For centuries, scientists have been aware of a particular class of experiences, and for just as long, they have been befuddled by them.

The experiences themselves have been documented throughout history, and share some surprising cross-cultural commonalities. Many hypotheses have been put forward to explain them, most having to do with brain architecture and neural interconnections and how they may react under certain extreme conditions. Alas, because of the nature of these experiences, they are very difficult to study; they happen only when someone is near death, and at that time, studying brain imagery for the mechanism of a near-death experience should not be a physician’s top priority.

Not everyone who nearly dies has a near-death experience, but enough people have had them, with enough documented similarities between them, than many non-scientists take their existence as proof of an afterlife. And perhaps they are. Or perhaps the hardcore materialists are correct, and they are simply how people who came incredibly close to death interpret, after the fact, the random, transient flickers of brain activity that was all that was left of them, before they somehow came roaring back to life – a story made up about a dying dream that takes some odd input and imputes meaning where none exists.

Nobody knows which is true, and it isn’t really important to the point of this story. What is important to the story is that as Alex Carey’s body was being carted into the Human Treatment Wing of South Naesavarna Trauma Hospital, Alex Carey had the sensation that he was not inside of it.

That Alex was experiencing a near-death experience should not be surprising; after all, he was dead. At least, he was by the standards that would have applied on the 21^st century Earth from which he had been kidnapped. He had already passed a point at which the doctors of his youth would have declared him beyond hope. Of course, Alex was not on 21^st century Earth, he was on 22^nd century Jutuneim, and the doctor who was treating him, a middle-aged human with an Eastern Prairie Avalonian accent, had just begun to fight for her patient’s life.

(He knew this doctor, though not well; she was originally from Gla, a brain surgeon that Nick thought highly of. They’d met at some Dahntnee Memorial Hospital fundraising events. Nick had said he wanted to recruit her to help develop care facilities in the Empire. Looked like he had.)

He heard her speaking in Jotnar to her underlings, he didn’t catch it all, but a few terms were the same in Archavian and Jotnar – “hypoperfusion,” “global stroke,” “accelerating ischemic injury” – basically them discussing the fact that his brain had been deprived of oxygen due to him having been stabbed a whole bunch. They were going to get blood into him, and cortexifan; the doctor seemed to think she could still save him.

He was surprised to find himself unconcerned about whether she could or couldn’t; as noted, he felt like he was observing this from outside his body, though not exactly — it wasn’t so much that he was floating outside of it as it felt like he had slid sideways into a dimension that exists right next to ours.

It felt like a nice place.

He felt like he should keep going into it.

He turned around. (Well…what he did exactly and what turning around meant is not really something he could describe. Perhaps because these were just the dying disjointed embers of the mind of Alex Carey, or perhaps because this was a plane above our existence; again, it’s not important.)

He felt the room recede, and felt darkness surround him, and felt a pinprick of light before him, which suddenly expanded into a brilliant tunnel of white that surrounded him, and he was within it.

There was someone there with him.

He couldn’t describe them, exactly; they were part of the light, but separate from it. A distinct thing. A person. He didn’t know if they were human or Titan or something else; he knew that wherever and whatever this was, such distinctions didn’t matter anyhow.

“Hello, Alex,” the being said.

“Hi…uh…whoever you are,” Alex said.

“Who do you think I am?” the being asked.

“I honestly don’t know. An angel? God? An afterlife processing clerk? Pryvani, maybe?”

“All of those, perhaps, and none of those, exactly,” the being said.

Alex tried to understand, then decided he wasn’t really meant to. “All right. So…I went into the light, so…I’m dead, then? They can’t save me?”

The being smiled, which was odd because it didn’t really have a face or body or anything but more light. “You are clinically dead, but that does not mean you are yet deceased; body and soul do not separate easily.”

“So I’m going to be okay?”

“They do not separate easily,” the being said, “but in the end, they always do.”

Alex considered this, and nodded. “I suppose so. So…I’m having a near-death experience?”

“That depends,” the being replied, “on whether you die. If you die, then you are having a death experience.”

“What are my chances? I mean, either’s fine,” Alex said, and he realized that he meant it; he was at peace with any outcome.

“The doctor thinks you have a fifty-fifty chance of living, though there’s only a 10 percent chance of that,” said the being.

Alex paused a beat, then said, “Wait a moment. That’s a line from The Naked Gun.”

“It is,” the being said.

Alex frowned. “Maybe this isn’t a near-death experience. Maybe I’m dying, and I’m telling myself jokes to keep from getting too depressed.”

“It is the kind of thing that you would do,” the being said.

“That is true,” Alex said. “Okay, if this is a near-death experience, don’t I get a ‘this is your life’ highlight reel? If so, can I order up a lot of Rixie in it?”

“You do. And you do not have to ask for Rixie to be in it; she is the most significant character in it, other than you.”

Alex suddenly felt a poking at the back of his mind; he opened it up, and in a flash, he was overwhelmed with memories of his very long life. Good memories – the birth of his sister, his daughter, his granddaughter. Marrying Rixie. Meeting Rixie – waking up and staring at an enormous boot attached to a beautiful woman, and trying to make sense of it. Mixed memories – the night he and Rixie got engaged, which started with him having to convince her that she hadn’t wrecked his life. Finding Ryan, but too late to save his mother. His joy at having Ryan home, only to feel despair at how badly his son had been maimed. And terrible memories – The soldiers coming to tell his mother that his father was dead. Rixie having her throat shot out. Vasha…the horror of Vasha.

Standing between an assassin and Rixie, and being carved up bit by bit, so that Rixie could survive.

They all came to him in an enormous, crashing wave, far too much to process and yet he felt like he had remembered it all, with perfect clarity and joy. Because the bad parts paled in comparison to the good. It was an incredible life. He was so grateful, so grateful that it was his.

He felt as if he was crying, though he was without a body, or perhaps, he was flickers of consciousness inside a body he did not control. The being nodded to him, which again should not have been possible.

“So is this the afterlife?” Alex asked. “Is it Heaven? It…it isn’t Hell. There’d be no happiness if it was Hell.”

“Until your fate is decided, I will not confirm anything,” the being said. “I may not exist at all. As you said, this may be a comforting story you tell yourself as you die. Or it may be the afterlife. If you are dying, completely, then I would not lie to you and tell you it is the afterlife; that would be cruel. If you are truly transitioning to another state, well…I cannot confirm it, because it is important that there be doubt about what exists after you exit the living world.”

Alex understood immediately. “If we knew there was something after, knew it for sure – I may have just been murdered. And that was by someone who didn’t know if I would just stop existing, or if there was something more. It would have been much easier for him to kill if he thought it was just a transition; much easier for me to not fight if I didn’t fear that there was nothing after death.”

“Exactly,” said the being. “If you return to life, you will never be sure whether you dreamed this, or whether it happened. Similarly, if you die, you may continue on with me to what is next…or this may be your final dream.”

Alex nodded. “If this is my final dream, it’s pretty good. Not perfect. But pretty good.”

“Your wife would be with you in a perfect dream,” the being said.

“Yeah,” Alex agreed. “But if she isn’t here, it’s because she’s alive. And either she isn’t here in Heaven yet, which means I did it and she survived, or it’s because I refuse to imagine her dead. Not even to comfort myself when I’m dead.”

“You are fortunate to have found her,” the being said. “As is she.”

“I know,” Alex said. “I know.”

There was a pause few moments, or eternity, before the being said, “While we wait…there are others for you to speak with.”

“Oh?”

The being was quiet; it seemed to have receded into the background. Into the foreground stepped a young man, perhaps in his early-to-mid-thirties. (Alex had long ago recognized that the age at which he thought people were still young meant that he was pretty old.) The young man had a lopsided grin, not dissimilar to Alex’s, and he wore a smart Army uniform of a style that had not existed for a century or two.

Alex looked at him, looked at him carefully. Looked at him as if he was seeing a ghost, which, of course, he was.

“Dad?”

“Hello, Alex,” said SSG Ryan Carey (deceased).

Alex didn’t care if this was a dream; he threw his arms around his father and hugged him as tight as he could, which was tightly indeed, given that they were non-corporeal beings.

“Dad!” Alex sobbed. “I…I missed you so much.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come back,” Ryan said. “I wanted to. But….”

“It’s okay,” Alex said. “I understand.”

“You do,” Ryan said. “Better now than you ever have, I’d bet. I am so proud of you. I always was, but you grew into a man…a man who was far better than I ever was.”

“I don’t know about that. I just wish you’d met your grandson,” Alex said. “He’s better than I ever was.”

“Ryan. You named him for me, I know,” Ryan said. “I know of him. He is a fine man, and I am honored to be his grandfather, even if I never knew him. I also know about Asteria. And Lexie. And of course, Rixie. Son…I told you when you were still a kid, the most important thing you can do is choose your wife well. And you did.”

“That is a lovely thing to say, Ryan. I never knew you told Alex that.”

Alex broke away from hugging his father to turn and embrace the woman who had joined them.

“Mom, oh, it’s good to see you. I’m sorry I didn’t come back. I wanted to, but….”

“You didn’t have a choice,” Melissa said, hugging him back. “I was so glad to hear that you weren’t dead, that you didn’t beat me here. And then, when I found out the life you were living…I only wish I’d been able to meet Rixie. I’m glad Emily was.”

Alex broke the hug to grab his dad’s hand, and he said, “That…uh…dad, you know about Mike, right?”

His parents laughed. “Of course I do,” Ryan said. “He’s a fine fellow. I’m glad your mother was able to find him. I’m glad you were able to get along with him. That you didn’t resent him.”

“I…did, a bit,” Alex said. Melissa shook her head.

“No, Alex, you just missed your dad,” Melissa Carey Torgerson said. “Mike and I knew that. I missed your dad too. I was very glad to see him again when I got here. And you’ll find…well, you’ll find that your perspective changes when you’re dead. It’s….”

Alex could hear the throat-clearing of the being behind him, and Ryan chuckled. “Right, you’re not dead yet. Could be all a dream. Disclaimer disclaimed.”

“I don’t think it’s a dream. I’m not this creative,” Alex said. “But….”

“If I may interrupt,” the being said, “time does not move the same here as it does in life. Perhaps because your brain is finally dying completely; perhaps because here is not there. But we are quickly approaching a moment when your fate will be resolved. It is not entirely up to you, Alex, whether the doctors will be successful in repairing your body and brain. If they are not, it will not matter – whether you wish to die or not, eventually, everyone does. But if they are able to restore them to the potential for function, you would have some choice in the matter, and if they do…we must know if you wish to go back.”

Alex turned to his parents, and smiled. It would be nice to get to see them, see Mike – he’d been a decent stepfather after all – and see friends from Earth who had died before he’d returned to it. Not to mention that he’d love to tell Niall that they’d named a planet after him, catch up with Yamanu – and soon, Emily would be here, and eventually, Rixie would get here, and some day, Asteria….

Rixie.

Asteria.

They were back in the living world.

Rixie was alive. And while at that moment, the distinction didn’t matter that much to Alex when it came to him…he knew that the living world was quite as important as anything that came after it. And in that living world, Rixie would be in pain from losing him. And she’d feel responsible, and feel guilty, and she needed to not worry about him – because the people who were arrayed against her were so dangerous.

She needed him.

Asteria was little, still. You could lose your father and survive it – Alex had – but that did not mean it did not leave wounds. He owed her many years of parenting. Besides, he wanted to be there for as much of her life as he could. He knew that Rixie could handle it, but she would be better off if he was there.

She needed him.

They both needed him.

If.

“If I go back,” Alex said, “will I be so damaged that Rixie will have to care for me? That I become another person to take care of? Will I be a burden?”

“I cannot tell you that,” the being said. “But technology in your time is quite good at repairing damage. If you can survive the next week, you may well recover fully, or nearly so. Or you may be profoundly disabled. Or you may live only a few days before returning here. There are no guarantees, in life or after.”

“But there’s a chance I’ll be okay?” Alex asked.

“Yes. There is.”

“Good enough,” Alex said. “Mom, Dad…I love you both. I don’t want to leave, but….”

“You are our son,” Melissa said. “You would never leave your family if you had a choice. We love you for that.”

“My body was too damaged to have a choice,” Ryan added. “If I’d had one, of course I’d have come back. Just like you must go to Rixie and Asteria…if you can. We love you dearly. We will see you again.”

Alex nodded. “I’ve made my decision.”

The being smiled. “So you have. And so this dream is at an end. Whether completely, or just for now…that is something you will find out later.”

Alex felt himself waving goodbye, and felt the light departing him, felt himself streaming through the side dimension, felt his body slide onto his soul like he was putting on an old pair of jeans, just for a moment….

And then there was darkness.