“P118098 was it?”

“Actually it’s eight-nine, not nine-eight”, P118089 responded. It looked up at the looming bi-pedal, staring at its hand and suddenly feeling an urge to nudge the hand and be rewarded with a scratch behind its ear. Spending a year in the canine unit was causing this strange urge no doubt. It had to hurry up and get its paws on the human renders or it would not get taken seriously in its new role. 

“Very well, Mr Eighty Nine, welcome to the HSS division. Here’s the manual,” a binder so hefty fell onto P118089’s paws, it could barely hold it, “and here’s the graphics card for a library of Homo Sapiens Sapiens renderings. You’ll soon realize that in HSS, you have more of everything – more instructions, more renderings, more exceptions, and best of all, more stories. First order of business, get yourself rendered into a human so everyone isn’t looking down at you or tripping over you. Then get started on your homework with the manual. I’m going to have you shadow some of my sessions this week so you know what it looks like, and we can talk about letting you run solo next week – good?” it abruptly turned around and left without waiting for a response.

P118089 was still reeling from the information dump and its trainer’s abrupt departure – that rehearsed speech had clearly been delivered countless times before. The processor in the next cubicle looked over “Newbie? Welcome to HSS! And since you’re saddled with P154, good luck.”

“What do you mean? Also 154? I didn’t even know we had processors with less than 4 digits around.”

“Well, P154 has been here a LONG time – you usually find the three and two digits in the whales or turtles divisions, but this one likes the apes, what can I say? P154 is probably one of the oldest around, so it knows a LOT about the HSSs. Sadly, it also knows a LOT about processors who don’t stick around, so it has little patience for newbies – be prepared for some rough treatment until it knows you’re here to stay.”

“Oh. Good to know. By the way, how long have you been here? And which division did you come from?”

“Oh I’ve been here 50 years now! I came in from the Big Cats division. I used to think I was working with the top of the food chain, ‘king of the jungle’ and all that , until I saw the first HSS gun, and I knew I had to check this place out. What fascinating creatures, these HSSs! Even 50 years in, every week I hear something new! How about you, what brings you here?” 

“As you can probably tell”, it wagged its tail for effect, “I spent 5 years with the Canine team. Watching humans from their eyes, I got curious.”

“Curious eh? I think you’re going to do just fine here in that case! Have a good first day.” It picked up the file in its hand and sauntered over to one of the processing rooms

P118089 went to the render booth to get itself a pair of hands with opposable thumbs and enough muscle to carry the hefty manual. It stared at the big block of text on the cover “HOME SAPIENS SAPIENS. Edition 322.” 

322?? The canine team was still working off of Edition 28. And that manual was roughly a tenth in size! Oh well, time to start reading.

Three days later, P118089 was deep in the ‘occupations’ chapter when P154 walked past, did a double take and came back to check on the newbie. It had not only made progress through the manual, the manual seemed to be dog eared and had several bits of paper hanging out at various points with hastily scrawled questions. Intriguing. Perhaps this one was stickier than the others. 

“Alright newbie – ready to observe your first processing?”

It started in surprise, blinked twice as if it had forgotten where it was, and when its thoughts finally caught up, it stood up immediately with a bark. And after a stutter, “yes!”

P154 turned around to hide its amusement and headed straight to its room. “Go watch from the observation room. You should be able to pull up the human’s LifeGraph on the panel on the left, and communicate with me through the telepanel, but try to avoid sending me anything while I’m in the middle of conversation, will you?”

“Yes!”

P154 walked in to find the lady lying flat on the ground, eyes closed, softly praying.

P118089 promptly beamed a thought through. ‘Is she doing the thing called ‘prayer’? I thought they only do that in life? Seems rather pointless now?’ 

P154 was irked by how quickly the first question had come through, but still impressed. Newbie did its homework at least. ‘She doesn’t think it’s pointless, because she doesn’t think she’s dead. Many show up here not having realized what has happened to them.’`

“Dear, I think you may want to get up from the floor.” 

Zima’s eyes flew open. A scraggly old face with a soft white beard, twinkling eyes and a loose rust robe was staring down at her. “That seems rather uncomfortable, no? If you stand up, we can be seated here, which I assure you is rather more comfortable.”

Zima didn’t move an inch. Her eyes took in the blackness beyond the man – it was darker than the darkest nights in her village, and not a star in sight. “Who are you? Where am I?”

Old man extended his hand to her. “Welcome to the After Life Processing Center. I am your Guide, here to help you with your soul-processing today.”

Without even realizing it, Zima had given the man her hand, and was standing up. She had been wrong – it wasn’t all black. She saw that one side of the sky was slightly different – almost shimmery – though still black, but a black that wasn’t constant. It glowed, moved subtly. 

“Did you say processing center? I don’t understand. Did Lelima kidnap me and send me here to be killed off? I knew that girl wanted me out of the house. Ever since she married my beautiful boy, she has wanted nothing but the entire hut to herself, and me out of the way.”

P118089 interrupted before P154 could respond ‘Is she accusing her daughter-in-law of kidnapping? But I looked at her life story. This girl is nothing but nice and kind to her. What makes her think such things about Lelima?’

P154 reminded itself to be patient, and that processors from the canine unit, or any other unit for that matter, found human emotions and reactions endlessly illogical. ‘Human mothers can sometimes be possessive of their sons, and perceive any other targets of their affections with doubt.’

Old man gently smiled, “Zima my dear, you just recently passed away in your sleep, at the ripe old age of 52. Your sons and Lelima were devastated, and as we speak are preparing to create a shrine for you 6 feet tall, and plant your favorite jasmine flower on it to remember you by.”

Zima blinked up at him. Dead? She could not be dead. She was still healthy! She cleaned the entire house each day, picking up after the lazy Lelima, and was still fit enough to run after her youngest grandson!

“That does not make any sense. I want you to take me back home right now!”

P118089 immediately flipped to the ‘Denial of Death’ section in the manual. Eager to be helpful, it reminded P154 ‘The manual recommends we first ask the individual about their last memory. If that is unable to confirm the death, we next must display a LifeVideo of their current body and surroundings to confirm the death. Following that, in the event of continued disbelief, we must assert more forcefully the nature of their predicament. As a last resort, the individual is to be shown the true nature of this room.’

P118089 waited with baited breath. P154 just signaled back ‘Died in sleep, has never had a TV, is stubborn’ and continued talking to the lady without missing a beat. What did that mean? P118089 took furious notes. As it wrote, it figured out the first one – asking about her last memory would be pointless since she died in her sleep! It made a note in the manual.

“I surely want to take you home my dear, but look around – have you ever seen a place like this in your life?”

Zima looked around once more, uncomfortable with the combined vastness and darkness around her. She felt small. Not since she was 15 and first married the strongest warrior in the village had she felt this small. She finally happened to catch a look at her reflection in the glowing black part of the room. She moved towards it in a daze. 

“What magic is this? Is this.. Water? How is this water standing up? And… I look so young. I look like I did right after my baby Timo was born.”

P118089 finally processed the second clue in P154’s code – the lady came from parts of the human world that had not seen a TV, so playing a video of her currently bereaving family would have seemed like absolute sorcery to her. It knew there was an entire warning in the ‘openings’ section of the manual to avoid having the humans ‘lose their minds’ at the start of the process, as it caused some damage to the soul and made the process longer. 

“Yes, you were beautiful then – wife of the chief, mother of three healthy sons and the guardian of the entire village’s sick and poor. You have done your tribe a great service, and even now they honor you.”

Pride filled her chest, even as sadness crept into her eyes. “Just as a fruit cannot return to a flower, so too my wrinkled body could not turn back to this. This is truly not the world I came from, and so I must be dead, as you say. Please, wise one, tell me why I am here then? Am I not worthy of rejoining the earth, becoming one with the soil and the trees? Do I have further duties I must fulfill?”

“Your duties – and that of your husband, your parents – was never to rejoin the earth. Your bodies may do so, but your thoughts, your souls, must live on to join a new body, to find another purpose and build another living as you have in your current one. However, before you go onward, you must pass a few tests.”

P118089 was confused ‘They’re not really tests are they?’ 

P154 responded ‘The older human tribes had no schools – these ‘tests’ of prowess for the young were the real learning grounds, and therefore closest to what we are trying to do here.’ 

Pride shined in Zima’s eyes. “I raised three boys who came back victorious from all their tests. I can take on any test you have for me!

P118089 started as the LifeGraph came alive on the screen – but it looked odd. The manual had said human LifeGraphs looked like blue lines criss-crossing, but this one just looked like stars in the night sky, with just one star burning a slightly brighter yellow in the middle.

Zima didn’t look surprised – with the acceptance that she was dead seems to have come the acceptance that anything could happen in this space. “This looks just like the nights on the Lake of Many-Ferns. What is the test, oh wise one?”

Old Man pointed to the yellow star “Zima, that is what you achieved in this life. You were happy, and you made a lot of wisdom for your tribe. If you had chosen other things, you could have been happier” Old Man pointed up to the top, “or you could have created more things, passed on more wisdom”, he pointed to the right. “Your test is to choose with your own eyes two of your other lives, and use the wisdom from those lives to take to your next life you lead. Choose wisely.”

P118089 was SO confused. None of the things P154 was saying were anywhere in the manual! The LifeGraph did not have a star edition, nor did this phrasing of the LifeGraph get mentioned anywhere. 

P154 watched Zima think carefully about her choices, and figured it should let P118089 off the hook – if it was as diligent as it looked, it must be frantically flipping through the manual to figure out what it had missed. ‘By the way, I’m currently operating the playbook from edition 220. Rather old, but getting souls who are from these tribal parts of the current human civilization is pretty rare these days. I had to go old school to fit the soul.’ 

P118089 was stunned. It had barely made it halfway through ONE edition of the manual, and here was P154, spouting language from the manual a 100 editions ago! It suddenly remembered what it had heard about P154 and flipped back to the front page – there, in small font along the bottom, it said “Author: P154, with inputs from P1657, P8176 and P11098”

‘You.. wrote these manuals? All 322 of them?’ P118089 asked. It got no response, but it knew it was the truth. 

Zima had made up her mind. “I would like to observe a life where I was not the wife of Tamo, chieftain of the village.”

P154 was yet again surprised by an HSS. For a woman who took such immense and clear pride in her life as the wife of a chief, it was interesting that THAT was her criteria. It pointed to the LifeGraph where two clusters of stars gleamed a bit brighter, like constellations of stars going supernova at the same time – one at the top left, and off to the right. “Certainly. There are two different paths that put you on – would you like to see both?”

Zima nodded. Suddenly the stars disappeared and were replaced by an image of her mother that covered the whole side of the room. She gasped – surprised by what her eyes were seeing, but also at the sight of her mom – she had nearly forgotten what she looked like!

She watched as her childhood sped by, until her first blood. Her father stood outside, negotiating with the young Tamo the price of the bride-gift. In the background hung another man, who seemed to be getting increasingly restless. Zima squinted, trying to jog her memory, until she recognized the distinctive posture – a casual lean against the tree to hide his weaker leg. It was Daro – her childhood friend, her lifelong confidant. She had spent her early years in the Lake of Many-Ferns swimming with him – the only activity she knew he enjoyed with his weaker leg. Later in her life, Daro had also become her herbalist, her partner in making the village’s medical care better. Even now, the injured and sick from other villages came to hers, looking for Zima and Daro’s miracle cures.

Suddenly, Daro pushed off from the tree towards Zima’s father, and shouted “I’ll pay you with a Leopard skin!” 

Zima’s father looked at him in disbelief. “How will you ever catch a leopard? You can barely walk with that leg, let alone run after a leopard.”

“Give me one week. Just one week.”

Zima’s dad seemed to size him up, looking him toe to head. Finally, something in Daro’s eyes seemed to change his mind. “I will give you three days. It is not good for a girl to stay with her parents for too long after first blood. Three days”

Zima was aghast – how could Daro have even promised such a thing? There was no way he could run after a leopard – even Makaka, the village ‘cheetah’ they called him – could not do so!

The video sped to three days later, as Daro hobbled in, leopard skin on his back, dark circles under his eyes, his hair full of twigs and what looked like bird poop. Zima whirled to face Old Man “How did he ever manage it??”

Old Man smiled gently, “Love can drive men to insanity. Your friend found the tree that the leopard often used for an afternoon snooze. He picked a branch above it and lay there, absolutely still, for 3 days. He stayed so still, birds had started to use his hair for building a nest, and his body smelled like the tree itself. On the 3rd day, the leopard couldn’t spot him, and when it lay down to snooze, he leaped on it and slashed its throat.”

Zima looked back at the screen – Daro collapsing from exhaustion and the weight of the leopard skin, her 13 year old self running towards him, tears streaming down her face. Her father lifted the leopard skin, and gave the boy a pat. “You have earned this well my boy. Tonight, we have a wedding feast fit for the Leopard Slayer!!”

As the night fell, Daro seemed visibly recovered, and Zima looked giddily happy to be united with her playmate for her life. Several of the men passed by the couple, with thumps of ‘Leopard Slayer’ for Daro and the women passed by with veiled hints for Zima about needing to watch out for Daro’s hunger tonight. The 13 year old on the screen received these jibes with confusion, while the Zima in the room giggled like a teenager. “Oh I hope it was a good night for her. For them both!”

Old Man replied with a smile, “It was the start of many.”

The video sped up as the young couple began their life, seeming to spend many of their days in the forests, foraging for herbs that would heal the sick in their village. They got a larger hut constructed through a generous donation from Timo, that housed many of the sick in their village, and also those from other villages. She watched as the queues outside their hut grew longer, and as their days spent healing grew longer too. As the nights came, Zima and Daro would walk home to their humble abode together, and turn in for the night. Even so, Zima seemed touched by sadness. “Why does she look sad?”

“You were never able to have children in this life..” Zima looked back with new eyes at their hut – no wooden toys littering the floor, no heaps of soiled clothes to be washed the next day. The house looked perfect. Perfect for two adults.

The video faded to blackness again, and Zima felt the void in her heart for Daro. No young feet pitter-pattering around. No smaller versions of Daro, of his strong jawline and his sleek sun-kissed shoulders. She knew he had chosen that path for himself in her own life, but it saddened her that even in an alternative life, there was no one to carry his blood and his genius with herbs.

“..to watch your second life now?” The Old Man seemed to have asked a question. Zima nodded, still lost in thought about Daro.

The video sprang back to life, starting again with her mother, and this time Zima watched her afternoons with Daro in a different light. Had he always looked at her with that much love in his eyes? Had he always sneaked her the best fruit and best cuts of meat when the men came back from the hunt? She had never noticed, too lost in her friends and fighting with her siblings.

Suddenly the village seemed to be on high alert – the chief had called a meeting! They rarely did meetings unless it was for a wedding, or for war, but the warriors didn’t seem to be putting on their protection so it couldn’t be that. Zima followed her siblings and Daro to the village center, where she saw two strangers, standing in odd clothes, with tentative smiles, and one of the warriors from the neighboring village next to them.

“This is err..” the chief turned to the warrior for help, and he supplied “Senor Roberto and Senora Mariana”. The chief crinkled his face at the strangeness of their names, and continued “and they are here from far away, where they say they have learned a great many things, such as how to heal people, and to make people live longer.”

The whole village looked at the strangers in awe, as if they were descendants of the gods themselves. Daro – her logical, beautiful Daro – was not convinced though. He stepped forward and shouted out “How can we know that? What proof do they have?”

The lady stranger turned to the warrior – he pointed at Daro and said something, and she replied back in a strange language. The warrior beckoned Daro, “She says you can watch her if you’d like, and see if she is truly able to do what she says.” 

Daro suddenly looked scared, his bravery fleeing him in the face of the tall stranger who had far too many clothes. Who knew what she was hiding behind them?

Zima suddenly jumped forward and took his hand, “I want to see too! I want to see what they have!” Daro suddenly turned to her with a grateful look, and Zima whispered to him “let’s see if they can make us live longer, eh?”

The lady smiled, and nodded to the warrior. The chief looked disturbed, but at the warrior’s  reassurances, nodded, and directed the pair of strangers to the old hut at the edge of the village. “You can find them there. They said they will help us for a time, so we may learn from their ways.”

Zima and Daro followed them in, and the video started to spin faster through the next few years – the two of them huddled together with the strangers in the old hut, learning new mixtures and ways to create herbs for the village. The strangers seemed to constantly be looking at these small flat rocks, which would open to reveal a collection of white leaves, stitched together with markings on them.

“What are those?”

“Books”, the old man replied. “They are made from trees, and are a place to store memories. So even if Senora Mariana and Senor Julio forgot something, they could find it again using those words.”

That blew Zima’s mind. How wonderful, to not have to rely on memories – her own and her family’s. She would have captured so many more of the illnesses she had seen, what potions she had tried, what had worked. 

As her first blood arrived once more in this life, she watched the lady stranger get into a huge argument with her father. They seemed to be arguing about whether Zima ought to be married at such a small age – she had so much more to learn. With a final shout, the chief seemed to decide – the two strangers must leave. Tears streaming down her face, Senora Mariana stormed back to her hut to pack her belongings. Zima followed her, tears streaming down her face, speaking now in the alien language herself to the Senora Mariana.

“What am I saying?”

“You’re telling her you don’t want her to leave, that you want to go with her.” Senora Mariana seemed to be shaking her head throughout, gathering her suitcase even as Julio tried to tell Daro about all of the manuals and medicines they were leaving behind. With nearly no farewells from the village except an angry chief glaring at them, the two strangers left, sadness in their eyes.

As night fell, Zima seemed to be getting prepped for the Bridal feast, and her giggling friends were telling her how lucky she was to wed the strongest warrior in the village. Zima couldn’t hear a thing, until suddenly she noticed she was alone. She was to rest here for the next few hours as the village got progressively drunker, before she would be fetched to sit on the bridal seat. 

She was alone. As that thought sunk in, Zima’s body started to move – she picked up her favorite clothes, her mother’s precious gems, her family’s store of food. With a silent prayer of apology to her family, she snuck out of the back of the tent with her bag on her shoulder, and started down the hill. She knew Senora Juliana would be at the river dock waiting for the evening ferry. She had to find her!

She caught up with them at the dock, and after a fierce hug, Senora Juliana seemed to make up her mind. Zima watched as the pair of them now became a trio, and for the next several years, they moved from village to village, spreading the knowledge. Zima’s presence seemed to disarm most of the villages they encountered, and the women would immediately come to Zima with their various ailments – they managed to create and train a few medics in nearly every village they visited within a few months of arriving. Even ripe into her old age, Zima was traveling, with her own companion trainees, tirelessly bringing the miracle of written knowledge to each place she visited.

As the video started to inch towards the end of Zima’s life, P11089 broke out of its reverie – watching human lives was definitely FAR more fascinating that canine lives. Not only were their lives far longer, but their activities and interactions were far richer. It had considered the human ability to communicate in words simply a slight advantage to processors who had to explain the After Life process (dogs did NOT often get the point of it), but in fact this ability had fundamentally altered the fabric of life for the species. How curious.

In the room, P154 was starting up the exit questions as Zima’s body gently wafted towards the exit.

“I now have three questions for you before you proceed to your next life.”

‘Three?? I thought we just had one?’  P118089 said before it could stop itself, but simultaneously flipped to the “Exit” section of the manual.

P154 ignored it – clearly the newbie had not gotten to the last section. “First. Would you replace the life you lived with any of the ones you watched today?”

Zima looked up at the Old Man. “No, I am proud of the daughter, wife and mother I was. Though I wish I had treated Daro with more kindness in my lifetime, I do not wish to change it”

“Would you like to have memories of this life to be available to you in your next life?” P118089 looked up, very curious about how the human would respond. There was no doubt that most canines would not even understand this question.

“Yes of course – I learned so much about ways to heal people, I want that to stay with me so I may do the same in my next life” 

It took P118089 a second to fully grasp the import of that. The human was asking not to keep the memories – not for her own sake, but instead for others’ sake. For others she didn’t even know yet – she was just acting on blind faith that she would want to heal whoever she met in her next life.

“Would you like to repeat any experiences from your current life again in your future life?”

P118089 thought this was the oddest question of all – why even ask when there was no way to ensure that this would be possible to promise? The manual indicated the purpose of this question was to ‘drive self-reflection’, and that ‘having a happy thought led to better error-free rewrites’. What did that mean?

“Yes – I want to once more experience the feeling of being important to a community of people – it was busy, but it was fulfilling, being able to take care of so many around me.”

The Old Man smiled and gestured at a bright void behind him and Zima slowly melted into it – proud and content.

P118089 met P154 outside the room. “That was quite…enlightening. Humans are rather more complex than their canine best friends for sure. I mean, the degree of empathy this woman showed for people she doesn’t even know yet!”

P154 felt a glimmer of hope unfurl. Perhaps this newbie actually gets it. It had been a few thousand processors since it had found another processor who picked up on the interesting bits of processing humans. Most just commented on the fragility of their deaths, or some remarkably shallow aspect of their lives – like their variety of clothes.

“Indeed. Well, continue on your reading of the manual, I noticed you’re only a third of the way through it. I’ll come get you for the next processing later.”

P118089 suppressed its urge to bark again. “Yes sir!” it saluted instead, hoping P154 would like the military reference. Judging by the smile from its Old Man rendering, it did. 

Maybe the Homo Sapiens Sapiens Division was not a bad decision after all.

Continue to Chapter 6: The Improbability of Satisfaction →