I had a lovely funeral.  The minister said kind things I didn't really deserve.
My wife cried.  My son sat stoically and patted her from time to time.
The flowers were so strong that if I hadn't been dead, I would have been gagging.

They lowered the coffin into the ground, and everyone walked away, leaving
me alone, sitting on my own tombstone.  It started to rain.  Up in the
clouds, I finally saw it: that big white light everyone talks about when
they come back after a near-death experience.  Being weightless and not
bound by gravity anymore, I started toward it.

As I got closer, it lost the ethereal heavenly glow and started to look
more like what you see in the hallway of an IRS audit.  The floor was tiled,
and the walls painted the bilious green usually reserved for schools and
penal institutions.  The line stretched forever.  I stood behind a gentleman
in a bulky coat and fur hat.

"Been here long?" I asked, dying (pardon the expression) to talk to someone
who could see me.

"Two years," he grunted back.  He had a thick Slavic accent.  "Is line.  I
stand.  Maybe meat, maybe bread, maybe toilet paper.  I hope toilet paper."

Toilet paper shortages in Heaven?  This sure didn't sound like the afterlife
I'd always heard about.  I shrugged and continued waiting.  A lady wandered
up behind me.

"This line gets longer all the time," she sighed, her chocolate-colored
skin ashy under the lights.  "I hope I've got all my papers right this time.
If I don't, I give up.  I'm just going down to Reincarnation and wait it out."

Reincarnation?  I had a lot to learn.

"Papers?" I asked.

"All the forms.  The 56312B/89, the D68042-65R, the-"

"Forms to get into heaven?" I interrupted.

"Ah, a first-timer," she grinned evilly.  "I've been dead for twenty years
and I'm still being in-processed.  Get used to lines, hon."

Twenty years?

"Next!"  The stern-looking woman behind the desk glared up at me.  The
man ahead of me had been given two rolls of toilet paper and sent on his way.  "Papers!"

"I don't have any.  Don't I just go to Heaven or Hell and be done with it?"

She gave me the look an IRS auditor gives a millionaire who claims he
lost everything when he invested in covered wagons.  "Nobody gets anywhere
without a 56312B/89, fella.  Can't gum up the works.  Here's your packet.
Sit over there and fill it out.  Number Two pencil only, mark the circles
solidly and print.  Then take it to the third door on the right in the left hallway."

I took the fat manila envelope and sat down at one of the desks.  Naturally
they were all left-handed type chairs, except for the few the left-handers
got directed to.  The packet was worse than a 1040, a college financial aid
package and the SAT all in one.  I filled in everything.  People came and went.
The lady behind me was waved on to another office.  I hoped I might see her soon.
She had been a very pleasant companion during the time we were on line.

The third door on the right side of the left hallway opened on a grim little
office and a dour man.  I handed him my packet.  He opened it.

"Where's your 56312B/89?" he demanded.

I recognized the vital form now, and realized I hadn't seen it in the packet.
"I don't know, sir."

"No one gets anywhere without a 56312B/89.  There must have been a foul-up
in your packet."  He rummaged in his desk, and pulled out a new form.
"This is an FR7586683.  Fill it out, take it to the Forms Department,
get your 56312B/89, fill it out and bring it back here."

I went back to the chairs, filled out the FR7586683, and then followed the
signs to the Forms Department.  The clerk laughed at me when he saw what I handed him.

"We quit using the FR7586683 a decade ago.  Fill out the IS7585450 in
triplicate and the PL6754321-D and we'll see about your 56312B/89."

"Is this really necessary to get into Heaven?" I asked, a little frustrated.

"Heaven, he says!" the clerk hooted.  "I suppose you believe in God, too!"

"Of course.  Don't you work for Him?"

When he stood up from the laughing fit, the clerk wiped his eyes and said,
"No.  There is no God, and no Heaven.  Ask anybody here, and they'll tell you.
Now fill out your forms, you're holding up the line."

No God?  No Heaven?  Nothing but civil service bureaucracy run by atheists?
Had I been sent to Hell by mistake?  Disgusted, I threw the forms down on
the desk and walked out.

How long I wandered the labyrinthine halls of the Brazilesqe Bureau,
I have no idea.  People were forever stopping me for my 56312B/89, and
other alphabet-soup forms I didn't have.  Finally I saw it.  A small
sign, buried on a "You are here" map.  It said "Purgatory."

I'm not Catholic, but everyone reads Dante in college.  Purgatory
had to be better than this soulless maze I was wandering.  I marked
the directions well, and followed them to the letter.  Unfortunately.

At the gates of Purgatory, a man at a desk stopped me.  "I need to
see your 56312B/89, your PC725640966 or your PP64832926, and a pass
signed by two archangels or better."

"I don't have any of that.  My admission packet was fouled and I
never got a 56312B/89.  I'm seriously lost here.  Do you believe
in archangels?  Most of the clerks are atheists, it seems."

"When ya got one in your poker club, you can't hardly disbelieve
'em can you?  Seriously lost, you say?  Maybe you should go to Hell!"
He hit a big red button on his desk, and I fell, screaming all the way.

Legend says travel time to Hell is nine days and nights.
It seemed like nine years!  I landed hard in front of, what boys
and girls?  Yes, another desk.

"I need to see your 56312B/89, your HC666D or your HP666453 and
pass signed by two Virtues," the demon behind the desk said.

"A demon?  Are you really a demon?"  I asked, terrorized
by him, yet strangely pleased to see a truly supernatural face.

He breathed fire at me and grinned.  "Yeah.  Now hand over the paperwork."

"I don't have a bloody damn 56312B/89!  And because I don't,
I don't have any other papers either!" I had grabbed him by
the shoulders and was shouting in his face.  "And no one is
giving me the right paperwork to get anywhere!"

"What'd you do?  Tell a pencil pusher you believed in God?"
he leered.  "Look, my orders come from the boss, and no one gets
in without a 56312B/89 and an HC666D.  That's your Hell Committal form."

"I want to see the boss," I demanded, seizing on a glimmer of hope.
If the devil existed, maybe God did too!

"Do you have an SP666759-67/354?  In triplicate?"

"No, but if you don't let me, I will sit right here and
personally destroy everyone that comes to this desk's 56312B/89
and their HC666D.  Then you'll have to deal with a lot more of us!"
I had no idea where I was getting this nerve.  On Earth I was quiet,
timid even.  But I had had one too many forms thrown up at me, and
I wasn't going to fill in another bloody damn circle that corresponded
to the bloody damn letter in the bloody damn box above!

The demon sighed and threw up his hands.  He hit a speaker-phone.

"Bel, there's a deader here who's demanding to speak to the boss.
No, he's not damned, and no, he doesn't have any papers.  He's
threatening to destroy the paperwork for the next six hundred and
sixty-six people that arrive.  It's one or Six sixty six, Bel."
He paused.  "All right."  He turned to me.  "Belial is sending
an escort for you.  Can't have you getting lost.  Good luck, man.
You're the first person in a hundred years who hasn't turned to
a quivering lump of jelly at my desk, begging forgiveness and repenting."

A lovely young woman with bat-wings opened the big brass doors and
slipped out.  "Hi, I'm Lilith.  Lucy's ready to see you now."

Lucy?  For some reason my mind conjured up Lucy Van Pelt of Peanuts
fame dressed in a devil suit behind a desk.  Pushing papers, of course.

"Lilith?" I asked, instead.

"Wassamatta, aren't demons supposed to have names?" she demanded,
nudging me out on a narrow bridge over a chasm of boiling lava.
I hate heights.  "For your information, I should have been your mother,
but Noooo.  Adam was such a domineering twit that I left.  Those silly
angels weren't gonna talk me into going back.  Always on my back!  I
could be nine months pregnant and he'd still want me on my back.  Mealy
mouthed little Eve might settle for that, but not me.  At least Asmodeus
is inventive..."

How do I shut off a demoness in mid-tirade?  I didn't have to.  She
knocked at a nicely done lava waterfall, and it parted.  I went in,
leaving Adam's first wife behind.

Behind the desk sat a lovely blonde woman in a black robe,
looking over a file.  I was stunned.  I thought the Ruler of Hell
was a he.  She looked up and laughed.

"Would you prefer this?" she asked, polymorphing into a hideous
red-skinned horned and fanged demon.  Back to herself, she added,
"Be flattered, I only dig that aspect out for visiting popes and
lost fundamentalists.  I hate it, really.  So ugly. "

I stood and stuttered with my jaw hanging open.  She snapped her
fingers and the knot at the end of my tongue untied.

"I hear you gave Beelzebub trouble.  Spit it out, I don't have all
eternity," she said, a little short now.

"I don't have my papers.  No one's sending me where I can get the
proper papers and I'm never going to get into Heaven at this rate.  I'm
really pleased to see you're here.  The guy in forms retrieval said-"

"Ah, you've run afoul of the bureaucracy, have you?  The free-thinkers
refuse to believe in an afterlife, so they just set up a huge run-around.
Only people who aren't afraid to step out of the boundaries, like you, are
allowed to go anywhere.  It's only been operating for the last couple
hundred years.  The Enlightenment started it all, you know.  I really
gotta talk to Dad about it."

"D-d-dad?"

She wasn't listening.  "Yeah, Mike," she said into the phone.  "How are
things in cooler climates, big brother?  Look, I got a lost deader
here, claims he's one of yours.  He got tangled in the paperwork and sent
here from Purgatory.  Tell Dad he really needs to do something about that
bureaucracy.  Last week they sent me a busload of Hadassah ladies that
should have gone to Sheol.  Before I got rid of them, they raised four
thousand dollars to air condition the place!  You know how cold my feet get!
Yeah, I heard about the fundies getting sent to Reincarnation."  She giggled
demonically.  "Love to Dad, and a kiss for Josh."

"It's all set," she told me.  "I send you to Limbo, and Michael will
send someone to pick you up and take you to Heaven.  Good luck."

Lucy and her office blipped out of existence.  Before me stood a stern
faced nun in a grey habit, thrusting a squalling baby into my arms.

"Take her!" she said, before dashing off to comfort a crying toddler.

I was a fair daddy back on earth, and I haven't forgotten everything
I knew.  The baby belched, cooed and fell asleep in my arms.  I laid
her down in a bassinette that materialized for her and listened for
the next cry.  A little boy had fallen off a tricycle, and I picked
him up and dusted him off.  He calmed right down.  A baby cried, newborn
size it sounded.

I arrived at the same time as a sweet-faced nun in a blue habit.  She
picked up the tiny one and soothed it.

"Where am I?" I asked, very confused.  This didn't sound like Dante's
limbo.  It looked like a day-care center.

"Limbo," the nun told me, confused herself.  "What are you doing here?"
The baby wouldn't stop crying.  She rocked him inexpertly.

"Waiting for a lift to Heaven.  Here, you're holding him wrong."  I propped
the little guy on my shoulder and showed her how to sway.  She took him back
and he was asleep in seconds.  "Why am I seeing only nuns and kids?  When did
Limbo become Crayola Heaven?"

"This is where all the unbaptized children go, from those lost in early
pregnancy up to age seven.  We get several thousand a day.  Entirely
too many of them are girls.  This little guy was a seven month miscarriage.
His mother fell down a flight of steps.  They worked to save him for a week,
but he was too damaged.  When she dies, she will likely want to reclaim him.
If it weren't for reclamation, we wouldn't be able to turn around."
She sighed.  "Unfortunately, too many are here permanently, by their parents'
insistence."

"Why nuns?" I asked, picking up a toddler girl in a pink dress who
just needed a hug.  I was uncomfortable with where this was going.

"Since the Church created this place, it's only appropriate the Brides
of Christ should staff it.  That's what they told me in orientation."

More babies need comforting.  The time passed quickly.  The nuns got
used to me being around.  Most of the more modern ones were never married.
A few from the Middle Ages still remembered what to do, having gone into
convents after being widowed.  I had a good hand and provided a father
figure for the kids.

I noticed that despite the assertion that both induced and spontaneous
abortions were sent here, I never saw any fetal looking kids.  Also,
some I had gotten used to were disappearing.  I tracked down Sister Mary
Agnes and asked.

"Oh, they all arrive as newborns, regardless of when they were lost
before birth.  Much neater.  They age as they would normally, and if
they aren't reclaimed by the age of seven, we send them to Purgatory.
From there, they work on into Heaven.  Oh, here, she wants you."

So it went.  I quit waiting for my lift and threw myself into the work
at hand.  Then, one day, as I was reading to a group of the older kids,
I heard myself being paged.

"I'm here.  Are you my lift to heaven?" I asked.

"No.  We apologize for the inconvenience.  Oresimus is waiting for you
in Sheol.  We got our paperwork confused.  Follow the glowing arrows at
your feet to Sheol, and we'll have you to Heaven as soon as we can.
Thank you for your patience."

"Can I at least finish the story?"  I got no answer, and decided to finish
it anyway.  After I was done, I found Sister Mary Agnes and Sister Mary Grace
and told them I was leaving.  They were sorry to see me go, but understood.

"Give our best to God, and tell Christ we love Him and haven't forgotten Him.
We're taking good care of His lambs down here."

I followed the glowing arrow that seemed attached to the toe of my shoe,
pulling me onward.  The well-lit colorful background of Limbo vanished behind
me and I was swallowed up in a mist with only the arrow to guide me.

The mist thinned out eventually, and I saw a huge barnlike gate.  In gold
were traced a variety of symbols.  A swirl, that had to be some foreign
language, a yin-yang, a cross, a Mogen David, a triskeleon, a thunderbird,
a kachina mask, an ankh and a dove made an arch over the gate.  The arrow
led through.

I was in a large grey waiting room.  People sat in chairs, people lounged in
corners, people leafed through old copies of supermarket tabloids.  A large
glowing sign said "Now serving number 98709.  Please take a number and wait
your turn."  The number dispenser had a paper tag that said 2609874562.  I
began to walk out the far doors.

"Hey, mister, no cutting in line!" a girl shouted at me.  Anything else
was cut off by the loud speaker.

"Attention numbers Ninety-eight thousand Seven hundred and nine
through Ninety-eight thousand eight hundred.  Salmon spawning
season is beginning.  Please line up at the left hand door.
Thank you for your cooperation.  We here at Reincarnation apologize
for any delays."

Not wanting to inadvertently become a salmon, I went out the right
hand door.  The mist gathered around me again.  When it finally faded,
I was in what looked like a sun porch, on a cloudy day.  I followed the arrow.

"Morris!" a woman's voice cried.  "Morris, you good-for-nothing
mamzer, where are you?"

A stocky man in a yarmulke slipped into a chair and buried his nose
in a newspaper.  I paid no attention.

As I walked, I was hailed to join a canasta game, come play horseshoes
and assailed by a group of ladies.  The latter was the most distracting.

"What did you think you were doing back there in Limbo, huh?  One man
alone with all those goyim bummerkehs.  Feh!"

"I should live so long to see a man know how to handle a baby right."

One of the canasta players muttered "Yentas," under his breath.

"Such a messhugge, leaving all those little ones to go chasing
some glowing arrow."  She noticed where it was.  "My nephew, Sol,
he is a foot doctor, nu?  A podamawhatcha. You go see him.  He'll fix
you right up."  She muttered as she walked off, "Such tsuris, a glowing toe."

I walked on, resolute that the half-understood Yiddish curses would
not affect me.  Finally I found him.  Or rather he found me.  Oresimus
was about nine feet tall and had six gigantic wings.  And a flaming sword.
I saw the sword first, when I almost bumped into it.

"Be not afraid.  I am Oresimus of the Order of Virtues.  I am here to
escort you into the Presence."

"You need a sword for escort duty?" I asked, refusing to be intimidated
by him anymore than I had Beelzebub.  After all, I was the most popular
guy in Limbo.

"I'd rather have a name tag, but ah well," he sighed.  "Let's go."

We flew.  And we flew.  And we flew.  Oresimus could really eat space
with those wings, but it still took forever.  I mentioned this, as
well as the instantaneous translation from Hell to Limbo.

"Lucy's a lot more powerful than I am.  She is, after all, the Third Child,
and First Daughter.  Only Michael and Joshua have more power.  Me, I'm just
a messenger.  It's an important job, and I'm glad Father gave it to me, but
it's nothing like those three.  Ah, here we are, the outskirts of Heaven.
You see, Sheol is a lot farther out than Limbo, but in a weird sort of way.
I didn't want to double back to Limbo, and then recover all the territory I
would need to.  Look, are you familiar with tesseracts?"

"Who, me?  I barely got through trig, all right?"

Oresimus sighed.  The outskirts were done in pink that looked like
fiberglass insulation.  I asked why.

"It's for the insufferably saved.  You know, the type who only know
what Jerry Falwell tells them and who take wax museums seriously.  Not
 many stay here long."

Heaven was lovely, like nothing I'd ever seen.  The mist that had seemed
so intimidating in Limbo was gone.  The weather was perfect and best of all,
there was sunshine.

"Are there any whaddayacallums, yentas, here?" I asked, still a bit undone
from my run-in with the Sheol Bridge Club and Nagging Society.

"No, no.  They stay in Sheol until all the yenta tendencies drain out,
and then they are admitted.  You'll be pleased to know the lady who was
behind you on line made it in.  She has a lovely voice, and joined the
Glory Singers."

"Are there non-singing angels?" I asked.  I sound like a raven with a sore
throat, on my best day.  On my worst, I've had bagpipers criticize me.  Oresimus
never answered the question, but set me down outside a beautiful city.

"And C.S. Lewis said John was speaking allegorically about streets of gold,
etc," I muttered.

*Not at all* came the Voice.  *So you finally made it.  It takes gumption to
get past the bureaucracy, and Lucy as well.*  The Owner came into sight.

God was nothing like what I had expected, but after everything I'd seen, I
wasn't expecting much of anything any more.  He looked like the average
middle-aged man on the street, but somehow much more.

*I only do the Fiery Throne number for those who truly want it,* He told me.
*You are the first person in a millennium who's seen it all, the whole operation.
There's an opening for you wherever you want to work.  Michael has said he'll
put you in charge of streamlining the free-thinkers' bureau.  Lucy says after
suitable modifications, you could work high in her department.  Joshua is
saying you're the best organizational mind to come along since Peter, and
Saint Agnes was very impressed with your work in Limbo.  Anywhere you want
to work, my son.  Anywhere at all.*

"This is all rather sudden, God, Sir, Father," I stammered.  "I'm a simple man,
just an average accountant who got lost in the shuffle.  Can I think about it
a while?"

*You have all of eternity, son.*

I had a lovely funeral.  The preacher said kind things about the ideal
he saw that I never really managed to live up to.  My husband sat quietly,
not weeping, just looking broken.  Our three kids and their spouses comforted
each other as best they could.  The grandchildren cried.  The flowers were nice, but potent.

During the graveside, I saw the Light.  Ignoring everything else, I went
toward it.  Imagine my shock when I found myself at the end of a line
stretching over the far horizon.  Seeing a booth off to the side, I walked over.

"Can I help you, Ma'am?" a cheerful gentleman asked.

"Is this the line for Heaven?" I asked.

"Nope, this line puts you right into the middle of a bureaucracy.  Here, this
map will get you where you're going.  Give Father my best!  Tell him I love this job!"