Rebirth Control

When I died, I transcended life, time and matter, and saw the whole Universe without being constrained by the deceptive and earth-bound human mind. I saw that Reality was a perpetually repeating fractal-like structure, bent like a Möbius-strip, where the experiencer and the experienced fuse together to create the existing. It was beautiful. It was marvellous. I was at peace with everything at last. As space and time warped around me, I realized that I was on my way into my next life: a set of new decades in which I will have to observe and create, to uphold the existing system. I was ready to go.

Suddenly someone grabbed my arm. A hand in a suit.

“Excuse me,” its owner, a bald and bristly, and overall rather smug-looking guy said, “But what exactly are you doing, cutting the line like that?” He pointed towards a lengthy and curvy line which I, for some reason, failed to notice up until that point. “Gotta check the permits, see?”

“The what?” I asked, taken aback. I felt like I was losing ground, in a literal sense, of course; there was hardly any underneath me as it were.

“The permits, the permits” he replied, while steering me gently but firmly towards the end of the line. “Oi! You there stop this minute!” he started running towards someone else who was advancing towards a new existence in a quick and carefree manner. When he caught the poor soul, the guy in the suit looked back, and shouted, “You just be good and do as I said, okay? Don’t try anything fancy!”

So into the queue I stood. I was surrounded with seemingly lost and confused people. No one really knew what all this was all about and what was going to happen. I tried to ask some of the more friendly-looking folks, but everyone was at a loss. We tried to avoid each other’s eyes as the line advanced at an almost unbearably sluggish speed. At one point a group of Christians passed by, flying upwards in white chitons. They were apparently having fun over our misfortune. Some of them even made some unambiguous gestures and some were laughing out loud, pointing fingers at us.

 “So long suckers!” one of them shouted out, “Looks like you’ll be here for quite a while!”

 “Yeah, well, have fun in heaven!” someone who I couldn’t see replied from the line. “Just try not to die out of boredom while playing your lyre, sitting on a cloud!”

 “Serves ‘em right” grumbled and elder, wrinkled guy next to me. “Who’d want to spend eternity in a place where sex and gambling ain’t allowed?”

The next couple of hours went away rather uneventfully. By the time I got close to the end of the line I could sometimes catch a glimpse of what was going on. A huge mahogany desk was floating there, with a morose-looking man sitting behind it. People went there one by one, talked with heavy gestures, even shouted sometimes, but generally just looked miserable or upset. Some of them (a tiny minority) were allowed to continue on their way to a brand new existence, but most of them were taken away by heavy guards dressed in suits. Where they went, I had no idea about.

I don’t know how much time it took me to finally get to the table. By that time I felt as if someone tied a knot on my intestines – a lot was at stake, after all.

 “Name please” the man said without even looking up from the papers in front of him. He looked eternally tired, with huge bags under his eyes and wrinkles on his forehead that looked as if they’ve been etched there with decades of hard work. It was immediately obvious that I won’t be able to argue with him. He somehow generated an aura that said if I’d be standing in front of him ablaze, he wouldn’t care about putting the fire out before he finished sharpening all his pencils and putting them in order according to hardness. He was a clerk.

I told him my name (which I hoped not to possess for much longer), my mother’s virgin name, my former address, my birthplace, and so on, and so on. He got quite irritated when I told him that I haven’t had my ID with me. He pushed a button and talked into some kind of microphone, asking the owner of the fuzzy voice that replied from the other side to look up some things for him.

“So,” he said, clasping his hands under his chin, “I supposed you don’t have your permission with you, either.”

“Excuse me,” I replied, confused, “But I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Gosh,” he sighed. “Don’t you people ever watch the news? Or read the papers? Or get informed in any way? You think that life – and death – are only about fun, right? No foresight, no responsibilities, eh? Making other people work for you while you enjoy things as you go.”

“I’m sorry, but...”

“Well that ain’t gonna happen anymore.” He interrupted me while bringing his fist down on the table. “You surely know about the new government regulation: no reincarnation without official government permission. I suppose you don’t have any with you now, would you?”

“No, but I’m...”

“Weeell, that is sad, my friend, that is sad. You should have received an official letter with the proper instructions on how to apply for one. If you were too lazy, didn’t get the mail or just thought you’ll manage somehow without it is none of my concern. But, alas, I’m sorry to say that I can’t allow you to continue living. Official instructions, you see.”

I was baffled. I always believed that somewhere, somehow, the Universe will be righteous in some way. That there is a fate, or karma, or some kind of system, that doesn’t allow injustice of this magnitude to happen. It seemed I was wrong.

“You will be now taken to the Limbo, to spend your remaining time there. Eternity, that is. Once again, I am most sorry for the current situation, but there's hardly anything to be done when faced with such irresponsible behaviour. Guards!” he shouted his last word in the microphone, and soon two heavy-framed men appeared next to me. They grabbed me by the shoulders and started firmly dragging me away from the table. I wanted to fight them, but I was too numb to do anything. I still couldn’t believe my situation; everything seemed dream-like, even more so than when I first arrived here.

Suddenly, I heard some kind of an uproar from the line. Apparently someone was shouting, but I couldn’t hear what exactly. As I turned my head backwards as much as I could, I saw some kind of stirring going on in the queue. As the rumbling got louder and louder, the line slowly disassembled, and formed a mob of some sorts. I could see a topless, long haired guy at the front, with determination blazing in his eyes. He looked like the revolutionary type.

“No one can deny life from us!” he shouted, while the people started to slowly group behind him. “We will live if we want to, or we will die trying!” He looked a bit puzzled for a moment about what he said, but recovered swiftly, and started sprinting in the direction of the gate that led to rebirth, screaming “To a new existence, brothers!”

The crowd cheered and shouted, shoving the surprised guards and the clerk at the table away, as they flowed towards the gate. I felt the grips released on my shoulders, as my guards decided that it was not by my side where they were needed right now. Needless to say, they were effortlessly swept away by the cheering crowd after their futile effort to stop its flow. I realized that it was now or never, and started running towards the gate, joining the mob. I felt immensely relieved, and I still remember bursting out in a carefree laugh when I took my last steps towards a brand new life.

Now I live in a rabbit, with six others. We don’t know why our memories weren’t cleansed before arriving to the new form, or why so many of us live in the same body, but we all suspect that it had to do with the fact that we all rushed into the gate at the same time. In any case, we’re not worried, at all. Life has its ways, and will sort things out eventually. Even bureaucracy can’t stop it.