Midday unshrouds covers to reveal a corpse. It's too late. I've broken a window, fled on foot, headed for the getaway van. Mediation with the time-machine gets us nowhere. The dashboard is lined with last night's obituaries, a plastic Buddha, a polyester cow.

If they were any better they would not have come. Here is the privilege of being reborn. Rehoming myself, I remember how to drive. Reheating my rations, I remember last night's argument. I find my double's phone and reply to the double texts. To leave the past behind is not to leave behind its mistakes. The building superintendent finds fifty dollars tucked into the bedside drawer.

Time was, what was consensual was ethical but I don't know any more. What I know is that the bodies arrive, unprompted, which forces one to deal. On the fly, we reorganise our cover stories of the day. I'm a schoolteacher, I'm a mystery shopper, I'm a petrol station clerk in Tanah Merah. Humans come in so many shapes and sizes. Can't remember how it started but there was a time when they stopped introducing themselves, with their dying breaths, "Welcome to the First Day of Your New Life."

Now they just leave instructions in a crumpled note. Literacy in the pluriverse is at an all-time high. One of our friends says we should be kinder, which makes me imagine the long line of choices they have taken to reach this point. Texting behind the wheel, I tell her I do not know what kindness looks like with these corpses. I hear sirens behind me, and punch it.