Death & the Coordinator – DH Reed
May 27, 2026
“You’re a writer. You look kind of like one. Write this down.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. Here, wait. Can someone get him a pen?”
“Mr. Michaels, I’m just wondering what you do here. I really don’t need a tour.”
“Everyone needs a tour. Don’t be impatient.”
“Here at NoGap, we squeeze the gap.”
“What gap is that?”
“Let me ask the questions. It’s my tour, and you’re going to spoil things with assumptions. Take this card.”
Craig took the card.
“Now, the ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife. It’s all fiction to us. Fiction to you, maybe. Sekhet Aaru, a field of reeds. That particular theistic viewpoint reigned roughly too damn long. How long do you reckon that was?”
“A few thousand years?”
“Bingo. Twelve thousand years. And now these days you have an afterlife view, I bet. What is it? Let’s say these days it’s heaven. You don’t need to divulge anything to me. I am not your priest.”
“Now, when that viewpoint goes extinct.”
“Why should it?”
“It’s an entropy assumption. No one really breaks even, gets a free lunch, or outruns heat death and all that. Bear with me. Things, views, what have you, have a lifetime.”
“Hmmm.”
“All right, I’m losing you. Let’s back it down here to basics. You get into heaven. You’re turning left or right after the pearly gates, presuming you’re not there for soliciting and you know somebody. You might need to make that choice.”
“Huh? I don’t think I would. What?”
“You know a lot. What’s your name?”
“Craig.”
“Oh dear, Craig. Then tell me what kind of jelly went on your nana’s toast. Grape? Strawberry?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course not. Follow me. You don’t know Granny’s toast. So here we are trying to decide if you go left or right, and you don’t know if grape jelly went left or right. Where’s Granny now?”
Craig still looked confused.
“You still look confused, Mr. Marmalade. Tell me now, easier: would you mind that you’re there and next to Great-Great-Uncle Maverick, who talks about race dogs, roulette betting schemes, and is obsessed with bird calls? You’re looking less confused.”
“I don’t think it would group like that.”
“You don’t think? Mr. Rosencrantz, you’re going to find out.”
“Who?”
“See, you’re definitely not in the drama section.”
“Why’s that? Rose cramps?”
“Hmmm. Actually, I never asked, but I see the impediment now. Salesman. You’re in sales.”
“I mean, yes. I am. I’ve got a guy down at the post office, and he’s telling me you’re hand-posting large volumes, so I scheduled a tour with Edith because you don’t seem to have any other way to get in touch.”
“I am a busy man. NoGap and all.”
“Well, Mr. Michaels, how long have you been needing postage services? Any emails?”
“Are you trying to Wall Street me?”
“What?”
“DiCaprio. I saw that too. You are a salesman.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Michaels, I get it. I show up in a suit, schedule a call, get on your calendar, wiggle-waggle-weasel-Wolf-of-
“Super Pumped, eh? You’re definitely going to hell. Fortunately, that’s almost easier to coordinate.”
“Coordinate?”
“Yes, Craig. Coordinate. NoGap gets you your coordinates.”
“You provide coordinates? You’re a salesman too. What the heck.”
“No, sir. I am a mathematician and a first-time founder. No serial entrepreneur. Clean slate. Nothing sloppy.”
“Honestly, that sounds like sales to me.”
“I am a mathematician. I provide coordinates, reference frames, general abstract nonsense. Not the same.”
“So product.”
“Coordinates, at least while you’re on my coordinates tour. This is not a sales tour.”
“Now, I am happy to incorporate some of your product questions on this tour since you’re alone today, but I have questions I ask on every tour.”
“I presume you have some scheme for entering your afterlife, which we don’t sell, own, operate, or wish to be structurally analyzed like a religious institution.”
“I do. I go with my family.”
“Perfect. Then for your ‘partner,’ I bet there’s an epsilon distance you want to be near them too. Pretty close?”
“What’s the quotes around partner about?”
“Everyone has a Right Now, Craig. Don’t read into it. Close to your ‘partner’ is a ‘yes.’ I’ll tell your partner you said so, emphatically.”
“I was just wondering how long you’ve been needing a pen.”
“Postage.”
“Thank you. Postage. I need a pen.”
Michaels turned toward the front.
“Edith, did you find a pen? I am sorry. I know I asked you to write on your blank card.”
Edith came back with one.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you, Edith.”
“Thank you, Edith,” Craig said. “Ah, this thing is mangled. Mauled almost into a quill.”
Edith looked embarrassed, almost childlike.
“Sorry,” Edith said. “I get nervous up front. These tours are very serious, you know.”
Craig looked back at the pen with smiling eyes and wanded it once in the air, reflexively.
Edith nodded, smiling back, delighted by the small whimsy in all the tension.
“I see. Thanks, Edith.”
Michaels moved on.
“Now, you probably also have or will have children.”
“A boy, Hal, and my daughter, Julia.”
“Right. So they need to be close, but not that close. Maybe within coordination of a town or something.”
“My little Julia, coordinating with her parents for eternity, Mr. Michaels?”
“So Craig, precision does matter to you. That’s exactly why you need a vector bundle.”
“Hold on.”
“For proper epsilons around your afterlife. That’s presuming you don’t want to just dabble around and figure it out over there in a timeless, nowless rift wherein all of reality has given you a chance to decide something requiring coordination and conviction. The umph.”
“You see, if wherever you are trying to go is a surface, hyperdimensional, and I’ll let you color that in for me with some belief information of yours, then you need to do some regular analysis to figure out how close you’re all going to be.”
“Now kids grow up. You grow up. They get mad, get therapy, what have you, but with some key pieces of insight we can reliably vector you into a cute little epsilon neighborhood.”
“Hmmm.”
“We get you local. We find a delta here and now, given your epsilon.”
Craig looked down at the card.
“What happens to drift?”
Michaels paused.
“Drift?”
“I mean, yeah. In the postage world, people move all the time. You’re coordinating me an address service, but what if Lisa and Bart are there instead of Julia and Hal?”
Michaels did not answer.
“Drift,” Craig said. “How do you handle drift?”
Michaels looked at him now.
“It’s a tough problem,” Craig added, staring like a doctor who had just broken bad news and was willing to provide a hug.
“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise,” Michaels said, and turned away.
Craig let the silence sit.
“Does NoGap have a drift platform? We have a whole platform that’s great with this problem.”
“Really? It needs a whole platform?”
“Mr. Michaels, you’re very smart. You could split an atom, you’re so sharp, but I hate drift, and things drift all the time. Someone needs to handle it for you.”
“For what?”
“Your postage problem. It’s all hand-done. We have a postage platform. Drift isn’t even a hundredth of the solutions we employ.”
Craig took the pen and wrote his personal number on the card.
“Here. That’s my personal number on the card. I have a 2 p.m. I need to get to, but have Edith call me. Does Tuesday around this time work?”
“Yes. It should.”
“Great. You guys give me a call. I’ve got a good feeling about this.”
Craig handed the card back.
Michaels held it.
“Drift?”
Michaels walked up to Edith and handed her the card. Craig walked out.
Edith looked at the scribbles of nonsense on it. “Did he think we needed notes?”
“No, no. He, ugh, didn’t really seem to have any clue yet.”
“He left in such a hurry.”
“Drift? He asked me about drift. Said he had a solution.”
“He didn’t seem interested in coordination with loved ones?”
“I am only a coordinator, Edith. I just try to help them leave here closer to what matters.”
He looked at her pen. “Why’d you chew the pen this way? I’ve never seen you do that before no matter how delusional they are for their coordination.”
Edith turned to live television, cathode-ray style, flicking the knob on and turning it around to 8. “His Julia chews her pens like that. I just tried to nudge him to remember something.”