...okay.

She usually wears a watch, does she have that on her? She'll try checking her wrist just in case. Not with very high hopes; this appears to be a dream.

She will neaten the stack of old gossip magazines and wait for signs of life.

She has her watch. In fact, she's dressed identically to her last clear memory.

Soon enough, a door that's suddenly always been there opens, and a rather nondescript man steps through, carrying a clipboard.

"Ayra?" he calls.

She stands. "Yes?"

"We're ready for your consultation now."

"I don't remember signing up for any consultations." Or leaving her apartment to come here, or walking in any doors that may or may not have existed to enter the room. "What is this place?"

"People usually don't sign up intentionally, no."

"This is where we decide your afterlife, Miss Ayra."

Oh.

Well this is a pretty pleasant nightmare so far, as they go.

"I don't remember dying."

"Not too unusual. Do you want to know what happened?"

"Yes."

"You were hit by a truck on the street outside your apartment."

Well that sounds fake. "Does my brother know?"

"I can ask around the office for details on the world after your death - but the consultation generally happens very soon after, and the living world is hard to reach."

"I'm finding it difficult to accept the premise that this is real, but I can't think of anything that would be useful evidence one way or the other."

She'll probably just continue thinking that this is a dream, a weirdly detailed high-definition dream, until they get to the point where she no longer exists, and then it will no longer matter what she believed was happening.

That's upsetting, but the less real this is the less sad it can be. "You mentioned deciding an afterlife."

"Yes. If you'll come with me - ? My office is possibly a bit more comfortable for this."

"Alright." She'll follow.

His office is fairly generic - but, yes, much more comfortable. A nice plush chair sits on their side of a large wooden desk piled high with papers. The man crosses to the desk's other side, sitting.

She'll sit too. That sure is a lot of paper. 

He pulls over some papers. "Now... Most people get a choice of afterlives. The majority need to reincarnate a few times, to build up enough karma for one nice enough for their tastes - you seem to still be in the usual karmic range for the reincarnation cycle..."

"I don't have any pleasant afterlife options available, yet? -- how many times have I done this?"

"A few dozen times - not an unusually high number, yet."

That sure sounds like a high number. How far back in history does that get her? Between -- hm, a few dozen, say 48... or even if she chooses 24 for a lower bound, even if she shortens the lifespan average to 50, that's still a minimum of twelve hundred years ago. But probably thousands.

That's a very long time. It feels momentous to find out about, even though she still doesn't think any of this should be real.

"Do you know where I was the very first time? Do you have records of all of my reincarnations?"

"We do keep those records, yes. You can look through them if you want."

"Yes, please. If the delay won't be a problem."

"It won't."

He retrieves a thick folder from the pile, handing it to her.

She reads through the folder.

It's interesting. (It's also increasingly alarming, how long the plot of the dream remains consistent, how little the text swims or changes or blurs into other scenes before her eyes. It's not, actually, very much like a dream at all.)

Eventually she closes the folder and hands it back to him. "Thank you. What are my options now?"