I didn’t remember the transition of time; only that I opened my eyes and found myself seated at an unassuming chair at an unassuming desk in a wood-panelled room.

It made me think of an old-school psychiatrist’s office in a city like New York, but without the chaise. Half gentleman’s boudoir, half modernist dean’s office, it was elegantly outfitted but minimal in accompanying accoutrements. Just the chair, the desk, a number (three, specifically) of bizarre glowing spheres hovering on top of it, and the petite woman behind it.

The woman smiled at me, and for a moment I thought I’d had it wrong, that she was barely in her teens. Her flawless complexion glowed (with health, that was, not like the spheres) and her features seemed too young for her effortless poise. But a third glance seemed to confirm her figure was mature, and the kind of un-self-conscious confidence in her posture was the kind I associated with women older than I who’d been around long enough to stop caring about what society told us to look like.

She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and if I’d been at all inclined in that direction I’m sure I would have experienced some self-consciousness of my own.

Instead, I felt strangely calm.

“Welcome, Enid.” The woman’s voice mismatched her appearance, deep and vibrant. “I’m sorry to tell you that you have died. But you already know that.”

I hadn’t, but once the words had been spoken I realised I suddenly did, the knowledge surfacing to mind as if it had always been there. I remembered taking one, two steps into the street at the crossing, and I remembered the feeling of something very large and extraordinarily hard barrelling into me. I remembered how it felt for that split second for my skin to tear away from my muscles and bones, for bits of me to spread out like jam, still attached, under the slam of a mallet. I remembered how surprisingly little it had hurt.

Then here, in this chair.

“Is this the afterlife?” I asked, looking around. A series of grey windows lined the wall to my left and a door sat closed on the other side of the desk. I couldn’t see anything outside the windows. “Am I to be judged?”

The woman’s smile didn’t falter. “No,” she said. “That has already taken place. Your soul is to be reincarnated on a new world. You won’t get to choose who you become, but you will keep your memories. Furthermore, you will have the choice of one advantage to take with you into your new life.” She gestured to the hovering spheres. “Some choices are better than others. Choose wisely.”

No pressure or anything.

The spheres were blue, green and red, colour-coded for my convenience, and each had a symbol etched into what seemed to be the light itself, which didn’t make much sense to me. My brain seemed to run with it, though, so I wasn’t about to complain.

When I looked at them for more than a couple of seconds, the symbols seemed to rearrange themselves in my mind into something understandable. The blue one represented knowledge; the ability to analyse and identify. The green sphere embodied raw, primal power – magic at its purest. The revelation that magic was, in fact, real and boldly on display in front of me somehow didn’t faze me in the slightest, much like being dead hadn’t, either.

In fact, being dead had been slightly underwhelming, so far. Aside from taking the whole thing in stride far better than I would have expected, I felt much like I had upon death. Or rather, my final moments before being reduced to a smear against someone’s windshield. Whosever it was was probably having a very bad day right now.

“Are you God?” I asked.

The woman smiled again. This was impressive because she hadn’t stopped smiling the first time. My brain tried to cope with the double smile overlay and balked, but then the incongruity passed and she was simply smiling kindly at me with no further concerning discrepancies.

“As a label, it serves a purpose,” she said. “I am a god, of a sort. For you? Yes. I am here to guide you to the next step of your journey, though our time here is brief.” She nodded to the spheres again. “There is, however, no rush. It is an important decision; you need not make it lightly.”

I looked at the red sphere. Emotions. Manipulation of the heart; not just of oneself but others.

I didn’t understand the specifics of how any of them would work, but all three seemed like incredibly powerful tools. The goddess’ words seemed to indicate there was some element of a test at play; that one choice would be the ‘right’ one. Or at least better. But to my uneducated eyes, all three seemed equally brutal advantages to send someone on with.

“Did I do something to earn this?” I asked, feeling my brow furrow. I hadn’t been a bad person, but I hadn’t done anything particularly heroic with my life, either. Most of it had been spent earning money to keep a roof over my head, really, with the occasional bout of entertainment here and there. I thought I’d helped an old lady cross the street once. It had been awkward and retrospectively patronising, and my attempts hadn’t actually helped her walk any faster than she would have on her own with her Zimmer frame. It was a fine life, in other words, but that was about all I could say for it.

“I’m sorry,” the goddess replied. “I can’t tell you that.”

“You don’t know?”

“It’s not information I’m at liberty to pass on.”

“Why am I being reincarnated?” I queried, switching tactics.

“No matter how many ways you ask the same question,” said the goddess, “I still can’t tell you.” Her gaze drifted towards the blue sphere. “But there are perhaps ways to help lead you to the answers you seek.”

I didn’t touch it. “Do you give everyone this choice?” I asked. “Or only some people?”

“I can’t –”

I nodded before she could finish. Confidential, right. I got it. “Is there anything you can tell me, then?” I pressed. “You said these were advantages. Who are they advantages over?”

The goddess raised her eyebrows slightly, though the smile remained kind. “The world you will be sent to is quite different to your own,” she explained, leaning forward slightly in her chair. “It will be a fresh start. How you use your chosen ability will be up to you. With the right application and ingenuity, you could go far. Accomplish great deeds. Or, you may waste the opportunity. You should choose wisely.”

I glanced over at the windows and their persistent greyness; I couldn’t tell if it was just the effect of the glass or if there really wasn’t anything out there. “Just to make sure we’re on the same page,” I reiterated, “the locals won’t have these powers?”

“As non-reincarnators, no, they will not.”

“Does this happen often in their world? Is it normal to them?”

“It is not.”

“Do you ever talk to them and warn them you’re dropping people in with these ‘advantages’?”

The goddess tilted her head to the side slightly, the ever-present smile finally dropping from her face as she scrutinised me anew. “This is unimportant,” she said.

“I don’t know,” I debated. “I think it is. If someone showed up in my world with a strange magical power, I know people would be curious. And what if they claimed it came from a genuine deity?”

Understanding flitted over the goddess’ face. She leant back slightly, her chin rising up and down in a near-imperceptible nod as the slow smile returned. “Of course, you may tell people about me,” she said. “However, it may not always be in your best interests to do so. Claiming allegiance with the divine can earn as many enemies as allies, or throw doubts on your soundness of mind.”

“I agree,” I said, frowning. “As the divine representative in question, don’t you feel any sense of responsibility to the worlds you’re sending people down to? Or, for that matter, my world? If you have the power to pluck people out of one life and into another to sow chaos – and give them magical powers to boot – why aren’t you using that power to tell people you exist?”

The goddess stiffened. “This is irrelevant,” she said. “You’re here to make a critical choice and continue on your journey. Death is a difficult process, but –”

“Oh, it really isn’t,” I interrupted. “Irrelevant, I mean. Difficult? Eh, I was expecting worse.” The calm I’d been feeling on arrival still hung strong over me, but felt like it was beginning to chip away, piece by flaky piece. “For someone in your position, talking to people is the bare minimum. Better yet, why don’t you take your magic blue orb and share it with everyone so that the whole world can benefit? Or the others? And that red sphere, fiddling with hearts? What if I was a psychopath and you just sent me down there with it? You won’t even tell me if I deserve it, so how am I supposed to know if you’ve even done any psychological vetting?”

The goddess sighed, and made a slight roll of her eyes. “You judge great movements you cannot possibly understand,” she said. “You are being offered a momentous opportunity.”

“Why didn’t you talk to my world?” I demanded, ignoring the assertion. “Why didn’t you step in and tell people death wasn’t the end?”

“I can’t –”

“So much fear,” I steamrollered over her. “So much pain could have been prevented. You could have stopped wars. You could have settled age-old conundrums. You could have brought peace, enlightenment, and truth to the world. And it would have been easy. All you would have to do is show them those magic orbs. And I bet that’s only scratching the surface of what you can do, isn’t it? Give me one fucking good reason why you left my world to fend for itself, and why you won’t just talk to the next one.”

By now, the smile had dropped from the goddess’ face completely. She pushed the chair out from under the desk and rose slowly to her feet. “You have no authority to make demands here,” she spoke, and the words rumbled in her voice like thunder. “Make. Your. Choice.”

She was a very petite woman, almost possible to mistake for a child. With an eerie calm I’d never possessed in life, I mirrored her and rose to my feet, pushing the simple brown chair aside.

The three spheres blinked at me from the desk, trying to get my attention. I ignored them as though they were poison. Calmly, I walked around the edge of the desk.

“No,” I said.

Nothing struck me down as I wrapped my hands around her throat. Calmly, I held on as she grasped and struggled against arms and legs magically healed after being shattered to smithereens. Calmly, I dug my thumbs into her windpipe, piercing the skin with my nails and realising with some interest that gods seemed no less vulnerable to it than humans, if my one example was anything to go by. Calmly, I lowered her body to the floor once I was done, propping it up against the stylish wood panelling.

I didn’t feel nearly as bad about it as I’d thought I would. After all, I now knew death was not the end.

Then I headed for the door.