A bright light falling onto my eyelids caused me to cringe my eyes in discontent. My mind and body ached like I hadn’t slept for the past few days but something urged me awake. My eyes opened as slowly as they adjusted to the new light entering my vision. The view that greeted me was familiar by knowledge but not by sight. Empty white space extended endlessly in every direction. I looked onward in amazement, the completely plain scene had grabbed my attention. It was unsettling how empty it was, so much so I began feeling a little nervous. I had never been here before but I knew where I was the moment I opened my eyes. I was in purgatory.
My trance was broken by an incessant scribbling sound. Startled, I quickly turned around to see what it was. A woman dressed in business attire worked tirelessly on the sheets of paper on her desk. My momentary shock turned to embarrassment and I felt the need to explain my reaction.
“Oh, I didn’t even notice you were there. I was busy looking at the uh… white space.” I said.
By the time I got to the end of my explanation I felt silly. She looked up at me hardheartedly and responded, “Age forty-five, human, professional doormat… elf.”
I looked at her dumbfoundedly, she spoke too fast for me to grasp the meaning of her words. “Uhh… what?”
She moved to stamp the paperwork on her desk but my words paused her. She reluctantly put the stamp aside and spoke with a more paced manner of speech. “I was explaining your assignment. You know, what you’ll be doing in your next life?”
Assignment? I barely had enough time to process my own death and she was talking about things I didn’t understand. I knew about reincarnation, it was a common theory about what happened after death. That didn’t make it any less surprising though.
“Next life!? What about my divine judgment?”
She slouched back into her chair and shot me a look of annoyance. I had only asked her a few questions and it seemed like she was already sick of me. “That doesn’t exist, at least not like you think it does. You die, get your new assignment and complete that one. Then you do it all over again.”
Hearing that was disappointing. After the life I’ve lived, I was actually looking forward to the afterlife. I wouldn’t have to deal with all the problems that plagued me when I was alive and now she was telling me I’d have to go through that all over again. I wasn’t happy about it and was ready to complain but the look on her face stopped me.
I released an shortened sigh. “So I’m not going to heaven?”
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “I told you there is no such thing and even if there was, I doubt you would be let in. I don’t think many murderers end up on the ‘nice’ list.”
I cringed at her words. Yeah I ‘murdered’ my wife and brother but it wasn’t malicious. If someone psychopathic went through what I did then I’m sure my brother and wife would have been made to suffer. I, on the other hand, ended their lives quickly and painlessly.
“I’m not a murderer. I helped them move on from their life of sin before they messed with a psychopath.”
“Yeah.. Uh-huh, whatever you say. I’m not here to judge.”
“I beg to differ.” If she wasn’t here to judge me then what was the point of this whole set up?
“Your assignment was chosen the moment you came here and not by me. I’m here to send you off to your next assignment.”
She didn’t even try to make her words sound believable but I wasn’t about to argue with her about it. I wanted the conversation to move on. “So what is it then?”
“Your assignment?”
“Of course my assignment, what else could I be asking about?”
“It doesn’t really matter what I tell you. You’re going to lose your memories once you reincarnate anyways.”
I straightened up after hearing that. I wasn’t happy with the prospect of being reincarnated but I assumed I would get to keep my memories. That way I could prevent myself from being walked all over in my next life. After thinking for a few minutes I finally asked, “Is there any way to reincarnate without losing your memories?”
“You can’t start your assignment until your memories are wiped.” She could see the look of concern on my face and returned to the stack of papers on her desk and flipped to the last page. After a few seconds of reading she looked back up at me. “If you’re thinking you’ll end up a doormat yet again, don’t worry. Your personality is a product of your environment and race, not your previous life. Plus even if you do end up like that, it doesn’t mean your next life will be bad.”
I shot her a disgruntled look. If her words were meant to reassure me, they didn’t help. “You make it seem like I will be like that in my next life. I don’t care if it doesn’t matter, what is my assignment?”
“Fine, your next assignment is an elf.”
She said something about elves at the start but I had no way of knowing what she meant at the time. I was still astonished I was going to reincarnate into a mythical race. “An elf?! Fantasy creatures are real?”
“Of course they’re real.”
I was still trying to process all of this but there was two things I had to know now. “What about my wife, what did she reincarnate to?”
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“A fairy.”
“And my brother?”
“Mermaid.”
“What?”
“He’s a mermaid now. He was a tempter in his past life so now he’s a mermaid.”
Her clarification contradicted what she said earlier. If personalities were a product of environment and race then why was my brother going to be a tempter in his next life because he was one before?
“But you sa-”
She cut me off before I finished my sentence. “I know what I said, you didn’t listen. He isn’t a mermaid now because he has some inborn talent to tempt people. He is a mermaid because he was a tempter in his past life.”
“How is that any different than what I said!?”
“If your personality was bound to your soul he would be a tempter no matter what he reincarnated to. As it stands now, he can still be a chaste mermaid if he really tries.”
“That still means there will be a high chance I’ll be a doormat in my next life. I don’t want that, can’t I keep my memories?”
“No, you can’t. I’m sure your brother didn’t want to be a mermaid either but he’s doing his assignment like he was supposed to. Plus I couldn’t even let you keep your memories if I wanted to. As soon as you go through the system your memories will be wiped and you’ll be none the wiser when you start your new life.”
I had also wanted to ask about my late wife’s assignment but I was worried it would take up too much time. Instead I decided the best way to get her to give me another option was to deny the one I was given. I issued an elongated sigh and muttered under my breath, “I’m not going to do my assignment.”
If she wasn’t sick of me already, she was now. I could tell by the way her eyebrow twitched as she stared daggers into me she wasn’t happy. I didn’t know what authority she had over me but she didn’t seem able to make me do my assignment without me agreeing. “What did you say?”
I doubled down and said it more firmly this time. “I’m not going to do my assignment. You want me to reincarnate into a tree hugging hippie with no memories of my past? Kill me why don’t you, at least my suffering will end sooner.”
She continued to glare at me but I didn’t look away. If I gave up now all my experience from my past life would amount to nothing. I wasn’t going to ‘play nice’ here or anywhere else for that matter.
“Fine,” she said, seemingly giving in. “I’ll let you have your deferment right now but you’ll have to do your assignment right after.”
“Deferment?”
“Yes, people usually only take it after their last assignment as a type of vacation but since you’re so adamant about not doing your assignment you can take it now.”
“What do I do during deferment?”
“Its like an assignment except you get to choose any race you want to be.” She paused and flipped through the papers once more before continuing. “Well, thats how it normally goes.”
“What do you mean?” I asked unhappily. I hoped she wasn’t inferring what I thought she was.
“When someone finishes all of their assignments they regain all of the memories from their previous lives. Then they can choose whatever race they want and explore life one final time. However, that isn’t the case for you. You’ve still got plenty of assignments left so you don’t get to keep your memories and choose your race. You get one. I’m sure you’ll want to choose to keep your memories so you’ll be assigned your race, which won’t be something good.”
I grunted at her response. “Whats the point of keeping my memories if I reincarnate into something too weak to make use of them?”
“You’ll get chances if you can survive. Its not the best deal but its the only one I’m going to give. If you don’t want to take it you can do your assignment.”
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
“Alright, place your hand over the stamp here and you’ll have signed. It says you’ll take this deferment deal but once its over you have no choice but to start your next assignment.”
“So, I’ll remember everything?”
“Yes.”
“Even this conversation?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you scared I’m going to tell others about it?”
She laughed at the thought. “Go ahead. Do you really think you’re going to cause some kind of massive revelation across multiple open realms because you’ve supposedly been to the afterlife? Get real, even if people believed you it wouldn’t matter. In the grand scheme of things if you convince a few billion people you’d probably increase the amount of people in all existence who know by 0.000000000000000001% and that’ll drop back to normal when they reincarnate. Because you lose memories when you reincarnate.”
“Oh…”
“Got anymore questions?”
“Not that I can think of… how long do I have before I start my deferment?”
“You don’t ‘have’, this meeting was supposed to be done within five minutes but I was being nice. Goodbye and I hope you have a ‘nice’ life.”
That was the end of the conversation. The bright, heavenly light of my surroundings faded until everything was pitch black. I couldn’t even see myself and soon I couldn’t even hear my own breathing. Slowly my consciousness weakened and I fell asleep until my placement was complete.