Where does that confidence come from?
It’s completely unfounded.
Power is like a poison after all.
It slowly creeps into every fiber of you body,
and when it’s settled in it destroys everything you love.
----------------------------------------
The manager was bored, though he was often bored. Raften the Overseer was his name. Overseer just being a fancy way of manager; it was his job to send human souls to the afterlife they earned and to deal with the ones who win the Afterlife Lottery.
Raften didn’t have a face. His body was like a ghost, with his torso in clear definition while his head was faded away into nothing. He legs also faded the further you went from his torso with his legs below the knees being in the same situation as his head: with nothing there.
For his secondary job he didn’t have to do much beyond reading. He never met the souls he routed to their afterlife. Here is how it looks for him:
The soul “John Smith” has been judged!!!
John Smith was a plumber in his life. He worked hard at his job. He was very honest about his practices and always tried his best to help the customer. He had a Wife that he was faithful to and three kids that he doted on. Cause of death: old age. Due to his behavior and character in life it has been determined that ‘James Smith’ has earned a place in Heaven.
Send to Heaven? |Yes| |No|
See? Secondary job: easy. It was always a quick summary of the person and he was required to read all of it. It was a job with a lot of reading. Unfortunately though it wasn’t a job that was actually needed, it was just something God gave him to do while he waited for his primary job, to become relevent. He had to meet with mortals that won the Afterlife Lottery.
The Afterlife Lottery was an interesting little thing; every mortal is entered into it the second they are born. There are two factors that determine if you win or not. The first is how you die. Every death is classified in different ways for example being the victim of a double murder suicide as a result of your ex-father’s drunken rampage is determined to be a ‘Tragic’ death.
The classification of your death depends on two things. The emotions felt during the death and the rarity of the type of death. A car accident is only ‘Semi-Tragic’ because they are often very quick, not allowing you to feel many emotions before they happen and because they are a very, common type of death.
The second factor determining whether you win is your ‘Time of Death’ (ToD). Your death qualifies you for a specific category like ‘Tragic’ once you qualify your ToD determines if you win or not. It’s essentially a window of time where if you die while qualifying for that category: you win the lottery. The higher rarity of classification the bigger the window of time for ToD is open and how often it shows up.
Based off these two categories you have a 1 in 100 chance of winning the ‘Martyr’ category but, only 1 in 985 million chance of winning the ‘Semi-Tragic’ category. People who die peaceful deaths don’t have any chance of winning. Literally, there is no ‘Peaceful’ category; the lowest category is that of ‘Semi-Tragic.’
There are a few more things to know about the Afterlife Lottery: If you have earned ‘Hell’ as your eternal punishment in your life time you will not be entered into the lottery. The second thing is a special clause that was implemented a few hundred years ago that even if your death was tragic if you died satisfied you wouldn’t win. For example, if you’ve seen Stur Wers the moment when Haan Soloo lets Kyloo Rin kill him would be tragic, but since Haan was satisfied with his death he’d have no change of winning the lottery. That clause had been implemented to deal with all the complaints.
Raften’s job when meeting with these people who win is to ensure they get to reincarnate in another place of their choosing. If they want to keep the memories of their previous life then they have to be sent to another-non-earth-world. This prevents people from using the knowledge in their previous life in ways they shouldn’t. The last person who did something like that ended up as an Oracle in Greece.
When winners are sent to the other worlds it is also Raften’s job to grant them their wishes. It is almost always a cheat skill of some kind because that’s what people usually ask for-that, and the random pervert here and there who wants a harem but, how it works is something like making a purchase at a store. Raften has a certain amount of energy or ‘money’ to spend on each person, and he has to use it all.
So that creates limitations on the power of the gift itself which prevent stuff like invincibility or immortality. It can be more or less anything: A skill, an object, a person, etc. There have been some creative people in the past but most ask for super powerful weapons or skills or something similar. It was almost never anything interesting, but for the random times when whatever they ask for doesn’t take all the ‘money’ up he can use his own judgement to decide how the rest should be spent, they get no say.
Raften glance at the alert that appeared in front of him. It appears that someone won the ‘Tragic’ Lottery for the first time since last year; and not just ‘someone,’ it was a fifteen year old kid. Rare for a teenager to win in the ‘Tragic’ category. Semi-Tragic was way more common (for how rare it was) with all the bad teenage drivers these days.
The paperwork he needed for the Afterlife Lottery winners wasn’t prepared yet, he’d have the kid wander around for a little while to buy time to prep it. IF he’d had it ready he could have had the kid appear right in front of him, but what’s the fun in that? He could even wow the kid when he came to visit!
******
James sunk further and further into the darkness until he felt some weight support his back. It wasn’t like he’d fallen onto it, but like it had risen to meet him. It was comfortable, and the persistent dull ache in his legs was -shockingly- gone.
He opened the eyes -that he hadn’t realized that he’d closed- and looked down.
He was being supported by some kind of faintly glowing plinth, or at least it looked like one. It was way too big to be an actual plinth, which were designed to support statues or vases, but it was certainly the same architectural style. He had landed in the center of the plinth and the edge was about 2 yards away from him at the closest. Beyond the plinth was darkness, unlike the darkness of shutting of the light in your room it looked more like smoke, he could see it roll, shift, and waver.
James slid his legs under himself and stood up…he…stood up?
Stunned he looked down at his legs, the legs he’d had for fifteen years. The legs that had kept him in constant pain, and had bound him to a wheel chair, the legs that had kept him from attending public school, the ones that had looked like someone had tried to recreate Frankenstein’s experiments on. Those legs-his legs, were whole.
Almost subconsciously he noted that he was wearing a white t-shirt, grey shorts, and was barefooted.
James slowly stepped forward and stumbled slightly. It was amazing. There were new born deer that were more elegant at walking than him, but he could walk! He carefully turned around -almost face planted- and began slowly making his way to the other edge of the plinth. It took a few laps but he got the hang of it enough to not make every step look like a drunk walk. It still wasn’t anything anyone would praise for grace, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care about that detail. After all, he had the rest of his life to practice now.
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After what must have been the thirtieth lap he turned an something was different at the other side: there were stairs. They looked like the were made from the same stone that the plinth was, and they were floating in the air with out any visible supports. Once he accepted the fact that stairs could appear out of no where the strangest thing was that smokey darkness had split and was clearly avoiding the light given off by the stone.
The whole situation he was in was extremely weird. Was this a dream? What was he doing before he got here?
Tracing back to the chain of events that got him in ‘The World of Fog’ he was surprised to realize that this was probably an after life of some kind. Thinking about it for a long minute he realized that he couldn’t bring himself to care about his own death, he certainly felt bad for his parents-they’d miss him, but hopefully they’d try to have another kid, one who wasn’t a failure like him.
To anyone looking at the situation it would be odd to accept death so quickly. They’d panic, or go into shock, or wish that they hadn’t died, anything! But to James, death had been a very real reality for years. Because of how fragile his legs were the fear that they would break in just the wrong way and pierce his arteries was a constant fear, it was also something the contributed to his death. Living with this weight on his shoulders James got used to the idea of death, and had long since accepted his own. It’s why he didn’t panic, or particularly react to being dead beyond:
“So this is what the after life is like. Not what I expected.”
The sound of his own voice was off, it didn’t echo like it would shouting in a canyon, and it wasn’t deadened by the fog, not it was more like the sound was…stagnant. Similar to how he imagined it would be like to be in a booth coated in sound absorbing foam. It wasn’t unnerving to him, but it was weird.
He slowly trod over to the stairs and put the issue of sound out of his head as he tried to figure out how to use stairs. Walking right off the bat wouldn’t work-he’d just fall, so he did a kind of crawling walk up the stairs. His hand were on the stairs and he was hunched forward as he slowly made his way up them. After a few steps he started to slowly stand up with each passing step until he was completely upright and slowly walking up on his own.
*****
10,865
10,867
10,869
He’d started counting steps a while ago and quickly discovered that it was a good thing that he appeared to have infinite stamina, or he would have been in trouble after the first hundred or so steps, and he only started counting after he’d walked for over several hours, so his current count was a ‘little’ lower than it should be.
The most interesting thing that had happened was when the incline of the stairs became noticeably steeper from step 5,011 to 8,872, and so shallow it was almost flat from 8,873 to where he was currently. It was actually flat enough for him to practice moving faster, and he’d even started skipping steps at that point.
Fortunately, he was still mostly content with the novelty of walking, or else he would have been bored out of his mind ages ago. He’d started counting mostly out of curiosity.
Finally, after reaching 14,950 steps he noticed something change ahead of him, there was another glowing platform slowly revealing itself from the smoky (or foggy?) darkness. He pushed down the urge to run and kept up his count, he stepped onto the platform with 14,999 steps.
“One off? Are they trying to kill people with OCD, or is the actual value something reasonable?”
A voice reached his ears from somewhere above his head, “No, I do that to mess with people who actually count. The real value is 19,999, it’s more fun to have that ‘so close, yet so far’ feel.”
Looking up James noticed a…floating body? He could see the chest wearing some kind of robe, but it lacked a head, arms, and legs. The weirder part was that he could see floating crocs where he assumed the feet would be, a giant pen floating just off center of where the head should be, and ink staining an invisible right hand.
The floating body continued his speech, “Well, it’s not that important in any case. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Raften the Overseer! Welcome to Trans’Du Niir!”
The body…Raften, extended his arms to each side like he was basking in the non-existent light, or praising the sun, and waited for James’ reaction.
What…should his reaction be? His main response was confusion, followed by curiosity; he really wanted to know why Raften was wearing crocs. After a moment’s hesitation he decided being polite would be the safe way to go.
“Um, thank you?”
“Don’t mention it kid!”
A heavy and awkward silence fell as they stared at each other. James was waiting for him to say more (and still curious about the crocs), and Raften was waiting to be showered with questions. After about ten seconds Raften cleared his invisible throat-clearly unable to take the atmosphere-and said in a smaller voice,
“Do you have any questions for me?”
“Yeah, why are you wearing crocs?”
“Hah?”
James was amused to note that his question had completely blindsided Raften, and the floating body had frozen in the air even his robes-which had been swirling in the non-existent breeze-had stopped dead. A few moments passed before Raften shook his invisible head like a dog and James watched the pen go flying.
“It doesn’t matter,” James could tell that he’d take the wind out of Raften’s sails, again, “I’ll just launch into the presentation.”
Raften reached deep into his robes and pulled out a giant pad of paper and quickly drew on it with a crayon-also produced from his robe-before turning it around. It was a poor drawing of what appeared to be a ghost, some kinda black smudge, a poorly drawn stick figure, a squiggly line, and at the far right some kind of flat line with a lopsided sun drawn above it and something that looked like a dying tree on the flat line.
Raften used the back of his crayon to point at the ghost first. Recognizing a long lecture incoming James had sat down crosslegged while he’d been drawing.
“When humans die they come to this place,” the pencil moved to the black blob, “‘Trans’Du Niir’ it is the in between place for mortals. It’s like a giant waiting room for deadies while God judges their souls one by one. The big guy doesn’t want any mistakes so he and his son personally meet with every dead person. It’s nice of him, but really inefficient. They’re behind schedule by about 1500 years at this point,”
Raften mumbled in a lower voice that James could clearly hear, “I know because he has me double check his work to stave off boredom.”
In his louder ‘presentation voice’ Raften continued his explanation, “And that’s where I come in! Since God is such a generous guy he created the Afterlife Lottery to allow mortals who died unfulfilled or dissatisfied because of tragedy the chance to reincarnate into another world! Well, technically you could reincarnate back on earth, but rules are rules and you’d have to forget everything.”
James raised his hand and cut in, “Yeah, I’d like to keep my memories, thank you.”
Raften used the crayon to give him a thumbs up, “Other world it is. Anyway,” he cleared his throat again and pointed at the stick figure, “My job is helping the souls who win the Afterlife Lottery settle into their new worlds, and to grant a wish to them. I’ll pick a world for you to land in based off a few questions I’ll ask you, and then we’ll work out what your wish should be. Sound good?”
James nodded, he didn’t have any preferences.
“Great! You’ve already answered the first question so, second question: do you want to land in a world with magic, or advanced technologies, or one more similar to your own?”
“Magic, I’ve loved the thought of it since I was a kid.”
Raften flipped to the next page of his pad of paper and used the crayon to scribble something down. James noted for the first time that it was pink.
“Third question: Do you want to stay human?”
“I’d prefer to, but if you need me to I can be non-human, it just has to be a humanoid like an Elf or Beast-Kin. No Orcs, Skyriim made me dislike being one, and I definitely don’t want to be a goblin or anything like that, sorry.”
“No, it’s fine! We’ll keep you 'human' then,” Raften noted that one down too, James had the funny feeling that the guy without a head was smiling mischievously, “Fourth question: Do you want to be in a world where you can gain levels like a video game character?”
“Yeah, that’d be great! I always loved the thought of being able to see hard evidence of training. The closest things we had on earth were tests, and those weren’t as satisfying.”
“I totally get it. I sneak video games in here occasionally, and I know what you’re talking about.”
“God doesn’t notice?”
“Nah, he totally does, he just let’s me get away with it. Moving on.”
They went through a list of questions. It was fairly short all things considered, just 20 questions. James felt like there was a joke somewhere in that thought.
“Now! It’s time for the fun part,” Raften said gleefully, “time to grant your wish!”
“What have people wished for before?”
Raften let out a long sigh and hunched a little, “Most of it’s actually boring. Just various cheat skills or what not. Please don’t be a pervert and ask for a harem, I beg you. It’s one of the most pathetic and expensive wishes. Definitely not worth the cost.”
“First: I’m not interested in a harem. Too much trouble. Second: cost?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this to you. Imagine that you have a bank account with 1000 dollars in it, and we have to spend it all. You get to pick ONE thing to spend that money on, and I get to pick the rest. Got a problem with that?”
“Maybe, are you going to pick things that’ll ruin my day?”
“No, I don’t get any kicks out of sadism.”
“Then I’m fine with it.”
“Good, what do you want to wish for?”
James sat back and thought, he thought of possible cheat skills and weapons, he thought of items and stat buffs, but then a thought popped into his mind completely unrelated to all of that: his parents. His gut sank as he thought about them.
He sat and pondered for a while before he looked back at where he guessed Raften’s head was.
“Could my parents be comforted about my death?”
A long moment of silence fell, but unlike the earlier ones this one felt…warm. Raften then chose that moment to burst into tears.
“What a great son you are!” James could see tears streaming down is invisible face, “Using your only wish on behalf of your parents! How wonderful!
“Sure, there’s no problem comforting them! It a pretty cheap one too, so I’ll pick something nice out for you!”
Raften reached up and began wiping the tears off his face as James cut in.
“Actually, can I request that you not pick stuff out for me that will make me OP?”
“Why do you want that?”
“I think, becoming strong too fast takes away from the pride you gain in reaching that point.”
“I can respect that, in a way. I’ll pick stuff out that will help you out and give you a path to become strong then. Do you have any more questions for me?”
“Are there any special rules or things to know before I go?”
“Yeah, you won’t keep your appearance or your name, I’m required to give you a new body, and the system that the world you going to uses won’t let you start leveling up until you turn sixteen, sorry, but you’ll have to kill a month, waiting.”
“That’s fine.”
“Anything else?”
“Why are you wearing crocs?”
“Get outta here!”
The floor shattered underneath James and dropped him into the darkness.