Thirty people shuffled into the conference room. Some were dazed, eyeing their surroundings in awe. Some were in shock, patting their bodies, exploring and looking for injuries where there were none. Still others were pretending composure, while their eyes darted cynically, searching for the key to the hoax.


    There was one figure whose face displayed no shock, no uncertainty. He was otherwise unremarkable. He wore a light blue shirt and black pants, appropriate for business casual at a workplace that is more business than casual. His outfit was at the midpoint of impeccable and disheveled. His hair the midpoint of full and bald. His face the midpoint of cherubic and gaunt.


    He spoke thusly: “Welcome, everyone. Please, gather round, take a seat, there should be enough for everyone.”


    The bewildered masses sat, and indeed, there were exactly enough seats for all thirty of them. They were all dressed in identical off-white outfits that fit each person comfortably. They looked at each other, searching for familiar faces and finding none. Many avoided looking out the window, where an endless expanse of gray nothingness loomed. It was not a gray landscape; it was a void, and the eyes of many avoided it.


    Only the man in business casual remained standing.


    “You may be wondering what is going on and where you are. By now, you have probably deduced that you have died and have left the earthly plane behind. But this new place is confusing to you. Why does it look like an office building, and not like what you imagined Heaven and Hell to be? And for you nonbelievers out there, you are probably wondering how there can be anything after death at all. Well, now I’m going to tell you the truth about the afterlife. Yes, you died. Yes, there is an afterlife. I am the angel Ciriel, and I’m in charge of this place. Please save your questions and religious objections for the end.”


    The man in business casual adjusted his glasses. Several people in the conference room had the thought that Ciriel looked a lot more like a middle manager than an angel, but none of them said so.


    “So basically the Big Guy Upstairs created the universe blah blah blah, you know how it goes, except then he kind of went on an indefinite sabbatical to who knows where, leaving us angels as the administrators of the afterlife. For the first million years we would observe people’s lives, judge their good and bad deeds, and sort them into Heaven and Hell accordingly. And of course we sent the vast majority of people to Heaven, because we are angels and we want people to be happy, even if they sinned a bit. Hell was reserved for the truly monstrous. But now there’s a bit of a problem, which is that Heaven is running out of space. This is all true, for as an angel I cannot lie." The one called Ciriel spoke with authority, because he knew from decades of experience that confused people will believe anything if you say it confidently enough.


    “And so, here are the rules. Every ‘dawn’ –” he did air quotes – “anyone in the Breakroom of Ascension will be sent up to Heaven, to experience maximum bliss for all eternity. The Breakroom is just down the hall and to the left, over there, it’s labeled, you can’t miss it. As for ‘dawn’, that just means whenever the big ol’ hourglass runs out; it should happen every five hours or so. But here’s the catch – there are thirty of you, and there are five slots available in Heaven. So once five of you ascend, the rest will be taken to Hell.”


    Silence in the conference room.


    “Now, even though I’m an angel or whatever, I’m not going to pretend to judge you. I’m going to leave that part up to y’all. It’s up to you lot to decide, according to whatever method you come up with, who you think is worthy to send up, and by extension, who will get sent down. Decide however you like. And take your time! If anyone dies in here they will automatically be sent to Hell, but that shouldn’t be too much of a concern because you don’t need food or water or sleep in the afterlife. Any questions? Great!”


    He gave no pause for questions whatsoever. “Anyway, good luck to you all, and I’ll see the lucky five of you up there! Toodaloo!”


    With that, a beam of blinding light poured from above, enveloping the man in business casual, and when the light faded and the people uncovered their eyes, the one called Ciriel had vanished, leaving the people in a bewildered silence.


    ~


    Everyone looked at each other. No one spoke for a minute, while everyone waited for the angel to return. When it became clear that Ciriel was gone, maybe for good, the looks became more awkward, eye contact avoided. No one seemed to want to speak first. No one wanted to be the first to stand up.


    Into this silence a voice spoke. “Okay, um, hi everyone! My name is Wendy, hi!” The ‘um’ was premeditated, meant to set the others at ease, to soften the force of a rhetorical expert. I’m just like you, the ‘um’ said, isn’t this a strange situation we find ourselves in, but by acknowledging the strangeness and awkwardness, we can bond and you can like and trust me.


    Wendy was dead, it was true, but that wouldn’t stop her from doing what she did best, her skills honed over decades of a corporate career: taking charge. She continued: “It seems we are all stuck in the same boat for now, so before we make any decisions, maybe we can all introduce ourselves? I can go first. Hi, I’m Wendy, like I already said! And we can go in a circle this way?”


    She indicated the next person, who was strategically chosen: a girl who was perhaps barely out of high school, who looked scared enough to obey Wendy and get the ball rolling.


    “Um, I’m Vivian,” the girl said quietly.


    “Nice to meet you, Vivian! And we can keep going around this way?” Wendy pointed.


    They followed the snaking path she indicated, each saying their name. Most people forgot most names, but Wendy did her best to remember them all. Knowing someone''s name was a form of power over them, and speaking it could show that you cared about them, that they should be on your team.


    “Awesome!” Wendy said, after everyone had said their name. Already, people were looking to her for what should happen next, which was just how she wanted it. “Great to meet you all. Now, I think we should figure out what to do. From what it sounds like, we are all dead, and we are in some sort of Limbo. And we can send up to five people up to Heaven. Does that sound right to y’all?”


    Nods around the conference room.


    A middle aged man with a big beard named Tyler said, “And the rest of us go to Hell, is what it sounds like.”


    “That’s my understanding as well,” Wendy replied. “So it seems the thing to do is, we need to figure out, as civilly as possible, how to determine who we should send up to Heaven. Obviously, what makes the most sense is to decide democratically, or at least to use a majority vote to decide how we are going to decide.”


    Wendy was a quick thinker, and already she was envisioning a bloodbath, where people fought and clawed their way into the limited spots in the Breakroom of Ascension. If that were the case, she was screwed. She was a tiny middle aged lady, and many here were much more physically imposing. But if she set them on the path to decide socially, through conversation and thought rather than physical prowess – well, manipulating people was what Wendy did best.


    “Hold up,” said an older man named Quenton. “Aren’t we being a little hasty? What if this is a hoax? It’s probably a hoax of some kind, right?”


    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    “It’s not,” said Tyler. “I died. I remember dying. This is definitely the afterlife.”


    “I remember dying too,” Wendy said, unwilling to cede control of the conversation. “I’m not going to ask y’all for the personal details of it, but do the rest of y’all remember dying too?”


    Nods around the conference room.


    “And, my body has been restored,” a young man named Thomas said. “I’m pretty sure we aren’t on Earth anymore.”


    Quenton looked a bit put out.


    “Hey, it still makes sense to ask the question,” a woman named Claire said to Quenton, her voice loud enough that everyone was supposed to hear. “And before we talk about deciding anything, shouldn’t we see if there is a way out of here?”


    Already, Wendy got a bad vibe from Claire. She thought Claire might resent Wendy’s role as leader, and that this could be a power move to gain control of the group and set them in a different direction. But Wendy was also self aware enough to consider that her bias against Claire might be because the other woman was demographically similar to her, but somewhat younger and prettier.


    “That makes sense,” Wendy said. “Let’s all move as a group, so that we don’t get separated. We have no idea what’s out there.” And if they split up, it would be easier for other leaders to emerge. Better to keep everyone together, where they could be observed and controlled.


    Together, they shuffled out of the conference room and explored the office.


    It was all on one floor. The conference room was adjoined to a huge main room, with a few cubicles in the middle, the sort that would be for secretaries in a nice office. And the people the secretaries served would be in the full offices, which surrounded the main room. There was a corridor that looped behind the conference room, dotted throughout with office rooms. Each office had a window to the same gray nothingness. There were no other people to be found.


    The breakroom was hard to miss. For one thing, it was the only room that was labeled, and for another, it had an empty water cooler and a large but empty fridge. The fridge was unplugged, and there was no sign of wall sockets. Now that Wendy thought about it, all the ceiling lights were off too, although there was a soft ambient lighting illuminating the whole office complex that seemed to come from nowhere.


    There were five chairs in the breakroom, surrounding a table, and it was generally agreed upon by the group that these corresponded to the five spots in Heaven that would activate at dawn. Dawn was a bit confusing, since there was no sun, but the group determined that dawn was in fact an arbitrary time, which would occur when the sand in the hourglass ran out.


    The hourglass was the most ostentatious feature of the building. It hung suspended from the ceiling, in the big open area between the cubicles and the Breakroom. Other than the gray void beyond the windows, the hourglass was the only thing that didn’t fit with the aesthetic of a standard office building. Sand slowly trickled out, but it would be hours yet before it fully drained.


    There were no doors out. No obvious way out of this building. No stairs up or down.


    They agreed that everyone would stay out of the Breakroom until they had made the determination of who to send to Heaven.


    Claire suggested they smash the windows and escape that way.


    “Into the void of nothingness?” Wendy asked incredulously. “What if that kills us all? More than we are already dead, I mean.” She wasn’t entirely sure if she was saying this because she believed it, or merely to push back against Claire.


    “It would be stupid not to look for a way out,” Claire said, “And this is the most obvious way.”


    “Ciriel said it’s either ascend to Heaven or go to Hell, and angel’s don’t lie,” said Peter. “We shouldn’t defy God and try to infiltrate the afterlife.”


    “But the angel also said that God wasn’t here anymore. And that if we don’t find a way out, that most of us are going to Hell,” Steven said. “If He isn’t here, I doubt He will mind us trying to find our own way. Especially because, I should hope that more than five of us deserve Heaven.”


    There were nods and murmurs of ascent. By now, most people had begun to realize that five out of thirty really wasn’t very good odds.


    “We should still be careful,” Wendy said, and this too got agreement.


    Eventually it was determined that they would take one of the wooden chairs from a cubicle and try with increasing strength to smash through the window. Two of the men would handle the smashing. As a precaution, everyone else sheltered in the conference room, in case this resulted in some sort of explosion or poisonous gas, in the hopes that sheltering might help.


    The men were Ryan, a tall dark and handsome guy, and Avery, a huge man who was incredibly buff and incredibly quiet. He had only spoken to share his name, and had merely stepped forward when they had discussed who would do the smashing.


    As Avery grabbed the chair, Wendy remembered what Ciriel had said: if they died in here, they were going straight to Hell. She hoped this wouldn’t kill them all, as she had an aversion to eternal torment.


    Ryan stood to Avery’s side, trying to look useful but unsure what he could contribute. Avery hoisted the chair and thrust it at the window. Wendy screwed her eyes shut, then after a second, opened them again.


    Nothing had happened.


    Avery drew back the chair again, and pushed it harder at the window.


    Nothing happened.


    Avery lifted the chair, positioned it carefully, then swung it with all his might at the window. He repeated this process a few times.


    Nothing happened.


    Eventually, Avery shook his head, and they all gathered around the window, which did not display so much as a scratch.


    “Looks like angels never lie, after all,” Wendy said, almost succeeding in masking her smugness.


    ~


    “So,” Wendy said, when they had all returned to the conference room to discuss next steps, as she called it, “We need to figure out how to figure out who to send to Heaven. Are we all good with deciding democratically – and I don’t necessarily mean deciding democratically who to send, although that is an option – I mean deciding based on a majority vote how we should decide who to send.”


    She had already said this, Lucas recalled. He didn’t begrudge her saying it again, just like he didn’t begrudge her taking charge. It made sense that someone would lead their discussion, and he saw no reason it should be himself or anyone else. Lucas nodded, as did the majority of people.


    “Great!” said Wendy. “Now, I’ll make the first suggestion, if y’all don’t mind, and suggest that we choose randomly who to send to Heaven. This is the fairest and simplest way. We can use the paper and pens from the cubicles, and there were trashbags in the trashcans, and I think they were clean, so we can draw names out of them if that works?”


    “Actually, I have a suggestion,” Lucas said. He was shy, and had never been comfortable in the limelight. He had read that the greatest fears of Americans were death and public speaking, and he agreed with that, but now that he had gone through the former, the latter was less intimidating, or at least should have been. He cleared his throat, which had gone dry.


    “I think we should all get to know each other. Share about ourselves, our lives, even our deaths, if we feel comfortable. Our deeds, our insecurities, our passions. Our relationships with ourselves, our families, our communities, and our religions and worldviews. And then, I guess we can vote, we can make the determination as humans, as moral agents, we can decide who is worthy. I know it might be uncomfortable to share so much with a bunch of random strangers – I know I would be uncomfortable – but I think it could be cathartic, too.”


    “Thank you for the suggestion, Lucas,” Wendy said. “Any thoughts from the group?”


    A man raised his hand, which created a precedent of hand raising, prompting a few more hands.


    “Okay, let’s go one at a time,” Wendy said, standing at the front of the room like a teacher, complete with a whiteboard behind her. She stood in the same exact position as Ciriel had. “First, Mark.”


    “I’m from America – probably a lot of you are – and in America, we value democracy. I support voting.”


    Wendy said, “Quick question, who here is from America? I expect most of us? Better question, is anyone here not from America? No, no one? Interesting. Well thank you, Mark. Trinity?”


    Trinity gave off the air of a sorority girl, the kind of person Lucas would have been friends with ten years ago, because he wanted everyone to think he was cool. “Yeah, I don’t think sharing our stories makes any sense,” she said, “Because people would lie. We would be incentivized to lie. Everyone would spin stories about how virtuous and deserving we are. We would wind up choosing not the most virtuous people, but the most devious. So I don’t think it’s a good idea.”


    “Um,” Lucas said, and Wendy nodded at him, giving him permission to speak. “I wasn’t planning on lying. Honestly, it didn’t even occur to me.” Trinity looked like she wanted to argue, so Lucas added: “Although, I suppose there is no way for me to prove that I’m telling the truth about that, either.”


    “Okay,” Wendy said, “Anyone want to respond?”


    The conversation continued for an hour or so, but by the end of it, no one was able to propose a method that made sense. Wendy called for a vote, and almost everyone agreed that random was the way to go.