I prefer the ongoing mystery tale...

There's at least anecdotal evidence that time slows down in dreams relative to real-time.

So when the brain prepares to cease functioning, I can easily imagine how the consciousness just slips into an extreme dream, a REM stage of multiversal proportions.

As long as you never wake up (and you shan’t), you are forever none the wiser as your dream becomes the afterlife you longed for.

Maybe a million supernovae later, your dream supervisor sits you down in his office and explains to you that this “afterlife” you’ve lived is really just the imperceptibly slow dream inside a brain that is still confined to a dying body. He is confident that you have learned all you need to in the dream, but in accordance with by-laws of the multiverse, you may choose to remain in the dream, or move forward into the true afterlife. He slides across the desk a pendant with a red button.

“What’s the true afterlife like?” you ask.

“Oh, nobody knows,” he says. “I don’t believe it in myself. That’s why I’m still here talking to you.”

Many in the dream wear their pendant everywhere, just in case they change their mind. Few do.