---Requiem for Ragnarok---

by Harriet Loew

“What have you done with my beard?”

The receptionist looked up at the man who stood over her. Tall and gangling, his mane of unruly grey hair and the desperation in his flinty blue eyes gave him the look of a starving wolf but decidedly less threatening. There was nothing dangerous or predatory about this man. He looked to be in his mid twenties, but she knew better than to assume anything about a customer from their appearance in her biased eyes. This man could be from any species, could have travelled here from anywhere in the Universe. He might not even be a man. He might not have a gender at all. She herself was a human, although not of Earth. She was from planet Baklus. She was much smaller and slighter, with almost white skin, and her hair was a pale shade of primrose. She would have looked more apt in a gown of woven flowers like some kind of fairy princess, not a well-pressed black suit with a red line – a flatline – embroidered into the pocket.

“Beard, sir?” she asked, attempting to keep her tone so absolutely neutral that she could have been a recorded message. Like the Director. She wasn't the Director – not by a long shot - but she admired her and aspired to be like her.

“Yes, I had it when I died and now its not there!”

“Okay, sir, I'll see if its on our database. Would you mind giving me your name?”

“Its Krelian.” he said, “Krelian Taylor.”

“Krelian Taylor.” repeated the secretary, keying the name into the database on her computer. With a single tap of the return key, she brought up an archive of every customer on the Game Over Screen and their physical appearance just before they died. This wasn't locally stored – it was actually contained on the mainframe of Game Over itself, a computer she would never have authority to go near in a million years – but she was allowed to view the information over the staff intranet for the purposes of the task. Graphical Reconstruction itself had a smaller database of every case, every problem they had solved and the ones they had failed to solve, stored in terms of urgency. A missing beard was not an urgent problem compared to, say, a missing head, or a victim of a teleport accident turning up in separate subatomic components, one quark in each room.

Krelian Taylor. 25 years old. Human. Planet of Origin: Edoald. A picture of him flashed up on the screen. He was slightly less bedraggled with rather a charming smile and no ugly gash across his chest. Apart from that, he looked no different. I didn't think he would look right with a beard, she thought. She had a good eye for this sort of thing. That was why she was hired.

“I'm sorry, sir, but there's no record of you having a beard before, during or after your most recent visit.”

“But my beard is a symbol of my authority within my community!” he protested, “Please, my father will beat me if I return without it!”

She sighed.

“What did your beard look like?”

“It was long, grey and bushy.” he said, pointing to somewhere halfway down his chest, before adding, “It must have been singed off during the explosion. Didros, I was so sure the experiment would work this time...”

“Sir, do you have any ID with you that includes a picture of yourself with your beard?”

“I'll have a look... just hold on a minute... didros, I always leave my wallet in my other coat when I die...” he muttered to himself, fishing around in the pockets of his faded blue jeans. The receptionist rolled her eyes. Tapping her fingers, she turned around to peer at her computer, hoping to find something more interesting to do while she waited for this joker to finish whatever the didros he was doing. Like answering all the spam in her inbox.

It was then that she caught something on his profile, just underneath his portrait. A single line of flashing red text. Five words. The five most terrifying words in the English language to ever overhear someone say about you. Even now, after ten years of working in this place, it sent shivers down her spine to see those words on her screen, to overhear another member of staff saying them in the low, solemn tone of voice they always used when they talked about it, or to hear the Director or the security guards make the final announcement over the tannoy when she was standing in the front reception. The veterans assured her that it wasn't just her. Everyone hated it. You were a twisted person if you didn't.

“Excuse me, sir...?” she began in a more serious tone of voice. He was already making a run for it, bolting down the corridor away from the darkened glass door of the Graphical Reconstruction Studio, his long shaggy grey hair flowing behind him. He was laughing his ass off.

She shrugged and pressed the large red button under her desk to call security.

----------------------

Krelian darted around the corner and fell over a canteen trolley.

The panicking porter made a grab for the handle of his trolley. Then he saw that the food had fallen off the top and was now scattering everywhere. Plates smashed, apples rolled, a beautifully prepared risotto splattered against the far wall. With a strong expletive from the already rough language of the planet Golvel, the porter retrieved a Pyrex bowl containing a lobster. Probably worth more than a week's salary, thought Krelian. Taking his opportunity, he leapt onto the trolley and pushed hard against the wall.

Faster than the furiously swearing porter could run, shaking a fist and throwing apples, Krelian's trolley went careening down the corridor. He understood now why it had gone out of control: one of the wheels was wonky. It refused to travel in a straight line, instead bouncing off one wall into another, rather like a pinball. Krelian was jolted from side to side. Keeping his grip on the sides of his crude vehicle was becoming an increasingly difficult feat of endurance and dexterity.

Just as he reached the end of the third corridor, the wheel buckled completely and the trolley fell over on one side, motionless. Krelian was thrown onto the floor. Controlling his fall, he managed to break into a roll. Apart from a few aches, bruises and the obvious but currently irrelevant fact that he was dead, he wasn't too badly damaged. He shook his hair out of his eyes and stood up. He walked back over to the cart. There was still some food on it. He picked up an apple and a bowl of rice, ate the rice and put the apple in his pocket for later.

His stomach felt much better. Why the didros do I feel hungry on the Game Over screen? I'm dead. Why do I feel hunger, discomfort and pain? His fear he could just about explain. There was a possibility of his mind surviving the complete shutdown of his body, if he believed in any kind of spiritual component to the Universe. But why did he still have a body, a body with senses and needs?

He laughed. People up here must ask these questions a billion times a day. There was an official answer, of course, the one you could hear at any guide terminal. He had a body because Graphical Reconstruction gave him one the moment he appeared at Game Over. A body was a physical shell, not that difficult to replace. What people actually were – the essential information, the constants and variables, every possible parameter, the nigh-on infinite complications of human interactions with each other, their environment and their own imagination– easily survived death. It was just a matter of recombining the two. Things went wrong sometimes, but they could be fixed. That was the official story, that was All The Customers Need To Know. But Krelian didn't believe a didros word the Game Over screen said any more.

Above philosophical musings and eating rice, he heard a noise. Footsteps - a small group of people. From the way they yelled at the top of their voice, the sound of a weapon being fired, he knew they were a security team. Time for him to move.

He had no idea where he was any more. Wonky trolleys didn't have planned routes. Picking a random corridor that was in a different direction to the guards, he sprinted down it. It was a less well used corridor this time, not one near the staff kitchens. He saw nobody the whole way down. It was much darker. The light had been turned off and he could only see the display terminals, down which scrolled an endless list of customers, their names, how many lives and continues they had and where they would be if they were actually where they were supposed to be. The sound of the guards grew quieter. They were still around here somewhere but he was outrunning them. He had time to find somewhere else to hide.

He couldn't see the signs on the doors, so he picked a random door and opened it.

------------------

He was surprised to find a small shrine.

This must be the Chaplaincy, he thought. People of every religion in the Universe, except for a few of the more successful immortality cults, came to Game Over on a regular basis. Some demanded an afterlife. These were Difficult To Arrange. He didn't understand how it worked, as they had never bothered putting on a show for a sceptical old atheist like him. Others were happy with a small shrine to their deity at which they could quietly pray. Pastoral care was vital for people at what was a deeply sensitive and significant time in their lives. It couldn't be found in the clinical, dark-glass offices of the Game Over staff, with their black suits and red tape, so these little shrines were important. If this was an unused corridor, the deities must either be very minor or from a very obscure faith.

Krelian walked over to the shrine and knelt down. There were two candles in silver candlesticks and a box of matches. He shrugged and lit them. Whatever deity it was, it was worth a try. If the deity existed and was insane enough to help someone in as deep a pile of shit as he was, good for him. If they weren't, there was very little for him to lose.

As the flame illuminated the shrine, a shiver went down his spine. His hand recoiled as though he had burned himself on the candle. The matches dropped out of his limp hand and the noise sounded like an earthquake in the cloying silence. The shrine was a pool of water carved from jagged, primitive black rock, in the middle of which was a deliberately broken hourglass; The holy symbol of Amaraud, the Goddess of Bad Endings.

No wonder this place was deserted. People just didn't call upon deities like her. Even people who regularly sacrificed small children to deities called things like Malfa'aznor, Lord of Skulls, didn't pester Amaraud. She was there for two reasons only: for very religious people to explain away Bad Endings, and to supplicate in the unlikely event of a Bad Ending actually happening.

With a nervous laugh, Krelian extinguished the candles. He made a quick apology to the Goddess, just in case he had accidentally woken Her up. Then he lay in the darkness. At least, he thought, the guards probably wouldn't come in here.

He waited for the footsteps to recede, but they didn't. The guards wouldn't come in, but they were still prowling the perimeter. He was trapped here until they gave up. After half an hour spent in cramped discomfort – Amaraud's shrines were kept cold and damp – he wondered whether he would rather face the guards.

Then he heard a dull thump behind him. He looked up into two glowing red eyes, ten feet above the ground, burning into him. Then he heard the terrible growl. The candle flared and he saw its face – its icicle-sharp jaws, its bristling snow-white fur, the death, the cold, futile death reflected in the eyes of the enormous wolf.