It’s easy to lose track of time when you don’t have a way of measuring it. We do have a way; our heartbeat counters are always there, always pulling us closer and closer to our next life. But a lot of the things you get used to when you’re alive just don’t worry us here

None of us will ever really get hungry, or have to sleep, or need to find a bathroom. That last one is important because I have never once seen a bathroom in the between. Like with sleep, it’s an option, but nothing enforces it, and that’s critical when we can’t open doors out that will let us come back without paying a steep cost.

This makes things that are enjoyable a lot easier to become the focus of our hours. I don’t even particularly cherish the game Six picked out, but we play for two subjective days before someone is declared the winner.

The end of the game comes with a collective sigh, a release of tension and a satisfying conclusion and a little something extra besides. Six is excellent at this game, but it was Ellin who took over this round, and she flicks away the notification that the game itself offers upon its conclusion.

Very little in the between is actually its mundane form. There are, obviously, several different theories about the place. I’d say “thousands” but that’d be a lie. There aren’t. Everyone thinks their take is unique, but they really just boil down to being from a handful of broad categories, and then reincarnators who haven’t learned how to not be pedantic in five hundred years of living argue with each other endlessly about it. But personally, while I don’t think the between is ‘alive’ exactly, I do think that if it were it would be sarcastic.

Leaves and Branches is an intense board game, and technically, it is a form of gambling. Except the buy-in is in the form of the literal heartbeats spent to play it, and the payout is something the between conjures up for the winner. Typically, depending on how long and abstractly good the game was, somewhere between a two to eight percent boost to mana production next life. Not really that fancy, especially since a lot of worlds don’t have mana and it won’t even convert to exa or seep or any of the other common ones, but it’s still not nothing.

Ellin ignores it. Instead, she’s much more interested in what she’s actually won. “Oy, yes!” The towering woman kicks her feet up onto the table, tilting her chair back dangerously far. Not for her, we can’t die here, but I’m terrified for the safety of the chair. The tree it’s made of was extinct before whoever brought it here died, replacing or repairing it is going to cost half my soul if she breaks it, if it’s even possible. “Alright Six! Pay up!”

The golem looks up from where he is tracing a line between two piles of cards with one of his grey fingers and an intense analysis in his round eyes. “Me, then? Very well.” He stands, and moves to the head of the table. “Where do I start?”

His monotone question has Ellin rubbing her hands together in excitement while Mark and Jules and I just settle in. “Oooh, let’s see. Well, first off, species? World class? Lifeline?”

“Orc standard, pre industrial, and forty subjective years.” Six snaps off his answers.

“Tell me…” Ellin considers, then snaps her fingers. “Tell me what was important to you.” She decides. “Like, what did you love pursuing?”

Six gives a curt nod. “Very well.” He thinks in silence, preparing his response, which buys me time to go rummage under the bar for anything to snack on. We are, unfortunately, out of bursting zee, and popcorn, and even just crackers. There’s nothing here that wouldn’t require cooking, and I don’t want to waste the time. I make my way back empty handed, tapping Mark’s leg with my tail as I sit.

“You didn’t miss anything.” He whispers like we’re in a theater. Which, in a way, we are.

Every world I’ve ever been on has something like the magic circle. The storytelling drive where we can transport each other willingly to far off lands. And somehow, despite having lived fantastical lives and seen amazing and unbelievable things, it is still a delight to share with each other. To tell stories, to relate our lives and experiences, to make it all real here again.

So when Six starts to speak, paying off his story wager, we all shut up and listen. “On the third hide of the scrolls of Kasu, there is a record of the origins of the Koo Hasu. The term, in our language, is literal, and means ‘good people’.” I love Six’s history lessons, they come with citations and tangents for all sorts of things like this. “When I was eight summers old, the other children and I were taken to a field to learn. Learning for the Koo Hasu is sacred, so it was natural to them that our learning take place in a sacred site. The field in question had been skipped by a wildfire six summers prior, and was considered blessed. The first of the scrolls concerned how to live good lives, and generally matched Luri and Jules’ ethos. The second scroll concerned how to find the divine. The third related to where our people came from.” Six pauses, and looks down at his hands, before shaking his head. “I regret that I will never see them again.” He speaks simply, but the words hold a weight that he typically never lets his voice contain. “Regardless.” Six continues. “The origin of our people was written as a fall from the moon. Both the writing and illustrations showed a descent with wings, which our people were said to have lost. As with many pre-information era writings, it was metaphorical and I assumed inaccurate.”

“Now that’s interesting.” Mark mutters next to me, eyebrows going up. And I agree with him; Six doesn’t say things like assumed unless he’s about to admit fault. I take a sip of my drink and enjoy the pleasant burn as I listen to the story.

“Yes.” Six continues with a look in Mark’s direction. “My assumption was flawed. As the world lacked the standard signs of active divinities, magic, thaumaturgy, or whispering, I had falsely believed that the story was a story and nothing more. A fiction that was falsely believed for comfort, as answers always are.” Six almost hits a note of irritation when he says that. Our golem is a renowned atheist, which tends to get him into trouble on worlds that do have non-metaphor gods. “The scroll was copied from the original writing. Or from a copy of the copy. But learning was sacred, and so every copy was made verbatim. Two summers later, for my knowledge, I was apprenticed to the recordkeeper, and given the task of making a new copy of the first three scrolls. Recordkeepers were semi-religious figures, but not leadership, and all youth were required to undergo an apprenticeship. And on close inspection, I found a detail that I had assumed - yes Mark falsely - to be decoration.”

“Oooh, a mystery!” Ellin grins a wide and toothy smile.

“Correct. And I am not immune to curiosity.” Six’s voice almost makes that sound like a condemnation, but I smile, because I know him too well. This one thing probably made the entire life for him. “I asked questions, and learned the recordkeeper copied it from the previous version. It took two more summers to obtain permission to seek another tribe of the Koo Hasu from which our recordkeeper had originated. Following the trail of copies, I eventually found a version that had been preserved for over eight hundred summers. And, along with it, preserved copies of other scrolls that had related context.”

“Suppressed knowledge?” Jules asks. It’s not really an interruption. When a story pulls us in, asking questions is to be expected. “Some sinister plot.”

Six shakes his head in a mechanical back and forth. “Worse. Time, and information rot. The copies of the other scrolls had not been considered valuable enough to be copied alongside the others. They did not spread, and the information was not well preserved. Because of previous information rot, they were not understood, but because of my nature, I could make sense of them. The markings on the third scroll were not decorations. They were coordinates.”

“How mapped out was the world, if it was pre industrial?” I find myself asking.

“It was not mapped at all.” Six says. “Our charts related to herd migrations, wind currents, and meeting places. There were no coherent maps of the world. And no use of coordinates.” He holds up a hand to forestall more questions. “The truth of the matter was difficult to understand. I now have the benefit of context, but at the time, performing translations and mild archeologies was the work of several years. I became a known figure in my people, and took several apprentices. It was not until near the end of my life that I found a record that could align to my deciphered coordinate system. At that point, I did what my curiosity compelled me to.”

“You went where the scroll pointed.” I’m grinning now. I can’t wait to see where this ends.

“Yes. The journey took three summers, and a pilgrimage with members from eighty different tribal bands of the Koo Hasu. It was a large undertaking.” I love the way Six can say something like that. A ‘large undertaking’ my tail. Probably the most powerful cultural event in his people’s history; it’s like calling a planet a ‘sizable rock’. Technically true, usually, but come on. “Arriving at the coordinate site revealed nothing except a strange formation in the ground. We set up camp, and began exploration.” Six tilts his head up, a tiny incline that’s almost imperceptible, but on him speaks a lot to the nostalgia at play. “And then we found a door.”

“What, just standing around?” Ellin asks, confused. I just sip my drink and point at her in agreement. “I mean, that happens sometimes, I’m not saying that’s off the table.”

“No, Ellin, the door was buried. We had to dig for it. It was made of a titanium alloy.” Six states the fact like that’s a normal thing to say. “I opened it with a [Rogue Aspect] use, which I had no need for over the course of an otherwise peaceful life. Several of our expedition, myself included, began to explore what was buried. The discovery gave context to the third scroll; the structure was a crashed starship.”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“That’s so fucking cool.” I mutter. “So you actually did fall from the sky.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, that was the end of my life.” Six says. “Though Ellin did not win the knowledge of my death, I would like to share it. When we ventured too deep, the ship’s systems reenabled, and the defenses targeted us at once with their remaining power. I kept my companions safe long enough for them to flee, which I am proud of. But the last piece of information I extracted was the language of the automated systems, calling us escaped prisoners.” Six shakes his head. “My people, with hundreds of years as peaceful seekers of knowledge and harmony, were the descendents of a crashed prison ship.”

“I wonder what happened.” Mark sighs wistfully. “I know we’ll never know, yeah, but I wonder. What changes a people like that?”

“Eight hundred years?” I comment. “Things change man. That’s forty mothers worth of time for most orc species. All it takes is someone starting a tradition and sticking to it to snowball into civilization.”

“Ah, right, that one time.” He taps his foot against my tail in a comforting bit of contact. “Thanks for the story, Six.” Mark addresses our tale teller.

“Yeah, that was great!” Ellin is beaming at him, and Jules applauds with a pulsing vibration as Six takes a perfect forty five degree bow. “That’s so much better than my life. I got stabbed.”

Ellin has been stabbed in every life she’s lived. I think she invites it.

We don’t, as a group, tend to play the game that the between wants of us. We don’t chase perks, we don’t optimize for any kind of perfected soul powers that will let us set ourselves up as the salvation or destruction of worlds. We just live. And in living, we find meaning and purpose and love.

But I am pretty sure that Ellin is trying to get a reward for being stabbed in twenty consecutive lives.

I can’t prove this. I could ask her, but I think if I did, she’d deny it, and then have a story about getting stabbed again next time around anyway. Or maybe it’s something else, like she wants an award for surviving a thousand total stabs or something. And she’ll use that technicality to deflect my question.

Deflect it like she always seems to fail to deflect knives.

Part of me wants to offer to stab her here, just to see if she’d say yes, as a way to test my theory. But that’s not really how the between works. And these bodies aren’t technically ours, or real, anyway.

“Are there any further questions?” Six asks, still standing, and I refocus on him.

“What was on the first scroll?” I ask. I’m always curious how different cultures define a good life.

Six answers with the mechanical precision of an encyclopedia. “One, act in defense of the community. Two, act in defense of the other. Three, act in defense of the self. Four, do not take from the world what cannot be replaced. Five, create that which brings freedom. Six, do not forget to love.”

Ah. He was correct, then. I would have liked those people, very much. I find myself holding a hand over my heart as I listen, happy tears in the corners of my eyes.

“They sound very kind.” I tell him with a soft smile.

“They were exceptional people.” Six agrees with me. “It is my desire that I added to their culture. My notifications indicate I did, but the between cannot be trusted.”

I wince. He’s not wrong. Sometimes notifications about influence or culture get muddled. Whatever is deciding on the names and value of our achievements sometimes has a weird view of what matters, and doesn’t seem to have a sense of scale or time frame. I once got a perk called [Thousand Year Tyrant] for doing eight years of accounting work at a tech corporation. So either I honestly did not get the memo about what our screen lenses were doing, or else there was a miscommunication somewhere along the line in the between.

“Were there any particular accomplishments you would like to share?” Jules asks politely, his soft accent hiding how much I know he loves learning about new potential places to develop. Jules doesn’t actually optimize or waste his time on things just for the prizes, but he likes the cataloging I think.

“Nothing of note, we already knew about the [Archeology] subset.” Six states. “Due to the nature of my death, I have a new aura layer for [Coherent Plasma Resistance], which I find novel.”

“Ah, to live in a world with spaceships!” Jules sounds wistful. “I am ever born too early to explore the stars.”

“You’re also born too often with two legs.” I add. “Not to needle you or anything. I just find it depressing. I wish we had a way to help with that.”

“I am certain that one life I will find a favored form.” Jules reassures me. “In the meantime, I reassure myself that I will ever return to this place, where I can enjoy this.” He snakes a tentacle around behind me and taps me on the opposite shoulder, and, despite hundreds of years of experience, I still look, on reflex.

“Dammit Jules.” I only barely try to keep my laughter in. Why resist it, when the whole point of being forever here is that we can express ourselves without fear or pain?

“So, what now?” Ellin asks as she, too, stands and stretches. Artificial or not, it still feels good to work those muscles. “Another game? Pool points and do a little shopping? Something else?”

It’s good to see her relaxing. But despite the lack of aches around here, I do still have a semi-social need I require caretaking of. “Whatever it is, do it without me for a bit.” I say, rising to my feet and balancing on Mark’s shoulders. “I need some time alone. I’m gonna go read a book, see if we have anything I haven’t read a dozen times.”

“You know we absolutely don’t.” Mark states under me. “We should see if we can get an empty as a drop, and put Six’s scrolls on it.”

“That would be a pleasant reminder.” Six flatly states. “I have not yet finished processing my notifications. Perhaps one of them is a souvenir.” He turns to me. “Enjoy your reading. Thank you for the time together.”

“You say it like I’m banishing myself forever.” I laugh as I head for the stairs.

We’re only here for a month. And yet, despite the limited time together, I cannot socialize solidly the entire time. It’s not feasible, and I will go mad and find a way to kill one of them. Probably… Ellin? Probably not Six, at least.

So I take quiet time. Twenty thousand precious heartbeats spent sitting on the floor, because fuck those chairs, my back against a sturdy bookshelf, everything narrowed down to the eternally worn and yellowed pages of the novel I’m reading.

I’ve read it before. I read it every time I’m here. It’s about a spaceship captain and his alien boyfriend and it’s absolute trash and I love it so much. For a couple subjective hours, my reality is this story, and nothing else. Abnegation through storytelling.

Much like sleep, it’s a form of refresh for the soul. The consumption and exploration of art. Even though it’s well worn and lovingly read, it doesn’t really get old. There’s always more to explore, a way to get a little farther into the author’s thoughts, or a new angle on the themes from something I learned or experienced in the last life.

Sometimes this ruins stories for me. I’ve lived through traumas that have turned books I’ve enjoyed into nightmares as context unfurls. But often, it just lets me understand better.

Maybe that’s what I’m here for. Understanding. Growing. Maybe that’s what the between is for, just a way to make us learn a little before our real death, if it ever comes.

I’m not too worried. I’m busy mentally workshopping steamy erotica about these two characters, even as I’m reading about them surviving a crisis by sharing an air tank for the thirtieth time.

I’m almost at the end when I hear the door open downstairs. I don’t stop though. If it’s important, Jules will crawl up here and inform me. If it’s not, I’ll get to them when I get to them. My little decompression ritual is what I’m focused on right now, and really, I’ve got heartbeats to spare this time around.

Mark’s voice calls a cheerful greeting to someone, and I smirk as I remember that he’s playing bartender this time. Technically, Bastion’s is a bar. Or a pub? I’ve lived so long and I’ve never actually learned the difference between the two. I know we’re not an inn, at least. No rooms and no beds.

The point is that it’s not impossible for people to walk in, and order a drink. We charge reasonable prices, and I like to think we’re good company. You can literally get a drink for a song here. Well. A crystallized song. Or an actual playable song, if that exists! Or even just some sheet music.

I reach the end of my novel, completing my little ritual by reading off the publisher’s information, author’s biography, and advertisement for the next book in the series. I’ve never been to the world it was published on, the author has been dead for two thousand subjective years, and the sequel is probably not something I can put in an order for. It used to bother me. Just like it used to bother me that this is book three out of at least four, and I’ve never read books one and two.

After a long enough period of experiencing art in a weird way, though, things tend to stop bothering me. It’s not a frustration anymore, it’s just a quirk of reality. It’s a lot like my lives, really. I’m seeing a snapshot of creation, one way or another. I’m never there when it starts, and I’ll be gone before it ends, unless I deeply fuck up. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful.

I wish that writing worked better in the between, or that we had paper that wasn’t disposable napkins. Because I would really like to commit my fanfiction to record. But I doubt the between will let me lock that in, unless I’ve got points to spend and the right vendor to buy from.

With a grunt, I push myself up against the bookshelf, steadying myself on the old wood. The book slides back into its slot perfectly, the motion practiced over lifetimes. Idly, I acknowledge that there’s a new notification for my having read the book this time around. I ignore it. It’s at the bottom of my list, and I’m only a third of the way through my whole set of notifications.

I don’t care right now. They can wait until later. For now, we have a guest. Or maybe two, judging by the voices Mark and Ellin are talking to. And meeting new people is always a fun time.

Maybe they’ll have some new books. Or failing that, some stories. If we’re unlucky they’ll be optimizers, but even then, we can just trade one of Mark’s weirder drinks and send them on their way.

This place could use some life and vibrancy outside the five of us though. It’s a little too big and too empty with just us. So I hold out hope.

That’s all I ever can do, I guess. Hope and wait, and sometimes say something I think is poignant at the right time. We’ll see which one of those tactics gets me a good outcome here.