After you die, you come back to the world as a fly on the wall of somebody else's life. You observe everything from a vantage point above and a little to the left of their head; you become the classic guardian angel, minus the guarding.

You didn't choose the person to whom you are assigned, but that soon ceases to matter as you become increasingly caught up in their story, observing moment after moment of hurdles, embarrassing slip-ups, and tender meetings. You watch as they take their first steps, go to school for the first time, find lasting friendships, think up excuses for unfinished work, and fall in and out of love.

It doesn't take too long before you're cheering on their successes, cursing bad luck, and wishing like hell you could give them some advice -- after all, you've been through all this once before. It is this last wish that gets you into trouble: once you're sufficiently invested in the life you've been assigned, the Assigners drop in and tell you a little secret. You can, if you choose, influence the decisions and tweak the behaviors of your person -- not much, but just enough to throw a delicate balance one way or the other.

This process occurs without the awareness of the human involved; you operate in that murky subconscious which controls more of human actions than we would like to admit. The possibilities open up: you can make them stay home and finish work instead of going out to a party; you can get them to walk out on a bad relationship, or finally go talk to that cute boy/girl across the room who they've been eyeing all night. You can be an active participant in life once more, give the advice and guidance you've been yearning to give, and you reach out with the best of intentions to make your first small change --

And then you realize you, too, must have had a silent, unseen watcher following you throughout your human life, and if you return as a person in your next life, you will again have an observer assigned to you. Those observers had and will have the same choice presented to you now: they could meddle in your life just as you propose inserting yourself into this person's, and you would never know.

These realizations reverberate through you, and you notice that you're still frozen in place, your unmade choice hanging before you. You settle your thoughts into place slowly and sigh; you've made up your mind to ...