I am driving home from the office. It is a calm and pleasant day. I come to an intersection and I see that I have the green light so I proceed. But suddenly I hear a horn to my left and I turn my head and I see an SUV coming right at me and then there is a crashing sound and then there is nothing.
I am standing in a dim and filthy city street at night. I am not hurt. I am still wearing my white shirt and dark green tie and navy blue pants and black shoes, and they are clean and undamaged. I look around, and see that I am in what can only be described as a red light district.
I am beginning to attract the attention of the inhabitants. At my left, a hooker is calling to me, and at my right a drug dealer is sidling toward me. I begin to walk away, affecting a grim calm expression. I am watching the ground in front of me, being careful not to step on any of the broken bottles or drug paraphernalia that litter this awful place.
But news of my arrival seems to travel faster than I do. Now shabby people of all kinds are coming out of the run-down buildings, calling to me, asking me to stop. I do not. I begin to run. I do not run with haste or panic, but with the practiced strides of a long-distance runner.
I set my pace and continue on. I do not make eye contact with anybody; I do not look left or right; I only focus my eyes on the road ahead of me. The road is always straight; it always continues and never turns. In this way I run for miles, always straight ahead. I do not allow myself to become fatigued. The only thing on my mind is leaving this awful city.
In time, I notice that the road is not so bad. There is less trash and less filth. I look around. The buildings here are in better shape, and the people here are cleaner and more elegantly dressed. But there is still an air of idle decadence. People are still moving about aimlessly. I see no productive work; everyone seems to be living only to search for pleasure. But they are no longer trying to stop me; I am simply being ignored.
I return my focus to the road ahead and keep jogging. I am not thinking about much except avoiding people and other obstacles. But I do notice that the light is changing. The sky is brightening and now I see a sunrise. I keep jogging and now the morning sun is shining even though it has only been a few minutes.
As this happens, I notice that I am in an older, nicer part of town. I am jogging down a tree-lined avenue of brownstone houses. There are also shops and businesses, quaint old-fashioned places with people moving purposefully in and out.
These people are similarly improved. They are wearing a mix of clothing, from fine suits to rumpled overalls, but everyone seems cleaner and more pleasant. They are also reacting differently. Instead of trying to stop me or ignoring me, they are waving to me pleasantly, wishing me a good day.
I see a man selling one-pint glass bottles of apple juice from a cart on the street and I realize that I am thirsty. I check my pants to see if I still have my wallet and I do. I stop running for the first time in several hours and approach the vendor and ask him how much the juice is.
"Two bits a bottle, sir, the perfect thing to keep you on the road."
I give him a dollar and ask for four bottles. He gives them to me in a brown paper bag and thanks me. I start to walk down the road again, holding the bag. I finish one bottle quickly and put it in a trash can.
This is actually a nice place. I am walking through the city at a good pace and enjoying the scenery. But I do not want to stop. I have seen a pattern now. The more I travel, the better things get.
I do not want to be in a city of any kind, and I am encouraged by the pattern of the environment. Where I started, everything was dark and surrounded by sterile steel and cement, a monolithic city center. But here there is light, and vegetation. The buildings are smaller, and the city is thinning out. I know that I can make it to the country.
I drink a second bottle of juice, find a trash can for it and the bag, and then put one bottle in each back pocket. It is somewhat clumsy, but it leaves my hands free and I can start to run again. I do, with renewed energy from the sugar and water in the juice.
As I jog the miles away, I begin to think about what where I am. I remember the car accident, and I wonder if I am alive or dead. Is this some kind of coma-induced dream, where I must follow the path in order to fight for life and wake up? Or is it an afterlife, where I must escape from hell to reach heaven? Either way, it is clear that the road ahead holds better things. I resolve to keep moving until I cannot move any more.
The miles go by as I run at a steady pace. I am growing more and more tired even as my surroundings are nicer and nicer. I have finished all of the apple juice. The empty bottles are still in my pockets but I cannot find a proper place to throw them away. I am actually tempted to toss them by the side of the road but I know that would be wrong.
I am in an old-fashioned farming town now. There are wooden buildings with architecture that must be from the seventeenth century. The people are wearing clothing from the same time period, and they wave to me. It looks like a simple, honest place, but I know that I can keep going if I can get food and water.
I wave to a cheerful-looking young man and he comes over and starts to walk alongside me.
"Good morning, stranger. Would you like me to walk with you?"
"Do you know where I might get something to eat and drink?"
"Certainly, sir, I can get them for you. You just keep walking, and I will catch up.
He runs into a building ahead of me. I walk slowly past it, and after about a minute he comes back out with a hearty meat and cheese sandwich and a big clay jug. He also comes out with a small crowd.
An old man says, "I bet you want to know about this place. Save your breath; I will tell you. As you may have guessed, this is the afterlife. You land at the beginning and you start walking. The place where you go to sleep is the place where you deserve to be. That is true the first time you go to sleep, and every night after that."
A middle-aged woman spoke now. "You really are a sight for sore eyes. It has been months since we saw a new face. In ages past, the path was shorter. People reached our town more often. But this world expands whenever a new soul comes to rest. It must, to make room. And when it does, the path gets longer. But we would never try to stop you, no matter how much we might want to. We see that you can go further. So we will enjoy this time while we can walk with you."
I walk with them as I eat and drink. When I am done, I hand the jug back to the young man, and also the apple juice bottles. I ask a question. "Why was the beginning so much worse than your town? Bad people have existed throughout time."
The old man spoke again. "Once people sleep, they cannot go forward. But they can go backwards. Those who seek only pleasure will drift backwards even as the world grows, leaving the calm and patient souls in the forward areas."
"And as you have doubtlessly noticed, the newly created part of the world is made from the minds of the people who enter. It holds all of the wonders that have just been developed. This often tempts people to go back."
I see that the crowd is thinning. More and more people stop, held back by some force. Finally there is just me and the old man, and soon he says, "This is as far as I can go. Godspeed."
I keep walking. The food and drink fortifies me, but I am still tired. All is a blur. I see cozy cabins and gardens and forests. People sometimes run out to give me water, but we do not say much. They smile at me and urge me onward.
But the more I travel, the fewer people there are and the more wild the world becomes. But it is a perfect wilderness, with fruit trees and beautiful flowers everywhere. A soul could rest here and be content forever. But still I walk on, and sometimes even jog, because I can.
And then, after a long stretch with no people, I see her. She is the most beautiful and perfect woman I could possibly imagine. I know this because she is here, so far into the world.
She runs up to me and hugs me. I almost collapse in her embrace but she supports me and keeps me on my feet. She takes my arm and we walk and talk. She is smart, she loves life, she lifts my spirits with her presence and her words. She has a great strength of character but also a great humility. We talk of many things.
She is Sophia of Thessalonica. She has not seen any soul in over a thousand years. She loves me deeply. If I may flatter myself, she loves me for the same reasons as I love her. Yet she urges me on.
I want to stay with her. I want that more than anything else I have ever wanted. She is perfect. Her encouraging of my onward journey only makes her more perfect. She is willing to sacrifice her only chance of companionship in a thousand years, just to help a stranger on his bold trek into the unknown.
But I keep walking. Why? Perhaps it is because I know that I can go back. If I should fall asleep in the most perfect place imaginable, I would still go back to her. But I want to see what there is to see.
Soon, just before I am ready to collapse in sleep, I come to a wall of light. I summon my last reserve of will and force myself forward into it.
I am laying on my back on a cold steel bed in a small metal box. I am wearing nothing except a flimsy sheet. It is dark. Yet, somehow, I am no longer tired. Awareness returns to my mind, even though my body is very cold and slow.
I scoot forward until my feet touch a cold steel surface. Then I kick it. I am hoping to make noise and attract attention, but the surface buckles. I see light around the edges and see that it is a door. I kick harder, and the door comes off its hinges with a great crunch and falls to the floor with a clatter.
More light comes in. I see that the bed is on sliding rails. I push against the ceiling, and the bed slides forward. I move into a harsh cold room of metal and ceramic. It must be a morgue. There is nobody here but the dead. The clock on the wall reads 3:18.
I get up and find a lab coat and put it on. I am still in the habit of moving, so I follow the fire exit signs out of the building into the cold night. And then I keep walking, without a destination or plan.
I do not know exactly what I am and what I can do. I have not experimented with my new form. But I know that I am a cold corpse walking. I have traveled the path of death to its conclusion in life. I know that I could do it again. I am immortal.
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