Tina set down her daybook on the warm bunk and stepped outside to embrace the gloaming. Even though the dead for that day were neither unusual nor particularly taxing, she still had trouble sleeping out at sea, and had been burned out for days. Master Thorpe did not seem to mind that she was still far from meeting her quota, but the deadline loomed closer with every passing day and the young woman felt an increasing pressure on her shoulders. Walthier van Geerig used to be a ship-owner of sorts, back in 1592. Eldest of a family of four and heir to a dutch merchant, he spread his influence to hundreds of cities and counters before drowning at the age of fifty-three years when his ship, the Oceaan Havik, was torn apart by a storm. His wife had died eleven years earlier during childbirth, and tuberculosis took away his daughter after only a few months. Tina slowly whispered to herself the important events in his life, to further commit them to memory. The irony was not lost on her, for she already knew the detailed biographies of a thousand people, yet she did not remember nor know anything about hers. The candles flickered. And again. The shapeless mist in the ritual circle formed slowly into the bust of a middle-aged man with an unkempt moustache. Probably a sailor from the Oceaan Havik, she thought. The dead usually have trouble making themselves understood, using a language neither they nor anyone else has practiced for centuries, with a disgustingly morbid accent to further complicate matters, and so the formal interview decayed into a sign language session. If interviewing ancient roman or greek political men was considered one of the best positions for a firstborn, coping with sailors drowned at sea was possibly one of the worst. A few hours later, in the evening, the shade vanished after explaining when and where he was born. He would resume the session on the next day. The living were so busy believing the dead left for a better place, that they were quite surprised when the dead came back and demanded tribute. There is no greater pain to the immortal soul than the relentless gnawing of oblivion, and so the mourned and huddled masses badgered, tormented and finally received remembrance. Those who still walked the earth would have to interview those who ceased to do so, and to commit the details of their past lives to both mind and paper. Refusal had proven too deadly for the living to consider. The United Nations Anamnesia Agency was created for that purpose, but the dead outnumbered the handful of historians coaxed into the job and, as the vengeful dead reduced the world population out of misery, individual freedoms were abolished by a cornered mankind. Tina, like all other firstborn children, was paid as a tax to the UNAA by parents she would never know about. The agency trained her in the art of interviewing the dead and memorizing their former lives, made her a specialist of the dutch 1550-1600 period, and started sending her on missions to everywhere people from that period had died.

Quote: Original post by bdoskocil
Very unique, interesting, and well-written. Is English your native language?

Quote: What kind of game are you planning with this story?