In March 1997, firefighters found hanging from a rope the body of Dr. Antonia Simone, next to the prototype of what would become the AfterNet terminal. On the screen were the words, “What took you guys so long?”

The discovery of the afterlife threw the world into chaos. Even though most religions believed in an afterlife, the reality of an afterlife where each person’s intellect or soul exists after death but is completely unable to communicate with the living or even the other dead shook those religions to their core. An afterlife without the reward of heaven or the consequence of hell fundamentally changed the world. Riots ensued, governments fell and the on again/off again India/Pakistan war went nuclear. People killed themselves in droves and the end of the second millennium seemed like the end of civilization.

But civilization didn’t end as people slowly began to accept the reality that the living share the world with the dead and that the dead, of course, far outnumber the living. In September 2001, an organization called the AfterNet was created to develop the infrastructure that allowed the disembodied to interact with the living and with each other. Slowly the world learned the rules that govern the afterlife, which include:

Souls exist. That is the unique energy of every creature survives death as a will-o’-the-wisp something, with an almost impossible to measure mass and charge and a volume roughly the size of a beach ball. Since souls do have a physical being, however insubstantial, they cannot pass through solid matter, but they are almost infinitely malleable. A disembodied soul, for instance, can be squashed paper thin, but it is not a pleasurable experience. The disembodied can move from place to place, although it takes practice and concentration, like a baby learning to walk. The faster or higher a disembodied person wishes to go, the more concentration is required.

The disembodied are everywhere. Considering that every person who has ever died leaves behind a soul (and no one knows when in human evolution the soul evolved), the disembodied are everywhere. And as the soul is so insubstantial, any point on the planet can be occupied by an untold number of disembodied persons. It is also speculated that all forms of life have some form of energy that could be called a soul.

The living are unaware of the disembodied. Despite ghost stories, there is no proof that the living are aware of the disembodied. The soul is so insubstantial it can only be recorded by the technology of an AfterNet terminal.

The disembodied are unaware of each other. Until the discovery of the afterlife and the invention of the AfterNet terminal, each disembodied person believed he or she was alone. And being so insubstantial, they could not interact with the living, with the consequence that most disembodied who had died before the invention of the AfterNet terminal have gone insane.

The disembodied cannot hear, taste, smell or feel. A disembodied soul is aware of the entire electromagnetic spectrum and is actually capable of 360-degree vision, but that is the only of the five senses available to them. Until the printed word, the only way the disembodied could learn about the world was by direct observation.

The AfterNet allows the disembodied to communicate with the living and each other, but there are still many obstacles the disembodied face. For instance, it is not easy to manipulate the AfterNet field. The disembodied must imagine their thoughts as letters and words that an AfterNet terminal can recognize. The terminal can then project the interface, essentially a web browser, back to the disembodied person at the frequency unique to that person. This allows many disembodied to use a single terminal. In dedicated mode, however, a disembodied person can control a standard web browser that is visible on the display of the terminal, making it possible for the living and the disembodied to see the same thing.

Another obstacle: Every disembodied person exists at an exact frequency, or field fingerprint, which makes it possible to identify that person. Unfortunately, most disembodied cannot prove who they were when alive. This uncertainty, of course, leads many of the disembodied to claim they were Jesus Christ or Napoleon or Elvis when alive.

In fact, it is a crime to claim an identity not your own, but it is a crime difficult to prove. It is also difficult to find a penalty with which to punish the disembodied. International law considers denying access to the AfterNet, which would be the ultimate penalty, a violation of human rights. Of course, in many countries, the disembodied are denied many of the rights the living enjoy, such as the right to vote and own property, all related to the difficulty of proving identity and residence.

Since the discovery of the afterlife, however, the living can use an AfterNet terminal to record their field fingerprint so that they may claim their identity after death.

Although a living person’s field can be recorded, most of the living cannot use an AfterNet terminal. It requires extraordinary concentration to imagine the letters and words that an AfterNet terminal can recognize. For some reason, it is easier, although still difficult, for the disembodied to use an AfterNet terminal.