Heaven Update
IDEA - 7-8-21
by
Patrick Ryan
Today is the day that everyone in Heaven has been waiting for: the release of Heaven 11. It's the most eagerly awaited update since Heaven XP.
Looking back on some of the past Heaven updates, I believe people focus too much on the mistakes, Heaven Millennium? It didn't even have sound out of the box until the first update. What about Heaven Vista? That 2006 version of Heaven is still booting up. And, of course, everyone remembers Heaven 8, when they removed the start menu; talk about confusion, I think it was the first thing Angels and Demons agreed on; Heaven 8 was dreadful!
Traditionalists will say, when Heaven replaced Peter with Cortana, it was all downhill from there. The update is taking place tonight, and everybody who dies on Earth after midnight will be immediately upgraded to Heaven 11. It's been a rough road; let's hope they get it right this time.
Henry Becker's fortunes are finally beginning to improve. He's finally decided on a college major; teaching high school English is now his life's ambition. He hangs out with great friends who he meets at Micky's Pub for a couple of beers on a regular basis. Henry is content, optimistic, and excited about the future.
Henry decides to walk instead of taking public transportation after leaving Micky's one night. It's almost 11:50 p.m., and the streets are as deserted as a movie theater on Super Bowl Sunday. As Henry walks towards the park, a stranger appears out of nowhere and approaches him with a knife pulled in his hand.
"Give me all of your money and your phone," the man yells.
"Sure, sure, just keep it cool. You can have all of my money, my cell phone, and whatever else you want," Henry responds.
The man becomes irritated as Henry struggles to get his wallet out of his pocket.
"Come on, I said now," the man cries as he slashes the knife over Henry's arm.
The wallet falls to the ground, and on his way up, he throws it over the man's shoulder and rushes away in the opposite direction. Looking behind him, he notices the man is enraged and begins to dash in his direction.
Henry accelerates swiftly in the dark and attempts to cross the street; unfortunately, Henry did not see the bus, which collides with him directly as he crossed the street. The man who was after him comes to a halt, glances to his left and right, and fades into the backdrop of the gathered crowd.
All Henry sees is a spinning wheel with the words
"Working on Updates, 1% completed, Do not turn off your afterlife; this will take a while."
Looking to his left and right, he notices other people who had died like him. To his right, there's an elderly Asian man, nearly 100-years old, who doesn't speak English. To his left, there is a young woman; she couldn't be a couple of years older than he was.
"Can you tell me what's going on? How did we get here?" The woman inquires.
"I believe we're dead; the last thing I remember was being struck by a bus, and that doesn't usually end well. My name is Henry; what's yours?" he inquires.
"My name is Sue, and the last thing I remember is eating at an Italian restaurant. I can't think of anything else," she says.
"Did you choke?" Henry inquired.
"I don't believe so; we were eating this soup called panocchie. There's nothing to choke on, though now that I think about it, I'm allergic to shellfish, and that damn menu was all in Italian. Oh, yeah, I'm dead," she confirms.
Sue and Henry talked for hours, which turned into days, which turned into weeks. They discussed their ambitions and dreams, the people they spent their lives with, and their regrets. They even played a game called celebrity, where one person names a celebrity, and the next person has to name a celebrity whose first name starts with the same letter of the last name of the one just mentioned. Henry has been stuck on Christina Yamaguchi for a week and a half. He can't think of a celebrity whose first name begins with y because he's already used Yo-Yo Ma.
They even got to know the old Asian man, who is strangely obsessed with chickens, way too obsessed with chickens. People were going insane because of the incredibly long update; they could hear people murmuring to themselves after only one month of seeing the update bar tick from 1% to 1.17 %. They could at least estimate how long they might be here at this point.
To Sue's left was an elderly woman who would regale Sue and Henry with stories about her grandkids and how she hoped to see her husband again in Heaven. They'd heard a number of these stories.
After a year (2%), Henry secretly suggests to Sue that they might not be heading to Heaven, and that this was hell. However, she responded by saying,
"I don't think hell would have an end, and eventually this update will end; maybe this is purgatory." Sue's optimism helped Henry get through some difficult times.
By the time year ten (20%) rolled around, Henry knew more about Sue than anyone he had ever met. They continued coming up with fresh ways to keep each other engaged and occupied. They'd make up stories to tell each other, and it became their own personal Netflix.
By year 30 (60%), they had taught the Asian man fluent English, which they quickly regretted when the chicken talk began to annoy everyone.
They celebrated the milestone in year 40 (80%) by encouraging everyone, who could hear them, to sing John Lennon's song Imagine. It was truly a spectacle; there must have been hundreds of people singing the song that Henry and Sue had started.
From then on, everyone was waiting to see what would happen when the upgrade reached 100% completion. The day had finally arrived, 99.9% of the way; the upgrade would be finished any day now.
Suddenly, everything turned white, and Cortana's soothing voice remarked,
"Welcome to Heaven 11."
Henry and Sue were surrounded by many people who already had been in Heaven before the update, one guy said.
"They rounded the icons; such an improvement," he remarked sarcastically.
"Is the start menu now in the center?" another woman asked.
What had only been a few minutes for those in Heaven or those who died after midnight had been 50 years for those who died between 11:55 p.m. and 11:59 p.m. Heaven sent an apology email a month later, stating that they had discovered the error and that they may make a free purchase at the Heaven Store.
Despite the long wait, Henry and Sue would never have met if it hadn't been for the update. During that time, Henry met his closest friend, the love of his life, the one he would spend eternity with, and if you ask any of them, they will tell you it was completely worth it.
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