The Great Beyond: Prologue

Prologue: "People Living Deeply"  (Earth, circa 2025 AD)

    "People living deeply have no fear of death"
        - Anais Nin

"Tie your shoelaces before you trip and knock your brains out", Paul
heard for what seemed like the thousandth time in the past hour.

Paul grunted, bent over with some effort, and obliged his girlfriend.
Julie was a wonderful woman, but she was not in a great mood, so he was
stepping extra gingerly today instead of poking fun at her
over-protectiveness.  And there was another, even more important reason
not to rile her up.

Today was the big day.  He was going to pop The Question.

He wanted it to be a fairy-tale moment, something special.  Julie, if
pressed for her thoughts on the subject, would have been thrilled to
have him ask in the freezer aisle at Walmart at this point.  But he had
not pressed her for her thoughts, and so the two of them had spent
several hours driving to Fall Creek Falls on the pretext that he wanted
to show her the Great Outdoors while the leaves were in their autumn
colors, alternating between holding hands and bickering over the AC
temperature.

Paul stood back up and grinned at her.  "Yes ma'am."  Unfortunately, the
cool autumn temperatures of the past few days had given way to a blast
furnace.  The humidity and arduous hiking had left her glistening with
sweat, so she was a bit pricklier than usual.  The part of his brain
that preferred not having fights, often for days at a time, concluded
that it wasn't the opportunity for one of his usual humorous comebacks.

When he was trying to sell her on the idea of going hiking, he had to
gently navigate the fact that Julie was about as enamored with hiking
through the Great Outdoors as a vampire might be with garlic-flavored
mouthwash.  Her idea of relaxing was watching TV on the living room
couch, with the thermostat set at a temperature that made the cats hide
under the covers and was more appropriate for storing sides of beef.
Not stomping through murky forest in the sweltering summer heat.  She
might even have made this fact subtly known a few times during their
hike, but Paul persevered, hoping the payoff would be worth it.

They rounded a small rocky outcrop, and Paul could distinctly hear the
sound of rushing water nearby, and his fingers tightened around the
small blue box hidden in his coat pocket.  Once when he was a kid, his
school took the kids here on a field trip.  He remembered seeing a
couple propose right on the edge of the waterfall.  Being as he was 12
and still deep in his "playing with frogs" phase of life, he thought it
was crazy and the only thing that immediately struck him was the
catcalls from some of the older boys urging them to jump.  A few decades
later when he was struggling to think of someplace exciting to pop the
question, the image kept coming back to him.

Paul was an IT geek and not overly fancy.  He bought two changes of
clothing at the beginning of spring/fall, wore them until the changing
seasons forced him to wear something else, and tossed them.  He had long
since acquiesced to the fact that he had the fashion sense of a 2x4, and
decided to focus on the positives.  He was proud at all the money he
saved by not buying clothing (which he subsequently blew and then some
on various electronics gizmos), but his minimalist geek aesthetic left
him somewhat unprepared for dealing with a fashionable woman, which
Julie most definitely was.

All of Paul's day-to-day clothing easily fit in a drawer.  So he was
taken back when he first saw Julie's apartment.  Entire mountains of
admittedly fashionable clothing were pouring out of every closet,
drawer, storage cube, laundry bin, piled on the floor, hanging on every
doorknob...  When he had once mustered the courage to ask her if there
was any she might be willing to part with just a few items for the sake
of space, she had spent an hour giving him the complete biography of
every scrap of clothing, where she'd got it, what she was thinking about
when she bought it, how it made her feel, and what moods she was in when
she wore them, and he took that as a valuable life lesson and never
asked again.

Her love for elegant things likewise extended to jewelry.  Rings,
necklaces, earrings, bracelets, bangles were arrayed on every surface in
her home that wasn't already covered by clothing.  They all had a
memory, a story, a mood that they set in her.  So he nervously hoped
that the ring he bought would have the desired effect.  He fingered it a
bit nervously.  It was the sort of wedding ring that spared little
expense to give the illusion that no expense was spared, but it was the
best he could afford.

Fortunately her love for the fancier things in life didn't extend to her
choice in men.  Paul smiled a bit at the thought.  They walked through
the woods silently, Paul alternating between taking in the natural
beauty and trying to suppress his nervousness at asking the question,
Julie daydreaming about air conditioning and trying to keep her soul
from fleeing her body due to the rancid god-awful heat.

He had practiced the moment in his mind for weeks.  He intended to slide
to the ground on one knee and groan and mutter painfully about falling.
When she asked him if he was ok, he would quickly present the ring, look
her deeply in the eyes, and say "I said I've fallen".  Her eyes would
tear up, and would scream yes, and then they would live happily ever
after.

And, just ahead, he could see the short side-trail that had led to the
waterfall when he was young.  In the 20 years since his childhood trip
during the height of the lawn dart craze, someone had put up a "DANGER
AHEAD!  NO HIKING!" sign blocking the path, but given the well-worn
ground, myriad visitors had decided to ignore the sign in search of
their own beautiful moment, just like he was about to.

Julie noticed the sign and stopped because, unlike Paul, she wasn't
naturally inclined to be a Darwin Award candidate.  "I'm not sure I want
to do this."  Which might sound indecisive when spoken by someone else,
but Paul knew her well enough to know she said it in the
passive-yet-matter-of-fact tone that meant there would be ten types of
holy hell to pay if Paul pressed her to continue.

"Look", Paul begged, "You can see the waterfall just ahead."  He
mustered every last bit of charm he had.  "Let's just go take a quick
photo, and then we can go back to the car and head back to the hotel."
She wavered.  The car and the hotel had air conditioning, and he was
hitting one of her vulnerable spots.  She stared at him for a moment and
then sighed.  "OK, but just for a minute."

He took a breath and stealthily tugged the ring from its box and palmed
it, hoping she wouldn't glance at his hand for a few more seconds.  They
wobbled along the short trail jutting with loose rocks, until they
reached the spot where the waterfall took its plunge into the gorge
below.  Pam grabbed her camera and started taking a picture to remember
the experience, mostly so she could, if he ever mentioned another
waterfall trip, show him said photos so they wouldn't ever have to do it
again.

His senses were overwhelmed with the beauty of it.  The gurgling rush
of the stream, the roar of the waterfall filling his ears, the lush
green canopy of the sunlit forest, and the sunlight playing off the
rainbow-hued mist hovering over the gorge.  Paul had to admit, it was
breathtaking.  The perfect spot, just like he hoped.

He looked at her and grinned from ear to ear.  Just one thing to do now.

He slid to one knee.  Or rather he tried to slide to one knee like he'd
planned, but wobbled a bit on one of his shoelaces that had unknowingly
come undone for the Nth time and to his horror found himself slow-motion
sliding across the algae-slick stream bed towards the looming cliff edge.

"I'm falling!" he screamed, in a vastly different sense than he had
envisioned a few minutes earlier.  The ring dropped from his hand as he
desperately scrambled to find a stick, a rock, any purchase to arrest
the slow slide.  Julie, for her part, was frozen in horror, camera in
hand, and unable to process the situation just yet.  The initial "I told
you so" look on her face was quickly giving way to horror.

People often contemplate their final thoughts, whether it be memories of
a life well lived, or of loved ones they look forward to seeing in the
afterlife, or of meeting the Creator, or of simply being at peace.  In
the few seconds Paul had left, the only thing that ran through Paul's
mind was a highly incredulous "SHIT!"

Moments later the world faded mercifully to black.