Chapter 1

December 30, 2019

I stood at the edge of the waterfall, looking over the jungle below. It was incredible, and the idea of standing IN the water at the edge of this drop as the water flowed over was also a bit mind-blowing. I was glad I saved this item on my bucket list for last. I looked around at the other tourist and the guide and saw none were paying particular attention to me and they were far enough away that there would be little preventing me from my task.

I climbed to the edge of the falls, onto the natural ledge that kept the water from pulling everyone to the death I sought. Looking back at the surprised faces, I leapt over the edge, thus ending the horrible existence that was my life.

Blackness surrounds me, pure blackness. Not the absence of light, but the absence of Everything. I can’t feel my body, no sounds issue forth when I cry out. I am utterly alone in the nothing. Time has no meaning with nothing to compare it against, so I have no idea how long I floated here. It could have been minutes, years, or decades. I couldn’t do anything except ... exist?

Then, there was white. It wasn’t light, it wasn’t anything, but it seemed it was the opposite of the nothing I had been experiencing. It wasn’t something, but it was no longer nothing. Words can’t describe it. As I am proving now.

As I float in the ... something ... for seconds or millennia, I wonder if this is the afterlife, and if it is Heaven or Hell, or something in between. I was never religious, so I have no real concept of either except the fairy tale versions shown in cartoons. Either way, this sucks. I should have just toughed it out on Earth.

It was at the point of that thought that everything changed. The something kind of merged with the nothing, and became ... something else. It coalesced into what appeared to be a 1950s doctor’s examining room. And I was strapped to the gurney with my legs in the stirrups.

I guess at this point I should explain who I am. My name is Victor Jacob Millson, I am 56, 5’8” tall, slightly overweight at 186lbs and have thinning salt and pepper hair. So, the stirrups were a bit concerning to me.

My life had been a major level shit-show for years. Anything that could go wrong, did, and was always easily placed at my feet as the reason. That was why I decided to finish my bucket list and kick the bucket over the edge of the waterfall. Still not sure how that turned out seeing as I don’t know where I am right now.

As I lay there struggling with the straps, realizing I am as naked as the day I was born, and just as vulnerable, the door opens. When I look over to see who, or what, comes in, I try to calm myself. Who comes through the door is both a shock, and a surprise? It is a 5’0” blond teenaged female in a nurse’s outfit. She looks over at me as she snaps the latex glove that is on her hand. She reaches into her pocket and retrieves a tube of lube, making me worry more about my positioning. As I struggle even more to get loose, she begins to giggle, then bursts into full on belly laughter. “You should see your face! That was so funny. Here, let me release these straps. They were part of my joke to you, along with the Hu*#j@A.”

I look at her, confused at the last word? Was she having a stroke or is there something else going on here? “What? I didn’t catch that last bit, and who are you and where am I and all the other contrived phrases that I should be throwing out right now?”

She thinks a moment, staring at me. I feel a pressure in my head like someone is inflating my skull with pressurized air at a low P.S.I. “You called it the nothing and the something. I made it as creepy as I could just to get you in the mood for my Nurse Rached prank. As for who I am, call me Shan, as my name would be almost impossible for you to pronounce. I am from a people who, as far as Earth is concerned, are gods. We oversee the day to day lives of everyone on your planet. I was assigned to you, and your family, after your original caseworker was found to be incompetent and drinking on the job. What I discovered is that he had failed to catch a glitch in your ‘program’ for lack of a better term. Somehow your actions were all set into an automatic fail state, which is why you ended up trying to learn how to fly without wings. I guess from a Hitchhiker’s standpoint, you learned, as you threw yourself at the ground, and missed. It was your program that caused you to end up here since you intended to kill yourself, it automatically failed, and because of the height you fell, the mother program couldn’t allow you to live. The conflicting programs almost brought down the system as a whole, which is going to cause hell for the next year on Earth. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria. I love that movie but it is basically true. The program placed you into the nothing as you called it. Which is basically a null state designed to preserve you until a solution could be found. Too many people saw you jump for us to put you back there, yet it was a fault of our program that put you there in the first place, so I am here to offer a solution. Or at least a proposal. We, as a race, oversee many different versions of Earth, alternate realities, if you will. We can place you onto one of them, with benefits that should compensate for the years of abuse our system allowed. There is little we can’t do, but we can’t put you back into your own timeline, even on the alternate Earth’s since there is already one of you there, or there was and he died, which would cause problems. We can place you in any time before you were born, but it would have to be at least 100 years before, to prevent you overlapping your own life. The closer to your lifetime, the less time you have, since your existence will end with your birth. If you are far enough back in time, you might even prevent your family from existing, which would allow you to effectively live forever. In addition to placing you on a new world, we will give you some benefits that you can customize to your liking. Pretty much if you can think of it, we can do it. I am going to leave for a bit to get you some food and clothes, you think about what you want, when you want to be, and what type of world you want to live on. Meaning, Technology, Magic, or a mix of the two. I will be back with Tacos and Chimichangas and beer in about 30 minutes. Think on at least having an idea of the when and type when I get back and we can brainstorm together for the rest.”