"Waiter! More gefilte fish!"
I watched the waiter with interest and, it must be said, a growing sense of alarm. I mean, for starters, most of the waiters were wearing black tie, while this particular gentleman was wearing a brown uniform, tall, shiny boots, a red armband with a swastika on it, and a Sam Browne belt. None of my table mates seemed to pay him any special attention, because they were too busy eating, arguing, or both.
"I mean, consider the soup," said Moshe, flourishing his spoon. Moshe is kind of the leader of our little group. We'd all met each other when we first arrived, naked and terrified out of our minds. We'd kind of struck up a conversation, and become fast friends. "It's clearly chicken soup, my friends, wouldn't you agree? And chicken soup requires chickens. It doesn't make sense that they'd cook and eat pious chickens, so these must condemned chickens. But what kind of a sin could a chicken commit? How could a chicken commit its soul to hell?"
We'd been engaged in a free flowing debate over the nature of this place ever since we got here, although no one could tell you exactly how long that had been.
"Powder" said Yossi.
We stared at him.
"There was a powder you could mix with hot water. Make the water taste like chicken soup, mushroom soup, onion soup, whatever. They probably didn't have that when you were alive."
Yossi was convinced we were dead, and this was heaven. Moshe was convinced that this was an illusion, a hallucination created by a dying mind to sooth its fear. Ben didn't speak much but was absolutely convinced we were in hell.
I was undecided. Mostly I enjoyed the food and listened.
If this soup had been made from artificial flavoring, then clearly someone had been doing his job well. It was so clear you could see the pattern on the bottom of the bowl. Flat egg noodles floated just below the surface like happy koi. It tasted exactly like my grandmother's chicken soup. Personally, I thought that this was a point for heaven, but Moshe thought it equally likely to mean hallucination, and Ben pointed out that surely there was a mass of exploited proletarians preparing the food, somewhere beyond the great swinging doors leading to the kitchen. What kind of heaven could rest on exploited labor?
Speaking of exploited proletarians, here came the waiter.
One of the first thing new arrivals learned was the fact that anyone could, if they concentrated, change their apparent age. Wether this was proof for our current location being heaven, hell, or merely a hallucination was currently the subject of debate. If you didn't concentrate, though, your apparent age reverted to your natural mental age. Moshe usually appeared to be in his early 20s, Yossi was naturally in his late 40s, and Ben appeared to us to be about 17.
Our waiter seemed to have a natural age of about 1000 years old. His papery skin stretched loosely around his skeletal structure, sagging under his eyes and around his jowls. His few remaining straw like hairs fell stiffly like white straw over one eye. His little bristly mustache drooped over his lip, ending