Eater-of-the-Dead

Happy birthday!

She’s ushered into a small little room and left there. It’s pretty bare — no posters, no prints of famous (if bland) art, no pictures — just a card table and a folding chair and a laptop. She takes a firmer grip on her paperwork, then reminds herself not to crinkle it, then sits down and opens up the laptop.

An elegant user experience it ain’t, but there’s a certain brutal grace to the interface’s sheer efficiency. First page, name, date of birth, date of death, previous address. All clearly labeled, all distinct, no questions.

After that, it’s page after page (after page after page) of the most exhaustive purity test imaginable. Every thirty or so pages there’s a little window that pops up reminding her to take a break, get up and stretch, keep herself fresh and limber.

The overhead light buzzes slightly.

Normally she scores really low on these things, and it’s a point of pride. She used to get ideas from them, but of course now that’s not really possible. Still, there’s a lot less in here about sex than what she was expecting. Oh, there’s some, of course, but even that’s mostly more about abuse and coercion than anything, and any coercing she’s done was more-or-less consensual. She marks a lot of NOs.

Some of the questions are awful.