Paul Dearborn is quite certain that he’ll go to hell, a prospect that bothers him in only one way: the uncertainty of what it will be.

And the only thing that bothers me is that I just had to read this in the month of my own sixtieth birthday. Oh, that no-goodnick Silverberg!
He thought back over his sixty years. The betrayals, the disappointments, the sins, the hangovers. He had some money now, and by some standards he was a successful man. But life hadn't been any joyride. It had been rocky and fear-torn, filled with doubts and headaches, moments of complete despair, others of frustrated pain.

Variants

(1)
  1. “The Nature of the Place” by Robert Silverberg, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1963.
  2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Robert Silverberg