of his death. It wasn't good ghost weather either. Who ever heard of a ghost wandering around in broad daylight? Of course it was exactly what he'd wanted back in the cafeteria. Sunny fluffy skies couldn't possibly be demon weather. Angel weather, that's what it was. Phil beamed at Sarah.

"Well if not find her then find out what happened to her anyway. I know she's not in Hell...not if Satan's still in charge anyway. But I can certainly imagine her anywhere else. I'll still need some credits though, if not the card, for the internet. How would I go about getting an angel on the case?"

"That's easy, you just go to heaven and walk to the Ministry of Angels building. You can request an angel to find them and they'll try to match your job with an appropriate angel. Then you can go anywhere, and when the job is done they will find you and alert you. Credits are pretty easy to get, anytime you improve someone else's life you earn credits automatically. You could be an angel, you earn a lot of credits doing that." She grinned at him.

Phil tried to picture himself with wings. They'd probably be small and black and suspiciously batlike. "I don't know about that. I don't strike me as the angelic type." He wasn't a bit like St. Peter and similar to Sarah only in cheerfulness. Though he wouldn't mind pulling some wrath of God on Semiazas. Speaking of which..."Couldn't you get someone to come down and do something about tall red and horny?"

Sarah shook her head, "not really. Heaven and hell are supposed to coexist. We aren't supposed to interfere with each others affairs. If I had proof he was causing a disruption I could send it to the detectives, but unless it's extreme no one will do anything about it. Basically, he has as much right to be here as I do. God gave equal rights and equal space to each of his sons, no one understands why," she made a sour face. "I think you'd make a really sexy angel."

"Wings are sexy?" Phil wondered. Then he turned and looked at Sarah. "Are you allowed to think I'm sexy?" He folded his arms over his chest and raised one eyebrow. He failed to prevent the corners of his mouth from twitching upwards so he didn't look quite as stern as intended.

"Of course I am," Sarah insisted, "I'm very nearly 18 years old." She pouted for a few seconds before grinning, "I died almost 10 years ago."

"Well then, you still have a few years before I stop looking like an old fart. You've been about eight for ten years then? I guess I'm lucky I died post-puberty." Phil had liked being a child, but he wouldn't want to do it for any longer than he had. Though she did make a very good little blonde angel. Very believable.

"You really are lucky, although it didn't bother me until more recently. I suddenly noticed that all of these people had boyfriends and I didn't." She sighed, "I think I'm prettier than a lot of them too. I wonder if St. Peter would go out with me? I think once your dead age doesn't really matter though. I mean you like Nik, and he doesn't look older than 15." Sarah wandered into the hospital lawn, leading the way to a huge flower bed. "In the winter I like to go to the lake and climb trees, but in the summer I usually spend my time by the flowers."

Phil had to stop for a brief episode of coughing. "You know..." No, it was better to just let her think it was because he was dead. "...I've always liked flowers. But it's hard to climb trees in the winter. Too many layers." Phil trailed along behind Sarah. Hospital flower beds were usually pretty nice. They were about all the view anyone was getting around there he supposed.

Sarah nodded, "you're right, now that I'm dead it doesn't matter as much, but I broke my leg falling out of a tree in the winter when I was six." The flowers were beautiful, red tulips, yellow daffodils and bright blue ageratum. Sarah walked into the middle of them. "I love being a ghost, there's so much you don't have to worry about anymore. At first I was really sad that I died, because I had so much I still wanted to do, but it doesn't bother me much anymore."

"It's not so bad, I guess. But there's not a lot of things I regret not doing either. I got most of them done. Think you'll go around again some time? Try out being a grownup maybe?" Phil reached down to pick a daffodil and remembered that he couldn't any more only when his fingers passed through it. He shoved his hands into his pockets and just looked instead. "Not so bad..."

"You can pick the flowers in heaven," Sarah assured him, "earth really belongs to people who are still alive. St. Peter tries so hard to get the ghosts to move on. It's hard to leave though. It's all you know when you die. After I left I couldn't wait to come back, even though heaven is really beautiful." Sarah sat down in the middle of the flowers. "I don't know about trying life again, I mean, you're never you again. You're the same soul, but you don't remember what you've gone through in the past. I just don't know."

"I don't think I'd be able to stay in heaven. I've decided to visit, but I don't think I could stay there. I couldn't stand it being beautiful all the time. It'd be too strange. I don't think I could behave myself as an angel either. If I could get rid of that Semiazas guy I'd do it, rules or no rules." Phil had never been able to tolerate bullies. His lack of tolerance had got him hospitalized a time or two. Really it was incredible he'd died of a reaction to a medication.

"Who knows, you might like it in heaven, maybe you'll change your mind. You're right though, you'd get into a lot of trouble if you went after Semiazas without good reason. I don't really understand it, but they make a big thing out of protecting the balance. I'm not sure what they mean, I guess some sort of balance between good and evil but... I don't see why there needs to be something like that. I think the more good the better. So when are you planning to go to heaven? You could go right away if you wanted."

"I was thinking I'd say goodbye to Nik first. Once I've gone who knows how long I'll be there. I have to put in a request with the Ministry of Angels, explore, meet Jesus. It would be rude to just disappear." And one last look wouldn't hurt. "Besides, I have ask about Oreo lessons. When's his break?"

"Hm? Oh, about a half an hour. I might be needed soon. Can you find your way around without me?" Sarah stood up, looking anxiously at the hospital building. She looked back at Phil, "it might be urgent."

"Yeah, I'll be fine, go." Phil made a shooing motion with his hands. He certainly didn't want to be part of the reason somebody ended up dead. Sarah gave him a bright smile.

"Good luck Phil, if I don't see you before you go. Stop and see me sometime if you're ever in the area." With that said she ran for the building.

Phil wandered through the flowerbeds for a while. Literally through them, his feet touching the soil they were growing in but passing right through the flowers. It was really sort of interesting. He amused himself by trying to convince himself that the flowers were as solid as the soil and found that he could walk on the flowers just as easily though he couldn't effect them. It didn't seem to be as intuitive as staying on top of the dirt though and if he didn't concentrate he fell back through them.

He decided to try out this new 'solidity by perception' at the lake. He made it quite a ways out on top of the water before he really thought about what he was doing. Concentration broken he found himself at the bottom of the lake. It was more fun walking under water than it had been walking on water. He tried scaring the fish but they didn't really seem to notice him.

By this time he figured a half hour had to have passed and he made his way back towards the cafeteria. As Phil approached the door to the building he saw Nik leaning against the wall smoking. When Phil got a bit closer Nik waved at him. "Did Sarah run off on you?"

"Yeah, she had a death to prevent. She said I was sexy before she left though so I have to forgive her." Phil made his way over to Nik and stood in front of him. "I'm glad I found you. I'm going to go visit the Ministry of Angels, see if I can't track down Grandma Karen and I thought I'd say goodbye before I disappeared." Phil shrugged.

"But we just met." Nik smiled at him, "the angels take forever on that sort of thing. It isn't worth as many credits as other jobs, and it takes forever. Mostly you'll be waiting for a new angel who doesn't know better. It would be faster to hire a private investigator, or, if you have any hacking skills you might find her yourself on the net. Angel's actually try to find people by word of mouth and passing a picture around. It can take hundreds of years. Of course you'd be a bit short on credits to hire a detective, being newly dead and everything. Some of them will do it for other things, but you probably aren't that desperate to find your grandmother."

"Yes, but if I don't say goodbye you might not remember me. I've made an impression now." Phil grinned at Nik.

"I thought it couldn't hurt to ask and I am curious to see Heaven. I'll have to pick up some shorts and sandals somewhere before I visit Hell anyway. I'm a...fair hand at hacking but Sarah tells me the internet costs credits and I'm not quite sure how I'd interact with a computer at this point anyway." Maybe he should try and become an angel. It sounded like a little file hunting would save them some time.

"Easy enough, pick up a laptop. You can get them on earth or in heaven, you can find one in hell too, but it's more difficult there, and it makes you more of a target for the assholes. Sarah's a wonderful girl, but not much of a guide. She's been extremely sheltered since death. She likes it that way too. I don't blame her, she's just Sarah. Anyhow, things like clothes and computers work a lot like food. If they're made of energy we can use them. The charges come when you access the internet because that uses real earth resources. It's not all that expensive to access the internet. You look like a fairly resourceful guy, I'm sure you could make some credits pretty easily. It's hard not to make them, really. I'm making some right now, by telling you how things work. You can make them by doing good things or bad things. Good things are easier though, God is more generous then Satan, Satan is a bit tight with the credits, controlling bastard."

"The words of a disgruntled employee?" Phil wondered. But who Nik worked for, while interesting wasn't what had caught his attention. "All the more reason to drop by heaven I suppose." Free laptops, he really might like it there. "But I've got earth resources myself. Accounts that won't get closed when I die because they aren't exactly mine. They don't belong to anyone who exists outside of files and records." Phil was mostly talking to himself at this point. It wouldn't be hard, he had alternate accounts running off of resources that weren't even associated with the name Philip Russel at all. Nik shrugged and shook his head.

"Not exactly, I've never worked for Satan personally, but when you get a card you also recieve statements regarding what you've made by way of credits and how. Well, a person knows good from bad, it's not hard to see that God pays out for the most ridiculous little thing and Satan only pays if you do something seriously beneficial to him, which I haven't done very often, just enough to see the difference. I made a pretty big mistake when I first died, and I'm still paying it off today. I'm pretty close to even though. At any rate, I've had reason to need credits for a long time." He stopped and looked off into the distance for a moment before continuing.

"So, if your old internet access isn't gone you should be good to go. Just get yourself a laptop."

"I suppose I'll have it until I stop paying for it. I doubt they care if I'm dead. The real problem comes in when the bank knows you're dead." Phil was curious about the big mistake. He'd hate to make a similar one but as Nik had said earlier they'd only just met. "I don't suppose you'd like to do another good deed and give me a lesson in making Oreos?" Phil put on his very best hopeful look. He had been told it was nearly irresistible to anyone with a heart. Nik laughed at him.

"You know, you almost look innocent when you do that. Of course I will. I will teach you exactly how to make an Oreo cookie, when you get back from heaven. That way you have to come back to see me," Nik winked at Phil.

"You...you are sneaky. I like it!" Phil wiped the faux innocent look off his face. "So did Big Red vacate the premises before you went on break or did you just leave your poor co-workers to deal with him?" Phil could hardly blame him if he had. Nik's smile disappeared.

"He left before I came out, just before. No one else will serve him. They really can't, none of them have ever been to hell, and they didn't have much by way of guts while they were alive either. High demons like him make anyone who isn't equally powerful feel like a worm, but the feeling can be overcome. I'm sure you noticed. I wish I knew why he was stalking this place. I'm suspicious, but I really don't want to believe it has anything to do with m... what I think it has to do with. I really shouldn't say that sort of thing about the other servers either. I didn't have much by way of guts when I was alive myself. Most of them have been gained after death. After all, I am dead, there aren't very many ways for me to die again."

Phil shrugged again. "Well, I never worried about it much when I was alive. It seems silly to start now. I wonder..." Phil thought about it for a while. "We could find out maybe, if Hell keeps records." Hacking Hell, now there was an accomplishment. If Semiazas was after who Nik thought he was after then surely finding out for sure and warning Nik would be a good deed.

"I think hacking into Hell's records would be a real challenge. You... it could be painful to fail. Interestingly, although we don't have bodies, pain can be inflicted upon us. That's a big part of what hell is all about. Also, since everything but our souls is made of energy it can be transformed by spells of sorts, almost like magic. So there are some pretty odd things that could happen if you got caught, for example, your laptop might explode, or go up in flames. Would you really want to risk that?"

Phil looked at his poor burnt finger for a moment. Then a smile spread slowly across his face, "A challenge huh? I'm a sucker for a challenge. I'd have gotten myself thrown in prison if I'd ever been caught doing the things I was doing. It would have been a painful experience. But I know the systems there now. I have to get into it. It's not like I'd be changing anything...probably." Phil looked Nik in the eyes for a long moment. "You want the info right? Well I want to get it. And if possible I want to make Red's life a little more difficult. No one makes me feel insignificant and gets away with it. Not since I was thirteen."

"He isn't really doing it purposely, well, he is sort of. He could always put his horns away if he wanted to, but they would hurt like hell when they came back out, and he needs them to be at full power. At any rate, I don't want to convince you not to dislike him, so just ignore all of that. He's a terrible person and anything you do to make his life worse will make me happy. So, I'll see you when you get back then? If I'm not here ask Sarah for me, she's got my cell number. I'd give it to you, but I don't know if you'll have a phone anytime soon."

Phil winced a little at the thought of having a pair of massive horns growing into place. He could see where a demon might prefer to just have them out in case he needed them. But then if he weren't lurking around hospitals stirring up trouble he wouldn't need them. In fact, Phil decided, it was his own damned fault for being a demon. It was no excuse to go around scaring new ghosts. It was like hacking AOL users.

"Right, I'll see you when I get back." Phil pulled his watch out from his pocket and flipped it open. The white button. Him, in heaven! Of all the incredible things. He pushed the button. Amazingly enough, nothing happened. Phil pressed it again. Yet again, nothing happened. When nothing continued to happen, Phil pressed it a few more times, raised his eyebrow at Nik and asked, "Is this thing broken?"

"Actually, the button's require, some paitience. It isn't exactly like real world electronics."

Phil stared at the watch, wondering what exactly that meant. "Now I want to take it apart. But I still need it. What are we waiting for exactly?" He put the watch back in his pocket to avoid temptation and was very pleased he wasn't carrying a screwdriver. The desire to take things apart when accompanied by tools was not something he had ever sucessfully resisted.

"St. Peter, he needs to transport you to heaven. He's faster when it's an emergency, but he takes longer for heaven and even longer for hell. I think he hopes you'll change your mind if he leaves you to think about it long enough or something." Nik tilted his head thoughtfully, "the watches seem to be virtually indestructible. I've never seen someone try to take one apart before, but hitting them with a hammer has no effect at all. I watched someone trying to destroy theirs once."

Come to think of it there hadn't seemed to be any visible screws. Not too uncommon for a pocket watch but when he took it out for a second look he couldn't find the seam to the panel that should be covering the seams. Even the hinge didn't look much like it would come apart easily.

"The afterlife is just full of challenges," Phil commented. "Pete works too hard. He's the greeter for the newly dead and the taxi."

"If you believe what people say he's a lot more than that too. Speaking of a workaholic. He's one of those people who make you not want to bother to ever try being good, because nobody could be better than him at it." Nik looked around, "he often arrives at the worst times too. I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised to see him behind me after saying something like that."

"I do, do I?" came the dry voice of St. Peter, from right behind Nik. "Really, I guess I'm no good at timing things." Nik's face turned light pink.

"He's in desperate need of a hug too," Phil said. "It's too bad Sarah's not around. I'm not feeling quite that brave."

"I think you're far too good at timing things," Nik accused, since he'd been caught anyhow. "I think you do it on purpose." He looked at Phil, "I think Sarah is really the only one brave enough to hug him." St. Peter gave a hrumph and shrugged.

"I'll just have to work on it," Phil said. Then, as though he'd just noticed St. Peter looming behind Nik, "Hi Pete. I need a lift to Heaven. Sorry about the button thing. I didn't know you had to escort me personally."

"Hello Phil, I know you need a lift to heaven, you pushed the heaven button five times. It seems that no one bothered to mention that it takes a few moments after the button is pressed for an answer. I answer all pushed buttons personally. If you become a button pusher, I believe I'll see you an awful lot," he gave Phil a speculative look, "Are you going to be a button pusher Phil?" he asked, sounding like he'd already decided the answer to that on his own. His eyes were slightly narrowed.

"You say that like you don't want to see me an awful lot, Pete," Phil sounded hurt. "And I'm so happy to see you. Sarah's been telling me all about how wonderful you are, you know." Phil leaned forward and dropped his voice to a stage whisper. "I think she has a crush on you." Phil was pushing it, perhaps, but then Peter really should have the patience of a Saint. Nik watched the two without comment, amused.

St. Peter shook his head, "I had a feeling you were the button pushing type." He took a deep breath, "You have requested to go to Heaven. Are you sure this is the destination you desire?" His voice became incredibly serious, slightly deeper, and he stood straight.

"Well I did press the button five times," Phil pointed out. He hadn't realized it was such a serious decision. He could change his mind later.

"Then we should go. It was nice seeing you again Nik, good luck," he gave Nik an apraising look, "I may see you again sometime soon," he held out a hand to Phil. Nik raised his eyebrows and motioned at himself.

"Me? Do you think I might press a button?" His eyes moved to Phil, "or do you think Phil is going to come back and press buttons around me again?" He smiled. "Good luck Phil, don't forget to return for your Oreo lesson."

"Don't worry, I'll be back," Phil told Nik and then took St. Peter's hand. "Hand holding Pete? We'll make it to hugs yet."

"I certainly hope you don't press buttons Nik, that would make things more difficult for me," his deep brown eyes looked into Nik's, a compassionate glance, before looking back to Phil, eyes back to neutrality. "As for hand holding, its a neccesary evil needed to make sure you travel with me. Do not believe it is something I do for the sheer delight of it. If you were to try to hug me... the consequences might be... harsh. I do not know you that well." His hand was warm as it wrapped around Phil's, the fingers tightening as he turned to start walking away. Nik's forehead creased for a moment, then he shook his head, smiled and waved at Phil.

Phil waved back and let himself be pulled along beside St.Peter. It was funny how both of the powerful beings he'd met made him feel like he was a little kid again. Semiazas was those moments when he'd been small and terrified and unable to do anything about it. St. Peter was a big person who knew just what to do so that Phil didn't have to worry about it.

St. Peter walked for exactly three steps before the surrounding area dissapeared in a bright flash of light. When Phil could see again, he was standing on large fluffy clouds and there was this enormous pearly white wall, with a beautifully carved set of gates on it. St. Peter continued to walk forward towards it, Phil's hand safely in his. After a few moments more, they were standing by a podium right in front of the gates. "Philip Russel, you are standing at the gates to Heaven. The list of things you've done that are good and the list of things that you've done that are bad are available to you, if you so desire for me to list them off. Are you still certain you desire to enter Heaven's gates?"

"Well I was sure, but you keep asking. Are terrible things about to happen because my bad list is longer than my good list or something?" Phil paused. "And no, I don't want to hear it. I suspect that sort of thing takes a while. Well, maybe not the good list so much..." Phil took hold of the rattail of longer hair at the base of his skull and pulled it around. It was just long enough that he could chew on the end.

St. Peter shook his head, "I keep asking because many people change their minds. The gate tends to intimidate them for some reason. Perhaps its how large and shiny they are. Your lists have nothing to do with what happens on the other side. As for the length of the lists, both of them would take quite a long time to read, but you do have the option to listen to them. Which you have declined, so therefore I don't have to worry about boring you with them. If you are still certain, we will go to the next part. Have you changed your mind now that you've seen the gates?"

"No. I mean they're intimidating and all," Phil gazed up at them for a little while, "but I've got stuff to do. I'm told I'm somewhat lacking in survival instinct." He'd been told that fairly often, in various ways for most of his life. The most common was: 'Are you trying to get yourself killed?'. "I appreciate the concern though."

St. Peter let go of Phil's hand. "No problem. Concern is second nature to me, I suppose. Just a moment," and St. Peter stood away from Phil and closed his eyes. White light enfolded him and he lifted a few feet into the air. As he watched, St. Peter's boring clothes swirled off of him, being replaced by an old fashioned robe of bright white, leather boots replaced his worn tennis shoes, and his hair became a bit softer looking. Huge white feathered wings, the span impossibly long, came from his back, and a shining halo appeared above his head. When he looked to Phil again, his eyes looked more alive, and they were incredibly bright. He landed again, his wings folding up somehow, although they did trail on the clouds for several feet behind him, and he smiled, an actual smile that could dazzle just about anyone. "Let us be off then," and he turned towards the gates.

"Wow," said Phil. And oddly enough that was all he said for a long moment. Then a smile to match St. Peter's stretched across his face. Phil's was neither so dazzling nor so completely benign as St. Peter's. It contained, as always a hint of something worrisome.

"Sarah was right you know. You really are beautiful." Phil began towards the gate. He was starting to feel a bit out of place. The scale of things alone would have made him a bit uneasy, but it was all so glittering and pristine. Even his drab guide had become something wonderful and Phil was still what he'd always been, if a little less substantial.

St. Peter shook his head, "This was the only way people saw me for a long time you know. It was very..." he paused, his hands on the gate, "..unsettling for them. Thank you for your compliment, and welcome to Heaven," he pushed open the gate and led the way into bright light, which cleared just before Phil was unable to see to walk, and what he saw was incredible.

Huge cloud cities were floating off in the distance, some closer than others, all of them were on seperate cloud grounds, seperated by large gaps of sky. They were standing on a smaller cloud currently that had a bridge to the nearest city. Before Phil had a chance to really get a good look at everything, a small little ball of person floated near to him. It was the valentines day version of a cherub, small baby with rolly polly cuteness and a loincloth as clothes. "Hello Philip Russel! Welcome to Heaven! Would you like to look at Heaven's latest in fashions? We have a large stock of new wing types!" His voice was just so much cuteness as well, high pitched and cheerful.

Phil blinked at this new creature. "I'm not really sure... Wings?" Phil echoed. "I've been here three seconds and I've been attacked by a fashion consultant." Phil edged away from the little bundle of joy and accessories. He was aiming towards getting one of those great big wings of St. Peter's between him and the cherub. St. Peter chuckled.

"Scared of the little cherub? He's very nonthreatening, really," St. Peter's voice was terribly amused. The cherub looked insulted.

"I'm not a consultant. This has to do with what you look like in Heaven! You have your choices of wings, halo's, robes, boots, jewelry, and much more! Including hair styles and colors. We even have people trying different skin colors and types out, if you'd like to be a tester, you can, it's under the section experiments." The cherub pointed and a round ball bounced in the air a foot away from him. It had arrows to the left and right, and a menu that said "Wings" in the center of it.

"It looks pretty dangerous to me," Phil told St. Peter, but he stopped backing away. It made sense, he supposed. Get everyone looking like they belonged right away. Just wouldn't do to have ratty looking ghosts cluttering up heaven. "Is it like a touch screen?" Phil reached for the right pointing arrow. It blinked as soon as Phil's finger got close to it and the "Wings" changed to "Halos".

"It's fairly safe, as far as I've known, it doesn't explode," St. Peter said as the cherub scowled.

"Of course it's safe! Honestly. And it isn't like a touch screen, it is a touch screen. Heaven of course has all the latest technology."

"Actually I meant you," Phil told the cherub. He tried tapping the ball instead this time. "You'll have to forgive my mistake, I've never seen anyone pull a touch screen out of his a...out of thin air before." Tapping the ball caused the "Halos" to dissapear and another screen appear in front of the ball. On it was a picture of a halo and a right arrow. The halo pictured was a simple round halo floating about an inch from the head of a black silhouette. The cherub crossed his arms and floated as if sitting.

"Really, I'm terribly safe," he pouted.

Phil tried the right arrow. "What are halos for, exactly? I'd think they'd be inconvenient. Get stuck in trees when you walk under low hanging branches, that sort of thing."

"Halo's are a traditional adornment to any angelic outfit," the cherub said, his voice changing from pout to full speach mode, "They originated from the old beliefs of angels that included sandles, white robes, white feathered wings and the halo's. It was a sign of a true angel."

"These days, it's more often used for people that like to keep the angel appearance," St. Peter interrupted, "and they aren't solid, so they don't get caught. You'd have more trouble with your wings, if you decided to get those, than you would with a halo. The halo is a manifestation of your power, or strength, so it isn't tangible, it's more like an illusion." Pressing the right arrow caused the halo to dissapear and another halo to appear. This one was in the same possition above the head, but it had small spikes coming out of it, almost like a spiked collar.

"So none of this is strictly necessary, right?" Phil asked. "Because much as I'd love to go through this stuff I'm looking for my grandmother. I'm told I can ask an angel for help finding her but that it can take them a very long time. So the sooner the better I think." Phil kind of liked the spiky halo, it didn't look very traditional though. "Maybe you could just set me up with something basic and I can customize it later, uh...what is your name anyway? You seem to know mine."

"My name isn't important, however it is Arlenthiasion. People call me Arlen for short, and if you don't want anything, then don't take anything. You can find me later, I'm right here, for the new Heaven arrivals. This is my job, so to speak."

St. Peter looked at Phil, "I pull the actual decisions you've made from your soul, so don't take anything you don't want."

"You make it sound like dental work," Phil shivered dramatically. "It's nice meeting you Arlen and I'll see you later, I guess. Sarah said I should go to the Ministry of Angels?" Phil was pretty sure that had been what she'd said.

St. Peter nodded, "I'm sure that's what she said. The Ministry of Angels has a branch in the first town," he pointed across the bridge. "It is often just as painful as dental work, the outcome however, is usually much more beautiful. Good luck looking for your grandmother, Phil. If you don't need anything else, I have someone to visit with myself."

"Jesus? Sarah said you go whenever you're here, she also said I should visit because he doesn't get much company. Maybe I'll see you there when I'm done at the ministry. Later Pete, later Arlen." Phil gave them both a wave and set out towards the bridge St. Peter had pointed out for him. Cloud seemed to be an interesting texture. Maybe he'd go for barefoot. St. Peter turned his head away as a bit of color crept onto his face.

The bridge was wooden and tied with ropes, it swayed a bit in the breeze and the drop was phenomenal, no land in sight underfoot. There were several different people on the bridge, some just looking and walking, some talking in pairs, and some jumping in the air, fluttering their wings, trying to fly. Every person was differently clothed, some in the angelic type of robe and shoes with wings, and some in the earth clothes of popular america, jeans and shirts, sweaters and skirts, hightops and steel-toed boots. The atmosphere was comfortable, warm with a small breeze that ruffled hair and fabric.

"Kinda wish I'd gotten some wings after all," Phil said to himself as he stepped onto the bridge. He didn't looks so out of place with the people but he still felt a bit at odds with the landscape. The sway of the bridge was bit unnerving, but although he was fairly sure he'd never been this far off the ground before, he'd certainly been on less stable footing. He hesitated only briefly to catch the bridge's rythm before continuing across.

The city was huge, old fashioned and modern mixed together in a mess of buildings both tall and short. The first thing that greeted him upon leaving the bridge was a huge sign that hung over the end of the bridge that said, "Welcome to Sunville!" in rainbow lettering. The cloud had cobblestone streets and walkways leading into the city. A few steps further led to a large town map of the city with buidlings colored in red, yellow or green. The bridges were in blue and labeled with the names of the areas they led to.

"Sunville huh?" Heaven was nice but he was becoming more certain by the moment he wouldn't want to live there. Rainbows and clouds and chubby babies bearing touchscreens. Phil scanned the map. It was colorful but not especially helpful as it lacked labels. Three boys ran past, two of them trying to catch the one in the lead. The tallest of the three, a boy with red hair, freckles, bright emerald eyes and thin glossy red and orange moth wings came to an abrupt stop and turned to look at Phil. Judging by height and features the boy was 11 or 12.

"Can I help you find something?"

"I'm trying to find the Ministry of Angels. The map's not helping." Phil fixed the map with stern look and shook his finger at it.

Children everywhere. He supposed children were the best candidates for heaven. They hadn't had enough time to do anything really awful.

"No, the map isn't really very useful unless you live here. You could visit the map maker and get a real map, or I could take you to the Ministry myself, why do you want to go there?" The boys wings twitched.

"I'm trying to find my Grandmother. She passed away and now that I have too I thought I try and look her up," Phil explained. Of course the problem with dead children was that they could very well be older than you were and then you'd feel silly treating them like children. But if you treated actual children too much like adults you ended up confusing them and teaching them new, highly inappropriate words. "I'd appreciate it if you could at least point it out for me. I've heard the process can take a while. I"m Phil, by the way," he remembered to mention.

"Hello Phil, my name's Tannis, I'm establishing a new branch of the thieves guild in town. If you get bored you could come join us. Follow me, I'll show you the way. I can always play tag, but there's no easier way to make a credit than leading someone around town when they're new. Except maybe sex with a high level angel or demon, that's worth a whole lot of credits too, although it takes a lot more effort to accomplish since they're pretty busy and not short on willing partners." The boy walked as he chattered. His wings seemed to have a life of their own, fluttering open excitedly every once in a while. One of them nearly hitting Phil. "Ooops, sorry about my wings. I'm just so full of energy right now. Border towns are so small and theirs not much to do around here. I can't wait to go to earth again."

"Don't worry about it," Phil said as he dodged the brightly colored wing. Warning colors apparently. "I'm not sure you could do much damage with them." Moth wings were generally pretty delicate.

"Heaven has a thieves guild?" Phil asked, his brain finally processing that little gem of information. "Never been in a guild. Of course I very rarely steal anything tangible." And, technically, he never would again.

"Heaven is really the only place for a good thieves guild, I mean in hell Satan would want part of the action and on earth it would be too hard to organise." His voice dropped, "we even help the detectives ocasionally, unofficially of course." He stopped in front of a large white building with two towering statues of angels, one to either side of the door. One angel was male, the other female and both had traditional white feather wings like St. Peter, though not nearly as large. "Well, here you are. I could wait outside if you need help finding anything else, or I could give you directions to the map maker before I leave."

Phil was starting to get the impression the Heaven was a lot like earth, just more dead. Less nasty so far, but the public maps sucked, he met a thief and apparently angels were in the habit of paying for sex.

"Well I'm going to need a laptop and then I need to find out where Jesus lives...maybe you should just tell me where this map maker is."

He'd just connected 'Heaven has all the latest technology' with his laptop to be and he was a little bit excited about the idea.

"No problem, when you come out of the ministry just turn left, pass the donut shop and the handmade doll shop. Just after the doll shop turn right and keep watching to the left, you'll see a shop with a picture of a huge scroll map. That's the place. If you ever want to join the guild, just stop in. We're recruiting here. It's a bit harder to get in where I came from, but if you've got skills and persistence you can usually get their attention."

"I'll keep it in mind, thanks," Phil said and made his way into the building between the angel statues. Right inside was a large lobby with comfortable couches and many different statues in white and black marble. Partway in was a desk with an angel behind it with a headset on her head, a computer and four phones on the desk, and tons of paper in different stacks all across it. She looked up at Phil when he entered, her light brown eyes cheerful, and she brushed a strand of light blonde hair off of her face as she spoke.

"Can I help you?" her voice was slightly deep, her wings were like a monarch butterflies, except that they were in different shades of yellow, and she had a small halo above her head.

Phil made his way over to the desk. "Yes, I hope so. I was hoping someone could help me find my Grandmother." Phil didn't volunteer any more information than that. He wasn't sure if this was the angel who would be helping him or if he'd be shuffled off to someone else. Sunville's population seemed to run to fairies. He felt right at home.

She smiled brightly, "Certainly, you'll need to go to the third floor for that. I'll page Cristy up there, she'll be waiting for you. There'll be some paperwork, but she'll give you all of that. The elevator is right behind me."

"Thank you very much," Phil said and went over to the elevator. He pressed the little button with the up arrow and waited. "You have lovely wings," he told the woman at the desk. "I've always thought monarchs were especially attractive butterflies. The color suits you too." She blushed a bit.

"Thank you so much! I wasn't sure of the color at first, when they started changing I was really dissapointed, but now I love them myself." The elevator dinged and opened, "Oh, and there you go, good luck!"

Phil slipped into the elevator and pressed the button marked three. He was always nice to receptionists. They took an awful lot of crap from an awful lot of people. It was good for them and if he ended up in a particular office regularly he ended up with better service.

He got off on the third floor and looked around for someone who looked like a Cristy. The room he was in was full of desks with angels behind them, the type of wings, halo's and clothes varried incredibly. One of the angels bounced up and came over to him in a second. "Hello! You must be the one looking for his Grandmother, correct? Lissa told me you would be coming up." She had brown ringlet curls and bright blue eyes. She didn't have wings, although she did have a halo that looked like a wreath of holly leaves, and it was green. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a longsleaved green shirt. "My name is Cristy, it's very nice to meet you," she held out her hand.

"That's me," Phil took her hand. "Phillip Russel, but call me Phil unless you're mad at me." He gave the hand a firm shake and let it go. "I'll do my best to avoid that though."

The room looked a bit like a television police station. He supposed if it was the 'missing persons' section that made a fair amount of sense. Her handshake was just as firm and she smiled. "Follow me," she said as she started leading him off to the desk she had evacuated. "We've got all kinds of paperwork to fill out at this point," and she laughed, which was a pleasant sound amist all the mumbling and paper shuffling going on in the room.

"Dead and still filling in forms. Just my luck," Phil laughed. "I'd never have expected it of Heaven anyway." All kinds of it no less. Phil was pretty quick about filling in forms. The only trouble was remembering to fill in his actual information. She motioned to a chair in front of her desk and took her seat behind the desk.

"Heaven has changed quite a bit over time really, they didn't used to have much by way of paperwork, and let me tell you, it made many things more difficult. For instance, we weren't able to have any kind of order to requests being fulfilled because we couldn't always tell when requests had happened. We tried all kinds of things back then," she stared off into the distance for a moment.

Phil folded himself into the offered chair. He tucked his left ankle under his right knee. "Well, I don't know how I was expecting you to organize things. It's kind of strange you have so much actual paper around though. Anyway, let's get started. Sooner it's over with the better. Besides, I hear this kind of thing can take a little while." She seemed to come back to him as he had started talking and she nodded.

"We're getting switched over to a completely computer based system, but it's taken over 3 years to get as far as we've gotten and to be honest, it'll probably take at least another 3. It's been hell," she blushed as a few people looked over at her, "oops, didn't mean that," and she giggled. "Ok," she reached down and opened a drawer, pulling out a clipboard. Then she opened another drawer and took out several different pieces of paper, "fill out all of the lines with the red asterisks by them, if you don't know exactly the answer to the question, that's fine, just estimate the best you can. If you really have no way of knowing, put a little DK in the line. You don't have to fill out the parts that don't have the asterisks by them, however the answers would help us locate who you're looking for a little better." She handed the clipboard and a pen to him. "When you've finished the first first form, please return it to me immediately, so I can start your profile in the computer."

The forms weren't difficult to fill out. He knew quite a lot about his Grandmother Karen. They were both somewhat black sheep in the family. Karen for being an independant woman and Phil for being a gay con-artist. He'd spent a lot of time listening to her stories, even more when she'd gotten sick. Of course the old bat hadn't died in bed. Her skeletal remains had been identified by the driver's licence in her wallet by a group taking photographs in the Amazon.

Phil couldn't wait to see her again.

The first form was mostly about himself, all the basics one would expect for a form, age upon death, eye color, hair color, weight, height, where he died, how he died, how long he'd been dead, that kind of thing. As soon as she got it, Cristy started typing it into the computer. The rest of the forms were about his Grandmother, including where she died, how long ago she died, how old she had been and what she looked like. What was the last known outfit she had been wearing, her religious beliefs, whether or not she believed in an afterlife, favorite places to visit, countries visited, hobbies, things she'd wanted to do that she hadn't, magical or non magical, human, elf, dwarf, dragon, vampire, werewolf, and a spot for other with a line as a list of species, as well as a full page for a description of personality.

It was the sheer amount of information that slowed him down. He knew the answers or at least an answer for most of them. He checked non-magical human with a raised eyebrow because he hadn't been aware that there were other choices. He was fairly sure that it was the sort of information that Karen would have shared with him though.

"That's everything I can think of," he said, turning over the last of them to Cristy. She smiled and accepted the clipboard with a quick flick of her wrist.

"Alright, do you have a cell phone or another way of contacting you? Heaven, Hell or Earth P.O. Box? Or should we just put your hair on file?"

"My hair?" Phil asked. "I'll have an email as soon as I get ahold of a laptop." Phil told her. "FoxxHaxx@cactus.com That's eff oh ex ex aych ay ex ex, cactus is spelled as usual. I'll probably have a cell too. But I don't have the number yet, obviously. Is there some way for me to update that sort of thing myself or should I stop back by?" She shook her head.

"You'd have to stop back by and find me, I can update your information. Or, you could call me at any time and I could update it over the phone." She typed a bit and turned back to him, "alright, I've sent out your request and I'll have the angel who works on your case contact you as soon as they have information for you," she took a card from her desk and handed it over to Phil, "My email, P.O. Box, and work cell number, if you ever need to contact me." It had a picture of her face, which changed expressions every 10 seconds or so, with the information she mentioned printed in pink script on a white card. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"I think that's all I needed." Phil studied the card for a moment. "Neat," he said and tucked it into his shirt pocket. Everyone was very nice and helpful. Probably because it was Heaven, but he supposed dead people didn't really have pressing matters to attend to in the same way that living people did. When you had all eternity you could stop and help a guy out for a little while.

He managed to find his way back to elevator. It wasn't far. He waved to the lady behind the desk who he supposed was Lissa on his way through to the street. "Now I go left, then right at the doll shop and it'll be on my left." Phil made his way down the street, peering around like a tourist.

There were hordes of people, all kinds, wandering around. Some buying things from shops, some just making a scene, a few doing magic tricks on the street corners causing crowds to form around them. Every kind of chatter could be heard, several different languages spoken, and almost everyone was smiling. The shops had wide ranges of items in them, and the doll shop was fairly close by. After turning right, he saw another street full of the wide range of people he'd seen before. The street emptied out into a circle of shops, all of which had the old fashioned make of something from the Renaissance period, wooden built, thatched roofs, hard iron latches, and signes without words, just with pictures. One of the buildings in question had a sign with a large scroll, a world pictured on the scroll. The door had a top and a bottom, the top was tied open.

It was just too much to resist. Phil ran towards the door, hopped once, put his hand on on top of the lower half of the door and hurdled into the store. Upon landing he put his hands in his pockets and looked around casually. He was in a large room filled with shelves of many different scrolls. There was a huge table in the middle of the room with an open scroll on it, and a person drawing on that. The person in question stopped drawing and stood up, looking at Phil with a bit of disdain.

"Ye know lad, the door is meant to keep people out o' (Well when you appostrophe of you put it at the end where the f should be.) 'ere." The accent was scottish (and I'm not good at writing accents, by the way, so if you have a better way of writing it, feel free to chip in at any time.) and the man was very short only being four and a half feet tall, had white hair and green eyes. He was wearing brown breeches and a white tunic that was mostly open to the waist.

"Then you should close the whole thing," Phil told him. "You're the mapmaker then?" Phil walked over to one of the shelves and pulled out a scroll. He unrolled it carefully to have a look. From paperwork to handdrawn maps. Things were getting more primative the further in he got.

The map Phil had liberated was incredibly well drawn, and exceptionally detailed, with little lables over everything. The map he was looking at in question was another town, the buildings having levels labled including what each level had on it. Everything was drawn in, including different kinds of trees and signs for shops.

"That's right lad, an' I'd appreciate it if ye'd tell me what yer lookin' for instead o' going fishin' for yerself." He came over to Phil and looked at the map Phil was looking at. "That one turned out well, if I do say so meself."

Phil nodded it. "It's incredible, actually." Phil rerolled the scroll as carefully as he'd unrolled it and put it back just where he'd found it. "You should have a go at the map by the bridge. It'd be a lot more useful if you designed it. I'd like to be able to get around without asking for directions all the time. I'm looking for a laptop, a cell phone and Jesus at the moment."

The man eyed him as he put the map away, and nodded his head a bit. "Good thing yer careful, I'd of not let ye have anything if ye weren't good to me maps." He moved over to the map he had been drawing on and sat down on a small wooden stool. "Laptop, cell phone, and Jesus. Yer an odd mix o' things, ain't ye? In that case, ye should 'ave some map o' the centre of 'eaven an' a map o' Techno Town, not to mention a map o' 'eaven and her bridges. Can ye handle all o' that? Do ye want cases fer 'em?"

"Yes, I suppose I am a bit of an odd mix," Phil said. "I'd better take a case. These aren't really the sorts of things I can just stick in my pocket." Too big for one. He really couldn't stand the thought of ruining one though. A lot of work had gone into them. He'd have prefered something machine made and laminated, to be crumpled into his back pocket when not in use.

The man nodded and pulled out a box from under his table, rooting around for a moment before holding out a three slotted case with a strap on it. He put that on the table, and then stood up, moving around his shelves for a moment before pulling out three different scrolls from three different places. He went to the scroll case and put them all in and closed the case. "They're protected from rain, sun, fire, and explosion. They aren't wrinkle proof, but as long as ye put 'em back in the case rolled when ye go to take 'em out, they'll be in pristine condition. The case comes with a hundread year guarantee, so if ye find ye are 'aving any problems with them, come back and I'll replace them immediately. I've put them in in order from left to right, 'eaven's bridges, Techno Town, 'eaven's centre. Got all that, kid?"

"Yeah, I think so. Only...why aren't they wrinkle-proof? I mean as long as you're proofing them anyway." The explosion-proofing was a very good thing though. Phil was often in explosions. Phil often caused explosions.

"'Cause it's too hard to wrinkle-proof. Different types o' people 'ave different types o' problems, and really, I don't have the kind of magic it would take to make somethin' wrinkle-proof. Fire, rain, sun, explosion, it's all an outside force causing the issue. It's a simple shield around the map, wrinkle-proofin' would require a shield around every fibre of the map, which I ain't capable o' doin'."

"I see," Phil said, picking up the case. He slung it over his shoulder by the strap. He vaulted the door a bit more sedately this time. Hopping up and sitting, then swinging his feet over and hopping down again. If it was there to keep people out, then it was quite possibly locked and it would be silly to try and use the handle.

"Well, if I get lost I know where to come and complain," Phil leaned over the door to say. "Of course if I get really lost you don't have to worry about it. So they better be either good maps or really bad ones." Phil ducked out of line of sight in case of projectiles.

Once he was out of range he opened the map case and removed the bridge map from its slot. He had a general idea of where he was in Sunville so he just had to figure out where Techno Town was and he'd be on his way. Opening the map was an experience all in it's own. Not only were the different floating cities labled, but each city had a decently detailed rendition of what the city looked like, whether it was mostly buildings or mostly trees was obviously apparent as soon as one looked at the city in question. Sitting right in the middle of Sunville was a little red dot that had an arrow pointing to it, there was a phrase above the arrow that said "You Are Here". Several floating cities away was one that said "Techno Town", in the direct center of Heaven was a completely forested cloud that said "Jesus' Glade", in a far corner was a cloud with many ruined marble and wooden buildings that was called "Exiles Confinement". On another point of interest was the angelic cloud labled "High Council of Angels" that seemed to consist of white marble buildings and fountains, and there were several clouds that just seemed to be houses that had names like "Rest Easy Village" and "Sunny Glen Township".

Phil picked a direction and walked. The labeled red dot moved along with him. It was very cool. He'd rigged up something similar with a GPS and a laptop once, but it hadn't been on paper. It looked like he had a bit of a walk ahead of him. He got a general sense of where he was going, took a sighting on a tall building and put his map away. That sort of navigation wasn't always the quickest way to get around but it almost always got him where he was going.

The streets were winding and as he walked, he could tell what parts had been built first, and what had cropped up later, as different ages emerged from different parts of the city. He found himself at the building he had chosen much quicker than he expected, an office building of some sort with several different gargoyles on it, some chatting with each other, some grooming themselves, yet others sunning on ledges and balconies. They all looked rather content, and a few glanced at Phil as he came near the building.

As expected the building wasn't too far from the first bridge he needed. He crossed and checked the map again to be sure he was really in the right place. Having oriented himself he picked a new landmark and set out again. He was getting used to the map now and he was fairly sure the tall building was the same as one at the correct edge of the town. It looked like the little inked building and it was in the right direction.

Phil seemed to get to his destinations much quicker than he expected to, and each cloud lead to the next fairly easily. Within no time, he was stepping off of a bridge into Techno Town. The first thing that greeted him was a teenaged boy with black jeans and a black t-shirt that said "I'm Dead tired of you now, please go Kill yourself". He had black hair that was cut in a fairly trendy style for the age, and his eyes were hazel.

"Yo, welcome to Techno Town, we got a hot deal on new phones for all new customers at Zombie Wireless," he walked over to Phil and held out a piece of paper, "My name's at the bottom, and there's a map to our outlet store there, you won't find a better deal in all of Heaven as you will at Zombie, if you find such a deal, take it to us and we'll match or beat it. We also have an exclusive limited time contract with Angelic Electronics so all new phone purchases come with a two free months of internet access card. Stop by and see what else we can do for you," his voice was incredibly monotone, but he did smile at Phil at the end of his speach.

All the buildings were strangely shaped, integrating odd angles and colors for interesting landmarks. In one corner, Phil could see a building that seemed to be mostly made of glass and steel that was in the shape of a phone reciever. Techno Town was also the largest populated area he'd been in so far.

"Uh-huh," Phil said as he looked around. He made no move to take the flyer. He pulled out the map he'd been given of Techno Town instead. A computer was his first order of business. There were files he'd like to get ahold of before someone started poking around and caused the computer to commit suicide. And while Zombie Wireless sounded like a great company for this little gothboi to be associated with it didn't exactly inspire Phil with a sense of confidence. Nor did the fact that they sent apathetic teens out to accost newcomers.

In fact, "I thought the phones were free," Phil said. Admittedly he was unlikely to find a better deal than that.

The boy looked at Phil and shrugged, "Yeah, they are, we just use the word purchase as a kind of code for new users. We've got some really cool camera and video phones too, you really should take a look, they've got dead and alive settings so you can take pics and vids of the living world or the dead world. It's really cool," he actually sounded interested in this, and continued to hold the flyer out to Phil.

The map had all kinds of interesting places listed, Angelic Electronics was one of the smaller electronic stores, there was also a Computers-R-Us, a From Scratch Up, Geeks Only Allowed, All About DOS, Programers Annonymos were all names of electronic stores, Computers-R-Us being the largest one on the map. Phone stores included Zombie Wireless, Still Talking in the Afterlife, Trendy and Bendy, Heaven's Best Phone's, and Bargin Phones, Still Talking in the Afterlife, which was shortened to STitA on the map, being the largest phone store. There were also gadget stores and record stores and movie stores of all varieties. A few of the stores had no description at all under their name to help with deciphering what they were for, Jake's was one of those, as well as Yes We Do.

Phil plotted out a course to From Scratch Up, accepted the flier from Gothboi and rolled it up in the map. "Thanks, I'll look into it." He sounded very sincere and this was mostly because Phil was good at that and helped along by the fact that it was entirely possible he would look into Zombie Wireless. He couldn't help but wonder why a Bargain Phones was necessary though.

From Scratch Up sounded like his kind of computer store. He was happiest when the acquisition of a new computer involved parts bins and a soldering iron.

When he got to the store, he saw that it was two floors, the top floor being labled "Inside" and the bottom floor was labled "Outside". Other than that, it wasn't very large. Inside was a pleasant atmosphere, air conditioning was going, and the lighting was pretty good. The front part of the store had just what he was hoping for, large bins of things all across the floor with ample space for sorting through on the ground, which was tiled. In the middle of the floor was a round desk with many employee's sitting around it, one of which got up and came right over to him.

"Hey, my name's Silverweed, can I help you with anything? You've never been here before, have you?" He had an easy smile, and was dressed nicely, even if the clothes did look a bit odd on a 15 year old. His hair was white blonde and curly, his eyes mint green. He held out one of his tanned hands as he stood a comfortable distance away from Phil.

Phil blinked at Silverweed for a moment. "Oh, no, I'm new." A beatific smile spread across his face. "I've been walking for a while now, but at last, I've found Heaven." Phil shook the hand, a bit absently. "You don't mind if I...just have a look around, do you?" Phil began drifting towards the parts. Silverweed laughed heartily.

"No, but let me wander with you for a bit so I can explain how this store works, alright? You still with me, or have you been lost to the shiny parts yet?"

"I've been gone since I walked in," Phil confessed. He grabbed a loop of wiring from a nearby hook and slung it over his arm. Then he began looking for just the right..."Hello lovely. Where have you been all my life." Silverweed laughed again.

"Alright, I'll try to make this brief. All the parts for the outside of your computer can be found on this floor, all the inside parts can be found on the second floor, the stairs are to the left of the building. If you'd like to assemble your computer here, you may do so in the back room, you'll have to get an employee, me specifically, to open the room for you, and I'll be there for conversation or help if you need me at any time in the back room. Did you get all that?" He spoke quickly and efficiantly, smiling as he did so.

"Do you have a basket?" Phil asked, tucking a largish bit of black plastic under his arm. "One of the big ones." Phil held his hands about three feet apart. He moved to measure the other dimension, but something else caught his eye. "Buttons or switches...both! Yes..." Silverweed dissapeared for a moment, then returned with a large shopping basket.

"Here, I'll hold the basket, feel free to fill it up," Silverweed smiled.

Phil emptied the growing collection of of black and grey plastic carefully into the shopping basket. He had also acquired two more loops of wire and and coiled them with the first. Once he was happy with his selection of casing and switches he headed up the stairs. If Silverweed's presence had been taken for granted on the first floor it was completely forgotten in the presence of the actual guts of computers. The basket was soon full of green and silver and black wrapped neatly in their little static free environments.

This necessitated a second trip downstairs and an exchanging of roughly half of the casings for other, more appropriate casings. "And a little red light." Phil conveniently remembered Silverweed's existence at this point. "Now, the back room?" Phil smiled sweetly as though he had not just been using Silverweed as an automated shopping cart. The boy had volunteered. Silverweed smiled sweetly and nodded, moving towards a door and pulling a key out of his pocket.

"Be careful, regular exposure to this room could make you too excited," Silverweed said, smiling innocently. In the back room was a large table with all the neccecary tools needed to put a computer together. There was no one else in the room and Silverweed went right over to the table and put the basket on it. "What can I do to assist you sir?" he asked.

"I would really appreciate it if you could put the basket down there," Phil pointed at the table and then bent down to untie his shoes, "and then go back to whatever you were doing when I came in." He smiled sweetly, realizing that he'd not only been terribly rude but that his behavior was not improving with time. But then he could only be so charming while attempting to build the system of his dreams. He placed his shoes against the wall and tucked his socks inside of them. He then proceeded to shuck his shirt and fold it before placing it on top of the shoes.

Silverweed put the basket down, leaned against the wall and smiled at Phil, "No thanks, I think I'd prefer to watch you, this is getting to be quite an interesting show."

"Start stripping then." Phil was down to his boxers by this point. "You can keep your underwear, but only because I'm not sure where these chairs have been." Phil perched on one the the chairs and began sorting the parts into piles.

"Oh? You think I can help you?" Silverweed smiled and started undoing his tie, "are you sure?" His eyes traveled up and down Phil's body apreciatively. Phil was too busy sorting through the selection of tools to even notice.

"Not really. But you're a static hazard!" Phil waved a tiny screwdriver in Silverweed's general direction. "These are delicate components you know. If you insist on watching you'll have to take the proper safety precautions."

"Can I please mention that this is Heaven, and if it doesn't work when you're done, you get free replacements?" Like an obediant child, Silverweed took his tie off and started unbuttoning his shirt.

Phil stared at Silverweed as though he'd just said something utterly incomprehensible. "Are you new here?" He continued staring just a moment longer until the computer won out over the pretty young boy stripping. Phil wondered about himself sometimes. Not as often as he probably should have or about the right sorts of things, but he did wonder.

"Much as I would love to build this machine again sometime I need it to work sooner rather than later. If anyone tries to get too deep into my old machine my OS is going to eat itself. I don't think I could recreate it either, the thing damn near evolved. This is a rescue mission, Silverweed. I'm saving a highly endangered species." Silverweed laughed and took his shirt off, folded it up and placed it with his tie. Then he took his shoes off, his socks, and his pants, folded them up and placed them together in a pile. Lastly, he walked over to the door and locked it, then bolted it.

"There, now we don't have to worry about being disturbed," he said, calmly for someone in a black satin thong and nothing else. "Well, perhaps you don't understand much about me, but I've been taking apart and rebuilding computers for over a decade now, so," he took a seat across from Phil, "tell me what you'd like me to do, and I'll help you with this."

"I never said anything about letting you touch, Mr. Don't-worry-about-the-static-replacement-parts-are-free." A thong...it was clearly some sort of challenge the universe was throwing at him. Can you build a state of the art computer while locked in a room with boy in thong, Mr. Russel?

The parts were not all completely familiar to him. He knew what they were but they were not the ones he had used in the past, some of them seemed to be more advanced models of things he'd only ever seen in magazines. But he'd been building computers most of his life and he'd always had sort of a way with machines. An instinct for what went where. This computer was coming together just as he'd known it would as he picked the parts. Of course it wouldn't mean a thing unless it worked at the end.

Silverweed laughed and shrugged, "Alright, I'll just sit and watch then," and that he did, lean back in the chair and watch as Phil put his state of the art computer together. The room was a bit cool with next to no clothing on, and Silverweed crossed his arms every once in a while to try to warm himself up. He sat, and watched, a smile playing across his lips the entire time.

The finished laptop consisted of four boxes, three of which were each about the size of a hardcover book. They were connected at the back by a maze of wires. Phil had them stacked but there was enough length in the wires to set them out across the table if he'd wished. The top box contained the monitor, or rather unfolded into the monitor. It had a flexible screen which looked suspiciously like a piece of cloth. Phil assumed it was the same technology, or magic that allowed his maps to have a moving dot despite being drawn on parchment. The fourth box was tiny and slim, about the size of a calculator. It had a switch, a button, a number pad and the little red light.

The keyboard was a separate piece. It was full sized but could be folded in in fourths to something about the size of a paperback. He'd also gotten it a laser mouse and a hands free headset which meant he could rig it to double as a phone. It wouldn't work exactly the same but then he prefered people not be able to find him whenever they wanted.

"I suppose I'll have to infect it with someone else's software," Phil said. "But don't worry," Phil addressed the computer, "It won't be for very long."

Silverweed watched Phil construct the whole time, a smile remaining on his lips during the process. Once Phil was done, he chuckled and spoke, "Well, is there anything else you'd like? Some software? We could set you up with that if you'd like." Somehow he remained mostly warm, so he didn't look like he was freezing.

Phil had hardly noticed the chill of the room. Computers did best in cool environments so his apartment had always been a bit on the chilly side. He stood up and stretched, he wasn't sore, he supposed it was the lack of actual muscles, but stretching still felt good after hunching over a computer for...however long that had taken. He lacked a watch and closed rooms gave very little sense of time.

"Something really basic would be great. See if it runs." Phil padded over to where he'd piled his clothes and started putting on his pants. "Do you know where I could pick up a carrying case? Soft, briefcase size with a shoulder strap." Phil, no longer completely captivated by his computer (if only because he couldn't run it yet), made sure to arrange himself so that he was facing Silverweed.

Silverweed stood up, stretched himself, and wandered over to his own clothes, which were in a very advantageous place for Phil, as Silverweed bent over to pick up his clothes and showed Phil the majority of his... assets. Once he picked up his clothes, he moved to the table to put them there and start putting them on, socks first, then moving to the undershirt, "We can get you the basics and a carrying case can be found next door if you'd like," he said as he leaned against the table. "They've got good stuff for electronics over there, at Jake's."

"Ah yes, welcome to Heaven," Phil said under his breath. He finished dressing with only a minor disagreement with his left sock. This involved a bit of hopping, slamming into a wall and deciding to just go barefoot. "Good, the OS first. It'd be silly to carry it off and find out it still needs parts." Silverweed smirked at Phil.

"Just a moment more please," he said, as he finished tucking his buttondown shirt in and started tying his tie. "Sorry, but it takes me forever to get dressed, I have this rather... interesting problem with clothes," he sighed and stared at his tie as it started floating in the air, moving every which way away from him, slipping out of his fingers and going for a trip around the room. "Damnit, come back here you," he muttered, moving to try to catch it as it slithered in the air towards Phil.

Phil watched as the tie headed towards him. He reached and snatched it out of the air. "I sometimes have trouble finding my clothes in the morning, but once I've located them they never try to escape." Phil frowned at the tie for a moment and then held it out for Silverweed.

It was like he was having the weirdest dream of his life. Well second weirdest. He'd eaten an entire tray of brownies, had a beer and fallen asleep in front of the wildlife channel (it had switched over to an infomercial halfway through the dream). He decided against pinching himself. He'd already hurt himself several times and felt it, or not woken up or whatever was supposed to happen when you pinched yourself in a dream.

Silverweed took the tie, but it struggled in the space between the two of them, eventually pulling out of both of their grasps and darting across the room like a wild beast, cowering in a corner. "My body seems to make some clothes scared of it. I'm not sure I understand what it is, but..." he shrugged as he headed over to the tie, "once it's on, it behaves, I just need to get it tied."

"That's...quite possibly the weirdest thing I've ever heard," Phil told Silverweed. "Too bad it's just the tie though." Phil edged towards the tie slowly. He dived towards the tie suddenly but it darted between his fingertips at the last moment. Phil rolled to his feet and stared at the uncooperative article of clothing. "It should be ashamed of itself though. Running from the opportunity to be wrapped around your body." Phil tisked and shook his finger at the tie.

Silverweed laughed, "You should see what I have to do to jeans to get them on," he grinned at Phil, "they're almost as evil as the tie. But if you'd like a demonstration sometime, I could probably work one out for you." Silverweed tried to come at the tie from the other side of Phil, but it flew into the air, aways towards the ceiling. "If I have to get another tie because of you, I'll be really dissapointed," he told it.

"Really? That sounds like a fascinating demonstration." Phil vaulted up onto the table and then out in the direction of the tie. He caught hold of it, twisting in midair. He landed off balance and careened into Silverweed sending them both sprawling on the floor. Phil managed to keep hold of the tie. He took the other end in his free hand and looped it over the back of Silverweed's neck. He tied it quickly before it got away again.

Silverweed smiled up at Phil, "Well, this is an interesting position to be in. You're quite fun to watch in the air, you know that? Thanks for the tie, by the way."

"Mmm, you like it there?" Phil asked apparently in perfect innocence. "Maybe we should do it again some time." He grinned and rolled off of Silverweed and onto his feet all in one motion. He offered Silverweed a hand up. "You know, I'm not sure I'm having enough fun considering that I just tied up a boy in the back room of a computer store."

Silverweed accepted the hand up and used the leverage to pull Phil close enough to whisper into his ear, "After building an impressive computer no less, don't lose the card, sir," and Phil felt something in his hand. Silverweed backed up and straightened his clothes so they didn't look quite as disheveled. "Shall we go then?"

Phil tucked the card into his shirt pocket with the one he'd gotten from Christy. He made sure nothing was on backwards or inside out and nodded to Silverweed. After unlocking the door, Silverweed led the way out to the desk where the employee's were waiting.

"Basics for a new computer please," he said to the man behind the desk, and in a moment, he was holding a bag out to Phil, "Here you go, anything else? We could go back to the back room and you could plug it in from there if you'd like."

"Wonderful," Phil took his new bag of goodies back into the back room. Phil plugged in the computer and opened the drive. He sorted through the bag until he came up with the correct disk. "Automatic setup, I think not. You won't be getting any more claws in than I can help," Phil muttered, his fingers flying across the keyboard. No smoke or unusual noises issued from the computer as he worked. "Configure online..what was that number again? Ah..."

"Now we just pop over to...wait a sec...No! No, Basil it's Daddy!" This was accompanied by frantic typing. Then the screen went black. Phil took a deep breath and held it for a long moment. "That's right, I had to rotate passwords early this month. Let's try this again."

Silverweed sat down and watched Phil, amused. He was certainly getting his fun quotient in for the day. He leaned back and enjoyed the Phil Show.

A second try with the correct set of passwords, and a few rather more arcane operations because Phil had never intended that his computer be remotely accessable, he had his operating system loading to the new computer. This setup he could leave to its own devices and when it was in place it would eradicate all traces of the first program. It would have rescued any of Phil's personal files had he had time to make them.

"If I go next door for a carrying case can I trust you not to touch anything? If Basil...if my guardian program detects another fuck up it's going to shut down the fan and start overclocking." Hacking Phil, much like hacking Hell, could result in you compute catching fire or exploding.

Silverweed snickered, "I love the name Basil, by the way, and yes, if you'd like me to simply sit here and wait for your return, I can do that. Feel free to go get the carrying case." He made an absent wave towards the door. "Make sure to knock three times on the door when you return, or I won't know who's at the door, and I won't open it." He smiled.

Phil decided to just trust him. If he came back and the computer was on fire he'd just have to collect the parts again and leave to put them together. "Ok, thanks." He made his way back out of the store. Jake's was, as promised, right next door.

Upon entering the rather plain looking store, the first thing Phil noticed was that there was no order to the merchandise. A clothes rack was directly to the left, a cellphone accessory stand to the right, and straight ahead was a bin of pens. A register was on a glass display case showing off coins, and sitting behind the case was a girl who looked to be in her mid-20's wearing true hippie clothing, tye-died shirt and skirt, blonde hair braided back with flowers in it, and she was reading a magazine. A little set of bells were tied to the top of the door frame so when he walked in, they chimed, which made her look up from her magazine in surprise.

"Wow, welcome to Jake's. Cool, a customer, can I help you?" her voice was thick and she drew out her sentences, as though she wasn't sure of what she was saying.

Phil beamed benignly at her. "I seriously doubt it," his tone was cheerful. Hippies were a lot like dogs, tone of voice mattered more than content. "But since I'm here let's give it a shot anyway, shall we? I need a soft briefcase with a shoulder strap. It should close with a double zip and it needs a flap. Extra pockets are unnecessary but more than welcome." She blinked at him for a few minutes, as if trying to make his words understandable to her.

"Um, so you're looking for a briefcase, ok, well," she got up from her seat, placed her magazine on the display case and moved around the counter. "Well, what we got is here, if you've got something in mind that's not here, well, and you can give me either a good description or a picture, I could make it, probably." She led the way further into the shop to a wall of hooks, from which sprung many different kinds of carrying cases, briefcases, purses, luggage bags, none of which exactly fit his description, but many of which would be acceptable.

"Good description..." Phil echoed. He thought she probably needed a map and wood guide to find her way to the bathroom. Well, maybe that was unfair of him. He wasn't entirely sure dead people used the bathroom.

"I'm sure one of these will do just fine," Phil told her, sorting through a selection of bags very much like what he'd described. He found one much to his liking, plain black, lots of shiny silver zippers and a good deal of padding to protect his new precious computer. "This one, for instance," Phil smiled at the woman. "Thank you very much."

She nodded her head and smiled back, "Sure, no problem, you're welcome. Enjoy your bag, stop back anytime you'd like something custom made, we take orders." Then she headed towards the counter and back to her magazine.

Phil managed not to get lost on his way out of the store and back next door to From Scratch Up. He went straight to the back room.

"It's not on fire is it?" he called through the door, knocking three times.

"Hmm? Fire? Nope, not on fire, it's smoking though," came the reply, as Silverweed opened the door, "Don't get anxious, I'm joking." He smiled at Phil, opening the door wide for him to enter.

Phil could feel the corner of his eye twitching. "You're not funny," he told Silverweed. "You're lucky you're cute instead." He checked his computer carefully for any signs that it actually had been smoking and Silverweed was just trying to throw him off guard.

Silverweed chuckled and closed the door behind Phil. "It really wasn't smoking Phil," and it hadn't been, Silverweed hadn't touched it the whole time Phil had been gone. "And I hope I'm at least cute, I try for gorgeous sometimes you know," he winked at Phil.

The transfer had completed so Phil set the computer to shutting down. He set his new case on the table and then turned back to Silverweed. He looked the boy up and down and rubbed his chin.

"Well..." Phil tilted his head. "Nope. Cute." Silverweed shrugged.

"Oh well, at least I'm not trying for gorgeous now. Are you all done?"

"I think so" Phil folded up the monitor and began packing away the laptop. Then he unpacked it and repacked it in a slightly different order, twice, until everything fit snugly inside except the piece with the number pad. This he let dangle out from between the double zips. "I'll just have to come back if I'm not." Silverweed smiled at him.

"Good, if you need anything, definately let me know. And give me a call when you want to watch me put on jeans," he winked at Phil, "I'm usually good for a good time."

"I'll put you on speed dial," Phil told Silverweed with a wink. "It might take a bit to call though. I have to settle in. Come to terms with the deep, personal loss of my fantastic body." Phil slung the strap of the bag over his head and across his body. He didn't want it getting snatched and apparently it was something he might need to worry about in Heaven.

"I can imagine the loss being difficult to handle, I had a similar problem," Silverweed looked sad for a moment, "then I had the issue with clothes not wanting to be on me, that was hard too. It took me over three months to figure out how to button a shirt." He held out his hand to Phil, "It was great doing buisness with you Phil, I look forward to being in touch with you."

Phil took the offered hand in his and brought it to his lips. "It was a pleasure to meet you. I will see you later," and with that Phil removed himself from the store.

He had angels looking for his grandmother, a new computer and a number to call when he got lonely. That left him with one more stop in Heaven. Then he supposed he'd need to figure out where he was staying. Maybe he wouldn't need a place, mostly his apartment was for sleeping in and storing his computer. The laptop was top of the line and he wouldn't need a desktop setup. As for sleeping, he wasn't sure he would need to. After all he apparently wouldn't need to eat much and he didn't feel at all tired. It was entirely possible this was due to the unusual stress of being newly dead. Phil slept poorly when he was under pressure, which meant he occasionally went weeks without anything more substantial than a nap.

He was pretty sure he'd seen a cloud labeled 'Jesus' Glade' on his main map, so he pulled it out to have another look. As he remembered, in the middle of the map was a cloud, mostly forested, labled 'Jesus' Glade'. It appeared to be several clouds away, but much closer than traveling from Sunville to Techno Town. The nearest bridge was even close to where he was.

"Fantastic," he said to himself, setting off by his usual methods of navigation. He wondered if it would be okay to just drop in on Jesus. Sarah had made it sound like he didn't have many visitors, but Phil supposed he was probably a pretty busy person. Nobody had mentioned needing an apointment though, so he supposed he would just show up and get kicked out if someone deemed it necessary.

The path was fairly easy going, few people bothered Phil, as he seemed to know where he was going, and he made what seemed like good time. That was the funny thing about heaven though, it seemed to be day time and although the sun did move, it didn't do it quickly. Jesus' Glade was amazingly forested, right from the end of the nearest cloud, Phil could see nothing but tree's. Once he got near the end of the bridge he noticed the large sign stretched out above the bridge saying "Jesus' Glade" in bright and cheery letters. The next thing to see was the tree's. Huge oaks, trunks several feet in diameter; ash trees gently rustling in a breeze that seemed to be part of the glade. There was one path, almost hidden in leaves that led from the bridge away and getting lost around a few birch trees.

Phil supposed he must be in the right place. It was a very big sign. The woods were not Phil's natural environment. His outdoors experiences were limited to parks, the family camping trip from hell and a couple of on the run from law impromptu hikes. He plunged right in, the path was pretty clear and if he got lost he still had his watch. Pete was just a button pushing away. Phil felt like he was going around in circles forever before he started to hear the sound of children laughing. A moment later he was out in an exceptionally large clearing that looked rather similar to a magical wood, chairs and benches made out of tree roots, shaded area's created from oak limbs stretching out above mossy ground, a small stream coursing through it ending in a pond that seemed to have sparkling lights swimming throughout it, and the air was light with the fragrant scent of life. It was incredibly peaceful and yet incredibly invigorating at the same time. There were several children playing tag in one part of the glade while there were several others sitting at the feet of a man, the only person over the age of ten in the whole area. There was a small child in his arms, and he lifted his face towards Phil as soon as Phil came to the area.

"Welcome Phil," came a voice, Phil wasn't sure if it was in his mind or actually spoken as the whole area seemed to resonate with the words, as if everything around was welcoming Phil. The man was darkly tanned and wore a simple brown robe and worn sandles. His hair was dark brown, hung down to his shoulders in light curls, and his eyes were a strange shade of golden brown, keeping eye contact with him was like staring into forever, an endless depth that was both capitvating and disturbing. His face was amazingly warm.

"Hello, you must be Jesus." Because, well, who else could it be. Phil wondered if Jesus just knew things like people's names or if St. Peter had warned him. "I was sure I was lost in there for a while. An adorable blonde told me you might be in need of a little adult company."

The baby in Jesus' arms dissapeared as Jesus motioned towards the grassy ground and some of the root-chairs. "Sarah likes to send people my way, she belives I don't get enough company," a few of the children moved to make room for Phil, and all of them turned to look at him. Jesus' lips moved when he talked, but Phil was still uncertain if the voice was in his head or actually spoken. "She may be right, in one way, most of the people who visit me are children, they all find their way here without any problems, but the adults have a harder time." He smiled at Phil, the act seemed to make the area a bit more bright, "Perhaps I'm intimidating?"

"Well you are pretty famous. People get nervous around celebrities," Phil shrugged and folded himself into one of the root chairs. He tucked his computer case underneath out of reach of the sticky fingered ankle biters. "The special effects probably don't help matters. I don't suppose you could tone it down a little, I think my brain is echoing." It was all very pleasant, but also very weird. That much pure unadulterated nice was something Phil just wasn't used to. "Or I could just take a hike if you don't want any adult company," Phil offered, because Jesus didn't seem lonely. He seemed pretty serene, in fact.

Jesus chuckled, and looked over to Phil, his eyes not connecting with Phil's, "I don't even think of it at all anymore, I'm so used to just talking," this time the voice was actually spoken, the tone a higher pitch than it had seemed before. His voice was a light tenor, amusement on the edges of it. "I suppose there's nothing I can do about being famous, perhaps people should just trust that I'm not going to be angry with them for all of their transgressions. I actually don't belive that so many people refuse to come here, and like to avoid my glade as though it had the plague. Perhaps they're afraid that I'll infect them with too much goodness. Am I infecting you with too much goodness Phil?" his smile seemed slightly sad.

Phil laughed, hard. When he caught his breath he looked up at Jesus and started laughing again. "Ah...no...no I doubt that. I seem to be more or less impervious to goodness." Phil managed to get himself under control. "Though maybe that's Sarah's plan. Infect me with goodness. She seems to think I'd make a good angel. I should mention we've only met the once and she doesn't know me all that well."

Jesus' smile got a bit less sad and he nodded, "She doesn't know you that well, that's true, however she'd still think you'd make a good angel. You do have a nice heart, and she can sense that." He stood up and stretched upwards before turning to the children sitting around him, "My story is over now, you can come back in a few hours for the next one if you'd like," and they all stood up in a second, some pulling at his robe and asking for another story right away, and some dashing off to join the group of kids playing tag again. Once they all were gone, he came over to where Phil was sitting and sat down on the nearest root chair. "Honestly, I think you don't give yourself enough credit, you've got the capacity for a large bit of goodness. You'd just never like to admit it. Besides that, there are things that you think of as being not good that aren't bad either. Different people's perceptions create many different kinds of morals and standards, you shouldn't think of any one particular type of people as being right and any other type of people as being wrong. Have a little more faith in yourself."

"Well, good or not, and I guess I should take your word for it, I'm lousy at taking orders." Phil was starting to relax a bit now that he didn't have voices in his head or sunshine increasing everytime the man cracked a smile. "You know what you need to do is to get out more. This is a beautiful place but it like going before a judge or something. Or visiting the boss in his office. If people could just say 'Oh yeah, I saw Jesus at the supermarket today picking up a loaf of bread and some anchovies' they probably wouldn't be nearly so intimidated."

Jesus chuckled a bit at that and leaned back in his chair, "Well, I can't do that really. If I were to leave, what would happen to all of the children who die? Most of the little one's just instantly appear here," as he said that, a baby appeared in his arms. He smiled down at it and held it close. It was crying for a moment before putting a tumb in it's mouth and falling asleep. "I'm in charge of forcing reincarnation on the babe's. I appear to be the only one capable of doing it, not even Saint Peter is as good at it as I am. We belive it's because of my spirit, so to speak."

"You could automate it. Just present them with a big shiny green button. Come to think of it that would probably work on a certain percentage of adults." Phil peered at the infant for a moment. "Or since they're attracted to you, you could push a stroller around with you. Now that would make you less intimidating. Nothing like a man with a stroller to attract women. Man that was the day from He...that was nightmare, and if I never have to watch something that can't explain why it's crying it will be too soon. Cute as they may be."

Jesus chuckled again, "Yes, they are cute, and yes, they are incapable of telling you what they want. However, I do seem to be able to communicate with them." He held the infant up for a moment to Phil so he could get a good look at it, "subject of abortion. He'll be going back in a few moments after his soul stabalizes. I couldn't automate it you know, it's impossible. There's no way to make things work correctly that way, the children are too small to know what to do to a green button." He smiled and looked up at the sun, "Although you might be right about it making me look less intimidating, I'm suspicious that me with a stroller would scare people in a different way."

"I think everyone is actually born knowing what to do with buttons; push them. We then slowly unlearn it as pushing buttons indiscriminately leads to Bad Things. Of course I was a precocious child, I was taking apart my crib toys before I learned to crawl.

"You know, she looks pretty late term for an abortion, poor kid. Still if someone didn't want her around it's best she tries again anyway," Phil paused for a long moment. "All right, I've got one of those deep questions for you."

Jesus looked down at the baby and smiled, "The body has to go through complete change to baby stage before I can help it reincarnate. You see, that's why the soul needs to stabalize, because it went through rapid growth and ended up here." He shifted the weight around a bit before turning to Phil again, "One of those deep questions? Alright, I'm ready for it."

"Do you," Phil paused, for dramatic effect, "play chess? No one does any more. I had to go to a retirement home to find an opponent. Poor Preston, he's going to think I stood him up."

Jesus looked at Phil, blinked once, blinked twice, then started laughing, a real laugh not a chuckle as Phil had heard so far, he breathed in once, then looked at Phil again, doubling over in laughter once more. Somehow the baby ended up on the soft grass as Jesus held his side, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Several minutes later he sat up, gasping for breath, and smiled, "Play chess huh? To be honest I haven't had an opponent in over a hundread years, no one stays around long enough for that. Why? Did you desire to test yourself against me?"

"What? Isn't that the question you expected?" Phil managed to look honestly puzzled, for about ten seconds. "Well, since you're a hundred years out of practice I might have a chance. Preston says my game is startling. I even win once in a while."

Jesus picked the baby up and looked at it for a few moments before it dissapeared. "If you desire to play chess with me, I will not say no. It has been too long of a time since I have played a game with an adult to deny them when they ask." The roots of the nearest tree started to creep out of the ground, forming a chess table inbetween the two of them, the different squares being two different types of roots. A few minutes after the table was done, the pieces came out of the board, right where they were supposed to be on the board. They all bowed before Jesus, then bowed before Phil, then resumed their position on the board as if they were waiting for a command. "Well, would you like to go first?"

"Never turn down an advantage." Phil supposed he would have to play without cheating. Phil tried not to cheat when there was a good chance he'd get caught. He picked up one of the pawns.

Jesus was a very competent player, staring at the board for several minutes before making a move, and watching Phil inbetween. He never looked at the board for too long, his longest time being 10 minutes, but after about five moves, a smile stretched across his face, and remained there for the rest of the game. He was a serious type of player, but seemed to enjoy the game fully.

A move in chess leaves the other player with a limited number of reasonable moves. A good chess player is always thinking a few moves ahead, anticipating what an opponent is likely to do. Phil, unfortunately for good chess players, didn't always make reasonable moves. He knew the rules and he understood the theory but he rarely thought out a move for more than a few minutes and often just made the first move he decided he liked.

Phil lost against computers and against players of medium skill with a great deal of regularity. He often surprised a victory or two from skilled players because they had thought ahead to counter moves Phil never made. After losing a few games he could school himself into a more traditional, and more useful, strategy though he was still hard pressed to resist making those moves which occured to him immediately, weren't a good idea and tended to confuse his opponent.

Jesus' face seemed to curve up in a smile regulary as Phil made his decisions. He chuckled often and as several children came around and watched the game, Jesus got a bit more destracted. A few baby's appeared in his arms and dissapeared during the game. Jesus tried to explain the basics of the game to the children, but only some of them got it.

"Move the horsey!" insisted one particularly curious little girl who had half climbed into Phil's lap in order to see the board. Phil, having played himself into a corner anyway, moved the requested knight and found himself rather firmly in checkmate.

"We lost, kiddo," he told her. She folded her arms and frowned at him.

"S'your fault."

"Nu-uh," Phil retorted, folding his own arms.

Jesus laughed again and looked at the board for a few moments more, explaining the end to a few children as Phil had his squabble. Once he was done, he looked up at Phil and shook his head slightly, "So, which one of you is winning?"

The fight, in the meantime, had become physical in nature. Phil had started it by tickling. The little girl had immediately tackled him. Phil had generously allowed her to wrestle him down onto the grass where she held him down by sitting on his chest. She was in search of a ticklish spot so that she could exact her revenge.

"She is," Phil admitted. The admission ended in a yelp as she discovered a spot high on the left side of his ribs. "Help," he added. Jesus laughed lightly and stood up, walking over to Phil.

"Are you sure you need help Phil? It looks like you're bigger than she is," he grinned down at him.

Phil froze. "You know what?" he asked the little girl. She stared back at him, startled enough by his sudden stillness to pause in her attack.

"He's right!" Phil surged to his feet, gripping her under her armpit and spinning in a circle. The girl squealed in sheer delight and started giggling. When Phil was too dizzy to spin any more he set her down. She was too dizzy and laughing too hard to stand so she sat down. Phil swayed right, and then left and then joined her on the ground.

"My turn!" announced a little boy. A chorus of voices joined in with "Then me!" Jesus laughed at Phil's antics, as the kids rushed him and started jumping up and down.

"Now, would you like help, Phil? I think I can manage to pick a few of them up." He smiled down at Phil, and patted the head of one of the children.

"Oh, now you'll help," Phil muttered. He then surged to his feet with his best roar. The children shrieked gleefully and scattered. The boy who had first spoken up wasn't quite fast enough and Phil grabbed him and tucked him under one arm. The boy flailed and giggled. Two long strides forwards and Phil had a second child under the other arm. He gave his best maniacal laugh and started spinning again. To his side came the squealing of another child, this one being tossed into the air by Jesus.

"You're heavy," came the laugh from him. He let him drop lightly into a bed of moss and reached for another one, this one getting a spinning treatment. Several minutes later, children and Jesus were sprawled across the mossy ground, laughing and gasping for breath. "Apparently, I'm terribly out of shape," Jesus gasped.

Phil clung to the ground in a brave attempt to force it to stop whirling around. It didn't seem to be helping although he thought it was a good sign that he hadn't fallen off yet. "Nah, they just have us outnumbered." The game seemed to have evolved into a cross between tag and football. The rules were fuzzy but seemed to involve a lot of roaring, spinning and shrieking. "I'd think you'd be used to it. A garden full of hyperactive monsters should keep you on your toes."

The girl who had started the whole thing heard this and proceeded to kick Phil in the ribs, though not hard. Phil feigned agony. "Sorry, sorry. I meant delightful bundles of energy." Jesus laughed heartily.

"No, I don't tend to get very physical with them myself. We play things like hide and seek, but... never tackle and twirl." He gently stroked the hair out of one of the boys eyes, "you are certainly right though, when you say they have us outnumbered."

"No tackle and twirl?" Phil's tone, aided by a hand pressed firmly over his heart and pre-faint flutter of eyelashes, was completely shocked. "That's a very basic game you know. Poor deprived children."

Phil tried to sit up and found that he was thoroughly pinned to the ground (which seemed to have come to a halt) by a child on each limb and two perched firmly on his abdomen. "I give up already," he informed the little girl who was apparently the ringleader. "I am vanquished. How about you Jesus?" Phil stumbled a little over the name. It was strange to just say it like that. Maybe if he pronounced it like it was Spanish, people were actually named that.

"I.. am vanquished indeed. If you think they are deprived, perhaps you should visit them a few times a year and give them the physical enjoyment they desire. You may get off of poor Phil and I now," his voice sounded tired and he was still breathing heavily. "Perhaps I do need the exercise, oof," he mumbled as one of the children on top of him got off.

Phil dislodged his passengers and sprang to his feet. He wasn't out of breath as he regularly indulged in activities involving a great deal physical activity. He was particularly adept at running, mostly away. He also loved to fight, the worse the odds the better.

"Should come by a couple times a week and take you for a jog or something," Phil said and winked suggestively. Phil played that back in his head. He really had just winked at the Son of God. But then he flirted with anything that had hit puberty. Maybe they'd engrave that on his headstone: Phillip Russel, Incorrigible Flirt.

Jesus laughed heartily and shook his head, "Well, if you did come by a couple of times a week for a jog, I'd likely lose a bit of weight," he patted his stomach, "and that wouldn't be a bad thing." He smiled at Phil, his expression going a bit more serious, "and you wouldn't want to do any of the somethings you've just now mildly thought of with me, as I'm fairly certain I'd be too straightforward for you."

Well then, that was ok. It must be, as Phil remained completely unscathed by divine wrath.

“It’s been fun but I’ve got a few loose ends to take care of. There’s got to be some way of getting back to Earth without bugging poor Pete again, right?” Phil dropped his voice to a whisper, “I don’t think he likes me much and his job’s hard enough without me using him as an afterlife taxi.”

“I regret to inform you that there isn’t.” Jesus sat up and straightened his robes a bit. “St. Peter is still in Heaven though, so if you’d like to stop him before he’s left, now would be a good time. After a bit of time, and once you’re a certain level of angel, you can travel between Heaven and Earth without Peter, but you most likely won’t be there for quite a while, you don’t strike me as the type to intentionally try for an angelic demeanor.” Jesus then stood up and wiped a bit of sweat from his brow. “Really though, that was great fun, I’ll have to try that with all of you again sometime,” he said, looking down at the crowd of children.

“As for liking you,” Jesus returned his gaze to Phil, “I don’t think you have to worry about that, he doesn’t dislike you, and he has a great deal of resources which allow for him to be the,” he paused, his lips curling up in a smile, “”afterlife taxi” so to speak.”

Phil stood as well and headed over to where he had left his laptop. It appeared to be unscathed so he slung the strap over his shoulder. He took out his 'watch' and pressed the brown button at the center to summon St. Peter since there wasn't an 'earth' button. Manfully he resisted the urge to press it multiple times.

"Doesn't dislike me hmm? That's entirely too neutral a reaction for someone to have to me. I'll have to work on that, one way or the other." Jesus chuckled and wandered over to the patch of moss he had been sitting before. Several children came over to join him.

“I see, you strive for true opinion on your character.” He pulled a little boy into his lap and arranged his feet so the others could get nearer to him. “Are you going to be able to resist the urge to press the button again?” he was smiling at Phil, “and would you like to sit while you wait?”

“An opinion. It doesn’t have to be true.” Phil said. “Of course I can resist the urge to push the button. Absolutely, yes. No,” Phil pushed the button. “You see what I was saying about automation right?”

Phil adjusted his bag trying to resist another urge, this one to speak. “I think I’ll just stand, after all the best seat is already taken,” he gave a pointed look at the boy in Jesus’ lap and grinned. He just couldn’t help himself it had gotten to be a habit. Jesus chuckled again.

“I see, but you don’t know if my lap is bony an uncomfortable or not, you are much larger than these children after all. It might be the worst seat here for you.” He shifted the boy a bit to turn more towards Phil. “You really should be careful, Peter will be here as quickly as he can be, it might take him as much as a few minutes. He is a rather busy person, after all. As for automation on getting into and out of Heaven, that would cause too many problems between Heaven and Hell, so it can’t be done. Only people of significant energy attuned to their desires can get to those places, it’s really for the best. After all, you can’t imagine the kind of problems we’d have if a high level demon was wandering around Heaven, it would cause a bit of chaos, and we don’t need that. Hell wouldn’t like it too much if a high level Angel were to go into Hell either, so, as you see, it makes for good relations between the two places.”

“Actually I was talking about my inability to resist buttons and babies being the same way,” Phil said. “But I don’t see why you couldn’t manage the other. Just disallow access based on…uh unattuned energy. Demonic people can’t come to heaven without an escort and angelic sorts can’t get into hell alone. Besides, didn’t Sarah say something about demons vacationing here?”

“It would require a certain bit of… working, and often enough, we have more important things on our hands. As for demons vacationing here, yes, they do that sometimes. They are allowed to go anywhere, but there are things they can’t do here, as they can on Earth, so they don’t tend to do it very often. Between that and the fact that they don’t like the energy here, they might come to Heaven a few times for kicks, so to speak, but they don’t usually stay for long, or come very often.” There was a dark shadow that fell on the area, and a bit of a breeze sprang up. Jesus looked up and smiled again, “Your “ride” is here now,” he said, as a figure descended from the sky, landing gently on the ground on the other side of the area. Phil realized why as St. Peter’s wings folded up carefully, their tips sweeping a few feet behind him. Had there been anyone around him, he might have knocked them down, and possibly injured them, if dead people could be injured.

“Pete Airlines,” Phil waved enthusiastically at St. Peter. “Hi Pete! I missed you.”

“I’m sure,” St. Peter said dryly. He walked over towards Phil and took a deep breath. “What can I do for you?” he asked, glancing at Jesus, almost losing his dispassionate look, and looked back at Phil quickly.

“I just…couldn’t resist the button,” Phil said with a most serious expression on his face. He managed to hold the expression just long enough to make a person think he was completely serious then smiled.

“Ok, not really. It’s actually because I couldn’t bear to be without your cheery personality a moment longer.” Again, he managed to seem sincere long enough to induce worry.

“I mean ‘Could I please have a ride back to earth?’” Phil corrected himself rather less serious now that he meant it.

“I see you have suffered considerably since I was last here, Jesus, I’m sorry for inflicting…” St. Peter glanced at Phil, then returned his eyes to Jesus, “… this on you.” Jesus laughed and shook his head.

“Phil has been a great deal of fun, you shouldn’t be sorry,” Jesus said lightly, “How are the people?” he asked a bit more serious.

St. Peter shook his head, “Fine,” he said flatly, then he returned to look at Phil, “You would like to return to Earth?” he asked.

“I told you he didn’t like me,” Phil said to Jesus.

“That’s right,” Phil said to St. Peter. “I mean I can’t resist buttons and I did miss you, but I’m also ready to go home. Heaven’s nice and all but I’m not quite done with earth yet, you know?”

“He doesn’t dislike you,” Jesus said, smiling at St. Peter’s dark look.

“Certainly, we’ll have to walk a bit to the edge of this area, I can’t open my wings here,” he looked at Jesus and gave a small smile, “I’ll see you again later,” he said, to which Jesus nodded.

“Of course you will, take care,” Jesus said, waving a bit, “You too Phil,” he added.

Phil was getting the distinct impression that St. Peter did, in fact, dislike him. He supposed it might be partially because St. Peter clearly liked Jesus. It was a combination of mind bending and cute that actually had Phil at a loss for comments.

“See you around, Jesus,” Phil said. What a fun phrase. Something he’d never have imagined himself saying and he had an excellent imagination.

“Yes, I dare say you’ll be back for another game of chess sometime,” Jesus said, his face bright as he smiled.

St. Peter started a brisk walk away from the clearing, walking through the trees, following the pathway as it wrapped around in a seemingly endless pattern. Finally, they were at the edge of the cloud, nowhere near a bridge, and St. Peter turned to look at Phil, “Are you ready? I’m going to have to… hold you… for the flight.” He looked as though he really didn’t want to do just that.

“Why Pete, I’m always ready,” Phil said as he looked St. Peter over slowly. He raised one eyebrow and then spread his arms invitingly. St. Peter gave a great sigh and put his head in his hand.

“Why me?” he muttered, before taking another deep breath and looking back up at Phil. “You will need to wrap your arms around my waist, not neck, as my wings are less likely to injure you that way.” He took a step closer to Phil, looked down at him and said warningly, “Make sure to retain appropriate decorum during this please, and do not move your hands any further down than necessary, understood, flirt?” he said accusingly, holding Phil’s eyes with his own.

“I would never…well, hardly ever…rarely…grope someone without an invitation. Who gets to judge how low is necessary? I mean I’m risking injury by wings if I hold too high up.” Despite his words Phil was a perfect gentleman in positioning his hands. St. Peter opened his wings, making it much easier for Phil to put his arms around him.

“I get to decide, and if you put them exactly around my waist, you should be fine. Are you scared of heights?” St. Peter reached down and placed Phil’s hands on his hips, “You’ll want to hold on firmly, but not so tightly I can’t breathe.”

“I’m not scared of heights yet, but I’m sure you’ll remedy the situation if my hands wander,” Phil said following St. Peter’s instructions about firm but not too tight. Phil had never had the least problem with heights and there was something deeply trustworthy about St. Peter. Phil thought St. Peter probably wouldn’t drop him even if he did grope the poor angel.

“Yes, that’s the right place,” St. Peter said, wrapping his own arms around Phil and pulling him very close. His arms were incredibly strong around Phil, and he took a step right off of the cloud.

“Snuggly,” Phil murmured into St. Peter’s chest just before they plummeted off of the cloud.

The flying seemed to be effortless, although they weaved under, around and above all manner of places. They swooped under a bridge only to fly high above towers and then around a small glen. One of St. Peter’s arms was around Phil’s waist, and the other was around his shoulders, which held him firmly to St. Peter and allowed his feet to dangle in the air. St. Peter always made sure to keep him from brushing his feet against anything. The flight was invigorating, the air brisk and it was all over quickly, even though it seemed to take several minutes. It was certainly a quicker way to the gates than his walking, although he saw more of the cloud islands than he had on his way to Jesus’ Glen. St. Peter gently placed Phil on the ground, keeping himself in the air until Phil was standing on his own.

“Are you steady?” he asked, having let go of Phil’s waist and shoulders, but still keeping his hands lightly on Phil’s arms to keep him from falling.

Phil whooped as he was set on the ground.

“No!” was his enthusiastic reply to St. Peter’s question. “Can we do it again?” St. Peter blinked at him a few times before settling his own feet on the ground, keeping his hands on Phil’s arms.

“You… are crazy. If you enjoyed flying that much, you should get your own wings, it’s a much better view to be looking down, instead of around my chest.” He folded his wings behind himself, and continued to wait for Phil to be steady. “I admit that flying is… a pleasure for me.”

“You’re just noticing now, Pete? I guess I haven’t been trying hard enough. Also I’ll have you know that your chest is a very nice view.” Phil stepped away from St. Peter’s grip, holding his arms out from his sides until he found his balance. It didn’t take long. Phil was very well balanced, physically.

Once Phil was steady, St. Peter nodded and motioned towards the gateway, “Are you ready to return to Earth?” he asked solemnly.

“Yes, since you won’t give me another ride,” Phil said. He would definitely have to get himself a set of wings next time he was in heaven. Airplanes and parachutes had nothing on wings. St. Peter nodded and led the way to the gates, which opened as soon as his hand touched them. Once on the other side, he closed his eyes and his robes, wings, and halo all disappeared, leaving the drably clothed man Phil had first seen.

“If you take my hand, I’ll lead you back to Earth,” he held out his hand to Phil, “You won’t get another ride from me until you return to Heaven. If you go to visit Jesus again, I’ll give you a “lift” there, if you’d like.”

“Really? Great,” Phil beamed at St. Peter as he took his hand. St. Peter shook his head and wrapped his long fingers around Phil’s, holding his hand and starting to walk away from the gates. Like before it took only a few steps for the clouds to disappear and there to be concrete under Phil’s feet. They were back in front of the hospital where Phil had died.

“I did not know if this is where you desired to be, however it is where I will drop you off. Is there anything else I can do for you before I go?” His incredibly dull and monotone voice was back in full force.

"Well..." Phil hesitated for a long moment. "No, I suppose not. Thanks and I'm sure I'll see you again sooner than you like." Phil winked at St. Peter.

“Yes, I’m sure you will. Good luck Phil,” and with that, St. Peter was gone.

"Doesn't dislike me...It's a good thing he's a saint or I'd be toast," Phil told himself, but he didn't seem terribly worried about it. Cheerful was, in fact, a much better description of his mood. He was dead, but he had a new computer, a workaholic to convert, a number to call if he got lonely and an archenemy. Afterlife was good.

Phil headed into the hospital. He figured he would go the cafeteria. If he didn't see Sarah or Nik on the way there then someone in the cafeteria would probably be able to help him. If all else failed he could spend a little quality time with his new laptop.