I drifted, aimless and uncontrolled, trying to figure out where I was and how I'd gotten here. I seemed to be floating in flowing water, if water was made of memories and emotions and leaked into the mind the way the smell of a Korean coworker's microwaved lunch leaked into a break room. Nothing against any of my old coworkers, I'm sure that fish and kimchi was delicious (for them), it was just kind of pervasive, and it stuck around for hours.

I think I'd been at home, mainlining energy drinks and junk food and working on one of my projects, when

Harold had better step harder on the gas. This baby was coming, and if we didn't get to the hospital soon, I was going to bite a hole in the car's upholstery. I'd never been in this much pain before in my life, and if my fool husband thought I was going to sit still and be quiet through it, he had another think coming.

What? No. I think I fell asleep at my computer? I definitely didn't have a baby - I didn't even have the equipment to have a baby! These alien memories were getting stronger, more pervasive. That one had felt way too real, the phantom pain of someone else's contractions burned through me, but there was no way it could have been mine. I wasn't a parent. Now, what had I been thinking about?

Before I ended up here, I was

walking through the forest, my footsteps soft and unhurried, my hunting rifle slung over my back. My mouth watered as I anticipated the outcome of a successful hunt - a new trophy for my wall, and more venison than my family could possibly eat by ourselves. Maybe we could trade some to the neighbor for some of her wild berry jam.

No I wasn't. I'd never even had venison, even if I suddenly knew what it tasted like. And I'd definitely never used a hunting rifle. This was ridiculous! I just wanted to remember what I'd been doing before I landed in this weird river! Computer! Red Bull! The screen got really fuzzy! It got hard to think! And then I was here. Was this just some messed up dream from falling asleep at my desk?

It hurt. It hurt it hurt! I grit my teeth and held my breath against the pain, against the screams and curses that wanted to escape, and pushed hard with my arms and legs. Something gave. Oh, that was the footrest on the hospital wheelchair. Well. If they didn't want me damaging hospital equipment, they shouldn't make me wait so long to get into labor and delivery to get some pain relief! I know Harold made the right call, dropping me off then going to park the car, but I could really use some support here!

I felt like I should have been shaking all over. There was no way I was dreaming. That was way too real - too painful. There was no way I could dream up what it felt like to be a woman in labor. Feeling panic rising, I tried to calm my breathing. I wasn't breathing. I didn't have a nose, a mouth, or lungs to breathe with. I panicked harder. I could feel water flowing around me, but I couldn't move to swim in it. I didn't have arms or legs.

I tried to close my eyes, but I didn't have those, either.

I blew out the candles on the birthday cake with one breath, all six of them. My wish was going to come true!

I needed to focus. I couldn't breathe through the panic. I couldn't tense and relax my muscles, because I didn't have any. I couldn't check my senses, because the only sense I had was touch, and the only thing I could feel was the current. I could barely string three thoughts together without getting interrupted by

such a beautiful baby. I never thought I'd live to see my first great-grandchild.

Other people's memories. Focus, focus, what could I focus on?

The only thing I'd ever been able to really focus on was computers, and if I didn't have a body, I definitely didn't have a computer. I really, really wanted a computer right now. Even if all I could do was sort files so they made more sense, I'd

S://

What? What was that? Was that a directory? Was there anything in it?

Earl

...that's my name. OK. Um. Open Earl?

S://Earl/

This is weird. Am I hallucinating? Dreaming? Imagining myself as a computer so that I can have a computer wherever I go? What's in Earl?

Memories; Skills

Is that all I am? Memories and skills? I guess, without a body, I'm just what I remember and what I know how to do. That's really depressing.

Jump. Jump. Jump. Trip. My friends laughed as I got back up. I steadied the jumprope and got ready to try again.

...I think maybe that was me? But why were my friends in dresses? I'd never hung out with girls as a kid. I'd always thought they had cooties.

Oh. Because that wasn't me, but it sure felt like it was me. Back to root. I have an idea.

S://

Create folder: Not_Earl. Now, list folders.

Earl; Not_Earl

Perfect. Open Not_Earl.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

S://Not_Earl/

Create folder: Memories. Direct foreign memories to S://Not_Earl/Memories/. Please work. And, uh, take foreign memories and move to S://Not_Earl/Memories/. Please.

That was such bad computer hygiene. If this were real, or I was using an actual computer, I'd have to jump through so many more hoops, but I think it worked. I felt better already, secure in the knowledge that I never wore a frilly dress and jumped rope with the other little girls, on account of never having been a little girl. Where were all these memories coming from? Were there any of my memories floating around?

Send query: "list removed memories"? Y/N

Um. Yes?

Unable to locate list of removed memories. Memories removed: 3.

Oh, that was not alright. I needed to change some settings or something, because I needed to not lose any more memories. Just because none of those had been important didn't mean the next one to go wouldn't be something I needed. Settings? Please?

Oh, there they were. That was a lot of tabs, and a lot of details. Well, I had nothing better to do, so I started reading. Reading and adjusting. Adjusting and reading. It was dull and tedious, but I did it. And it worked. I enabled memory copying and disabled deletion when a memory was copied from me to the river, and I learned a few things, too.

First thing: I was dead. I was definitely dead. I had to review a few (dozen) memories to check facts, but the evidence pointed to stroking out at my computer and then not getting any help. Sure, I lived alone, but I was in my thirties! That's not old enough to have to worry about having a stroke, right? Right? Oh. Wrong. According to a wikipedia entry I must have read late at night and then not remembered later, people could have strokes at any age. It was just more common in old folks.

I sat by the hospital bed, holding the cold, wrinkled hand. I wasn't ready. I never would have been, I know, but I wasn't ready.

Ugh. Even though I knew that wasn't my memory, it hit hard. I wondered if anyone was going to grieve for me. I hadn't spoken to my parents in years, and it had been even longer since I'd heard from my sister, and that was just a letter telling me I was formally banned from attending her wedding. The only thing she might cry about was that I definitely hadn't left her anything, not that I had much to leave behind. I didn't have any friends outside of work, and my work friends barely counted. I only ever saw my landlord when my rent was late or I had to bully him into fixing something around the place.

The second thing I learned going through my settings: reincarnation was a thing. People reincarnated after they died, animals reincarnated after they died, and memories and personalities were erased from the soul when that happened. This river I was in, the River of Memories, was part of that process. I turned off automatic deletion of memories and personalities. By changing the settings in my soul, I probably changed the way reincarnation is going to work for me, maybe forever (or until those settings get changed back).

If I keep my memories in every life, will I go mad from it? Can I seal those memories after I'm reborn, so I can have a nice, normal life as a new person, and then remember myself later? Or maybe I can sort of watch from behind my own eyes and have multiple minds and personalities develop in my soul? That sounded messy, but still better than forgetting who I am.

If "Earl" ceased to exist, I wouldn't be me. I'd be someone else, and "Earl" would be dead. I didn't want that - I couldn't stand the thought. I'll just have to cross that bridge when I come to it, however many "me"s there are.

As I thought about life and afterlife and the nature of the self, the river around me grew faster and more turbulent. What had been a gentle current became rough and choppy, and unseen forces created eddies that swirled me around in circles, up and down and around and around. It was dizzying, and the fragments of memory were disorienting.

I ran-walked-crawled-swam through-past-over-around a road-a field-an olympic pool...

Ugh. Something soft bumped against me, and foreign emotions flooded out of it panic fear confusion lost alone and then it was gone, swept away in the current. Or maybe I was swept away from it. Either way, I drifted into a calmer patch. Fragments of memories, barely impressions of experiences, continued to wash through me as I floated along. Sometimes, things bumped into me from the side, or from below, and inflicted their emotions on me. None of them seemed to be having a good time.

In an attempt to distract myself from how awful the afterlife had turned out to be, I made a folder called "Tools" in root and built a little tracker program in it. It counted notices that the River was copying a memory, kept time in increments I labeled "seconds" based on how long it took me to think the words "one Mississippi" slowly, and logged which memory was copied and the time between copies. Now, if I wanted some idea of how long had passed, I could just check the tracker.

Several bumps and a copied memory later, I realized that I'd forgotten something. I went back into my tracker and added "minutes" and "hours". That was better. Now I could track how long I'd been here.

About fifteen hours after that cheerful thought, I went over a waterfall, bounced off of something hard under the "water", and bobbed back up. It was weird to realize after so long floating that there was a bottom and, apparently, a top to the water. I didn't have long to bask in my new understanding of the world around me, though.

Less than a minute after going over the falls, my world became pain. Something pierced through me - not like the pierced ears (and other things) from some of the memories I'd been forced to live, but all the way through. I'd been impaled. Then, I was jerked back by the - the thing that - it burned - it -

----------------------------------------

Junior Fisherman Burim had been having an incredibly boring, typical day, watching the River of Memories and occasionally throwing his harpoon at something or scooping small souls out of the water near the shore with his net, when he saw it. It wasn't big enough to be a spirit fish, but it wasn't small enough to be an ordinary soul, either. It was floating in the calm patch near the middle of the river, much too far out for his net.

Not too far for his harpoon, though.

Burim checked to make sure the harpoon's rope was connected properly, both to the weapon and to his own wrist - it wouldn't do to lose it. He hefted his fishing tool, took aim, and threw, just as hard as he could.

There was a great splash, and both the harpoon and the large soul vanished beneath the surface of the river. Burim waited, but the unusual soul didn't float back up. Excitement rose within him like the first rays of dawn after a long, cold night, and he began to reel in the harpoon and, he hoped, the large soul. Carefully, too fast and it might slip off the end, hand over hand, Burim pulled the rope in until he reached its end and found that the biggest, fattest soul he'd ever pulled from the river was impaled on his harpoon.

It was bigger than his clenched fist, almost as large as both his hands together, and speared neatly through its middle. He propped it over an empty basket and carefully untied the rope from his harpoon before standing the weapon on its butt in the basket and sliding the soul, carefully, down and off, trying to do as little damage as possible to it. He'd have to let it sit a while to heal from being speared, but that was typical.

Burim put a wicker lid on the basket and tied it shut with twine, then set it aside to wait for him to finish his fishing for the day. Maybe there would be a few other good catches for him before the collector came to fetch his catches.

He glanced at the stack of empty baskets behind him and grimaced. Some decades, it felt like he'd never manage to fill them all up and be promoted to Fisherman.