Challenge 175

Where do you really go?

Bewildering Stories issues a standing Challenge: improve on the poem translations quoted in the welcome message to Willie Smith.

Please read “The Inn Between” first.

Bob Blevin’s story “The Inn Between” raises some questions, such as:

Mitchell Gavin calls his peculiar environment “Limbo,” which is traditionally a place between Heaven and Hell. Never mind why one might go there; as long as Gavin is conscious of his situation, won’t he feel that he is in Hell? If not, what might Heaven be like?
Is Gavin not really brain dead, as the doctor says he is? Does the doctor’s apparently cavalier response to his patients’ attempts at speech imply a breach of medical ethics?
If Gavin really is brain dead, what does the story imply about patients who are in a “permanent vegetative state”?