“So I’m dead, you exist, and my relatives were right.”
“About my existence.”
“Good. Put that in writing.”
“Would that help?”
“No, they wouldn’t read it. Who’s with my wife?”
“Friends and Family. Your daughter is with her.”
“Are they all right?”
“Not yet.”
“Send me back.”
“You’ve reached Vaikuntha. People spend their entire lives praying for this.”
“Would one of them like my place?”
“You haven’t heard what I’m offering.”
“I’d also like it noted that I got here without praying. There are people who will find that very annoying.”
“Your beliefs weren’t the difficulty.”
“What was?”
“You sometimes mistook avoiding an unpleasant conversation for kindness. Other times you actively pursued difficult topics.”
“Can’t slip anything by you.”
“But you tried to do right by people.”
“I thought that was the useful part of the religion. Be decent. Help where you can. Also, for the record, I went to all the temples, did all the ceremonies.”
“Despite not believing.”
“She wanted company. I didn’t think the temple queue needed to hear my views on organised religion.”
“You have nothing to defend.”
“Then why can’t I go home?”
“Because you might prefer what’s here. No fear. No obligations. You would want for nothing.”
“I’d like a laptop. A nice one preferably.”
“You wouldn’t want a laptop.”
“Then I should make my position clear before you start improving me.”
“You would be free of the need to keep doing things.”
“When I said I was tired, I meant I’d like a weekend. I didn’t mean I wanted my interests removed.”
“Your weekends didn’t seem to help.”
“They kept putting things in them.”
“Who did?”
“Some of them were me.”
“Most.”
“Yes, all right. I liked taking my daughter out. I liked seeing people. I’m not asking you to clear my calendar.”
“What are you asking?”
“To go home. Have dinner. Find out what happened at school. Sit with my wife. And later, when everyone’s asleep, make something.”
“What sort of thing?”
“Anything that strikes my fancy. A little dictation program that kept my voice on my own computer. Better school notes for my daughter. I had stories to finish.”
“Several.”
“I’d appreciate some discretion about the drafts.”
“You already spent your working life building things.”
“I spent a fair amount of it discussing what other people should build. Then explaining why they hadn’t. It was nice to make something myself.”
“Your wife didn’t always understand what you showed her.”
“No. She’d come over and say, ‘Is it supposed to do that?’ I’d say yes. She’d say good.”
“That was sufficient?”
“She’d come over. Of course it was sufficient.”
“You could have anything you wanted here. Instantly.”
“Could I make it?”
“You could have it.”
“I don’t know how else to explain the difference to someone who made the whole fucking universe.”
“That took some time.”
“I’m not complaining about how long it took.”
“You have complained about the result.”
“I live in Bangalore. Some of that feedback was justified.”
“You really would go back to the same life?”
“Yes.”
“Knowing you would eventually die again?”
“I knew that the first time. It wasn’t my favourite feature, but I accepted it.”
“Very well. I’ll return you to the moment before.”
“Will they remember losing me?”
“It won’t have happened.”
“So she won’t have to tell our daughter.”
“No.”
“Thank you.”
“Before you go, you may ask for one gift.”
“You’ve already agreed to send me back.”
“I know. What else would you need?”
“There was something.”
“Go on.”
“I finally have these tools that could help me build the things I wanted. Sometimes I’d get more done in an evening than I used to manage in a month.”
“But?”
“I’d get everything ready. Everyone asleep. Work finished. Laptop open. And then it would tell me to come back on Thursday.”
“Could you not use another?”
“I did. Explained everything again. Paid for that one too. It told me to come back on Friday.”
“You spent your evenings doing this?”
“Some of them. I started saving the clever one for difficult jobs. Giving the easy bits to the cheaper one.”
“You were managing them.”
“I was trying to have a hobby.”
“And your last evening?”
“Wednesday. I was waiting for the allowance to reset.”
“You died waiting?”
“Yes. I assume they’re still billing me.”
“I could give you another thirty years.”
“I had Wednesday evening. I need more tokens.”