When I woke up, I was on my back, and a cloudless blue sky hung high above me. Sitting up, I realized that I’d awoken in a woodland clearing surrounded by lush, green plant life. At a glance, it looked like any other forest in Japan, but that was impossible. I was no longer on Earth, or even in the same universe.
I was now in a completely new world.
⌗⌗⌗
Our story began on a day like any other.
Back on Earth, I used to work as a software engineer, toiling away seven days a week plus holidays and overtime in order to meet my release deadlines. One night, I was on my way home after work. It was around midnight, and I was heading toward the train station. Exhaustion had already claimed me, and I was dead on my feet, but then I saw a stray cat stagger onto the road. It seemed as unsteady as I was, and as I looked on, it stumbled right into the middle of the street.
Suddenly, I noticed that a truck was barreling straight for it.
Maybe the driver was drowsy or on their phone; maybe they were just being careless. Regardless, they showed no sign of slowing down at all and gave no indication that they’d even seen the cat. I was also barely managing to stay awake at that moment, so my speculation could be unreliable.
As soon as I processed what was happening, I sprinted for the cat. The truck and I were converging from different directions, and the race was on. It was anyone’s guess who might reach the cat first—the truck had me beat in terms of speed, but I’d started closer to my target.
I rapidly closed in on the cat, lifted it up by the torso, and flung it out of the way. Unfortunately, considering what happened next, the truck won our contest by a landslide. What did it win, you ask? That’s a discussion for another time.
There was a sickening thud. The impact knocked me off my feet and tossed me into the air. Nonsensically, some stories about parents lifting vehicles to save their kids rushed through my head as everything faded to black.
⌗⌗⌗
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before I’d awoken, or to be more precise, regained consciousness. A blank white expanse surrounded me, and I was floating within it. I couldn’t even see my own body, but I felt both perfectly alert and half asleep at the same time. It was as if I’d been suspended in a vague state of semi-existence.
“Hey, you’re awake?” The words were delivered in the voice of a young woman.
“If you can call it that, then yes,” I replied, confused by my current perception of reality.
I wasn’t exactly hearing her (I assumed that the voice belonged to a woman). To clarify, no sound waves were reaching my ears. I also wasn’t really speaking, since speech was defined as air passing from the lungs through the vocal cords to produce vibrations. Telepathy might be the most fitting term for our communication; she was projecting her thoughts toward me, and likewise, I sent my thoughts toward her. It was a circuitous interpretation of a conversation.
“Looks like I’ve managed to preserve your soul, even if I had to overreach my authority to do so,” said the voice.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“In short, you died in your world. Normally, your soul would’ve been disassembled and repurposed into new resources,” she explained. “You were a software engineer, right? In technical terms, the section of memory containing your soul would’ve been deallocated if I hadn’t locked it first. I wasn’t supposed to do that though.”
“I more or less understand the situation,” I said. “So, now what?”
I felt oddly serene, even though she’d just casually informed me that I was dead.
“That’s good. I want you to stay calm. I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve had to temporarily rewire your consciousness to suppress your fear of dying. Otherwise, your soul would start to deteriorate—in other words, the garbage collector would’ve seen the flag for deallocation and automatically deleted your soul to free up memory. At that point, you would’ve ceased to exist both physically and figuratively.”
“All right,” I said, still at peace.
“Thank you for your understanding. Moving along, do you remember saving a stray cat?”
“Yes, of course. I love cats.”
That’s right. Although I was over forty and my looks regularly attracted police attention, I loved small animals and was particularly fond of cats. That day, I’d been physically worn out from the combination of my advancing age and lots of consecutive overtime; I’d been mentally exhausted from burnout.
My love of cats was the final star in a miraculous constellation—albeit, an unlucky one—and the result was an unthinkable heroic dash to my death.
All of that rambling boiled down to one simple statement: I love cats.
“That cat was me,” said the voice. “I was on duty as a Watchdog, but of course, that means nothing to you. Let’s see, are you familiar with parallel universe theory?”
“Yes, it often appears in sci-fi and fantasy,” I replied.
“Good. That’ll make this conversation easier. My job is to patrol different universes and watch for catastrophic cross-world events. That is, any event in one world that would negatively impact another.”
I sensed a trace of pride in her not-voice. Indeed, it was a job that no human could perform. “That’s pretty impressive,” I said honestly.
“There are pros and cons to the job, but more cons, I’d say.”
I guess I shouldn’t have bothered with the compliment.