Chapter Two: I Took the Right Road, but I Must Have Took a Wrong Turn
Marc stared at the message, oddly framed in a small rectangular box floating a few inches in front of his eyes. Suddenly the white space surrounding him flicked out as though someone flipped a light switch. One moment was standing in an empty white void with only this one strange message box floating in front of his face, the next he was in a small, cramped but very normal-looking office. He was now seated in a cheap and uncomfortable office chair with his back to the door. In front of him was a set of large file cabinets flanking a spartanly bare desk. Seated behind the desk flipping through a file with papers was a slightly familiar, but wholly unexpected person.
He looked dumbfoundedly at Mary Lopez, the HR manager seated in the very office that he had just been fired from. Marc was dumbstruck. Had he experienced some kind of episode? Was the drive back and the truck just a hallucination? Did he have some kind of stroke and he had been sitting there in some kind of coma, drool dripping down his chin after being told that he was losing his job? That would have been a pretty embarrassing thing to happen on his last day. Mary was just casually leafing through some papers as though nothing unusual was going on. He mentally struck the stroke/brain aneurism theory from the list of possible explanations. Then he thought about it again. Maybe he was still hallucinating. Everything seemed perfectly normal. The familiar smell of the office, the dull hum of the air conditioning coming from the central vent on the wall. Nothing seemed out of place. Whatever was happening, it just didn’t add up.
Marc tried to compose himself. This was obviously still the same office. He remembered the details from his earlier visit. The same lack of windows, the old file cabinets with tiny indecipherable labels stuck to each drawer. He recognized the HR manager. He had seen her many times around the office. When he had been hired she had even delivered the new employee introduction during his training. Whatever was happening, he thought he needed to take it slow and try to figure things out. But then he noticed something that made his blood freeze in his veins. The strange box burned into his vision was still there in front of his face, glowing with the same disturbing declaration.
【YOU HAVE DIED】
Marc could feel the panic again rising in his chest. What was going on? Was he really dead? Was this heaven, or… the other one? His pulse started racing and he could feel his chest start to tighten up. Noticing his tremors, Mary looked up at him and did something he had honestly never seen her do before, even during his orientation. She smiled at him. She had never struck him as unpleasant or mean in the past. She just had that older, middle-aged demeanor that spoke of a life with little joy and endless small problems. Her usual expression screamed, “I’m very tired, please do not add to my mountain of disappointments.” Now he was starting to seriously freak out. Looking into her smiling visage, he felt the need to make some kind of excuse. An excuse for what, he had no idea. He opened his mouth but his words got caught in his throat and he sat there, mouth agape. Then the woman in front of him started to speak.
“Hi Marc”, she said.
“I bet this is all pretty confusing. But don’t worry, I’m here to explain everything”. The bright cheerfulness in her voice blew away every thought in his head. Who was this person?
“I understand that things might seem a little strange right now. This is a really big and complicated transition, and I’m here to help you get through it”.
Marc finally managed to find his voice, ”Am I really fired?”, was all he could think to say. He instantly regretted that outburst. It sounded stupid even as the words left his lips. Is that really the question he wanted to ask right now?
She looked at him with what seemed to be a sad and pitying face, but he couldn’t be sure because he had no memory of seeing a similar expression on her face before. “Well, technically the answer to that question is unfortunately yes. I’m afraid it’s a bit more involved than that though,” she admitted.
“Let’s just say that is the wrong question for the situation we are in here, in fact, the changes we need to discuss are far more consequential than your former employment. But it’s not a bad thing, what I want to talk to you about is a great opportunity for you. It involves a chance to do more than you have ever imagined possible.” Now she was laying it on like an army recruitment officer.
“To start with, I am not Mary, your friendly office HR lady, and we are not sitting in the HR office of a call center in Deming, New Mexico, or anywhere in the world for that matter”. Then she dropped the bomb. “You see, that message you can see in front of your eyes is true, you are really dead. Smashed like a bug on the front grill of a delivery truck. I am merely a guide to help you to transition to your next step.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
She let that sink in for a moment.
“Then who are you, an Angel?”, Marc asked in a quiet voice.
Mary gestured to the room around them. “Ha! An Angel? That’s a couple of levels below my pay grade Marc. Your special situation warrants my direct involvement. This is all just a mental construct I made to make it easier to have this conversation. A type of simulation where we can have a comfortable chat with less distractions.”
“Then where are we really? Who are you? What is going on?” Marc demanded, starting to feel the grip on his calm slipping.
“Where we are is hard to explain in a way you can understand. Depending on how you look at it, this could be an illusion created by your own mind, or it could also be called…”, Mary, half rolled her eyes. “…you could call it heaven, if that’s what works for you.”, she spat out with a sigh.
“Then you are not the HR manager who just fired me, and this is not the office?” Marc looked at the woman with a new intensity.
“Wait… are you God?”
“Well, to be honest, I’m not-not Mary”. She took a deep breath, “Maybe I should say I am not ‘just’ Mary. In order to exert some influence over this world, I need to use mediums that I can influence and use to focus my authority. It’s a lot of work to maintain them and it is not very fun to hang out on this backwater planet so I usually just leave this one, HR specialist, Mary Selina Lopez, age 36, divorced, with 4 children, ages 5, 9, 16, and 19, on auto-pilot.” She leaned back and admired her nails while she said the last part.
Marc scrutinized the woman. 36? He was sure she was at least 40.
Immediately she looked up and scowled at him. Then she went back to brushing her nails with the back of her wrists.
“Mostly I just come here to monitor things and make sure this plane doesn’t develop any flaws or defects that could upset the local existential matrix.”
“The what?” Marc blinked as he refocused. He was having difficulty keeping up with the discussion and tried to remember what she had just said.
“Nevermind. We’ll come back to that. Don’t worry, I’ll explain everything. We have all the time in the world after all.”
Marc didn’t like the sound of that last part.
“So you are God?”
“Yes, sort of. Well, not really, but maybe it would help move things along if you just thought of me that way. It’s a close enough approximation from your perspective.
“But you are also Mrs. Lopez too?”
“Yes, well, more like Mary is also me, sort of.”
“And I am dead.”
“Yes, very much so, sorry to say.”
“And I am still fired.”
Mary cracked a sly grin, “See, you catch on fast.”
Marc took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds while he gathered his thoughts. Then he looked at her.
“Then what is all this for? Do we just sit here and discuss my work performance and talk about company policies for the rest of eternity? Is this actually Hell after all?”
At that, she let out a short cackling laugh.
“Ha! I knew you were a good choice. You have half a brain at least.”
Mary swiveled her chair around and pulled open one of the file cabinets. She reached in pulled out another folder and laid it on the empty desk between them. She opened it and pulled out a small pamphlet. It was one of those laminated, tri-folded deals they stick in hotel lobbies that advertise some cheesy local tour attraction or service. She unfolded it and placed it in front of him. The whole face of the page looked like a vacation advertisement. It featured a large photograph of rolling green hills with a huge snowcapped mountain in the distance. Smaller photos depicted a farmhouse with many people gathered around in some kind of festival, children running around in front, smiling. The buildings and clothing of the people looked like some medieval theme park, and the scene was completed by the Renaissance-style font proclaiming “COME TO ISEKAI!” across the top.
Mary stared straight into his eyes and in a dramatic tone intoned “We have a new job for you.”
Marc blinked. “A job?”, the word feeling gross and bitter on his tongue. “Who’s ‘we’?”
“Yes, a very important job.” She retorted sweetly, ignoring the second question he had asked.
“What kind of job?” He said, slowly picking up the brochure.
“It’s nothing difficult, one that you are more than qualified for.”
“How much does it pay?” He asked slowly drawing out the words, the skepticism coating his words like batter on fried fish.
“Nothing.”
“Huh?!?” He asked blinking, hoping he had misunderstood.
“It doesn’t pay anything.” She answered cheerfully,
“Then can I turn the offer down?”
“No.” Her Cheshire grin grew so much her eyes had turned into slits.
“Then what do I have to do?” Marc said, playing along.
“Nothing too hard. In fact, you only have to do one thing.”
“And that is?” He followed up cautiously.
“Simple, just don’t die.” She answered.
“Huh?”
“Don’t die. That it. That’s all you have to do. Easy, right?”
Marc tried to understand what this crazy woman-slash-deity had just told him. Then, like a punchline to a joke, his eyes flipped back to the floating box burned into his vision. The declaration, now an absurd joke capping off an apparent hallucination he had had while experiencing a stroke after being fired.
【YOU HAVE DIED】
“You just need to avoid dying. That’s your new job.”, she repeated, now with a giant grin on her face.
Marc continued staring at the three words floating in the air, realizing how messed up the situation was.