The middle aged couple were sitting side by side in the first class compartment of a jumbo jet on its way to Tokyo. He was fat, bald and was made almost ugly by the number of lines on his face and the stress that could be easily seen around his eyes. She was heavily made up and if you were curious enough to guess what was beneath it you would see a lot of the same features that marred her husband’s face too. They started to reminisce.

“It’s both wonderful and horrible. The company was almost like the child we never had and now it’s gone.” He stretched in his seat.

“It was almost like a pet that we couldn’t leave at home alone. This is the first vacation we’ve had since our honeymoon.” She at least sounded a bit enthusiastic. “Look, we sold out for an obscene sum and now we can do whatever we want for the rest of our lives.”

“That’s true; perhaps I can even spend some time playing chess again.”

“Oh, come on, I was hoping you might say something a bit more exciting, there was so much we gave up or never did. We never traveled except for business, we decided against children and we had hardly any friends. I mean real friends.”

The plane gave a lurch, there was a ding and the seat belt sign came on. There was a voice over the loudspeaker system. “This is the captain speaking; we are about twenty minutes from Tokyo Narita airport and the weather is getting worse. Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts.”

While it was being repeated in Japanese she started flipping through the in-flight magazine. After a bit she told her husband. “Look at this, see this picture of a Buddhist temple. It says that they believe in reincarnation.”

The plane dropped violently, it bumped around for a few seconds before it settled again. When it did he said, “There have been a lot of things missing from our lives and I did a lot of things which didn’t make me feel too good about myself.”

“Right, you were a totally nasty cutthroat businessman and you treated our employees like dirt. They probably all hated you.” She tapped the article in the magazine, “What would you like to be like if you were reincarnated?”

The plane rattled and bumped. The captain’s voice came again, “We will be coming into land in a moment. The weather is deteriorating rapidly.” She took a quick look out of the window. It was raining and she could see lightning.

He managed a reply between the bumps, “I would like to be a kind person, I don’t really think I acted as myself in the last twenty years. He looked down at his paunch and then up at her, “Face it I’m a wreck. I would work out every spare moment so I could have a better body than this, one like a gymnast's perhaps.” He zoned out for a moment, “I was relentlessly bullied when I was in school as I was a total nerd, so if I could I would stop all the bullies.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, one other thing. In my next life I would really value my privacy. Being in the public eye was something I never liked, what with the papers and television and people all wanting to squeeze money out of me. How about you?”

She smiled sweetly at him and said. “We girls must be allowed a secret or two, it’s a woman’s privilege.”

The captain’s voice came again, “Hold tight everyone; this is going to be a bumpy landing.”

The couple held hands while each thought how they would live their next lives if such a thing was possible. Suddenly their stomachs were in their mouths and they felt the plane drop like a stone to the ground. It was the last thing anyone on that plane felt.