To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Phillip Jose Farmer

Burton was surprised. Had Goring learned about this from Kazz or was there an informer among the slaves? He told in full detail everything that had happened between the time he opened his eyes to find himself in the place of floating bodies to the instant when the man in the aerial canoe pointed the metal tube at him.

“The extra-Terrestrial, Monat, has a theory that some beings, – call them Whoever or X – have been observing mankind since he ceased to be an ape. For at least two million years. These super-beings have, in some manner, recorded every cell of every human being that ever lived from the moment of conception, probably, to the moment of death. This seems a staggering concept, but it is no more staggering than the resurrection of all humanity and the reshaping of this planet into one Rivervalley. The recordings may have been made when the recordees were living. Or it may be that these super-beings detected vibrations from the past, just as we on Earth saw the light of stars, as they had been a thousand years before. .

“Monat, however, inclines to the former theory. He does not believe in time travel even in a limited sense.

“Monat believes that the X’s stored these recordings. How, he does not know. But this planet was then reshaped for us. It is obviously one great Riverworld. During our journey up River, we’ve talked to dozens whose descriptions leave no doubt that they come from widely scattered parts, from all over. One was from far up in the northern hemisphere; another, far down in the southern. All the descriptions fall together to make a picture of a world that has been reworked into one zigzagging Rivervalley.

“The people we talked to were killed or died by accident here and were resurrected again in the areas we happened to be traveling through. Monat says that we resurrectees are still being recorded. And when one of us dies again, the up-to-the-minute recordings are being placed somewhere – maybe under, the surface of this planet – and played into energy-matter converters. The bodies were reproduced as they were at the moment of death and then the rejuvenating devices restored the sleeping bodies. Probably in that same chamber in which I awoke. After this, the bodies, young and whole again, were recorded and then destroyed. And the recordings were played out again, this time through devices under the ground. Once more, energy-matter converters, probably using the heat of this planet’s molten core as energy, reproduced us above the ground, near the grailstones. I do not know why they are not resurrected a second time in – the same spot where they died. But then I don’t know why all our hairs were shaven off or why men’s facial hairs don’t grow or why men were circumcised and women made virgins again. Or why we were resurrected. For what purpose? Whoever put us here has not shown up to tell us why.”

“The thing is,” Frigate said, “the thing is, we are not the same people we were on Earth. I died. Burton died. You died, Hermann Goring. Everybody died. And we cannot be brought back to life!”

Goring sucked on his pipe noisily, stared at Frigate, and then said, “Why not? I am living again. Do you deny that?” “Yes! I do deny that – in a sense. You are living. But you are not the Hermann Goring who was born in Marienbad Sanatorium at Rosenheim in Bavaria on January 12, 1893. You are not the Hermann Goring whose godfather was Dr. Hermann Eppenstein; a Jew converted to Christianity. You are not the Goring who succeeded Von Richthofen after his death and continued to lead his fliers against the Allies even after the war ended. You are not the Reichsmarschal of Hitler’s Germany nor the refugee arrested by Lieutenant Jerome N. Shapiro. Eppenstein and Shapiro, hah! And you are not the Hermann Goring who took his life by swallowing potassium cyanide during his trial for his crimes against humanity!”

Goring tamped his pipe with tobacco and said; mildly, “You certainly know much about me. I should be flattered, I suppose. At least, I was not forgotten.”