Chương 132: Something a little different.

It was raining because of course it was. I was walking to work, so any hope I'd had about the sun earlier — back when I made this genius decision — had well and truly fucked off. It took about five minutes for the sun to turn into overcast clouds and then sudden gale-force winds. Well, not really, but you get my point. The rain started not long after that. And it wasn't even proper rain.

It was that awful thin drizzle that seems fine, isn't landing hard or anything, and then bang, suddenly you're soaked. Not the end of the world when you're nipping to the shop. Significantly worse when you've got an eight-hour shift in a call centre to look forward to. It took like twenty minutes, tops, to walk to work. It was about all I could muster for exercise when the rest of the day was spent sitting in front of a screen listening to Doris complain her internet isn't working again.

I swear, the amount of times that happens and it's because they turned the plug off before they went to bed and forgot to turn it back on again. I was broken out of my complaint when a car went past too close to the kerb and clipped the edge of a puddle, sending a spray of water across my legs.

"Yeah, nice one. Cheers. You fucking dickhead," I muttered, to nobody, since the driver was already gone, his BMW turning the corner at the end of the street. Of course he drives a BM. I bet the prick never indicates, has a new-build house with his wife Stacey and his two brats Chad and Deano. I bet he works as a call centre manager. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I fished it out and wiped a bit of rain off the screen with my sleeve. That made the screen more wet. Typical.

Heads up team — nationwide internet outage affecting most areas since this morning. Expect high call volumes today. All hands on deck! Well, that's nice. Cheers for the awesome news, Greg. I bet you had a stupid grin on your face when you sent that, didn't you? What a prick. I stuck my phone back in my pocket without replying. There was no point. Nobody actually wanted a reply to those messages; they just wanted you to have seen it so they could say you'd been told.

Well, joke's on you, Greg, I read it on my lock screen. No satisfaction of a read receipt for you. The small victory quickly vanished when I remembered that it was Tuesday and this wasn't the final shift before the weekend. Worse, I had a Saturday shift, so my weekend was already fucked. Man, what I wouldn't give to win the lottery. Or find out some relative I've never met has died and left a fuck-ton of money for me in his will.

How about that, but with a load of fantasy hotties working as maids in the mega-mansion he also left me? That would be amazing. Up ahead, a bloke was wrestling with an umbrella that had turned itself inside out, swearing at it like that was going to help. I walked around him and didn't make eye contact. Smart not to get involved in a man's argument with his umbrella. My phone buzzed again, and for a second, I thought about throwing it. If this is more bad news from Greg, I'm calling in sick.

Luckily for Greg, this time it was from someone I was happy to hear from. Lauren: I swear to god I am going to kill my manager. He thinks it's okay to tell me I should wear something a little more ladylike, show off the 'girls'. I'm not even going to bother going to HR this time. They do fuck all cos he's the owner's son. What a bellend. If I kill him, will you help me hide the body? x I started typing a reply and got about three words in.

I looked up to make sure I wasn't about to walk into traffic or something and noticed a light above me. There was a billboard, lit up despite it being daytime. What a waste of electricity. Don't Wait Until It's Too Late To Start Living. J & W Funeral Services. Complete with a picture of an open coffin. Lovely. Who the fuck thought that slogan was a good fit for a funeral advert? Who even uses billboards nowadays anyway? I went back to sending my witty reply when I heard a loud crack. I looked up again.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Everything went black.

I became aware of myself slowly. No transition, no falling sensation, just one moment nothing and the next moment standing, eyes closed, listening to something laugh. That laugh. I knew that laugh. Squeaky, ridiculous, unmistakable.

"Hang on a minute," said a voice.

"Why are you here?" I opened my eyes. White room. Not painted white — just blank, nothing, like the walls hadn't loaded in properly. Massive TV on one side of it, and on it, SpongeBob was doing something enthusiastic with his spatula. Course he was. There was a bloke on the couch, legs up, looking at me like I'd just interrupted something. Top knot. Big beard. Both the same colour as the walls, which was somehow worse. Dressing gown, also the same colour. And — I kid you not — socks and sandals.

"Where exactly is here?" I said, still looking around.

"What's going on? I was on the way to work, then everything went black, and now I'm—" I gestured at the room.

"Wherever this is." He looked at me for a second before cringing and looking away.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?" I looked down to make sure I didn't somehow have birdshit running down my shirt or something. No idea why that would've happened, but it was my first thought. I found nothing. Not like "no birdshit" nothing — actually nothing. No body or anything.

"What the fuck!"

"Whoa, calm down, bro. It's all good."

"How is it all good? Am I a floating head or something? What the hell's going on?"

"Give me a sec. I need to check something." He reached over and pulled something towards him. It looked like a laptop, if laptops hovered on little wings and didn't have any ports, or hinges, or really any indication of how you'd open the thing. He clicked around on it anyway. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"Oh," he said.

"Well, that makes sense." He looked back at me.

"Yeah — sorry to tell you this, my guy, but you're currently dead."

"Huh?" Pretty sure I said that out loud.

"What d'you mean, dead? Are you fucking with me?"

"Nope. You got crushed by that funeral advert you saw. Ironic, right? Pretty funny if you think about it."

"How the fuck is that funny?"

"Whoa, chill, dude." He held both hands up, like I was the one being unreasonable here.

"Look — it's kind of my fault. Don't worry though, I can fix this."

"What d'you mean it's your fault? What is even going on right now?"

"Right, here's the sitch." He sat up straighter on the couch, his sandals slapping the floor as he put his legs down.

"My name's Jeff. Well, it's not, but my actual name would melt your brain if I said it, so just call me Jeff. I'm God. Yeah — that God. Or, the god that God's based on, whatever. Doesn't matter. Point is — I may have accidentally killed you about sixty-two years before you were meant to kick the bucket. Sorry about that."

"... Explain."

"Okay so, I've been working on this thing. Kind of a passion project of mine. I was looking for someone to test it out, and came across your profile—" he pointed at the laptop "—I gotta say, that prank you pulled back in school where you cling-filmed the toilets. Genius. Anyway."

"What the fuck, man? How do you even know that? And is that a laptop? We're in the afterlife. I'm talking to God. And he's got a laptop. Why is that even a thing?"

"Man, don't ask. The guy who handles this stuff for me has a bit of a thing for your tech. No idea why — the guys over on Terra are way more advanced, but he says they're all way too into skulls, thinks it's tacky. Personally, I prefer how the dwarves do it. Just looks cooler, you know? All that brass."

"No. What are you even talking about?"

"Right, sorry. Anyway — I was looking at your profile, and I think I might have pressed delete by mistake. Classic fat-finger moment. You get it, right?" I nodded. I did, in fact, get it.

"Hang on — why is there a delete button that kills people?"

"No idea. Seemed like a good idea when this was all set up, I guess." He shrugged.

"Anyway. My bad, b. How about I make you a deal to make up for it?" Screw it.

"Sure," I said.

"What's the deal?"

"Good man." He clapped his hands together.

"Right, so — I can bring you back. I'll just rewind things a bit, put you back in your house, before any of the funeral advert business. Clean slate. To make it up to you properly though, I'm gonna let you be the guy I was testing this thing on. I'm gonna give you a pocket dimension. You go in, get resources, craft stuff, maybe learn some magic. The whole shebang. Nice, right?"

"So you're giving me more work?"

"Nah, don't think of it like that. It's gonna be like your crafting games. You get a cool gun thing that turns stuff into resources, you've got a storage system, the whole floating-blueprint-instant-build thing, loads of crafting tables. I know you love that." He wasn't wrong.

"I mean — that does sound cool," I admitted.

"I'd barely have time for it though. Work and everything."

"Well, I'll make it so time freezes outside while you're in there. You step in, spend a few hours relaxing, come back out, and it's like you stepped in and immediately stepped back out."

"Isn't that gonna mess with something? Messing with time in literally every form of media I've ever seen never ends well."

"Look at me." He spread his arms slightly.

"Who are you talking to? I'm God, remember." I shook my head slowly.

"Right. Fair."

"There's a load of other cool stuff about it too, but I'll let you figure that out for yourself." He winked. I wasn't sure why, but the wink made me uneasy.

"So," he said.

"We got a deal?"

"... Sure." He reached out a hand to shake and I tried to take it. How I'd managed to forget I didn't have one in the last two minutes is beyond me. Jeff seemed to realize this fact and chuckled.

"Awesome." He was already looking back at the TV.

"Right, I'll get on that. Talk to you later."

"Wait, what do you mean you'll—" There was a flash of white light, and for the second time that day, I got yanked somewhere else without any warning.

I opened my eyes expecting to find my bedroom. Instead, I was met with grass. Loads of it, stretching out in every direction. This wasn't what I was promised. Come on, Jeff, man. I get you're the kind of god who fat-fingers people to death, but this is a bit much. How the hell is this my room? I knew this was probably that sandbox he was talking about, but it wasn't like I could see a door leading home or anything. There were also no animals. Am I going to starve to death?

I'd rather face death by funeral billboard again if that's the case. There were trees scattered about, mostly clustered in a forest to my right. On my left was a big pile of rocks. They looked like the aftermath of a landslide, minus the mountain they fell from. Past all of that, in every direction, were thick walls of fog. They went straight up as far as the eye could see. So that's what he meant by sandbox. He was being literal. My phone buzzed.

I know this is a weird thing to get stuck on, but how did I even have signal out here? I pulled it out and looked at the screen. The name Jeff appeared before me with a picture of him in a Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses pushed up on his head, lying back in a deckchair somewhere, drinking out of a coconut with a straw in it. I stared at the screen for a couple of rings. Honestly, I don't know what I was expecting. I answered the phone.

"Right," Jeff said, totally dodging an apology for not sending me home.

"So. This is your sandbox. Cool, right?"

"Yeah, about that—""Anyway, I gave you a system. You know what I mean. Just think system and it'll pop up. Think it again to hide it, if you don't want it just hanging there." I thought system. A screen appeared in front of me. Floating there, like something out of a HUD, except there was nothing to project it. Blue and white, three tabs along the top. Storage. Crafting. Quest log. Okay. Pretty standard system from any game or manga. I'd put hundreds of hours into games with basically this exact menu.

"You'll get more tabs as you go," Jeff said.

"For now — storage, crafting, quests. Look in storage." I thought storage, and the screen shifted.

"See that gun-looking thing?" Jeff said.

"That's your tool. I've named it the Deconstructor. Point it at stuff, pull the trigger, beam comes out, stuff turns into resources, resources go straight into storage. Nice and stackable. I know you're all about having a clean inventory."

"Is this just—" I stopped.

"Did you rip this off from that one game where you have to turn a barren planet into a habitable one?"

"Yep."

"Are you going to keep ripping off stuff cos you're too lazy to make anything yourself?"

"Yep."

"Right."

"Anyway. Quest tab. Have a look, follow that, do the basics, and you can head home. Give me a shout if you get stuck. You'll get a map eventually but you don't need one yet — you can pretty much see everything from here anyway."

"Okay, so—""So yeah, that's the basics. Like I said, you'll—oh, no. Sorry. Something's come up. Gotta go."

"Wait, what do you—" There was a scuffling sound, like he was shoving something out of sight.

"Where do I— no, not there, she'll see it there—" A pause.

"—she'll never let me hear the end of it if she finds out about this—" The call cut off. I stared at the phone for a second, then put it away. No idea what that was about. I'm sure it'll be fine and in no way become a headache I need to deal with later. I thought storage again, and there it was — the Deconstructor, sitting in the middle of the screen on its own little stack of one. I thought about picking it up, and it appeared in my hand. It looked exactly like the gun from the game. Obviously.

Sleek, matte black, a thin line of blue light running along the barrel that pulsed gently, like it was idling. I turned it over a couple of times. Surprisingly light for something that was apparently going to disintegrate rocks. Right. Test run. I walked over to the pile of rocks, picked one about the size of a football, and pointed the Deconstructor at it. Took a breath. Pulled the trigger. A beam of light shot out and hit the rock dead on. The rock didn't explode or anything dramatic. It just started...

coming apart. Crumbling inward, layer by layer, like watching something dissolve in fast-forward, until there was nothing left but a faint shimmer of dust that got sucked away before it even hit the ground. A small notification popped up in the corner of my vision: +8 Stone (Common) — Storage: 8/∞ I thought storage again. Sure enough, there it was. Eight stone, sitting in its own neat little slot with a counter underneath it. I stood there for a second, looking at the gun, then at the rock pile. Okay. Yeah.

This was actually pretty cool. Maybe getting crushed to death by the world's worst advertising decision wasn't such a bad way to go after all.