The anticipation hung thickly in the room as the engineer caressed his machine. It had taken far more years than he cared to remember, all he could beg, borrow or steal and two divorces, but here it was at last: the machine that would, once and for all, bore a tunnel directly across the boundaries of reality that separated the mundane world from the great unknown: the afterlife.
The Mayor adjusted his tie as he stared at the contraption, his staff readying camera equipment and adjusting sound levels. If this worked, he could probably squeeze another term or three out of it; imagine the headlines. Mayor Reveals Afterlife and New Tax Plan! The story practically wrote itself.
The engineer took a breath and flicked a switch. The machine began to rumble and shake as it looked for the weakest microscopic point in space/time to drill into. The wide oval that served as the portal entrance began to glow as if white hot, a rainbow of color gyrating in its midst.
A fuzzy picture began to form in the oval and, as everyone in the room looked on, the picture snapped into focus, though it was no less fuzzy.
“That is not the afterlife,” the Mayor yelled over the barking.
“Yes!” the engineer said as he frantically ran his fingers over the controls. “It is! Apparently we’re the first humans in history to discover the afterlife that awaits all Labrador retrievers!”
He paused, awaiting applause. One staffer coughed.
“No one cares about the Labrador afterlife,” the Mayor snarled, booting one curious spectral Labrador in the nose as it curiously stuck its head through the portal. It yelped and leaped back.
“Humans, man! Find the human afterlife!”
The engineer nodded. The Labradors faded from view, the surge of rainbow hues returned and faded, to be replaced by a different portal all together.
“They’re everywhere!” a staffer yelped as a hamster crawled up his pantleg.
“Get them back in! Get them back in!” the Mayor screamed, scooping up deceased hamsters with both hands as he chucked them back into the afterlife. He glared at the engineer.
“Your machine is worthless!” he howled as one irritated hamster bit his finger.
“I think inventing a device that tunnels through space/time directly into the dimension containing the hamster afterlife is pretty noteworthy,” the engineer protested.
“But what will the papers say?” the mayor complained. “What possible use can there be for hamsters in the political world? I can't get advice from Ronald Reagan then hamster! Keep trying, damn your eyes!”
Once more the engineer’s hands flew and once more the colors raged, only to subside into a calm light. No creatures lurked on the other side of this portal, and the Mayor stared at it curiously.
“Do you smell that?” he asked no one in particular. “It smells so familiar…” he leaned forward, inhaling deeply. “It smells like…chamomile tea.”
“Of course it does,” a voice, high and ragged rang out. “It’s my favorite after all.”
“Nana?” the Mayor asked. An old woman, her face translucent yet lined and kind, slowly emerged from the portal.
“Hello, Boopsy,” she said warmly. The Mayor’s eyes filled with tears. “Nana!” He embraced the woman, and as he did so the engineer saw with alarm that the Mayor’s hands were slowly becoming as translucent as the old woman.
“Uh…” he began, but one of the staffers furiously shushed him.
“I thought I’d lost you, Nana!” the Mayor said. “You died so long ago. I have so many questions! What’s the afterlife like? Is God real? Will I win reelection? Will God help me win? So many questions!, Nana!”
The old woman’s smile was wonderful. “We have answers to all your questions, Boopsy. Just come with me.”
She grasped his hand with an iron grip and started to drag him towards the portal. “Answers lie beyond the shroud.”
It took a moment for the Mayor to realize what was happening. Then, raising one now-translucent hand to his face, he began to struggle, but the old woman’s grip was far too powerful. He looked pleadingly at his staffers.
“Help me!” he screamed. “Help!” the staffers recorded his pleas in perfect high definition quality fit for any campaign ad.
He was halfway through the portal when he turned to the engineer, all but his head the same translucent pallor as the old woman. “Shut it off!” he howled. “I’m not ready to go! Shut it off!”
The engineer began his work, but it was futile; it took far longer to shut down the portal than it did to start it up. The Mayor managed one final “No!” and then he was gone, vanished into the calm light beyond the portal.
The engineer kicked his machine as hard as he could. “You stupid thing,” he snapped, wincing at the pain of his broken toe. “You’ve ruined me!”
Fortunately for the engineer, one of the Mayor’s staffers later ran in his place and won. Showing surprising business acumen, she formed a partnership with the engineer and later founded a pet business, their fortunes made from a mysteriously unending supply of dogs and hamsters flooding the market again and again and again.