You had to make your choice between survival and efficiency, though in the long run survival was optimum efficiency, no matter how much time and effo… - Philip José Farmer

A gray-pink salmon leaping up the falls of night
Into the spawning pool of another day.

Dawn-the red roar of the heliac bull
Charging over the horizon.

The photonic blood of bleeding night,
Stabbed by the assassin sun.

Dreams haunted The Riverworld.

It was like no hell or heaven of which he had ever heard or read, and he had thought that he was acquainted with every theory of the afterlife. He had died. Now he was alive. He had scoffed all his life at a life-after-death. For once, he could not deny that he had been wrong. But there was no one present to say, "I told you so, you damned infidel!"
Of all the millions, he alone was awake.