"When the day comes, if you have lived rightly, tranquil fields will be yours to wander. Had you still needs they would be met, but as it is, nothing but untroubled time awaits you for the space of a year.
"At that time a messenger will arrive to inform you of an offer. You may continue to reside in that blessed realm, or you may spin the wheel. Should it stop at a favorable position, you will ascend to a more exciting afterlife, but in the other case, you will return to the mortal world to live and strive for righteousness again.
"The higher afterlife is the province of the witty, the learned, and the well-traveled where lassitude is impossible. Having dwelled there for ten years, the same messenger or another will inform you of another land reached by a similar method. That realm is impossible for me to describe. After a century there, the messenger will approach you again, and so on. Well? Would you take the first chance? The second? What do you think?"
"Grandpa, I wouldn't and neither would anyone else."
"Heroes would, child. And as for those heroes . . . do you think they hope for the outcome you would?"
Finis
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