When I woke up, it was pitch black. At first I assumed I had just woken up too early due to nerves, but then I realized I didn't see any lights from the highway by our house. Or hear any trucks downshifting. Or Bill's snoring, which would occasionally drown out the trucks.

In fact, this darkness felt deeper than normal darkness somehow. It was so dark, it tasted like dark. I didn't even know darkness had a taste up until that moment. I tried to see if I could see my hand right in front of my nose, but there was one problem. I couldn't move my hand.

In fact, I couldn't even feel my hand! I couldn't feel anything. I started to panic a little bit. If I'd had lungs, I'd be breathing fast. If I'd had palms, they'd be sweaty. And if I had a heart, it would be beating like the drummer at a rock concert just got a solo.

Just before I went into a full panic attack, I saw something. It was amazing how comforting it was to just have something to look at. I looked closer, trying to see what it was. I saw a man in a pure white suit, walking next to a woman in a black dress. I had thought the darkness before was as dark as it could get, but the woman's dress was somehow even darker. It started to give me a headache when I looked too closely (of course that still worked without a body), so I looked at their faces.

They seemed to be opposite in many ways. The man was old, with happy crinkles around his eyes. His lips were upturned in the slightest smile. The woman, on the other hand, was young. Her face was stern, bordering on angry. Her eyes were the dull color of waves breaking on the beach on an overcast morning.

As they approached, I started to get a bit creeped out, so I decided to take the initiative. "Hello, I'm Alex. Who are you?"

The woman responded. "We know who you are, Alex. And we are the ones who brought you here."

Interesting. "And here is …. where exactly?"

The man smiled. "It's a sort of in-between place. A pocket, in space and time. We wanted to talk to you, so we brought you here."

That had some interesting implications. Bill loved to talk to me about random physics phenomenon, and he'd never said anything about these pockets, which meant we probably hadn't found them yet. And I had a gut feeling that these two were extremely powerful. Which raised the question: why did they want to meet me?

I thought about it for a second. If they wanted money, they obviously chose the wrong guy. I was still living with my college roommate in a tiny apartment, although hopefully that would change soon. If they wanted connections, again, wrong person. So that meant they wanted something only I could give them. What a B+ average geology major could help them with, I had no idea. "So, why do you need my help?"

The woman in white answered this time. "Clever boy. We do indeed need you to do something for us."

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I blinked. Hadn't the woman been wearing black? Well, now she was in a powerfully white dress, and the man's suit was pure black.

"But why did you need me specifically?"

The man answered this time. "There are a few reasons we picked you. First, you're clever. You didn't always get the best grades, but you excelled at things that needed you to think in a new way. Second, you aren't power hungry. We are going to put you in a position where you might be able to get a lot of power, and we are convinced you wouldn't abuse it. Finally, it's easier to transfer a soul if it isn't … attached."

The first two I could live with, but his last reason would've given me goosebumps if I'd had arms. "What do you mean my soul isn't attached?"

The woman replied. "You're dead, Alex."

The man in white looked over and raised one eyebrow (they'd switched colors again.) "Don't sugarcoat it too much." He said sarcastically.

The woman was visibly unrepentant. "He'll need a firm spine if he's going to do what we need him to."

As I considered the fact that I was apparently dead, I was less bothered than I thought I'd be. After all, these people needed me. So I couldn't stay dead. I'd heard of people officially dying who were then brought back to life by doctors, maybe this was the same idea. Although the whole "transfer a soul" line still made me a bit nervous.

Almost like he could see what I was thinking, the man in white responded. "We aren't giving you your old life again, but we are giving you another chance at living. It will be unfamiliar, and there will be many challenges. But you'll have a chance."

I thought about it for a second. If there was one thing I knew, it was that no one did something for nothing. My coming back to life benefited these two somehow. "And what do you get out of me having this 'extra life'?"

This time, the woman replied. "To understand that, you must know who we are. We are Balance. Good and evil, joy and pain. Light and darkness, life and death. All of these are necessary throughout the universe if there is to be any growth, but always the balance is in danger. Too much of any one of these would spell disaster. We keep these things in balance throughout the worlds in the universe. When the scales are tipping too far towards one side of the spectrum, we tap the other side to even things out." She glanced at the man as he continued.

"We often find it difficult to interfere directly, due to our opposing natures. However, when we agree something needs to be done we can help keep the Balance. This is one of those times. On one of the worlds we watch over there is a delicate balance between the Humans and the Dungeons. But right now the balance is starting to tip. It isn't visible yet, but if things keep going the way they are the dungeons will overpower the humans. You are our plan to keep that from happening."

I definitely didn't understand everything in their explanation, but it sounded like these "dungeons" were attacking the humans, and they needed help. That sounded like something I could do. "That sounds doable."

The woman smiled. She looked like a shark. I decided I preferred her when she looked stern. "You will have a guide, but it won't be easy. Most of this is up to you. Do not disappoint us."

And with those comforting parting words, I fell. I fell for days, or perhaps for minutes. The darkness was back, and without any sensory input my sense of time was very confused. A few weeks later, or maybe 30 seconds, I felt a strange feeling, like I was getting squeezed all over. Then I ran into something hard and everything disappeared.