The prayer processing division

A phone rang. A little red light flashed on the handset. “Prayer processing, how may I direct your call? Thank you, please hold the line until a customer service representative can speak with you.”
It rang again, and the next little red light jumped into action. “Prayer processing, how may I direct your call? Thank you, please hold the line until a customer service representative can speak with you.”
The prayer processing division was situated in the same office park as the department of post-mortem reunions, but on a different floor. Stuart Macleod had stepped out of the elevator on the wrong floor and looked around, disoriented. He looked down and was momentarily jarred by the hypnotic, maddening airport carpet, with its endless, hideous repetitions of mauve flowers on dark blue field. Ever since his arrival in the hereafter Stuart had found himself inexplicably nauseated most of the time, and the shrill tedium of the carpet very nearly drove him to vomit in the recycle bin at his side.
A sour looking Angelic front desk attendant wearing a headset with a boom mic looked up from her crossword puzzle with undisguised disdain, but said nothing. Stuart eyed the recycle bin.
She stared at him. “Can I help you?”. Her falling intonation indicated to him that it was not, indeed, a question.
“Yes, I was looking for the department of post-mortem reunions, but it looks like I’m in the wrong place.” Stuart turned to leave, pressed the button the summon the elevator, and waited awkwardly.
“Actually,” he said, and turned back towards the angel “this is prayer processing?” She looked back up from her crossword puzzle and glared at him. “Yes.”
Stuart felt a surge of confidence welling up from somewhere in his gut. It made his head swim with giddiness. It had been lifetimes since he had felt this way. There wasn’t much need for confidence during the layover in limbo, and like a disused muscle, it had atrophied over the last century and a half.
“What is it that you do here, exactly?” His newly-rediscovered boldness seethed and boiled over. He even cracked a smile for a moment.
The angel of the Lord was not impressed. “I put people on hold” she said, simply.
Stuart’s brow furrowed. “You what?”
“People call in with their prayers. They want the Green Bay Packers to win the Superbowl, they want their lotto tickets to win, they want their grandmothers to come out of the hospital OK. Now think for a minute exactly how many people on Earth pray on any given day. How many people are there on the planet now, seven billion?”
Stuart nodded in assent.
“Listen, they all pray on a daily basis, even the atheists. And we’re drastically underfunded. Consequently, our backlog is so bad we don’t get a chance to even review their requests until they’re seventy years into their layover in limbo. Why do you think the Mariners have never won a World Series? It’s not like we don’t want to help, but there are procedures that we have to follow. So my job is to put people on hold. They call, I put them in the queue.”
Stuart’s newly-rediscovered confidence quietly stepped out the back door.
“Is that why my ex-girlfriend Amanda Christiansen married that Brent Braddock guy? I mean, I prayed for her to come back to me every day for like, three months at least…” he trailed off, and held his palm over his face. “Could you look it up? I mean, can you do that?”
She sighed sharply. “Your name?”
“Stuart James Mcleod”
“Last four digits of your social security number?”
“2974”
She waited as the search results appeared on her console. Finally, without looking at him, she said “Well, as it turns out, your requests were denied. Not until twenty three years after your passed, which is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. This system is broken, and if I had the funding for a couple of administrative assistants we could crank these out in half the time it takes now, but yeah, denied, I’m sorry to say”
Stuart felt his throat tighten. “But, why?”, he croaked.
“Well, it’s pretty nepotistic, if you don’t have an in with the board of directors, you might as well panhandle on the corner for funding”.
The phone rang. A little red light flashed on the handset. The angel answered, “Prayer processing, how may I direct your call? Thank you, please hold the line until a customer service representative can speak with you.”
The elevator bell chimed and the doors slid open.