The Meeting.

Beta: BlackRoseRaven109

Disclaimer: What belongs to me from the whole of Discworld is just the idea for this very story.

Riley Rigg's hands shivered a bit as the boy clutched the reanimation card. Before he died last month of a malignant brain tumor at only fifteen, never did he imagine the afterlife could be like that. At one moment the boy was lying in his hospital bed, surrounded by his grieving family, as he took his last breaths. The next, he was standing before the Pearly Gates in a very long queue consisting of what seemed like a neverending deluge of people of all races and all ages.

He went to heaven and heaven was just wonderful a place as Riley always thought. You could get everything you ever dreamed of, but you couldn't get when still alive. Flying? Okay, you instantly grew a pair of fluffy, feathery wings on which you could fly wherever you wanted. New look? If was enough to say the wish and instead of being the wrinkled infirm eighty-year-old you were at the time of your death, you were eighteen again; young and fresh. Meeting a famous person you always admired?

This was something Riley Riggs always wanted. Ever since nine-years-old when he discovered a complete set of books by Terry Pratchett on the shelves of the local library, he always considered him the greatest writer that ever lived. But even famous writers die – their time on Earth isn't unlimited, like it is in the case of ordinary mortals – and end up in the place where young Riley got to, just a couple of weeks before him. "Could I meet Pratchett?" he asked Tiffany Bowman, his best friend in heaven. Tiffany was very sociable and only a year older than he was when she died of a heart disease which was in the nineties. She seemed to know everybody there and knew everything about this place. Tiffany only blew a giant bubble of her herring flavored chewing gum – she wished for this original taste so she instantly got it, as it was heaven.

"Sure," she said, shrugging, as she knew more about heaven being here for a longer time than he was. "You only need to get a reanimation card. Otherwise famous people wouldn't have a moment of peace, couldn't get away from their fans. They will make an appointment for you two to meet, for an hour. I already did it with my favorite actress Marilyn Monroe a couple of years ago."

Riley only nodded – a small, almost unnoticeable movement of his head – but his heart was beating rapidly. He was going to meet great Terry Pratchett in person! He got a reanimation card from Saint Peter who explained to him how the whole procedure worked. All the boy needed to do was go to the special room in the specially separated part of heaven and write the name of the person he wanted to meet on the card and put it on the table in that room. Then the chosen person would come to him and they will have the whole hour to talk.

And now the shivering boy was standing in front of the massive door leading to the room where he was going to meet Terry Pratchett. He wrote "Terry Pratchett" on the card in the blanks and shyly knocked on the mahogany door. Only silence answered, so the boy turned the handle and came through the threshold. The room was small, and only a small wooden table was there in the middle. The boy got closer and put the card on it. It disappeared with a soft 'poof' as if it sunk into the table, but nothing happened.

The boy looked around. There was another door in that small room, leading to... To where? The boy decided to find out. He got closer and like previously, turned the handle. The door opened with a soft swish. In front of the boy's eyes, there was another room, much bigger and elegantly furnished. There was also a table with two comfortable armchairs. In one of them someone was sitting. Pratchett? No. That man was a middle-aged gentleman, plump and with ruddy chubby cheeks revealing good health. He was looking attentively at the boy.

"Ekhem... good morning," the teen said, wondering who this mysterious man was.

"Good morning" the man said, smiling at the boy. "You wanted to talk to me, did you?"

"Not to you, to Terry Pratchett," Riley protested, shaking his head. "I put Terry Pratchett's name on the card. Who are you?"

"Well, Terry Pratchett," the man answered, in such a voice as if he was a bit surprised by the boy's words. "I don't know any other Terry Pratchett."

"Your name is Terry Pratchett? But you are not the writer, are you? I don't recognize you."

"A writer?" the man's voice was expressing pure stupefaction. "I never wrote a book in my life. Heck, I even hated writing essays at school when I was a boy." The obese man laughed as if the very thought of him writing something seemed incredibly hilarious to him. "I'm Terry Pratchett, a pig breeder from Nebraska."