AfterLife by S. P. Cloward Read Free Book Online

giant bioluminescent blue whale breached the
surface of the water a few hundred feet off the shore and fell on its side,
creating a giant splash. He didn’t know if whales even existed near the beach
Emily had created, but he didn’t care. He wanted to see one jump. He looked
over at Emily to see if she approved. She smiled back at him giving him the
reassurance he needed to continue with something bigger.
    Wes looked out at the sea and in his mind saw the horizon
begin to fill with the warming hues of a sunrise’s first rays. The sky gradually
filled with warmer colors as the reds, oranges, and yellows grew brighter and
pushed the darkness farther and farther away from where the two of them stood.
Finally, the sun rose out of the water on the near horizon. He had created his
first sunrise.
    “That was gorgeous, Wes,” Emily said softly, touching his
arm. “I couldn’t have created a more fantastic sunrise myself. You must truly
love and appreciate beautiful things.”
    “Yeah, I guess I do. At least, I’ve always appreciated a
good sunrise and sunset.” He thought about some of the sunrises he’d seen over
the years. Once on a road trip, while passing though South Dakota, he’d stopped
just to watch the sun set over the stretches of grassland on either side of the
freeway. Even the one he’d seen the night he died had been beautiful. It had
been the last beautiful thing he’d seen. He remembered how bad his vision had
become in the few days since his death. In this place where his and Emily’s
minds were coexisting he could see fine, but in reality his vision was like
looking through a dirty window. “Will I ever be able to really see a sunset
again?”
    “Of course you will. That’s one thing you will definitely be
able to do. Your vision will be as good as new once your body is processed.
Your eyes were probably full of all sorts of crap when you arrived. You don’t
produce tears like an antemort. Before we found you, you were dead for a few
days, right?” Emily looked up at Wes as he nodded. “That’s normal. You weren’t
able to naturally flush out your eyes with tears, and that made your vision
worse.
    “I should warn you though, you will notice a lot of
differences in the way you experience things now that you’re dead. You’re still
connected to your body, but you’ll relate to the world around you differently.
You won’t be able to taste, smell, or touch like you used to.” Emily sat down
on the sand still watching the sun as it rose. She patted the sand next to her
and Wes sat as well. “I’m teaching you calculus without starting with the
basics of algebra. There’s a lot to learn and you won’t understand it all right
away, but I’ll give you a broad overview to get you started. Once we begin the
training process, it will start to click. I promise. Let’s see, we’ll start
with something simple.
    “When you’re alive, the mind and body are so intertwined
that it’s hard to consider that one might exist without the other. The body
needs the mind to live and operate even though, when broken down to its
simplest functions, the body is just a machine. It takes in fuel and processes
it into energy to operate. A living machine is much more complex than a
non-living machine.
    “Your body is now a non-living machine and so its functions
will be decreased. You’re still in control of it just as you were when you were
alive, but it will be more like moving your body in a virtual reality machine.
You can move it around, see what it sees, and hear what it hears but the other
senses will be greatly reduced.
    “The rebirth process will help. We are slowly replacing the
fluids in your body with ones of our own design. We call them “animal spirits.”
They’ll help your body exist for longer periods of time without recharging.
We’ll talk about charging and feeding later, but just as any machine needs an
energy source to work, so will you. You’re no longer able to make your