Chapter 1: The Sopranos was right

A scream from the other room nearly breaks my concentration before Demarcus quickly shuts them up. The third pin of this lock is stuck, but it's the only pin left.

“Cy!” Higgy yells from the front of the post office, behind the tellers desks.

“Almost!” I yell back, muffled behind the annoying bulky mask. I hate it, but I have to wear it. A police sketch of a skinny guy with a big ass facial scar and an eyepatch would be all over the news within the hour otherwise.

I may be applying too much pressure on the tumbler. I slowly begin to ease the rotational tension on the inserted metal bar.

A door slams from behind me and some distant part of me startles, far enough away to ignore, but still I turn my head wide to see if I’m about to be shot or arrested.

Higgy stands in the doorway. Hat, sunglasses, and bandana cover his face, but Higgy's gym-bro physique, plus those shitkicking boots and that shitty jamming glock that he refuses to let me fix make him easy to recognize.

“Cy! We need to move now!”Higgy screams.

“If you wanted to do this fast you should've let me use the circular saw.”

“I ain't letting you break my buzzsaw on a P.O. box! The cops are fucking here! Someone must've heard somethin’, so hurry the fuck up!” He retorts.

As if to punctuate this fact, some garbled voice of a hostage negotiator comes over a bullhorn, impossible to understand.

“We could've bought you a new saw with the profit from the score!”

I ease the pressure to get that last pin, and hear the telltale click of all my progress being tossed out the window like a Russian politician.

“Fuck.”

I remember the order the pins stuck in, so I could pick the lock again, but if the cops are here there's no time.

My stomach drops as I realize this was all for naught. My damaged amygdala lobs cross-court shots, fear yelling from across the house, but I cannot panic. We don't have the luxury.

“I lost it, we gotta run.” I say, packing up my gear.

“You fucking what?!” Higgy yells, turning back to me from where he was peeking through the blinds to the front room.

“It's over, get the guys.”

“You--” whatever new one Higgy was about to tear me is cut off by the ear-splitting report of gunfire as Higgy cedes the floor to the local police department.

I start booking through a door, making my way to the planned route out the back, decently covered with tight alleys and an abandoned Chinese restaurant we can duck into. If Higgins is the selfishly cruel sort of intelligent I know he is, he should be following me shortly. The door kicking open behind me proves I was right.

We haul ass to the back door, I let Higgy go first in case the cops are waiting for us on the other side, and as we make our way to the van, we hear the gunfire stop. Higgy peels us out as we strip off the masks, and I think about the guys I grew up with that we just left for dead.

I think about it long enough to realize that those guys were mostly assholes and I don't really feel bad about it.

Except for Demarcus, he was cool.

Sorry Demarcus.

***

After 3 hours of waiting at the designated rendezvous point, Higgy is about ready to pop.

The guy’s criminally insane, but we all are, and he's gotten me this far so… I make a token effort to assuage his worries. “We don't know that they died in that firefight, I mean, Miguel is a hothead and definitely would've shot back, but the others might've just been arrested. A good lawyer--”

Suddenly I'm on the floor.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!!”

I must've mistimed a dodge when he hucked a lamp at me. Damn depth perception.

“A good lawyer?! A good lawyer will get them a deal in exchange for selling us out! You'd better hope they're dead. Fuck!”

He punctuates that claim by putting a new hole in the drywall. I swear, half our overhead is spent on spackle.

From the floor I butt in. “Not Demarcus, he'd rather do life than screw us over.”

“Fuck Demarcus!” Higgy says as he paces his way around the room, edging closer to where I'm standing back up by my usual worn-in seat in the corner where I can see everything.

“It's over, the gang is over. Imma have to start from scratch, the fuck am I gonna do for money?”

Again, as it's been working just stellar so far, I reassure him. “We're smart. We can figure something out.”

“We? Fuckin’ we?!” This time it isn't a lamp, but a full-pistol whip that lays me out. I really should've seen that coming.

Between the ringing and the tweeting cartoon birds circling my head, I hear him say “this is your fault you fuckin’ cyclops! There is no we. We're done!” After saying this, it takes me a second to notice how he'd eerily gone silent.

“We're done, man. I can't let--Fuck Cy, why ya gotta be so damn…” the word he's looking for is conniving, I'm pretty sure. But I don't hear that, all I hear is the sound of his shitty glock jamming.

Even through my 12th concussion, I've got a survival instinct honed enough to know what to do without thinking.

I kick Higgy in the nuts.

Hey, it ain't a real fight if you ain't fighting dirty.

Fight or flight picks flight because Higgy's between me and the snubnose in the kitchen drawer. I start ducking towards the door, trying to interpose chairs or lamps between us. I hear the telltale sound of a gun jam clearing and

***

“Whenever you’re ready, we can begin.”

I'm not sure if it's shock or some otherworldly calm that's fallen over me like a psychic Valium, but despite everything that I could or should be thinking of, all I can think of is the show The Sopranos.

TV has described dying in a bunch of different ways, but I didn't get to slowly bleed out, have the last laugh, and die smiling as I think about how I managed to punt him in the boingloings on my way out. I didn't see my life flash before my eye(s). nothing like that.

No, The Sopranos got it right. You're mid-sentence, mid-thought, halfway through a bar of “don't stop believin’” and it cuts to black.

Although my life is being replayed. But it's not so much a nostalgic, foggy reminisce where the hand of a loved one takes mine and brings me to the other side, but more of a clip montage being played on a big floating screen to my right. Currently it's showing the toddler years, when my parents were at least half-assing it. Thankfully it's on my blind side so I don't have to see it.

I'm still missing the eye, which is good because I genuinely don't know how to see with two anymore. I've even still got the eyepatch. In fact, I'm still in the clothes I was wearing when I died. No soft white linens, no endless white expanse with pearly gates, but a shitty hoodie with holes in the pits. So Veggietales was wrong. Looking around, it looks like nothing. I mean real nothing. It looks like something you're not paying attention to, like all the wrong letters in a wordsearch, or, as I'm seeing as I look very closely, it looks a bit like TV static.

The being sitting at the desk across from me is definitely not a seraphim, floating wheel of eyes and wings. It's more like a mannequin, or a white version of those little wooden pose dolls for art. As my attention turns back to it, it speaks without a mouth. The voice is calm, patronizing but not condescending, like what I imagine a kindergarten teacher who believes you shouldn’t baby the kids would sound like.

“Are you ready?”

“Is this the part where you tally up my sins and tell me I’m going to hell?” The idea of actual eternal torture and damnation is terrifying enough to bridge the disconnect in my damaged brain and I can feel a bit of adrenaline hit my veins.

“No,” it replies, “though if that’s what you’re interested in we can discuss that.”

“Nope!” I quickly say. I steal a glance at the screen, the compilation now showing a scene from my early childhood, where I hid in a closet as one of my parents’ many arguments turned violent. It’s muted so you can’t hear the screaming.

I’ve seen enough hell.

“Very well then. I’ll take it by your engagement in this conversation that you are indeed ready to begin.” The mannequin hadn't moved as it spoke, sitting completely stationary at its desk. But now, it turns, and an arm raises to gesture. Like a professor giving a lecture.

“I am an orientation-construct, here to facilitate your transition into the post-mortal sections of The Great Work.” As it speaks another floating screen appears within the nothing, showing a small, cartoonish version of the mannequin waving. It then shows it sitting at its desk with a similarly cartoonish balding asian man in glasses sitting across from it.

“My job is to outline your options for afterlives, and what they entail. This is a very important decision, so ask questions and think things through. Take as long as you need, time has no relevance currently.”

It's at this point that I'd like to interject with some question or snarky comment. But I am inundated with choices, and my paranoid disbelieving mind is having a mental slobberknocker with the absurdity of this situation. The result leaves me distant and resigned, like I'm just along for the ride. So I just stare, dumbly.

“Very well,” it continues. The screen shifts to quadrants, with the cartoon asian man and mannequin sitting at the desk in the center where the four sections meet. “Generally, we divide afterlives into 4 categories;”

“Heavens,”

The northwest quadrant populates with an image of a cloudy, pearly gates vibe, the asian man floating wearing robes and wings.

So Veggietales wasn't all wrong.

The northeast depicts the man lounging on a tropical beach.

The southwest with him hanging out with Elvis and what seems to be his dead mother.

And the southeast with a weird, ethereal, iridescent mist. A lavalamp-esque ball with the asian man's glasses and smile floats along. I suppose this would be the more “one with the universe” eternal bliss sort of heaven.

The screens wink back to blank with the two at a desk.

“Hells,”

The northwest shows the classic fire and brimstone, but the asian man wasn't burning. He instead was a hooved, red demon with horns, a forked tail, and chains in his nipples. He seemed to be stabbing something in the pit, and then tossing the spear into another passing demon's chest.

The northeast showed the asian man amongst other people, in, what is very blatantly, a drug fueled orgy.

Southwest was a horrifying mess of violence and gore, eternal rage and pain. It made me think of Prometheus, chained to a rock and having his liver viciously eaten by eagles, only for it to regrow and start again every day. Only if Prometheus was a very pissed off hamster, and the eagles were the blender it was shoved in every day.

Southeast was bleak, dark obsidian spires in an endless wasteland. The cartoon asian man wasn't even depicted. This hell was cold. Impossibly cold. I looked into the hell of eternal rage and violence and didn't blink. But at this, I had to look away.

“Oblivion,”

The screen showed nothing. A peaceful nothing. A nothing where everything is finally, just, over.

“And miscellaneous. This category covers everything from the endless library where you can learn everything that is, was, or will be, the eternal labyrinth-- though very few choose that-- to the Game of Gods.”

This time the screen shows the library, a labyrinth, and then changes completely to show the asian man fighting a dragon, summoning lightning in his hands, then sitting atop a throne in the clouds.

“Pause.” I interject. “Two things. One; there are gods? And two; what is the ‘Game of Gods’?”

“Gods are souls that have grown so powerful and significant that they managed to add to reality in some way. Either by creating a new concept or aspect, or by their existence becoming fundamental and intrinsically tied to the universe's existence.” The mannequin explained.

“The Game of Gods is, if anything, the true form of existence. It is an infinite realm where souls can struggle and strengthen themselves to the point of divinity. It is not only a game that the Gods play with each other, but where new Gods are created, which is necessary to perpetuate the universe and The Great Work's existence. The Great Work is the system by which this, and all things not done by the Gods, are facilitated. Larger than any one God, it was created by the combined effort of the first Gods to allow Gods, and therefore the universe, to exist.”

“So, the real world, or… what would you call it?” I ask.

“We call it the mortal realm.”

“Thanks. So, if I'm inferring things correctly, the mortal realm is just a way to create more souls to participate in this post-mortem ‘great work’, or this game, which you called ‘the true form of existence’?”

“That's one way to interpret it.”

“How very evangelist of you.”

“It is not only for the cultivation of new souls, the mortal realm is also where all the universe's aspects coalesce and interact. In turn, affecting the afterlives.”

“Alright, whatever, real quick plot hole. You said the creation of The Great Work was done by gods, allowing gods to exist. How in the fuck did they make it before they existed?”

“Ah, you've encountered one of the great paradoxes of the universe. Only a Primordial God would be able to answer that question, or even truly understand it.”

“Uh-huh, ya know you're allowed to say you don't know?”

“I fundamentally am not.”

Death's welcoming committee or whatever this thing was called shifts to gesture at the screen again.

“All sapient species make sense of the game differently. For one species they may think of it as colors, another shapes, there is even a theocratic species where it is the hierarchy of a clergy-- they are mostly monks and clerics-- but through the balance of The Great Work, no one species has an advantage over another.

For humans, it is a base 10 system. 10 tiers with 10 levels between them. For the first tier, you will be confined to 3 ‘floors’ until you reach the end of tier 1. The first floor is only for yourself, to get you acquainted with the process and your new abilities. The second will be larger, and have a higher population with other humans that died around the same time as you. The third will be much larger, containing every human yet to reach the 2nd tier. Once you reach the second tier, the Game will truly begin. You will have an entire universe open to you, and will be among souls of every species and every tier.”

“This is all genuinely fascinating but I do need something clarified.”

The mannequin’s head tilts as if ready for my question.

“You said other species. What other species?”

“Ah yes, humans are not alone in the mortal realm. Earth is not the only planet with sapient life upon it, or that has had sapient life at some point in the past or in a previous iteration of the universe.”

“Ah. Cool. Glad we cleared that up.”

“In the Game of Gods you will be capable of magic, you can conquer great foes, create great works and masterpieces, uncover truths and forge strong alliances, and if you should make it to tier 10, your soul will be strong enough to handle ascension to Godhood, though how you get to Godhood is up to you.”

“What happens if I don’t make it? Can you die in this game?”

“Of course. It wouldn't be much of a game otherwise.”

“And what happens if I die?”

“Oblivion.”

“Oh.” That’s all I could say. All there was to say.

I sat there stewing in it, the information, the possibilities, until I finally turned my head again.

I don’t know if it was some kind of fate, or if I had just been eyeballing the passage of time in that highlight compilation of my life, but I turned to watch my father, drunk and high from some party with his skinhead friends, kick in the door to my room. I watched it all again, as this glib ‘Great Work’ played the worst night of my life as a clip on a highlight reel.

I watched as I lost my eye.

Then I watched as my mother, strung out on heroin, quarter-assedly tried to bandage me up. Keeping me alive just to avoid jail, unaware or uncaring of the brain damage.

I remember everything after that.

How it felt like my brain was slowly spinning up, turning back on. The onset of acquired savant syndrome, when fear became distant and disconnected, when I became illiterate in reading body language. When my memory entered a horrible perfection as my brain cannibalized itself in neuroplasticity.

I remember in crystal clear perfect memory:

When I started studying, calculus, chemistry, physics,

learned everything I could.

When I spent a year methodically eating over a hundred apples, every seed ground up in a makeshift mortar and pestle, every gram of cyanide painstakingly collected.

And when I murdered my piece of shit parents.

I turn back to the construct.

When I speak, my voice isn’t as steady as I practiced it to be.

“And-- and where-- or which, did they choose?”

The mannequin is still expressionless, still motionless, I don’t know if I expected pity or what, but it answers.

“Your father chose a hell where he could live out all his desired sins and vices, and your mother chose oblivion.”

“Yeah,” I say quietly, through a shuddering breath of relief. “Yeah that tracks.”

I watched more scenes, of me joining the gang, Higgy taking me in. A few of our better scores and higher moments, and a few of our lower lows. I asked several more questions, about life, the universe, and everything. But none of that affected my decision.

No, I made my decision a long time ago, when I decided I wasn't gonna let anyone have power over me, that I'd never be helpless again, that if I had to, I'd lie, steal, and cheat my way up.

If it takes becoming a god to do it then fine, I'll play their game.

And I'll break it.