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    LIFE, Inc.: A Cosmological Fable of the Afterlife
    LIFE, Inc.: A Cosmological Fable of the Afterlife
    LIFE, Inc.: A Cosmological Fable of the Afterlife
    Ebook71 pages1 hour

    LIFE, Inc.: A Cosmological Fable of the Afterlife

    By Vera Nazarian

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    About this ebook

    What really happens to you after you die?

    Find out, in this mind-blowing philosophical fable, hero's journey, and thoroughly weird cosmological fantasy by two-time Nebula Award Nominated author and award-winning artist Vera Nazarian.

    Follow Norman J. Jones on his trip into the afterlife, and discover an amazing unclassifiable story that only begins in his moment of death.

    LIFE, Inc.

    A Cosmological Fable of the Afterlife

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVera Nazarian
    Release dateJul 9, 2018
    ISBN9781607621461
    LIFE, Inc.: A Cosmological Fable of the Afterlife
    Author

    Vera Nazarian

    VERA NAZARIAN is a two-time Nebula Award Finalist, 2018 Dragon Award Finalist, award-winning artist, a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and a writer with a penchant for moral fables and stories of intense wonder, true love, and intricacy.She immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at the age of 17, and since then has published numerous works in anthologies and magazines, and has seen her fiction translated into eight languages.She is the author of critically acclaimed novels DREAMS OF THE COMPASS ROSE and LORDS OF RAINBOW, the outrageous parodies MANSFIELD PARK AND MUMMIES and NORTHANGER ABBEY AND ANGELS AND DRAGONS, and most recently, PRIDE AND PLATYPUS: MR. DARCY'S DREADFUL SECRET in her humorous and surprisingly romantic Supernatural Jane Austen Series, as well as the Renaissance epic fantasy COBWEB BRIDE Trilogy.Her bestselling and award-winning series THE ATLANTIS GRAIL is now a cross-genre phenomenon -- a high-octane YA / teen dystopian apocalyptic science fiction adventure, romance, and historical mystery thriller -- has been optioned for film, and is in development as a major motion picture franchise or TV series.After many years in Los Angeles, Vera lives in a small town in Vermont, and uses her Armenian sense of humor and her Russian sense of suffering to bake conflicted pirozhki and make art.Her official author website is http://www.veranazarian.comTo be notified when new books come out, subscribe to the Mailing List:http://eepurl.com/hKaeo

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      Book preview

      LIFE, Inc. - Vera Nazarian

      DEDICATION

      To Giles S. Bignold

      in all truth.

      LIFE, Inc.

      A Cosmological Fable of the Afterlife

      Ninety-one year old Norman J. Jones drew in his last faint breath through withered lips and into decaying lungs. He closed his eyes for the last time, feeling the world and the vaguely concerned faces of loved ones slipping away. And he died.

      Or maybe it was but a deep comatose sleep. Because after some cosmically immeasurable amount of time, he began to dream.

      And then, woke up.

      Norman J. Jones was as dead as falling snow, and as wide-awake as he could possibly be. And he stood at the Pearly Gates of Heaven or possibly, Hell.

      Actually, it was neither. It was a misty whitish place, dreamlike, and without a horizon line or proper sky. Before him stretched a tall filigree-metal gate painted gleaming mother-of-pearl white, and beyond, a great fantastic looking building.

      The building was a wild mixture of small colorful towers and turrets (reminiscent of a certain popular family amusement park the name of which he used to know, but which, at the moment, just barely escaped him), modern glass windows, Grecian columns and Roman porticoes, a gothic spire or two, several geodesic domes, a glass bubble-dome, brightly painted Dutch windmills that actually rotated, and, seen from the back, a giant neon-lit Ferris Wheel that turned slowly like the face of a clock. To top it all off, this incredible structure was garishly encrusted with brass rooster weather vanes that spun on needle steeples, modern streamlined wind-spire turbines, Oriental wind-chimes, many-armed Hindu god-figurines in sensual relief, paper lanterns, grape bunches of helium balloons, and on one side, the figurehead of an old Scandinavian sea-faring vessel. . . .

      And incredible as it may seem, as Norman stared at it, the structure was in fact changing before his very eyes—walls replaced turrets, church spires sank, only to rise again as columns or Aztec pyramids, and everything, after a second or some other random temporal measure, became everything else.

      There was a huge lit sign on the top of the highest gothic spire that read: LIFE, INC.

      Norman stood staring. It was not quite what he’d expected. Not that he’d expected Biblical settings, or atheistic non-existence, or even an agnostic white light at the end of the tunnel. No, whatever he thought might come after the last expelled breath, would be something a bit more orderly and—dignified?

      This way, Mr. Jones! Please get in line.

      Norman turned to look in the direction of the very normal voice, and he saw a woman dressed in a conservative gray business suit wave to him politely at the Gates that stood ajar. And then he saw the line.

      The line, consisting of individuals standing single-file, wound like a snake back and forth in about seven loops in front of the Gates. Boundaries were roped off, and the whole thing was very reminiscent of the rides at the amusement park the name of which he had, like a peanut fragment, on the tip of his tongue. There was no scorching sun, however. And the end of the line, Norman saw, just simply appeared to fade into a mist, about fifty feet away.

      His mind absolutely complacent, for one reason or another, so that he wasn’t even registering surprise, Norman Jones obediently got in line. He simply walked to what he believed was the end, where the last person seemed to shimmer in the mist. And lo and behold, that indeed was the last person, and he simply slipped into place behind him.

      The line moved fast. The people all seemed normal, but for some reason they all had the same drowsy look. They stared nowhere, absorbed in their own reveries. He too did not notice the others before and after him—maybe because none of them mattered, or because time was not moving normally here—he never noticed anything, only viewed the chameleon sight of the mutating structure before him. And then he was at the head of the line, facing the woman in a suit.

      She smiled at him, fortyish, with distinctive gold-rimmed glasses, reminding him of someone. Here’s your ticket, Mr. Jones, she said warmly, You may go in.

      He stared at those glasses, wondering why would anyone need glasses, here, now. And he blurted: Am I dead?

      Mr. Jones, said the fortyish woman gently. You are young.

      And as though someone finally allowed him to note this fact, Jones looked at himself, and suddenly realized that his ninety-one year old body was no longer stooped, realized the sudden absence of arthritic pains, and realized there was a coat of dark strong hair on his formerly bald head.

      He also realized that he was in his pajamas.

      Aware of his sudden self-consciousness, she smiled again, and urged him on. Go on now. You look fine.

      And then Norman Jones took his first step past the mother-of-pearl Gates, into . . .

      ––––––––

      The Big Bang!

      He was the pregnant kernel of the Universe, and he Exploded.

      And then there were flames, scorching with blue-white gaseous agony, and it was Hell.

      After

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