A nice white sheet of paper peeped shyly out from the underneath side of the platen, a virgin sheet of paper as yet undefiled by the hand of man. My hands were clasped over that portion of my anatomy where I once had a waistline; they were several inches from the keyboard when the thing happened-the keys commenced to depress themselves with bewildering rapidity, and one neat line of type after another appeared upon that virgin paper, still undefiled by the hand of man; but who was defiling it? Or what?
I blinked my eyes and shook my head, convinced that I had fallen asleep at the typewriter; but I hadn't-somebody, or something, was typing a message there, and typing it faster than any human hands ever typed. I am passing it on just as I first saw it, but I can't guarantee that it will come to you just as it was typed that night, for it must pass through the hands of editors; and an editor would edit the word of God.
Chapter One
I WAS SHOT DOWN behind the German lines in September, 1989. Three Messerschmitts had attacked me, but I spun two of them to earth, whirling funeral pyres, before I took the last long dive.
My name is-well, never mind; my family still retains many of the Puritanical characteristics of our revered ancestors, and it is so publicity-shy that it would consider a death-notice as verging on the vulgar. My family thinks that I am dead; so let it go at that-perhaps I am. I imagine the Germans buried me, anyway.
The transition, or whatever it was, must have been instantaneous; for my head was still whirling from the spin when I opened my eyes in what appeared to be a garden. There were trees and shrubs and flowers and expanses of well-kept lawn; but what astonished me first was that there didn't seem to be any end to the garden-it just extended indefinitely all the way to the horizon, or at least as far as I could see; and there were no buildings nor any people.