It was a dark and stormy night. (I always wanted to do that.) Somehow, feeling like I'm some hardboiled private eye makes me deal with this job a bit more. I mean, I was kind of lapsed in my religion, but when the undeniable proof of life after death came, everyone had some worries. And when you work with the government, they manage to handle things even more.

It always seemed like this could be used poorly. After all, with all the lives in the world, from every different type of being there was, and how cruel the animal kingdom is, technically the government could have an excuse to put anyone and everyone in their country in jail for mass murder. After all, in the animal or even plant kingdom, if you have lived, you must have caused something to die- and if people can be reincarnated as an animal or a plant, technically the simple act of eating any type of food just to sustain yourself is a capital offense. Don't get me wrong, some nations who really wanted to be cruel for cruelty's sake did indeed read it that way, but those nations were soon struck down by the rest of the world and their own problem of "if everyone's a criminal, then no one is." Eventually, the more Hinduist viewpoint of reincarnation took hold, which included a firm belief "if someone was reincarnated as an animal or plant, then it is considered them already being punished for their crime"- which both lessened the amount of potential criminals and got out of that nasty loophole before everyone in existence became a prisoner.

But this isn't perfect. Sometimes, the evil go unpunished on the karmic scale. Sometimes, a real piece of shit gets reincarnated as a human being.

That's where I come in. Some say I'm a wolf of the government, but the badge says I'm a lama.

I head to my boss. They told me that they found out somewhere in the city, this nasty piece of work has reincarnated. I looked at his history and shuddered- this is the type of shit that should make you a cockroach in your next life, and he's still walking around as a human? They handed me this book they found in the guy's collection they got from lockdown, then told me to go pick out a few fake possessions to hide it. I was to head to the preschool and have the children test which possession they liked the most; the real one would naturally choose their own possession and we have the guy.

This is the part of the job I hate- you always see the problems here. Sometimes you can see it, the biggest bully of the kids is the one who picks it and you know the soul is rotten to the core, but then it's this quiet, this sweet, adorable kid who picks it and you wonder if their soul is really purified. Doesn't matter; if prison values punishment first and foremost, they say you have a bunch of life sentences to deal with, you deal with them.

I head to the preschool. The parents didn't know which was which, but I put the possessions out. I see some kids play with some of them, not wondering. It seemed normal. Then, this one kid who was busy reading in the background headed over. This is what I'd fear...he picked the book.

I shut it down. I went to his parents. "I'm sorry, but your son has proven he's the reincarnation of a serious criminal. We have to take him in." His mother cried, his father punched me out. It happens- sometimes it's out of anger, out of frustration, even a desperation that an assault charge gets them arrested and forced into prison to watch their child. I have to shake it off and just let it go. I take the child in my car, the father goes in a local cop car.

I always feel so rotten when it happens- but if karma doesn't punish people, that's what we have to do.