8/19/23: Laughing in the Wind
The most surprising thing about the afterlife, at least from Luo Xiang’s perspective, was how much time was spent waiting in line. There must have been thousands of people in her queue alone, stretching out as far as the eye could see.
“First time here, eh?” said the man in front of her.
“Yeah,” she said. “Is it that obvious?”
“You have that lost puppy look about you. Back when I was a newbie, claims processing took just a few minutes. You’d die in the real world, appear right here in the Liminal Space, and walk right up to the front desk and get going to your next life, just like that. My name is Sheban, by the way. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Luo Xiang said.
“So who were you? When you were alive, I mean. If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Who was I?”
“Take me. I was a fisherman, out by the Nile. Died before I saw my twenty-first birthday. My canoe tipped over. That’s a new one for me - I’ve never died before of a tipped canoe.”
“Oh. I was a peasant. I died from heat stroke, I think,” said Luo Xiang.
“Sorry,” Sheban said, his eyebrows furrowed.
“It’s not a very interesting death, is it?”
“No, it really isn’t. But you can always spend your points to see if you can set up a more interesting next life.”
“Points?”
Sheban pointed at the front of their line, which was just a speck in the distance.
“When you get to claims processing, they’ll give you a certain number of points based on the amount of karma you accumulated before you died. You get to spend those however you want,” he said.
By the time they arrived at the front desk, Sheban had given her a primer on the finer details of the karmic points system.
“- and so some people don’t even spend their points at all! The system skims a few percentage points off the top each cycle, but for the most part, they just sit there collecting dust. It takes thousands of lifetimes to save up enough to achieve Nirvana though. I’ve never seen anyone actually do it; some say its a scam. Certainly, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you were - “ he started, realizing that the person in front of him had disappeared.
“Well! It’s been nice meeting you, Luo. We probably won’t see each other again, so farewell!” he said smartly, before addressing the man behind the desk. “I’ll put 16 points into even-temperedness, 23 into being born into a region with socio-political stability, 5 into having a well-off family, and dump the rest into guaranteeing that I don’t get reincarnated as a non-human, thank you very much!”
“Oh. Uh. We deprecated non-human reincarnation for the time being,” said the man at the desk. “The world population is growing, so there’s more than enough human lives to be reborn into at the moment. Feels wasteful having people be reborn as animals.”
“I’ll dump the rest of my points into good health then!” said Sheban brightly. Then he hit the big red button on the desk, and promptly disappeared.
The man behind the desk yawned, and looked at Luo Xiang with half-closed eyes.
“You have 8 points to spend,” he said, then pointed at a blackboard of shifting numbers behind him. “Up there are the categories you can spend them on.”
“8 points? That’s so few…” Luo Xiang.
“Well you must not have led a very good life then,” said the man. He sounded like he had had this conversation many times before.
“I led a perfectly good life! I was a good daughter and friend, and I - “
“It says here that you died during a duel?” said the man, opening a folder in front of him. “Let’s see… yes, Luo Xiang, aged 23, died due to small bowel perforation after a sword fight. Proximate cause was ‘Sequelae of romantic relationship, second encounter,’ which in my experience almost always means a love triangle turned deadly. Aha yes, it looks like your opponent died before you did. The negative karma from killing the man was likely what canceled out most of the points you had accumulated during your lifetime.”
“But he… It was to avenge my husband’s - “
“Avenge this, revenge that - it’s all the same in the end, as far as karma is concerned. Killing is killing.”
Luo Xiang took a deep breath, then tried to let it out slowly as her mother had once taught her. After she’d killed the Butcher of Cloud’s Rest, she’d collapsed in the snow knowing she would die from her wounds. But at least she’d avenged her family. Now, to have to stand here, as a stranger berated her for -
“If you were so innocent, why did you lie to the man in front of you? Sheban, I think his name was. You told him you died of heat stroke.”
Luo Xiang bit her tongue before she could retort. None of this was important anymore.
“Can I find my husband? He died a week before me - does that mean he’s already been reincarnated back in the real world?”
“No, yes, and yes. Our bylaws allow me to tell you that he was reincarnated in the Mongolian plains.”
“Then I’d like to spend all my points on getting reincarnated in the same place as him,” Luo Xiang said. “Please.”
“You realize that neither of you would have any memory of your previous life? That even if you were reborn close by to him - which is a long shot, given how few points you have - you’d pass each other on the street and not even recognize each other?”
“Yes.”
The man at the desk sighed. “Listen, lady. I’ve seen this a thousand times. It never works out.”
“If it doesn’t work out, then I’ll try again when I die.”
He paused, then shook his head sadly.
“Very well,” he said, stamping some of the papers in her file. “Go ahead. Push the button.”
She was back again.
It had been a short life. She had been born a hundred miles north of the Mongolia plains, into a family that had little to eat. She’d died at 6 months. Barely any time at all.
This time, she looked at the afterlife with more careful eyes. The Liminal Space, is what Sheban had called it.
The lines, like last time, stretched into the distance, ending in a row of desks. There was a soft oceanic rumble in the background, noise generated by tens of thousands of people chatting in line. Up above, there was no ceiling, only gentle and evenly distributed light.
As an experiment, Luo Xiang took several steps away from the line - and apparated back to her spot almost instantly.
“Yeah everyone tries that at first,” said the woman behind her. “I asked the claims clerk about that once. He said there’s no escaping the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth. A bit obnoxious, if you ask me.”
Luo Xiang didn’t reply. It felt futile to have lived as a helpless babe only to die and end up here again.
“You’re back so soon,” said the man at the desk. “Sorry about that.”
He sounded apologetic, and like he meant it, too. He reached into a bin underneath the desk and pulled out a ticket.
“Here,” he said, punching a hole in it. “Child mortality is projected to stay quite high for a while. So if you get two lives in a row that end before the age of 10, your third will be guaranteed to last until adulthood.”
“Do I have points?” Luo Xiang asked. “I was just an infant. Do infants accumulate karma?”
“Sure they do,” the man at the desk said. “You have 49 points. Each time you die as an infant, the system throws in some sympathy points. If you have two in a row, you get even more - a way of the system trying to tilt things in your favor, if you catch my drift.”
“And my husband - “
“He’s technically not your husband anymore,” said the man.
“Guo Jing, I mean. Is he still down there, in the real world?”
“Still down there. Still an infant.”
“And if I were to spend all my points to regional proximity, what would that get me?” Luo asked.
“You’d have a 52% likelihood of being born within a 400 mile radius as him. The region he’s in is quite sparsely populated.”
“Can I take a look at the regional reincarnation preference sheet? Just so I can understand the math involved?”
The man took out a sheath of papers from the bottom drawer and handed them to her.
“Have at it. You’ll have to stand by the side of the line though. And you’re not allowed more than 24 hours, otherwise that’s considered stalling.”
In her first life, Luo Xiang had been a scholar, albeit with a focus on calligraphy and swordplay rather than the mathematical arts. So she had at least some basic understanding of what the papers were trying to say. For the most part, they were filled with tables upon tables of values - listing how many karmic points were accumulated for each action in the mortal plane, and the various ways they could be spent in Liminal Space. Some of the equations were entirely beyond her understanding, while others referenced documents that weren’t included in the original file. She read as much as she could, and then when the 24 hour period was up, approached the man at the desk.
“I’d like to put 12 of these points towards being born in the Liao province of the Sunrise Empire. And the rest in the bank, under the High-Risk 6-month CD fund. Oh, and I’d like to leave Guo a message. Is that allowed?”
“42 character limit,” said the man.
She left the message, and then, taking a deep breath, hit the button.
“You’re back,” said the man at the desk. He kicked his legs up, and pulled out a sandwich from his jacket pocket.
“I didn’t know that people ate food, here in the afterlife,” Luo said.
“Oh, it’s purely for pleasure,” the man said. “Your part of the world hasn’t invented or encountered croissants yet, but they are simply delicious.”
“I’m sure,” Luo said dryly. “Say, what is your name, anyway? Every time I come back here, I’m slotted into a line that’s headed towards your desk.”
“The system does that on purpose,” the man said. “It decided that seeing the same souls over the course of their many lifetimes makes us more invested. Helps with burnout rates.”
“You never answered my question,” Luo said.
“Well I suppose it’s only fair, since I know yours,” the man said. “The name’s Peter. Or ‘Pete,’ for short.”
“Nice to see you again, Pete,” said Luo.
“Bubonic plague, this time around? Bad luck, that,” said Pete. “I expected you to last more than 6 months at least. Here, give me your card.”
“I’d rather hold onto it, if that’s okay,” Luo could feel the card, with its single hole, in the bottom of her pocket. She brushed her thumb over it nervously.
“What, you don’t want a hole punch?” asked Pete. “It’d guarantee you a life that lasts until adulthood.
“There’s no rule that says I have to use it, right?” said Luo.
“Strictly speaking, no. Alright then, you have 64 points in your CD account, and 54 points from this past life, so that comes out to 118 points total. You going to spend it? That’s quite the nest egg.”
“Keep them in the CD account for now. I’d like to look over the points manual again first,” said Luo. “I saw that you had a yellow pen earlier, could - “
“A highlighter?”
“Yes a highlighter. Could I borrow that please?”
“24 hours, then you have to be reincarnated. You know the drill. Next!”
When Luo came back into the Liminal Space, for the fourth time, Pete had a bemused expression on his face.
“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? You spent just enough points to get reincarnated into a plague region. And you’re getting sympathy points from the system for dying as an infant.”
“I just have rotten luck, it seems,” Luo said with a smile.
“Where are you getting - oh, you must be talking to the people in the lines next to you. That’s how you’re finding out where people are dying the most. That’s your insider knowledge.”
Luo said nothing.
“Alright, I have to admire the gutsiness of it. I can’t say that I’ve seen anyone harvest karma quite that way before.”
“Sheban accumulated 139 points of karma after 20 years of a virtuous life. In 18 real-world months, I’ve accumulated… how much do I have now?”
“239 points.”
“Right. So the numbers talk for themselves, don’t they?” said Luo. “That being said, I’d like my 24 hours with the points manual please.”
“Already ahead of you,” said Pete. “I got a small desk for you too. Otherwise you always make a mess, standing there by the side of the line.”
Waiting in line had always been an onerous task. On average it took five days of waiting before reaching the desk. Most people chatted, gossiping about the state of the world.
This previous time, Luo had asked around, and had had the good fortune of coming across a numbers man from two lines over. She’d gotten the people around her to shuffle to the right, bending the line close enough to the other so that she could have a conversation with him.
He had been an accountant in one of his previous lives, working to dodge taxes for a trading company in the Mediterranean. Over the course of several days, Luo learned about compounding interest, shell corporations, arbitrage. Enough to understand the limits of her knowledge, and where to look for loopholes.
At the end of her 24 hours, she approached the desk again.
“How was your reading session?” Pete asked. He offered her half of a sandwich.
“Good,” she said, taking the sandwich. She handed him a stapled stack of papers. “I wrote down some changes I’d like to make to my karmic account.”
“Is that so?” he said. “You should know that the system contacted me, and there are certain regions of the world that are off-limits to you now. No more being reborn into plague regions.”
He sounded a little embarrassed to admit as such. Luo shrugged. She had suspected that something like that might happen. She bit down into the sandwich. The flecks of the croissant broke off into a hundred pieces in her mouth.
“You’re right, this is amazing,” she said, pointing to the sandwich. But Pete was busy studying the document she’d given him.
“You want to open twelve accounts. Each with two other accounts nested inside them. And you want transfer 198 points distributed evenly between 4 of them - hold on, that doesn’t make sense, let me -”
The entire process took some time, but eventually Pete verified that it was all above board.
“Alright, done,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Guo is still alive? Down in the real world?”
“He is approximately 1 year and 8 months old,” said Pete. “Alive and healthy, the last I checked. Born into a family of privilege, so the chances are high that he’ll live a long life.”
“I’d like to write my 42-character message to him then,” Luo said. “Addended to my last. And then I’d like to spend my remaining points in a very particular way. If you could flip to the appendix…”
“Okay, that was clever,” Pete said, 2 weeks later. “How did you figure that one out?”
Luo had discovered from a person in line next to her that there was a war going on in one of the Amazonian steppes, and that a war party was going to raze a certain village to the ground. After that, it was simply a matter of spending points to ask for a set of conditions that could only be satisfied by being reincarnated in that specific village.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Luo.
“So what’s so special about this Guo person, anyway?” asked Pete. Luo was fourteen lives in, and the system was still playing cat and mouse with her.
“If you met him, you wouldn’t think he’s special,” said Luo. “But he is special to me.”
“Yes, but what does that even mean? What do you like about him? Was it his good looks? Those change with every lifetime, as you know. Was it - “
“He was a good man,” Luo said. “We loved each other. That is enough.”
“Yes, but what was your origin story? How did you fall in love? Who was the man you killed? How did you die? Why are you waiting for him?”
“If I told you, you would think it is nothing special,” Luo said.
“Tell me then.”
So she told him.
“And then you said…”
“And then I said that I would find him. If not in the next life, then the one after that. Or the one after that. Or the one after that. Because I had said to him that we were going to grow old together.”
“Plenty of people make promises like those though. I see them a dime a dozen.”
Luo shrugged.
“None of those people are me,” she said.
One hundred and twenty-six lives later, Luo approached the desk.
“Hi Pete,” she said with a smile.
“Hi Luo,” he replied. “I saw that Guo is on his deathbed. He’ll be here in Liminal Space soon. So this is it, huh?”
“This is it,” she said.
“I’ve gotten used to seeing you every few months for these past few decades. It won’t be the same here without you.”
“Don’t get sentimental on me, Pete. I’ll be back. Just not for a bit longer than usual.”
“I have your paperwork all ready from the last time you were here,” said Pete. “All that you need to do is spend your points all at once, and hit the button.”
Luo reached over, and -
“Wait,” said Pete, stopping her hand. “Luo, you know that if you wanted, you could spend them on ending the cycle. You could achieve Nirvana. You have the points to do it.”
“Someone told me once that Nirvana was a scam,” Luo said. “That no one had ever actually achieved it.”
“It’s real,” said Pete. “And its worth it.”
“Maybe next time.”
Pete smiled at her, and let her hand go.
“I just had to say it. One last thing. Punch card?”
“My points should be more than enough to guarantee - “
“Just for good luck,” he said.
She reached into her pocket, and took out the card. There was one hole in it already. Pete took it, and punched out the other circle. The card evaporated into the air.
“See you next time,” he said. “I’ll pass along your message.”
She pressed the button.
Message to Guo, written 42 characters at a time.
Hi Guo,
While you were living your last life, I used a variety of financial instruments to accumulate several million karmic points. I’ve transferred half of them to you under several puppet accounts.
Follow the instructions below to the very letter. By spending them in this way, the threads of fate will be twisted, such that you and I will be reborn into the same time and place on Earth, our life-lines woven together so that we can meet again and grow old together.
See you in the next life.
Luo
Awww, cute. Also maybe a little obsessive, but no one’s perfect :p