Before continuing with our story, let us discuss the merits of the Federated Association of Reincarnation Tradesmen: the merits vastly number in the zeros range and are steadily decreasing as we speak at a rate of 1 x 10 to the power of 42 merits per galactic antidepressant. Good; now that that is out of the way, we may move on to a bit of ludicrous history.

The Federated Association of Reincarnation Tradesmen -or FART, as it is mumbled under the breath- found its origins in the musings of a mad man named Fulbus the #. One day as he was thrashing about deliriously in his puce beanbag chair on the planet Nyahhhh and dreaming of hordes of Twinkies fighting gory battles against the Mohawk wiener dog minions, a singular and utterly incomprehensible thought began to form in the #'s abdominal hippocampus, and it was this: "I like Twinkies; I like Mohawk wiener dogs also. Neither should have to die!" Sadly however, his train of thought was interrupted by the advertised, but none the less intrusive entrance of a hyperspace bypass that leveled him, his home, and a gimpy cat with three legs, one claw, and no tail named Mr. Pretty. In this disastrous frame of mind, the # bounded into the afterlife with a new purpose; and in a few recently deceased Gulgafrinchans from the blue-green planet Earth, he found a means to aid that purpose. With the help of a hair-stylist, a used car salesman, and a military chap who'd taken one too many baths, plans for the first working re-assembly line began to be formed.

Approximately four quintrillion years later, the plans were finished; then someone spilled coffee on them and they had to start all over again. By the time they had worked it all out however, the universe had been destroyed, and everyone thought it was a pretty bad idea to be mucking about down there in oblivion. So the idea was lost for many millennia, and everyone seemed to be acutely happy and inflicted with vigor in their present surroundings. That is until an immortal by the odious name of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged (believed to have been a distant relative of Fulbus the #) decided that everyone was having a little too much fun, and dropped the plans through a paratemporal vortex that sent them back to the dawn of life…and death. Due to the fact that dead people in those times were much more intelligent than those corpses nowadays, the first re-assembly line was built in a matter of months. And due to impending mitigations, the monopoly held by the builders (the Grog, Glurg, and Thomas G. Borinthall Co.) was broken into hundreds of smaller vendors - known as the Federated Association of Reincarnation Tradesmen - who felt it was their civil duty to use the time rift to exploit the recently deceased, the soon to be dead, and their living families.

Astoundingly enough, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that seemingly unending abyss of knowledge, has absolutely no record of these exceedingly ridiculous circumstances and has this to say on the subject of death and dying:

"Probably no big deal; tie one on for us before you bite the big one!"

The "Hitchhiker's Guide to Eternity", founded by deceased editor Hurling Frootmig, says that the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is an uninspired scribble on the bathroom stall of life, and has a killer time at hoity-toity book-of-the-month clubs comparing it to "Fifty Things I Can Tie to my Nose Hairs" by Wad the Soapless (widely considered the worst book ever written). The Guide to Eternity opens with the three most important facts you should know about the afterlife:

1. When you die, get over that fresh post-mortem shock: there's a 1 in 420-octillion chance that this isn't your first, second, or even 142nd time here. Because of the abuses of the FART conglomerate throughout the history of the universe, most of the organisms which you find yourselves slumming it with when you die are the same ones which were present at the beginning of creation, just with varying limbs and new hobbies. In order to combat the subsequent rants of disgruntled customers complaining that the product they bought from him was inferior, a vendor named Degerbil found it much easier to wipe their memories each time they came back. Degerbil tried to get a patent for the idea when all the other vendors followed suite, but the idea was mysteriously wiped clean from his mind, which coincidentally now focused on his new job as chief Fillagrian gum chewer on Nyahhhh Prime.

2. Because each vendor has probably already seen and had enough of you and you don't even know it, they can be rather pushy and impatient, so make sure they aren't taking you for a ride.

3. Eternity is big...really big...or extremely small...or it could also be astoundingly...medium...in actuality, it's what you make of it. Eternity reads universal thought like the funny pages over a bowl of cornflakes, and knows precisely who you are, what it is your looking for in an afterlife, and why Mary Worth is interesting. Wherever you end up, don't get lost, because although eternity is in the multifaceted eye of the beholder, there are quarantined areas which remain constant throughout this one-size-fits-all wonder.

To avoid the vexing paratemporal paradox of Fulbus showing up dead many years after his idea had already been created, the powers that be just decided to stick him in an infinite quarantine prism with his cat and a few Gulgafrinchams where he could work on his idea without knowing it had been created yet. Each time he and the insipid crew of Arc B came up with the solution, they were miraculously pumped back into the system as contributing members of living society. And of course, no-one was permitted into the area, because that would cause a cataclysmic inconsistency, ripping apart the boundaries between reality and paranormality like tight pants on an opera singer. And no-one broke that most sacred law, and Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was still a jerk over and over again.

Of course, most of these so-called facts are so insanely impossible that it boggles the mind.

It's funny though, how seemingly impossible temporal infinities can be disrupted by the most Random of variations.