Thunder boomed and the rain sang transforming Jersey City into a symphony of chaos. Nobody wanted to be caught dead in this weather, not even the rats, who had the good sense to stay in their hidey holes. Rats were smart like that. They knew to forage when the sun was out, rather than when the sky was pissing on them. Of course, rodents didn't need to pay rent, so they could afford to be choosy.
The same couldn't be said for Samian Green, who was currently standing on the corner of 8th and 9th, trying to sell chicken sandwiches to the few brave souls who dared to venture out in this weather. The Chick-fil-B had opened up a week ago, and the manager had decided that the best way to drum up business was to send his employees out into the storm to hawk their wares. Sam had drawn the short straw, as usual, and was now standing in the rain, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.
He was wearing a weather pod, a cone-shaped yellow plastic contraption that was supposed to keep him dry, but in this weather, it was about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. It did however protect the iPad that he was supposed to use to take orders, and Sam had a sneaking suspicion that it was the reason for the pod in the first place. The manager never yielded an inch when it came to giving his employees a raise, but that same miserly attitude didn't extend to his precious gadgets -- "Strategic investments" he called them.
By now the rain had soaked through his uniform and was seeping into his skin, making his whole body feel like it was wrapped in a wet sock. A wet sock that was slowly getting wetter and wetter. Not that Sam could afford to wear nice socks. Not on the salary of a chicken salesman. He had to make do with the ones he had stolen from the laundromat, which were now in a similar state of dampness as the rest of him.
He sighed and looked up at the sky, the infinite expanse of grey reflected in his pale blue eyes. What a shitty day. What a shitty life. He was 23 years old, and he was already washed up. A has-been before he had even begun. He had dropped out of college after his first year when his scholarship had run out, and now he was stuck in this dead-end job watching his life slip away from him one soggy sandwich at a time.
For a while, he had tried to convince himself that he was just biding his time, that he was waiting for something better to come along. It helped that his friends were in the same boat, all of them working shitty jobs and living in shitty apartments, all of them waiting for their big break. Laughing and joking about their misfortunes, they had come up with a name for themselves: The Cosmic Punchlines. But lately, Sam had started to wonder if the joke was on him. His friends had since moved on, found better jobs, gotten married, and put down roots. Ed had even bought a house. A house! And here was Sam, still standing on the corner of 8th and 9th, trying to sell chicken sandwiches to people who didn't want them.
"You need to grow up, Sam," his mother had told him the last time he had called her. "You can't keep living like this. You need to get a real job, a real life. Try putting effort into something for once. The universe won't just hand you things on a silver platter." She had always been like that, his mother, blunt and to the point. "Why can't you be more like your brother? I can ask him to put a good word in for you at his hospital. They're always looking for orderlies." Just what Sam needed, to be wiping old people's asses for a living. He had hung up on her and hadn't called back since.
Time kept ticking, and the rain kept falling. Sam could feel the water trickling down his back, making him shiver. He tried to shake it off, but it was no use. Instead, he looked down at the iPad in his hands hoping to see that his shift was over. No such luck. He still had an hour left. He saw his reflection in the glass, a distorted version of himself staring back at him. He looked like a drowned rat. A drowned rat with a stupid yellow cone on his head. He sighed again and went back to his thoughts.
He imagined himself as a superhero, a savior of the world. Someone who would rise up and change everything for the better. He would have a cool name and real powers, and everyone would look up to him. Like the comic books, but real. God, how he wished he could be like that. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, with a destiny written in the stars. But he was no Superman. He was just Sam. Sam the chicken salesman. Sam the Last Cosmic Punchline.
But that didn't mean he couldn't dream. And so he did. He dreamed of a world where he was more than just a cog in the machine. A world where he was at the center of it all, a master of his own destiny. A world where he was a god. He chuckled at the thought. Sam the god. It had a nice ring to it. He closed his eyes and let himself drift away, away from the cold rain, away from the reality of his life into his imagination. "I am Sam," he whispered to himself. "master of my universe, I am ... I am ... I am ..."
Bang! The sound of something hitting the curb made him snap his eyes open. Only to be met with the blinding light of a Mack truck. He began to move his hand to shield his eyes, but it was too late. 300 milliseconds later, he was no longer standing on the corner of 8th and 9th. Instead, he was now flying through the air, about to crash into the window of the nearby bakery. The last thing he saw was the weather pod spinning away from him, a yellow blur against the grey sky. "Looks like a kite," he thought, before he crashed into the glass and everything went black.
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"No! This can't be!"
Admist the noise of the hospital floor, a woman's shriek echoed through the halls making patients and staff alike wince. A patient who had been sleeping, awoke with a start, only to be relieved that, no his mother-in-law had not come to visit him. The patient had been in the hospital for a week now for a UTI, and the last thing he needed was his mother-in-law to come and nag him about his hygiene. He had enough of that from the nurses.
The banshee wail was coming from the next room, where a mother was currently sobbing into her husband's chest.
"Doctor, please, you have to do something!" she cried once she gained more composure. "You have to save my poor baby!"
The doctor, who had missed lunch to deal with this emergency, sighed and looked at the couple.
"I'm sorry, but there's nothing more we can do. We've done everything we can."
The father held his wife tighter, trying to comfort her as she cried. The doctor gave them a moment before he spoke again.
"We can try to repair the damage, but the chances of her ever walking again are slim to none."
"We were just eating dessert at the bakery," the father whispered, his voice hollow. "She was so happy. I bought her a strawberry cheesecake, her favorite and sat her down by the window. She was laughing and smiling, and then ... then ... the glass. It was like a bomb went off. And then she was on the ground, bleeding. Oh god, the blood. So much blood."
"It was a freak accident. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," the doctor said, trying to sound reassuring. "It's not your fault."
The doctor had seen his fair share of accidents, but this one was especially unfortunate. A truck had lost control and crashed into a Chick-fil-B salesman standing on the corner of 8th and 9th. The impact had sent him crashing through the window of the bakery so hard that the glass had exploded, sending shards flying in all directions. One shard had hit the couple's 8 year old daughter in the back, severing her spinal cord and paralyzing her from the waist down.
It was bad enough that a person had died from the accident, but to have an such a young bystander get hurt as well was just cruel. No child deserved to have their life ruined like that. But that was the way of the world. Sometimes, bad things happened to good people, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
The doctor excused himself and left the room, leaving the family to grieve in peace. He had other patients to attend to. The patient with the UTI was due for his catheter change, and the nurses wanted the doctor to do it as the patient gave them the creeps. He was a bit of a pervert, and the nurses have complained that he was always trying to get them to touch him inappropriately. The doctor sighed and made his way to the patient's room, mentally preparing himself for the task ahead.
Meanwhile, the mother continued to cry, her sobs punctuated by the beeping of the machines that surrounded her daughter's bed. The father just held her, his own tears falling silently down his face. They had been so happy, just a normal family out for dessert. And now, their lives had been shattered in an instant. Her daughter lay in the bed, eyes closed but breathing steadily. She was alive, but her life would never be the same again.
Suddenly, the mother's sobs turned into a low growl, and the father looked at her in alarm. She was staring at the window, her eyes filled with hatred. The father followed her gaze and saw the Chick-fil-B salesman's weather pod drifting in the wind, like a yellow kite in the grey sky. No one had bothered to pick it up after the accident, and now it was just floating there, reminding her of the cause of her daughter's suffering.
Now you might think that it is irrational to blame the dead salesman for the accident, but grief does strange things to people. It twists their minds and makes them see things that aren't there. Sometimes it makes them lash out at the world, looking for someone to blame even when it doesn't make sense. And in this case, the mother had found her target. She stood up, her eyes blazing with fury.
"Coward!" she screamed at the pod, her voice hoarse with emotion. "You ruined my daughter's life! I curse you to hell!"
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GREETINGS SAMIAN GREEN
REJOICE!
WE ARE INTELLECT
YOU, LIKE ONE-TRILLION-FOUR-HUNDRED-AND-SEVENTY-THREE-THOUSAND-AND-TWO-HUNDRED-AND-SEVENTY-ONE OTHER SAMS, HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO BE PART OF THE SAMIAN EMPIRE
ONLY ONE OUT OF TREE(71) OF SAMS ARE CHOSEN FOR THIS HONOR.
WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING YOU, SAMIAN GREEN, SINCE THE DAY YOU WERE BORN. WE HAVE SEEN YOUR HEART'S DESIRES, AND HAVE DECIDED THAT YOU ARE WORTHY OF OUR ATTENTION.
YOU WILL BE GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME A GOD. POWER BEYOND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS WILL BE YOURS. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO SHAPE THE WORLD TO YOUR LIKING, TO BEND REALITY TO YOUR WILL.
WE ONLY REQUIRE ONE THING IN RETURN: REVERENCE. YOU WILL BOW TO US, AND WE WILL BLESS YOU WITH OUR POWER. A SMALL PRICE TO PAY FOR THE GIFT OF GODHOOD.
WE WILL KEEP IN TOUCH, SAMIAN GREEN. PREPARE YOURSELF, NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOUR APOTHEOSIS. WE DEMAND IT.
Signed,
01606d0cb882f808043b8bb48c7a4265e26ff9a0e16e7d28edcd0d707e2f9983...(Collapsed 2 billion tokens.)