Chapter 1
Everything went black. Amalia could still hear the echo of screams and shrieking metal. Was it her screaming? Was she still screaming?
They had been walking along a footpath. A car had blown a tire as it crested the hill behind them. It had crashed into a parked car less than ten metres away. Tabia had rushed on to the road to help the driver. Amalia had tried to drag her sister to safety. The driver was obviously fine, they had been able to hear him cursing up a storm. Another car had crested the hill. It was too close to see them. Too close to hit the breaks or swerve.
She opened her eyes. Instead of death and chaos, she was met with the sight of lush blue carpet and an endlessly long desk. It stretched so far into the distance she couldn’t see its end.
She was seated in a luxurious leather office chair. The heavy kind with wheels that actually roll where you mean them to.
Tabia was sitting in a chair identical to her own. Her eyes and fists clenched tight. It looked like she was having a nightmare.
“Tabia?”
Her eyes flew open and she jumped in her seat.
“Amalia? What happened? Where are we?”
Amalia gripped Tabia’s hand tight. She didn’t have any answers.
“I don’t know. Right now, I need you to tell me if you are hurt. Focus on me. Breath”
“Very good advice. A small amendment; perhaps we all might focus on me for a moment”
Across the desk from them, a professional looking woman was seated in a fancy leather armchair. There had been nothing and no one there a heartbeat before.
“We don’t often entertain such delicate proceedings with two people at once. But, you did arrive together. Given your circumstances, we thought you would be more comfortable this way”
She was short and petite. Blonde hair tied in a severe ponytail. She smelled of vanilla and citrus.
A ledger appeared in her hands she wasn’t holding when she started speaking.
“I can answer some of your questions. We have time. Once we get you a little more settled, I have some questions of my own.. Tabia and Amalia, welcome to your second life”
Tabia stared blankly at the not at all comforting woman. Amalia watched Tabia.
My sister is dead? I’m dead? She doesn’t look dead. I don’t look dead.
There wasn’t so much as a wrinkle in her jeans or blouse.
This parody of an angel did not give Amalia the impression of lying.
Breath in for a count of 4, hold for 5, exhale for 6. In 4, hold 5, exhale a long slow 6.
The anxiety exercises helped take the edge off a bit.
“I understand what you are telling us. My first question, where are our parents?”
The office angel’s lips pursed to a tight line.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything that might influence a certain choice you will have to make. I can, however, point out that they are not in this room with us. You will have to make of that what you will”
Mum and Dad probably survived. They didn’t run on to the road like we did.
A knot of tension and fear eased in Amalia’s stomach.
“Can you send us back?” Tabia asked.
The woman gave her a sad smile.
“No. You are no longer of that world. There are certain rules”
Amalia did not find this surprising. She thinks she might be in shock. She had always thought there would be nothing past Death’s door.
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“What rules? Where are the Pearly Gates? Is this heaven? What about the guy in the car? Are you an angel?” Tabia berated the woman.
A very small twitch developed under the office angel’s eye.
“Please do try to keep your questions to one at a time. I can answer some of those, I won’t answer others, you don’t want the answers to the rest. I’m afraid your Christianity covered only the spirit of a very limited number of truths. I myself am called a Regulator. Consider this place an in-between. You are not quite dead but for the choosing”
She took a long drag on a cigarette that had magically taken the place of her ledger.
“My name is Trista. The two of you have been chosen. Given a second chance, if you will.”
Amalia seized on a particular phrase, “That world? There are others?”
Trista’s eyes focused on Amalia’s. They had maintained eye contact for only a moment, yet it seemed untold amounts of time. The woman’s eyes were a deep blue abyss.
“You are quicker than most. Yes, there are other worlds. Now seems as good a time as any for me to start asking you some questions”
“What other worlds are there?” Tabia asked. Braced on the edge of her chair.
“Not terribly relevant right now, my sweet,”
Trista wiggled herself back in her chair and swung her feet up on to the desk.
“Though I do so enjoy teaching. Are either of you familiar with quantum mechanics?”
Both sisters shook their heads.
“Don’t worry about it. For illustrative purposes, your universe is a cake. Can you imagine cake for me? Good good,” Trista held up three fingers and a thumb.
“I will represent four infinite fields of energy as basic ingredients. The electron field, gravitation field, and the strong and weak nuclear fields. These are our eggs, flour, sugar, and butter. Have I lost you yet?
Neither of the girls seemed totally engaged, but had not glazed over yet.
“Pressing on. Our ingredients are eternal and infinite. They have no beginning or end. They exist everywhere, mixing together like a soup”
Tabia interrupted, “Soup? What happened to the cake?”
“Apologies, dearest. Too many food metaphors. Alright, our ingredients are a series of oceans. Infinitely expansive oceans that interact with one another on occasion. Splashing about and occasionally causing little ripples and waves in another field, or ingredient, to form,
“It so happened that there was a day when all our ingredients disturbed one another in the same place and time. This made for enormous waves, a tsunami of mixing to happen. The tidal wave sized eggs got stuck to the flour, the waves of flour absorbed the butter, the butter was saturated with sugar. They made a cake. You will have heard of the event by a different name. The Big Bang”
They sat in silence a minute before Tabia ventured, “What does that have to do with worlds? Why cake?”
“Planets, sweetums. The Big Bang made possible enormous balls of gas and rock that you call planets and stars. Everything you can see or touch is made of those four ingredients. There are tens of billions of planets in your universe that are reasonably suitable for life. Life, which is a natural accident of matter, develops on all of them eventually.
“I present cake for my metaphor because this next bit is hard without it. Also, I quite like cake. How many different types of cake are there? Are there not more ingredients that might be added to make, let’s say, a chocolate cake? The confluence of fields expressing themselves as a Big Bang has happened many times. Slight differences in the mixture can result in spectacular changes to natural laws. A little more sugar can produce a Big Bang that creates nothing but black holes. Too much flour, too little gravity for stars to form and start creating the first complex atoms. Fortunately, the universe is an enormous place. Tens of thousands of different cakes have exploded into being without ever coming near overlapping.
“We have until the end of time to talk about all the worlds. That will not be long enough. We are outside all that here. In fact, your cake selves are not here either. This place is pure sugar. You are right now something like the psychic images of your previous selves. Ghosts or souls. Whatever makes you happy. Not that happy is something you can be here. Too many chemical bits and moving parts. Strictly consciousness and abstraction whilst you are with me. For now, let’s talk more about you,
“What would you have liked to change about yourselves?” She asked. The cigarette vanished and ledger in hand again.
Tabia leapt into the, what Amalia suspected might not be rhetorical, exercise.
“I wish I was stronger. I wish I had the power to change the world around me. I wish I could have stood up to bullies. I wish I could hurt them”
Amalia was shocked to hear her articulate so honestly. She was also surprised to learn that her sister had such a juvenile perspective. She had seen Tabia defend her friends many times without resorting to petty violence.
Tabia held herself with pride. If she suspected Amalia or the Trista of judging her, it didn’t show.
“Excellent. Absolutely nothing wrong with a straightforward brute. Pardon my language. I mean that as strictly the highest of praises”
“Now you-” she waved her ledger at Amalia accusingly- “-you I imagine want something harder. Let’s hear it”
What could she possibly say that sounded convincing? Amalia truly hated being put on the spot like this. Should she say she wished she had been better at turning invisible when asked personal questions? It was the only thing she could think of.
“I really wish I had been able to talk to animals”
Amalia clapped a hand over her mouth. It had rushed out of her so fast! She didn’t know where the words came from. She hadn’t known what each new word was going to be even as she had said it.
“Don’t look so worried, my dear. There are no lies in this place. Good news, I think I have something for you,”
Trista looked down at her ledger.
“How about it girls? Exciting new life, or shall I let your souls pass into the great unknown?”
Tabia squeezed her sister’s hand before responding.
“Do we have to be born again? I really don’t think I can handle puberty a second time”
“Ha. Good form, that woman. No. You will be the persons that you are now. I am offering you the opportunity to live and grow, rather than just become a memory”
Sharing a look, the sisters nodded to one another. “Yes” they replied to Trista.
“That’s all I need to get you started. The two of you are now amongst my Chosen. This will require both very much and very little of you. I am sending you to Amacore. A planet that belongs to a Red Velvet cake universe. I do hope you enjoy my little joke when you see what I mean. When we speak again will largely depend on you. Farewell and good luck. Closing your eyes now would be a very good idea”
Amalia’s world exploded in iridescent shades of blue and white. It was beautiful.