As I woke up from my last seconds of life. I found myself in a plain room, similar to the waiting rooms you see at a hospital or a psychiatrist, only smaller in scale as if they knew there would be only one person waiting here and without any exits. The windows also seemed to have a somewhat fake look upon closer inspection, everything seemed...off somehow, as if it was lacking something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The chairs seemed comfortable enough, so thinking along the lines of going with the flow and not really wanting to stand with seats available, I took a seat.
After some time passed, I don’t know how long and frankly I don’t care, it is not like I can do anything about it anyway. A door appeared in one of the walls. It opened and an androgynous individual stepped out and closed the, afterwards disappearing door.
“Greetings newly deceased and welcome to limbo. We will soon look upon and judge your previous life, before sending you off to the next.”
“Who are you?” I asked out of curiousity, I mean there is no knowledge about how death worked and it was not like there was anything else to ponder about.
“Interesting, you don’t seem that shocked. Your emotions are really calm for a newly deceased, going even as far as passing the so called stages acceptance and even asking questions to satisfy what seems to be pure simple curiosity, very interesting indeed”
“You may call me Thanatos, that one is one of my favorites as far as names go. As far as genders go. I am neither, I simply exist to fulfill my task of guiding souls from one life to the next...” He, I am calling him a he since ‘it’ sounds derogatory in my opinion when referring to a person, I doubt he’d care at all though, suddenly came to a stop. His eyes widening a fraction, as if he suddenly realized something before starting to mumble: “How peculiar, to be able to bring out individuality while there should be none...”
“What do you mean, there should be none? I mean I still remember everything so retaining my individuality should be normal, right?” My question seemed to awaken him from his dazed state, after seemingly taking a few seconds to gather his thoughts he began
“Allow me to explain. The abnormality that I was talking about was not about something you did wrong. Aside from you being curious instead of being in denial about your death, which only seems to be making my work easier at the moment. It was about the fact that I was able to talk about my own preferences and with that define part of my individuality. I shouldn’t be able to do so, I am but a single copy out of many and while our minds are linked to a certain degree, only the original Thanatos should be able to display his individuality. The fact that I am able to do so means that things aren’t going as intended”
“Okay, that is indeed peculiar. Is this a problem? I mean if things aren’t going the way you, or more accurately the original, intended then the most important question is whether or not this is a bad thing, isn’t it?
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“To answer your question, I don’t know. I should take this up with the original as soon as possible. My apologies, but it seems your passage to the next life will have to be put on hold until this is resolved.” He said before taking on a look that was completely empty, as if his mind was somewhere else entirely. Which is entirely possible I guess, they are al all linked to each other after all…
After some time, again I don’t really know how much… Purgatory seems to make fairly easy to just think of nothing while waiting for death to come and remain calm in the process. This probably was done to make the job easier, most souls being in denial of their death and all that. Calm often seems to help in those situations. Getting back on track…
The door in the wall appeared again and out came someone looking identical to the Thanatos already in the room. Only this one carried with him a presence that made you feel both enormously sad, tired, calm and elated at the same time. It was as if everything you hold dear was being taken away, while at the same time feeling the joy that can only stem from the ignorance of a small child, quite a confusing blend of emotions.
The Original, calling them both Thanatos only creates confusion for me and the copy was here first, Looked like was both interested and irritated at the same time before saying:
“So you’re the one who found the error in my system, don’t look that special to me. Although the way you think is somewhat strange and your emotions are surprisingly stable.” He closed in on my seemingly towering over me, even though our height is actually the same.
“And how are you going to make up for this?”
“I don’t know, but isn’t it also a bit irresponsible to blame the user for finding a fault in the system you created. When the only abnormality is that I was calmer than most, besides do you really want me to believe that I actually am the first to find this fault? Even if earth was the only place in the universe that sustained life, which I highly doubt, then there would be 56 million deaths annually. Even if that wasn’t a large enough group I once read that around 108 billion people in total have lived on this earth, that means that 101 billion people at the least have gone through this system. Are you telling me that I am the first out of 101 billion people that remained calm after dying? I find it extremely difficult to believe that.”
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Let's see how for I'll be able to take this. Next chapter will probably be posted in a day. After that I'll have to spend 2 - 3 days with family, so I don't know how much time I'll have. Let me know if you see any grammatical errors, I suck at interpunction and have the tendency too make sentences too long if I don't pay attention.