John wasn't sure how long it had been since he died. Nothing ever changed on the seemingly infinite plane of nothingness. He hadn't aged, he and everyone else there looked exactly the same as the first day he arrived. The force of time had no meaning in the vast emptiness. He was moving slowly up in a line where he could see no end and no beginning. He held what looked like a massive deli ticket that had the number 8,456,435,434 printed on it.
The line contained people from all walks of life who had died in a variety of different ways. Geography often played a rather large role in this. Of course, there were people who had simply made it to a ripe old age and had gently drifted off into death, but there seemed to be fewer and fewer of those arriving. Far more often John was meeting victims of war, famine, disease.
There were also plenty of people who had decided to expedite their addition to the line. John had met some them, too many to count. In fact, just in front of him,…