Story 3:
The World After Death
I FOUND MYSELF in a white room.
“Hey.”
“Howdy.”
The pixelated asshole here was in good shape as usual. Just because he was sealed in here, of course, didn’t mean he was moping. He was as pixelated as ever, so…
“That stuff I saw forty years back… That was future vision, huh?”
“You got it.”
The Man-God was the same as ever. But forty, even fifty years had passed since I saw him last. His “same as ever” qualities had long since faded into my distant memory. I did remember him being just as arrogant back when we first met as he was now, though.
“I thought if you saw that you might cut me a bit of slack.”
“Lost that bet, huh?”
“Whatever. I was doomed anyway.”
I wasn’t so weak-willed that I’d give up on everything I’d worked for just because of one dream. Though admittedly, I might have if it hadn’t been in the form of a dream.
“That was what you looked like, huh,” he said.
I looked at myself. The big, blubbery body…was gone. At some point, my appearance had changed. I was in pretty good shape—you could see muscle definition, and my abs were trim and toned. It was the kind of body that looked like it could float like a butterfly. It was the body I’d grown used to in this world… The body of Rudeus Greyrat. I couldn’t see my own face, but I didn’t feel like it was very old.
“You didn’t know?”
“No. My eyes see straight to the soul. I knew there was something different between your body and your soul, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen you.”
He was really dropping some hot new information on me now! Then again, I didn’t know what the Man-God looked like either. Technically, we were even.
How come my body’s only just changed to look like this now? Actually, never mind. I don’t need an answer.
“Anyhow, this is the end of the line for you,” said the Man-God.
“Yeah,” I replied at length.
I’d died, at seventy-four years old. It was hazy, but I remembered my final moments. I was surrounded by my children and my grandchildren. I think I was happy at the end. At the very least, it was a world away from the final moments in my previous life. When I compared it to that lonely, powerless, pathetic, pitiful end…
“It’ll make things easier for me with you out of the picture.”
“That so?”
“While you were alive, everything I tried to do came to nothing. So I had a think. I took a leaf from your book, and ever so slowly, I’ve been building up my allies.”
“You still haven’t quit, huh?”
The Man-God’s mood changed. Now he was angry.
“Obviously,” he said. “Would you give up if you knew that future was coming? Always alone, unable to do anything, see anything—and spending ten or even a hundred thousand years like that. I know I couldn’t live like that. How could I give up?”
Okay, fair enough. Can’t imagine it turning into such an epic thing, though.
Still, I understood a little of what he felt. If you knew that something was going to happen to you, the sort of future that awaited you, and that you’d regret it unless you acted now, you wouldn’t be able to sit back and let it happen.
“Yeah, I guess you can’t quit.”
“What’re you acting so ambivalent for? Think you’ve already won or something?”
“You have a plan then?”
“I do. And now I know that Orsted loops through these same two hundred years. Also, you had too many descendants. I thought of a way to use that. Over the past fifty years, I’ve gotten everything ready…”
“That so?”
“Is what I’m saying getting through to you? I’m going to turn everything you built against you, then spoil it. Once you’re gone from this world, I’m going to use what you made to win. And there’s nothing you can do about it because, in the end, you’re dead! You can’t do anything to stop your descendants from feuding and murdering each other. You can’t come to me crying ‘Please, stop this!’. You won’t even be able to see it!”
While the Man-God’s gleeful spiel went on, I scratched my face, then while I was at it, I scratched the back of my head too. Not because I was itchy—I just wasn’t really sure how I was supposed to respond.
“You don’t say?” I said.
“What the hell?!” he yelled, stamping his foot up and down. “Why the hell are you so smug?!”
“Probably because I’m dead,” I said promptly. The Man-God didn’t seem to know what to say to that.
I closed my eyes and thought back on everything that had happened up until now. In this world, I’d done the things I wanted to do. I got married, and I made friends. I had children and lots of grandchildren. I even excelled at my job. True, it troubled me to hear the Man-God talking about the future, and there were things I thought I ought to have done better. But somehow, mysteriously, I had no regrets. No…maybe I ought to say I had no unfinished business. I was worried and anxious, but I didn’t feel the urge to do something about it. Hearing the Man-God talk now, I wasn’t filled with the need to find some way to resurrect myself and save my children.
If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because I thought all of them—kids and grandkids both—would work things out themselves from now on. Just as I’d done myself, I trusted the kids to apply themselves to whatever problems came at them and do their best to overcome them.
I slowly walked towards the Man-God. He was far smaller than I’d thought. Up until now, neither of us had gotten any closer to the other than was necessary, so I hadn’t had a good idea of his size.