Free Escaping Heaven by Cliff Hicks Page B

and Gardens… all dated April 1983.
    “ Why do you only have magazines from 1983?” Jake finally asked. “I wasn’t going to ask, but now I’m curious, considering I’ve been staring at them for who knows how long…”
    “ Oh, ah, that.” Gilbert had pushed many pages of Jake’s forms into odd corners of his desk, and when he’d run out of corners, he’d used sides, ends, drawers, and Jake was sure the man was trying to figure out some way to attach them to the legs. “Yeah, well, you see… they don’t exactly deliver magazines to the afterlife, so the only time we get new batches is when a postal carrier dies carrying some and brings them up to us.” He paused for a moment, glancing over at the magazines before looking back at the rat’s nest of papers. “You can tell it’s been a while since I’ve had one come through the office. You can imagine how much the processors cheer when they get them.”
    “ Why don’t you have one of those guys who gets new dead people, the whaddayacall’em, Cherubim, bring some up for you?” Jake asked, simply finding the subject a little baffling and trying to keep his head above water. “Just have the Cherubim take it from the carrier before he gets to processing, you know?”
    Gilbert’s head looked up at Jake as his hand slapped palm flat against the top of his desk. He stared Jake down for almost a minute (or so Jake guessed) before he broke out into a big toothy grin. “That’s brilliant! I should do that! I could even get some stuff for me to read, seeing how little I get out of this office these days. You know what? I’m gonna use a T- 38 form for you instead of the standard T- 36 . I know it doesn’t sound like much of a difference to you, but believe me, this sweet baby’s gonna cut down on your wait time more than you can believe. I can’t believe I never thought of that! I’ll bet Murray would be more than glad to snag me some magazines when he’s down there…” Gilbert kept talking, although Jake had stopped listening at that point.
    It was a strange concept to him. Jake wasn’t used to helping people particularly, but he seemed to be good at it here in Heaven, dealing with a problem simply because no one else had thought to do so. He didn’t know exactly how he felt about that, but he knew the idea was a little odd to him. Hadn’t they been here a while? Shouldn’t they have had all the time in the world to think about it? Strange, it was all very strange and there was nothing else Jake could say to himself about the matter.
    Gilbert was shifting paper around excitedly now. It was almost as though he was enlivened, excited by the prospect of something changing.  The very concept of something different seemed to have invigorated him. “Yes sir, there’s gonna be new things in this office soon! Okay, Einstein, your paperwork is all processed. You’re set to go to tier thirty-seven. If, after a few decades, you find you’re getting a little bored, you can put in for a transfer to tier twenty-one, but just remember that tier transfers are irreversible, and you can’t go back to a tier you’ve already been to for at least one century. We try to make Heaven as great a place as we can for as many people as we can, but nobody’s perfect. It may take you a little while to get your groove. Don’t worry about that. That’s normal. Everybody goes through that. Don’t let it get to you. We’ve seen a relative spike lately in P.A.D.S. and we’re working to find solutions for it, but until we do, you just sort of have to ride it out.”
    “ P.A.D.S.?”
    “ Post-Ascension Depression Syndrome. One of the fancy headshrinkers up here came up with it a few decades ago. Catchy, isn’t it?” Gilbert said with a broad smile as he was pulling together seemingly random sheets of paper and stuffing them into a manila folder. “Anyhow, if you start to feel what you think might be the onset of P.A.D.S. then you should notify one of the regional