Whatever Lola Wants Read Online Free PDF

thinking beyond self-pleasure? Becoming a God means, precisely, dwelling within the ultimate reward. There’s not even a pretense of any other mode of experience. Even if, say, a God could fear a thing, or suspect some unhappiness—which they can’t, so this is pure surmising—then such a moment would be understood as the pleasure of fear, the pleasure of unhappiness. The past, an imperfect time, is completely forgotten, as are the complicated people one lived among in the down below—one’s dealings with them so imperfect their very names and faces have gone absent. In Lola’s mind, a place where uncertainty could float? It made no sense. “But how’d the question come to you?”
    â€œIt was eerie.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “When you were talking before, I thought, Why is Ted an Immortal, and I’m a God?”
    Here was dangerous ground, wandering close to the border of what one is. I felt a sudden shiver. Could she step out of her God-realm? I wanted her close, yes. But not by putting her at such risk. She could hardly become an Immortal. And mortality was done with.
    â€œHow did we evolve to what we’re seen as here?”
    â€œLola—” I can’t say what came over me: I took her hand. “I have no idea.”
    Though her question did come close to another I’ve at times considered: What in fact is the process of deciding who becomes a God, who an Immortal? In fact, who decides who gets to AA altogether? I do know that about 99.9999 percent of us in the down below never pass beyond our graves. Let’s say there are about six billion people down there. If an average worldwide lifespan is sixty, one-sixtieth of the world population dies each year, or one hundred million people. Of these, one in a million, or about one hundred people, AA annually. Mostly we demise and get forgotten. A few of us are obvious and become Gods, but most here are Immortals. Myself, one day I died, and AA ed, and found myself here. So I get to be around forever, a sweet yet curious privilege. Why me? I can only guess. We AA because of something we did down there. They say it all depends on how long we’re going to be remembered, and by how many. But by what device can anyone tell that in advance? In the down below I wrote stories for a living. I never made huge amounts of money.
    I should amend some of this. They say for almost everyone, Gods and Immortals, it’s the pre-departure that defines us. Heroic leadership, or resplendent singing, or a theory that holds the world together for a while, or curing some terrible disease, or privileged martyrdom, that kind of thing gets one to AA . They also say a very few of us have managed to AA some time after the demise moment—a celebratory posthumous biography, a momentous re-evaluation of one’s work, fabulous underground word of mouth that bursts to the surface, deserved sainthood. Myself, I don’t know anybody who got up here like that.
    None of which explains Lola’s questions. But I had to draw her back from them. Which I did, walking away from the cloud’s edge, the pleasure of the touch of her hand against mine.
    Yes, pleasure. Unusual, and we Immortals are different from the Gods in that way. We too function in the eternal infinite realm, eir , but under normal circumstance we feel relatively little pleasure. Immortals are content with the privilege of going on forever, having no responsibilities. Still, by doing certain important things, the pleasure sensation can arise. For me, by telling stories I get pleasure. I’ve been doing it even up here because I found I could. And I’ve observed how others get a jolt in their own pleasure-sphere by listening. Now with Lola here—
    â€œWhy so silent?” she asked.
    â€œWhy’re you so full of questions?” I grinned at her, playful-hard.
    She didn’t take to the tease and pulled her hand away. “You’re not