《The float of a life》 The float of a life My father bought a gun for him and another one for my mother. It is unusual in our village to own a firearm and it used to be frowned upon. Yet we must prepare because this World has become strange! *The times they are a changin''* is playing on the radio in the living room where we nowadays sleep together. We just woke up to the morning light. My father is showing affection to my mother. That also is unusual and perhaps he finally understands that we can''t cower forever. I want to go. My mother wants to go too. It''s been a month now that this World doesn''t want us anymore. Everything that we eat tastes salty. The water that we drink makes us cry and pissing it burns like torture. The people around us care less and less. My father freezes and I can''t look away. I feel a straightforward pressure in my brain. My father is still frozen and I can''t move at all, can''t move to take a look toward my mother. The muscles do not respond and it makes me wonder how I can even have thoughts at this moment. The light from the window behind my father is as strong as ever and I can see the leaves from a nearby tree. The leaves have a carefree float for themselves and it is evident that they care not for what we experience right now in this room. Somehow they move when I can''t breath and I can''t move my eyes away. Another song on the radio later and nothing has changed, it feels like an eternity. Looking at my father and the window behind him is the only connection between myself and the world. The universe seems to allow nothing else. Just as I was beginning to wish for it to end, this connection slowly fades. My father becomes blurry and I can''t see the nonchalant float of the leaves anymore. This is DEATH, I know. Perhaps I could not move a single muscle, but the cells of my body finally lacked nutriments and oxygen. Everything fades to black and I open my eyes, somehow.. elsewhere. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. I¡¯m nervous and exalted because suddenly there¡¯s more to all this, when I believed it was the end of everything. The prior month has been a torture. I should be 17 years old, but I feel like an old man at this point. The intense suffering definitely aged me. In this stream of thoughts, my mother and father probably feel like they are corpses now. In this new place, there is only my consciousness and the new void. I¡¯m here without a body. There¡¯s just empty black all around me.. and a tablet. As soon as I take notice of the tablet, my body emerges from nothingness and I¡¯m alive. My mouth has a breath and my legs stand the pressure. The tablet gives a sentient feel and it goes away in a floaty way that reminds me of the leaves earlier. There is sand everywhere at this point and perhaps the sand exists now that I have legs to walk upon it. The tablet looks colossal and the level sands stretch far away. In a will to survive, my legs bring me to a run toward the tablet and hands make a grab a it. The tablet lets me read it and it goes as follow :
*Around the decay of your World, do not despair. The Works do not end. You will keep on living, as soon as you sacrifice. If you sacrifice enough, you¡¯ll be born again. If you sacrifice enough more, you¡¯ll be born strong, ye Mighty*
A black fish I don¡¯t know what to do at this point because the immense tablet actually gives very little information ! In my village there is a clear water Koi pond and my mother brings me there every now and then when she is upset about something. To think about this is very conflictual with the surrounding sands and I swear that the tablet looks smaller now. Back to the pond, there are various species of fish in there and my mother would kowtow to this yellow one of that red one depending on what she needs at the time. The yellow fish apparently provides luck, the red fish soothes your mind of worries and the black ones are for when you require retribution for something. All that is required to obtain their help, is to be honest and thankful to the seemingly unaffected fish. My mother believes it all and to this day it appeared much too occult to me, yet everything around me is currently unexplained. Emerging alone from those memories, I decide to take my chance at trying to understand what is written on the tablet. However, the tablet has nothing written on it. When I think about it, perhaps there never was anything written on it. The information about sacrifices simply appeared like a pop up in one of those video games.
*Settings updated. Emergency council here, there are 3 billions of you that reached your desert. Terra is now under emergency sleep. Our World is bankrupt and your souls will be auctioned individually to richer universes. We¡¯ll update you in 2 weeks.*
The human body is 65 percent water. We need liquid water to survive past a few days and nutriments to live through more than 3 weeks. That¡¯s what I learnt last month at school. You can survive about 3 minutes without air, good, that¡¯s available to me right now in this desert. As for water, I¡¯ll deal with it later. This desert feels like the black fish in the pond. Perhaps we have endangered this Terra, our universe and the fault is being punished. No, there are clues around and I must consider them. I sit on the ground and use my fingers to draw lines around me and then I fill them with what I know. 1) The World I know has decayed. 2) I can live, if I sacrifice. The tablet mentions being reborn If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. 3) 3 billions of us reached *their?* desert, the others could be dead 4) I must survive 2 weeks. Obviously, memories of my parents pop non stop in my head, this is the farthest I have ever been from them. As tears follow my cheeks, I quickly pull myself together. My right hand becomes a fist and it strikes the ground around points 1, 2 and 3 and only ¡°I must survive 2 weeks* is readable. I can¡¯t waste more water. The desert is everywhere and the sands stretch too far away. If this barrenness leads to anything, well I can¡¯t hope to walk that far. This means that I¡¯ll not find water, I¡¯ll not find help, I¡¯ll not waste anything! Damn Terra knows nothing. I¡¯ll lay low on the ground and attempt the 2 weeks solitude forced upon me by that emergency council. May it too be punished someday. Easier said than done, two weeks go by and my mind is at it¡¯s limit. I¡¯ve laid my wastes around the tablet. Other than doing that deed, I¡¯ve not moved my body much. However, my mind screams in anger every other minute. I would be dead already, if there was a Sun. The ambient temperature is constant. I do not sweat when I calm down the anger. I¡¯ve only managed to do so when I think about the pond and the fish in it. In a way, this pond helped me more in the past 2 weeks than it ever helped my mother. It became a part of me at this point, it feels like a part of my soul. The pond and the fish are an island surrounded by my anger and the only anchor that my sanity has in this desert.
*Settings updated, emergency protocole 1.0 enabled. Auction can begin. Well done good souls! 300 millions of you survived. As the Emergency Council, we expected fewer than you to meet this day. As such, you¡¯ll be given an extra dice when you¡¯ll sacrifice yourselves for us.*
Seize the Sice
**3 Dices for your soul. It¡¯s a good bargain for you all. Be attentive fellow souls, this is how it¡¯s gonna work. Call it karma or fate, you¡¯ve got a little bit of value because of your individual karma. Each cube has six faces! Ace will get you nowhere. It is the most hopeless. Deuce is laughable and a futile attempt. Trey is meaningless, but not vain. Cater should not be disregarded. Cinque is fortunate and propitious. Sice is sice, it is the best flavor of fate. Of 3 dices, one is your Terran fate, a second is measured by what you will sacrifice today and the third is our gift to you and it¡¯ll be random. Within the desert where you are should be an omen of fate. This object will appear to you when you are ready. Clear your mind and try to feel it¡¯s location. That object cannot move away, it is sealed within your karma. Open your mind and sense it. Or WITHER.**
Each muscle of my body aches under the pain of effort. I had not moved upward for the past 2 days and now I am trying to stand up. The information earlier is scribed within my brain, as if it was something that I studied repeatedly. It mentions an object that is required and I suspect that it is the tablet. From my arrival at this desert until now, this tablet has been the only other thing around, my only one companion in this place. ¡°Hello little one, I¡¯ve looked at you for some time now. None others has found me so soon.¡± Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. -I¡¯ve transported to this place after my body died in a strange way. I¡¯ve seen you from the very beginning, yet could you be what I¡¯m supposed to look for? ¡°Aww yes yes! But the update is not ready. That¡¯s tough, you bully. You were not supposed to find me so quickly. Whatever, we can proceed. In a few days, this Terra will go to sleep. It is simply bored to DEATH because you humans stopped exploring! Your universe was much stronger when you guys were actually trying. Most universes are actually just a single huge big mass, one planet and perhaps a Sun or two. Terra made a whole damn Milky Way and barely anybody cares. I¡¯ve heard that a few weeks ago, Explorer 1 exploded somewhere and Terra could not deal with it, emotionally. It was the nail in the coffin. The result is that most of humanity is now dead and most of you will never locate their totem of fate like you did. That scores you a Sice on you first die by the way. You¡¯ll do just fine. A Sice means that the Emergency Council will spare more than 6 tons of karma to save you. Anyway let¡¯s go elsewhere.¡± As the stone tablet finishes talking, the air begins to vibrate and I¡¯m too weak to resist it. In a motion of falling on my butt, my bottom appears to land on a chair instead of the ground and that chair is just one of many. The place looks like a graduation ceremony. There are 5 rows of chairs extending to my left and right. My sight is insufficient to see where they stop in the distance but all those chairs have one thing in common : empty. I¡¯m alone. ¡°Ahem, little one. We¡¯re way early but I finished the update just now. Your Sice has been registered and authorized, CONGRATULATION BOY. A Sice is not 1 out of 6, it¡¯s more like 1 out of 50. It shouldn¡¯t be authorized again for the Dice of fate again tomorrow. Some of the others will reach this place today and seize that chance, then that¡¯s it. Right now you have a good chance at securing a life after this. I¡¯m allowed to distribute you this 2nd cube and explain it to you. It¡¯s simple, you can¡¯t leave this place until you fuse your soul with it. Once you do, well that cube is stronnnnng. It¡¯ll rip a part of your very essence and it¡¯ll be given back to Terra. The bigger that essence, the bigger the compensation from the Emergency Council will be. Little one, time is stopped in this place. You won¡¯t decay as long as you sit on this special chair, so take a few days and challenge the cube slowly. Names are given Unknowingly, I lose track of the time while giving all my thoughts to the cube in my hands. Most likely half a day has gone by and I am not alone anymore. None of the other representatives of humanity has talked to me and I¡¯ve not acted on my curiosity yet either. The closest of them is about 40 meters away from me and one of them is a girl that looks like a rabbit. I¡¯ll call her -Toothie-, Earlier, Toothie talked to a blurry book floating in front of her. That¡¯s probably her totem, just like the one that usually is by my side. I¡¯ll call mine -Tablet- Most representatives appear my age and none of them is a child or a grandpa. Surviving until now indeed required physical resilience and my body shivers for a moment before I put away the thoughts that my parents are probably dead by now. According to Tablet, the few humans sitting on lonely chairs in this World will all get a Sice for reaching this place quickly. I make a mental note of as many of them as possible because they¡¯re more likely to survive along with me. -Birdie- has long hair and he seems to look nervously look all around him. I can¡¯t see his totem. -Buffy- has dark hair and a gothic watch on her right wrist. Her totem is a stake and she looks like a vampire killer. -Bono- has blond hair and he is trying to comfort the nearby -Mischa- that has cried for a while now. Perhaps Bono will save her and the rest of the World. Bono¡¯s totem is a shield that looks like it comes from a medieval movie. It¡¯s a square one that big enough you can hide behind. Mischa¡¯s totem seems blurry and it could be an arrow or a long pencil. Tablet moves a little bit closer to me. ¡° Awwwwww boy, not many have arrived yet. I¡¯ve said that a Sice is usually one in 50 or so¡­ well let¡¯s talk about that. I can see farther than your human eyes, little one, there are about 2000 humans here. The ones that arrived within 4 hours after the opening update are Sice like you and your elite group numbers fewer than 500. Way too many chairs have been prepared. If that¡¯s the case, the Emergency Council might commit seppuku at the end of this. They should not have given you as much as 2 weeks time alone in the desert. This death toll is unimaginable. On this chair you¡¯re safe, but of the 300 millions other humans, perhaps half will die today. It looks like there are many chairs but the Council expected to fill them more than once. They¡¯re delaying the final update, while waiting on Soul Investors and that might let more humans survive.¡± You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. -Tablet, I¡¯ve never bothered with it but you can call me -Xenos-. It¡¯s not good for my pride as a man if you make it as if I¡¯m a little one. If you¡¯re the totem of my soul, then I suspect that you¡¯re not older than I am. It won¡¯t do, definitely call me Xenos. ¡°Sure Xenos, now little one have you tried to challenge the cube?¡± -Yup, that¡¯s all I did today. I¡¯ve made some progress in regard to it. At first it would not react at all, but lately I¡¯ve been thinking a lot about a Koi pond that my mother brought me to see a few times and it¡¯s helping me with this cube. They¡¯re very alike and I¡¯m the skimmer that must refine its surface. It¡¯s a slow process during which I forget everything else around me and pretend that there are impurities on the surface of the cube. Sometimes it feels like the cube emits something that I can only feel, not see. Then, that invisible stuff leaves the surface of the cube and it never comes back. If more of that stuff goes away, perhaps I can then see inside the cube.- ¡°Oh you Sice, you¡¯ll make me cry. What you do is beautiful, but STOP IT. You¡¯ll die. That cube is way stronger than you. Just feel it, feel your soul and that cube''s then take a look WITHOUT MAKING IT MORE DANGEROUS THAN IT IS.