Taylor still felt
sick from the teleportation. He tried to count backwards from fifty-four. That
sometimes helped. The fact that he rarely acquired more than four hours of
sleep did not.
He sat in the
waiting room of Next Life (NextLife.gov).
Another man sat
across from him. The stranger read a digital copy of Entertainment magazine. “Looks as if Hollywood’s gonna release
another Friday the Thirteenth reboot.”
Taylor realized
that the stranger spoke to him. “Pardon?”
“To celebrate the
one hundredth anniversary of the original,” the stranger explained.
“Oh.” Taylor
stared at his callused hands. His knees ached. His head felt as if filled with
cotton. He wondered who found the time to see a movie these days.
“I never
understood the title, though,” said the stranger. “I mean, Friday the
Thirteenth’s the least lucky day of the year, right?”
Taylor shrugged.
“It might come more than once a year. I think.”
“Yet,” said the stranger,
“everyone in the movie gets lucky. Don’t you find that odd?”
“They’re also
getting killed,” Taylor pointed out.
“Yeah, but doing
what they love.” The stranger produced a couple hip thrusts, lest Taylor not
catch his drift.”
Taylor rubbed his
eyes. Where do these people come from?
“Mister Ka?”
someone said.
Taylor removed his
hands to see a young woman in a business suit.
She offered her
hand. “Kate. Shall we head to my office?”
Taylor shook her
hand. “Lead the way, please.”
He stood and
forced his tired legs to follow the young woman to her corner office with
frosted glass walls. She sat behind her wide walnut desk. Taylor seated himself
in the dangerously comfortable chair in front of it.
Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. If you do,
for the love of God, don’t snore.
Kate tented
together her fingertips. “Mister Ka, here at Next Life, we stand committed to
ensuring you the best next life that money can buy.”
She punched a few
“buttons” on her touchscreen-desk. Holographic, green numbers scrolled across
the wall behind her.
“As you can see,
Mister Ka, your last monthly payment came late by over three days. At eight
hundred dollars a day plus a two thousand reconnection fee—”
Taylor raised his
hands. “What’s the bottom line?”
“Taking interest
into account, we’ll have to raise your monthly rate by twenty percent to make
up the difference.”
He rubbed his
forehead. He already worked ninety hours a week. How could he hope to raise his
income by another twenty percent? He would have to tighten his belt somehow,
lower his expenses. How?
He cleared his
throat. “Could we transfer my account to a cheaper program?”
She frowned.
“Mister Ka, your current program only permits you, upon death, reincarnation
into the first world. If I lower your payments one level, you’ll spend your
next life in the third world. If you think this
life proved difficult—”
“Right. Right.”
Taylor sighed. “What happens if I die before I make the final payment for my
current program?”
“In that
likelihood,” Kate said, “you would receive a new life equal to the amount of
money you paid by that point--minus the transfer fee."
Her fingers tapped
some more virtual buttons. More green data spilled across her wall.
“As you can see—”
she pointed at the data “—given your current debts, you can afford, at this
point, reincarnation into a frog.”
“And how,” Taylor
asked, “as a frog, could I afford to pay for a better life after that one?”
Her expression
turned grave. “You couldn’t. That’s why it proves so very very important to always get reincarnated into the first world.
Once you lose that, you’re lost, likely to return as a tree or slug after every
death you experience thereafter.”
He rested his head
in his hands. “I work so hard, already.”
Kate smiled. “Keep
at it, Mister Ka. If you do, you can eventually purchase a new life as a member
of the privileged. That’s what I apparently did in my last life.”
“All I can ever
afford is the same life over and over again. How can I make the jump to the
next level?”
She spread her
arms. “Sir. I sit here as living proof. Work hard. Follow the rules. Your time
will arrive.”
The rules. Taylor groaned. Next Life
created a lot of rules that screwed people after death.
One of Taylors
seventeen roommates, Jim, who shared his studio apartment with him, paid every
month for a slightly better, next life. Unfortunately, a jeep hit Jim, killed
the seventy-two-year-old before he could make his final three payments.
Next Life charged
Jim a massive fee to transfer his account to another program. Only about half
the money remained after that fee. Jim’s soul ended up in a skunk.
Taylor shook
Kate’s smooth hand. He rose on weary legs and shuffled off to work.
(Thanks for reading. You might notice below that I changed the schedule for my blogs. I will, because of the number of projects on my plate, only produce a short story for this blog on Mondays. Fiction Formula will switch from Fridays to Thursdays. I apologize for any inconvenience, though I . . . doubt this will rock anyone's existence. Thanks again!)
I
publish my blogs as follows:
Tuesdays:
A look at the politics of the entertainment world at EntertainmentMicroscope.blogspot.com.
Wednesdays:
An inside look at my novels (such as Daughters of Darkwana, which you can now find on Kindle) at Darkwana.blogspot.com
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