The frail figure of Ellowyn lay on the soft hospital bed, hugging her comfy, long white hair, feeling each passing heartbeat weaker than the last. The doctors said her weak heart was in critical condition and would give out in a day or two.

Her serene crimson eyes wandered around the room, taking in the figures of her loved ones one last time, those whom she adored and had spent almost everyday of her painful life bringing her happiness. Sitting across from her bed were her parents, tears streamed down their cheeks as they tried to imprint this moment into their hearts.

“Thank you”, her wispy voice sounded from the bottom of her heart, breaking the silence.

“Thank you for always being there for me. Even though my life has been filled with pain, you have brought me joy and filled my days with endless fun.”.

“It is you who we are ought to give our thanks.” her mother said, “For you have always been the light of our life. Everyday, your bright smile had always brings us joy, your cheerful outlook of life had often brought me out of my depression.”.

“Not to mention being impossibly cute and huggable!” her pale cheeks reddened at her brother’s tease.

The exchanges continued until she gave in to her tiredness, she fell into slumber as she said her possibly last goodbye. Because of a satisfied life filled with the warm embraces of her loved ones, she had no longer feared death.

Ba-dump. Ellowyn opened her eyes, adjusted to the darkness and saw everyone asleep next to her, probably due to exhaustion. Ba-dump. Her heart is so weak that it made her unable to move or speak, it seemed to be just above the threshold to activate her machine’s alarm. I guess this is goodbye, thought Ellowyn as she laid there, quietly accepting her death.

Suddenly, her eyes popped wide open as a transparent screen appeared before her.

"You have received a transfer request from Lyon Corporation, would you accept? To make your decision, think the word ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ out loud. If you need help, think ‘Help’"

Stunned, her dazed eyes rereading it over and over, unable to comprehend the odd situation. She took a moment to recompose herself before giving into her curiosity, I suppose I’ll see where this goes, Help.

From what she can tell as she read the short 5 pages of help information, the message came from a world named Varius. In that world, there is a procedure named The Transfer, it was extremely costly, and was therefore used only by those who possesses massive resources, even a small country wouldn’t be able to afford it.

The procedure was used when the user needs help from a something akin of a miracle, that was exactly what it does. It would choose the soul matching its requirements and gives that soul special abilities suiting the user’s desire, from complete visual camouflage for infiltration to super human strength for task force.

However, hers wasn’t disclosed. Either said abilities are top secret, or my mind couldn’t comprehend them because of different world-context.

The legal text that spanned dozens of pages assured her of her human rights, if her employer were to break these rules, she was free to retain her abilities and seek work elsewhere. She chuckled, They sure have thought everything over, this kind of job security can tempt even the most wary of businessmen! Her respect for them rose by a few notches.

She couldn’t get much information about the world because it is said that most chosen candidates were from Varius, that it was very disadvantageous for those who were summoned from a different world due to the many barriers between language, culture and ideology (she was able to understand the message because it was processed through the language part of her brain).

Because of such restrictions, it was extremely discouraged for those who are from different worlds to accept. She was not the only candidate, the procedure would move on to a less compatible suitor.

Minutes flew by as she pondered over her choices. For all her life, she had only encountered concepts such as cross-world summoning in novels, there was even the possibility that this procedure was performed using advanced technology as the word magic was not mentioned at all. She chuckled, imagining the scene of someone typing sudo summon --hero into their terminal.

Maybe this world’s technology is really advanced, thought an excited Ellowyn. Because of her condition, physical activities were a luxury and so is going outdoors. Her peculiar albino-like appearance only made things worse, as she was stared at by everyone.

Technology was the only thing that interested the shut-in Ellowyn. Everyday, she would check her tech websites for new breakthroughs and whether she can get her hands on it. Ever since her brother got her a beast of a machine, if she wasn’t trying to install an exotic operating system, she would try to find new ways to breach various types of cyber security.

According to the message, due to security reasons, all organic parts of her body will be transferred, leaving behind clothes and all other attachments, it had also warned that any life-supporting, non-organic mechanical devices will not be transferred.

She noticed that it did not mention anything about the subject being in critical condition. Presumably, the procedure had not realized that she was on the brink of death. It worried her a little since she could die during the transfer process.

She could refuse and accept death or be thrown into an unknown world with unknown languages and cultures. She would have to deal with people of unknown motives and complex politics. There was even a possibility of having to suffer the fate of a lab rat, locked away in a remote facility and opened up, modified with or upgraded. Sure, they had some legal text, but they themselves were just text.

For all she knew, the text could have been as invalid as the policies of a fallen nation. She knew how terrible the fate of a lab rat must be, as many of her computers and electrical creations had bitten the dust when she was trying out exotic hardware or custom circuits that she herself had crafted using her 3D printer.

Shuddering, she thought of the times her sadistic side cheered as she heard the mechanical screams of doomed electronics. The message stated that she had at least 5 days to make her decision, though she only had perhaps one or two hours before her heart gave in.

Of course the answer was yes.

Lights engulfed Ellowyn’s body, embracing her with warmth. She lightly breathed out in relief as none of her family members had seen the brief flicker of light released by her body. The screen was filled with activity as the procedure logged its progress.

Scanning body for wounds and deformities. Detected low blood pressure, presumed as sleep state

She sighed, the technology that was possibly light years ahead had yet failed to realize she was dying. Squinting her eyes, she tried to read the rapid streams of text.

“Muscle atrophy within acceptable parameters. Scanning Done. Indexing organic mass for transfer. Done. Isolating soul from the body and prepare for separate transfer.

Another screen appeared before her eyes with indicators for various body statuses such as heart rate and temperature.

Preparations completed, transfer in 10 seconds, please note that the automatic translation function will stop once your soul leaves the body.

Every second passed by with Ellowyn getting more nervous.

Now starting step 1: transferring soul to Varius and register with Varius’s soul registry.

An alien feeling invaded her senses, her vision turned pitch black, everything on both screens turned into incomprehensible gibberish. She can still make out the icons representing her body’s status. She grimaced as the status bar of her heart begins to drop and presumably warning icons started popping up. Moments later, she found herself back into her body as the words on screen started to make sense again.

Fatal error! body in critical condition, aborting the transfer. Soul and body sync failed. Please hold...

She blinked, trying to comprehend the message before another one popped up that made her blood run cold.

You’re currently at the default case of our main switch clause, this was never supposed to happen. The system should be working perfectly and we just put this up for fun. Whoever you are, you’re probably fucked.

Loading recovery options and sending log so the next poor bastard doesn’t have to suffer from the same fate.

There must be a way for them to restore my state, at least bring my soul to the afterworld or something, panic overtook her.

You’re now at the reincarnation recovery option, this really is the worst of the lot, but since you’re here. You didn’t qualify for the other two so you really have no choice. I’ll tell you about the other modules nonetheless.

One was designed to sync your soul back into your old body, it fails if your body was modified or it is no longer functioning. The other one will try to force boot your soul back into Varius’s post soul processing system or heaven, as the religious folks like to call it. It fails when your soul doesn’t meet the requirements, usually when Varius judged that your soul has not died yet or maybe when you’re from a different world.

Alright, back to the present, this option is actually much more obscure than the title. It attempts to override your soul’s status to trick Varius into thinking you’re a newly created soul and will hopefully integrate you into the birthing cycle. If succeed, you will get a new body and your memories will probably be formated.

Please note that everything here is theoretical and has never been tested. We couldn’t develop it since its impossible to know whether the operation has succeeded. Even if we could, we wouldn't be able to find heads or tails judging by how crappy this thing was coded. Carl’s code is as bad as his handwriting,

Anyway, good luck and maybe we’ll see you again, but you probably won’t remember us anyways. Another thing, if the procedure happens to fail (quite likely actually) you will be one of the very lucky few whose soul managed to be excluded from their world’s processing system, we have a bazillion theories and absolutely no observation to what happens then. Cheers.

Color drained from her soul’s imaginary face as she realized she was one of the very few unfortunate idiots who managed to make a choice to which consequence was far worse than death. A short moment later, another message appeared, it had a much smaller font.

Hi, this is Carl, you've probably heard my name mentioned from the other guys' failure messages.

If you’re seeing this message, it means your soul is currently rather beyond recovery, because I felt partially guilty that it might have been caused by the times I skipped the debugging sessions, I'm going to provide you with another solution that might help with your soul’s survival by enhancing your current recovery option, if not by just a tiny bit.

If you agree, a part of the system designated by me will be duplicated and attached to your soul to help with recovery and prevent your soul from being garbage collected by the world system.

There is also a minuscule chance that your soul is incompatible and will dissolve on the spot.

NO! Ellowyn sweats frantically as she refuses desperately, she would rather gamble her life by accepting help from the other organized, well behaved developers than to have her soul dissolved because a messy programmer didn’t take care of his wild and unstable code. Little did she know, it really was Carl who developed most of her current recovery option.

I’ll take that as a yes

Ellowyn could only lay there, staring hopelessly at the faulty answer detector as it started the attachment procedure made by the insane developer.

This is a cached message, if you’re seeing this, it means the language sync has failed due to unknown reasons

The frustrated Ellowyn squinted at the screen which was filled again with gibberish. Finally, before her consciousness faded into nothingness, another message materialized.

Reincarnation recovery procedure completed