Prompt Images

Heaven’s Terms of Service (North American)

Heaven is a place where you will spend eternity. Please read and approve our Terms of Service (TOS) before entering. These TOS may change at any time and continued use of Heaven indicates approval of new terms and conditions. As thousands of people in North America die daily, we ask that you review and approve the TOS promptly. You have five minutes.

Who May Use the Services

Users must have died on Earth, either in the North American region or after having spent sufficient time in North America to plausibly identify with the culture, broadly defined.  As of 2016, North American Heaven has the same restaurants and retailers that are available in European Union Heaven. Day passes to other Heavens are available at the concierge desk.

Privacy

Everything in Heaven is continuously monitored for bliss and perfection. We anonymize your data to make you feel better about it, but we should warn you that we’re omniscient, so anonymizing data doesn’t actually do anything. We know who you are. We can’t help it. We’re like Santa. But the truth is, the whole system falls apart if we don’t know. If you want paradise, you have to give up privacy. It’s worth it.

Content on the Services

We may use your likeness, actions, words, songs, artwork or other products of your stay in Heaven to advertise our services to the living, often while they are having near death experiences.

Agreement to Arbitration

By entering Heaven you agree not to become party to any class action lawsuit and further agree that no venue for legal challenge exists within this pocket dimension. Disputes, disagreements and demands for damages will be resolved solely through arbitration, to be held on Judgment Day, as described in the Book of Revelations. Judgments must be enforced and collected prior to the dissolution of the universe or claims are void.

Using the Services

Your access to Heaven’s services are “as-is” and “as available.”

 If you can get over that we watch everything you do and compile a complete and unadulterated dossier about what paradise means to you, and you can accept that we’re not snickering at you because we really have seen it all, including things that haven’t happened yet, you should have no trouble using our services. If you’re going to have hang-ups about things, that’s really something you should have worked out before you died.

Your Account

We know you’re using the same password for this that you used for everything down there. We get it and it doesn’t matter. But this is why you still get spam.

Other Users

The roster of people you’ll meet in Heaven is highly subjective, based on user preferences. As an example, Elvis is a hero to most, but he will not be in rapper Chuck D’s Heaven experience. To maximize your Heaven experience, we recommend that users utilize settings to control their public profiles (public, only my friends can see me, locked account) and please understand that if you can’t see a particular soul (i.e. John Kennedy, Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earnhardt, Bigfoot, etc.) that this might not mean they are not in Heaven (i.e. soul reaped by Cthulhu, abducted by aliens, reincarnated, still secretly alive, transmuted to some other aethereal plane) as their profile simply may not be visible to you.

Some of you have requested notification when Keith Richards arrives. He’s not coming here. Not ever. We don’t mean that he’s going “down there.” He’s just never dying. We don’t know either. He’s an exception. You must have gathered that by now. You shared a planet with him. Or, he shared his planet with you, to be accurate.

Animals/Pets

Sure, fine.

Blocking/Reporting

You may block other users. You may report users for moderation if they violate our policies against harassment and discrimination, though our moderators will not investigate claims of gender bias, sexual harassment or racial discrimination against users signed up before 1968.

Limitation of Liability

Nothing bad is going to happen to you in Heaven, but a lot of you come here with complaints, comments or suggestions about things you went through back on Earth. So we’re limiting out liability over all of that. No answer we can give will satisfy. That “pain makes the good times better” fails to convince. When we tell you “other people had it worse,” you always respond, “that’s no answer!” Well, it isn’t. We don’t have an answer. So we’re limiting our liability. Hey, we got the idea from down where you’re from.

Michael Maiello

Michael Maiello is a New York-based playwright, author and humorist. His work has appeared in McSweeney's, The New Yorker, and Weekly Humorist. He has two plays available through playscripts.com.

learn more
Share this story
About The Prompt
A sweet, sweet collective of writers, artists, podcasters, and other creatives. Sound like fun?
Learn more