At 9:47 AM, Rupert's manager Laurent (a man whose accent managed to make theoretical physics sound like a particularly saucy dining experience) informed him that the Large Hadron Collider was experiencing what he termed "ze little irregularité."
This, Rupert had learned through experience, could mean anything from a loose wire to an imminent resonance cascade.
The problem turned out to be disappointingly mundane: a magnetic cooling system fault in Sector 7. As Rupert made his way through the tunnel to the affected area, he couldn't help but think how amusing it would be if someone accidentally turned on the particle beam while he was down there. He'd probably become the first human being to be fractionally quantum tunneled through several dimensions at once. The thought made him smile—the kind of smile that would have worried his therapist if he could ever afford one.
The fix was simple enough: a connection had come loose, likely due to thermal cycling. As he tightened the final bolt, Rupert reflected that this was about as anticlimactic as nuclear engineering got. Here he was, in one of the most sophisticated machines ever built by mankind, holding a common 3cm socket wrench and performing the particle physics equivalent of jiggling a wire until the TV picture came back. A regular Gordon Freeman of CERN.
Minus the aliens.
He packed up his tools and began the walk back to the data center, mentally composing an email explaining why this particular fault wouldn't be happening again (it would), and how they could prevent similar issues in the future (they couldn't).
The Swiss sky above was a perfect shade of spring blue, the kind of day that made one forget about the thousands of planes passing overhead, each carrying hundreds of passengers who were using the facilities, their bodily waste being stored in tanks that occasionally developed ice leaks at high altitude. Ice that unfortunately was the exact same color as the beautiful spring sky.
Rupert's last thought, as a frozen mass of commercial airline lavatory runoff merrily accelerated toward his head at Mach .78 was that he really needed to go to the bathroom.
On the way, the bathroom met him.
The block of blue ice struck him with a level of laser-guided accuracy that would have impressed his colleagues if they weren't about to be so inconvenienced by his sudden departure from both his workstation and the mortal realm.
He died instantly, which was, all things considered, the most efficient thing he'd done all day.
The incident would later be recorded in CERN's accident log as "Act of God (United Airlines)," and would result in a strongly worded letter to the airline in question and a new safety policy requiring all employees to wear hard hats when walking outside—a policy that would save exactly zero lives in the following decade but would thoroughly annoy his co-workers. The women on the safety committee awarded themselves a special commendation for thinking of it.
In a grand cosmic irony, Rupert Wright, who had spent his career studying the fundamental forces of the universe, was killed by the most fundamental force of all: gravity, working in concert with human plumbing and the international aviation industry.
His body was found seven minutes later by a passing appreciative grad student, who initially mistook the scene for an elaborate performance art piece about the impact of globalization on postmodern society.
***
Rupert found himself with a mild headache in a waiting room that combined the worst aspects of airport terminals, dental practices, and departments of motor vehicles, right down to the magazines that were seventeen years out of date and contained nothing but crossword puzzles that had already been filled in (incorrectly).
He approached a number dispenser, the kind found in delicatessens and particularly sadistic government offices. The machine whirred thoughtfully when he pressed the button, then dispensed a slip that read "∞-1." The next person in line received "√-1." The person after that got "π²." A plump, harried-looking man with a bushy mustache who had clearly been there for several eternities was playing idly with a ticket that read "Thursday."
“Is this always so illogical?” Rupert asked The Man Who Was Thursday.
“Life is not illogical; yet it is a trap for logicians,” Thursday replied philosophically.
Rupert watched as people (they all at least appeared to be human, or approximations of them) were brought forward seemingly at random. "Now serving number: Fiat Lux!" called out an auto-tuned voice. A man clutching a ticket marked "IAOUE" strode confidently to the counter. The voice chirped, "Now serving: The Meaning of Life!" Half the room stood up at once, prompting another announcement: "Correction! Now serving: What is 6 x 9?" That seemed to settle things, as the line narrowed to just one very irritated Englishman in a bathrobe holding a ticket that read ‘42.’ Next the voice called out "Now serving number: The Square Root of Entropy!" and three other people began jostling, trying to argue that their tickets were equivalent to this if you solved them using irrational numbers.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Rupert cut in front of them. They didn’t notice.
The clerk behind the counter was a being of indeterminate existence wearing a name tag that read "HELLO MY NAME IS █████████" (the name actively rewriting and censoring itself in real-time). They were filling out forms in several dimensions simultaneously.
"Cause of death?" the clerk asked without looking up, their voice bored and coming from multiple directions at once - like a tentacled home theater system.
"Frozen airline waste," Rupert replied.
The clerk paused, one of its seventeen visible pens hovering in mid-air. "Blue or brown ice?"
"I didn't have time to check the color chart."
"Hmm," said the clerk, shuffling through a stack of forms that were printed on what might have been paper if paper could beg for the sweet release of death. "That's going to require Form 7B/Ω. No, wait... you're a human. Make that Form 7B/Ω/η. Do you have your interdimensional transit visa?"
"My what?"
"Your interdimensional transit visa. Required for all cross-reality transfers since the Convergence of Infinite Realities Treaty of [REDACTED],” the clerk droned, tapping irritably at a keyboard made of light. “Can't process a death without one. Did you not receive the pre-death information packet? Should have been delivered in a dream roughly three to five business nights ago."
“A dream?”
"Yes, a dream," the clerk snapped, as if explaining to a particularly dim hamster. "You know—deadly premonitions? Visions of impending doom? A glowing angel with a Tom Selleck mustache handing you a manilla envelope marked URGENT? Ringing any bells?"
"I don't remember any—"
"Of course you don't. Nobody ever does. That's why we have Form 94/∞ for retroactive dream-mail confirmation." The clerk pulled out a form written in Proto-Indo-European and binary code. "Fill this out in triplicate. Don't have a pen? There's a fourteen-year waiting list for the pen requisition form."
Rupert, who had spent his short professional career dealing with the bureaucracy of multinational scientific institutions, found himself surprisingly at home. "Isn't there some sort of expedited process? Given the unexpected nature of my death?"
The clerk's expression conveyed the concept of ‘amusement' without actually changing. "Oh, you mean Form EX-1/∅? For expedited processing? Certainly. You'll just need to get that approved by the Department of Temporal Acceleration. They're located in last week. Once you have that, you'll need signatures from the Board of Metaphysical Transitions (they only meet during solar eclipses on Chiron, Proxima Centauri), the Council of Improbable Deaths (currently on strike due to an stack overflow of ironic demises), and three versions of yourself from alternate timelines."
"But I'm dead. How am I supposed to—"
"Being dead is no excuse for not following proper procedures and protocols, Mr. Wright. In fact, there's a form for claiming death as an excuse for not properly following proper protocols and procedures. Would you like to add Form KAFKA/¯_(ツ)_/¯ to your queue?"
Rupert noticed that after the ticket counter the waiting room was full of other souls in various states of ennui. A man killed by a falling piano was filling out a teetering stack of forms, each one asking for a slightly different definition of "piano." A woman who had died of heartache was arguing with another clerk about whether her death qualified as metaphorical or literal for insurance purposes.
"What happens if all this paperwork isn't properly filed?" Rupert said,
The clerk finally looked up, all their eyes (a number which changed every time he observed them) focusing on Rupert.
"Without proper documentation," the clerk said, "You'll be processed through the Random Reincarnation Lottery. You could end up anywhere—any reality, any time, any place. And wherever you land, you'll be bound by that reality's rules. Its own metaphysics. Its laws of life and death."
The bureaucratic being shuffled some papers. "However, to spare me the paperwork, I'll let you jump straight in as is—we usually make people get born again, but there’s an ongoing lawsuit from the Southern Baptist Convention about copyright infringement." The clerk signed something, then added, "Plus you'll have local language fluency to make it fair. Consider it a customer service gesture. Technically against regulations, but," they lowered their voice, "between you and me, the Processing Department has been backlogged since the Finno-Korean Hyperwar, and they still haven't upgraded from punch cards."
"Wait," Rupert asked, a thought occurring to him. "Do I get any powers or special abilities?"
"You've been reading cheap fiction, haven't you? Been getting a lot of those 'hit by truck' guys lately. Hmmmm." The clerk's name tag flickered as they hemmed and hawed, "That's... not standard procedure..."
"But possible?" Rupert pressed.
The clerk sighed like a rusty filing cabinet opening. "What did you have in mind?"
"Well," Rupert considered carefully, not wanting to waste this opportunity, "something appropriate? Given my background?"
The clerk studied him for a long moment, "Very well. When you get there, just make your eyes go out of focus. You'll figure the rest out." They paused, "And I never told you that. Forms 27B/6 through 39Q/∞ have not been filed for this conversation, which, officially, never happened."
The clerk leaned forward. "You get one shot at this, Mr. Wright. One. No appeals, no do-overs, no interdimensional transfers. Your soul will belong to whatever world you find yourself in. Are you absolutely sure you want to bypass the proper channels?"
Rupert considered this for a moment. One chance. One reality. One set of rules he'd have to learn to live - or die - by. "That still sounds better than all this paperwork. I'll take my shot."
"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that suggestion of circumvention. But hypothetically, if someone were to, say, accidentally drop this rubber stamp marked 'RANDOM REASSIGNMENT - VOID WHERE PROHIBITED' and then accidentally look away for exactly 2.3 seconds..."
Rupert had been in academia long enough to recognize a hint when it was dropped on his metaphysical head. He quickly grabbed the stamp and slammed it on his left wrist.
The last thing he heard before things began to dissolve around him was the clerk muttering, "Finally, someone who understands how things really work around here. This will only generate about three hundred forms for improper soul processing, rather than the usual seven thousand–"
Then everything went sideways in a direction that didn't exist in Euclidean space.