What Really Happens When You Die?

Introduction

With some poking and prodding ChatGPT4 gives us a survey of various perspectives on death and what happens after.

[Note: ChatGPT is not a scholar. Nor is it a learned individual. ChatGPT is a large language model. This means that it will give us a response created as a construction of most likely words following words following words. I haven’t put in the time to verify each and every one of the facts in this particular chat session. That means you must either take these responses with a grain of salt. Or, you should put  in the work to verify yourself. Definitely don’t take a chat AI’s word for it. For myself I have taken this as a curiosity to be explored later on my own — as I am able.] Continue reading

An Interview with Dead Dick

(Speaking of UBIK, here’s an interview with Dead Dick. Courtesy of the Bardotown Gazette.)

Bardotown Gazette Reporter (BG): Dick, how do you like being dead?

Dead Dick (DD): Tell me the truth, did you really like your first beer or cup of coffee? Didn’t it take a bit of getting used to? Death, like beer and coffee, is an acquired taste. As it is now, I wouldn’t want to live without being dead.

BG: Have you been working on any new books since your terminus?

DD: I have made some furtive attempts at ghost writing. So far I have not been able to find any Lightsiders that could put themselves and their own interests aside long enough to get even a novella out. I shouldn’t make it sound so negative. I have a coup
le of good prospects even as we speak. The trick seems to be to let them think that they are stealing my ideas and style for their own purposes. You may see some pretty interesting material during the next few years. I only hope they can learn to spell, punctuate and use grammar. Don’t you know that it must be a law somewhere that “those who are able are not willing and those who are willing are not able.”

BG: Were you satisfied with your recent lifetime, Dick?

DD: As you know, I am many different authors scattered throughout history — much like fingers poking through a piece of paper. From one perspective they look independent. But, when one is aware of the “hand-ness” that connects them, the synchronicities of action and cooperativeness of efforts no longer looks miraculous or mysterious. It is taken for granted that the fingers of a hand will work in concert. My most recent sojourn into the Lightside was quite useful. However, I think the most satisfying was
that cave thing in France. To tell a story within the constraints of a single wall was quite invigorating. I just wish we’d had a better blue to work with.

BG: Do you have anything that you would like to relate to our Lightside readers?

DD: First of all, has it occurred to you that your experience of me is just ink on pressed wood pulp? If you look too closely (as with a magnifying glass) even this black and white existence is shown to be a semi-organized chaos of dots. It’s all in the reading.

 

Things to do until you die.

These are not things to do excessively to bring about de-de-death. These are things to do during that time period following the irrevocable realization that your life as you knew it is over.

There comes a time when the cosmos plays a particular dirty trick on you. Not a particularly dirt trick. Lord knows the cosmos has plenty of equally dirty tricks up its sleeves. This particular dirty trick is a certain specific trick. It might look like the following. Continue reading