“So,” Death’s intern went on, “you are now in your home base, a place where you can return to rest and refit. When you go outside, you’ll begin your mission to conquer all of HEMP for your side.”

The line went dead for a few moments before Death spoke to the woman in a voice he probably thought I wouldn’t hear. “Should I tell him about the whole war, or just what he has to do today?”

Words came back, but I could only hear the last snippet of a short sentence. “—but we’re out of time.”

“Right,” Death said to me. “Go outside, cash in your ticket, then you’ll be on your way.”

The woman came back on at full volume. “Did you tell him the last thing?”

“Man, I’m baked.” He coughed for a moment. “This is the absolute, I’m positive, last thing. The next message you’ll hear and see is from the chocolate dimension. By agreement with the bigwigs, they get equal airtime.”

Male Death cracked up like someone had told him a funny joke off-screen.

The woman spoke, but at a distance. “Hey, you have ten seconds before we have to switch tapes. Stop fucking with him and tell this guy something important, for real.”

Male Death tapped the microphone. I leaned in, intent to understand what was going on. Ready for crucial intelligence on who, what, why, when, and where.

“Ugh hum,” he cleared his throat. A few seconds ticked by, he hummed a bit, then he sang the words, “Hey, Orpheus, I’m behind you…don’t turn around.”

The last few seconds expired, then he added a parting shot. “It’s a clue, dude.”

“Idiot,” the woman chided. “You could have just told him.”

“Bruh, it says here he’s a big fan of Arcade Fire, so I had to quote some of their lyrics…”

“But how would that help him—” the woman said before being cut off.

Death disappeared.

A dark cloud seemed to hover where Death had been, and after all the excitement of the two people on the recording, I initially believed it was leftover tape, or the camera was pointed at the floor. However, as I watched, the shape seemed to become clearer. It wasn’t a cloud, though I couldn’t say what it was.

Fuzz? Poltergeist TV static? Rain?

Whatever the source, the blob of nothing hovered in place of Death for a few minutes.

“Hello?” I said to it.

In the movies the guy always puts his hand in the hologram, to see what would happen, and my job as a mechanic was nine-tenths trial and error, but there was no fucking way I was going to put my hand in there.

After many minutes, and without any detectable power-down sequence, the hologram shut off.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I stared at the area of space where it had been displayed, wondering how anyone could have seriously sent that to me. But I couldn’t dismiss it entirely, as my name was said at the beginning, wasn’t it?

I pushed play and Death started his speech, exactly as before. I only waited long enough to hear the important part.

“…some Chad named Chuck Mecklinberg.”

I clicked it off again. Yep, this weird piece of technology with the Dude, Where’s My Car? guy playing Death was, in fact, legit.

I was not in Kansas—I mean I was not in Nebraska anymore.

“Deep breath, man,” I said to myself.

Swiveling back to my laptop screen, I found three squares on the video conference for each of my friends, but all of them displayed the “Missing Signal” warning.

“Guys?” I asked, hoping by some miracle there was still a connection.

No one answered.

I sat there in stunned silence for a long time before I remembered Death had mentioned the box at my feet. Bending over, I studied it from a few inches away. By all appearances, it was a physical object in my dorm room. How did it get there?

I snatched it off the concrete and set it on my table, so I could get a look inside the painted metal container. It had a couple of latches on the front, the projector and play/stop button on the lid, and the olive drab metal was thick, as if old. It was about eight inches long, four wide, and about three tall. Not much could be stored in there.

I took a sniff, expecting more of the sewage odor, but that feature must have been reserved for Death’s big entrance.

“Let’s see what the next joke is…”

The hinges creaked as it opened, and I held it away from my body, as if I was about to roll a 1 on a d20 when searching for traps. However, nothing jumped out, there were no poison arrows shot at me, and a giant ball didn’t come rolling down the hill Indiana-Jones style.

I glanced over my shoulder, to be sure.

Inside, the silver necklace was there, as promised, so I gently lifted it out of the container. My eyes registered it as a pair of dog tags, like American military identification tags, with rounded corners and engraved lettering. Both necklaces also came pre-stamped with my name, blood type, and religion…

They, whoever the people were talking behind Death’s image, knew my name, my background, and even what type of music I liked. But more to the point, if I was going to war, the dog tags reinforced the idea, as it was what all soldiers had to wear so their bodies could be identified later. I gulped at the thought of being fodder. “This ain’t good,” I mumbled.

Put it on, or not? I didn’t understand much of what Death had advised, but I knew for certain he’d asked me to put on the necklace. I kept it in my hand as I pulled out the folded piece of paper I assumed was the map. A map might have locations for headquarters or information units, anyone who could help me figure this out…

The map sheet had been printed with interlocking hexes, each about half an inch wide, that ran from top to bottom on the 8.5x11” standard sheet. At the top, it said ‘Map of HEXAGON IMPERIUM, Sector 5J5.’ A tiny legend up the side had twenty different hex types, with little samples of each. However, the map itself was otherwise blank, as in no features were drawn on it.

“Thanks for the useless map,” I yelled at a cloud. “What the fuck is this, Death?” What the hell was the point of a bunch of empty hexes?

It hit me a second later. Death had said “…where you got transported.” He also said I needed to go outside to get in the war. If I was going to learn what the place called HEMP was all about, I needed to start moving.

I strode over to the door below the red warning light. For reasons I didn’t understand, I put my hand on the metal door to check if it was hot.

Then I thought how dumb it was. If there was a fire in the complex, I was already a hundred feet underground with a limited air supply.

I’d be dead on either side of the door.

“Please be cool,” I said to the entrance.

Given the choice, I preferred to die in the sunshine.

I turned the handle.