The Terms and Conditions of Reincarnation
The leak arrived as a PDF, of course. Not a burning bush, not a trumpet blast, just a politely formatted document titled: “Afterlife Services – Updated Terms & Conditions.” Somewhere between the bullet points and the legalese, humanity discovered that reincarnation now requires clicking “I Agree.” The cosmos, it seems, has moved to a subscription model.
The new policy is simple and horrifying. To respawn, you must consent to third‑party cookies tracking your karma across lifetimes. Every petty grudge, every small kindness, every time you put the shopping trolley back where it belongs – all logged, cross‑referenced, and sold to “trusted metaphysical partners.” The fine print clarifies that “trusted” means “entities with sufficient processing power to render your next incarnation without noticeable lag.”
Then there are the mandatory ads during the REM cycle. Dreams, once the last ad‑free frontier, are now “monetized visionary intervals.” You’re falling through an endless sky, chasing a symbolic version of your childhood home, when suddenly a serene voice interrupts: “This revelation is brought to you by SoulFlex™ – upgrade your destiny today.” Skip button grayed out. Enlightenment will resume after these messages.
The enforcement section is even stranger. Users who decline the updated terms are placed in a temporary holding pattern known as the Unassigned Soul Queue, where they receive periodic reminders that reincarnation cannot proceed until all consent boxes are ticked. Reports claim the queue plays a looping tutorial on karmic hygiene and the importance of maintaining a clean metaphysical footprint.
There is also a clause about data portability. Should you wish to migrate your accumulated karma to a competing afterlife service, you may request an export file in a proprietary celestial format readable only by software that no longer compiles. The document assures users that this is standard practice and not, as critics suggest, a deliberate attempt to discourage spiritual switching.
You request an export of your soul’s metadata, but the celestial format is incompatible with your current hardware. You sigh, hover your cursor over the void, and click ‘Agree’ just to see what happens next.
Harry is a satirist in remission who now moonlights as a metaphysical desk jockey. He specialises in cosmic admin, recursive nonsense, and the occasional algorithmic incident report. One poem he wrote still hasn’t stopped, and several readers claim it whispers back during thunderstorms.
