Chapter Two) The Woman in Charge. Or, Job interview with a Goddess.

The lady clenched her eyes shut, took in a deep breath, then hissed it out. “On it...”

Then she began poking at her silver tablet before starting to stomp around and yelling. “This is Allysaria. Halt the service line… Yes, now! By my authority as a junior grade deity of life, I am calling for an emergency halt to my resurrection service line. Your butt is hereby covered, now get to it.”

She came to a sudden stop and gritted her teeth. “Damned Damned.”

Spinning in place to look back at me she forced a grim smile on her lips. “Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back.”

Then she sort of stretched up into the sky and I was alone.

Go anywhere? It’s a stretch of featureless dark rock that goes off to the vanishing point in all directions. Except up. Where am I going to go?

At least whatever was keeping me calm about the whole being dead thing also seemed to keep me from being too bored.

How did I die? My ticker wasn’t in the best shape, but I had done cut down on salt a while back and I was taking all the pills. Even the ones my insurance company had cheated their way out of paying their fair share of.

I guess my time must have just run out. At least my last few years had been nice, a lot of the kids from the Troop, well, adults now, had stopped by the old folks home to say hello. Some of them even more than once.

A few of them had even brought their little ones, some of whom were already in the cub pack that we had always gotten a lot of new scouts from.

I had been a part of their lives over the years, a lot of them now that I thought of it. And all because they needed another adult to attend the Scout meeting that evening at the school I was working at.

It turned out that they always needed another adult, and somehow I ended up doing it for thirty years.

It was a pretty good life, and I had accepted that it was going to end at some point. I just wish I could remember how it did. Those last few days, even the last moments, those had belonged to me.

I wanted those moments back, even if they were bad ones.

Golden Gown, Alice something or other, stretched down out of the sky and gave me a nod, and I interrupted her before she started to speak.

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“I want to know. And I want to remember, how did I die? It was a part of my life and I should have the memory of it just like all the other ones.”

She stood there for a moment, with her mouth open, then slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry, it’s policy to block that off at first to help people in line for service to stay calm enough to get briefed so they can hear everything important before they deal with how their lives ended. But you got screwed over, and everything else has been thrown off. So if you do want it now? I can make it happen.”

...I could see how it was important to focus on the moment. But, who knows when I will get another chance to regain my memories? It did seem like I was working with the normal level of incompetence you get in any kind of large organization. And this one seemed even larger than any Earthly one I had ever dealt with.

But "Yeah, I want to know. It's my death. I want to close things out before I move to the next step."

Then...

Pneumonia. From sitting out too late on a cool evening at a barbecue after getting soaked playing with my niece's grandkids in the sprinkler.

A great day, and one last happy memory before a long dragged out miserable week of being sick that ended with me falling asleep one night at the hospital and not waking up until the girl with the curved black knife was apologizing and telling me it was time to go.

Cute kid, she even gave me a quick hug too when I tried to shake hands.

Five out of five stars. Would get reaped by her again.

I just hope Sam's kids didn't blame themselves. I was old and chose to live my life as much as I could even as an old guy, not huddled in a corner fearing every moment might be my last.

“...Thanks. I just need another moment then we can get to whatever it is.”

She gave me a nod from where she had turned away a bit while I dealt with it enough to move on.

"All right, I got it together enough to function. Hit me."

Alice something or other, took in a breath and let me have it. "So we still need someone to do this job, and the next guy in line is actually a pretty good choice for the job you were supposed to have taking charge of a bunch of orphans in a wasteland. A former National Park Ranger. He was pretty good with his stepkids."

She gave me a nod. “We caught up with the issue before anyone else got assigned. So seriously, thanks for that.”

“But this job needed someone trustworthy, and good at training people. Even if you don’t have military training, we need someone to unlock three starter skills, weapons, and armor for people who choose the Fighter class before they go off to incarnate on one of the low tech, high magic worlds.”

“The job is to train ten thousand people in total, which I know sounds like a lot, but then you’re a free soul with a lot of options. Good ones too with a service record. Or you can choose to go back into sorting instead and get stuck with another job. And I won't try to fool you, it could be a better job, it might be worse, but any service job is going to be a long drawn out slog. There's a reason we have to get debtors to do them."

Huh. “Well… I think I’m going to need another moment here if you don’t mind.”

She shot me an understanding nod with a bit of a smile, then turned a bit to the side and began poking at her tablet thingy.

So… Do this or something else picked at what might be random. The wasteland job with the kids sounded like something I would have enjoyed doing, but this one involved helping people out too. Plus, once I get going, and with it being the same job over and over, I could probably run people through it pretty quick.

Mainly it just sounds like the bad part would be that it would end up being boring, and maybe a bit lonely.

"Just to be sure, do I get to talk to the people I train? I don't want to get stuck without any interaction for however long this takes."

She gave me a small, but real smile this time. “Oh yes. You will need to talk people through the training and answer what questions they may have.” She slumped down a bit. "With more time to do so than I can give you, but with less information to share. Try not to let it get to you.”

Shoot. I'm stuck with doing this for however long it takes to deal with ten thousand people. She's a goddess or something, how much work is she getting stuck with?

“This is all new for me, but I appreciate how hard you're trying to do this right."

Her lips twitched a bit as she tried not to react to my words, but I could see in her eyes that she appreciated it. Then she straightened up, putting her game face back on.

“Thank you. It does mean a lot to hear it every now and then. But if you are taking the job, this is what you need to know...”