Elsewhere (5 page)

Although Liz has arrived at the Registry fifteen minutes early, it takes her nearly twentyfive minutes to find the Office of Acclimation. The maps posted at the elevator shaft are long outdated, and no one who works at the building seems able to give proper directions. When Liz attempts to retrace her footsteps, she keeps finding new doorways that she could swear weren't there five minutes earlier.

At random (for she now believes in the power of randomness as only the suddenly deceased can), Liz decides to give one of the new doorways a try. She finds a hallway and, at the end of the hallway, another door. An unofficial-looking cardboard sign indicates that behind this door lies the temporary home of the Office of Acclimation.

Liz opens the door. Inside, she finds a busy, perfectly ordinary-looking reception area. (As Betty had said, many people are still wearing white pajamas.) If not for a faded, rather macabre poster hanging on the wall, Liz might have thought she was at her doctor's office. The poster depicts a smiling gray-haired woman sitting up in a mahogany coffin. Printed on the poster are the following words:

SO YOU'RE DEAD, NOW WHAT?

The Office of Acclimation is here to help.

The peevish-looking woman at the front desk reminds Liz of the poster; she, too, is faded, dated, and grim. She wears her hair in a 1960s beehive and her skin has a greenish tint. A name-plate on her desk reads yetta brown.

"Excuse me," Liz says, "I have an appointment at "

Yetta Brown clears her throat and nods her head in the direction of a bell that sits on the desk. A sign by the bell reads, please ring for assistance!!!

Liz obeys. Yetta Brown clears her throat again and plasters a broad fake smile across her face.

"Yes, how may I help you?"

"I have an appointment at eight "

Yetta's fake smile turns into a definitive frown. "Why didn't you say so? You're five minutes late for the video! Make haste, make haste, make haste!"

"I'm sorry," Liz apologizes, "I couldn't find "

Yetta interrupts Liz again. "I have no time for your apologies."

Liz dislikes being interrupted. "You shouldn't inter "

"I have no time for small talk."

Yetta deposits Liz in a dusty, darkened room with a battered VCR and TV The room, which is more like a supply closet, barely has enough space for its one chair. "I will return for you when the video is over," Yetta says. "Oh yes, enjoy the film," she adds in a perfunctory manner as she walks out the door.

Liz sits in the lone chair. The video is like the dry informational videos that Liz occasionally watched for health in ninth grade or driver's ed in tenth grade on subjects like "Sexual Education"

and "Traffic Safety."

The video begins with a talking cartoon parrot. "I'm Polly," says the parrot. "If you're watching this video, that means you're dead dead dead! Greetings and salutations, dead people!" Liz finds the animation primitive and Polly annoying.

With the detestable Polly as guide, the video covers some of what Liz and Betty have already discussed: how everyone in Elsewhere ages backward and becomes a baby, and how the babies are sent down the River when they are seven days old, back to Earth. "On Earth," Polly squawks, "man ages from the time he is born to an indeterminate point in the future, when he will die die die." The video shows a cartoon baby becoming a boy, then a man, then an old man, then dead.

"On Elsewhere," Polly continues, "a life is more finite: man dies, and ages backward until he is a baby." The cartoon old man becomes a man, then a boy, then a baby. "When man becomes a baby again, he is ready to be sent back to Earth, where the process begins again." The cartoon baby becomes a boy, becomes a man, becomes an old man. Liz imagines her life depicted on a cartoon time line. I would only make it somewhere between cartoon boy and cartoon man, she thinks. And then she wonders if boys are always boys, and if girls are always girls, and if dogs are always dogs.

The video also ventures into subject matter that Liz and Betty had not discussed in much detail.

Liz learns the proper way to state her age: your current age followed by the number of years you have been in Elsewhere. Liz's current age is fifteen-zero. She also learns that her new "birthday"

is January 4. It is a somewhat confusing calculation that involves adding the number of days past one's last birthday to the day one died.

She learns that no one new is born in Elsewhere, but no one dies either. People get sick and hurt, but with time, everyone eventually heals. Consequently, sickness isn't much of an issue here.

She learns that you are forbidden to make Contact with people on Earth ("Contact is a no-no! It's a no-no!" squawks Polly, waving his yellow beak furiously from side to side), but that you could view Earth from the Observation Decks anytime. Observation Decks, like the one on the SS Nile, aren't just for funerals. They are also located on docked boats and lighthouses scattered throughout Elsewhere. For the price of just one eternim, Liz could view whoever or whatever she wants back on Earth for five minutes. Liz decides right then to ask Betty to drive her to the nearest Observation Deck tonight.

She learns that everyone has to choose an avocation. From what Liz could tell, an avocation is basically like a job, except you are actually supposed to like doing it. Liz shakes her head at that part. How does she know what she wants to do? Not to mention, at her age, what is she even trained for?

She learns the official definition of acclimation. "Acclimation," yells Polly, "is the process by which the newly deceased become residents of Elsewhere. So welcome welcome welcome, dead people!"

She learns many, many, many other things that she is sure she will probably forget.

The end of the video deals more with metaphysical issues on Elsewhere. It talks about how human existence is like a circle and a line at the same time. It is a circle, because everything that was old would be new and everything that was new became old. It is a line because the circle stretched out indefinitely, infinitely even. People die. People are born. People die again. Each birth and death is a little circle, and the sum of all those little circles is a life and a line. During this discussion of human existence, Liz finds herself drifting off to sleep.

She wakes several minutes later to the sound of Yetta Brown admonishing her. "I hope you didn't sleep through the whole thing! Get up! Get up now!"

Liz jumps to her feet. "I'm sorry. I'm just really exhausted from dying, and "

Yetta Brown interrupts. "It doesn't matter to me; your behavior only hurts yourself." Yetta Brown sighs. "You have your meeting with your acclimation counselor, Aldous Ghent, now. Mr. Ghent is a very important man. So, you know, it wouldn't do for you to fall asleep during your meeting with him."

"I honestly don't think I missed much," Liz apologizes.

"All right. Tell me why human existence is like a circle and a line," Yetta demands.

Liz racks her brain. "It's a circle because, um . . . Earth is a sphere, which is kind of like a, um, three-dimensional circle?"

Yetta shakes her head in disgust. "Exactly as I thought!"

"Look, I'm sorry about falling asleep." Liz speaks very quickly to avoid being interrupted. "Maybe I can watch the end of the video again?"

Yetta Brown ignores Liz. "We have a lot to get done today, Ms. Hall. Things will go far more smoothly if you can manage to stay awake."

"This is Elizabeth Marie Hall, Mr. Ghent." Yetta pronounces Liz's name as if it were a particularly unpleasant word like gingivitis. Aldous Ghent looks up as Yetta and Liz enter the office.

"Thank you, Ms. Brown," Aldous calls as Yetta basically slams the door in his face. "Ah well, perhaps she didn't hear me? Yetta seems to have peculiarly bad hearing. She's always interrupting me."

Liz laughs politely.

"Hello, Elizabeth Hall. I am Aldous Ghent, your acclimation counselor. Please have a seat." He indicates that Liz should sit in the chair in front of his desk. However, that chair is entirely covered in paperwork. Indeed, all of his windowless office is shrouded in paperwork.

"Should I move these files?" Liz asks.

"Oh, please do!" Aldous smiles and then looks sadly around his cluttered office. "I have so much paperwork. I'm afraid my paperwork has paperwork."

"Maybe you need a bigger office?" Liz suggests.

"They keep promising me one. It's the thing I'm most looking forward to. Except for my hair growing back." He pats his bald pate affectionately. "I started going bald around twentyfive, so I figure I only have around thirty-six more years to wait for a full head of hair. The sad part is, we all lose most of our hair when we become babies anyway. The way I see it, I'll only have about a twentyfour-year window of hair before I lose it all over again. Ah well!" Aldous sighs.

Liz runs her fingers through her own newly grown hair.

"Last year my teeth came back in. The teething was murder! I kept my wife up all night with my blubbering and ballyhoo." Aldous grins so that Liz can see his teeth. "I'm going to take good care of them this time around. Dentures are not good. They're worse than not good actually. Dentures, they um . . ."

"Suck?" Liz suggests.

"Dentures suck," Aldous says with a laugh. "They really do. The sound they make when you eat is just like sucking."

Aldous carefully removes a file from the bottom of a precarious pile of paperwork in the center of his desk. He opens the file and reads aloud, "You're from Bermuda where you died in a boating accident?"

"Um, that's not me," Liz says.

"Sorry." Aldous selects another file, "You're from Manhattan, and had, uh, breast cancer, is it?"

Liz shakes her head. She doesn't even have much in the way of breasts.

Aldous selects a third file. "Massachusetts? Head trauma in a bicycle accident?"

Liz nods. That's her.

"Well" Aldous shrugs "at least it was quick. Except for the coma part, but you probably don't remember that anyway."

Indeed, Liz does not. "How long was I in a coma?"

"About a week, but you were already brain-dead. Says here your poor parents had to decide to pull the plug. We, my wife Rowena and I, had to pull the plug on our son, Joseph, back on Earth.

His best friend accidentally shot him when they were playing with an old gun of mine. It was the worst day of my life. If you ever have children " Aldous stops himself.

"If I ever have children, what?"

"I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that. No one can have children on Elsewhere," Aldous says.

Liz takes a moment to absorb this information. From Al-dous's tone, she knows he thinks this news will upset her. But Liz hasn't really thought about having children.

"Do you see your son now?" Liz asks.

Aldous shakes his head. "No, he was already back on Earth by the time Ro and I got here. I would have liked to see him again, but it was not to be." Aldous blows his nose. "Allergies," he apologizes.

"What kind?" Liz asks.

"Oh," Aldous replies, "I'm allergic to sad memories. It's the worst. Would you like to see a picture of my wife, Rowena?"

Liz nods. Aldous holds out a silver frame with a picture of a lovely Japanese lady about Aldous's age. "This is my Rowena," he says proudly.

"She's very elegant," Liz says.

"She is, isn't she? We died on the same day in a plane crash."

"That's awful."

"No," Aldous says, "we were actually very, very lucky."

"For the longest time, I didn't even realize that I was dead," Liz confides in Aldous. "Is that normal?"

"Sure," Aldous reassures her, "people take all different amounts of time to acclimate. Some people reach Elsewhere, and they still think it's a dream. I knew a man who was here fifty years and went all the way back to Earth without catching on." Aldous shrugs. "Depends on how a person died, how old they were it's lots of factors, and it's all part of the process. It can be particularly difficult for young people to realize they have passed," Aldous says.

"Why is that?"

"Young people tend to think they're immortal. Many of them can't conceive of themselves as dead, Elizabeth."

Aldous proceeds to go through all the things Liz would have to do in the next several months.

Dying seems to entail a great deal more work than Liz initially thought. In a way, dying isn't that different from school.

"Do you have any initial thoughts about an avocation?" Aldous asks.

Liz shrugs. "Not really. I didn't have a job on Earth because I was still in school."

"Oh no, no, no," Aldous says. "An avocation is not a job. A job has to do with prestige! Money! An avocation is something a person does to make his or her soul complete."

Liz rolls her eyes.

"I see by your expression you don't believe me," Aldous says. "It appears I've got a cynic on my hands."

Liz shrugs. Who wouldn't be cynical in her situation?

"Is there anything you particularly loved on Earth?"

Liz shrugs again. On Earth, she was good at math, science, and swimming (she had even gotten her scuba certification last summer), but she didn't exactly love any of those activities.

"Anything, anything at all?"

"Animals. Maybe something with animals or dogs," Liz says finally, thinking of her prized pug, Lucy, back on Earth.

"Marvelous!" crows Aldous. "I'm sure I could find you something fabulous to do with dogs!"

"I'll have to think about it," Liz says. "It's a lot to take in."

Aldous asks Liz a bit about her life on Earth. To Liz, her old life has already begun to seem like a story she is telling about someone else entirely. Once upon a time, a girl named Elizabeth lived in Medford, Massachusetts.

"Were you happy?" asks Aldous.

Liz thinks about Aldous's question. "Why do you want to know?"

"Don't worry. It's not a test. It's just something I like to ask all my advisees."

In truth, she hadn't put much thought into whether she was happy before. She supposes that since she never thought about it, she must have been happy. People who are happy don't really need to ask themselves if they are happy or not, do they? They just are happy, she thinks.