Contrary to popular belief, you can take it with you. Some of it, at any rate. Since July 2047 AD, it has been possible to buy a cryptocurrency called EverAfterCoin, which is redeemable in the Next Stage, ie after dying. The details of how data from the world of the living is securely transferred to the Next Stage are beyond the scope of this account. Suffice to say that it works. Naturally, as in all financial systems, there is scope for fraudsters, but that is a separate story.The introduction of this currency caused major social upheavals in the Next Stage. It brought into being a two-tier society, ie those with EverAfterCoins, and those without. Obviously, this mirrored the situation in the normal world, where most people were have-nots, living in a world ruled by the have-lots. As in our familiar world, the Next Stage suffered from the absence of a deity to ensure that things would be fair and just. Thus the short answer to the question, Why is evil so prevalent? is that God lost interest in us. The Creator is an absentee God. After bringing forth the two worlds, He abandoned both and turned His attention elsewhere. This 'elsewhere' is unknowable to us and presumably irrelevant from a human point of view.
Why did the good Lord create the Next Stage? This question has exercised many sharp minds, who have proposed various theories. One of the more persuasive is that, on analogy with the recycling bin in a computer, the Next Stage was designed to warehouse beings whom He might later want to re-deploy. Another theory states that it was a prototype for our world, one that God neglected to erase after it had served its function. A third is that it is a kind of purgatory. A fourth one, which has little credence, states that the Next Stage is a Masonic conspiracy concocted by autistic gays. No-one really knows, as the deity is proverbially inscrutable.*
In any case, Jason and Olinda, a couple in their 40s, were killed when their car plunged off a bridge into the Potomac River. They resumed consciousness in the Next Stage, feeling greatly relieved to be alive and unharmed, but totally confused as to their whereabouts. It is worth pointing out that no earthly religion mentions the Next Stage, referring instead to different varieties of Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and so on. Thus, except for those who arm themselves with EverAfterCoins, no-one arrives in any way prepared for life in the Next Stage.
Ironically, the couple was on their way to be granted a divorce on the grounds of incompatibility. So they were still wed-locked on arrival in the next world. Like most people in the Next Stage, Olinda and Jason had neglected to purchase EverAfterCoins. Big mistake. As a consequence, they had to slave all day, carting bricks in order to be able to eat. They were paid in food rather than in EverAfterCoins. However, Olinda managed to use her skills at making chicken tikka to earn some much needed coins. This caused Jason to reconsider breaking up with her. For her part, Olinda found him more tolerable. He could no longer be a TV-watching blob, since they did not have any gadgets.
Only a small minority could afford any form of housing. The rest slept in the open, which was not so bad, as it never got cold and never rained. The few trees growing in the Next Stage used water from beneath the ground. Basics such as food and clothing were paid for by barter or services rendered. The cryptocurrency was necessary to obtain luxury goods, such as radios, which could be tuned to earthly stations, and mobiles. The latter functioned as status symbols, though they could only be used locally, ie they could not communicate with the world of the living. These and other luxury goods were created in 3D printers that used a person's DNA as the cryptographic key to unlock the use of EverAfterCoins. Couples who died separately could find each other using the mobiles, hence these were much prized.
This gave Jason an idea: why not offer a "find your family member" service? He persuaded Olinda to use her savings to hire a mobile for a month to see whether his business plan was viable. The problem was that both parties had to have access to a mobile. This constraint meant that few people managed to find their partner or child using his service. However, those who did were very grateful and rewarded him well. He made a profit, though not as much as he had expected. Life became more pleasant. They only needed to work as laborers four days a week.
Thinking about making connections, Jason, became ambitious. Although his actual beliefs wavered between agnosticism and Christianity, he had always been fascinated by the enduring human project of contacting the deity. In his earthly life, he had spent hours reading about the various modes of attempting to reach God. Humankind had tried many methods, such as prayer and meditation, trance, psychedelic drugs, whirling, extreme asceticism, sacrifices and votive offerings. However, none of these seemed to work. A promising recent idea was to use the rapidly improving technology of AI. However, engineering a prompt that would cause the AI to contact God was no easy matter.
Jason devoted all his spare time to this project, so much so that Olinda thought again about divorce. The AI gave him evasive answers and led him down numerous blind alleys. Eventually, he found a Sufic text in Arabic that gave a clue. It suggested that to address God, one needed to use all 65,536 of his names at the same time. As far as he could tell, no-one had ever done this. So Jason set about compiling a list of the sacred names. This involved diving into the literature of a large number of religions. Luckily, the AI could do this in a matter of minutes. Having assembled the complete list of names, the challenge was how to frame a message to the Almighty.
Jason pondered this for days and eventually came up with this formulation: "Dear God, could I trouble you to have a look at the two worlds humans inhabit, to see whether you could intervene in some way to set things right?" Jason was excited and eager to send the message into the ether, but he wanted to make sure it was exactly right, as he did not think he would have a second chance. Accordingly, he slept on it for seven nights, but failed to find an improvement.
So it came to pass that the Godhead received His first ever successfully delivered message from His human subjects. The results were momentous, but that is another story.
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*Author's note. The real reason for the Next Stage is that, as with the conservation of matter/energy, spirit too is conserved - or if you prefer - souls are immortal, hence they have to go somewhere after death.