A date with destiny - Chapter 1
The God of Death and Commerce, the reaper, the merchant of lives, was bored out of his mind. He didn’t understand why she had to live so far away from their section of the mortal world. He also didn’t understand why it must be done in person. The person in question, a girl named Melanie, was the goddess of fate and stories in their realm. However, she lives a fairly simple life, serving coffees in a small city in the many smaller realms beneath the mortal realm. The only problem is that she lives literally worlds away from his work. He practically has to take a vacation every time he wants to see her. Which is a hassle because they are supposed to be dating, after-all. Its almost a month trip, going many times faster than any traditional car might go. Plus, because he is a cheapskate, he is using economy class.
The grumpy reaper thundered to the ticket booth at the rail-line here in the city, and quickly paid his return trip next week. He preferred to schedule things well in advance, and hated surprises. Melanie, goddess of fate and stories, was his girlfriend, and in many ways his opposite. Her job as goddess required both being able to analyze probabilities on a massive scale, and intense creativity. So much so, that she loves surprises and being able to turn off her brain for some mindless fun. As such, said girlfriend loved to play pranks on her unsuspecting boyfriend whenever he came to visit, and this time was no different. The reaper, god of the dead, lord of commerce, collector of souls, merely grimaced when his entire body was dunked in a nasty, clinging, slime as he entered his girlfriends apartment.
To her credit, she did not spend much more than ten minutes rolling around the floor laughing her ass off as he tried to clean the slime off him. Once he got most of the slime off, he was greeted with a loving kiss, which considerably improved his mood.
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A few days later they are sitting in the coffee shop that Melanie works at and runs, sipping at their respective drinks. Now, you might think that, being a god, Melanie has more important things to work on than making and serving coffee, and you would be quite right. This job is more like her hobby. She lives and works here so that she can turn off from her actual job. Additionally, unlike the other gods, she does not have to constantly work on her ‘day job’. She goes to a few meetings, works with the other gods, comes up with a few hundred stories with the help of her employees, and she is done for quite a long time. In a way, she acts as more of a consultant than a ‘real’ god. Some of the other gods don’t like that fact, and dislike Melanie as a result. The reaper, on the other hand, has quite a history with this woman. She is the only of the gods in their pantheon older than he is, and actually was a minor god of another pantheon some time ago, when he worked under her. The other gods don’t know this, and merely think of her as an outsider. Regardless, she is professional and does her job well.
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The reaper has just finished explaining his basic idea to her, leaving her with a frown. “This will be a lot of work you have dumped in my lap Nathan” Nathan, the reaper in question, grimaces, “I know, I know. Thats why I came to see you in person. Its asking a lot of you, but we stand to make a lot off of this, possibly enough to tide us over until our realm recovers.” She sighs in response. “Its always money and profit with you. If you just did it and got it over with, it wouldn’t be all that long, and would result in less suffering for the people.” Nathan stiffens up at the last remark. “Melanie, they aren’t people, any more than characters in a book are people. Yes, they are often person-like at times. Saying such things can cause trouble; you know that.” His face is scrunched up with worry. Protesters and terrorists outside, and even inside the ring of realms have resulted on a crackdown from management. Saying things like that in public can result in fines and worse if you aren’t careful. Moreover, it is true to him. They may look and act like people, however a few choke-points in their logic prevents them from actually realizing their person-hood. Even if you told them the reality they lived in was manufactured, and showed them proof, they wouldn’t be able to process it. They are physically unable to progress past a certain level of technology, etcetera. Many critics claim that they are people anyway, and it is unethical, however, serving a content hungry population of quintillions of people takes priority over ethics in the eyes of the shareholders of the ring-realms.
She rolls her eyes. “I know that, I helped work on their neural architecture after-all. Still, they should be treated mercifully, regardless.” He nods at that. “I agree, which is why I had this idea. A quick cataclysm may be cleaner and easier, but would have a far higher casualty rate. Killian tells me a ninety to ninety-five percent death toll. I believe we can bring down that death toll to a mere seventy five percent, if this is handled right.” She takes a sip at her coffee at that, “Its not my decision anyway... I don’t like it, but ill get to work on it. Do you have any ideas on how to start it?”
Nathan, the reaper, god of death, commerce, accounts, and debts, grins at her coolly. “I may just have an idea...”