The next minute I opened my eyes, I was sitting in a bus driving along a picturesque stretch of road with rolling green hills off to one side, and a dark green mountain range off to the other. A friendly bus driver's voice called out from the front seat.

“We’ll be pulling into Yucaborough in about ten minutes, so if this is your stop, thank you for traveling with Roadrunner Transport.”

I was interested to see that in this world there were still buses, and by extension, combustion engines. We had no company in our world called Roadrunner Transport, but we had Greyhound Busses and other ones like that. Although these days most of the buses were self-driving. It was nice to see someone actually sitting in the driver’s seat for a change.

I had no idea what the angel meant about being sent to another world that ran on different rules, but I guess I was expecting something else? Swords, monsters, kings and queens trying to kill each other, all that kind of stuff? Something a little less familiar? That’s not what this world was like at all.

I looked in the window of the bus to get a glimpse of my reflection and saw someone I didn’t recognize staring back at me. He was young, just like I had been, but his skin was full and healthy, not emaciated and gaunt like mine was as the cancer at me from the inside out.

I opened my eyes, and his eyes widened. I smiled, and his reflection showed a kind smile in return. This new body had good teeth, blue eyes, and had his black hair cut short, but in a stylish kind of way. It didn’t look like me, at least not the me that I had been in my other life. But it wasn’t bad. I was actually pretty handsome.

The clothes I wore were no-nonsense. A simple blue t-shirt over long black jeans. I was wearing sneakers of a brand that I had never heard of. They were called Fools, and the word was emblazoned on the side just like Vans or Converse would be in the world I came from.

I quickly checked my pockets and was actually kind of happy to not find a phone waiting for me. Maybe there was no such thing as social media in this world. That would certainly make it easier to have a simpler, more meaningful life.

I did find a wallet, which had some strange cash tucked into it, as well as some identification. I pulled out the driver’s license and stared down at the awkward photo on the front of it.

My name in this world was Jackson Jones. It was a little strange that in the world that I had come from my name had been Jack, and now in this world I was called Jackson. Jones was a pretty common name in the world that I came from, but it could have been worse, I guess. I could live with being called Jackson Jones.

One interesting thing that I noticed on my identification was that it said I was born on the 7th of Noctuary, 236 AB. The identification said that my blood type was O-negative which was different from my original life. In that life I was A-positive. The ID also said that I was 186 centimeters tall, which was just over six feet tall. It looked like this new world that I was in used the metric system, unlike the country I had come from which used the imperial system. That would take some getting used to.

There was something else in my pocket too - an envelope with the word Jackson on the front. It was written in what appeared to be English, but I wasn’t sure whether it actually was English, or maybe a language that this Jackson Jones person was familiar with that I had absorbed his knowledge of. I opened the envelope and pulled out a meticulously hand printed letter.

My dearest Jackson,

If you are reading this, then I am dead. I made arrangements in my will to pass on my farm to you. It has unfortunately fallen into disrepair over the last few years as the sickness progressed. But don’t be sad, please. I have suffered for quite some time, and one of my only comforts was in knowing that you would be taking over the farm after I’m gone.

I am terribly sorry about what happened to your mother and father. It was a tragic accident, and I understand why you’ve been so distant since it happened. You needed to finish your education and figure out what you wanted to do with your life. If you don’t want to come out to the farm and try your hand at this hard but rewarding life, I understand. The farm will always be there for you if you change your mind.

I’ve left some basic instructions in the farmhouse, and the key is tucked away in this letter. I’ve also saved some very special seeds for you that should get you started nicely. It was always my dream to turn the farm back into something that I could be proud of, but unfortunately as the years rolled on, and I faced the challenges alone, they became too much.

It's a big farmstead and it gets lonely if you’re by yourself. You’ll find Yucaborough and the whole Yuca Valley to be a lovely place if you give it a chance. It’s very different from Zazen City, though. Life is a lot slower out here, and I hope you will find comfort in the time and space you have.

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Yours with love,

Grandpa Joe.

I slid back in my seat and let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding. The keys weren’t in the letter, so maybe someone else was holding them for me. There probably had to be a lawyer involved in all this if the estate was being passed on.

It sounded like this Jackson had a life that was going in one direction, but he wanted to go off and be a big shot adventurer. Just what did the original Jackson plan to do? The angel had said it was something unforgivable and I hoped that didn't mean that he was thinking about taking his own life. But then again, if Jackson Jones had lost his parents in this world in some freak accident, then he might also be looking for a second chance. His life was vacant and ready to slide right on into. It really did feel like this second chance could be the perfect opportunity to do everything I had always wanted to do, but never had the chance to.

Soon enough I saw the beginnings of a small town appear in the road ahead. That had to Yucaborough. It was a quaint looking little town, with only a single building that had more than one storey. At least from my current vantage point, that seemed to be the case. There were a couple of houses that were two storeys, but that one main building towered above the rest. It even had a bell tower!

To my surprise, that building was exactly where our bus was heading. The bus continued straight along the main road and pulled into a bus stop right outside the Town Hall. There was a clock right at the top of the tower, and it showed that it was just a little past 8 o’clock. That had to be in the morning, because the sun was out and looked to be still rising. It was actually a little comforting to see that this world ran on the same time system as the world I had come from. It still seemed as though there were 12 hours on the clock, and that the second hand was moving at roughly the rate I expected it to.

When the bus stopped, I was the only one getting off. There were scattering of other people on the bus, and I had a quick glance at everyone as I left to see if there were any odd folks there. I almost expected to see an elf or a dwarf or something like that sitting there waiting to go on down the road further, but everyone appeared to be human.

I got off the bus and retrieved my bag from the compartment underneath, and when I turned, I saw a kindly old woman waiting for me with a rustic cardboard sign. It had the name Jackson Jones written in large black letters. She must have recognized my face because her eyes lit up when she saw me.

“Jackson Jones! Haven’t you grown up?” he asked.

If I knew who she was, I mean if the Jackson I was before knew who I knew who she was I didn’t have access to those memories. I had access to all of my own memories from my previous life, but none of this was familiar or ringing any bells.

“That's me,” I said. “I’m really sorry but I’m having a bit of a mind blank, yeah? Who are you?”

“Oh don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t expect you to remember me. You haven’t seen me since you were about this high.” She made a motion with her hand at about her waist height, and I was significantly taller than that now. “My name’s Marlene Bradshaw, a long time friend of your grandpa, and I work in the mayor’s office. The paperwork is all done, your grandpa was very prepared towards the end, so now all I need to do is give you this set of keys and take you out to the farm.”

“Before you do that, do you think you could give me a bit of a tour of the town? Just to know where everything is, of course.”

She waved my question away as if it was no problem. “Of course I can. As you can see Yucaborough is a pretty small town, so we can definitely go for a ride before we head out to the farm. Your grandpa has left you an old pickup truck as well, but I’m pretty sure it’s the one he’s had for the last thirty years. It used to rattle and clunk when he drove it into town, so you might want to head over and see Carl Dinn the mechanic when you have a chance. Just get him to give it a once over. I don’t know if anyone told you this, but your grandpa was a very stubborn man. I’d be surprised if he took the car into the shop once in the last ten years.”

“I’ll be sure to do that,” I said, but I didn’t know if I had the means to pay for a car service or any repairs. I didn’t even know whether I had any money in any bank accounts. I might only have the cash in my wallet.

“Things work a little bit differently here than the big city. I can see the apprehension on your face but let me assure you that Carl will do what needs to be done even if you can’t afford it right away. Almost everyone here trusts everyone else, so we’re more than happy to have you pay things back.”

That was a very interesting difference to the world that I had come from. People were more and more reliant on borrowing money from banks and other large corporations just to cover their normal everyday expenses. Back when Afterpay and all those buy-now, pay-later scams came in, it changed everything.

People stopped squirreling away money to cover the basic expenses of life, and instead relied on borrowed money that they could then pay back over time. In the world that I came from, you couldn’t do a damn thing unless you agreed to some payment plan, or signed up for a direct debit, or some kind of subscription service.

If this world truly was different, then it might be the chance that I needed, to live the life I really wanted.

Marlene showed me all around town and all the places that I might need to go. There was a general store, a doctor’s office, a town square where everybody posted community requests, and a few places that needed some work. The more she continued talking and showing me around, the more I realized that all of this sounded eerily familiar.

I grew up playing pixelated video games because that's all we my mother and father could afford. They were millennials, and my father kept all the old game cartridges he grew up with. We spent hours playing those old games together, but I liked them more than the eternal grindfest that was most modern video games.

I was very familiar with farming simulator games. In those games, the farmers always had secondary activities they could do like rebuilding museums, making the town better, festivals, and other things to keep you busy outside of the everyday farming activities.

Everything I'd seen of Yucaborough so far felt eerily familiar. I'd inherited a farm from my dead grandfather, moved to a sleepy little, small town with a whole host of people to meet and get to know, and there were a ton of improvements to be made around the place. But this was real, or at least as real as it could be.

My other life was over, and this was the only second chance that I was going to get.

I needed to make the most of it.