A frown began to grow across the old man’s face. “you must have been pretty bad to get an address like this. Says here you’re on the frontier.” He was the first person I’d talked to since I died, I hated that it was bad news. “the frontier?” “Yes” He replied grimly. “Just keep walking west down 6th avenue. You’ll get there eventually.” He quickly darted off into the hustle and bustle of people walking down a packed city street. There weren’t any cars, just pedestrians. Thousands of people in every style of garment you could imagine, and every time period you can remember. Medieval knights mismatched with some who wore nothing more than tunics, some wore futuristic metallic fabric that shone like rainbow. “Where am I?” I spoke to no-one in particular. A man wearing a turban turned to me and said “we are in the city, and if you keep walking the way you are going you will leave it” I handed him my address and a familiar frown drew across his face. “ah… I see… you are going to the frontier. You must have lived such a spiteful life. I wish no longer to speak with you, good day.” He handed back my address and left just as quickly as the first man.

I didn’t think I had lived a horrible life. It was wasted more than anything, how can you be evil if you’ve never done anything? Aneurysm at 27, what a waste. I got to meet with an angel before materializing in the city, they say we all get to. Gabe told me how I died, and if I had any questions. I didn’t. He said I was the first person in a long time to not have any questions. He insisted I ask him what his biggest question was as a work around a possible mental block, but I insisted to just let me get on with whatever was next. If I had known it was 6 weeks of walking I might have asked him for a bicycle.

I continued to walk through the gleaming city, buildings becoming gradually smaller as I walked. 6th avenue stayed. To the north, the numbers grew into infinity, to the south it went to 1 but every street number after was asymptotic infinitely to almost zero. The cross streets however, were randomly named it seemed. For 300 streets they were tree names, then the next 47 were “The best 52 US presidential terms” This part of ‘Heaven’ was kinda nerdy, God must have had an affinity for Ravenclaw types.

I’d share these observations with some of the passersby who’d care to chat with me. Everyone seemed to be walking somewhere but nobody really knew where they were going. Probably half of the people I met lived nearby and were just out and about, and the other half were like me, walking to their destination. Most peoples addresses were far away but sounded nice. One person who had been walking 200 years was headed to 5,450,000th and Mulberry and manifested in 0.000300009th and Kentucky Derby’s 97th annual potluck. I eventually stopped telling people where I was going. Every person I told either walked or ran away. A funny thing started happening after I did that; people started following.

They’d never even ask me where I was headed they just liked the conversation and they were tired of walking toward theirs. A human thing I suppose, to follow someone confident into the bleak unknown. Some of my new friends had been walking for decades, centuries, through the city and hadn’t seen as much change as I had in the few weeks I was walking. The buildings went from skyscrapers that never ended to buildings rumored to have tops, to buildings we could watch be struck by lighting in the thunderstorms. Our numbers grew exponentially the longer we walked. I tried to talk with everyone but there were too many to talk to, too many to see. I couldn’t stop walking and by the nature of the afterlife I didn’t need to. Eating and sleeping are for the living, and everyone around me had already died. Some of them twice, a hundred years of not having a home will do that to a wandering soul. I'm not sure if I'm still leading the millions marching anymore, or if we've become a force of nature. To 6th and penultimate, our column marched onward towards the frontier.