This article is classified "Partly real, partly fictional"
One of the more unusual ways of travelling is the out-of-body experience. This can occur (involuntarily) during a rather critical moment of life, namely the edge of it. At a certain point in time the dying process gets so far that the patient in the real world comes into a critical situation and then sometimes feels himself detaching from the body and floating around in the air, observing himself from above. After that the travelling commences. It is a pity that so many people don't seem to realize the possibilities present here for seeing a lot of our planet. They only seem to be interested in the surrounding hospital. Before people realize they can, at that point, go on any holiday to any place they ever dreamt of (and walk through walls, walk through mountains, and observe kinky sex wherever you want) seemingly without having to pay a dime for it, they start to experience some things of which I absolutely fail to understand why they should be anything else than boring. The people who have been there speak of a long tunnel with a bright light at the end. I guess they have to convince themselves this is a pretty exiting, mystical, and peaceful experience in order to hide the disappointment about a lost chance to see the world from a unique perspective. Why they would want to recreate one of the most boring aspects of normal travel (by train or car), the endless travelling through tunnels, beats me completely. To me it is no surprise that at the point they reach the end of the tunnel and meet the bright light they get pulled back to their body, completely against their will, or so they say. This getting pulled back occurs at the moment the patient is on the very edge of dying. A moment longer and life will cease to exist. It thus seems there isn't much time to take advantage of your ultimately free situation, so if you should find yourself in this situation, pull yourself together, act fast, and see as much as possible. More so because you have to try and get your money's worth, because although it seems this travelling method doesn't cost you anything (you don't use any vehicle, not even yourself), it actually costs you a lot. After being brought back you'll have to pay the staggering medical fees. So far only people with this disappointing, peaceful, and life-changing (they say) out-of-body experiences have told their story. Nobody knows what lies beyond the bright light (a black hole maybe, the consequence being that travelling through a black hole puts you into the spirit of a dying person?). This may have something to do with the dying aspect of the whole thing. From the knowledge that there is nothing after death we know there should be nothing beyond the bright light, but it could just as well be that there is some asymptotical effect in our personal clock so people who dare can see much more. It could equally well be that people who have grasped the opportunity have mailed all their experiences to alt.sex.stories without telling how they got the stories, in this way unsolidaritily keeping this possibility of pleasure to themselves. If *you* should ever go beyond the bright light point, please share the experience with your fellow hitchhikers and create a follow-up to this article. Disclaimer: It was not my intention to disrespect or ridicule people who have had these out-of-body experiences, but we finally have to face up to the facts!