Jojo finds herself looking in a mirror at someone who isn’t quite her.

Sure, the image is close. It’s got her fashion sense. Her curly hair. Her dark skin. Her freckles. But Jojo knows what she looks like. She isn’t quite that tall, her face isn’t quite that sharp. She could never pull off the twin ponytails like the person she’s seeing. She has none of her little blemishes. The pockmarks, the scars, the moles. The signs of a life lived.

“It’s a fairly new policy, changing how people look. I’m not sure it’s going to last, to be honest, but only time will tell.”

Jojo turns towards the other person inhabiting the white void of nothingness she’s found herself in. The other person is… Immaculate. Tall, with a perfectly tailored blue business suit and short-cropped, professional hair. Their sharp, rimless glasses are poised at the very tip of their nose as they look down at a clipboard that their eyes haven’t left since she showed up.

“Your appearance is based on an idealized self derived from a snapshot of your consciousness taken at the moment of your death,” they continue. Supposedly, this person is an angel, or at least some equivalent to one. That’s what they told Jojo, at least. “The cultures department determined that improving departed souls’ appearances would make the relocation process smoother. I haven’t looked into the numbers to see if their prediction has panned out, though.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just make people happy with how they already look?” Jojo asks.

“It would,” the angel says, “but the ethics committee vetoed that idea.” They wave their hand, and a sparse metal desk appears between them and Jojo with uncomfortable plastic chairs on either side. They take a seat, and motion for Jojo to do the same, so she does. “Anyway, are you prepared to move on to the next step of the process?”

“I guess,” Jojo says. She leans forward on the desk and sighs. “So, I’m dead? And this is the afterlife?”

“In a sense. This is a processing facility for souls whose soul energy was not fully depleted in life. Most people run through their soul energy long before their deaths, but occasionally one—such as you—will die with more energy left in reserve.”

“So I died before I was supposed to?” Jojo asks.

“No, Fate is a separate system,” the angel explains. “Soul energy is largely responsible for higher-dimensional workings that have little to no effect on your lived experiences.”

“What’s it do, then?”

“The primary example we like to use is time. Consider a second of time,” the angel says. “No matter what, that second of time will contain a certain subset of events. Soul energy cannot change that. What soul energy alters about that second is, for lack of a better way to explain it, how long it takes to experience the second. From your perspective, a second is a second, but from an outside perspective there are irregularities caused by soul energy.”

“Okay…”

“You don’t really need to understand it,” the angel says. “The point is that you had soul energy left over when you died, and that can cause issues when a soul vessel is reused. So.”

For the first time, the angel puts down the clipboard and looks Jojo in the eyes.

“Current policy is to reincarnate the soul so that they can use up their soul energy. In other words, you’re getting a second life.”

“Oh! Sweet.” Jojo grins and sits up, suddenly more interested. “Is it gonna be on Earth? Am I just gonna get back up? Is that why defibrillators work?”

“No, it’s more like…” The angel sighs. “I detest this question, but have you heard of ‘isekai?’”

“Yeah, I know about ‘em,” Jojo says. “Is that how it is, then? Another world? Ooh, is there magic?”

“There can be.” The angel sighs and picks the clipboard back up, scribbling here and there on it with a pen that they didn’t have a moment ago. “The worlds we have available fall into modern—so, Earth-like—futuristic, or what you would probably call fantasy. Do you have a preference?”

“Fantasy, definitely.”

“Alright. Would you like to go to a world with or without a World System?” The angel glances up over the clipboard to explain. “Basically, a World System makes the world work like a video game.”

“Oh, neat! Yeah, that sounds fun,” Jojo replies excitedly. “Gimme the System!”

“Very well. Finally…” The angel puts the clipboard on the table with a loud clack and slides it over to Jojo. She sees that it has far fewer pages than it used to, only three or four at most, and it’s all just checkboxes next to short descriptions. “You get to choose an Upgrade. This is to make up for any inconveniences you’ve felt during this process, and also any potential mental trauma you may have as a result of remembering a previous death.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Jojo takes the clipboard and starts looking through the options giddily. There’s all the ones someone might expect: super luck, super strength, super magic, time travel, magic phone… After the basics, they start being divided into categories. There’s an entire category of experience modifiers that give five, ten, fifty, or even a hundred times the amount of experience gained. Similarly, there are options that multiply specific stats by a certain amount. There’s a superpowers section that has basically any superpower you can think of, from ice powers to a touch of death. Then there’s a section of overpowered equipment…

“A lot of these seem geared towards worlds with a System,” Jojo comments.

“Yes, well, Systems open themselves up to a lot of options with this sort of thing,” the angel replies. “Those options would be hidden if you had chosen a System-less world.”

Jojo perks up curiously. “There’s hidden options?”

“Yes, but nothing you’d be interested in.”

“How do you know?”

“We have a lot of experience with this,” the angel replies. “There is a lot of data about what options do or don’t apply to different people.”

“Well, maybe I don’t fit your data!” Jojo huffs. “I wanna see the hidden options!”

The angel groans. “Really? Surely there’s something in the available options that suits you.”

“Maybe, but maybe something in the hidden ones suits me better! So gimme!” Jojo holds her hand out expectantly.

The angel sighs and pulls a sheet of paper out of their pocket. “Fine. I don’t know what you expect to find here, though.”

Jojo grins and starts looking through the new options. They’re…

Okay, most of them suck. A lot of them just don’t apply, like “computers can access Earth’s internet” or “you know intuitively how to fly a spaceship.” Past those, a lot of them are just downgrades rather than upgrades. Experience dividers, no experience, hard mode, start life as a baby. All of that sounds awful.

Jojo is just about ready to admit the angel was right when a particular one catches her eye.

“A harem?”

The angel grimaces. “That one… Well, we got a lot of complaints from certain types of people that it wasn’t an option, so we eventually had to implement it. We couldn’t even make it work how they wanted, because that would practically give the ethics committee cause to mutiny. All it really does it tug at the strings of fate a little to put you in frequent contact with romantically compatible women. It at least made the people who wanted it happy, though, so I suppose it’s not all bad…” They’re avoiding eye contact, clearly uncomfortable with the topic.

“Why isn’t it on the main list, though?” Jojo asks. “Especially if the whole reason it exists is to stop people complaining about it not being there."

“Well, we…” The angel tugs at their collar. “Okay, we only show it to young men. Showing it to anybody else is just… Embarrassing.”

“What? Not even young women?” Jojo raises an eyebrow. “What, so only guys get to have a harem? Is that it?”

“No!” The angel protests. “We just—”

“Just thought women are too chaste to want such a thing, is that it? Hmph.” Jojo crosses her arms indignantly. “Or, what, do you not think women can be attracted to other women?Is that it?”

“Oh, come on, we—”

“Stuff it! I see how things are here. ‘Making up for inconveniences’ my ass. You just wanna keep us compliant!”

“Please, we—”

“Quiet! You know what? I want the harem option, and I want it to not count as my chosen Upgrade.”

“I’m not sure I can do that…”

“Well, then I’ll…” Jojo stops to think for a moment. “I’ll tell everyone in the new world that angels hate women! And I’ll start my own religion!”

“We, um… We don’t really care about new religions starting up in the worlds we manage, though,” the angel stammers.

“Oh.” Jojo puts her hand on her chin and thinks some more. “Well, then, I’ll take this to your manager!”

The angel gasps. “Please, no, not that. I’ll give you the harem option. I’ll even throw in a free dimensional storage power! Just please, don’t tell my manager.”

Jojo chuckles under her breath. “Good. Now, for my actual choice, I want the hundred times experience! I’m gonna kick this world’s ass!”

“Y-Yes, ma’am,” the angel says, taking the clipboard and checking the boxes for her. They then fill out a few more forms as quickly as they can before signing their name at the bottom and poofing the whole pile of papers and the clipboard out of existence. “We’re, um, we’re all set then. Is there anything else before you start your new life?”

“Hmm… No, I think I’m good.” Jojo smiles wide and stands up with her hands on her hips. “Beam me down, Scotty! To my new life!”

Everything vanishes, and for a brief moment Jojo is plummeting through absolute darkness, darker than anything anyone on Earth has ever or will ever experience.

Then she appears in a meadow, stumbles, and promptly falls on her ass.