The Choice (part 1)
First there was a squeal, and then some expletives.
Then a crash.
Then falling.
This was very shortly interrupted by the sensation of being locked in a paint mixer.
Then cold silence.
Then something blew up.
Jack found himself standing in a spotlight that shone from some source out of sight above him. Outside of the circle of illumination was nothing. Well, not fully nothing, but more an impermeable inky blackness that defied any attempt his eyes made to see into it. The last thing he could remember was traveling down the interstate.
And now, for some reason, he was here.
He looked all around himself for some clue, when a small, hunched man with a wrinkled face and an incredibly elaborate white beard appeared with a poof in the circle in front of him. He couldn’t have been more than two or three feet tall, and wore what looked like a bathrobe. The little man hovered in the air at eye level for a long moment, seeming to size him up.
Jack opened his mouth to say something, but before he could get a word out, the little man spoke.
“Great news, kid… You’re dead!” He said. His low, raspy voice reminded Jack of his grandfather back when he used to smoke.
Jack looked at the little man blankly.
“Uh, I’m sorry… what do you mean I’m ‘dead’?” He asked.
The little man shrugged.
“You’re dead. Deceased. No longer living. Shuffled off this mortal coil. You know the thing where they stick you in a box in the ground or throw you in a furnace? You’re that.” He said. When Jack continued to give him no response, he sighed and added, “welcome to the afterlife, kid.”
Jack understood all of the words coming out of the little man’s mouth, but for some reason his brain couldn’t seem to make sense of them in the combination he was hearing them in. He couldn’t be dead, because first of all, there was no afterlife. Second of all, if there WAS an afterlife, it certainly wouldn’t be this… whatever this is.
But then, how did he end up here? And just where WAS here, anyways? That of course completely ignored that somehow a little man in a bathrobe was floating in front of him. Lacking any other way of understanding it, he decided that this surely had to be some sort of elaborate prank. “Alright. You can stop messing with me now. I know this is a joke. Where are the hidden cameras?” Jack said, looking around.
The little man cocked his head in confusion.
“You seriously think this is a joke?”
Jack nodded.
“Of course. Though I gotta give you credit, the whole thing is pretty convincing. You almost had me going for a second there. Alright Matt and Scotty, you guys can come out now.”
“Yeah, no, they’re dead too. Died the same time as you, actually.” The old man said. When he saw the lack of comprehension on Jack’s face, he rubbed his face with his hands in frustration. “Okay look, you know what? Here. Let me show you.”
He swatted the air beside him with the back of his hand and something akin to an old projection screen appeared floating in the air beside him.
Jack watched a video as a black Jeep rolled down the interstate. It looked like police chase footage from a helicopter, without the twenty pursuit vehicles. It was Matt’s Jeep, easily identifiable by the wall of bumper stickers that covered the entire rear end of the vehicle. As Jack watched, it approached a large bridge that crossed over a gorge.
Without warning, a large deer dove out of the patch of woods on the right, bounding at top speed to try and cross the road before the SUV got there. The Jeep jerked to avoid the animal, and in doing so lost control and screeched clear off the road, blew through the perfunctory guardrail beside the bridge, and careened headlong into the ravine beneath it. It slammed into the sloping cliffside a few dozen feet down with a crunch, and proceeded to crumple into a twisted metal heap as it tumbled down the ravine wall. Jack flinched at every impact, and winced as it finally came to rest on the ravine floor with a resounding thud.
Jack turned to the old man to say something. Then the car exploded. He watched a close-up slo-mo shot of his head being launched out of the fireball. It tumbled across the ground and the camera followed it until it came to a stop. As if to really drive the point home, it proceeded to zoom in on his mangled face and hold the shot in freeze frame for several seconds until the recording screen winked out of existence.
“Uh, I, uhhh…. What?” Jack finally managed to stammer out. He suddenly felt very ill.
“Like I said. Deadorino.” The old man said. “So, you got a name, kid?”
“Uh, Jack…?”
“Nice to meet ya, Jack!” The old man said, extending his hand with a broad smile. “My name’s Frumpkin Snozcumber, but most people these days just call me ‘God’.”
Jack numbly shook the little man’s hand, and Frumpkin continued.
“So, you may be wondering why you’re here. Well, that’s because it’s time for you to decide how you’re going to spend your afterlife.”
He swatted the air beside him again, and what looked like a whiteboard appeared. On it was written, in big, bold, black letters:
1. AN ETERNITY OF PERPETUAL BLISS
Or
2. START OVER IN A NEW LIFE AS A FANTASY HERO
“So, you can pick one of these two options. Most people, they take the eternity of perpetual bliss. Me, I personally think that’s the better of the two options, but hey, what do I know, right?”
Jack could barely wrap his head around what was happening. He was DEAD? But… no. That couldn’t be right! ...Could it?
“Option number two, I reincarnate you in a world not unlike fantasy stories from your world. Magic, dragons, damsels, the works. In this one, you get to try and be the hero who saves it from certain destruction, or something like that. You wanna start your new life with magical powers? You got it. A harem of beautiful women? Sure. Ridiculous good looks and a legendary sword that lets you fly? We can do that too.” As Frumpkin named each thing, the whiteboard flipped over and over, depicting a smiling stick figure of Jack with each of the things he was describing.
“This version has a little bit of a catch though. At some point, there will be another person from your world transported into it. A rival, so to speak. They will be playing the role of villain to your heroic self, and their goal is simple- they have to either kill you, destroy the planet, or defeat and enslave every major political power on it. They get their own set of advantages too, same as you. You, as the hero, will have to permanently stop this villain from completing one of these actions. How you do that is up to you.
Good news is, if you manage to defeat them and succeed in saving the world, you get to take on my role for that world forever. You become ‘God’, so to speak, with all of the attendant omnipotence and bottomless charisma. Bad news is, if you die in that world, you cease to exist. Poof. No everlasting bliss for you.”
He gestured to the whiteboard with a wave of his hand, and looked at Jack with a grin.
“So, what’ll it be, kid?”
