"Wh . . . y . . .?"

"I was murdered. But perhaps you mean why are dead people turning into magical beings and we have no idea why that happens."

"Oh.  . . . Well, we as collective denizens of this cylinder might have any idea but I personally don't really beyond the abstractions they teach in school?  I'm not an astrologer.  - Oh man, you guys wouldn't have influenza, would you; that sounds so convenient."

"...we have a viral illness that is called influenza."

"But presumably not scheduled times of being sick depending on the stars?  What influence is yours referencing."

"A mythological one. It does tend to come around once a year during a particular season but not because of the stars."

"It's not once a year for us; it's different for everybody.  Or every birthday."

"Okay, yeah, that's different. Do you also have illnesses that randomly strike or just the scheduled ones?"

"There're some that are like, transmissible, or caused by other stuff; I don't know of any entirely random ones."

"Yeah I don't mean random random I mean infectious and not star-related. When you say stars are dead people what is the... content of this proposition."

"Every time someone dies there's a new one?  And they're watching down on us."

"...the latter part is understood how."

"Well if you get high you can join them."

"On drugs or in a space shuttle."

"I don't know what a space shuttle is and probably shouldn't rely on any guesses from context that I can come up with."

"On drugs or in some kind of vehicle, then. Or on foot, if you can just get to star level by summiting Everest."

"I guess the drug is the vehicle, sort of?  It induces astral projection, which is where most of your soul leaves your body to go up among the stars, and then you're like, there with everybody.  Including all the other high living people, not just the dead ones."

"That's also very weird, so you're aware."

"If you say so."

"What's the drug?"

"Omnilol?"

"Never heard of it, so I suppose it could still be ayahusca under a brand name but maybe it's totally different."

"It would be pretty fucked up for a brand name to be the primary thing people knew it by, I think."

"Would it? That sort of thing happens where I'm from. Kleenex and Crisco and velcro and so on."

"I don't know what any of those are."