Part 1: A Big World

  Chapter 1: Death

  Another hour-long commute back home because of all this traffic.

  This accounting job hasn’t been the greatest, but it’s survivable. And I’m grateful that they hired me straight out of college. I couldn’t dream of a better paying job at 24.

  The past 2 years here have been boring, monotonous, whatever other word you can use to describe empty. But every night and every weekend and every holiday my soul lights up when I can sit at home, read a book, watch a show, or play a game.

  I am absolutely obsessed with fantasy. This world is dull and flat. Variety doesn’t exist. Standing out is an illusion.

  Click… Click… Click… Clunk! My blinker returns to its place as I make a left turn.

  Media allows me to take part in another world, fantasize about my own life, think about what kind of decisions I would make if I ever got a chance to start over in a new world… but who am I kidding?

  Ghosts and the supernatural don’t exist. God isn’t real. Life’s existence is a role of the dice, which is great and all, but many spend it just surviving.

  And I fall into that category just like the rest of you.

  Green illuminates my windshield and I let off the breaks.

  I don’t have anyone waiting for me at my apartment. I don’t have an especially nice relationship with my parents. And my lifestyle doesn’t really mesh well with friends, much less a girlfriend.

  School was uneventful. I wasn’t bullied, I wasn’t valedictorian, I went and I studied and I graduated.

  My car inches into the intersection.

  I’m not the best at the accounting firm. I’m not the worst. In the eyes of most, I do well for myself… and yet…

  My glasses glare up from a disturbance in the passenger window.

  And yet I’m not satisfied. I’ve accomplished nothing. I have no goals, no ambitions, no want for anything.

  Why should I even keep… Oh.

  Looks like someone is running the red. Barreling. Tunneling.

  I guess it’s my lucky day. I’m not sure what I was doing here anyway. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

  What was it all for? I mindlessly survived through school, college, worked a job that was meaningless for 2 years. I can’t say I’ve really done anything.

  Am I really okay with it ending here? I guess it doesn’t matter. I guess I have no say. I guess I’ll just return from where I came.

  I’m sorry for the trouble. Someone else should have taken up my spot. I didn’t put it to use. I’m sorry.

  *

  *

  *

  Darkness clouds my vision and my limbs don’t respond… Great. I’m alive but blind and crippled.

  Only one of my senses remain. Touch.

  It’s hard to tell without moving, but it’s wet. Maybe it’s my blood? No. It’s like I’m completely submerged in it.

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  The only thing I can feel is this liquid. Not the seat of my car and not the bed of a hospital.

  I’m suspended. Floating.

  Is this the afterlife? Did I escape the matrix just to find out I’m breathing this thick liquid and suspended in a tank?

  If I’m truly alive then I hope they cut off the life support. I was barely surviving as is and I wouldn’t make it without a single sense I once had.

  Here I am. Untouched. Unmoving. Blind.

  It must have been days, maybe weeks. I was bored out of my mind! This is true torture.

  Not once, this entire time, had I even heard anything. All that raced through my head was constant prayer for the hospital staff to turn on the TV and my ears to finally work again.

  I guess I faked my prayers to a God I didn’t believe existed really well, because a few moments/hours/days later, I could hear. Or maybe that’s an over-exaggeration.

  A deep, long circular rubbing noise kept repeating itself. Someone must be rubbing their hand across my matrix fluid sack! I had always envisioned it as a glass tube, but it sounded more like it was made out of rubber or a smooth, hollow wood.

  For another week or so (I’m not sure, time is hard to keep track of) the rubbing hand was my entertainment. I had grown used to its caressing, but eventually, my hearing improved.

  A soft hum of a song was common. The voice came through the rubber and thick liquid. Dampened.

  Her voice was gentle, reassuring. The first time I heard it, I knew she couldn’t help me escape, but that was the first moment I ever really had hope that I could ever.

  Her humming told me to be patient. It would take time. Floating in this fluid isn’t so bad right? I can survive. I’m good at that.

  Another sound I welcomed was the crackle of fire. A pleasant warmth accompanied it and it was striking to my sense of touch that felt absolutely nothing otherwise.

  By far the most interesting sound was when the woman would speak. By the way she bounced around her words, I could tell she was reading, and yet I understood and recognized none of it. The afterlife must not have an Earthly language.

  The woman was always by my side. I could hear each breath she took reverberate through the rubber. The reading and fire and singing and steady, slow breathing was enough to relax me. With my hearing improved, the fluid was almost comforting.

  The woman wasn’t alone on the outside either. After maybe a week of my hearing returned, a man came in and checked on me. He would say things to me I didn’t understand and caressed the rubber just as the woman did.

  The two of them were… well acquainted. The fluid was disturbing but the two of them making love in the same room as me was much worse. Like did they have nowhere else to go?

  The woman was loud. Her usually gentle voice would screech louder than I ever heard before and it would ring through the rubber and vibrate the liquid. The man’s grunts were not a welcome addition. Every thrust was shaking my once comforting liquid oxygen.

  Shaking the liquid?… Every thrust was shaking the liquid?… Almost as if— Almost as if I was right there. Moving with them. The liquid sloshing around every time the woman’s pleasured yell bounced through the skin walls.

  I didn’t want to believe it, but the sloshing became faster. And as the both of them let out their last few grunts, screams, and sighs, I had to accept it. The woman was pregnant with me. I wasn’t merely just hearing this interaction through a rubber tube… And with that, I crumpled up my brain and threw that thought away, never to unpack it ever again.

  After that, the man would come every few days or weeks, but thankfully nothing else happened other than a smooch or two. More importantly, I was definitely growing.

  My limbs were growing in and I could actually feel myself begin to take shape in this world. After being without them for so long, it felt incredible just to move again. I had been claustrophobic and missing the feeling of control.

  The days continued. It was more singing, more reading, talking, sitting by the fire. Sometimes it would be a bath, a sizzling pan, a nap. She would go outside for sunlight and fresh air and I would hear birds chirping and wind howling through fields.

  I’m not sure how I did it, but through all these days and months I didn’t really think about it. I ignored what this could all really mean. It’s not like I had answers anyway. I didn’t know where I was or who I was.

  So after the days and months repeated and the man returned for the final time, he stayed. And I knew what that meant.

  It wasn’t easy. Neither she nor I were big fans of the situation but I did what I did best and turned off my thoughts, ignoring this traumatic moment. And eventually it paid off, my vision turned white. Really white.

  I had dremt of this moment my entire life. How many pieces of isekai media had I consumed in my past life? How long had I dreaded the monotony of Earth? If this life is anything of a fantasy, I won’t ever let it go.

  The nurse let out a few positive words, and handed me to my mother. I couldn’t see but I could hear their conversation much more clearly than I ever had.

  “Qa lis mu palpe?” My father barely got it out through tears.

  The question lingered in the air for a moment. I hadn’t known what he asked, but once my mother opened her lips and let out a quiet whisper in reply, I understood. It was impossible to miss. Through one word she gave me a small glimpse into what my future would entail.

  “Vespera.”