The pictures on the wall behind the bed are proof of my obsession. There are hundreds of them, all condensed and organized by length into a single large canvas. Clicking on one of them will take me right into the next life.

“How does it work?”

“The theory is very simple,” he said. “First, you put your faithful old body inside a spaceship, then you send out coded messages, in the proper voice, to all the living things on earth, instructing them where and when the body will be collected, and how and when it will be taken away. It’s magic, my friend.”

“I don’t quite follow the logic,” I said.