As I draw my last breath, I think of Bernard Williams, the British philosopher who called death a gift. He claimed immortality would be unbearably boring. Part of me wants to yell, “bullshit!” But I doubt my shattered body could muster that now. Oddly, I don’t feel as much pain as I probably ought to. Maybe it’s shock. Maybe that’s what shields me from agony.

  A much sharper French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, believed the opposite: that our awareness of mortality strips life of all meaning. What is the point of doing anything if everyone involved will eventually vanish? I’ve wrestled with those questions since my teenage years, lying awake at night picturing oblivion while my classmates fretted over exams or dates. Maybe it’s because my parents never imposed religion on me, or was it the curse of above-average intelligence?

  Gosh, even in my last moments, I can’t help but be an insufferable twat. I wasn’t a genius or anything, just curious enough to shatter my sanity. Always caught up in thoughts about death. Sometimes I’d find beauty in a Zen koan or a Christian ritual, but my rational side would always pick it all apart. I’d start to look into a new religious text for answers, only to find myself cataloguing contradictions by page twelve. Still, I long for comforting lies, especially now, as I bleed out on the sidewalk.

  Even after realizing early on that life was devoid of meaning, I still tried to bamboozle myself into some sort of happiness. I rushed into marriage, twice in fact, each time believing I could find shelter from existential anguish in someone else’s arms. I’d wake up next to my wife, grateful for her warmth, yet suffocated by the truth that she, too, would be gone one day. Eventually, they did, probably sensing that black hole inside me sucking the joy from everyone around.

  In rare moments free from depression, I distracted myself with countless hobbies. I learned trades. Practiced sports and martial arts. I traveled all over the world and studied everything from the sciences to the humanities, but nothing stuck. After a month or a year, I’d always quit before mastering anything.

  My career was also marked by false starts. I’d take new jobs, searching for meaning, but quit after a few months or, at most, a year. If a coworker irritated me, I’d bolt rather than deal with it. I envied their drive, though, even if their ambitions seemed small. Some craved houses or cars, others wanted fame and prestige. I convinced myself quickly that I’d never do anything truly significant, so I stopped trying.

  If only I’d been born an elf, maybe then life would have lasted long enough to get inspired by something. Or would that be worse? Centuries of this existential paralysis? No. I could’ve tried it all: architecture to build amazing cities, investigation to find the real truth, medical research to defeat death, or bloody baking just for fun! The prospect of choosing just one always felt impossibly limiting. Call me greedy, but I wanted to choose all of them. Still, I suppose even an elf could get hit by a truck while reading at a bus stop.

  I want more time. I need it. My eyes close again, maybe for the last time. I’m torn between a desperate prayer and a bitter laugh. I wish I could be wrong, but I’m not. Either way, I don’t get to choose what happens next. At least when I’m gone, I won’t have to deal with this endless inner monologue anymore. That’s what I’ll focus on now. Time to be free from pain and suffering.

  “Congratulations on reaching the final stage of grief. Took you long enough!”

  “Huh?”

  Suddenly, the blackness surrounding me vanished. I opened my eyes to find myself still lying down, but now within an unfamiliar, totally white space. There were no walls, no floor, and no ceiling. Everything around me was just one boundless, almost blinding white void.

  My mouth fell open. “Huuuuuh?” I blinked rapidly, trying to process a sudden change in my environment.

  Out of nowhere, a face materialized in the whiteness, hovering above like a moon. “Welcome back to The In-Between. I’m Jerome, your guide to the afterlife. Do you need a moment, or are you ready to proceed?”

  “I was wrong?” My heart pounded against my ribs. Wait, did I still have a heart? The void beneath me suddenly felt solid as I scrambled to my feet, legs wobbling like those of a newborn deer. A laugh burst from my throat, high and uncontrolled. “Hahahaaah!” My cheeks stretched until they started to ache.

  I sprang upward, discovering I could leap high into the air without effort. “I was wrong! I was wrong!” My body tumbled forward into a clumsy cartwheel, then another, my fingertips tingling where they touched the non-surface. This couldn’t be a product of my imagination. This was too vivid, too real. This gotta be real!

  Jerome seemed to wait patiently through all of my escapades. His facial expression hovered between amusement and the look teachers give while waiting for a child to settle down in class. It was all I could gather from him, really. He was clearly not corporeal. His form wasn’t humanoid. Rather, he looked like a beam of energy with a face attached. No body language to speak of, just a face. It was plain and androgynous, despite his masculine name. Hard to put a gender or even race on that face.

  Finally, I collapsed onto whatever passed for ground in this place. I breathed in fully, cleared my throat, and nodded for him to continue. Still, I couldn’t stop my leg from bouncing with jittery energy.

  Jerome’s face flickered like a projection on mist. “Watch,” he said. His beam-like body dispersed, and in that empty, endless white expanse, I saw myself, but not quite myself. A woman in medieval dress, hunched over manuscripts. Then a boy sprinting through rice paddies. A soldier playing a flute by a bonfire. A beggar loitering on a busy street. The images cycled faster: dozens of lives, dozens of deaths.

  “Those were all… me?” Jerome nodded. “Body and mind wither away. The soul continues.”

  “So I couldn't remember them? Feel what they felt?”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “You can try if you want to,” Jerome suggested. Reminding myself I was never good with musical instruments, I concentrated on the flute player, and suddenly, searing pain shot through my skull. I collapsed, gasping.

  “Not yet,” Jerome said quietly. “Your soul is like a sapling trying to take in as much carbon dioxide as a whole forest. The gas is there, but you just can’t absorb it all yet.”

  I rubbed my temples. “And if my ‘sapling’ grows larger?”

  “Indeed, that is my role as a celestial being, to help nurture and develop souls. However, your soul is a stubborn one. Many times over, you were born into different life circumstances, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Despite all that, most of your previous lives, you have struggled with the same existential fear you did in this life.”

  “Talk about being a slow learner…” I said under my breath, running my fingers through hair that appeared both present and absent. “Not that I usually care to compare myself to others, but am I some kind of cosmic failure case?”

  “Your situation isn’t common, but it’s not entirely unique either. Across the nearly infinite universes my kind looks after, there are all kinds of souls. Each is unique, but some do share common traits, so we’ve come up with solutions, like treatment plans for rare medical conditions.”

  Jerome’s face showed a touch of amusement as suddenly a hand grew out of his 'body.' As soon as it formed, he tossed a coin. It flew high into the air and landed neatly back into his open palm.

  “What was that about?” I asked. “A coin flip will decide my future?”

  “Apologies if this seems thoughtless, but for us, it’s a nice change from the usual routine. For the treatment plans I mentioned, we’ve developed two that work equally well given your circumstances. We’re not allowed to choose for you, but you’re also not fully capable of making that decision on your own, so we introduce a bit of chance to help move things along. As it stands with this coin toss, you’ll be reincarnated as you normally would, but this time you’ll keep your recent memories to help in dealing with your fear of death, which holds back your soul from growing,” he said. “I should warn you, though, this isn’t like those isekai stories people on Earth write these days.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “No overpowered abilities? No system interface?”

  “No infinite storage, cheat powers, or translator,” Jerome confirmed. “You’ll need to learn local languages the hard way. Although magic does exist where you’re going, you’ll have an affinity for using it. You’ll be born healthy, not limited by crushing poverty or local politics, with many choices available to you.”

  I nodded, thinking it over. My knowledge from Earth would still give me an edge in most social situations, and even in many survival scenarios I could imagine. Cheat powers sound great in theory, but I doubt they’d help that ‘sapling’ of mine grow. Being reborn as a slave or a noble wouldn’t be ideal either, since people in those roles rarely get to choose their own faith. Jerome went on to explain that, to smooth my transition, I’d stay male and that my memories would be turned off during my infancy.

  “Thank goodness for small mercies,” I sighed. “Well, actually, sorry, thank YOU! I’d rather not remember being squeezed through a birth canal or suckling at someone’s breast.” Starting as a toddler might sound like years of boring existence, but I will have to learn a new language from scratch and get acclimated to my new body and environment. This will also give me plenty of time to educate myself about the world and plan my future accordingly, which did not seem like a waste to me in the slightest.

  “So, what is this place I am going to like? What type of geography does it have? Political landscape? Level of technological development?”

  Jerome responded without skipping a beat. “The planet has a similar circumference to Earth. It has 3 moons. You’ll notice the gravity is about 90% of what you are used to.”

  “That’s… not what I asked.”

  “The dwarves of the northern mountains have a fascinating parliamentary system,” he offered, then paused with a smirk.

  “Ok, ok… I understand that it would take forever to give me all the details, and I suppose it will be more fun to learn such things on my own. With that said, could you at least tell me if I will need to worry about some sort of global catastrophe, demonic invasion, or nuclear war?”

  “No existential threats face this world,” Jerome said, his face creasing a little. “Not yet, anyway.” The way his mouth twitched when he said “yet” made my stomach tighten. He seemed to enjoy giving me just enough information to keep me curious, but not enough to let me prepare.

  Once I finally gave up on probing him any further, I respectfully bowed to Jerome, genuinely appreciating the time and special consideration he had given me. Though Jerome left the specifics vague, like what exactly makes a soul ‘grow’? What happens when it does, beyond accessing past memories? What will happen to me if it doesn’t grow? And what was that ‘yet’ part all about? But perhaps that’s the point? Discovering these answers myself, rather than having them handed to me on a silver platter.

  Knowing for sure that death isn’t the end and that I’ll return to the In-Between someday changes everything. No more existential paralysis. No more feeling like time is always running out and nothing I do matters. With a new sense of excitement, I closed my eyes again, ready to start this new journey.

  “Your consciousness will now be transferred into your new body. Good luck!” said Jerome as his voice started to muffle, and darkness had surrounded me once more.

  When I watched all those sci-fi movies and TV shows where the main character constantly got teleported around, I always wondered what it’d feel like. Did you lose consciousness in the process, or did you maintain it? Was it still you, or was it just a copy of you? From the outside, it was impossible to tell. This wasn’t exactly the same situation, though, as it wasn’t my body that was transferred, but my mind.

  Maybe because Jerome was aware of my tendency to overthink everything, the process was far smoother than I could’ve imagined. It didn’t feel like going to sleep and waking up. Rather, it felt like for a moment my body just disappeared and reappeared while my mind stayed on. Just like it did when I closed my eyes at that dreadful bus stop and opened them again in the white void. It was seamless. The only difference was the noise.

  The noise of rain, trashing the roof above like a myriad of tiny fists. Thunder cracked, and wooden beams creaked overhead. So much for being reincarnated on a beautiful sunny day. Darkness weighed against my eyes. The whiff of milk and wool entered my nostrils. Something soft nestled my body, but a hard lump dug into my lower back. I tried to reach behind me, yet my limbs refused to cooperate. I could register them now. Short, stubby things that barely responded to my commands. I rocked side to side, attempting to roll over when lightning flashed, brightening the room.

  GRAW-OOOOOM. In that instant, I saw that what should have been my tiny baby hands were actually small paws covered in reddish fur, tipped with curved black claws that glinted in the flash. My throat tightened. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I might come back as anything other than human. I was… something else. I couldn’t reach behind me, but I could touch my head, and sure enough, my face had a snout, my ears were in the wrong place, and they were very pointy.

  “Wooooah. What kind of furry’s wet dream is this? Am I… a dog now?” Of course, just like my tiny paws couldn’t reach where I wanted them to, my tongue couldn’t produce any intelligible sounds except for baby grunts. Thinking about it now, that lump in my back… that’s a tail, isn’t it? I have a tail now. That is so ridiculous… BUT THIS IS SO MUCH FUN!

  1.1 - I finished a thorough line editing of this entire chapter. I relied too much on artificial separators to jump between different scenes in the same chapter. Now I am trying to create contextual bridges between them to make it all flow more naturally (like that teleportation inner monologue, instead of just jumping to another scene). I think this is better.

  1.1.1 - Found another typo.