The fluorescent lights of DataFlow Solutions hummed their usual monotonous tune as Runar Cross leaned back in his ergonomic chair, fingers drumming against his mechanical keyboard. The open-plan office buzzed with the familiar symphony of typing, muted conversations, and the occasional frustrated sigh.
"This is a terrible idea, Marcus."
Across the desk, his manager—a portly man with thinning hair and an expensive suit that didn't quite fit—frowned at his tablet. Marcus Chen had the look of someone who'd spent too many years climbing corporate ladders and not enough time understanding the products he managed.
"The client specifically requested it," Marcus said without looking up. "They want a social media integration feature. It's trendy."
"It's bloat." Runar pulled up the codebase on his monitor, highlighting the relevant sections with practiced efficiency. "Look, we've built a lean, efficient project management tool. Our selling point is simplicity and speed. Adding social media feeds will slow down load times, introduce security vulnerabilities, and frankly, nobody asked for it except one client who probably won't even use it after launch."
Marcus finally met his eyes, and Runar recognized that particular expression—the look of a manager who'd already made up his mind and was simply going through the motions of appearing to listen.
"I understand your concerns, but—"
"Do you?" Runar cut him off, leaning forward. "Because I sold my last software company for twelve million dollars specifically because I got tired of feature creep killing good products. I came here because DataFlow seemed different. Focused. Now you want me to compromise that?"
The office had gone quiet. Runar noticed Sarah from accounting pretending very hard to focus on her spreadsheet while obviously listening. Great. Office drama. Exactly what he'd been trying to avoid.
Marcus's face reddened. "That's quite enough, Runar. You're a talented developer, but you're not the CEO here. The decision has been made. I expect the feature implemented by end of month."
Runar stood, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair. "Then you can implement it yourself. I'm going home."
"It's only three in the afternoon!"
"And I'm a contractor, not a slave." Runar shouldered his backpack, ignoring the mixture of shocked and impressed looks from his coworkers. "I'll think about whether I want to keep working here over the weekend. You think about whether you want to keep destroying a good product with bad decisions."
He walked out before Marcus could sputter a response.
The evening air was crisp as Runar made his way through the city streets, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets. He probably shouldn't have been so blunt, but honestly? He didn't need this job. The twelve million from his last company was invested well enough that he could live comfortably without working another day in his life.
He'd taken the position at DataFlow because sitting idle drove him crazy. His brain needed problems to solve, puzzles to untangle. But not like this. Not watching good software get ruined by people who didn't understand it.
Maybe he'd finally start that personal project he'd been thinking about. Something with—
A horn blared.
Runar's head snapped up. A massive truck was barreling down the street directly toward him, no driver visible in the cab. His mind processed the impossibility of the situation even as his body reacted on instinct.
Years of parkour training kicked in. He sprinted forward, planted his foot on a fire hydrant, used the momentum to run up the brick wall of a nearby building, and executed a perfect backflip over the truck as it roared past beneath him.
He landed in a crouch on the pavement behind the vehicle, breathing hard, adrenaline singing through his veins.
"What the fuck?"
The truck screeched to a halt twenty feet away. Runar straightened slowly, every muscle tensed. The cab was definitely empty—he could see straight through the windows. An autonomous vehicle malfunction? But those had safety protocols, multiple redundancies...
He pulled out his phone with shaking hands, thumb hovering over the emergency call button.
Then the truck spoke.
"Okay, that was actually really impressive. Like, genuinely. The academy never covered what to do if the target has parkour skills."
Runar's phone slipped from his fingers, clattering on the asphalt. The voice was coming from the truck itself—young, nervous, definitely male, and entirely impossible.
"I'm sorry," the truck continued, and now Runar could see it... changing. Metal panels shifting, wheels retracting, the entire vehicle reconfiguring itself like something out of a Transformers movie. Within seconds, a twenty-foot-tall robot stood in the middle of the street, looking down at him with glowing blue optics.
"I just graduated from Truck Reincarnation Academy," the robot said, wringing its massive hands together in a surprisingly human gesture of anxiety. "This is my first mission. I can't fail, or I'll become a laughing stock among my fellow trucks. So... sorry, buddy. You have to die and reincarnate."
Runar's brain, which had been frantically trying to process the transformation, latched onto the words instead.
"Truck. Reincarnation. Academy."
"Yeah!" The robot brightened slightly. "It's a very prestigious institution. Three years of intensive training. We learn optimal impact angles, target acquisition, dimensional barrier penetration protocols—it's really quite comprehensive."
"This isn't real." Runar backed away slowly. "I'm having a stroke. Or I hit my head during that flip."
"You're not having a stroke. You're perfectly healthy. Well, for another minute or so, anyway." The robot's optics dimmed apologetically. "Look, normally if someone dodges a reincarnation truck, we're not allowed to continue the attempt. Interfering with fate and all that. But I'm the genius of my class! I passed every simulation with perfect scores. I can't have a failed first mission on my record."
Runar turned and ran.
The street blurred around him as he sprinted with everything he had, parkour training lending him speed and efficiency. He vaulted a parked car, slid under a shop awning, cut through an alley—
A massive metal hand plucked him out of the air like a child grabbing a toy.
"Really impressive evasion skills," the truck-robot said, holding Runar up to its face. The blue optics studied him with what might have been genuine admiration. "You'd probably make a great protagonist in whatever world you end up in. Speaking of which—"
"Wait!" Runar struggled uselessly against the unyielding grip. "You can't just kill people because you're worried about your performance review!"
"I know, I know, it's not ideal." The robot sighed, a sound like pressurized air releasing. "Tell you what—because you're being so cool about this, and because that backflip was genuinely sick, I'll give you a gift. Something to help you on your new journey."
"I don't want a gift, I want to not die!"
"Too late for that, I'm afraid. But trust me, where you're going? You'll thank me eventually." The robot's other hand came up, and a strange symbol began glowing between its palm and Runar's forehead. "I'm giving you the Heaven-Defying Comprehension Mantra. It's kind of a big deal. Usually costs, like, a thousand merit points at the academy store, but I've been saving up."
Warmth flooded through Runar's skull, and suddenly there were words in his mind—no, not words exactly. Concepts. A rhythm. A pattern that felt simultaneously alien and intimately familiar, like remembering a song from a dream.
"There we go." The robot sounded satisfied. "Now, this is going to hurt for a second, but then you won't feel anything, and then you'll wake up in your new life. Try to be less argumentative with your bosses in the next one, yeah?"
"Wait, what are you—"
The world twisted.
Pain beyond description exploded through every nerve. Runar tried to scream, but he had no lungs, no throat, no body. He was being unmade, every atom of his existence torn apart and scattered across—
Nothing.
Silence.
Darkness.
Peace.
Consciousness returned like a light switch flipping on.
The first thing Runar noticed was that he couldn't see properly. Everything was blurry, colors washed out and indistinct. The second thing he noticed was that he couldn't move. Well, he could move, but his limbs felt wrong—weak, uncoordinated, tiny.
The third thing he noticed was the voice.
"—beautiful boy," someone was saying, and the words sounded distant, muffled. "Kaelen, look at his eyes. He's so alert."
Another voice, deeper: "Takes after his mother. Hello, little one. Welcome to the world."
Oh no.
Runar tried to turn his head toward the voices, managed only to roll it slightly to the side. Blurry shapes resolved into faces—a woman with kind features and auburn hair, exhausted but smiling, and a man with gentle amber eyes leaning over her shoulder.
His parents. These were his parents. He'd been reborn as a baby.
That ridiculous truck actually did it.
"Should we name him?" The woman—his mother—asked softly.
"We discussed this," the man said, and Runar could hear the smile in his voice. "Runar. After your grandfather."
Well, at least I get to keep my name. That's something.
Runar tried to speak, to tell them he was actually a twenty-eight-year-old software developer from Earth who'd just been killed by a sentient truck with performance anxiety. What came out was a gurgling noise that might have been charitably interpreted as a burp.
His mother laughed, the sound warm and musical. "He's perfect."
As his new parents cooed over him, Runar became aware of something else—a presence in the back of his mind. Not the mantra the truck had given him (though he could feel that too, a steady rhythm humming beneath his thoughts), but something more substantial. More systematic.
Words materialized in his vision, glowing softly:
[REINCARNATION SYSTEM INITIALIZED]
[HOST: RUNAR CROSS]
[STATUS: NEWBORN]
[AVAILABLE FUNCTIONS:]
Infinite Qi Realm (LOCKED - Insufficient Essence)
Comprehension Space Realm (UNLOCKED)
World-Hopping Transfer Gate (LOCKED - Insufficient Space Energy)
[SPECIAL ABILITY DETECTED: Heaven-Defying Comprehension Mantra]
[WELCOME TO TELSTRA]
Despite everything—the absurdity of his death, the shock of reincarnation, the complete helplessness of being a newborn—Runar felt something unexpected bloom in his chest.
Excitement.
He had a second chance. A whole new world to explore. A system that promised incredible power. And if the mantra was anything like what he'd felt when the truck gave it to him, he had the tools to actually make use of it all.
Alright, Telstra, Runar thought, letting his baby body relax in his mother's arms. Let's see what you've got. And truck-kun?
The system flickered slightly, as if acknowledging his thoughts.
One day, I'm going to find you. And when I do, we're going to have a conversation about proper mission protocols.
His mother began humming a lullaby, and despite himself, Runar felt his consciousness beginning to drift. Baby bodies apparently needed a lot of sleep. As darkness pulled at the edges of his awareness, one final thought crossed his mind:
This is going to be interesting.
The system pulsed once in agreement, and Runar Cross—genius programmer turned reincarnated baby—slept.