I probably should’ve been thinking about other things rather than the color of the sky. Such as, for example, the fact that it was supposed to be night, not what seemed like the middle of the day.
I remembered everything, except for what happened at the end.
It was raining hard in Olt's Valley. A terrible road in any weather, it took a special kind of stupid to go over the speed limit there in the rain, at night, after working twelve hours in a factory tracking down the one cable a rat had gnawed on.
I was, of course, that very special kind of stupid. Twelve hours to do a job for which I’d allocated two. And now I was far behind schedule, and out of fucks to give.
I was also eating in the car again, and trying to make an appointment for which I was already four hours late. My phone was ringing like mad on the dashboard, but I was ignoring it.
Close to Cainenii Mari I took a corner a bit tighter than probably safe. My Ford Focus lost traction in the tight curve. I didn’t have both hands on the wheel.
And then I saw God… or, rather, the twin headlights of a truck coming the other way.
There’s not much of a difference really, if you think about it.
Grass rustled. Clouds passed overhead. Some insect buzzed in my ear. And I was pretty sure something was trying to crawl up my pants leg.
The smell of grass and turf filled my nose as I drew a deep breath. I couldn’t smell any of the normal aromas of life: pollution, grime, grease, spilled sauces. The air smelled more like some idyllic version of air, crisp and fresh and cool.
It had been night. And now it wasn’t. That made no sense, but I was too enraptured by the sight of the sky to parse the difference.
I was staring at the message floating in midair.
[WELCOME]
For a second I thought it was plastered across the sky in blocky white letters. Then it moved as I turned my head.
Huh, neat. Heaven got digitised nowadays.
It crossed my mind that I wasn’t reacting properly. The more I lay there, the more pressing the feeling of wrongness became. Headlights shone in my mind’s eye, coupled with the sizzle of rain spattering my windshield and the beginning of a horn blaring in alarm. If I thought about it enough, I could just remember the crinkle of metal meeting much heavier metal moving in the other direction.
As a fun fact, if two cars get into a frontal impact at the same speed, the result, for each of them, is like hitting a wall at exactly that speed. Doing over a hundred pretty much ensured survival rates were nil.
I was putting off thinking about the fact that I wasn’t thinking about being dead.
Given the circumstances, I probably should’ve been freaking out. First for being dead. Then for being somewhere other than in the crumpled ruins of my car. A fraction of a moment ago I was about to bite through the steering wheel, for pity’s sake.
The message stayed resolutely plastered in the centre of my vision even as I rose into a sitting position. I tried to swat it away but my hands passed through it.
“Hi?” I said, stupidly.
The message faded and was replaced by another.
[ARE YOU COMFORTABLE?]
How the bloody fuck would I be comfortable? I was dead! And I was fine with it, which was the most uncomfortable feeling of all.
Did anything hurt?
A quick, cursory pat down of my chest and stomach revealed that no, nothing hurt. I rose to my feet and straightened my back and… I felt nothing. No stiffness. No steering wheel embedded in my sternum. No crick in my neck from laying on cold, hard earth.
Nothing.
I was, however, missing my belly fat and I frowned as I stared down, patting my stomach. Stupidly, I lifted my shirt and stared.
“Why do I have abs? I’ve never had abs.”
My voice sounded odd. Thinner. Not the chain smoker’s hoarseness. I sounded like a kid, even in my own head.
With the message still hovering there, I ventured an answer.
“I’m fine?” What else could I say?
[I AM ETERNITY]
[I WELCOME YOU]
[MY INTERFACE WILL CONNECT MOMENTARILY]
[THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE]
The text flashed several times and then faded away entirely.
“Okay?” I asked the air, prompting a continuation. “Okay,” I added when it didn’t reply.
Honestly, I wasn’t really surprised. I felt odd, yes, but I wasn’t surprised that nothing made sense. Not the text. Not waking up atop a green hill. Not the insane vista that greeted me once I sat up. Not even the shocking blue of the sky… okay, that shocked me a little. The sky isn’t supposed to be that particular azure shade, no matter what some poets would say on the matter.
I’d always assumed that the moment between life and death would be the fuckiest thing anyone would ever experience. For obvious reasons, nobody would ever write anything concrete on the matter.
With my head probably serving as a hood ornament for that truck, I guessed I was about to see just how right I’d been in life. Woohoo, lucky me…
While I was waiting for whatever was meant to happen, I took in the sight. And it was a sight to behold!
As already established, above was the bluest sky I’d ever seen, despite a few scattered clusters of clouds. They resembled cotton, drifting high above a world of pure, raw green. Dark blue mountains lined one edge of the horizon, like the broken, uneven teeth of a saw.
On the other edge of the horizon, some twisted structure crawled up from a crater in the earth, barely visible at the farthest point to my right, a mess of interlocking elements too far out to make out in detail.
Forests of silver-leafed trees—yes, silver!—lay straight ahead from my vantage, just a little to the side of the hill I was perched atop.
I turned. Behind, the hill descended towards a sparkling stretch of water extending far over the curve of the world. Beyond that sea, or lake, or whatever it was, a tower scratched at the sky beyond.
And I mean that literally. The thing looked like it extended all the way into space.
My jaw dropped as I followed the curve of the tower upward. A planet hung in the sky, half-visible, dominating the entire view. A marble of blue and green, like Earth, with strange landmasses covering its surface. An alien world, just hovering there, much closer than the moon would’ve been.
“That’s something…” I said to no one, just staring up, mouth agape.
The sun shone from a point to the side of the other alien world, looking as if it could disappear behind it at any time. Would that lead to an eclipse? Who the fuck knew.
I turned away from the sight—and turned back a couple of times just to make sure I hadn’t imagined it—and took in my more immediate surroundings. At the intersection of hill and forest was a village nestled in the valley below, red-roofed buildings poking out from among the trees. Fields were cut in its surrounding scenery, shining golden in the sunlight. Wheat? Maybe.
“I’m on an alien world. Staring at an alien planet in the sky.” I looked down and raised an eyebrow. “And I’m wearing my work clothes with my work boots. And there’s a sword.” For a moment I had to wonder what the fuck had been in that gas station sandwich I’d been eating before impact.
[YOUR INTERFACE IS READY]
I got a fresh burst of text while I stared at the sword not two paces away. It had a blue blade on one side, with a black spine on the other, making it look like an oversized box cutter. It was just there, stuck point first in the ground, with a scabbard laying nearby in the grass.
“I’m wearing a Nightwish t-shirt, with blue jeans and steel-capped boots, staring at a blue sword, with text floating in the air around me.” I frowned as I rolled the words around in my head, trying to make up my mind if to laugh or cuss. Was I really spending the last seconds of consciousness in life… in an absurd fantasy mixing in my work life and the little gaming I sometimes had time for?
It did beat the alternative, I guess. I wasn’t exactly keen on the whole life-flashing-before-your-eyes idea. That was called living, and doing it all once was more than enough. At least in this scenario I was about to expire with a sense of awe, rather than feeling miserable, overworked, overtired, and angry at myself.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
And the last thing I wanted to see or think about was a car crash. Six years of obsession over a particular one, for now to drive myself into another was about as much karmic irony as I could take without combusting.
[PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME]
I almost reacted with the customary idiot “Uh”, but caught myself. The last thing I wanted was for my imaginary name to register as “Uh-Klaus”.
“Klaus,” I said loudly, unsure if it was also requesting my last name.
[KLAUS HAS BEEN LOGGED AS PREFERRED DESIGNATION]
A whole bunch of crap text scrolled across my vision, windows popping up, opening, minimising, as if things were self-arranging. It went on for nearly a minute. I sat back down. It was making me dizzy.
[INITIALISATION COMPLETE]
[INTEGRATION HOLDING STABLE]
[NAME: KLAUS]
[AGE: 23]
Ha! I’d been thirty-six that morning, not twenty-three. Was the fantasy already breaking down?
[SPECIES: HUMAN]
The fact that it was even a category suggested the existence of other species. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was I about to hallucinate some elves? Which variety? Tolkien? Pratchett? Warhammer? I stifled a chuckle at my imagination’s own vagueness.
[CLASS: UNASSIGNED]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE YOUR ATTRIBUTE SHEET?]
“Like, in a game? Sure, I guess.” I rolled with things. It was nice to see where my brain was going in order to prepare me for the end.
[ATTRIBUTES CAN BE EXPANDED BASED ON PREFERENCE]
[CURRENT LIST IS CURATED FOR SIMPLICITY]
[LEVEL: 1]
[STRENGTH: 4]
[INTELLIGENCE: 7]
[CONSTITUTION: 2]
[WISDOM: 5]
[WILLPOWER: 3]
[FREE STAT POINTS TO ALLOCATE: 0]
[FREE SKILL POINTS TO ALLOCATE: 0]
[INSIGHT LEVEL: 0]
[CURRENT ASSESSMENT IS BASED ON TIME-OF-FLIGHT RECORDING]
Exactly like a video game. I couldn’t help but wince at some of those ratings. Willpower only a three? Constitution a two? And the simplicity of it all! It reduced me, as a person, to five numerical values. The nerve!
I caught myself before getting into a huff. I wasn’t about to have an argument with a figment of my dying imagination.
When nothing else happened aside from the text just floating there, I spoke up. “What am I supposed to do? Do I get a quest or something?” I tried to keep my tone neutral but failed. It was hard to not laugh at the absurdity.
[LIFE MUST CONTINUE]
[PURPOSE, WHERE THERE IS NONE, MUST BE ACQUIRED]
[LIVE]
[DIE]
[THE CHOICE CAN ONLY BE YOURS]
Oh, that was just grand! I was hallucinating a system dispensing fortune-cookie wisdom, projected straight to my retinas.
“Is this even real?” I asked, walking towards the sword to pick it up.
It weighed nothing at all, like a foam prop for a costume. Testing the edge with my thumb drew a bead of blood, the sword sharp enough to shave with. The sudden pain felt realer than anything else I’d experienced yet.
[EVERYTHING IS REAL]
[NOTHING IS REAL]
[REALITY IS SELF-DEFINED]
[PURPOSE DEPENDS ON YOU]
[THIS WORLD DEPENDS ON YOU]
[ANSWER ITS CALL OR DO NOT]
[THE CHOICE IS YOURS]
[NO GODS]
[NO MASTERS]
[ONLY TIME]
I stared at those last three lines. What an odd thing to get from an entity calling itself Eternity, speaking directly into my head.
Didn’t that contradict the gods line?!
Was it an AI talking to me, I wondered. Interface, connection, text communication. Why was I hallucinating an AI talking to me? Of all things, I was the last believer on Earth in the coming of AI, what with almost fifteen years of teaching very dumb machinery to do the work of severely underpaid and uneducated poor schmucks.
Though, the concept did have its appeal, and it made sense I’d hallucinate it. I… wasn’t the best worker to be managed, I admit. I would show up, pick up the data, start working, not stop until my system was running or I was thoroughly unbalanced. In a sense, I would work myself to death.
But not if I was tasked to do it. If anyone tried to set tasks for me, I would make sure I was conveniently unreachable until I finished my work the right way.
How this brave new reality fit so well, at first glance, with my personality only served to cement my disbelief, even as I sucked on my thumb to stop the bleeding. Blood tasted like always, of rust, a bit like putting my tongue to a battery.
If I was in a video game, that would’ve been the moment for a quest to pop up—something about killing wolves or rabbits for the promise of some reward. But this thing basically told me to fuck off and do… whatever. “Go forth and frolic in your very own Elysium garden.”
With no clue what was expected of me or what to aim for, I sat back down in the grass and thought.
“What’s this place called?” I asked, trying to sort out the questions crowding my head. “Middle Earth?”
[THIS WORLD IS DESIGNATED AS ORESSTRIA #2111]
[CURRENT POPULATION: 723 122 001]
So, I had stats, an absurdist AI speaking to me, and absolutely no goal. Several items had now appeared in my sight, tidily grouped in the bottom-right corner, but none of them really interested me. [STATS], [SKILLS], [MAP], [INVENTORY]. The map and the inventory ones were greyed out for some reason.
Honestly, I didn’t want to spend my time trawling through menus. I’ve been doing that for most of my adult life ever since college, and I wasn’t going to do it while I waited to finish dying. There were a whole bunch of questions crowding around my head and almost flooding through, but I chose to ignore them. Answering my own questions via my own subconscious felt masturbatory.
Instead, what I said was, “Cool. Best I get on with things, right?”
Eternity did not answer. I slipped the sword into the strange scabbard it had, couldn’t figure out how to sling it at my hip, hefted it up on my shoulder and set off towards the village.
“Funny way to die,” I grumbled.
[YOU ARE NOT DEAD]
[RESURRECTION IS FORBIDDEN]
[YOU ARE NOT DYING]
Ah, so Eternity wanted to weigh in on my musings. Of course it would.
“That’s just what I’d tell myself if I didn’t want to panic just now. Nice try. ‘A’ for effort.”
[I AM NOT PART OF YOUR PSYCHE]
[YOUR MIND IS YOUR OWN]
“My point stands. It’s okay. Really.” My own cheerfulness surprised me. “Whatever’s happening, I want to look around before the end. Always been a fan of the outdoors, in theory. But you already know that.”
Where had I read about silver forests? No example sprang to mind. It definitely wasn’t in any of the recent audiobooks I’d been going through while driving, and I couldn’t remember any recent fantasy game I’d played.
“The mind is a foreign country sometimes,” I said. “I could swear this feels real.”
[EVERYTHING IS REAL]
[NOTHING IS REAL]
[REALITY IS SELF-DEFINED]
“Right, right,” I agreed readily. “As you say. My reality is that I was about to ram into a truck on a wet road, going at about a hundred kilometres per hour. Odds of surviving that are generally null.”
[YOU ARE NOT DYING]
[YOU ARE NOT DEAD]
I smiled and kept up my pace. The grass was tall but oddly soft, not impeding me much as I kept a steady descending pace. Even so, the village would be an hour away easily, given how the scenery widened as I walked. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I wasn’t even winded, which was odd to say the least.
For the past ten years, I’d been steadily gaining weight and turning into a blob that could barely go up two flights of stairs without heaving my soul out. It made sense that I would imagine myself fitter at the end. I’d always promised myself I’d get fit at some point. Someday soon.
Everything was always going to happen someday. Most of it, when I was feeling charitable, was going to start today.
[YOUR BIOLOGY HAS BEEN ADJUSTED FOR EASE OF INTEGRATION]
[YOU ARE NOT IMAGINING YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES]
“As you say, as you say,” I agreed again. “Alice also really thought she was in Wonderland when she followed the white rabbit.”
[I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THAT IS]
I smiled. “Sure you don’t. Don’t worry about it.”
For a time, no other messages followed. I was still not getting tired as I continued the trek. The slope of the hill eventually eased off and became a rolling incline, softly descending, the sight widening with each step. I could better make out the bends of the river passing by in the distance, the full scope of the village as it spread among hills and through valleys, the buildings loosely gathered together. It had no architecture that I could recognise, especially as most buildings looked to be extended lodges fit to house a lot of people.
“Am I going to find elves down there?” I asked. “Elves would be neat. Tolkien’s elves, especially. Going to Valinor and all that.”
[THERE ARE NO ELVES RECORDED ON ORESSTRIA #2111]
[I HAVE NO INFORMATION OF A PLACE CALLED VALINOR]
“Wanna bet I’ll find elves?” I asked. “It’s my imagination. I want to meet elves so I’ll meet elves.”
I could swear I felt Eternity glaring at the back of my head as I kept increasing the pace, ultimately settling into a jog, something I hadn’t done since my late teens. I was still not freaking out at anything, utterly convinced that this was it, the end of the line, the final stretched-out moment before darkness. It could happen at any moment, and I wasn’t about to stop and have a fight with whatever part of my brain was still running this whole show.
So it came as a shock when I found myself on the outskirts of the village, emerging from the tall grass onto a dirt-packed trail snaking its way towards the wooden buildings. I blinked several times as I stared at the inhabitants.
They stared back at me.
I don’t know which of us was more shocked.
[YOU SHOULD NOT BET AGAINST ME]
“Eternity,” I said, slowly. “Am I in Wonderland?”
[YOU ARE ON ORESSTRIA #2111]
[I HAVE NO INFORMATION OF A PLACE CALLED WONDERLAND ON ORESSTRIA #2111]
I swallowed and let out a slow, incredulous chuckle. Right. Not Wonderland. And I wasn’t Alice.
“Then why am I seeing rabbits? Why are they holding spears?”
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