The Extraordinary

                                            The Extraordinary

I had pictured death to be a lot of things- eternal darkness, blissful paradise, never ending torment. I had prepared myself for the glory of heaven and the horrors of hell. I had researched reincarnation and imagined coming back to earth as a newborn baby, or a cockroach, or a tree. I thought about what was to be the most likely scenario after life, which would be my body being put into the ground and left to rot and that being the end. The true, final end. I had spent a lot of time in the last few months of my life thinking about death.

In all my musings, daydreams and fantasies, never once had I pictured death to be a waiting room.

 I found myself standing in a beige room, filled with hard-backed seats and dull carpeting. A few people sat in the chairs, staring down at their laps or blankly at the walls. I made my way over to the receptionist’s desk and knocked lightly on the clear partition. A young blonde woman with bright blue eyes smiled at me as she slid the glass back.

           “Name, please?”

           “I…” I opened my mouth, but found all the questions that had been tumbling through my head caught in my throat. I wanted to ask her where I was, how had I gotten there, why was I there? What had happened to my parents or the soft bed I had grown to call home for the last several weeks? Instead, I found myself answering her question, because it seemed like the simplest thing to do.

“Bailey Richardson.”

“Ok, Mr. Richardson. Have a seat and he will be with you shortly.”

           I walked over to one of the chairs and sat down. Across from me sat an old man. His skin was riddled with liver spots. His watery eyes stared at the floor. He seemed as lost as I was and I wanted to say something to him, maybe something encouraging or comforting, but found nothing came to mind. Anything I said would shatter the stillness of the room. I looked down at my pajama pants and t-shirt and ran my hands over the cloth, to assure myself it was real. I realized I was barefoot. The old man across from me had shut his eyes. Vaguely, I wondered if he had fallen asleep. I scanned the wall for a clock, but didn’t find one. There were no calendars, pamphlets, signs, anything. I considered going back to the receptionist and asking questions or leaving the room, but I didn’t. I sat and waited, waited for my name to be called, waited for something, I just didn’t know what.

           Vaguely, I was aware that I should feel scared at finding myself in a place and having no recollection of having gotten there. Or embarrassed that I was sitting in an office in my pajamas. Or worried about my parents and friends. Yet, these feelings didn’t come.

           The door on the other side of the room opened and a face appeared. A large man sporting an even larger beard scanned the room until his eyes landed on me. His mouth spread open at once into a smile.

           “Bailey! Excellent. Come in.” He gestured me forward enthusiastically with one beefy hand. I followed him out of the room and into a hallway which was just as bland and unremarkable as the waiting room had been. He didn’t say anything, but just smiled brightly. I can’t recall ever having a stranger be so happy to see me before. He opened a door at the end of the hall and gestured for me to enter.

           “Have a seat.”

           There was a bare desk and two chairs on opposite sides facing each other. I sat in one and he plopped himself across from me. For the first time I noticed he held a manila file in his hands.

           “Ok, so I am sure you have a ton of questions and we will get to those soon, but we just need to cover the basics first here alright?”

           I nodded, although I had a feeling he wasn’t expecting a response.

           “So, Bailey Richardson, age twenty-five, from Portland, Oregon. It says here you graduated from University of Oregon with a degree in mathematics.”

           It didn’t seem to be a question I was actually meant to answer, but as if he were brushing up on the details of my life.

           “And you didn’t finish your Masters, correct?”

           “No,” I said. “I got sick halfway through my first semester.”

           The man clicked his tongue and nodded, his eyes still going over the file. “That’s too bad. And your cause of death was lung cancer, correct?”

           I blinked, and then slowly nodded. “Yes.”

           “And you have no children, one sibling and a girlfriend, correct?”

           How did he know all of this? I shook my head. “Yes, but my girlfriend and I broke up right after graduation.”

           The man nodded, “Alright. So everything here looks good.” He shut the file and slid it to the side. His fingers intertwined together.

           “So, I know the last few years have been very hard for you.”

           I nodded again.

           “However, I am very happy you are here and we have so much to go over. I do apologize for your cause of death, I was hoping we could do something quicker and less painful, like a car accident, but they were insistent that you needed one final challenge. And you passed beautifully.”

           My eyebrows furrowed. “Who said?”

           “Oh, I’ll explain all about them too. To begin: after death the souls of humankind enter the afterlife. It isn’t an eternal hell or heaven like most believe, but a type of neutral period, I believe many refer to it as limbo. This is where all of humanity goes. However, every once in a while, someone comes along who is chosen by the council as a potential candidate.”

           There were so many questions I needed to ask I didn’t know where to start. I grabbed one at random.

           “What council?”

           “The High Council. We don’t usually like to use the term “gods” but I will just use it here because it may be the easiest way for a newcomer to understand.”

           “Alright… But what is a candidate?”

           “A potential human who we find has shown extraordinary qualities and who we believe may be eligible for a seat.”

           “And by ‘we’ you mean…” I began.

           “The High Council.”

           “Ah.” I tried to take in everything he was saying, but it was difficult. The gears in my mind were spinning rapidly. One thing in particular stuck out to me. “And you said I am… dead?”

           “Yes,” the man said, matter-of-factly. “You died late last night in your sleep. You mother found you a few hours later.”

           I let his words sink in and pictured my childhood bedroom where I had spent the last few weeks, hooked up to tubes and monitors, watching old childhood VHS tapes and staring out of the window, watching the sun pass in the sky. I pictured my mother holding me now, her graying brown hair falling in her face. I thought of my father and his checkered shirts and dark brown eyes.

           “What about…” my voice caught in my throat. “My parents, my brother… my friends?”

           “They will be alright. They will mourn for you, but they will find happiness again. It may take a long time, but they will come to terms with your death.”

           “Will I ever see them again?”

           The man shrugged one shoulder. “It’s certainly a possibility, but there are also many things to be done in the meantime.”

           “Things to be done?” My voice suddenly felt distant, hollow. “I thought that I would be able to rest now, find eternal peace.”

           The man nodded in understanding. “This is a common misconception. And yes, most humans tend to find peace in the afterlife, but not a potential candidate. You proved yourself worthy, but I am afraid life on earth was just the beginning, the first act, if you will.”

           “The first act?”

           “Every candidate must complete a series of tasks if they want to be given a seat on the High Council.”

           “And the High Council is what again?”

           “Rulers of the Universe,” he said.

           He said it with such nonchalance I had to repeat the words silently to myself to understand them. For a few moments I stared at him, trying to understand the insanity of this conversation.

           “So what you’re saying is… is that I need to pass tests in order to become… a god?”

           “Again, we don’t like that term, but yes, that is what I am saying.”

           I fell into silence, wondering if I had somehow taken too many pills and was having some insane dream. I would awake in the morning in my childhood bedroom, greeted by the sound of the beep of the heart monitor and the ending credits to whatever 1980’s action film my mother had put on. To test this theory I took a long, deep breath and my lungs inflated with ease. There was no struggle, no pain. For the first time in many years I could breathe. And then I knew that this simple act of life also meant the end of mine. I let the air out slowly and when I was done I looked back at the stranger with tears in my eyes.

           “Are there any other candidates?” I asked.

           The man shook his head. “No, there hasn’t been one in, oh, in human time, 3500 years?”

           My eyes widened.

           “Only six humans have ever been able to pass the tests. Yet, the Council saw something special in you, something extraordinary, so you are being given the chance. Again, I am sorry you had to be taken from earth so soon, but you are needed and we couldn’t wait.”

           “And if I fail?” I asked.

           The man shrugged again. “You go to where the other humans go when they die. It’s no big deal. You are not punished, so don’t worry.”

           “Do I have to do this?”

           The man tilted his head to the side and a coy grin crept over his face one more. Above the mass of gray hair that was his beard, his eyes twinkled. “No, you don’t have to do anything. But you have been chosen. Of all the humans that have lived on earth in the past several centuries, no one has been able to catch the eye of the council as you did. The cancer was a test, a way to prove yourself, and you passed.”

           “I didn’t though, I wasn’t able to defeat the cancer. It killed me.”

           The man brushed my words away with a wave of his hand. “Well yes, you were never intended to survive the cancer, that wasn’t the test. It was to show how you would handle the disease, how it would challenge you, shape you, build you. And you passed the first stage. I am afraid each task will be harder than the last.”

           I tried to think of something harder to handle than cancer, but nothing came to mind. I looked behind me at the door we had entered. I could leave now and go back to the waiting room and find whatever it was that lay beyond this building. I could find peace and rest my tired soul. I slowly looked back to the man to find him staring at me. The smile had returned and he had placed both hands on the table in front of him again.

           “The choice is yours, Bailey. Yet, the Council chose you for a reason. You have something in you, something that we don’t often see in many humans. You have a kind heart, a gentle soul and a noble character. I think the universe needs you.”

           I turned away from the door and back to him. I gave a nod and in that moment said goodbye to the world I had always known. Maybe I would see it again someday, but that was past now.

           The man smiled again. “Excellent. Ready to get started?”