Inconclusive

Galileo Sullivan

Inconclusive

The white card read; the guide's next assignment.

For spiritual guides, the assignment's details were never disclosed. Aside from a name and a given belief system, personalities, cause of death, and socioeconomic status were irrelevant—a mere body-less soul requiring passage towards their afterlife, or lack thereof one. The details and case files were handled at the doors of the afterlife or to a separate guide who determines the outcome of their past life. It varies between different beliefs, some involving separate processes for an individual's events and choices.

Many assume it's a simple process for souls to travel, a quick, painless, and enlightening one that leads to a life beyond.

Death is simple; the afterlife is simple—the journey between is a complicated one.

Guides were neither living nor dead. They did not have specific names, personalities, identities. As one might say, Shapeshifters presented themselves to their assignments from their past life's psyche and beliefs. Whether female, male, nonbinary, genderless, or somewhere between human and creature-like, all was decided by the assignment.

Inconclusive, the guide read. Peculiar. It wasn't unlike assignments to have undetermined or undecided. Especially for the young, who had not had the pleasantries of experiencing life for long, their cards often read undetermined given the lack of understanding of the world and the unique belief systems. But never had this guide read the words inconclusive.

The guide decided on presenting themselves as a grim reaper, with the typical garb and appearance many undetermined and undecided assignments received. With a black robe and hood, the guide grabbed their scythe. The guide presented themself as a masculine human rather than a skeleton figure, in case their assignment was a child. They had scared many youths in the past with such a face.

Much like their appearance, guides set the stage for what each assignment's journey looked like. Based on the vast array of beliefs, guides would manifest the spiritual aether to appear as what best fits their ideals. For many, it involved a river, be it Styx or Sanzu, a road like Hwangcheon, or a set of stairs or cave paths.

For this inconclusive assignment, the guide concocted a simple cave setting, one that could later transform to fit the assignment's beliefs given what visions and memories surfaced along the way.

The perilous journey required guides for that very reason. A summary of the assignment's life would replay in a short span, highlighting the good, bad, and everything in between right before their eyes. For some, reliving them was painful; other's addicting. Each assignment handled these memories differently; emotions were a complicated facet of the living. The guides were there to keep them moving. Reliving them for too long could cause an assignment to want to return to their past life, a feat that would be plagued with antagonizing pain and suffering, not to mention the shift in the balance of the universe. Very few humans survived long after returning through the gates of death, their tie to the physical world already disrupted.

The guide waited for their assignment, scythe in hand as the door to the In-Between opened up. Galileo Sullivan was an older gentleman, appearing to be in his late fifties. The guide watched as he stepped forward, unusually calm and collected. Peculiar, the reaper thought. Most were fearful, skeptical, or angry even; others would leave a trail of tears.

Not Galileo Sullivan.

Galileo was smiling, not a speck of fear in his soul. Galileo was content for someone with an inconclusive belief as he scoped the cave out, his gentle eyes settling on his guide.