For Arthur, waking up was usually harder than this. Most days it was painful, a cross between the not-quite-healed aches of a late night and the bitter realization that he was about to have to get up, shower, and go to work.

This, though? This was another kind of waking up. A better kind.

This was how it felt after a mid-afternoon nap in an absolutely quiet house, surrounded by warm blankets and knowing that tomorrow was yet another day off. He wasn’t even sweaty. The sheets were softer than they should have been and somehow felt like they just emerged from a thousand clothes dryers all at once.

All in all, it was so damn comfortable that he almost didn’t mind that his last memory before waking up here was falling to the ground. The bed was so comfortable he almost wasn’t concerned about his recollection of a tight, shooting pain in his heart and a curiously numb left arm. Almost.

He sat up, forcing his eyes open to see a room that looked as good as waking up had felt. Everything in it was light-colored, not in a hospital room stark-white way, but instead in a calming pastel array of whites, light grays, and soft blues. The light was tinged with the same kind of soft twinkle that reading near a window on an overcast day had.

It would have been entirely too nice, if it wasn’t for the fact that he had just died.

“Now, now, don’t panic. Everything is going to be quite all right, I promise.”

“Where am I?” Arthur said, already feeling calmer somehow.

An old man was sitting in a chair by his bedside, just now folding a book closed and laying it down on a small table like he had been passing the time while waiting for Arthur to wake up. Whatever else he might be, the man had a talent for soothing raw nerves.

After a few moments of silence, Arthur ventured a guess, “Am I…”

“Dead?” the man said. “A bit, I’m afraid. Perhaps not in the most technical of senses, but in all the ways you mean, yes.”

“There’s a non-technical form of death?”

Although there were more important things to be concerned about at the moment, Arthur was far from immune to going off on rabbit trails. He might be dead, but he was also fully nerd-sniped now. The old man chuckled, apparently not put out by the question.

“Oh, yes,” the man said. “Dead is, well, dead. Your body dies, and your soul departs. There’s only a few destinations one might go, after that. Your soul left your body, yes. But rather than it leaving after your body died, it left just before. That means more options.”

“That was a heart attack?”

“Yes. Quite massive, I’m afraid. We had to move very quickly.”

As distressing as not-quite-dying should have been, Arthur was having a hard time being upset about it. His last week at work had been so stressful that it should have been unbelievable. The reason it wasn’t was because all his other work-weeks were equally bad, if not worse.

He had pushed through them, promising himself that he’d find the time to get a better job, or at least to figure out ways to make a more sustainable schedule. After years of unfulfilled promises to himself, nothing had changed. That kind of stress had to add up.

“Tea?” the old man offered. “It’s quite good.”

Arthur looked over to see the old man already pouring tea from a small teapot into a delicate cup. He didn’t know for sure if that pot had been there all along, but the tea really did smell wonderful. The old man added a small amount of cream to the cup, just the way Arthur liked his tea, and handed it to him.

“I thought about coffee, but it didn’t seem like that kind of day.”

“Don’t worry. This is wonderful. Thank you.”

It really was. Arthur liked tea, although he seldom had time to make it. This was the best he could remember having, a heavily spiced brew that felt warm in a way that went beyond temperature. He could almost feel the liquid relaxing his muscles. It was serene.

Then he messed it up for himself. He realized, all of a sudden, that his parents and siblings would know he had died. They were kind people. Loving. They weren’t going to take this easily.

And my job. My god. My project. It’s already behind. And I’m the only one who knows how it works, and it’s going to go to shit, and every one will be mad at…

“You look distressed, Arthur.”

Arthur jerked with surprise. He had stressed himself out so much that he had forgotten the man was there.

“It’s all right. Perfectly normal. I suppose you are thinking about your family?”

“Uh… yeah. And my job.”

The old man took a sip of his tea.

“I won’t pretend your family won’t be sad. But if I read your profile correctly, they have families of their own, correct? People who love them?”

They did. Of all the people close to him, Arthur was the only one who had gone down the workaholic path. The others skewed on the life side of work-life balance. They were people with friends and family and lots of hobbies. He didn’t doubt they’d mourn him, but they’d be fine, eventually. With a sigh of relief, he realized that while they liked him, they didn’t exactly need him for anything. They’d be just fine.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“As to your job… was this project important? Making a new medicine? Something that would save lives?”

It was a leading question, but the old man wasn’t wrong. At worst, the project would fail, but nobody would die over it. At best, it would go on without him and make someone he didn’t even like that much a little more money.

And, he realized, he didn’t even really work there anymore. All the tension vanished from his body as the truth that the world would go on just like it had before washed over him.

Arthur sighed and stretched, enjoying the exquisite bed and tea just a little more than should have been possible.

“Good,” the old man said, smiling approvingly. “That’s more like it. Now, on to business, I’m afraid.”

“It’s all right. So am I going… upstairs? I guess? Or…”

“Downstairs? No, I’m afraid this isn’t quite like that. You aren’t fully dead, after all. Of course, you could choose to die just to see which option you’d end up with, but both are awfully final.”

“You can make a different offer? Are you…”

“A god? I’m afraid not. Just a man with a job, so to speak.” The old man sipped his tea and sighed. “But as far as the offer goes, yes. For reasons I can’t explain to you and to accomplish goals you can’t know about, I can make your death’s lack of finality much more permanent.”

“Immortality?”

“No, but a new body. A different life. One you’d have more say in.”

Arthur sipped his tea and considered this. There was, of course, a rule that afterlife was going to be much better than regular life. Whatever heaven might be waiting for him, should he get in, might be the best possible choice. It was heaven, after all. But something kept him from leaping at that option.

“Sir?”

“No sirs, please. But what would you like to know?”

“Would you say I had… enough life?”

The old man’s eyes widened a bit, and he set his cup down as he considered this.

“That’s quite the question. I’m not sure how to answer it.”

“Your best try is fine.”

“I’d say you had a short life, one that you didn’t give yourself very much time to enjoy. Enough is different for every person, but…” He paused, hesitating.

“It’s okay. That’s about what I thought, too,” Arthur said. He swung his legs from beneath the bedding and sat facing the man with his legs hanging off the mattress. “I think I’d like to take another shot at it.”

“Splendid. I’m not allowed to influence decisions before they are made, but now that you’ve made yours, I can say that I don’t think you’ll be sorry.” The old man looked distracted for a moment, his eyes focusing downwards at nothing in particular. “I’m going to send you some information in a moment. Please don’t be alarmed by the format. I assure you it’s quite harmless.”

A small screen suddenly opened midair in front of Arthur’s face. Under normal circumstances, it would have startled him. As relaxed as he was at the moment, it registered as a mild surprise and nothing more.

Terms of Relocation

In accordance with his assent, Arthur Clarendon (hereafter the Transmigrator) is offered an opportunity to transmigrate to a different world, realm, or combination of the two.

1. A new body will be provided, as close in appearance and form to Arthur’s previous body as possible. Some alterations and differences may occur in ways that the Transmigrator would consider to be beneficial and positive.

2. The body will be youthful enough to enjoy a long life, but per guidelines, it will also be an adult as judged by the culture into which the Transmigrator is transmigrating.

3. The Transmigrator will retain all of their memories, but any memories that would allow the Transmigrator to destabilize the host world, such as knowledge of how to construct a thermonuclear device, will be blurred.

4. The Transmigrator will be restricted from revealing details of their old home to inhabitants of the host world in any scenario where the communication of those facts would be harmful or destabilizing to the host world, its inhabitants, or the Transmigrator themselves.

5. To the extent possible, the world that the Transmigrator is introduced to will be one in which they have a good chance of reasonable success.

As per condition five, the Transmigrator has been granted some level of influence over the type of world they are sent to. The Transmigrator is able to influence one element of the selection process by emphasizing a specific word.

For example, a daredevil might emphasize the word “danger” and find themselves in a world where danger is the norm while another person who desires love might emphasize “love” or “romance.”

The precise world chosen will, to the extent possible, be one that is suited to the Transmigrator’s stated preference. It should be noted, however, that some level of accommodation might be required on the Transmigrator’s part if a suitable world is not available.

“I don’t know why they still include that last bit,” the old man said. “The variance in things people wanted was never that large to begin with, and these days there’s so many worlds that it hardly comes into play at all.”

“Can I quote you on that?” Arthur asked. “Legally, I mean.”

“Oh, heavens no. I’m a salaryman, Arthur. I don’t supersede that document at all. But for what it’s worth, I’m a salaryman who isn’t trying to trick you.”

Arthur believed him. In the worst case, that belief was coming from some magic in the tea or the room influencing his feelings on the matter. But if that was the case, he didn’t see himself having much choice anyway. It was much nicer just to believe the man was on his side.

“Have you given any thought to your new world?”

“What’s the most popular world that people choose?”

“The most popular word isn’t one you’d understand, actually. But the most popular word from your world is ‘adventure’, and it’s the most popular by far. We’ve seen a sudden surge in ‘harem’ recently, but we do our best to discourage that.”

Harem, at least, was easy to disqualify. Arthur got the appeal, but all the anime and shows he had ever seen with that focus left him slightly queasy in a way he couldn’t explain. Adventure was much more appealing, really. He could have a sword, or do magic, or something. Dungeons could be cleared. Loot could be hoarded.

But that didn’t seem quite right, either.

As much as he liked adventure in stories he read, he had never much wanted to actually do the deed himself. The reality of adventure didn’t really appeal to him. Some other guy could sleep in tents and fight giant mosquitos.

“Any ideas?” the old man asked. “I don’t mean to hurry you. We have all the time you need. But I can help, if you’d like.”

Arthur thought about it. The prompt had assured him that he would arrive as an adult, and he tried his hardest to remember the last time he was happy, truly happy, as an adult on Earth. It wasn’t college, certainly. That had been almost as busy as work, somehow. And work itself had been miserable, always just one more miserable step towards success after the other.

In his newfound clarity, he suddenly realized the last time he had felt content. It was in a place like here. A calm room, a pleasant conversation, soft cloudy-day light, and a good cup of tea.

“I don’t know if you can do this, but I think I have my word,” Arthur said. “Is it possible that you could do something nice?”

“Nice?” the old man said, beaming. “Yes, I think I can do a great deal with that.”

And he did.