The pain burned through me. Large chunks were ripped and torn from me. I tried to writhe and scream in agony even as I was held still and silent in an inky blackness. A brief endless moment of this torment existed before the calm of the darkness surrounded me. Slowly a new pain began to slice and cut into me, driven by precise fine lines of torment, a subtle pain compared to the violent gouging that came before.

Then, release…calm…peace…

The ache of my torture finally ebbed away and I found myself in a small grey room. Grey walls, dark grey carpet, with a small grey man situated behind a dark wooden desk. The desk and the rim of his glasses were the only color in the room. Grey hair, grey eyes, and a grey suit. All his short form was just differing shades of gray.

“We don’t have much time, so I’m going to try and go through this quickly and tell you as much as I can, this is obviously not an ideal situation.”

The grey little main rubbed the bridge of his nose as he stared at me, his voice hinted at frustration and disgust.

“I’m an afterlife advocate, when people who die fall outside the normal rules, I’m supposed to figure out how to process their next life, within the rules, in the best way possible.”

The idea that I was dead should have caused a flash of fear or laughter or any number of emotions, but it was just a fact, no more exciting to me than up or down. My calm acceptance of death and rebirth said clearly something fundamentally was wrong.

Tapping the grey folder in front of himself, the little main continued.

“When you die, we measure your performance in life based on whatever Benefits you selected, whatever Penalties you experienced, and how well you reached your Goals.”

Tapping more aggressively at the folder he continued.

“Free will exists so if a Benefit gets screwed up because of someone acting up, well that’s how it goes. We keep track of that and keep aware of it in your measure.”

Waving his arm the grey little man continued, “Born to the rich but your parents gamble away the money? Well, that Benefit becomes a Penalty, we are aware of this. Your life is measured, even in that regard.”

Flipping open the file folder he sorted files into multiple stacks. I glanced at them as well as I could but the writing on them was odd and unreadable. The three stacks he built were grossly uneven, two large stacks and a middle stack of only a few thin sheets.

Pointing to the largest stack he explained, “Goals determine how well you do in life,” moving to the smallest pile, “Benefits are your rewards for your previous efforts at life,” and the final pile, “While Penalties create difficulties to overcome.”

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Again the little odd man rubbed the bridge of his nose then shook his head as he continued.

“Almost every part of your previous life was screwed up. Benefits became Penalties, your Penalties became worse, and your Goals were balanced according to your original Penalties and Benefits. In short, everything which could have gone wrong did.”

I tried to raise a feeling of disquiet, of anger, or frustration, but I felt at most apathetic over the entire situation. I was as bland in emotion as the color scheme of the room.

“Worse, someone put an unsupervised intern in charge of reclamation and when the skewed numbers came through, meaning you should have had an advocate right from the start, they just looked at your Goal score and blithely continued on with the process and started ripping your memory out like you were a failed soul bound for a low-end reincarnation.”

Somewhere these words pulled a small shadow of feeling, a sense of injustice and anger, but it was a pale reflection of real feeling.

“Worse, since your Penalties were all off the chart, even the meager showing you made towards your Goals would have awarded you massive Benefits in your next life.”

My focus on the conversation started to drift, the bland grey world I found myself in became blurred and soft. The sharp color of the brown desk starting to flex and blend into the shadows and carpet.

“This throws everything off, I did the best I could for you, with your memories of yourself mostly ripped out, I had to select all your Goals, Penalties, and Benefits. I had to balance everything the best I could within the rules, pushing for you the entire time, but it wasn’t easy, and it frankly wasn’t even remotely fair.”

Shoving all the papers into the folder the grey man placed his hands on the desk bracing against the desk before presenting the verdict.

“I picked a universe where the mechanics and rules are clear. Your memories of yourself were cut away, personality and self, though the memories of your world will stay. I balanced these such that your memories count as a Penalty since your moral code and self-perception as a human won’t work in your new life. You won’t be human, but I picked a race which comes with potential Benefits if you can bend things your way. I did the best I could on your Goals, but sadly I had to take the worst Penalty I could find to balance out the blatant rule bending I was doing…I can’t tell you your Goals. Good Luck.”

As the room started to fade away I could see the little grey man with his head resting on his hands softly weeping.