Interlude Six - The Waiting RoomDaniel was floating through a door. If this was the afterlife, he thought, it was quite boring. And not very interactive. The path he was following was a plain corridor, and he didn't seem able to move off it. each time he tried the path pressed back, gently at first but more insistantly if he kept trying. Almost suffocatingly insistantly.
"Name?"
"Daniel Christopher CrumpleSteel." He gave his name automatically. Perhaps it was the years of giving his name on request, but he could have sworn he felt a tiny press in his throat.
"Thanks. Means of death?" The receptionist barely looked up at him as she spoke, instead watching the tapping of her fingers on the keyboard.
"Umm, I just died, I guess. It just sort of happened when I was coming home from two of my daughters' graduations. I was ninty-six."
"Old age then. Take a seat, you'll be called when you've been processed."
"What do you mean, when I've been processed?" he asked.
"Well, we can't do you all instantly. This isn't the only waiting room, and we're short-staffed today as well. Worst of all Kelly isn't even properly ill, I saw her out last night. But anyway. Take a seat and you'll be called when you've been processed."
"I don't want to be processed!" He protested, but the press was driving him towards the seat anyway.
"You think I want to process you? I'm only here until I can get enough money to go to medical school. Take a seat please, Mr CrumpleSteel."
Daniel contined protesting as he was propelled towards the nearest seat. It wasn't an uncomfortable room, although sterile and neat in a slightly morbid colour scheme. There were books and magazines he'd never seen before, something which would normally have piqued his interest, but there were too many unanswered questions to concentrate.
As he sat, as calmly as he could in the situation, a few more people entered. One was in and out almost instantly ("Unlucky, I'd bet," said the receptionist), an old man who declared he'd been electrocuted and sat down without any fuss to read a magazine, and a brightly-coloured young woman.
"Means of death?" asked the receptionist in her flat tone.
"Jelly bean bush."
"No, seriously now. How did you die?" She tried again.
"I told you, I ate a jelly bean off a bush and then I died. I wasn't expecting it either, truth be told."
"I hope you're not kidding me, because that's not an option on the system and I'm going to have to ring head office. They'll sack me if it's a prank call."
"It's not, I'm telling you!"
Daniel thought he remembered the receptionist saying she hated her job anyway.
"Hello, can I speak to Tony please? Yes, it's Cathy from Waiting Room Eleven. I've got someone in, as Miss Saskia Hall, who says she died by jelly bean and I can't find it on the system." Cathy gave the bright ghost a glare, which she rapidly rearranged into a neutral expression as she listened to Tony on the other end of the phone. "Oh... right... so I click on 'override' and then enter it manually? Great. Thanks Tony, you're the best IT man ever!"
"Told you so."
"Take a seat and you'll be called when you've been processed."
"I told her so, and I can't believe she didn't agree with me!" The bright ghost, Saskia, came and sat in the seat next to Daniel, constatly muttering under her breath. "You look like an old-age ghost," she said, this time aimed at him.
"What?"
"Like you died of old age."
"I did. Well, that's what they said over there." He gestured towards Cathy's desk.
"Ah, well, they could be wrong then. They're a bit useless up here."
"How do you know so much about it?" Daniel asked her.
"My grandad told me. He died last year. You see, there's options when you get up here. Sometimes someone from your family will put your urn out, so you'll get sent back home. My grandad was the only one that liked me though, so I'm not expecting that one. Or you can be put on a different world as a ghost, or made alive again and put on a different world, and I think there's some other options but he doesn't know what they are. Apparently sometimes it takes days to be processed. Days and days. There was a guy in here when Grandad was up that had been three weeks and they still didn't know where he was going. He'd had the entired catered menu by that time."
"There's catering?" That didn't seem like the most important question, but it was the one that came out of Daniel's mouth.
"Yeah, and the stew is to die for, my grandad said. Literally. Get it?"
Daniel laughed, because if he was going to be stuck with this girl for weeks he didn't want to be in her bad books. But she certainly liked to talk.
She was halfway through a tale about two of her sisters, which was making him painfully homesick, when a official-looking man entered.
"Mr Daniel CrumpleSteel?"
"That'll be me."
"This way please, you've been processed."
Daniel was handed a pink slip, which he didn't have a chance to read, and exited the room behind the man whose nametag proclaimed him to be Lucas Paul. Saskia waved cheerfully, and wished him a happy death. He was rather glad to be leaving her behind.
