Day 0
“Regrets, I've had a few.”
— Frank Sinatra
I try to scream, but a tangible force shoves the air back into my mouth, stifling it before it escapes my lips. After a desperately long moment of terror, I realize there are no headlights. There’s no truck.
There’s nothing. My world is white, and I don’t even feel my body’s basic movements, like breathing. Even the stubborn ache at the base of my spine that’s become like an annoying little brother over the years is gone.
Suddenly, a blue panel with white text flashes into existence before me. Its color scheme evokes numerous long-buried youthful trauma, making me yelp without a sound.
[Restart?
Yes / No]
“Yes.” I say, since nothing but hard restart helps when the blue screen of death hits. My panicked shout causes neither ripple nor sound, but the letters wriggle like tadpoles and dissolve to form the next string of words.
[Terrorist or anarchist?
Terrorist / Anarchist]
After my initial panic passes, I realize something is wrong. I’m lacking lungs, vocal cords, and everything else middle school biology once taught me I needed to speak. In fact, I’m lacking my entire body, but the words flash in silent menace before I consider the implications. I know one thing, the blue screen doesn’t want me to entertain random thoughts right now.
“Anarchist,” I barely make the call, and the message reforms itself into a new one.
[Rage?
Yes / No]
“Yes, I am still enraged, indign—” but the words blur and shift again. The BSD isn’t interested in my rant.
[Redo?
Yes / No]
This is a tough question. What’s the difference between Restart and Redo? Is it asking whether I wish to redo my life and act differently, knowing what awaits me and my family? Assuming that’s the question, I would most certainly do things differently. I could have lived a happy life in a mud hut with my wife and kids. We could have farmed the land and produced food for ourselves, maybe joined a religion supporting such lifestyle. I could have become Amich, for example.
“Yes,” I say after several moments of hesitation, hoping I would start my life over, or at least the part after escaping the elementary school pricks.
No such luck.
The world flickers. The terrifying blue screen of death dissolves, and I find myself disappointed. I’m neither in a brightly lit room, screaming my lungs out at doctors and nurses, nor am I in my locked childhood bedroom with a Prayboy magazine and hand lotion.
Instead, I stand in a long line of pale shades. Off to the side, a bunch of disgusting red abominations, which look like melting humans, are stoking several fires. I guess whoever is in charge rewarded my hard work and effort with eternal damnation without bothering to hear my take on the matter.
“Shit,” I say before the unknown force returns and muffles my mouth. Then another unfortunate sod pops into existence behind me, followed by dozens of others.
Try as I might, I can’t make out their features. I don’t know whether the white globs in front and behind me are humans, animals, or aliens. However, I clearly understand their initial curses and wails, but beyond their first word, hell seals their mouths, just like it did mine.
Apparently, Hades does not uphold freedom of speech. Not that humans cared about it much. Just as I start mentally dissing my species, the blue screen of death returns.
[You are a level 0 Anarchist, awaiting reincarnation.
You will face judgment and be reborn as a new sentient or semi-sentient life-form.
All our administrators are busy.
Your waiting number is 7.134.897.432.
Time until judgment - Eternity.
Thank you for your patience.]
I reread the message, realizing I must have sent the DMV guy straight into a new career here. I regret I can’t sigh before I dismiss the blue window and face the prospect of waiting in a seven-billion-people-long queue with surprising calm. I guess I’m used to pointless waiting, or maybe it’s because it drove me insane years ago.
After trying a few things, I realize my human rights no longer exist. I can’t make a sound, can’t leave the line, and can’t even move my glowing form, it happens automatically, as if I’m on an assembly line.
The only thing I’m free to do is watch the sanguine-colored melted goos, which might have once been human, stoke fires. The gruesome sight becomes boring and mundane after what felt like several years. Instead, after witnessing thousands of specimens perform the same monotonous task of throwing arms and legs to feed the fires I start to wonder about other, more sensible things.
Are arms and legs really that flammable? Don’t they have any other fuel? Where’s the smoke? What am I seeing all of this with, since I’m fairly certain I lack eyeballs? Did I always have three-sixty vision, or is that a new addition?
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
After god knows how many centuries, I see the end of the line. Another agonizing eternity passes, and only fourteen glowing blurs stand ahead of me. Then, a light shines before me, and I'm no longer fifteenth, but sixteenth in line. Lights keep cutting in front of me, and even though I’m just a glowing glob, rage wells up inside my metaphysical body.
As if prodded by my churning emotions, the blue screen reveals itself once more.
[Anarchist Level 0
To level up, openly execrate a person of higher status to their face, heedless of the consequences.]
Execrate? Really?
I stare at the blue panel with less loathing. Centuries ago, shortly after joining the queue, I realized why we called it the blue screen of death, and on some primitive level, I appreciate the ghastly humor. I dismiss the pop-up with another thought, and finally, after watching some twenty inbred swine cut the line, I’m next.
“Next,” a stern, female voice, dancing at the edge of familiarity, says, and the restriction on my mouth disappears, but before the invisible conveyor moves me, another glowing blob appears and takes my spot.
“Fuck your inbred swine mother,” I shout, and suddenly find myself facing an endless line of white lights, my mouth sealed once again.
[You are a level 1 Anarchist, awaiting reincarnation.
You will face judgment and be reborn as a new sentient or semi-sentient life-form.
All our administrators are busy.
Your waiting number is 8.394.184.637.
Time until judgment - Eternity.
Thank you for your patience.]
Over eight billion? How long have I been here? How much longer do I have to wait?
I dismiss the blue screen of death, but another appears.
[You have leveled up.
Select a defining feature within sixty seconds or a random one will be assigned to you.
Blunt - Bodies you inhabit deal increased damage with blunt weapons. Your choice affects your personality.
Sharp - Bodies you inhabit deal increased damage with sharp weapons. Your choice affects your personality.]
I got a level for cursing someone who cut in line? Really? And they were my superior? I guess they were, they appeared at the start of the line, not at the rear. I wait for several seconds, rereading my options, but despite my leisurely approach, the letters don’t give me the menacing flash, only a very real deadline. Unfortunately, the second reread doesn't make my choices any clearer.
Why would I care about dealing damage? That’s the first question that pops to mind after confirming my options. I’m a geek, and ever since I got divorced, I spent my days reading, gaming, or watching Newflix and anime. I hope my question is reasonable, but I dare not take a chance.
Sharp works for knives, swords, probably arrows, and such. Blunt enhances unarmed attacks, clubs, hammers, and probably bullets. Should I care about how it affects my personality? I think I was sharp in my past life. A lot of good that did…
I choose blunt. The screen changes immediately.
[Anarchist Level 1
To level up, slap a person of higher status, heedless of the consequences.]
Slap a person of higher status? I guess that will have to wait until I have hands. I shrug without a body, and with nothing better to do, I wait in line.
Show status window. Show stats. Menu. Blue screen appear! I summon thee! Frame on! I spent hours trying countless phrases, but the blue screen of death refuses to appear.
Another eternity passes, and I find myself gazing at the slithering melted mass, holding human limbs in its thin, oozy arms. It makes no sense. Why would arms and legs burn? Is that a tentacle?
Finally, I can once more see the end of the line. The inbred swine keep cutting ahead of me, but I’ve already grown numb to their shit, and eventually I get summoned by whoever is in charge of this mess.
I expect to see a demon, devil, or an angel, but instead I’m faced with my kindergarten teacher. The slightly chubby brunette is sitting behind a teacher’s desk, while I’m seated behind my tiny crayon-littered table, holding a paper with a drawing of two radishes and a carrot between them. She looks at me over her glasses, and her lip turns sour, revealing open disdain and disappointment. Back when this really happened, I believe she disdained the masterpiece called, ‘Things my pet eats.’ Now, I see I’m the focus of her disappointment.
I lower the paper and look around to see other administrators of hell. My blood pressure shoots through the roof after a single glance, even though my mock form has neither blood nor blood vessels.
“You’ve been a naughty boy,” my kindergarten teacher repeats the line from my childhood, biting her thick, crimson-painted lip.
I can still recall the feeling. When I was a child, she was the height of authority, but right now, she looks much less intimidating. A twenty-five-year-old with a white-tipped pimple on her nose seems like hell's lousiest attempt of instilling fear and exerting authority over me.
“Who do you think you are to judge me?” I ask, and she opens her mouth, probably to say her job is to judge me, but I don’t give her the chance. “What kind of cesspool is this place? You have ten bloody counters, but only you are working? Look at them! That fat-ass over there is eating noodles, that one is sleeping, and that one is drinking Smileoff straight from the bottle.”
“Stop speaking,” the kindergarten teacher thwacks her desk with a ruler. Despite myself, I jump from the sudden threat of violence. “This is a responsible, adult job, young man. People need their energy. They naturally need to eat, drink, and sleep.”
Her words and act are meant to cow me, but instead they make my anger surge even wilder. “That guy over there is having sex with his, his…” What are we clients, proteges, victims?
The last one sounds right, so I use the word, “Victim.”
“There are no regulations against intercourse with your case.”
“They are both men!” I shout, but she waves her hand at me, sealing my mouth.
“We follow the newest trends and fashions without discrimination. Now, we shall list the sins you have committed during your lifetime. You have urinated on your parents twenty-seven times, and defecated on them once, breaking the fourth commandment.”
The images flash before my eyes, and I try to shout, ‘I was a baby,’ but my mouth is sealed shut.
“You have committed theft seventeen hundred ninety-three times…”
Images flash before my eyes. I was picking flowers by the roadside. I was eight and found my schoolmate’s neat fountain pen, but I kept it instead of returning it. I was breathing in the scent of my high school sweetheart’s hair…
How is that a theft? What did I steal? Pheromones? But I can’t speak my indignation, and the array of absurd thefts, including over two hundred instances of charging my phone at a friend’s place without asking, keeps rolling on and on until it reaches its end.
“You have committed adultery thirty-two hundred fifty-three times…”
What the fucking hell? I won’t deny it. I have paid twenty-odd hookers for basic missionary work, but that was after getting divorced. I am a man. I have needs which a hand will never fulfill properly, and I always hired a different woman, so I don’t form stupid attachments.
The scenes play out before I can further consider the matter. I’m not failing the most wonderful human being I had the privilege of knowing and making love with for almost two decades. Instead, I’m eleven, my pants are down, and I’m watching a VHS with the Adolescent Mutant Pirate Turtles, the TV frozen on a scene with April O’Nail bent over, wearing a hot pink bikini.
Absurd accusations play out one after another. Situations no sane human would consider adultery keep flashing before my eyes. Then I get married. I’m twenty seven, in the shower, appreciating the mental image of my manager, a thirty-two-year-old busty blonde, who looked like she had won an Oscar for milf porn.
In my imagination, she just dropped a pen in the office. I’m not a saint. I admit I would have done something to her had she dropped that pen while wearing that mini skirt, commando-style, in front of me, or if she got stuck in a Xerox wearing similar clothes. BUT IT NEVER HAPPENED!
Finally, I boil over. Fury grips me, and I stand from my seat, the image of my kindergarten teacher, the one I’m currently seeing, overlaps with my mind’s eye looking at my manager’s juicy ass, posing and wiggling for me. I struggle against the disconnect between my senses and take two steps towards the pimpled bitch. My hand moves.
[You are a level 2 Anarchist, awaiting reincarnation…]
The notification pops up before me as the slap rings in the open office.