To Your Scattered Bodies Go

He remembered his death.  It had come as a blackness...a nothingness; he had not even been aware that his heart had stopped.

Then his eyes opened.  His heart was beating and he felt strong, young again.  The pains that had wracked his body were gone.

He seemed to be alone in a world of silence, surrounded by bright light and able to see, but incapable of understanding the visual images.  Then he tried to sit up-and experienced panic.  he was suspended in nothingness, and the attempt to move had sent him rolling forward and over helplessly.

Now he was face "down," or was it "up"?  Not that it mattered: he was in an invisible cocoon hanging in space, and "below" him was a woman.

She was naked and completely hairless, and her body was turning slowly, like a chicken on a spit.  The force that rotated er was doing the same to him, and as he spun away from her he could see other naked, hairless bodies all around...millions of bodies in silent, spinning rows.Richard Francis Burton had never believed in a life-after-death, but he had died, and now he was here.  The question was, where...and why?