He died the way he lived: inconvenienced.
Not afraid. Not reflective. Not even particularly surprised—just irritated that his body had chosen this moment to become a problem.
The room around him was too white, too clean, too expensive. Someone had tried to make dying look tasteful. A private clinic suite. Polished chrome. A muted painting meant to calm the mind. Even the air smelled curated—citrus and antiseptic, like a luxury lie.
He lay in a bed that cost more than most people's annual income, listening to a machine complain in steady beeps about his failing organs, and thought, with sincere annoyance, I'm going to miss dinner.
A nurse stood near the door pretending to be invisible. A doctor hovered at the edge of the room, hands clasped as if prayer could be billed to insurance. Behind them, a window showed a city that glittered with lights he had helped turn on—factories, towers, roads, and all the little lives moving through them like ants under glass.
He had made the city.
Not with kindness. Kindness was a hobby for people who wanted applause. He built with leverage, threats, favors owed, and careers broken at the hinge. He built with contracts that looked fair until you read the footnotes. He built with the kind of cruelty that came wrapped in legal language.
A cough grabbed him and shook him. Something wet hit the back of his throat. He swallowed. The taste of pennies spread across his tongue.
The doctor stepped forward. "Sir—"
He lifted a trembling hand. The motion felt slow, like wading through heavy water. "Don't," he rasped. His voice sounded cheap in the expensive room. "If you're going to say something meaningful, you're about forty years late."
The doctor's mouth opened, shut, opened again. The man watched him struggle with words like an insect on its back.
He looked at the nurse instead. Her eyes flicked away when he met them.
"Any last requests?" she asked, too professionally. Her tone implied she had asked the question a thousand times and hated every answer.
He considered it.
He could ask for forgiveness. People did that at the end, panicked like children on the edge of a pool. He could ask for family, but family was just people you trained early.
He could ask for his lawyers.
But the funny thing about power was that you stopped needing witnesses once you were sure you were right.
He exhaled slowly. "Turn the lights down," he said. "They're insulting."
The nurse hesitated, then dimmed them. The room softened. The beeping continued, patient and smug.
He stared at the ceiling and waited for whatever came next. He didn't pray. He didn't bargain. He didn't apologize.
He only thought: If there's an afterlife, I hope it's at least interesting.
Another cough. Another taste of metal. His chest tightened as if a hand had decided to squeeze his ribs together.
His last coherent thought, absurdly, was about a man he had ruined two decades ago—some accountant who had tried to quit.
I never did find out if he jumped.
Then the beeping stretched into one long, satisfied line.
And the room, the city, the money, the clean white bed—everything—fell away like a coat he'd grown bored of wearing.
Light.
Not warm light. Not holy light. Just light—flat and endless, with no source and no shadows to prove depth. It was as if someone had taken the concept of illumination and removed every comforting detail.
He tried to inhale and discovered he didn't have lungs.
He tried to blink and realized he didn't have eyes.
Yet he perceived.
He floated in that blank brilliance with the strange certainty that if he had a stomach, it would be sinking.
"So," he said, because silence had never been a friend. "This is hell."
A voice answered from everywhere and nowhere, calm as a ledger.
"No."
The word landed with a finality that made his usual confidence feel suddenly… loud.
He tried again. "Purgatory?"
"No."
He rolled the sensation of being observed around in his mind like a coin. "Administrative holding area?"
A pause. If a universe could sigh, it would have sounded like that.
"This is restraint," the voice said.
He laughed. It was a reflex, a habit, a way to prove he was still himself. "Bit dramatic. You could've sent a letter."
"I did," the voice replied.
He waited for the punchline. None came. Something about that—about the refusal to entertain him—pricked at his patience.
"So who am I speaking to?" he asked, already knowing. Pretending not to know felt childish, but admitting it felt like conceding ground.
"You know," said the voice.
He resisted the urge to look around, as if a direction mattered here. "God, then."
"Yes."
No thunder. No choir. No warmth. Just the word.
A presence pressed into the light—not a shape, not a face, not even a silhouette. It was simply more real than everything else. Like the difference between a reflection and the object itself.
He found, unpleasantly, that he wanted to speak more carefully.
That annoyed him.
"If you're here to scold me," he said, "save the sermon. I've heard enough moral speeches to last—well. Forever."
"I'm not here to sermonize," God replied. "I'm here to account."
That was worse. He had always hated accountants. They turned the invisible into numbers.
"I'm sure you'll find my books… creative," he said.
"Your books were meticulous," God answered. "Your heart was not."
He scoffed. "You sound disappointed."
"I don't experience disappointment," God said. "Only accuracy."
A faint chill crawled across him, despite having no skin.
God's presence didn't loom closer. It didn't need to. The light itself felt like it had turned its attention toward him.
"You lived a life defined by deliberate harm," God said.
He shrugged in the abstract. "Everyone harms. I just didn't pretend otherwise."
God did not argue the philosophy. God did not debate intention or ask him to consider the feelings of others.
God began to list.
"You punched a baby," God said, voice level, "and drank its milk. Not out of hunger. Out of curiosity."
His mouth—imaginary or not—twitched. "I didn't drink it. I tasted it."
"You punched a baby," God repeated, as if the clarification had been filed and rejected.
He tried to laugh it off. "That's hardly—"
"You tripped an old woman," God continued, "because you wanted to see whether traffic would finish the thought."
He made a small noise of protest. "She was already unsteady."
"You paid a man to poison his own brother," God said, "then attended the funeral to watch the widow's face when she realized she had no savings."
"That's called investment," he said automatically, and even he heard how weak it sounded here.
"You locked a stray dog in a car in summer," God said, "to test how long compassion lasts when there is no audience."
His humor faltered for the first time, not from guilt, but from the realization that God's memory did not miss.
"You bribed a judge," God went on, "to imprison someone innocent. Not to protect yourself. To prove you could move the world with a whisper."
He leaned into what he knew. Deflection. Minimization. "You're cherry-picking."
"I'm sampling," God replied.
"I never killed anyone directly," he said, trying for a line in the sand.
"You outsourced," God answered. "You delegated. You optimized."
The calmness was what made it unbearable. A shouting accusation could be dismissed as emotion. This was simply… recited.
"You stole from the poor," God said, "then charged them interest."
"That's finance."
"You set a charity on fire," God said, "because the sign annoyed you."
He blinked in the metaphorical sense. "It was an eyesore."
"You ruined a man's life," God said, "for amusement. And forgot his name by the next morning."
He felt an unpleasant flicker—not shame, just irritation that the details were being aired like laundry.
"Is this really necessary?" he asked. "We can skip to the part where you send me somewhere unpleasant."
"This is the unpleasant part," God replied.
He exhaled through nothing. "Fine. Yes. I did things. I was… efficient."
"You were cruel," God corrected, still without anger.
He leaned on what had always steadied him: certainty. "So what. If you're God, you already knew I'd do it. You made me."
"I made you capable," God said. "You made choices."
Ah. The old debate. He almost smiled. This was familiar territory.
But God did not follow him into it.
God simply said, "You failed."
He snorted. "Everyone fails."
"No," God replied. "Many stumble. Some fall. You dug."
The words were plain, but they landed like a weight.
He refused to let that weight settle. "Alright. So what's the sentence? Fire? Darkness? Eternal screaming? I'm flexible."
"You will live again," God said.
The man paused.
It was, unbelievably, not what he expected.
"You're… letting me back?" he asked, suspicious.
"You will be reincarnated," God continued. "Over and over again. Into bodies that have recently died."
A grin crept onto his face before he could stop it. "That's it? That's the punishment?"
God's presence did not shift. "Yes."
He laughed—this time with genuine amusement. "Do you hear yourself? Infinite lives? Infinite chances? You're giving me a playground."
"You think it's a gift," God said.
"It is a gift," he insisted. "I can do anything. Be anything. No consequences. No permanence. I can—"
"You will not choose the bodies," God said.
"So I adapt.
"You will not choose the worlds," God said.
"So I learn their rules."
"You will not keep what you gain," God said.
His grin thinned. "Meaning?"
"Each life begins with only you," God replied. "No accumulated power. No carried treasures. No built empires."
He rolled that around. It was an inconvenience, not a deterrent. He had built from nothing before.
"So it's like starting over," he said. "Annoying. But fine."
God let the silence stretch until it became uncomfortable.
Then God said the line that mattered.
"You will continue," God said, "until you learn how to live without taking."
He laughed again. "You're serious."
"Yes."
He leaned forward mentally, as if leaning could win an argument here. "And if I don't?"
"Then you will continue," God said. "Forever."
The man's amusement sharpened into defiance. "Good. Eternity is a long time to get bored. At least you'll be entertained."
God's voice did not change. "I'm not doing this for entertainment."
"Then what?" he asked.
God answered with the same calm accuracy as before.
"Correction."
The light collapsed like a closing fist.
Pain returned like a debt collector.
He woke to the taste of dirt and the immediate understanding that he was face-down.
Cold mud pressed into his mouth and nose. He coughed and gagged, trying to pull air through a throat that felt too narrow. His limbs were wrong—too short, too thin, as if someone had taken a man and poorly sketched him smaller.
He pushed up—
—and his left arm bent with a wet snap.
He screamed. The scream came out high and thin and humiliating.
A moment later, as if the universe couldn't resist adding punctuation, something heavy shifted above him. He glanced up and saw a splintered wagon wheel hanging at an angle over his head, one spoke cracked like a tooth.
He tried to roll away.
The wheel came down.
The world became a brief, stunned flash of white.
A black screen blinked into existence.
Not God's light. Something else. Something boring.
Text appeared in neat, indifferent lines:
[REINCARNATION INTERFACE: BASIC FUNCTION]
World: Unknown (Local Classification Unavailable)
Body Status: Recently Deceased (Reanimated)
Species: Human
Age: 12
Condition: Fractured left humerus; internal bleeding probable
Stats:
Strength: Low
Agility: Low
Endurance: Low
Cognition: Average
Skills / Traits:
Pain Tolerance (Minor)
Survival Instinct (Inconsistent)
He stared at it—again, without eyes, somehow—and felt the first spike of genuine offense.
"Pain Tolerance?" he rasped into the void. "That's what you give me?"
The interface did not respond.
He waited for commentary. For a hint. For a warning. For anything.
Nothing.
Then the light snapped back in, and he was in a new body.
This time he woke upright, strapped into something.
Wood creaked around him. Rope bit into his wrists. A hood covered his head, stinking of sweat and old fear. The air was damp, echoing. He heard dripping water. He heard chanting—distant, rhythmic, enthusiastic in a way that suggested group activities.
He smiled beneath the hood. Ah. Ritual. Religion. Excellent. Easy to manipulate.
He inhaled, tasting stone and mold.
The hood was yanked off.
He blinked at torchlight and rough-hewn walls. Faces in simple robes surrounded him, eyes bright with conviction. One held a bowl. Another held a knife that looked like it had never met soap.
He cleared his throat. "Ladies and gentlemen—"
A robed man stepped forward, lifted a finger, and shouted a single word.
The floor beneath the chair dropped away.
The rope snapped taut. His neck jerked.
He had just enough time to think, Oh. It's that kind of ritual.
His spine made a sound like a snapped twig.
Darkness.
Then the interface again, as indifferent as weather:
[REINCARNATION INTERFACE: BASIC FUNCTION]
World: High-Gravity Habitat (Artificial)
Body Status: Recently Deceased (Reanimated)
Species: Human (Modified)
Age: 34
Condition: Pulmonary collapse; oxygen deprivation
Stats:
Strength: Average
Agility: Low
Endurance: Low
Cognition: High
Skills / Traits:
Technical Aptitude (Minor)
Vacuum Exposure Resistance (Negligible)
He didn't have time to be offended this time.
He woke to the sound of alarms—flat, digital sirens—and a pressure on his chest like a giant hand. The air tasted thin and metallic. A red light stuttered overhead.
He tried to stand and found his legs obeyed sluggishly, as if gravity had been turned up for a joke.
A window in front of him showed a corridor with a hairline crack running across it.
The crack widened.
A rush of air screamed past his face. Papers flew. Tools spun. A cup of something—coffee?—floated up in a perfect little arc before being torn into mist.
He grabbed for a handhold, fingers slipping on sweat.
The crack became a hole.
And then the room began to leave.
He had time—barely—to register the awful comedy of "Vacuum Exposure Resistance (Negligible)" before his lungs tried to become outside.
Darkness again.
No pain now. No body.
Just the lingering humiliation of being killed by architecture.
He floated in the blank between lives, and for a moment—just a moment—he considered the possibility that this wasn't going to be as fun as he'd assumed.
Then his pride snapped back into place like a shield.
"Flukes," he muttered into the nothing. "Statistical noise."
There was no answer.
Of course there wasn't. The interface didn't care, and God had already said His piece.
He rebuilt his confidence out of sheer habit.
Life one: bad body, bad timing. Crushed by a wagon wheel. Ridiculous, yes, but also… common. People died stupidly all the time. That wasn't cosmic punishment. That was Tuesday.
Life two: some cult nonsense. Wrong place, wrong chair. Fine.
Life three: equipment failure. Pressure loss. Again—unlucky.
He had played roulette before. He understood runs.
"Nobody plans around that," he said, as if speaking to a skeptical audience. "You adjust."
The light flickered.
The interface returned, almost smug in its silence:
[REINCARNATION INTERFACE: BASIC FUNCTION]
World: Fantasy (Local Energies Detected)
Body Status: Recently Deceased (Reanimated)
Species: Human
Age: 19
Condition: Severe malnutrition; mild anemia; one missing tooth
Stats:
Strength: Low
Agility: Average
Endurance: Low
Cognition: High
Skills / Traits:
Mana Sensitivity (Minor)
Pickpocketing (Adequate)
Charisma (Questionable)
He grinned.
Now that—that looked promising.
A world with "local energies." A body young enough to exploit. A skill literally labeled pickpocketing. The universe, apparently, had finally remembered who it was dealing with.
"See?" he said, to no one. "Now we're talking."
The light snapped, and he woke on cobblestones under a gray sky. The air smelled of rain and soot. A market stretched around him—stalls, shouting vendors, animals in cages, people in rough cloth haggling with the desperation of poverty.
He sat up, rolled his shoulders, and felt bones that, while thin, were at least intact. His mouth found the gap where a tooth used to be. He spit to the side.
A coin glinted near a boot. Someone had dropped it.
He reached out—already imagining the chain reaction. A coin. Then a purse. Then a mark. Then influence. Then—
A shadow passed over him.
He looked up.
A piano was falling out of a second-story window.
He had time to think, Pianos exist here?
Then it landed.
Blackness.
Silence.
The interface did not appear immediately, as if even it needed a moment to process the insult.
When it did, it was exactly as boring as before.
He didn't read it.
He just lay there in the between, furious in a way he hadn't been in years.
For the first time, the thought came not as fear, not as guilt, but as cold irritation:
This is curated.
He clenched mental fists.
Then he forced a laugh—sharp, humorless.
"Alright," he said into the void. "Fine. That one was… unusual."
He swallowed the rising anger and labeled it what he needed it to be.
"A fluke," he said, voice steadying. "Just… an outlandish fluke."
Somewhere beyond the light, God remained silent.
Which, he realized with a tightening in his nonexistent chest, was somehow the funniest part.
And the cruelest.
The interface blinked again.
Another world.
Another body.
Another chance to be exactly who he was.
He smiled, because he refused to do anything else.
"Next one," he promised himself, "I'll actually get to start."
The light took him.
And somewhere, deep in whatever counted as the universe's sense of humor, something waited with impeccable timing.