Next, Please
Brief notes from the first desk in Heaven

Gatekeeper Chronicles—1

What a lovely word, the Spanish word for ancestors: antepasados.
Adelante; Te esperaré aquí—Go ahead; I’ll wait for you here.
‘I passed for human,’ the squirrel confessed.
‘Whatever for?’ Saint Peter asked. She and the other turtles
were deeply shocked.
‘The drink. I blame the drink,’ the squirrel replied.

Gatekeeper Chronicles—2

Saint Peter thanked her lucky stars and wondered if that were appropriate.
She noticed her own subjunctive-for-condition-contrary-to-fact ‘were’ instead of ‘was’.
In her present and eternal job, it wasn’t the stars she should be thanking. Still, looking at the large Doberman before her lectern, Saint Peter was thankful that she herself was a giant turtle with a thick shell.
Justice—the Doberman’s name—growled. Then he tried whining.
‘I’m afraid puppy sounds won’t help you here,’ Saint Peter told him.
‘Do I have to wait much longer?’ asked Justice. ‘I’ve heard that all dogs go to Heaven.’
‘To,’ Saint Peter answered. ‘Not the same as into Heaven. Not in your case. You killed that little boy.’
‘He would have grown up.’
‘And?’
‘He might have become a Democrat.’
Saint Peter sighed. She shook her head. Justice could not see that because she had gone back into her shell.
‘He might have become a Republican?’ Justice tried.
Saint Peter extended her neck, looked down her beak at the Doberman. ‘And?’ she shouted.
The dog shrugged, attempted a tail wag. ‘I had to try,’ he said.
Justice stepped off the cloud and disappeared.
‘Next,’ said Saint Peter.

Stars winked.

Gatekeeper Chronicles—3

Every Senior Saint received and signed for something new above the Sun. A package labelled Deus ex machina.
Saint Peter opened her package. It contained one shining stone tablet. Under the tablet was a parchment titled EternallyOn uPad—Orders to Use It.
‘Could have done with some notes on how to use it,’ muttered Saint Peter. The stone uPad floated up in front of her. She raised her left hand and swiped up on its screen with all five fingers.
Local space dilated. Jupiter and its moons swung through the cloud carpet in front of her lectern. Came and went.
‘Don’t you go thinking that tells you where Heaven is,’ Saint Peter called to those waiting in the endless queue. ‘If, and that’s a big if, we are on Jupiter’s orbit, at which point? And is this Heaven’s only gate?’
She smiled the way turtles always must. No one in the queue noticed.
They’re too far away, she realised. She scrolled down—five fingers again on the uPad—stopped when it said, ‘use normal scale for locale’.
Using her own powers, Saint Peter dialled herself down to Galápagos-tortoise size. ‘Just call me Petra Petite,’ she whispered to herself.
Everyone in the queue stared. As always.
She slid the uPad onto a shelf under the lectern. Letters on the edge of the shelf spelled out u P a d.
‘Has this label always been here?’ she asked herself, taking care to not even whisper. Out loud she said, ‘Next.’
Next was an eighteen year-old girl.
‘What are you doing here?’ Saint Peter asked. ‘You look five times your age.’
‘Three times,’ prompted the uPad.
The girl stood mute.
Saint Peter’s shell phone rang. She rolled her eyes to answer it and heard, ‘Let her in.’
Oh my god, thought Saint Peter.

The gate creaked open—another day in eternity’s waiting room. She waved the girl through.