“There’s really no need to do that,” the shade began, but Death was already pulling out a rock with a teal glyph carved into its surface. She pressed several lines, each one making a loud ringing beep, then held it up to her ear. After several rings the shade could hear the sound of someone answering.

Thence followed a brief conversation in a language that Connor didn’t understand, before Death hung up what must have been a (cultivation world) phone in disgust. She spit on the floor of the forest clearing they were using as a training ground, then turned to face her two colleagues. “They say they’ll look into it, and will be back with us momentarily.”

“And we will - or, to speak with a greater degree of precision, already are,” replied a surly and pompous voice. The youth stepped out of the portal, the pearly towers and marble halls of the Upper Realm vanishing as the portal faded into nonexistence behind him. He didn’t quite descend to the earth, preferring to hover in midair. Possibly this was to avoid stooping to the level of his interlocutors; possibly it was to avoid dirtying his pristine albescent suit. Perhaps it was a bit of both, thought the interlocutors, as they watched him carefully brush his gold tassels in case passing dust motes damaged them.

He pulled a folder out of nowhere, scanning it briefly, his perfect face a mask of contempt. Finally he spoke, his tone imperious and pitch strident. “Do I have the pleasure of addressing the transmigrator formerly known as uPhone 12, model MX0169, and reincarnated as one Connor Crinkle?”

“Indeed you do,” Connor replied, idly rising off the ground and into the air himself, not because he particularly cared if he was the equal of the prim and proper youth but because it was hilarious watching him squirm. Death must have agreed, because her mouth quirked up in a slight smirk, before she folded her arms and floated up beside him.

(Art was too busy examining some nearby beetles to care much about the conversation.)

The youth flipped through several pages of paper, scowling all the while. “I’m here to formally inform you that there was something of a clerical error during your iNitial Event of World Transition (N.E.W.T.), as a consequence of which you seem to have been classed as nearly two dozen persons in our internal filing systems.

“Said internal filing systems are not used to handling two dozen distinct persons in one body - we only ever do it as a unique and thrilling form of punishment - and it appears to have automatically adjusted itself by recording you as two dozen distinct persons entering, so to say, one by one. Hence every time you transition between worlds, it records it as an instance of a new individual entering another world and assigns you a new System.”

Death was unamused with this response.

“And is there any way to undo this? In case you hadn’t read that part of the file, these Systems are hardly useful. I mean, seriously, the Invincible Tree Growth System? What’s he even supposed to do with that?”

The shade nodded as he opened that particular System screen, looking in annoyance at the largely useless stats.

[Leaves] 0

[Fruit] 0

[Xylem] 0

[Phloem] 0

[Bark] 1

[Heartwood] 1

[Roots] 5

He had gotten his Roots stat to Rank 5 through walking about everywhere (thus the origin of his legendary indomitable toes), but the rest of the stats had remained at zero till he began cultivating the Body Regeneration Technique. Once he’d started developing new bones and flesh his heartwood and bark had begun increasing; he was hopeful that the rest of his stats would increase as he finished the body, but the System was still less than optimal for conceptualising human physiology.

The gorgeous youth sniffed, flipping through the papers. He tucked the folder under his arm. “Undo? No no no, no we will not, nor is there a need to. I- we,” he hurriedly corrected himself, “have no intention of taking responsibility for this problem, no matter how deleterious you may find it. The source of the problem was evidently the fact that Connor Crinkle, formerly known as uPhone 12 model MX0169, was a cellphone, an inanimate object; and inanimate objects aren’t people. As it was not a bug but a feature of our internal filing systems that interacted poorly with his non-soul, I- we reject the notion that we have any responsibility for the resultant problem, as there was no error committed.”

“Now wait just a doggone minute here,” said Art, rising suddenly to his feet, his entire form lit with righteous indignation. “I reject axiomatically your central contention that you can abrogate your responsibility by virtue of the fact that Connor here is a cell phone, and thus an inanimate object; as all the worthwhile works of man assert, man contains within himself the ten thousand things and thus has an obligation to fulfil all under Heaven - cellphones included.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Death whipped out her popcorn, delighted by the opportunity for entertaining chaos. The beautiful bureaucrat, on the other hand, backed up, affronted and furious at this insult to all good law and logic. “My dear sir, the ‘ten thousand things’ are the living beings, those which exist ens per se, which is to say of their own accord; phones, however, are inanimate objects which exist ens per alio, contingent upon others, and thus lack any sufficiency of self to ensure a continuity of identity. Consequently the notion that a phone might have anything to do with plenitude is eo ipso absurd, as the phone which is now was not the phone that was then, nor is it the phone that will be; a non-continuity of identity which goes in a large way to explaining why it is that our interna filing systems registered the phone as two dozen distinct persons in the first place.”

The phone in question was about to interrupt and explain that he really didn’t mind not being considered one person, as it affected him not in the slightest to have an excessive number of overpowered Systems and Cheat Skills (at least, not negatively), but Art was raring to defend his newfound friend and was absolutely determined to defend his honour before those who would assert that the phone was no person, but a collective of non-human databytes.

“That perspective, my dear sir,” and here he was spitting venom, “is perfectly acceptable if and only if we confine our analysis of the objective to a purely contingent case; yet you must be aware that an object exists not merely contingently, but by means of its own givenness, whose ineluctable and inexhaustible essence must be acknowledged and appreciated, not dismembered with logic games. Even for an object, what you are is not merely what you do.”

The heavenly youth’s face screwed up in disgust. “Oh gods, you’re a Hegelian. Please, spare us the diatribes about how all of creation is hidden love; as von Hildebrand noted at length in his What is Philosophy?, the faculty of perception is quintessentially defined by its unitive nature, and observations of the givenness of things need not indicate any degree of vivacity or even of value within them.”

Realising that the conversation was now entirely out of his hands (and arguably completely unrelated to his person - or two dozen persons, as the case may be), Connor opened up his third System and reviewed its stats, mentally cataloguing that with those of his second System.

Ultimate Obscure Sports System

[Geocaching] 0

[Lacrosse] 0

[Pole Vaulting] 0

Other sports to be unlocked later

Connor stroked his chin thoughtfully as he examined the stats, noting how they might interact positively with increases in the stats of his Invincible Tree Growth System. The situation was convoluted and irksome but not hopeless. Through care, diligence, and thoughtful consideration he was more than certain he could succeed with a body and the cards he’d been dealt.

“Phooey!” Retorted Art to the argument of the gorgeous messenger. “You have misunderstood both von Hildebrand and the deficiencies of his argument. The givenness of an object is the givenness of an object, and exists independently of any other object (save the Absolute, who is not, as has been well-documented, an object, but the non-being which gives the gift of being). On the other hand, the notion that our faculty of perception is fundamentally unitive is patently ludicrous. We are broken creatures, all of us, in need of a balm to make us whole; and how we see the world is as fragmentary as our selves, shards and ideas flickering as they dance across our vision, now one thing, now another. It is this brokenness that cripples our ability to understand others in the first place, hence the very origin of fulfilling the ten thousand things. Yet you deny that the phone merits respect merely because he is an object? You son of a dog, gird yourself like a man and argue sensibly.”

Briefly consulting his first System, the shade felt a shiver of existential dread course through him as he started to wonder. Was he real? Did he exist - really exist, as a person and not just a tool? Was he no more than a stream of broken fragments, which could never be mended, or was he something more? He turned to Death to ask her, but she was consumed with worries over more momentous matters. She turned to him, concern floating in her eyes.

“If you’re nearly two dozen persons, then do you have to pay the taxes of two dozen persons?”

This was obviously unhelpful, and added yet another worry to his growing pile. Then he remembered that “wonder was the start of philosophy” and he could avoid philosophy if only he avoided wondering, and felt better. There was nothing quite as blissful as ignorance.

The youth, of course, took exception to Artemaeus’ charge - though not because of the personal insult. He was, strange to say, fairly content about that one, seeing it as an entirely acceptable insult in the pursuit of the truth (for one should be offended only to slights on one’s moral honour, and not to slights on one’s face). No, what incensed him was Artemaeus’ ridiculous notion that the brokenness of existence could suffice as a justification for the notion that objects contained a totality beyond their incidental features, an idea he firmly rejected in line with his (to Art’s mind highly idiosyncratic) interpretation of von Uexkull.

The two danced through an intellectual battlefield, postulates pouncing and propositions propounding. Arguments toppled, worldviews fell, syllogisms rose and then collapsed like so much philosophical rubbish. At last, the field littered with shrapnel and the charred corpses of a thousand dying ideas, they reached a conclusion - the only conclusion, really - on what should be done with the case of the multipersonal cellular device:

He should be given a fourth System.