Turn 1
What if we Want to try and take on the challenge of a particular type of soul, how would we make arrangements to receive one or more?
David replies that you need to prove that you can handle generic souls before taking on any special types. Once you have taken a small number and demonstrated that your facilities are adequate, you can apply to become a specialised holding facility for that type of souls. This brings with it a number of priviliges.
What would we have to do to get the necessary licences and permissions to destroy troublesome dead people?
You would have to fill out either individual application forms or request that certain things be punishable with total destruction in your realm. You would also have to demonstrate that you have the equipment required to destroy the souls in a safe and appropriate manner. You'd also have to generate some goodwill on the part of the Department for the Dead, who are paying you to keep souls, not liquidate them. They have entirely sufficient facilities for ensuring that the expectations of skeptics remain unsubverted.
Buy enough space to hold a 1/10th scale room but warp the space so that the bottom leads to top and vice versa.
Then buy a 1/10th scale room with some chairs/benches, some tables, some snacks, one of those things that gives out numbers and a closed booth, essentially a waiting room. Make sure it's airtight and fill it with air. Place a sign on the booth saying "Back soon, please wait".
Buy 10gs of acceleration that constantly push the room upwards. The warping space will make it so that the room can constantly accelerate rather than reaching some sort of boundary or disintegrating or whatever.
Put new arrivals in a nice rebuilt copy of their original at 1/10th scale. If possible, make it so that it can breathe but doesn't actually use up oxygen. Dunno if the dead can die again, but we should probably avoid that.
We could also generate gravity by spinning or have no gravity at all but I'm assuming the living beings we will get will most likely be used to normal gravity, so they're more likely to be happy with it, or at least less confused. And since the force we buy is in acceleration regardless of mass, it is cheaper to accelerate the room rather than individual souls.
Assuming this is cost effective, we can buy a few waiting rooms to generate some quick profit.
+1
Good idea to give them some stimuli while we figure out what to add. I’m assuming mass still has gravity? Tables and chairs and such are presumably still made of atoms, so gravity would still exist, albeit less than normal. What is being 1/10th the scale? Of Earth?
+1 Give Or Take
We have, as stated in last update, "the normal laws of physics." This includes gravit- oh, duh. Gravity requires mass. As for 1/10th, I assume he's referring to 1/10th the default increment - default is 20 cubic meters, so this means 2 cubic meters.
I'm assuming you mean 1/10 scale in terms of volume. This would put people at about 1/2 their previous height.
Concentrating on your essence stocks, you access the Essence Marketplace, which is almost exactly like going to an online store without using a device. Searching for space and air gives you the right results immediately, and putting them into your reality is as simple as pressing a button. You visualize the building and furniture you want, and it appears on the screen, prices listed. You give the order to purchase, and the space expands as essence drains away. Creating detailed, complex objects like machines seems to cost a bit more essence, but your losses are still fairly small.
You create a 25 m^2 room, 1.3m high (which will look like a 10x10m room), with ten benches, four tables with stacks of sandwiches and breadsticks, a closed booth and ticket dispenser.
Right now, the left and right walls are actually the same wall, as are the front and back walls; the space is curved in a fourth dimension and not very big. Structurally sound though.
The space costs you 10 essence, though the room is now very large compared to the people in it. Air costs are 8 essence.
The walls, furniture, machine and food you purchase are crude but functional, and pretty cheap, costing you only 4 essence in total. The machine even has a power source or supply, both of which cost very little. The Department for the Dead offers heavy subsidies for administration supplies, apparently.
At the end, you've spent 22 essence, leaving you with 8.
You reconnect to the Essence market. You purchase smaller human bodies, in perfect health and fine condition, resembling the bodies they had when they were alive, and shove them into existence just before your initial charges arrive. These bodies are pretty expensive actually. They are however designed to forever, given adequate nutrition, air, heat, not being killed, all that, at no extra price. Baseline human biology is really inefficient from the Department for the Dead's perspective. Ten of them costs you six essence.
You can't get bodies that don't respire, but it costs only 1 essence to install more than ample gas exchange. One-off charge, too: the exchange is free. Guess there's someone out there in running a plant dimension that really wants to swap carbon dioxide for oxygen.
You finish making your realm, and survey it. Weirdly, you're looking at it from every perspective at once. Having your own plane of reality is trippy.
Warning messages from the Department for the Dead flash up in your vision as the time to take the first ten souls approaches. A form is forced into your... well, they're not exactly hands, you don't have hands any more, you get the picture. You fill it in, indicating that you take responsibility for the souls and describing the objects they're going to be put into. Don't want a bunch of lifeless bodies and animated benches on your hands, do you now?
The people newly under your charge enter their new bodies and slowly regain consciousness. Then they open their eyes and look around, start moving. There's no way for them to notice the size difference, but some seem to experience elation at their physical condition. A few cartwheels are turned, in fact. Seems like quite a few died in bed, decrepit and comparatively old, or withered by illness. They are all naked, by the way, if that's something you care about. Only one person seems particularly concerned about that, discreetly holding a hand in front of his manhood. I guess you were lucky enough to get dead from cultures that don't care too much about nudity. Or everyone's just so hyped for the afterlife they take it in their stride.
After getting to know their newly youthful bodies for a bit, and exploring the room, the souls settle down and start chatting and enjoying the snacks. Hm. Food. Not a renewable resource for you right now, though pretty cheap. Also may lead to problems a little later.
Oddly enough, the people all seem to be talking in the same language. English. Or actually wait, this isn't English, it must be the Spanish you learnt... though it isn't that, either. In fact, you don't recognise many of the words, but you know what they mean. Some people are clearly speaking completely unrelated languages, but they're communicating fine. Huh. Language must work differently in the afterlife. You could spend some time listening in, work out where they think they are, what they're worried about, etc, though that would leave less time to mess around with other features or ask your boss questions. You're all-seeing in your realm, but can only focus on as much as a human can, it seems.
David checks in. He seems to like you, or at least believe you're going to survive the job longer than usual.
"Small bodies, eh? Very smart, though be warned: smaller souls move, act and think faster. But you're doing well! Don't be too alarmed by the expenses, essence's always tight at the start, we don't admit it but the pressure helps weed out the truly useless ones early on, saves us trouble. Artists and heroes are easy to deal with, and tend to smooth out the early financial bumps when they come in. So, we'll say another five bodies every hour, nice and slow, and you'll get your first artists and heroes after a day."
"By the way, I'm pretty impressed with your commitment to the quality of life of your souls. Smart move, in my opinion, keeps them from gnawing through the cage, so to speak. Most people just do whatever's cheapest. One fellow just incarnated his souls as blobs of water... that afterlife got pretty weird, I can tell you. Another woman kept her underworld below freezing temperature, and just took people's previous bodies for free, stuffing them with preservatives and letting them repair their corpses with scrap metal. It didn't exactly hurt them, but it took some getting used to."
Regarding timings, I realise it would be more sensible to let you guys decide how long you want turns to be. So do mention that, or else I'll have to guess something sensible.
As ever, questions welcome. I know this is a pretty odd RTD that asks for a lot of micromanaging and updates slowly, but things should get smoother and more interesting.
Underworld:
25 m^2 room, 1.3m high (which will look like a 10x10m room), with ten benches, four tables with stacks of sandwiches and breadsticks, a closed booth and ticket dispenser. 10x earth "gravity" artifically produced by accelerating walls and floor.
Sign on the booth saying "Back soon, please wait."
Souls:
10 in youthful form. Status: happy, a bit overexcited, sitting around discussing whatever people who have just died discuss. Just arrived.
Delivery Arrangements:
5 Ordinary souls arrive per hour. Current arrangements: automatically give soul body, youthful/healthy replica of human form to scale, costs 0.6 essence.
Essence: 11
Time: 0 days 0 hours
Author
Topic: Death and Taxes: an SG about managing the afterlife (Read 1951 times)