by Armando Simón (July 2025)
The weather was appropriately dismal for what was in the works. The sky was overcast, grey, and it was February cold, the cruelest part of the year. One got the impression that the world was almost colorless.
Inside one of the many buildings of McGill University, the final touches to one of the most bizarre experiments ever conceived of was being slowly, methodically, being carried out.
Quinn Smith, the primary participant in the experiment, was a research psychologist at the university. He was tall, in his early forties, but with a greying goatee, and he was nervous. He was nervous because the experiment required him to die.
Yvette, his matronly colleague, along with four others in the experiment, was trying to be reassuring by telling him what he already knew. They then recalled what had become a stock joke among them by imitating Dr. Koptur, the department chairman’s accent, when he had been initially informed of what the experiment entailed. He had shaken his head and said, “I choost don’t know, I choost don’t know.”
Quinn had to die. That was a requirement. Four had volunteered (Yvette had demurred), they had drawn lots, and Quinn had been the “lucky” winner.
They had developed a technique whereby an animal could be brought back to life after being dead for forty minutes, without any obvious physical or mental damage (the animals had previously been taught elaborate tasks, which they remembered perfectly after being revived). The application for human beings was obvious, so they had decided on the next step, using a human being as a guinea pig, hence Quinn. And, needless to say that he had to fill out numerous legal papers for the university.
A last minute, secondary goal of the project had been to find out what happened when a person reached the famous “light at the end of the tunnel.” Many other persons who had died in the past, but had been revived minutes later by doctors, had reported being in a tunnel with a light at the end. Since they had been brought back a few minutes after being dead before they had reached the end (and been permanently dead), the reports had led to all sorts of theological speculations. Now, hopefully, Quinn would know if there was indeed anything at the end of the tunnel and, if so, what?
Or even who?
“Most people think that the light at the end of the tunnel is Heaven. Or it could be the other side,” one of the researchers had initially pointed out.
“Or maybe it’s a movie about to start,” joked Quinn.
A couple of his colleagues at this time were laughing at something entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand. It seems that last night they had seen some people going to a boxing match, and his friends were sneering at the fact that some of the men in the audience were dressed in tuxedos, as if they were going to attend a symphony, or a formal, diplomatic dinner instead of going to see of couple of brutish animals pummeling each other. “Tux to box,” one joked.
The time had come. Quinn lay down in a bed while he was hooked up to all sorts of equipment. Needless to say his heartbeat, blood pressure and respiration were very high. He would first be anesthetized, whereupon he would be asphyxiated until dead, always a frightening experience when conscious. And this, in fact, took place.
Quinn had no idea how soon it had been since he had died, but he was now, in fact, inside the “tunnel” and he did, indeed, see a light in the distance and he was, indeed, drifting towards it. He was alert, but not feeling excited or afraid, no strong emotions at all, just very, very calm, not even curious.
Ahead, emerging through the wall of the “tunnel” were three or four odd green circles, luminescent, tethered to … poles? lines? They seemed to come through the walls, then withdraw. As he got closer, one of the loops came over him and encircled him. The moment that it touched his body he felt sharp pain, then he was yanked to the wall and slowly, painfully, pushed into it. And through it.
For the first time, Quinn thought that he might be having a nightmare. He was lying on the ground, the green rope having been yanked off, and above him was a monstrosity. The thing had a huge caterpillar-like brown body, three feet high and the end closer to him went straight up another three feet. At the apex were four round, yellow, yolk-like circles, equidistant. Halfway in the middle were two short, flexible, extensions ending in suckers which deftly handled a pole, of which both ends had a rod with the green luminescence.
Quinn may not have been having a nightmare, but the creature certainly was one.
It swiftly brought one end of the pole towards him and a sharp pain made him yell out. The thing did it again and again and it soon became clear to him that he was being prodded towards a very large enclosure. An opening became obvious, and he rushed through it to avoid the green end of the pole; it closed behind him.
It was, in fact, very large and it was full of people. Human beings. Hundreds of them and of every racial type: Polynesians, Orientals, Europeans, Indians, Africans, Arabs, you name it. Everyone was naked, without a stitch of clothing, yet no one seemed to care or be gawking. When he had come in, some of them looked at him briefly while others ignored him. A handful continued looking at him. One of these approached him.
“Hello. I won’t say ‘welcome’ because you definitely do not want to be here. You’re feeling disoriented right now, so let me help you get your bearings. By the way, my name’s Jîri. I’m Czech.”
“I’m Quinn. Canadian.”
“Well, Quinn the Canadian, I died in a car accident. And you?”
“You died in a car accident, you said.”
“Of course. Everyone here has died. I believe, in fact, I’m certain that these are—we all are—the souls of people who’ve died. That’s how we can understand each other and why we’re not obsessed with being naked. So, anyway, how did you die?”
Quinn explained what had happened to him. Jîri’s eyebrows arched in surprise at the tale.
“That is definitely a new one,” he remarked.
“Say, what’s going on? What is this place?”
“Ah! That’s the big mystery. I have a theory. You want to hear it?”
More people appeared. A handful of Chinese who, it turned out, died in a bus accident in Taiwan, herded each in by a creature.
“Anyway, come over here.” It appeared that all of the enclosure’s walls were vertical bars coming together overhead, made of that green glowing material which was so painful. They went to one of the sides and Jîri pointed to the distance. “I’ve been here the longest, so I think that I’ve got it figured out. That, over there, is their … city, the slugs’ city, I mean. And over here … come, come, come over here.” They went to the opposite side.
“Here’s where it gets ugly. They take people into that place,” he pointed to a large structure where a dozen creatures would come in and out. “No one ever comes out.” Jîri let the words sink in. “But every once in a while, they bring out loads of those and dump them out,” he motioned with his foot at the ground and for the first time Quinn noticed that the entire ground, as far as he could see, was covered—and deeply—with flat beef jerkies. There were thousands of them. Tens of thousands, probably more. From the very beginning, he had been walking on them.
“Look closer,” Jîri said and Quinn noticed that the flat, two-foot long “beef jerky” were human shaped. He gasped, looked up at Jîri, then at the large, bizarre structure, then at the creatures and he felt horrified, then infuriated. Had he been in a more observant mood, he would have noticed that the calmness that he had felt in the tunnel was no longer a constant. It had left him long ago.
“Food, or energy source?” Jîri asked, more to himself, in a quiet voice. “At least, now I know why there are no longer reports of ghosts.”
“Are you scaring him already?” a voice asked, behind him. “Let the poor fellow get adjusted first. He just got here.” A tall, blonde, man was smiling at Quinn, but addressing himself to Jîri.
“This is Lief,” Jîri explained. “He’s from Norway, or Denmark, or somewhere up there. He died from pneumonia, and he’s been here almost as long as me. Managed to avoid the roundup, so far.”
“Seriously, Jîri, you should let a person get adjusted, give him time, before you start dumping all this on him,” he criticized.
“And how much time do you—Hey!!” both men stared at Quinn.
The Canadian began to float upward. He rammed the top bar with his back, shrieked in pain and fell back on the ground.
“Look!” someone else shouted, a big Samoan. “The green bars are gone!” It was true. Some of the people were stepping outside where the enclosure had been.
“Quick! Now’s our chance! Come on, everybody!” Lief yelled.
Hundreds of people now swarmed out as the creatures attempted to regain control. Someone snatched one of the poles and struck the creature that had been holding it with the weapon, at which point it silently exploded, leaving the victor stupefied. Others who had seen it were now trying to wrest the poles away and some were successful, with similarly spectacular results.
And now Quinn was beginning to float upwards again. As he got higher, he saw, first, that the humans were quickly gaining the upper hand. Then, he saw that there were other enclosures, still having the green barriers intact. But the Samoan had grasped the solution, had seized one of the creatures and paused to exclaim with surprise, “Hey! They don’t weigh anything!” He picked up the creature effortlessly and threw it against one of the intact barriers. The slug exploded and the barrier simultaneously powered down. Hundreds more humans poured out.
Quinn ascended further. The last he saw were dozens of slugs emerging from the city rapidly moving in that undulating manner of theirs to the side of chaos. They were armed only with the same poles that he had seen. Quinn felt his back pressing against something before he blacked out.
“He’s back!” Yvette shouted. “Don’t move, Quinn, you’re all right,” she told him. “We need to check you out. You gave us quite a scare.”
The test subject very slowly lost his disorientation as his colleagues checked his vital signs and took blood samples from him for chemical analysis.
“How do you feel? We lost you for a moment. Then the EEG surge came back.”
“Fine. A bit groggy.” She put a blanket over him. A few more minutes passed in hectic activity.
“So, Quinn,” Yvette lowered her voice. She could not wait any longer to ask him. “Did you get through? Did you make it to the end of the tunnel?”
Quinn took a deep breath. “Not … exactly.”
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Armando Simón is a retired psychologist, author of This That and The Other.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
