By: Tom Ball

     I, Clarissa, said to Stephen, “There’s no turning back now!” We had entered “Paradise,” and were about to meet God. This God was said to be angelic and inspirational. And we had both been hypnotized to lose all our faults and be angelic ourselves. We were just hologram spirits and had died recently.

     Then God appeared as a massive hulking asexual spirit. He said, “Welcome to heaven! Your mission is to be angels to help troubled humans and get them to be good! Your cases will be able to see you as if you were ghosts and you will get in their minds and tell them what to do!”

     And God proclaimed, “Everyone will be visited by Heavenly spirits!” And God said, “It is also your job to calm people and bring peace to the Worlds. And no more fighting or arguing. And if they refuse to follow your entreaties, shout in their head until they do!”

     I asked, “What about the Devil? Does he have his minions getting in peoples’ heads too?” And God said, “Of course so you must fight them. And Leaders get into the heads of people too. It is an insane situation. But we will never give up!” Stephen said, “This competition for souls is indeed insanity and is a new thing for humans to adjust to. When we were alive it was just starting and then we both overdosed and came to Heaven! Maybe everyone will kill themselves by overdosing like we did!”

     But God said, “Humans have now developed experimental mind reading blockers but no doubt they will still want to hear from the angels, so will not block us out! I said, “It looks to me like humans will still go insane from brain apps as they desperately try to improve their brains and I don’t think visitations by angels will help them!” God said, “But there are many success stories and now many verge of becoming Gods just like me. But I will always be the kindest, most inspirational God, I think.” Stephen said, “Maybe you’ll be the kindness God, but new Superhumans will be artists and scientists and truly inspire people to do their best.” God said, “It’s hard to predict, the future, even for a God. But I know that more powerful Gods than me are in the cards.” I said, “It is unclear what Gods would want of the people. Maybe some will be really bossy, others inspirational. And some will no doubt be evil, like the Devil!

     God said, “Many people are capable of evil, and evil will never be eradicated totally. To kill evil people, is, itself, evil. And many people who have evil tendencies also have good tendencies.” I said, “But we can alter evil people in the lab and keep tweaking them to make them better and better.” God said, “But putting people in mind rehab could backfire and have ruthless tyrants use it on the opposition.” Stephen said, “In fact they are probably doing it now!” God said, “Maybe we could make Mind Reading Technology (MRT) illegal on Earth and only me, God, could get into heads.” I said, “Then the bad guys will still use it for a God you don’t seem to be that brilliant.” God said, “As I said, ‘I am the God of kindness.’ And with my numerous angels we get in minds and try and make the people as kind as possible. We encourage them to live in loving communes for example in which everyone is on the same intellectual level and love one another. And encourage them to work for charities. There are not so many poor people these days but there are billions with mental health issues. Mental problems are the number one problem in the World today. Of course, there are a lot of new drugs which make them relatively happy, but they are still insane.” I said, “People need to live a simpler life and not have pressure to change their brains.” God said, “There’s no turning back towards a simpler life. Modern society is an unstoppable juggernaut. Just like you say with MRT, there’s no turning back. Once the technology is there it will be used. And evil and good scientists will design new weapons and eventually the Worlds will blow up. But Gods and spirits will never die, and the World will be haunted by ghosts forever and ever. And maybe the spirits will build, ‘ghost cities’ which are spectral but real. And as always spirits will get their kicks from intellectual conversation and cerebral sex with pleasure bursts.”

     I opined, “I always thought that Superhuman Gods would deliver us from evil. But at least you prognosticate human souls will survive.” God said, “The human soul is all that really mattered, in the past.”

     Stephen said, “Yes, I believe that most people want to live on as souls. It’s really not so bad. After all we got to meet God!”

     And we got together with others and sang in a holy choir, we could sing even though we were spirits. And we were especially clever spirits, and each composed some songs. And wrote some scripts, like, “The Only Pleasure,” which was about thinking in a non-materialistic way. And I, personally, wrote, “The Battle for Hearts and Minds,” about how we were at war with evil spirits and were winning the hearts and minds of humans. And Stephen wrote, “Forgotten Souls” about how some souls were neglected and haunted places all alone. And another was written by another soul, a former Mayor, about how power was in the hands of the mind reading souls now.” And still another was about, souls who gambled their existence as souls in games of chance and losers were eliminated, and their souls were dead. Many souls thought they had nothing to lose.

     And another soul script was about why souls exist in the first place. And the conclusion of the script was they were the true representatives of humanity, both bad and good. And of course, the souls had the brains of humans. But there were also android spirits and hologram spirits who wished to further their own kind. And Supercomputers had ghosts in the machine.

     And yet another famous script was about how souls could feel no physical pain and this was a real boon. But mental anguish was suffered by most souls and there didn’t seem to be anything they could do about it. This soul proposed that, “Souls be reconstituted as beings who could not suffer.” But most souls said, there was pain and pleasure and it had to be that way. All pleasure and no pain would be pain in itself.

     Another script was about convincing clever humans to die and join the souls. This soul writer was one of the happier souls. He especially enjoyed cerebral sex and tried to convince people to die and try it out. But some humans thought he was an evil tempter. And these humans wanted to live life to the full and weren’t ready for death.

     And so, on went the scripts. Most souls could write scripts as only the cleverest made it to Heaven.  Those souls who were mediocre or lousy didn’t get into Heaven. And just died out. But many mediocrities wanted desperately to live on, knowing they probably wouldn’t get to Heaven. But everywhere people had eternal youth and could live on if they liked. But there were many overdoses, accidental or deliberate. And other risky behaviour.

     Anyhow, Stephen and I lived on for years as souls, but then we used new technology to turn back into humans. And so, we planned to live for hundreds of years, believing it was better to be a human. We enjoyed eating and drinking and drugs and real sex in particular. And we were famous as people who’d been dead but came back to life. And everyone wanted a piece of us.