Harry sat up abruptly, with a gasp.

"I'm alive: how disappointing," he said, pushing his hair back from his forehead.

"Actually, you're not."

Harry looked around for the source of the voice and found himself to be in a small, drab, windowless room. He was sitting up on a cot of some kind, like a doctor's examination table. In a hard wooden chair near him sat an old man, with neatly trimmed white hair and beard, who regarded him steadily over a pair of frameless glasses. The old man wasn't dressed like a doctor or orderly or prison guard. He wore lime green polyester pants and a short sleeved dress shirt, and looked like an ordinary geezer, though more alert than most.

"Oh, I'm not, am I?" Harry asked sardonically.

"No, you're not." The old man's mouth twitched as though he were amused by Harry's cynicism. "If you don't believe me," the old man continued, "think for yourself. What's the last thing you remember?"

Harry could still see the set, emotionless look in her eyes as she opened fire, just as he'd wanted her to. He'd practically begged her to end it. He looked down at his chest; there was no sign he'd been shot. He pulled up his shirt, expecting stitches, sutures, scars-- anything. Nothing. Not a mark on him. Harry looked up at the old man, perplexed.

"She's a very good shot, isn't she?" the old man asked, nodding. He toyed with something in his hand that rattled faintly.

"How--?"

"What, you think you brought the bullets with you?"

Harry gave up that line of questioning. He'd play along for now. "So, I'm dead."

The old man smiled.

Harry continued, "Then where am I? Because if this is supposed to be heaven, somebody's overdue for a false advertising suit."

"Where do you think you should be?" the old man asked.