Rahi was scared. This huge room just had a huge TV screen, and she couldn’t see her mommy and daddy anywhere. She did a full circle, ran to see if she could peek behind the TV – but they were nowhere to be found. She burst into tears.

There was an announcement on speakers somewhere – but Rahi couldn’t understand any of it. Slowly to her right she noticed a lady in a green dress walking towards her. She looked like her mom, and also like her teacher. Rahi stood still and watched warily as the lady walked closer, and shouted “I am not supposed to talk to strangers!”

The lady smiled, and said “I know. I’m not a stranger though, I am your mommy’s friend! I know everything about you and your mommy – do you want to test and see if I am really her friend or not?”

This was intriguing. The tears forgotten, Rahi racked her brain for a suitably tough question. “What is mommy’s favorite food?”

“Oh that’s easy”, the lady said, “your mommy loves cheesecakes! You like them too, don’t you?”

That she did. She nodded reluctantly. Hmm. The lady had passed the first test. Rahi had to give her something tougher. Oh – she had the perfect one!

“Do you know where she hides the cookies when she doesn’t want daddy to eat them all?”

The lady smiled a little secret smile. “Of course! They go into the pasta box on the top shelf. Your mommy is very clever isn’t she?”

Ok, no one – not even her daddy – knew about THAT. She was sure of it. So this lady HAD to be very close to her mommy. 

She walked closer to her and looked up. The lady was wearing an apron, and the apron had something written on it. Rahi had been reading and writing for a LONG time now, so she could read it pretty easily. “P… 154. P154? What does that mean?”

P154 looked down at the child. It REALLY hated processing children’s souls. Something about the whole process made it want to take a break from work and go on a long meander through the spiritual realm. 

“It’s my name.” 

Rahi’s face crumpled in confusion. “P154 is your name? That’s not a name, silly, that’s just some numbers! What’s your real name?”

“Yeah, you’re right, it’s just some numbers. My name is Penny Pfeiffer. You can call me Penny!” As she spoke, she leaned down to pick Rahi up into her arms. Rahi could finally see Penny’s face properly, so that was nice. 

“Penny..” she said, testing the name out. “Penny. Like ‘Pretty Penny’? My daddy used to say Pretty Penny all the time! Was he talking about you?” Excitement built as she thought she had connected a dot, fit a piece of a puzzle. She loved puzzles – she was so good at them!

P154 looked at the excitement, torn between being honest, and playing along to give her a win and make her feel better in this strange environment.

“Yeah it must have been me! See I told you I was your mommy and daddy’s friend.” And P154 instantly regretted it saying those words, because it knew what was coming next.

“Penny, do you know where my mommy and daddy went?”

P154 rescanned the short 5 year lifespan of the little girl in its arms, trying to find clues that would help it say the right next thing to help the soul process itself. This part was hard enough with adults where P154 had at least 20 years, sometimes 50 or 60 years worth of data to lean on. But 5 years was very little to go on, and picking the right response to this near-universal question from children was almost always the most delicate part of processing a child.

Was it better to ask about her last memories before she got here? Assure her that her parents had just left for a short while and would be back? Or begin with the Play Doh metaphor? Or easiest, but sometimes the most disastrous, distract them with the pretty pictures on the screen?

P154 watched Rahi intently watching Penny’s every facial movement, and pegged her too intelligent for lies or misdirection. So her last memory would be the best place to start.

“I don’t know – but maybe we can figure it out. Tell me, what do you remember last before you got here?”

Rahi tilted her head and her eyes wandered in thought. “Hmm.. I was in school, and then there was a lot of shouting, and people were running around. Miss Ivy was asking me to run to the classroom and hide under the table, but my friend Cara and I wanted to see what was going on, so we were at the back.. And then it was so loud!” She covered up her ears again as she recalled just how loud it had gotten towards the end. 

Penny closed her eyes, and looked angry. Rahi quavered “I’m sorry! I was running to the classroom, but it was so loud, so I went there to tell him to stop, he was being so noisy! Mommy said we should be quiet so we don’t disturb other people, especially in school. I just wanted to tell him to be quiet.”

Penny opened her eyes. Rahi thought Penny was about to cry. “You are right honey, some people need to learn that schools should be quiet. Noisy things should not be allowed in schools.”

P154 took a deep breath. Bloody guns. Ever since the HSSs had invented the blasted things, the number of premature deaths had skyrocketed. It had been a rude shock when after centuries of the average life span going up, suddenly in the 19th century, these 18, 19 year old conscripts had started to show up with alarming frequency – shell shocked, in army fatigues, unaware they were dead, unprepared for a conversation about the afterlife. Thankfully that had abated recently, but this disturbing new trend of school aged kids showing up – similarly unaware and unprepared for conversations about death – was really infuriating. 

Now for the hardest part. Explaining death was hard enough, but explaining the LifeGraph was always a pretty trick. But as Penny saw the curiosity glimmer in Rahi’s eyes, she knew Rahi would get it. 

“So, that day in your school, you got hurt by those boys who were making all that noise. You know what happens when people get hurt?”

“They go to their daddy or their teacher to get it fixed?”

“Yes, if you get just a little hurt you go to your daddy, but if you get more hurt, then…?”

“Then…. You go to the hospital? The doctor can fix it there?”

“That’s right, but when you get SO hurt that the doctor can’t even fix you, then, you come here.”

“Oh. But… I don’t feel hurt? See – I am not hurt anywhere! I don’t have any pain, I’m fine!”

“That’s because you’re now new . Like, if you started making a dinosaur with your Play-Doh, but then you messed up the shape, you mix it all back together and make a new one right? And the new dinosaur isn’t messed up anymore? It’s the same way – you’re now a new dinosaur, so all the previous hurt goes away.”

Rahi looks skeptical. “I’m new now? So when I become new, will I still have my same mommy and daddy?”

“No, next time you’ll get a new mommy and daddy.”

“But, then how can I be the same me? I am not me. That’s silly.”

P154’s program manual drew a blank. In so many centuries, no adult had made this point that this 5 year old had so innocently stumbled upon. She was right, a reincarnated soul in its new life wasn’t the same person, though they began with the same source materials. Like the Play-Doh analogy, while each soul changed shape each life, the texture of their personality was already predefined. With each reincarnation, the soul got a little richer, wiser. 

Explaining all of that to a 5 year old was beyond Penny though. So, time to throw in the distraction. 

“You see this big screen? All those little blue lines have many other yous, with your mommy and daddy! So if you open one of those, you can see yourself, playing with mommy and daddy again! Do you want to pick one so you can look at it?”

“I can see mommy and daddy again?? Yeah – can I see that one?”

P154 sent a silent thanks to the world that Rahi had picked one of the happiest life lines. She pulled up the video, and slow-played the first 5 years so Rahi could re-live most of the same childhood again. The video started to speed through the later years. Rahi was brimming with questions – asking them to the world faster than anyone could answer

“Is that me? Am I 7 years old in this video? My hair is so long! Did I make it that long? Am I fighting with mommy? But why? Is daddy helping with my art project? But he doesn’t help me, I usually do it myself! Hahah daddy is being so silly, he’s got paint all over his face. Oh who is that boy? Is he my friend? Why is he holding my hand? What is daddy telling the boy?…”

P154 tuned out the questions – there were no answers it could give, and in any case Rahi wasn’t expecting any. It let the video play out – and asked Rahi if she wanted to watch another one. She nodded enthusiastically – after all, nothing is more fun than watching your own life on fast forward with only enough maturity to understand the happy parts, and only vaguely comprehend the more adult, complex emotions of regret, sadness, grief, anger.

As the second video wrapped and the lights dimmed, Penny walked with Rahi towards the door. 

“So Rahi, did you like those videos? Which one did you like better?”

Unconscious of the slow move towards the door, Rahi excitedly responded, “The first one! Because daddy was being so silly, it was so funny to watch!”

“Yeah that was funny!” There was no point in asking the second question, since early childhood memories didn’t transport well to the next life anyway. On to the third then, with the risks it brought of waterworks, but P451 was now at the home stretch.

“So Rahi, now that you’re a new you, what do you miss the most from the older you, before you got hurt?” 

Rahi suddenly turned serious. Eyes downcast, she was clearly scanning through her memories, and whatever she was thinking of was making her bottom lip tremble and her eyes start to water. She looked up at Penny, “I want to go walk in the park with mommy and daddy again!” And the tremble turned into a full wail, and Penny held back her own tears as she gently let Rahi go through the door. 

P154 closed the door, immediately hit the ‘break time’ signal, and leaned its head against the door. Children were the worst.

Continue to Chapter 4: The Wealth Abstraction →