On a very unfaithful Tuesday afternoon, you know, the kind that makes you wonder if the universe woke up and chose violence specifically against you, Arthur Finch's last coherent thought before dying wasn't about loved ones, regrets, or the meaning of life, but rather: 'Well, that's a critical system failure.' Which, in hindsight, was probably the most Arthur Finch thing he could've thought while an eighteen-wheeler turned him into a very unfortunate speed bump, and honestly, if anyone had asked him how he wanted to go, this wouldn't even have made the top hundred list, right next to "death by vending machine" and "tripping over his own shoelaces."
But let's rewind thirty seconds, back when Arthur still had a functioning skeletal structure and a future that extended beyond "imminent pavement decoration," because context is important and also because Arthur's last thirty seconds of life were possibly the most on-brand moments of his entire existence.
Arthur had spent thirty years perfecting the art of existing in the most predictable way humanly possible, and by God, he'd made it into an Olympic sport. Wake up at exactly 6:47 AM, code until his eyeballs felt like raisins left out in the sun, caffeinate like his life depended on it—which it absolutely did because Arthur without coffee was basically a malfunctioning robot—code some more until lunch, microwave something that used to resemble food three days ago, code again, go home, sleep, and repeat the whole beautiful cycle. It was magnificent in its monotony, really, the kind of life where the most dramatic thing that happened was when someone used tabs instead of spaces and Arthur could spend a good twenty minutes having an imaginary argument about it in the shower, complete with devastating comebacks he'd never actually use because confrontation was terrifying and also required talking to people.
He LIKED it that way, thank you very much, because predictability meant safety and safety meant he could go entire weeks without having to make a single decision more complicated than "chicken flavor or beef flavor instant noodles?" which was already pushing his daily decision-making quota to its absolute limit.
So there he was on that particularly unfaithful Tuesday afternoon at exactly 4:47 PM, punching out of Sterling Corp with the enthusiasm of a man escaping prison, except prison probably had better coffee and definitely had more natural light than his cubicle, which was located in what he'd privately nicknamed "The Fluorescent Wasteland of Broken Dreams."
His mind was already wrestling with that stubborn syntax error that had been haunting him like a clingy ex-girlfriend who couldn't take a hint, the kind of error that woke him up at 3 AM in a cold sweat because his brain had suddenly figured out it was a missing semicolon all along, and his earbuds pumped cheerful synth-pop that lied shamelessly about life being wonderful and full of possibilities while his fingers twitched unconsciously as he mentally drafted his fifty-seventh passive-aggressive email about the coffee machine.
Oh that damned coffee machine, his arch-nemesis, his white whale, his reason for mild homicidal thoughts every single morning! Three years—THREE ENTIRE YEARS—he'd been fighting that battle, and that machine had become more than just a broken appliance; it was a personal insult, a daily reminder that the universe didn't care about his needs. It gurgled like a dying demon every morning, spat out liquid that tasted like burnt sadness mixed with regret, and Arthur was THIS CLOSE to writing a strongly worded letter to corporate about it, except he had seventeen drafts already saved on his desktop, single-spaced, with footnotes, charts, and a comprehensive analysis of the machine's failure rate that would make a statistician weep with pride.
As he stepped off the curb with all the awareness of a man deep in fantasy, fully committed to his mental coffee machine revenge scenario where he gave an hour-long PowerPoint presentation titled "Why Our Coffee Machine Is A Crime Against Humanity: A Comprehensive Analysis with Visual Aids," and in this beautiful daydream, everyone in the meeting was nodding seriously and taking notes while the CEO himself shed a single tear and promised to buy a new machine immediately.
The city screamed its usual Tuesday symphony around him—horns blaring like angry geese on steroids, people shouting in what sounded like twelve different languages at once, someone's car alarm having an absolute meltdown for absolutely no reason, a street vendor yelling about hot dogs, and a pigeon making aggressive eye contact with him from a nearby trash can—but Arthur noticed precisely none of it because he was too busy perfecting his imaginary presentation, specifically the slide about how the coffee machine had personally victimized him two hundred and seventeen times.
The almighty truck-kun appeared, and by "appeared," Arthur meant it literally MATERIALIZED into existence like someone had copy-pasted it into reality without checking if that particular space was already occupied, which it very much was, by Arthur, who was standing there like an absolute idiot, completely unaware that the universe had just hit Ctrl+V on an eighteen-wheeler in the exact coordinates his body currently occupied.
VROOOOOOM!
The sound was massive and terrifying, but not gradually massive and terrifying like a normal approaching vehicle, no, this was instantly, impossibly, shouldn't-be-physically-possible massive and terrifying, the kind of sound that bypassed your ears and went straight to your soul to inform it that it should probably start packing its bags. Not with any warning, not even with the basic courtesy of existing two seconds earlier so Arthur's brain could process "oh hey, giant death machine incoming, maybe move," but just suddenly, horrifically THERE, barreling through a red light like it had a personal vendetta against traffic laws and anyone who believed in them, particularly Arthur.
Arthur's programmer brain looked at the truck with the analytical calm of someone observing a particularly interesting bug in the system and went: 'Huh, that's not supposed to happen, that's a MAJOR glitch, and someone's definitely getting fired for this, probably me, except I can't get fired if I'm dead, wait, am I about to die?'
His internal warning system started absolutely SCREAMING like every alarm in a nuclear power plant going off simultaneously: ERROR! ERROR! CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE! IMMINENT DEATH DETECTED! ABORT! ABORT! DO SOMETHING, YOU IDIOT! But his body, his stupid, coffee-deprived, completely useless body just stood there like he was rooted to the concrete, participating in absolutely none of the survival instincts his brain was desperately trying to activate.
The truck driver—probably having his own terrible day and wondering if he should've called in sick and stayed in bed where it was safe and trucks didn't spontaneously teleport into pedestrians, suddenly realized with absolute horror that he was about to turn a human being into a pancake, a realization that hit him approximately one second too late to matter. His eyes went WIDE, wider than Arthur had ever seen human eyes go, like they were trying to escape his face entirely, and his hands yanked the wheel like he was trying to wrestle a bear while simultaneously winning an arm-wrestling championship, and his foot SLAMMED on the brakes with enough force to possibly break through the floor of the truck.
SCREEEEEECH!
The sound of the tires was absolutely ear-splitting, the kind of screech that could wake the dead, which was ironic because Arthur was about to join their ranks, and it echoed through the street like the universe's way of announcing "SOMEONE'S ABOUT TO DIE, EVERYONE LOOK!" but it was too late, way too late, comically too late, which would have been funny if it wasn't about to be tragic.
Arthur saw the truck's grill loom up like a chrome monster about to eat him whole, all metal teeth and mechanical fury, and his brain supplied one final, perfectly Arthur thought: 'Definitely filing a bug report about this if I survive, which I won't, so never mind, well this is disappointing, I never even finished that video game I bought last month.'
BAMMM!!!
The impact came with a sound that Arthur's brain couldn't even process properly.
CRUNCH-THWAM-CRASH
All mixed together into one horrible symphony of metal meeting meat, and honestly, the world didn't go black like in the movies where everything fades dramatically with sad music playing.
It went WHITE, blindingly, impossibly white, the kind of white that felt like someone had turned the universe's brightness setting up to maximum and then added another fifty percent just to be absolutely sure they'd damaged your retinas. It was so white it hurt, except Arthur couldn't feel pain anymore because pain required a body and his body was currently having a very bad time back on the street, probably in several pieces, which was a thought he decided not to think about because gross.
But Arthur's consciousness, his actual mind and thoughts and the part of him that was definitely-still-him even without the body, was floating in this weird white space that hummed and buzzed and vibrated with energy that felt like he'd been plugged directly into a wall socket, except instead of electrocution it was strangely pleasant, like a massage made of electricity and stardust. Every single part of him—or what used to be him, or what would be him, time was weird here—was being taken apart like LEGO blocks, carefully examined by some cosmic force that was apparently very thorough, and then put back together in a completely different configuration, like someone had decided his original design was outdated and needed a major update.
He was being rebooted like a computer, completely wiped and reinstalled with new hardware, and he couldn't even be mad about it because it was KIND OF COOL in a terrifying, what-the-hell-is-happening-to-me way, and also because being mad required energy and his energy was currently being used to exist in whatever this white space was.
Then came sounds that definitely weren't the sounds of city traffic or ambulance sirens or people screaming about the accident, no, these were different sounds entirely, soft sounds that felt intimate and private, wet sounds that made him vaguely uncomfortable.
Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump a heartbeat that definitely wasn't his, or maybe it was his, or maybe it was both, time and identity were doing weird things and Arthur was too confused to figure it out.
And then came the sensations, he felt SMALL, not just regular small but impossibly, incomprehensibly small, like he could be squashed by a finger, and HELPLESS in a way that made his programmer brain want to scream because he couldn't control anything, couldn't move, couldn't see properly, couldn't do ANYTHING, and HUNGRY, so desperately, overwhelmingly hungry that he would've eaten a horse if one had been available.
"Oh, my little star! He's here! He's finally here!"
The voice crashed into his consciousness like a tidal wave of pure sugar, so sweet it made Arthur's figurative teeth hurt and it was warm like honey drizzled over sunshine, soft like clouds made of marshmallows, and SO FULL OF LOVE that Arthur genuinely wanted to run away and hide because this was TOO MUCH EMOTION for someone who'd spent thirty years carefully avoiding feelings deeper than "mildly annoyed." But he couldn't run, couldn't even twitch, because apparently his new container had approximately zero motor control and all the physical coordination of a cooked noodle.
He tried to move his arms experimentally because surely he could move his arms, everyone could move their arms, arm-moving was a basic human function, but his arms just flopped uselessly like sad fish, and then he tried his legs with the same result, and then he tried to move his HEAD, just his head, that's not asking for much, but his head was apparently made of lead and also not interested in cooperating!
'WHAT IS HAPPENING?! WHY CAN'T I MOVE ANYTHING?! AM I PARALYZED?! IS THIS HELL?! DID I GO TO HELL?! I DIDN'T THINK I WAS THAT BAD OF A PERSON! I RETURNED MY LIBRARY BOOKS ON TIME!'
"Our little lightning strike," another voice rumbled into existence, deep and grounding like thunder rolling across mountains, the kind of voice that vibrated in your chest and made you want to trust it even if it was telling you terrible news, and it said the words with such pride and joy that Arthur felt embarrassed for this person, whoever they were. "Welcome, son."
SON?!
The word hit Arthur's consciousness like a slap!
SON?!
EXCUSE ME, SIR, BUT I'M THIRTY YEARS OLD! I PAY TAXES! I HAVE A 401K THAT I'VE BEEN DILIGENTLY CONTRIBUTING TO! I HAVE RETIREMENT PLANS! I—
Arthur tried desperately to voice his very reasonable complaints, tried to explain that there had been a TERRIBLE MISTAKE and he needed to speak to whoever was in charge of this afterlife nonsense immediately because he did NOT sign up for this, didn't fill out any forms, didn't agree to any terms and conditions, and he was pretty sure this violated some kind of cosmic law!
But,
What came out instead: "WAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
.....