“Herata are you paying attention?” A ball of light spoke into the void between realities.
It floated above a smooth, paneled floor. A sea of shimmering stars amid the vastness of space spread endlessly in every direction.
Only the floor gave any indication that they weren’t floating freely through the cosmos.
The serenity of nothingness was shattered by seventy floating screens, each full of pictures and scrolling text.
“Of course I’m paying attention! Look how adorable baby Atlas is with that tiny fedora, how could anyone not pay attention?” A teenage girl’s voice echoed from amidst the screens.
Dozens of the screens were dominated by the display of an adorable baby boy, each with their own unique angle.
“Not the baby, Herata, the souls! You know, your job, processing and guiding souls to the next life? I get that Atlas is cute and stuff, and that these humans have the second best hats in the verse, but I swear I saw an error in that last batch-wipe.”
As the ball spoke, several souls of the departed began to pop into their plane of existence. Within moments, tens of thousands spread across the flat floor.
“Nonsense Mila, the wipe was fine. As if I would miss the most basic of—oh look now he’s trying to put the fedora on your sister's head. Ahh he’s just too cute!”
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The screens shifted their view, to a close up of the tottering child.
“You know what, never mind I’m sure you’re right. Two million years and counting, our perfect record in this quadrant won’t be taken down by a toddler in a zoot suit.
After a moment of hesitation the ball spoke again.
"Only wondering here, but where did you send that batch? I'm going to send out a tracker,” The last words were so quiet as to be imperceptible to any but a being of unimaginable power.
“Ugh, Mila you’re so annoying. Fine, fine, I’ll focus. You don’t need to send out a tracker, everything's fine!”
The nearby space quaked as the voice spoke, the fabric of reality bending and churning. Not that the nearby souls seemed to mind, as they continued to flutter about mindlessly.
“Very believable, since you’re now only watching him from twenty monitors instead of fifty? Oh look Herata, he’s doing a little dance.”
“Aaaahhh, adorable!”
Shamelessly using his nephew as a distraction. Mila made several near-instantaneous mental commands to his single floating screen. It responded by feeding him the coordinates of the last batch of souls as well as the prompt to convert a nearby soul into a tracking program.
Mila’s thoughts raced faster than the most sophisticated computer.
Always best to be cautious in the souls game.
There we go, that should resolve any pesky issues. Let’s see, one thousand cycles until the tracker arrives. Yeah, that’s not nearly enough time for some unwiped souls to cause any real problems.
Probably.
I’m sure she’s right.
Herata’s never made a mistake before and even if a few went through the filter in the last couple nanoseconds they’ll probably just die again before they break anything.
Probably.