Alessio returned last night. I woke to find him standing in front of the window with the full moon behind him that made him glow turquoise. 

“My friend, I have so much to tell you.”

“Is that really you, Alessio? The thing is, you are dead.”

I sat up in bed. Everything seemed real yet I knew it must be a dream. Alessio looked different. It was definitely him but he looked older and well groomed.

“Of course I am dead. There was no way I would have survived falling from such a great height and lived.” 

Alessio stepped into the room but still had that strange glow about him. 

“Why are you a funny colour?”

“Ah,” he said, “it is the colour of oro and is quite normal. It fades after a while.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Relax my friend. Don’t be frightened. I have something exciting to say. When we were young boys we were taught that God created this beautiful planet that spins. But I have found out something remarkable. The earth that you see from space looks to be one planet, but everything is not as it appears. To our eyes it appears as one, but that is not the case because there are really three worlds superimposed over one other..”

“Alessio. Wherever it is you have come from, I see that there is an abundance of drugs for you to take.”

“Hear me out. God was a multi-tasker and didn’t create one world, but created three – the past, the present, and the future. He was a genius. The reason that the earth spins is because it allows the past, present and future to rotate together. Sometimes each of the worlds moves faster, sometimes slower, but each spins unknown to the other, but occasionally they slip into each other and voila, you end up where you aren’t supposed to be. I am testimony to that. Right now I’m in a controlled time slip. I am a ghost standing before you, and you appear as a ghost to me.

“The exciting thing is that you are in the present and when you die you will cross over, and without knowing it, you will be reborn into the past or the future. It’s a potluck where you end up. When I died I moved into the future where I grew up to be a wonderful scientist, part of a secret AI team that discovered this amazing shit, and right now I’m part of an experiment that is communicating with the past, or should that be the present? I might not remember anything when I return, but, so far so good, I know why I’m here, and came knowing nothing about you, but immediately remembered who you were and everything that happened between us. Bad boys always recognise bad boys. How are you, by the way?”

“It’s a lot to take in,” I stuttered. “Does that mean there isn’t a heaven? Or hell for that matter?” 

“On the contrary my friend. Heaven is where you might perceive hell to be. Three lifetimes and we all go to heaven. It’s a place that no living person can ever go to, but tomorrow, when the sun is high in the sky, think about why it is that the sun is so hot. It is what is behind that fiery facade where the answer to your question lies. And, by the way, there is no hell, and if there is, we’ve yet to discover it.”

“This is bizarre,” I told him. “This is the weirdest dream I’ve ever had.”

“Think of it as a dream if you like.” He looked at his hand. “My oro is almost gone so I must return. But remember what I’ve told you, and if you care to tell anyone then I am sure that they will think you are quite mad. Goodbye Lucio. It has been good to see you again.”