Blueprints of the Afterlife

by Ryan Boudinot

What do you think is beyond that door? This isn’t a rhetorical question. What’s beyond that door? I—I don’t know. Well, there’s a hallway, some offices, a break room with vending machines for soft drinks and snacks, a parking garage where I park my Volvo every morning. Beyond that there’s a city, with streets lined with stores like Applebee’s, Whole Foods, and Best Buy. There are dry cleaners and gas stations and churches and schools. There are freeways leading to suburbs where there are homes where people live. And in those homes are kitchens where food is prepared, bedrooms where people sleep and dream, garages where they put their cars. People typically get up and go to work five days a week then spend a couple days doing whatever they want. People take vacations, make money, meet partners, have children, get old, get admitted to hospitals, then die. Every year there are a couple new and exciting electronic gadgets that people get excited about. People pay attention to sports scores and who celebrities are sleeping with. They try to get promotions to get more money to spend on stuff for themselves. Some of them go to community gatherings, some get obese, a very few commit criminal acts and get incarcerated. There are addicts, social workers, software developers, bus drivers, attorneys, and teachers. Everyone getting up in the morning, taking showers, listening to the radio on the way to work, catching a movie on the weekend or doing some gardening. That’s the world out ...