Jane Actually

Miss Austen.
    FRY: I admit God is still part of our society and probably will be for a long time. We still say we dial a phone even though no one’s put their finger in a phone dial for ages. So who knows how much longer we’re going to say “For God’s sake” or “Lord love a duck.” But I’m afraid the reality of the afterlife will all but kill any belief in the jiggery-pokery of heaven or an eternal reward.
    AUSTEN: Mr Fry …
    FRY: Please, my dear lady, call me Stephen.
    AUSTEN: Stephen then, how can you believe the discovery of the afterlife explains anything? Professor Cox …
    COX: Brian, please.
    AUSTEN: And you may all call me Jane. Brian, can science explain how it is that I slipped my mortal coil and ended up on facebook, or how I can see X-rays or how I see in 360 degrees without eyes?
    COX: I’m afraid not. Theories range from the soul being intelligent dark matter to … well the joke about “then a miracle happens” still seems appropriate. There are no credible explanations for the soul.
    AUSTEN: Precisely. There still remains that God-shaped vacuum 1 in the hearts of men, Stephen. With all the unanswered questions about the afterlife, doesn’t it make sense that many will choose to live their lives in accordance with their beliefs from before.
    FRY: Oh, so you’ll throw Pascal’s wager 2 at me, dear lady? I might remind you that many have thrown off this belt and braces caution, even in America, where the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has shown that belief in God and religion has hit an all time low.
    AUSTEN: Faith certainly has cycles, but I think the ‘reality’ of the afterlife only raises questions that can’t be answered.
    FRY: Brian, help me out here. Surely science has shown there’s no reason to believe in God’s hand in the afterlife.
    COX: What, you mean by introducing yet another mysterious particle/energy that is intelligent and that can’t be explained? Yes, we can measure an AfterNet field and even weigh what to all intents and purposes is a soul, but we can’t divine what makes Miss Austen’s intellect survive her death.
    HAWKINS: Miss Austen, maybe you could relate—and I’m sorry for asking this because I know you’ve been asked many times to do this—your experience after dying?
    AUSTEN: It is no imposition. The passage of time has softened the memory. Like most people before the discovery, I thought my condition was unique to me and I thought myself a ghost, which essentially affronted the very practical Anglican beliefs inherited from my father.
    HAWKINS: You didn’t feel you were abandoned by God?
    AUSTEN: No, not at all. I believe my recollection was that I attributed my situation to my own failings, not knowing of course that my fate was shared by all of humanity.
    COX: Can we go back to being a ghost contradicting your father’s beliefs? He didn’t believe in ghosts?
    AUSTEN: In a romantic way, of course he did. He even told me ghost stories, but he didn’t believe … no that’s not the right way to describe it. His was a practical faith and didn’t include what Stephen labelled the jiggery-pokery of the church. Miracles and the supernatural were part of Biblical times and apart from the miracle of birth and his many superstitions—which I think he invented to make him a more colourful character—he thought God worked in a … well, in a workmanlike manner. And ghosts, to his mind, would have been God showing off.

    1 If Blaise Pascal didn’t say—“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus”—then he should have.
    2 Pascal’s wager posits that humans all bet with their lives either that God exists or does not exist. Given the possibility that God actually does exist, a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will only have suffered a momentary (a lifetime’s worth) loss of pleasures and indulgences.

Deeper still
Jane’s fantasy expands
    J ane waited as patiently as she could, but she was beginning to think Albert hadn’t received her message asking him to join her. She paced around the busy coffee shop in the West Village, having fled Melody’s apartment rather than risk displaying her anger in a cutting remark.
    It had been a frustrating day of rehearsing for the launch parties, with Melody giving Mary instructions on how to act