Chapter 1

So today's the day. The hot water pouring from the showerhead greeted me as I stepped underneath. It was a little too hot, but I knew that messing around any more with the temperature would only turn it too cold, and I preferred this. It helped wake me, though I'd had trouble falling asleep again anyway after waking up to a forgotten nightmare at 5am. As the water poured the sleep from my mind, my thoughts wandered to the same thing they had been increasingly focused on for the past few months. Today I would defend my thesis before a small group of professors, who would then get to decide whether I was worth the title of PhD. Rationally, I knew my work was solid, but the stress always brought some loss of confidence with it. Surely they understand if I make some mistakes after all it's very stressful they see nervous people like me regularly they can look past a poor presentation right but what if they don't I really need to make this work what if my presentation won't start for some reason or I get stuck in traffic then I can start over again OKAY STOP. I can do this. I got out of the shower, got dressed, all the while trying not to think about what might go wrong. It's not like that would be the end of the wor

White everywhere, so bright I wanted to close my eyes but I found I couldn't. What the hell, I muttered only to hear me think it instead of saying it. I turned around, and when I made full circle there was a man standing in front of me. He seemed as tall as I was, average height, and wore a red t-shirt with blue jeans. His hair was a messy mop of black down to his ears, and he looked at me with a friendly smile. I turned around and ran.

What the hell is this was I kidnapped what does this guy want with me?? I ran as fast as I could until I noticed that my feet were not slapping down on any floor and I felt no stress on my muscles, as if I was floating in mid-air. I turned around again, and the man was still about 10 feet away from me.

“Welcome” the man said, “this is all very strange to you but I need to tell you something. A minor administrative error occurred and your universe was popped because of that. My sincerest apologies”.

I stared at him, not quite understanding what he was telling me. “What the fuck do you mean ‘popped’?”. My lack of a voice did not seem to inhibit the man’s capacity of understanding me as he answered immediately in a voice that was more low-pitched than his slender build implied.

“Well, exactly that”, the man said with that stupid smile on his face as if he hadn't just told me everything I knew and loved was gone. “A slight oversight led to a series of events that resulted in your universe, along with its 3 trillion ‘intelligent’ -the man gestured with his fingers- inhabitants, to be torn apart instantaneously. You are here for reassignment as a way of compensation. You can be given a choice of what kind of world you would like to be reborn on and whether you would like to keep your memories, or if you'd like to die for realsies. Of course, the options are limited and for the sake of fairness, there will be disadvantages to some of the more popular options”

Halfway through his explanation I had stopped paying real attention. My family, my friends, my life. All gone. I sat there in a mixture of disbelief and denial, too stumped for grief. Acceptance came to me with surprising ease, though there was a mild worry in the back of my head, that I was made to accept what had happened by a force beyond my control.

I looked the man in the eyes. “So what, are you God or something?”

“Well, I am a god, just not your God”, he said with a face that seemed incapable of showing normal human expression. “Your universe was more of a sandbox simulation. You set a few parameters, like how the smallest parts of the universe-to-be interact with each other, and you press play. Then came the Big Bang. No god was involved beyond that point, really. And you did fine without them. Until you popped, of course, but that was hardly your fault.”

While a clear resentment towards this thing and its casual demeanor was steadily growing in me, the scientist within me -and the agnostic- were growing curious. I was talking to something beyond what I knew to be possible. “So you’re omnipotent right? How come you look like a human? If we’re the result of a simulation, was there even a plan for there to be humans? Are there other humans or intelligent lifeforms?” I asked, questions rising in my mind one after the other.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Without missing a beat, the entity spoke, “I am only as omnipotent as possible, without any of the contradictory qualities omnipotence implies. I cannot create a rock I cannot lift. I look human because it is a form you are comfortable with -I would have laughed if this weren’t so surreal- and because my true form is not something you can fully behold or understand. Humans were just a random occurrence, but one bound to evolve in the limitless omniverse. You are not the only humans, just the only ones in your universe. To answer more of your as yet unspoken questions, while your universe was created through a simulation, there are many such simulations some of which have strikingly similar outcomes to your own universe. Furthermore, we have all the time we need here since time is not really a thing right now and I am speaking, have spoken to, and will speak to all of your universe’s inhabitants at the same ‘time’. The ones capable of making a choice for their afterlife may do so, or may choose for a random allocation, which is also applied to those incapable of making a choice, yet who are still qualified as intelligent lifeforms.

I let that sink in for a little. “What has become of my loved ones? Can I choose to go back to them?

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Dave. Your relations with other lifeforms and the possibility of forming a group with them after your reincarnations might bring about a shift in balance of the powers-that-be in your new life. I simply cannot take the risk, and will have to place you all in a different universe. But worry not, there are plenty of universes.”

“Can’t you just turn back time then?” I asked of the non-human. “If you really are so powerful then surely there are other ways of mending this, ways that don’t lead to so much grief.

The god tilted his head slightly and spoke, ”yours is not the only universe. Turning back time to a point where the destruction of your universe is avoidable for the whole omniverse is both incredibly straining and ultimately useless. The mistake that led to this happened a long time ago. Turning back time to that point would effectively lead to your unbirth, and that of many generations before you. The ripple produced by the alternative path given to your universe and that of others would lead to many more lifeforms not being born. YOU may never be born, and your life will be over no matter how you look at it. This is the way to make most people happy. In a way, you should be glad the mistake was made. Had your universe never taken this path, it might never have led to you as you are now.”

I knew I had more questions, but a part of me wanted to get this over with. What use was knowing whether there was a heaven and hell? Any answers from a being beyond my understanding about a world that was gone for good would be useless to me in a completely new life. And I had grown frustrated enough with the emotionless, sterile demeanor of this guy -this thing- to want to get out of here ASAP. “How long will this take?”

“That depends on how decisive you are in making your choices for the afterlife. Or I could simply roll the die, and you have a chance of getting worse off than your worst choice would give you, or better than the best choice. That’s fifty-fifty really. There have been a few of your fellow earthlings who tried and will try to become powerful by rolling the die, thinking that surely THEY would end up on the right side of the coinflip. Some did and do, some did not and do not.”

I made my decision. I didn’t really care anymore. I would need to start over with my life anyhow. If I had my memories in the next life I might be able to make the best of it, but if I were incapable of doing so I might regret my memories of a better life. Without memories, I would simply be unable to regret any choice I made here and, in a way, be truly dead. Death or regret in the worst possible cases. That seemed alright to me after the literal earth-shattering news I had just received. Nothing to live on for anyways. “Roll the die”.

The being stretched out his right hand, and for a brief second I saw something form in there. Then the world was upside down, left was front, where am I what’s this banana dog doftiel goraandiaje and then with a SNAP everything was clear again and the man held a 20-sided die in his left hand.

“Pardon the side-effects of summoning pure chaos”, the man said with that eternal smile.”It is a little different from rolling a die in your universe. No influence from the ground it falls on, no influence from wind or infinitesimally small differences in weight distribution of the die. A perfectly equal chance for any of the infinite possibilities to come up.” The being tossed the die in the air, and it fell on the floor, like a perfectly normal piece of chaos.

When it stopped, I was unable to really read the outcome. I could see what was there, but the meaning eluded me, like reading individual raindrops as they fell. The smile on the man’s face wavered however, then turned even brighter. “Hunh, it seems that some of you indeed ARE luckier than others. Have fun!” And then I fell.