“Hey.” Zebra pushed his way through the brittle, overgrown grasses that lead to the back of the shops. “What are you doing back here?”

Katters was sitting on the pavement below the bathroom window, staring at the fence that stood between their modest yard and their third neighbour. There was an unlit cigarette propped between two of her fingers.

“Thinking, I guess,” she said.

“Dangerous past-time.”

“Yeah, apparently.”

Zebra sat next to her. “Anything you want to talk about?”

She closed her eyes and rocked a little, side-to-side. After a moment, she opened them again and shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about reincarnation.”

“What about it?”

“Just, uh. Like. The entire point is to get off the wheel of life, right?”

“Yeah, I think so. Do better in this life so you can get closer to the end of the wheel, or something.”

“I don’t think wheels have ends, that’s not how wheels work. But that’s not the point, anyway. I don’t know, maybe there’s a bunch of wheels and you’re hopping from one to the other. What was I talking about?”

“Reincarnation. You’ve been thinking about it.”

“Right, yeah. Yeah, you’ve got it — do good now or do it all over again, right? Basically.”

“As a bug or something.”

“You know how sometimes you wake up with someone else’s dreams?”

“No.”

“You know how sometimes I wake up with someone else’s dreams?”

“No. Should I? Has this come up before?”

“I thought it had. Whatever. I was someone else for a bit and I thought, what if it’s reincarnation but, but bigger than that. What if — god, what if someone else can fuck it up for you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Okay, right, think of it like this — you have some kind of goal, in your life. If you can achieve that goal, you can move on from this life to the next, or whatever’s after it. Okay?”

“Sure, I get that.”

“Okay. But then some asshole comes along and stops you from achieving that goal? They — like, they kill you. Some asshole kills you and you don’t get to move on.”

“Well, it sucks to be me then, I guess. I’ll just have to try again, and not get killed this time.”

Katters nodded, but she didn’t look like she agreed. “Okay, sure, okay. But imagine, instead of some solo game, it’s a co-op. You, and also your team, have to achieve all of your goals to move on.”

“Well, how do I know who’s on my team?”

“What if — what if everyone is on your team?”

“What?”

“What if every person on Earth is on your team, and all of us have to achieve our goals or we’re stuck here, again and again and again, and by killing people we’re just sabotaging everyone and fucking everything up?”

“That’s insane.”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s no way to win. There are so many assholes on Earth, Katters.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.”

“There’s no way to progress — we’d just keep coming back and doing the same thing, forever.”

“Sure, yeah, I mean, maybe there’s some way to — I mean, if I got it, right? Maybe other people could get it? A little bit of progress each time?”

“The chances are — there’s no way. If that’s how it works, we’re fucked no matter what we do. It doesn’t matter if we’re assholes.”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean — I mean, you’re assuming it has to be fair.”

“I’m not assuming anything.”

“You are — you’re dismissing it because it’s impossible, so it can’t be true.”

“I’m not saying that, I’m saying it doesn’t matter if it’s true.”

“Alright.”

“Look, Katters, you can’t take responsibility for fucking up the world. We’re not screwed as a populaton because you, personally, have done some fucked up shit.”

“I’m not exactly making it better though, am I.”