His Heaven, Our Hell Part 2

Emma turnd to the direction the people were flocking to and walked to the top of the hill. The road went down and abruptly ended at a large lake surrounded by crooked trees. Strings of white lanterns were hanging from them and the crowd was lining up beneath them at a carnival-like stand where a strange man in a striped top hat was shouting,
"Come one, come all to Myrtle's heaven! Never thought you could make it to paradise? Well now you can! All you have to do is line up for eternal life. That's right folks - free immortality!"
Jake walked up behind Emma with a soft, "Wow."
"Wow?" Emma replied, her eyes shifting to each different person as they passed. "No, there's something very wrong here."
But as she spoke Jake began to descend the hill towards the lake. A large white ferry boat with red trim was haulting at the end of the lake and people were getting ready to board. Emma snatched Jake's arm as he began to dart towards the crowd but he pulled away knocking her into a stranger. It was a middle aged woman with a large fake looking grin.
"Aren't you coming to heaven?" She said sweetly, reaching out to her.
As she did this several more of the surrounding people began to reach for Emma but she ducked beneath an old mans arms and ran as fast as she could. She collapsed finally behind a blue mini van along side of a dirty tractor trailer.
As she caught her breath she heard two voices whispering on the other side. She looked beneath the truck and watched black and white two toned dress shoes of the deep somewhat whining voice and the worn brown dress shoes of very official and monotone voice. Both male, the two tones spoke first.
"Is everything going according to plan?"
"There were some bugs in the messaging system," the browns replied. "Some didn't go out, though I was able to send at least one message to each cluster. I believe the pull of one should drag along at least a second."
"Good. Good. But this will be fixed?" Two-tone answered.
"Within the hour. However, it looks like everyone in the first wave is already in the vicinity."
"Perfect, but you do assure me that no one will NOT get the message?"
"Abosolutely, My Lord. The only way they could not get it would be if they were already in the simulation and that is where you want them, correct?"
"Correct."
The two shoes walked away leaving Emma to ponder their words. But not a minute passed before a hand shocked her from thought.
"Elliot!" She gasped, wrapping her arms around his neck.
"What is all this?" He asked, looking around them as they embraced. "It's like the end of the world."
A young girl passed them, glazed with the message and heading towards the ferry.
"If we don't enter the 'heaven' we'll become like them," said Emma.
Elliot knew this was no time to ask questions so he took Emma's hand and they raced down towards the ferry.
"I think Jake has already gone through," Emma said to Elliot as they joined the ferry line.
"I know," he replied. "I saw your family boarding too when I first got here."
Emma and Elliot looked into each other's eyelined eyes. They could almost hear the prayers that they were each repeating in their heads.