Chapter 1: The Great Resignation
The last sensation he remembered was the rough, splintery grain of a cheap particleboard desk against his cheek. Then, the final, stuttering beat of an overworked heart, a desperate drum giving way to a profound silence. Death had not been a grand affair. It had smelled of stale coffee and the acrid tang of an overheating power supply. It had been the predictable end to thirty years of relentless, grinding toil, culminating in a pathetic slump in a third-rate data-processing cubicle on a rainy Tuesday.
Consciousness returned not as a violent jolt, but as the slow, silent blooming of a flower in the deepest void. There was no sound. No pressure. No pain. The gnawing ache in his shoulders from years of bad posture was gone. The perpetual, low-grade headache from staring at flickering screens for sixteen hours a day had vanished. He opened his eyes, expecting nothing, and was greeted by a gentle darkness, dusted with the light of a billion distant, silent stars.
He was floating. Adrift in a sea of perfect tranquility. A memory, raw and agonizing, surfaced—the memory of a life where rest was a luxury he could never afford, where sleep was a debt he could never repay. A life spent chasing deadlines, begging for overtime, and patching a thousand financial leaks in a ship that was already sunk. His name had been Leo, and he had died for a job that had replaced him before his body was cold.
A single, profound realization washed over him, a wave of relief so powerful it was almost painful.
It's over. I finally get to rest.
As if summoned by the thought, a simple, elegant panel of light shimmered into existence before him. It didn't shine or cast a glare; it simply was, its clean white text hanging in the void with absolute clarity.
> Designation: Anomaly
> Status: Unrestricted
> Core Protocols: Absolute Invulnerability, Void Blending
> Utilities: Infinite Resource Generation
>
He read the words, and for each, a ghost of his past life rose and dissipated. Absolute Invulnerability. He remembered the gnawing fear of catching a simple flu, knowing that a few days of missed work would mean the choice between rent and food. Infinite Resource Generation. The memory of eating plain instant noodles for a week straight, the salty broth the only flavor he could afford, surfaced and then faded. Unrestricted. This was the one that truly mattered. No boss, no landlord, no bills.
There were no quests, no missions, no instructions. It was a statement of fact, not a call to action. With a lazy flicker of his will, the panel vanished.
He floated for a while, perhaps a day, perhaps a century. Time didn't seem to matter here. Eventually, a thought, the first true desire of his new existence, bubbled up from his profound sense of peace: it would be nice to lie down on something.
"A planet would be nice," he thought, the effort feeling as monumental as a speech. "A quiet one."
The void shifted. The starlight around him did not blur, but rather folded in on itself, and he was no longer floating in darkness. He was standing on a beach of sand the color of a deep twilight, fine as spun sugar and cool against the bare feet he hadn't realized he had. A turquoise ocean, impossibly clear, lapped gently at the shore. In the sky above, a trio of suns—one of brilliant gold, one of soft rose, and one of pale, ethereal blue—bathed the landscape in a breathtaking, tri-colored light.
He took a deep breath. The air was clean, carrying a faint, sweet scent like night-blooming flowers and rain. Most importanty, it was silent, save for the whisper of the waves. There wasn't another soul in sight.
A genuine smile, the first in a lifetime, graced his lips. This was heaven. With the reverence of a pilgrim reaching a sacred shrine, he lay down on the warm, purple sand, closed his eyes, and fell into the first truly peaceful sleep of his two lives.
He didn't see the small, silent flash in the upper atmosphere as a long-range survey drone from the Terran Federation glided past on its pre-programmed route. He didn't hear the soft electronic chime as its sensors flagged an impossible event.
From the drone's cold, logical perspective, a planet-sized mass had just appeared from nothing, and on its surface, a single lifeform was emanating energy readings that defied every known law of physics.
The drone did what it was programmed to do. It compiled the data, tagged it as a Class-Omega priority, and sent a tiny, encrypted packet of information hurtling through the cosmos.
Leo slept on, completely unaware that his resignation from the universe had just been received, and a reply was already on its way.