Today was just an ordinary day, on ordinary old Earth. I got out of bed, strapped on my shoes, and headed out to work. I then immediately stepped back inside my house, put some clothes on, and then headed back out again.
Work is only about a 15 minute walk from my house, so I don't really need to take my car. Honestly, everything I need is within a small commute from my house, I've been thinking about cancelling my car insurance. I looked around as I walked, appreciating the ordinariness of everything.
I'm walking on an ordinary sidewalk, next to an ordinary road, on my way to my ordinary job. Ordinary cars pass by, except for the yellow ones, they're assholes, but I suppose that's ordinary too. Ordinary housewives are kicking their ordinary snot nosed brats out the front door, making an ungodly racket.
I suppose I should describe myself, seeing as all you know about me right now is that I have a penchant for appreciating ordinary things and streaking. Yes, streaking, because I sleep in the buff. Also, I am buff. Seriously. I'm not one to brag, but I've got a six pack, and I run a few miles every day, in addition to my daily commute.
Wait, I just remembered something. Oh, right. None of this really matters, given what's about to happen on this pleasantly ordinary day.
I'm a tad OCD. As I was walking, I happened to spy a loose stone in the cracked sidewalk. It was jutting up above the rest of the sidewalk, truly a tripping hazard. Being the kind hearted gentleman I am, I walked up and MASHED that sum bitch back into it's place, removing one hazard for everyone's sake.
And then...well, did ya read the title? Yeah, everything exploded.
I don't mean that literally, as in, not everything in the world exploded in their own seperate explosions per item, as in every pencil in a pack exploding seperately. I really mean to describe one huge explosion that blew everything all to shit. Just thought I'd clarify that.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to stick around to witness the no doubt bad ass explosion, because I was dead. Yup, I didn't even make it through the first chapter. Shit sucks.
Dying isn't terribly difficult, I've noticed, as in the becoming a dead person part. Afterwards though, it's a tad rough. Imagine yourself finally noticing the earth's rotation, a couple hundred thousand miles an hour or whatever it is. Now imagine noticing earth's rotation, and then becoming detached from it, while hurtling in a straight line towards a bright white light. Now imagine a chicken sandwich. Now you're hungry. I digress though.
Once you're done hurtling through the tunnel, you abruptly stop on the other side of that white light, and you're in your respective heaven etc. Blah blah blah religious mumbo jumbo each faith has different heavens. I personally don't know what happens if you go to a respective hell, but I'd imagine it's the same process but less comfortable.
I hurtled to a stop, and looked around me. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to look at, because there were four grey, solid looking walls surrounding me. Under my feet, which I abruptly noticed were missing, was a solid looking gray floor. I was beginning to notice a trend here.
Looking straight up, luckily, there was NOT a solid looking græy ceiling. My mouth agape, all I could do was stare, dumbstruck. The swirling galaxies, the burning suns and molten planets, the gaseous giants and far away stars were all laid bare to my sight. At that point in time, it was easy to realize just how small a person really is.
If you haven't been to the country, I recommend it. Find a friend with a farmhouse, or even just drive your car out there, and have a look at the night sky. Stay away from civilization, all the light pollution will dim your sight. Go on a crisp autumn night. Bring a telescope if you like, but more importantly, don't forget to bring a towel, and just lie there, and have a look. If you're a tad introspective, you may get how I felt at that moment.
Some of you may be wondering why I could greet my missing feet with equanimity, and be awestruck by the heavens. Well, there was a bit of an overwhelming feeling of surreal. Honestly, I can't really account for myself in the circumstances. Could you?
About the time my non existent neck started hurting from trying my best to look straight up, something blotted out the view. A woman's head, bigger than the ceiling that was neither grey nor solid looking, was peering down at me. Long, flowing locks of golden hair, beautiful noble facial structure, a deep emerald green pair of eyes, a shining white tooth. Yes, she had one tooth. She's a god, aight?! She does what she wants.
"CAN YOU UNDERSTAND MEE?" -??
"YES I CAN UNDERSTAND YOU!!" - Me
"I AM BIG MOJO GODDESS. ME ANGRY YOU END WORLD. YOU NO GO HEAVEN. YOU GO DIFFERENT WORLD. YOU DO BETTER." -Goddess
"You know, I can speak perfectly clear English." - Me
"Oh. My bad. You were so small, I assumed your mental faculties matched." - Goddess
"Happens to me all the time," I said with a straight face.
"Well, either way, I'm still pissed. Seriously, what the hell man? Do you know how hard it is to make a world, and keep it running the way I did? The entire thing was a clusterfurk of massive proportions! Then you just HAD to go and hit the self-destruct button, and blow everything to shit!" - Goddess
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I just kinda stared at her, once again dumbfounded. "...self destruct button?"
"Well yeah, every good invention has a self destruct button. You people have 'em too, remember?" -Goddess
My non existent head started hurting. " Alright. So, you're pissed I hit the self destruct button. My bad. I'm sorry about that. Anyone could have hit it though, honestly, it was just sitting there in the middle of the sidewalk. Why did you even put it there?"
"Sidewalk? No, it was buried a couple hundred miles beneath the surface?" -Goddess
My mouth gaped a little bit. The goddess looked at me, and then just sighed.
"Yeah, I get it. It was tremendously bad luck. You didn't do it on purpose, you just happened to put the right force in the right place, and managed to press the switch enough to set off the whole shebang. You kinda did accidentally commit genocide on a few thousand different species though. I can't exactly put you in a Heaven, and you don't deserve to go to Hell, in my opinion, which is the only one that really matters. -Goddess
"Can't you just put it back the way it was?" -Me
"It's not that simple..there are a limited number of souls to go around, it took me forever to accumulate all the ones I had stockpiled on Earth, and now that they're free they go back into the big potluck in Main Heaven." - Goddess
"So essentially you could make the world again, but there'd be no souls on it." - Me
"More or less. I don't really want to rule over a zombie world, there are already too many of those where lesser gods are sulking. I suppose it's time I take a vacation. It's been a few eons."
I nodded sagely. "So, I can't go to heaven, and I don't belong in hell. So, what's this different world like?"
"You'll enjoy it, I think. You seemed like a pretty smart dude, and dudes like games right? Well, this world has some cool tricks in it, you can probably do much better in this new one anyways. I'm having a friend do me a favor, letting you in, so for my sake, don't blow this one up, 'kay?"
I sighed. "You blow up one planet.."
She smiled, looking benevolent despite her mirth. "Alright, I got a long trip ahead of me to get to edge of the universe in time for lunch, so I gotta send you packin' dude. This might suck a little bit." -Goddess
She reached into the box I was stuck in with one massive hand, grasping me firmly. She then tossed me into the air, grabbed me by my leg, which had come back at some point, and rearing back, tossed me with all her no doubt god like strength.
Dying isn't terribly difficult, I've noticed, but alright I've already done that gag once. Anyways. Pew pew, I went flying like a freaking laser, millions of miles an hour, bright white light again. Coming through the light, I found myself floating in orbit around a planet, much like Earth. Blue seas, large landmasses, a few scattered groups of islands. It was a big place, much like planets usually are. I know, terribly descriptive.
Either I, or the planet, depending on how self important you are, slowly revolved, and I was able to see a few continents. One shaped like a boot, complete with cowboy spurs. It was kicking towards another continent shaped like a goldfish bowl. In the north, there was a perfect circle of frozen ice. To the south, a perfect circle of hard packed earth and inferno, flames spewing everywhere. As the planet slowly revolved, I thought I saw a slight shimmer on a section of ocean, but it was hard to tell, given my lack of experience observing planets.
Having seen all I could, I waited impatiently for something to happen.
And waited.
and waited...
"HELL FUCKING O HERE?! TRYIN TA REINCARNATE!!" - Me
Faintly, I thought I heard a snicker, and a slightly 'special' sounding voice, saying "Sowwy."
A blue text box has appeared!
"Welcome to Pungeea! Please select your starting continent!
- Distonia
- Ruthero
- Frozen Wastelands
- Flaming Wastelands
- ???? (Random)"
As the text box popped up, the continents below myself began to glow faintly blue, and their name's slowly spread over them. Distonia was the cowboy boot, and Ruthero was the gold fish bowl. I think the other two were self explanatory.
Given my lack of foreknowledge of the situation, I picked the goldfish bowl. It looked like a greener country, and therefore I was less likely to starve to death, right? ...right?
"Ruthero selected as starting location. Race will be pre-determined via first available birth slot. Class and stats will be determined during lifespan. Error. Soul found to have pre-set conditions. Gender automatically set to Male. Race type automatically set to Humanoid. All other parameters met. Please stand by for integration."
Once more through the tunnel I went, although this time was slightly slower, and wetter.
Being born isn't terribly difficult, but what comes after is a real mess. I'll skip the gory details for now.