The details of my death were not particularly important. As my soul was freed from my body, I instead pondered the details of my life.

  I was born at a time which allowed me to spend my youth enjoying what I would later see as the peak of human civilization. The middle class of the western world could still enjoy its relative wealth, and technological progress was both fascinating and exciting. The future seemed bright, though I was too preoccupied with entertainment and other simple pleasures to spend much time thinking about it.

  Then, as I began to inch towards adulthood, the world was struck by terror. After the worst of it, things seemed to return to normal, but it may have been the beginning of the end of the good times. It was a subtle shift, at first, but decades later many would look back on that single day and see it as a major turning point. Others would blame it on systemic issues that were only accelerated by terror.

  Perhaps it was always destined to go wrong.

  Unable to know the future, I continued on blissfully unaware, went on to finish my mandatory education and entered higher education, only to graduate into one of many economic recessions. The wealth gap grew, and stark division spread throughout society. Even still, I managed to pull through, find work, and enjoyed what I could of the world without thinking overly about the bigger picture.

  Slowly but surely, the simplistic and hopeful dreams of my youth were sanitized by reality. Our lives were repeatedly bludgeoned by the hammers of past mistakes, present incompetence, willful deception and ignorance, and increasing vitriol between people who should have been working together to build a better tomorrow. I witnessed changes to the climate, cycles of pandemic, the rise of authoritarianism, the first food crisis, the total collapse of the middle class, wet bulb mortality events which devastated populations, the refugee crises, the wars, the following and lasting food crisis, the complete loss of freedom, the final splintering of society, and the effective fall of modern civilization.

  My death was less of a mournful affair and more of a release from a miserable, broken world.

  I was surprised when, after my death, I found myself continuing to be able to think, as a soul. I had always been an atheist, and did not particularly believe in the existence of a soul that transcended the simple electrical impulses of the meat-sack that made up my consciousness.

  To properly describe that moment of leaving my life would be impossible. I was no longer able to sense like I had as a human. What occurred was not so much the following as it was something significantly more grand, bizarre, and mysterious, all happening in a dimension a mortal brain could barely comprehend. My story, as I was able to tell it, was how one might comprehend the events given only a human comprehension and a mere biological brain to discern it.

  * * *

  As my soul floated out of my birth universe, I began to drift towards the Engine of Reincarnation. Other souls joined the whirlpool that fed into the Engine, from all manners of universes like my own as well as the somehow denser souls of universes beyond. As my orbit drew closer, I could feel the heat of the Engine begin to scour my soul of impurities: my memories, my personality, my very sense of self.

  I reeled at the loss of myself.

  No, that wasn’t it. I was reeled—reeled in—trawled, somehow, from the cycle of death and rebirth.

  The net was dragged aboard the trawler, and my soul was unceremoniously dumped alongside countless others.

  “Pitiful haul,” an existence grumbled. “Barely any life in these souls.”

  “Must have been a lower universe feeding this area,” another concurred, disdain dripping from its voice. “I’ll go tell the captain we should head to better waters.”

  “Should I toss these back?”

  “No, they’ve still got some value… dump them in the second cargo hold with the broken higher universe souls we snagged earlier. It’ll even out in the mix when we juice ‘em.”

  My soul shuddered as it was thrown into storage, and my last vestiges of self reached out to my surroundings, trying to grasp onto something, anything.

  If I could have laughed, I would have, and a bitter laugh at that. My life had turned out miserable, and my death was not looking too great either. I mourned myself as I worried for what was to come.

  Something nearby called to me. I wiggled my essence, drifting towards it. Souls were not stationary things, and my own was supposed to be moving towards reincarnation. Instead, I moved towards whatever it was that beckoned me nearby, something beyond me, but something… broken. Around me, other souls wiggled, attempting to latch onto various other energies in the hold.

  I began to absorb the energy, insofar as I was able. It took an incomprehensible amount of time—or perhaps it was no time at all—for my soul to come to understand how to do this. The energy was radiating from a broken soul, bleeding out into the hold, leaving nothing of a person behind; just a system of order that was emptied of purpose.

  Grabbing onto that System, I made it my own.

  Searing, sizzling, crackling, and then—

  I felt my knowledge of myself stabilize, my remaining memories and sense of self contained and strengthened by the shield of the System around me.

  Michael Carter. That’s who I am. That’s me.

  Of course, I was dead. There wasn’t really any reason to cling to my name. Still, it felt good to know who I was, and have a clearer picture of my former life.

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  What was equally interesting was this peculiar System that I had gained and what it meant. My world hadn’t had a System, so this was all new to me, but it didn’t feel particularly wrong, either. Unfortunately, not having a System in life, my level and stats seemed zeroed out.

  On the other hand, somehow, I had a single skill.

  I wanted to learn more, but the ship carrying my soul lurched. The sounds of voices from beyond the hold were panicked, and I could make out snippets in the chaos.

  “It’s the authorities!”

  “Man the armaments!”

  “They’re boarding!”

  A battle ensued, though I would be hard pressed to describe what actually happened, or for how long. When the din of the conflict finally came to an end, I could hear different voices calling out commands as the ship and its cargo was searched.

  “Find every intact soul you can and prepare them for return to the Engine’s cycle,” a clear voice rang out.

  Other voices called out affirmations as they found the stockpile of souls the pirates had fished from the whirlpool that fed the Engine of Reincarnation. I tried to call out, but I was unable. I had no body, so I had no voice. I squirmed and wiggled and pushed at the fragmented broken souls around me, until I finally heard the cargo hold I was stored in opening.

  “We’ve got a slurry of soul energy here,” I heard someone say. “And some unrefined souls, as well. Should we dump the hold?”

  Panicked, I tried even harder to claw my way to the surface, though I couldn’t tell up from down. I was beginning to despair when, finally, it seemed my efforts paid off.

  “Oh, shit… Commander, we’ve got a live one.”

  * * *

  I was brought back to what I could only assume was the so-called “authorities” base of operations, where I was placed in a room, either for examination or observation. It reminded me of police shows I vaguely recalled watching in my previous life, so that was the best metaphor I could use for what was happening to me in this strange new reality.

  Before I could spend too much time trying to figure out what was happening, the door to the interview room opened, and in walked a figure who my mind labeled the detective. He closed the door behind him, and it felt like he placed a cup of coffee on the table in front of me before he sat in the chair opposite me. Of course, that wasn’t what actually happened, I just didn’t have the language to describe it any other way.

  “I’m Detective Jeb Gudell,” the man said.

  Well, that wasn’t what he actually said. I had no idea what he actually said, but that was how I was processing it. If I changed my perception ever so slightly and started to think of this as heaven, it also kind of sounded like, “I am Archangel Jegudiel,” and if I let myself think of this as something even more alien, it started to sound like, “????????? ??????????????????? ???????????????????? ??????????????????????????????.” Though, if I allowed my train of thought to drift that way, it seemed like I might lose my mind, so I shifted my focus back to the police precinct.

  “Where am I?” I asked, to such an extent that whatever I was could do something like ask a question.

  “Well, that’s... a tough question to answer for an existence from your dimension. You were on your way to reincarnation before those soul pirates grabbed you. We caught most of them, and they’re in custody now.”

  “Am I? In custody, I mean. Like, am I under arrest?”

  “Oh, no, don’t you worry about that. You’ve done nothing wrong. But your situation is a bit… complicated. Do you know how you were able to get a System? It doesn’t quite match your soul age.”

  “Uh,” I stammered. “I got it while I was in that hold, I guess?”

  “Cross-contamination, eh? Fucking pirates,” Gudell spat, shaking his head.

  “Is that… a bad thing? Am I in trouble?”

  “No,” the detective said quickly, softening. “You were probably on your way to a System universe anyway, at the latest in another cycle or two, and you’d likely have got one then. The only unusual thing is this skill you’ve picked up as a result of all this.”

  My System appeared in front of me, and the [Metasurvival] skill lit up.

  “Randomly acquiring a skill between universes is fairly rare, particularly at your age,” Detective Gudell explained. “That’s also why it’s a metaskill. It’s not unheard of for a young soul to acquire a metaskill, but since you have no experience with any of this, you’re likely to get confused, and this particular skill certainly won’t help with that. If anything, you’ll wind up more confused. That’s why I’m going to explain some things to you.”

  I nodded, and braced myself.

  “So, the vast majority of universes use the System to cultivate the growth of souls. Once you’ve got a System, you’ll only be reincarnated into a reality with a System. You were from a System-less universe—what some might call a lower universe, since souls tend to move ‘upward’ from System-less universes to those with Systems over time—but no universe is truly lower or higher than any other. All of them are important.”

  I nodded again, though I only partially understood. The detective continued his explanation.

  “The contents of your System may vary from universe to universe, adapting to the local reality, but under the hood it’s all pretty much the same. Your stats—Body, Mind, and Will—are the triumvirate of your effort in life.”

  “I get Body and Mind,” I said with a frown. “But what’s Will? Is that like determination?”

  “Ah, did you come from a universe without any externalized Will? That’s not uncommon for System-less universes. No, determination would be an aspect of your Mind. Will is… a force you exert on the world around you. Consider an object you wanted to move. Your Mind perceives the object, comes to the decision to move the object, and makes the plan of how to proceed. Your Body may then physically move the object, if it has the requisite strength, dexterity, and so on. Or, with enough Will, you may simply command the object to move.”

  “Like… telekinesis? Or magic?”

  “Oh, so you do know. Yes, both of those are examples of how you might impose your Will upon the world around you. It will often interact with a type of force or energy in the universe. Some universes call this ‘mana’ or ‘magic’, others might call it ‘qi’ or ‘cultivation’, or perhaps ‘spirit’ or ‘soulforce’ or the like. The name doesn’t really matter. In most cases, it’s about extending your Will outside of yourself and creating change in the world. With a sufficiently high Will, one could remake their reality.”

  I felt a bit stupefied at Detective Gudell’s brisk explanation of the supernatural forces that I would have found god-like in my former world, and the detective likely could tell.

  “We’re going to help guide your coming reincarnation, so we’ll place you in a universe that’s somewhat comparable to your own, though it will have some element of the Will. It’ll be an easier adjustment for you and give you some room to grow into it. I know it might seem overwhelming, but reborn souls manage it all the time, without any foreknowledge or past memories. You’ll do just fine.”

  Nodding mutely, because what else could I even have said, Gudell moved on.

  “Generally, skill acquisition is locked behind your stats. You need a certain level of physical proficiency to acquire physical skills, and so on for mental and will-based abilities. That’s why it’s unusual for you to have this [Metasurvival] skill so young, as you’re without the requisite stats to earn it. As for the skill itself…”

  A new window opened over top of my System screen, displaying the skill.

  “As you can see, this skill makes it so that you’ll be going into your future lives with full knowledge of yourself and all the effort you’ve put into the lives you’ve lead up to that point.”

  “Isn’t that… a problem? For the world I’m being born into?”

  “Not really. You’ll eventually encounter others in the same situation, though not many, particularly early on. The Engine of Reincarnation tends to put souls into universes that can handle them and further refine them. It’s more of a problem for you, since you’ll be forced to keep your memories and skills from life to life, before you’ve acquired the resilience that would have come from growing your stats to the point where you could normally have acquired such a skill.”

  I thought back to the cargo hold, the slurry of broken souls and System-less souls like myself.

  “Um… how is it even possible that I got this skill? Shouldn’t the soul who had it have been... safe, between lives?”

  The detective frowned. “I suppose you should take that as a lesson, then. There’s always something more powerful out there. Perhaps they were soul-killed in their last life. Maybe it was the pirates who attacked the soul. Or even…” Gudell trailed off.

  Soul-killed? What the hell, man. That sounds terrifying. “Even what?” I asked.

  “It’s possible—though unlikely—that the soul you got your System from didn’t have the skill, and you somehow legitimately earned it in your struggle. Unfortunately, I can’t tell, not from where I’m sitting. I don’t run the show, I just work here,” he said with a grin.

  I shook my head. This was all crazy.

  “Don’t worry too much about it. I’m going to get you set up in a nice cozy universe where you can get your feet wet. I’m going to tag your System, so I’ll personally check in on you in a few cycles. You’re going to do great.” The detective stood, and offered me his hand. Tentatively, I took it and shook it.

  Except, not really, since this was all a metaphor for something beyond comprehension. Still, that’s how it felt.

  Gudell stepped towards the door, opened it, and looked back at me.

  “Welcome to the multiverse, kid.”