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Pryderi Dressler stared at her reflection in the mirror of her small bathroom, examining the new face she had. It looked more feminine than her old one, she could say that. How much more feminine was a bit tricky to tell, though. Working as a Reaper, for Afterlife Incorporated, had come with transition healthcare coverage, but at the price of having the majority of her upper body now marked by skeletal tattoos. Signs of both the dirty work she was involved in and that she was a slum-dweller trying to crawl into the world of citizens.

The skull tattoo on her face, which grabbed the most attention, was apparently an exact replica of the new bone structure beneath, having been done by nanites in the same batch that had feminized her face. It was also disorienting, making her exact features hard to read.

At least the effects of her hormones were less easily hidden by tattoos, her chest starting to genuinely fill the utilitarian bra she wore.

“Progress is progress, even if it isn’t perfect,” she muttered to herself.

Working for Afterlife Inc might have been far from ideal, but it was also far from where she’d started. The child of a refugee family up from Texas, her parents had little more than the clothes on their back and some barely recognised currency when they’d shown up in the slums outside Calgary, and she’d never had proper ID. Just a vague ‘refugee acknowledgement’ card. She’d grown up with nothing in the way of job prospects, and probably would have accepted it if it hadn’t been for the dysphoria. A force that drove her to accept a job with a company that’s business revolved around killing people.

Sure, the official company line was that the uploading process granted life outside the constraints of a mortal flesh and blood body (and, free of the slow decay of the real world), but living people went in and corpses came out. It didn’t matter if one was from a Catholic family or not, that felt wrong. It wasn’t prosthetics and implants, this was crossing the threshold of death and claiming to emerge the other side.

Getting dressed and preparing to plaster on a customer service smile, Pryderi focused on the factors that made her feel rather less evil than she’d expected. She dealt with two types of customers at work: the rich, whose egos couldn’t accept the idea of mortality as easily as their wallets could accept the cost of a scan; and the dying, who were going to end up corpses in a couple of months at best anyway. So, there wasn’t really anything wrong with frying their brains to build a digital copy that offered some approximation of life, was there?

Honestly, she wasn’t sure, but she also wasn’t paid enough to figure it out.

She wasn’t even paid enough to live on a C-train line condo, one of those lovely buildings with climate controlled walkways accessing smooth and clean rail transit. Instead she had to wait in the suffocating June heat for a bus to show up, taking solace in the lack of humidity, the only thing that kept the temperatures from being actually lethal.

#

Sitting in her small grey office, Pryderi felt her cheek muscles starting to strain as she forced a smile for yet another wealthy customer. The woman was probably sixty, with enough layers of plastic surgery to make her look something adjacent to, but not quite identical to, forty. She’d probably also spent more on her face than Pryderi had earned in her entire life.

The benefits of being born in a citizen family of one of the few countries to ‘win’ the climate collapse: even if half of Canada had burned in the aftermath of the permafrost melting and the methane hydrates bubbling, it had still remained a country.

“Do you have to smile like that,” the woman said in a sharp tone. “It’s creepy with that skull face of yours.”

“Apologies, ma’am. Most customers prefer when we smile,” Pryderi said, thankful to be allowed to shift to a more neutral face.

The woman went back to reading the release forms on the tablet she’d been given, only to pause a few moments later. “Well, now that face isn’t much better. It’s so cold… and you don’t blink enough.”

“Are you nervous, ma’am?” Pryderi asked, in the most understanding tone she could manage.

“Am I--yes. Alright? Yes. I’m about to have my brain fried and now I’m seeing warnings that make it seem like I might not even be conscious once I’m in your computer.”

“That is something of a philosophical warning that the government makes us add,” Pryderi said, laying on her best ‘gentle explanation’ voice, since she was low on customers this month and needed the commission to make rent. “Much like the warnings about not being able to ensure your soul, spirit, or other undefined essence may follow, the issue is that there is technically no way to prove any of our clients are truly conscious… in the eyes of philosophers. A group who also insist there is no way to truly prove any other humans one meets are truly conscious.”

“What?” the woman asked, her harsh and confrontational tone slightly softened by genuine confusion.

Always a good sign. Leave the customers too baffled to argue and they generally started signing their lives away just to make Pryderi stop hurting their brains.

“Well, can you guarantee that I am conscious? What can I truly do to prove it? Is there anything I can do that your smart home or phone cannot do?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Neither do philosophers, apparently. And, well, you know how it is with the government. They worry that if our deal sounds too good everyone will sign up to be scanned and then they’ll lose out on so many soldiers and manual labourers,” Pryderi explained.

“We need soldiers and workers,” the woman said, sounding slightly horrified.

“We do. We do,” Pryderi replied, wearing a smile and ignoring the fact that the state would always have its soldiers and workers, vast populations in the slums who could never afford a scan. “I am not saying the government is wrong to scare people away from getting scanned… in fact, the company agrees too, hence why all of us look like this and employees are called ‘reapers’. But, it’s all a bit of show and spookiness to make sure we don’t collapse the whole economy.”

In truth, it was a mixture of the executives loving to hold power over desperate employees mixed with having a bit of a temper tantrum over all the regulations placed on the company. Customers didn’t need to know that, however.

The woman was quiet for a moment, before she nodded and signed. “It makes sense, I suppose. Though I would have thought quotas and age regulations would be better.”

“That’s seen as too heavy handed. Freedom is still considered essential in our society,” Pryderi replied, smoothly but swiftly taking the tablet from the woman’s hands. “The technicians behind the door will be ready to see you now.”

The woman nodded, standing up and walking past her, towards the black door Pryderi herself had never walked through.

#

She’d processed five customers that day: not quite the six she’d hoped for, but she was good on rent at last, with a whole week left to earn what she needed to cover food and utilities. It was a wonderful relief.

Sure, it had meant a bunch of rich people walked off to get their brains scorched, but they probably would have done it anyway. Just at a slightly slower rate. And they were arguably benefiting from it anyway.

The assurance she repeated to herself every day to help her sleep at night. Or to be able to hold down a meal, depending on how much she was hating herself on any particular day.

Trying to shake off the deathly air of her workplace, Pryderi was part way through changing out of the grey and black uniform when her manager stepped into the breakroom.

“Can you come by the office for a few minutes?” the man said, wearing a smile that Pryderi did have to admit was creepy with the skeletal tattoos on his face.

“Uhh… sure,” Pryderi replied, not sure what it might be about.

Had she messed up somewhere? Five clients in a day was pretty good… three or four was a normal day. Maybe she’d missed something in the paperwork from doing too many? Forms did sort of blend together after a while. Slightly nervous she’d have to fudge some timestamps to make everything look above board for later bookkeeping, she felt an increasing sense of dread.

“Dressler. It’s good to see you.”

Pryderi’s mind skipped a moment as she realised it was the regional director who had said that. The older woman was sitting patiently in the small manager’s office, perfectly calm. To the point Prydery was never quite able to shake the idea the woman was some sort of undead being. Or an android. Either would be hard to prove as the regional director’s body was even more covered in skeletal tattooing than Pryderi’s.

“H--hello. Madame--Madame Director,” Pryderi said, wondering just how badly she’d messed up if someone two ranks above her manager had shown up.

“Now, now, Ms. Dressler, there’s no need to be nervous. You’re not in trouble. Quite the opposite, actually,” the older woman said. “You’ve been quite an exemplary employee.”

“Our best processor,” the manager said, once again smiling too much for his skull-tattooed face. “If anything, you’re a bit too good, and we’ve gotten a bit of a backlog for the waiting rooms.”

“That in mind, and, with your… main procedure coming up, we felt it was a good time to offer you a promotion,” the regional director said. “We could use your diplomatic and comforting presence in the uplink room. Calmer clients are easier to scan. Far fewer messy hormones and other neurochemicals flashing about in their brains.”

“You… you want me actually there? Where they--” Pryderi cut herself off before she said ‘fry them’, barely managing to keep to corporate approved vocabulary, “they scan the clients? And… well, where the clients’ bodies die?”

“Yes. I do understand that is a bit of an uncomfortable aspect to our business,” the regional director said, “but the promotion comes with a significant pay increase.”

“It would also come with us moving your reconstruction procedure up by five months, as higher ranking employees get priority with internal medical,” the manager added.

“Five… five months,” Pryderi mumbled, needing a moment to register it. “That would--that would only be a month away.”

“If that is what you want,” the regional director said.

“If--of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” Pryderi replied.

“Well, the system did look up you new name and flagged it as masculine and--”

“I can explain,” Pryderi blurted, suddenly terrified that things might actually be taken away from her after being dangled so close. “I was looking up names on a database and, without my knowing it, the ‘female names’ box got unticked while I was changing other settings. I didn’t notice until after I saw the name and how very fitting it felt… and, well, it doesn’t sound masculine… does it?”

“Oh, no. No. Not at all,” the regional director replied. “I would have never guessed if the system hadn’t run a few automated assessments. Regulations do insist on automated oversight. We’ll happily move your treatment up, then. If you accept the new position.”

“I… yes. I’ll accept it,” Pryderi said.

The idea of actually being there for the frying creeped her out, but… bottom dysphoria was not something she wanted to be stuck with any longer than necessary. It felt so much worse now, with the rest of her body having seen changes. Some women could handle it, sure… some cis women even wanted what she’d been born with for some reason. But Pryderi was not in either of those categories.

“Your new position will go through on next week’s schedule,” the manager said. “There’s a three day training initiation, and then you’ll be good to go.”

“Th--thank you,” Pryderi replied.

#

The three day training process proved rather easy. Surprisingly, an actual resident of Afterlife ran her through a few lessons. One of those clients whose finances went sideways after their scan and had to earn their data subscriptions. The man’s smiles were utterly fake, but in a human enough way to leave Pryderi relatively convinced that he was actually somewhat alive.

The lessons themselves mostly gave her a number of reassuring phrases to say if clients panicked. There was also generic information about how to find grief counseling within the company if the number of dead bodies got to her.

The training ending with her having to sign a non-disclosure agreement was a bit odd, but she had also finally seen the actual new salary she would be getting and so was happy to sign just about anything. She’d actually be able to start having savings with the new wages.

#

Of course, all that said, she still felt nervous going down towards the uplink rooms for the first time in her life. She was glad she couldn’t smell any fried brains or anything like that, but it was still all so sterile.

The surgical white rooms, with only the slightest hints of black trim here and there, made the soft greys of the offices upstairs feel home-y and warm by comparison.

“Ah, you’re the new nanny for the future corpses,” a male voice said, causing Pryderi to jump slightly.

Turning around, she saw the man who said it was somewhat short and heavily set. The soft roundness of his face rather lessened the effect of his skeletal tattooing, making him less unsettling than most. For a moment she was also surprised they made the technicians down here have the tattoos, but, well, everyone at the company was considered a ‘reaper’ and the company wanted to keep them marked. It reduced turnover, as the tattoos made finding new jobs harder. Which was good for corporate profits.

“I--yes. Pryderi. Pryderi Dressler,” she said, trying to wear a soft and less toothy smile than the manager usually put on.

“Mhm. First day is the worst,” the man said. “If you throw up you’re out, whatever the regional director says. The cleaning bots don’t clean puke very well, and we’re not dealing with it.”

“Uh--I have a strong stomach. Don’t worry,” she replied, avoiding mentioning just what she’d seen in her youth in the slums to leave her confident of that.

The man made a small grunt, before giving her another quick once over. Apparently only just noticing something. “You’re tall… and the way you hold yourself… you’re trans, aren’t you? That’s how they got you.”

“P--pardon? I mean… yes. But, what do you mean ‘got you’?” she asked.

“You’ll find out,’ the technician said cryptically.

Before she could ask more her com-bracelet buzzed. She had her first client to process on this side of the door. At least interacting with a resident had helped her feel less like a murderer in all of this, so she could move with less guilt in her gut.

#

The man was pacing by the time she reached the small waiting room, even though it hadn’t taken her more than a few minutes to arrive. He looked like he’d had plenty of work done, meant to give him a perfect look of ‘middle age’, while no doubt being closer to seventy.

“What if it fails?” he asked, as soon as she’d stepped in the room.

“Pardon?” Pryderi replied.

“The scan. What if you fry my brain and the scan doesn’t take?”

“The scan always takes. There are seven different redundant failsafes,” she replied, using what she’d learned in the training sessions. For whatever reason, only 3% of people who worried about the system failing did so before being processed, and very few ever worried, so she’d not encountered them in her previous position. “You were two thousand and fifteen times more likely to die on your way over here if you took a car.”

The man blinked, clearly surprised by the sheer weight of the number.

“We’re not allowed to let clients die,” Pryderi continued. “Regulations are some of the strictest of any industry.”

That got a small nod out of the man.

“If you would follow me,” Pryderi said in a gentle tone, indicating the hallway she’d come down.

There were no further outbursts from the man as they headed towards the upload room. She was glad for that. The day was stressful enough without having a high maintenance client as her first taste of the new position.

Reaching the room, the technicians were already largely in place, fussing with a few last minute preparations. Pryderi led the client to the seat, where he paused again, a nervous look in his eyes.

“Why--why are there restraints?” he asked.

“Stabilization,” she explained. “The less you move the easier the scan goes. We can get the information either way, but it makes life much easier for our technicians and means we have to burn less energy on processing algorithms.”

‘Burning less energy’ was a phrase drilled into everyone’s minds in the current era. Even with fusion power having started to save the day a decade or so ago the energy demands of the carbon capture plants and the air conditioning to keep southeastern Canada and what was left of the US vaguely functional meant there was never much power to spare. Though the wealthy citizens’ conservation efforts were generally more cosmetic than anything they still found it gauche to be caught being deliberately wasteful.

So the man nodded, sitting down in the chair and letting Pryderi click the padded restraints in place. A moment later a technician slid the scanner over the man’s head.

“It only takes a moment,” Pryderi said in her calm customer service voice.

“Right,” the man mumbled, sounding about as overwhelmed as was to be expected.

It was a shame they couldn’t just give the clients a sedative, but there was a minimal level of neural activity needed for a good scan. Too calm and the scan lacked resolution, the copy was vague. Not vague enough to count as a true failure, but there would be memory gaps and personality drift. On the other hand, too stimulated and the scan became overly data rich. Trimming and cleaning took dozens of human-hours and mildly absurd amounts of algorithmic processing, and even with all that, it often resulted in memory gaps and personality glitching as well.

Pryderi was glad her first client was all in the green as the scanning instrument gave a brief whirring. A few screens on the walls flashed with 100% signs and the technicians gave small nods.

“We got a clean scan,” a female technician said.

“Good, implement stage two,” the lead technician from before said.

“What’s stage two?” the client asked, his voice muffled behind the scanning equipment.

Pryderi blinked. She also didn’t know what stage two was, but… wasn’t the client’s physical body supposed to be dead at this point? If the scan was at 100%, the--

Before she could finish the thought, one of the technicians had produced a syringe and injected it into the client’s neck. The client let out a yelp of pain, began to shout something, only to begin to convulse a split second later. Pryderi was still processing what had happened, her jaw half open, when the man’s convulsions stopped and she heard a flat drone from one of the monitor screens that had been covering the client’s vitals.

“Good. Well, disposal time,” the lead technician said, lifting the scanner from the client’s head.

Without the device there to support it, the head slumped loosely. A stench also started to reach Pryderi’s nose and other technicians extracted the body from the chair.

“Wha--what just happened?” Pryderi muttered, still half in shock.

“A clean scan,” the lead technician replied.

“A--but… he… he was alive?” she stammered, indicating to the corpse now being rolled out of the room on a gurney.

“Until he wasn’t,” the lead technician said flatly. “Everything leaving the room is exactly what he expected to be leaving the room. Is it really an issue if he had a few seconds of consciousness after being scanned?”

She blinked, not sure how to process that.

The lead technician let out a small sigh, before turning to look her in the eyes. “The initial scans did fry clients’ brains. The legal rights of those in the mainframe were decided based on the concept of continuity and singular existence. As we refined the technology for cleaner scans we discovered a way to get a better transfer that kept the organic version alive… unfortunately, that would throw the legal and ethical status of every mind in our mainframe into question in the eyes of both the government and the public.”

“So… we kill them,” Pryderi muttered, staring at the chair now.

“They expect to die. We just kill them slightly later than they expect,” the lead technician replied.

The thought of it was revolting in its corporate efficiency. It did make her throw up slightly, but nothing that got past her mouth. Forcing that down, she knew she was still making a face.

“That’s why corporate makes sure every employee who goes in this room has something they can hold over us,” the lead technician explained, his voice more compassionate now. “Three of us are trans, having been promised early access to aspects of our transitions for coming in here. A couple others had prosthetics or implants they needed. There’s one or two I’m not sure about, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve all killed enough people for the company that there’d be no legal protections for us if we went whistleblower.”

“I…” Pryderi mumbled.

“Think of it this way: you’re only one step closer to it than you were before, so it’s not that big of a change in guilt while it’s a very big change in pay,” he said, his voice still soft.

It took her a moment to reply, her mind still spinning from the revelation. “Right… right.”

“You can sit the next couple out in the break room,” he said. “We always have two final councils present because we know you need breaks… you actually have to talk to the corpses.”

#

Sitting in the new break room, staring at a cold grey wall, Pryderi barely noticed when the motion sensing lights turned off from her sitting so still for so long. As the change in stimulus slowly reached the conscious portions of her brain, she was still barely able to process it. She had to wonder if she was genuinely in medical shock, she felt so out of it.

It was all so much. She found herself starting to cry, the warm tears rolling down otherwise motionless cheeks. People were being killed. Unnecessarily.

There was a difference between an inescapable death that people signed up for and cold blooded murder… wasn’t there? Or was the technician right? Were those few seconds irrelevant in the grand scale of things?

Slowly, she reminded herself who the clients were, with the same harsh wording she’d always used. Either the dying, for whom they really weren’t doing any harm, or the wealthy and egotistical who thought themselves too good for death. For the former, well… euthanasia was legal. Possibly too legal (to the point it prompted rumours about certain meats, considering how rare animals were). And, well, she’d never minded knowing the egoist wealthy were dying here, of their own free will. So… so…

So was she accepting this?

No.

No.

But… but the promise of her sexual reconstruction procedure was dangling in front of her. Only a month away if she stayed in her position. Compared with… with who knew how long, if she left the company. Because there was no going back to her old position. Not only was that not allowed, but she wasn’t sure it made a difference in her guilt.

How much blood did she already have on her hands, from all her months working for Afterlife Inc?

With that in mind, how little of a difference did it make if she stayed another month? Then, perhaps just that little bit longer to pay off any debt to the company for the procedures.

After that she would quit.

They would keep killing people if she was here or not, so she might as well finish her transition and then bolt. It made no difference to the world in the grand scheme of things. While it made all the difference in the world to her.