Better for the bottom line

John Crowley had attended many board meetings in his life, but he had never been in a whiter room than he was in now. In fact he had never seen anything so blindingly white, and it took his eyes several moments to adjust. He rubbed them briefly before he could see, and it was at that moment he realized he was holding a little black book. How odd.

Two enormous glass towers stood in front of him. Encased in the glass was an old pearly gate, barely visible beneath the sheen of the glass. John looked upwards to see how far up it went. The sky was perfectly white and without end, and the towers stretched upwards tapering to the size of a pin.

When he looked back at eye level there was a man standing in front of him. He was dressed in an immaculately pressed suit bearing an enormously eager grin. How very odd.

“Hello,” said the man in a well-practiced tone. “I would like to welcome you unto paradise.” He stretched out his arms and gestured into the sprawling whiteness. His smile was white and perfect.

How very very odd.

Then John finally realized: he was dead, and this was heaven. And if this was heaven, then the man standing in front of him must be none other than…

“Are you Saint Peter?” Asked John.

“No,” the man said, irritated. He got that question a lot. “I’m Jordan.”

The look of confusion on John’s face forced Jordan to continue explaining. “Yes, yes, yes. Heaven finally was able to raise their Series E, went public, et cetera, completely new leadership, new branding, logo pops a little bit more, margin improvements, whole nine yards.

“Now if you would please follow me.” Jordan turned and began walking at an inhuman pace towards the gate.

John began to feel a sense of dread. The last thing he remembered was sitting on the porch of his beach house in the Florida Keys. The calm aqua ocean stretched out in front of him, and the morning sun warmed his face. It had been day one of his retirement. He had planned to work on his novel that morning before heading out fishing later that afternoon. He recalled the sense of delight at the thought of being able to do that for many, many years to come. And he had died on the first day of his retirement? Un-fucking-believable.

As they passed through the Pearly Gates, the renovations that Jordan had mentioned became more and more obvious. The streets had been torn up on account of their gold and replaced with asphalt. The river of life could now barely be called a brook: it had been diverted for power far upstream. Instead of mansions lining the streets there were giant apartment complexes rising high into the endless white ceiling. Each building looked exactly the same.

“Hey hey hey wait a second,” John said to Jordan. “I have a few questions.”

Jordan continued onwards as if he hadn’t heard him.

“Do you seriously think I’m going to live in these lifeless buildings?”

“Depends on how your interview panel goes.” He replied curtly.

“Interview panel?”

“Yes. There are nine judges,” said Jordan most unhelpfully.

“Are they like, the board of directors or something?” Using that phrase made him want to vomit. He had dealt with them enough back on earth. And without even really trying to, John suddenly found himself blaming them for his untimely death...

“Dear Market, no,” said Jordan, as if John had asked the dumbest question anyone could have possibly asked at that moment. “They aren’t even Vice Presidents.”

“Wonderful. Is there anything else useful you can tell me?” replied John, doing his best to hide his frustration.

“Let’s see. They are strongly influenced by first impressions, stubbornly cling to their opinions for no other reason than it is theirs, weight heavily towards industriousness and tend to think in terms of multiples of invested capital.”

“Lovely,” John said, full of sarcasm.

“They are!” said Jordan, with no sarcasm whatsoever.

John suddenly remembered the little black book in his hand. “Hey why do I have this little book anyway?”

“Prior management had strict rules about bringing anything with you in the afterlife. Things are more lenient now. We allow everybody to bring their favorite possession with them, praise be to the Market.”

That made some sense; the part about the book at least. The book really was his favorite possession, in a way.

“Let’s have a look at that little book.” Jordan grabbed it from John’s hand and studied it. “Looks somewhat new, which is good.” He examined it further. “Okay, Moleskine, solid brand.” He handed it back to John thoughtlessly.

“Will they like it?” John asked.

“Be surprised if they did.”

Jordan led John up to a glass building with heavily armed security guards: they were ex-Green Berets sporting sunglasses and submachine guns. Above the revolving doors was a very slick, newly-redesigned logo that read, ‘First Bank of Heaven.’

They entered. The guards didn’t so much as bat an eye at them. They walked to the elevator at the back of the building. Jordan turned to John and said, “Your interview will be on the ninety-ninth floor. Good luck.” And before John so much had time to think, Jordan turned and left.

“Wait wait wait - do you have any other advice for me?” John yelled as Jordan walked away.

“Just be yourself!” Jordan shouted over his shoulder.

Which John knew to be the absolute worst interview advice imaginable.

When the doors dinged open on the ninety-ninth floor, John found himself in another blindingly white room with pillars spaced ten feet in every direction. Immediately upon exiting the elevator, he was faced in front of a panel who sat on an elevated bench, much as our most blessed earthly judges do.

“In the name of the Market, fiat currency and compounded interest, Amen,” said the leader, standing in the middle.

“Amen,” they all replied in unison. The nine of them sat down altogether. They all looked the same and very similar to a board of directors: male, white, old-ish but somehow still vigorous, and with heads full of silver hair.

“Ah, who do we have here?” said the leader.

“John—John Crowley.”

“Well Mr. Crowley, we have your dossier here, and we have just a few clarifying questions…”

“Before we begin,” said John, “I’d like to thank the panel for having me.” He paused. Nothing but piercingly judgmental silence answered him. He cleared his throat and continued: “I was wondering, if I pass, do I get the, uh, privilege of staying here?”

“Staying here?” the leader said, affronted. “You will get the privilege of advancing our company’s mission.”

“And that is?”

The leader hesitated a second. He opened his mouth but abruptly stopped. He turned and looked at those around him. He spoke in a vigorous whisper. “What was the theme again this year? ‘Make it our own?’ No, that was last year. ‘One Heaven’? No, no no, that was scrapped.’” He thought for a moment longer. “Ah right! ‘Pareto Efficiency.’”

“‘Pareto Efficiency,’” announced the leader to John as if he had known it all along.

“Well I would be honored,” John said. “But in the unfortunate event I don’t pass; will I, uh, go to, ah, you know." John pointed downwards to the floor, but none of the interview panel indicated they understood. He opted for bluntness instead. "You know, Hell?”

“Hell no,” said the leader. It took several seconds before a few of his more sycophantic aides manufactured laughter. “We don’t send anyone there anymore, you see. Bad for business.”

“Right. Well, suppose I pass and do well and all, uh, ‘what’s in it for me,’ you know what I mean?” He added a nervous laugh to soften the landing.

“Great question,” said the leader. “Should you prove your value-add, you’ll be promoted, and those who prove themselves worthy enough will be eligible to apply to the next heaven.”

“Is that also, run, by, uh, erhm—”

“Our firm?”

“Yeah.”

“They are owned by a different holding company, unfortunately,” the leader said defeatedly.

At least there was some light at the end of this tunnel, thought John. Maybe if he played his cards right he could get out of this place.

“So,” the leader began, seriously now. “You’ve had quite the successful career. What was the most important thing that got you started down that path?”

John thought for a moment. “The twenty-thousand dollars my grandma left me when she died.”

“Ah yes, it says here you were able to found your own business with that money?”

“That’s right,” said John.

Which was a blatant lie. In truth, he had worked on his novel and hadn't done a damned thing in the way of income generation. Those twenty thousand dollars lasted him one glorious year before he had to find a real job.

“But that didn’t work out,” said the leader.

“No, it didn’t, but I learned a lot of valuable lessons which really set me up for my later success.” Which was maybe even a bigger lie.

“I see,” said the leader. He frowned slightly as he flipped a page of John’s dossier. “And you worked as a ah, journalist, as they call it?” He couldn’t even say the word without distaste.

“Yes.”

“And you did that because...?”

John had done so, obviously, to advance his dream of being a writer.

“I had an idea to found my own blog—”

John knew he had mis-stepped. A hush of harsh whispers echoed throughout the interview panel.

“Not much money in blogging…”

“No of course not,” John said quickly. “But at the time there was much promise with bitcoin and artificial intelligence opportunities, big data, machine learning.” He cringed inwardly. Outwardly he sported the confidence of most dashingly daring of the robber barons.

“I see.” There was a very long pause. The sound of the leader flipping through his dossier pages pealed like thunder. “Hm,” said the leader. He looked up at John. “Well obviously it was a good choice. You were Vice President just a few short years later.”

“That’s right,” said John, with an enormous sigh of relief. He spent the remaining time with them dodging questions like why he passed on a promotion (longer commute and thus less time to work on his novel). Or why, much later in his career, his investment fund had poured so much money into an obsolete publishing business (you can probably guess). Well anyway, he never did end up finishing his novel, or even really starting it: he died the very day when he finally had the time to devote to it.

“One final question,” said the leader, his tone jovial now. “We were all wondering. Of all the things, you bring that little black book up here. Your favorite thing! Well I gotta ask, what’s in it?”

John looked down and opened the pages. Inside were years’ worth of notes detailing characters and potential plots, themes and, though he never quite figured out what a motif was, there were probably definitely motifs in there as well. For a passing moment he thought about coming clean and telling them the truth, but then he remembered the best advice anyone had ever given him: don’t be stupid.

“Any time I won some sort of victory over my competition, no matter how small, I wrote it down. I noted the time and place and the nature of it. I lived for those moments.” He smiled the fakest smile of his second life thus far.

He walked out of the interview panel with high marks. And though the nature of his work would be different than back on earth, it was going to be essentially the same. And maybe in the next life he’d finally have time to finish his novel. But probably not.