“The soul alone is peaceful and doesn’t require control. Our Mind and body are what impart emotions and can influence our soulscape. The body’s interpretation of the world is given to the mind to evaluate and mirror onto the soul. A mind can be trained to interpret the body’s signals however you want. So through our mind we can control both our body and soul. In short my child, stop thinking with your dick and don’t be an idiot.”
- God Emperor Nero to his 14th son when he found him battered, in his undergarments, and hanging from a wall sconce after hitting on a War Sister.
I looked down and saw that I was rising from a body… my body. As I rose, the world seemed to spin, and a thin gray haze replaced my surroundings with fog. Before long, all I could see was a cloudy expanse and I felt like I was spinning in a washing machine. I couldn’t feel my limbs or close my eyes. If this was the standard post-death pickup, hopefully some disgruntled housewives would start a letter-writing campaign.
Time passed and the fog darkened, transitioning into a void. From the darkness, lights started to come into view as the ambient haze faded away. I wondered if that was what I looked like, simply a little cotton candy ball that someone lit on fire. Some were larger than others, each a different hue. I’m guessing that the one which looked blood red was a real asshole. The only white ones I saw were tiny, and I assumed they were probably just kids. Most were just a little off-white with different shades including blue, green, even pink. As I have no idea what that meant, and I couldn't see myself, I let my focus move on and tried to see if there was anything else in the void. There wasn’t.
More time passed and nothing in my field of view changed. I wondered if I was supposed to be reflecting on my life or something. Giving it a try, I’d guess about 10 minutes passed without anything changing. I had no real complaints, all my life's hate was already vented on the internet, like it was supposed to be. With nothing to do, my mind wandered. I spent my time making up memes in my head. When that got old, I held mock debates with myself. Topics included whether or not vaping should have been considered smoking, and who was the best Doctor Who.
In the vast expanse of the void, I came to realize a fundamental truth. There was nothing crueler than forcing someone to spend time away from their phone.
Gradually, I noticed a change.
My fellow light-balls and I started picking up speed and condensing into a stream heading upward. My sense of anticipation rose as the feeling of movement was like heading toward the top of a roller coaster. Looking up, I started to see several streams condensing into a river hurtling toward a giant glowing rift. I couldn't help but think that this was a little too cliche, and any sense of excitement I had withered with the realization that after death you really saw a 'bright light'.
Now in a stream, we were beginning to bunch up. I felt like I was on a subway with everyone’s shoulders pushing into my personal space. Since I didn’t have a body, I couldn’t do anything to alleviate the discomfort. I wasn’t freaking out, I was just pissed that people were still annoying me even after I was dead.
Apparently being dead was like being really stoned, all muted and fuzzy, while the world around me was moving too fast. I felt like I finally understood the “Grateful Dead” stoner lifestyle.
OK, here we go. I was coming up on the main river. This was like when I was learning to drive and I had to merge onto the highway for the first time. Surprisingly, I was pretty stoned then too. Yep, there was the repressed panic in my gut, along with the feeling of 'fuck it', and then I was barreling in while hoping for the best.
I fought to influence my flight and 'leaned' into the merge. My mind seemed to clear a bit of its fuzziness, yet not as much as I had hoped. Worse yet, speeding forward worked a little better than I intended, and I went right through the river. As the river was huge, I had figured I would have been swept into it, but since taking control of my flight I couldn’t seem to feel the force of the river anymore. I felt something similar to panic since the cotton candy flame things were all over the place and I could no longer tell which direction was forward.
Suddenly I shot out into the void, and I used my newfound maneuverability to instantly spin around and see the river continuing toward the light. Unfortunately, I’d picked up some serious speed and was now heading farther away from the river and its destination. Without any better ideas, I put all my effort toward slowing down and reuniting with my fellow light-balls. I tried to angle my trajectory toward meeting them back at the light.
Approaching from around 45 degrees off-center, I was once again heading toward the giant light. I figured I was back on track.
Getting closer and closer, I saw that all the light-balls had merged into a solid beam of multi-colored plasma. Not going to lie, it was beautiful and held my attention longer than it should have. Eventually, I turned my attention back to where I was going, and looked at the light which now resembled a world-sized gateway. Within the light, I could see doors opened on the sides and the light was spilling out the front. Unfortunately, I couldn’t exactly see what was on the doors as I was currently heading directly toward the flat edge. At first I was disappointed to miss out on seeing what was written, but then I realized that what heading toward the door actually meant.
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The feeling resembling panic returned, and I tried altering my course back toward the river. But I had gained too much speed, and my turning radius was no longer sufficient to alter my course. I’d been picking up speed the entire time I had been staring at the soul river. Now, I felt like I was trying to turn a plane. Struggling was futile, as I could lean to swerve slowly, but not slow down to turn any quicker.
In a flash of insight, I understood. Being an asshole and trying to take control of my merging without having to suffer traffic congestion, was probably “fighting against fate” or some other such nonsense.
These thoughts flashed through my mind while I went headfirst into the edge of the door and careened off into the void.
Lamenting on how that could have gone better, I resigned myself to having to swing around for another pass.
After finally stabilizing my flight, I looked back at the door and found myself completely confused. I could see that there were now multiple doors, with multiple rivers, being fed by multiple streams. The more I looked around, the more doors I saw. Thousands upon thousands of them, and they all looked the same. At least now that I was looking at them from angles, I could see that there were different designs on each of them. The sheer scale of what I beheld was amazing. I could see them all clearly. It was like I could see infinitely far, with perfect clarity, until my sight line found something in the void.
It took some time to get a handle on my new perspective. The void I had been in was now gone, and in its place was a sea of doors. Each river heading into a door was formed from nothing. I couldn't see where they began. It was as if they just appeared out of nowhere, only to end in a door. It was like a never ending sea of umbrellas.
And as I pondered on the infinity of existence, I realized I had lost my door. This was an unfortunate development, which had me spinning around, looking for an information kiosk.
Without any other options, I floated around making sure that I didn’t get too close to any lights, while looking closely at the doors in order to see if I could recognize anything. Each of the doors had weird sculptures and designs with fantasy themed images. Well, they weren’t all fantasy-based. Some of them were covered with tentacles, and those I stayed far away from. I even noticed one or two with bird themes. Others had flowers, trees, cogs, symbols, and numerous things I couldn’t even begin to recognize. While some of them were so abstract that I had no clue what I was looking at. But as I had never actually 'seen' my door, I remained completely lost.
Yet, among my many virtues was patience. I took great pride in my ability to stand in front of a Chinese restaurant menu and look at every single dish while slowly deciding which one I felt like eating that day. With that being said, I never picked anything fancy and almost always ended up with broccoli beef.
While floating through the infinite expanse of doors, completely lost, I realized that I was eventually going to go through a door with fantasy crap on it. I had played tabletop games too many times to NOT go through a door with elves, dwarves, and dragons. Even if I were 100% sure that I would get eaten immediately, I mean, come on… magic and stuff. It was inevitable, just like broccoli beef.
The first gate I saw that fit my desired theme had a bunch of races, and it seemed like it had some kind of tier-system as a bonus. I wondered if that meant there was a leveling system? We had a winner, and all that was left was me figuring out how to get there.
Slowly lining up my path to head into the door, I made sure to maintain my distance from the soul stream. At the time, it just didn’t seem important to force myself into the crowded path while we were all going to the same place. In retrospect, I’m guessing that’s why my experience was so unique.
Taking my time, I floated through the planet sized doors into what was another door filled expanse.
Below me, I watched as the soul stream immediately passed through a large ring and lost all of its color. Now a solid white, it started to break apart. Unraveling like a rope, each new stream headed toward its own much smaller door. I, however, floated on my own and just watched the process with cautious interest.
Rather than picking a stream to follow randomly, I circled around to take a look at the doors and see what was on them. Maybe I could pick my race, or had some other choice I could take advantage of. As I got closer, I saw a door with beast type people on it. Some of them were wolf-like, others panther-like. All on one door, which I dubbed the “Beastman Door”.
Refusing to come to a quick decision, I checked the other doors. It took forever, but I saw doors for insects, arachnids, cows, etc. All of their streams seemed really dull looking. Apparently being non-sentient made you less bright. I spent a few seconds trying to decide if all of this was some kind of cosmic pun.
Finally I saw it. THE door. A dragon door. Not even bothering to look around any more, I pointed myself forward and charged through.
Well, I tried to go through. The stream heading into it was very bright. It was like a solid bar of liquid sun. Apparently I wasn't bright enough, and I bounced off the door like I went headfirst into a gym wall covered with an impact mat. Although it didn’t hurt, it was extremely embarrassing.
I wasn’t qualified to be a dragon. I could take a hint.
Chagrined, I resumed my perusal of the doors. After I couldn’t go in the elven door either, I realized I might be in trouble. What if my assumption about how the doors worked was wrong? What if I couldn’t go through the doors, not because of my race, but because I was from a different universe? Could I get back through the big door?
Luckily, I was just over-thinking things because I went through the human door just fine.
Surprised that it was so easy, I looked around excited for my next choice. But, all I saw was a giant ball of light that dwarfed the stream next to me. It seemed to exert a pull on me. Holding myself back, I watched the stream head toward it. After looking around for a while, I came to the conclusion that there didn’t seem to be anything else on this side of the door. At this point, I figured there was only one way forward, so I let myself get pulled toward the light. It seemed to take longer than I’d thought it would to get pulled in. And the closer I got, the bigger the ball of light became. It just kept getting bigger, but I kept getting closer. Finally it was so big, all I could see was light surrounding me.
For the first time since I had become a flaming light-ball, I started to feel pain. Starting off as a sunburn, it grew until I felt like screaming. And all at once, everything went black.