On his way from his cot to Gaudemunda’s “office”, Noah had seen enough to start spinning theories. An uncanny space with animated arrows on the floor. Cots holding sleeping people who didn’t need to breathe. The abyss he’d woken beside the moment he died. And copies of two people he’d met before. It all seemed to point to one thing.
“The whole world is one big computer simulation, right?” he asked the woman walking beside him. “And the simulation doesn’t end when someone dies. It keeps going. Though I’m still struggling to get why the bucket game was necessary…”
“That’s your first question?” Gaudemunda cut in, clearly amused by his theory. “No, Noah. The world isn’t a simulation. You lived in a real world and died a perfectly real death. And before you launch into another conspiracy sprint, remember: I suggested you ask questions, not theorize. Trust me, it’ll be much faster.”
“Okay,” he coughed, a little abashed. “Questions only. Got it.”
But if this wasn’t a sim, then…
“What is this place? Where are we now?” Noah looked around.
“This space is called the Dream Sphere,” she said, gesturing at the rows of cots. “I can’t tell you exactly where it is, because the Sphere itself sits in an indeterminate locus. But it also envelopes the entire planet, preventing any dead soul from leaving Earth—or entering from outside. Think of the Dream Sphere as a barrier between the living and the true land of the dead.”
“Uh-huh… And you here are… doing what exactly? Testing us?”
“Oh no. Much worse,” Gaudemunda shook her head, still smiling. “We judge and evaluate you, Noah. Every deceased person older than twelve. We try to assess precisely whether you deserve to continue on this side. By the way—congratulations. Your results were excellent: ninety-three points out of a hundred. If you hadn’t wasted so much time in phase two playing with YouTube, you’d have earned another four.”
Only now did it hit him: Gaudemunda had known from the start. She knew and still let him contact the living, let him reveal a slice of what was happening here. He’d even complained in front of her about the Administrators’ lack of imagination…
If he still had a pulse, his face would be burning.
“Te—test…” Noah cleared his throat, trying to hide his embarrassment. “I’m having trouble grasping how ladling shiny juice from a tap into an abyss says anything about me.”
“Right now you’re in energetic equilibrium,” she said. “Under normal conditions, you’d remain like that for thousands of years, barely changing. We had to create a situation that would artificially drain your energy, force a need for survival, and push you to seek an exit. Phase one is for gauging the subject’s ability to think and adapt. Only about five percent fail it. Turns out even idiots figure out under pressure that a bucket of shiny juice might somehow save their skin—absurd as it looks.”
Five percent… so one in twenty? Noah frowned.
“Of those who clear phase one, two-thirds fail phase two—opening the first black door,” Gaudemunda continued. “That’s where the biggest drop-out happens. The reasons vary, but I can tell you one thing precisely: religious beliefs trip people worst. The moment someone decides they’re in Hell or Purgatory, progress slams to a halt. Statistically, it’s mostly atheists who open the black doors. The rest…”
She shrugged, declining to detail the fate of the unlucky two-thirds.
“Phase three checks whether the subject can empathize,” she said more gently. “Poor Brutus doesn’t make it ninety-nine times out of a hundred. His appearance is theater. The true ‘saveable’ victim is me. If the subject is female, we swap—I get sacrificed, and Brutus gives her a chance to save him. Nearly half of those who open the black doors pass this phase. Of course, the points system skews things: almost seventy-five percent succumb to power upgrades and blow past limits without thinking how it’ll bite them later. You felt it yourself, Noah. The more power, the more time you waste at the wells, hauling water.”
Noah said nothing. Seventy-five percent… just how many people were “sacrificed” in these tests?
“And the final phase measures your will to self-sacrifice,” she smiled. “This time you’re not traveling alone—you’ve got the person you saved. Double the charge burden, double the pressure. Far less time to accomplish anything. I even tried to sour your mood on purpose; you were enduring a little too quietly. You never blamed me for anything, not even at the very end. I even started thinking you were either a robot or a saint…”
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“How many people pass these tests?” Noah stopped. Gaudemunda stopped too, as if she’d been expecting.
“Very few,” she said, smile fading. “Statistically, just four and a half percent.”
“You destroy ninety-six out of a hundred?…”
“Hm.” Her smile bloomed again. “We do in fact destroy a tidy number every day. True.”
Noah sensed a “but” hovering on her tongue—yet asked something else:
“Is there… any god here? From any religion? Even one?”
Because if there was, only an Aztec deity could justify this kind of work.
“You should define ‘god’ more precisely,” Gaudemunda chided. “If you mean all-seeing and all-powerful, then no. None here, and no one’s met anything like that.
“But if you mean exceptionally powerful beings who can even affect the world of the living, then yes, such things once existed.”
“Once? But no longer?”
“We wiped them out,” Gaudemunda shrugged. “You can’t imagine what they were, Noah. If you’d lived and died five hundred years ago, you’d have been torn to shreds before you even realized it. You wouldn’t have made it to the Flow, where human records go to be reincarnated. Back then, the afterlife was a complete madness.”
She took Noah by the hand and drew him along.
“But they’ll cover that in the newcomers’ tour once you’re out of here. No point repeating it twice, right? I’m guessing they’ll even offer you an interesting job. Ninety-three points is no joke. You’re a good man—you endured my nasty company to the end, ha ha!”
“What else was I supposed to do?” Noah muttered. “Not endure? My swearing wouldn’t have helped much.”
“Ha! Maybe I was wrong—you’re no saint. You’re just na?ve,” she teased, grinning widely. “When I bored others, a lot of them shoved me into the first abyss they could find—figuring they’d cut their refill time by ten buckets. You didn’t even consider that, did you?”
“I wanted to smack you with a book when you started talking in the tower about whose fault it was,” Noah admitted. “I just couldn’t decide whether to use a thick one or a thin one…”
At that, Gaudemunda laughed even louder, heedless of the sleepers nearby.
He might’ve laughed too, if not for the faces stuck in his mind—people turned into glowing liquid because they couldn’t open the black doors, or because the points bait led them to burn out.
Was this woman good or evil? What had he stepped into? If this were a novel, wasn’t he obliged to rebel against the system and free them all?
“Who built this Dream Sphere?”
“I did,” she said with a shrug, eyeing the gray wall. “About five hundred years ago, from the bones of the old ‘gods’. Not alone, of course. Many helped. Most of them are gone now.”
So he wouldn’t be rescuing anyone. This woman was powerful. She could even spin up copies of herself. Noah had no idea where to begin.
“You built it…” he repeated. “So you’re the evil one?”
“I’m the inevitable evil,” Gaudemunda corrected. “Few manage to get hired into the Dream Sphere, and fewer still last two or three Earth years. I not only devised the concept and made it real—I’ve kept it running to this day. So yes, I’m probably a great evil in many eyes.”
She stopped. Only then did Noah realize they’d arrived. In another unobtrusive niche stood glass doors, labeled:
“D.S. Section 04. (Attention—do not stand in the doorway!)”
“Despite being the inevitable evil,” Gaudemunda smiled, “I hope you’ll visit me—say, once every hundred years.”
He had no idea what to say to that, so he deflected.
“An elevator…” he pointed at the doors. “You couldn’t put it closer to the office?”
“Of course I could,” she said. “But then I couldn’t walk and give you a few answers. No—this spot is ideal.”
Maybe she was right, he thought. It was ideal. Five minutes - just enough for a handful of questions; not long enough to make you furious at Gaudemunda. He still didn’t know what to think of her. His cavern memories were too fresh, even knowing the worst of it had been a theater.
With a soft chime, the elevator doors slid open.
With a quiet rush, the nearest cot with its occupant sank into the floor. A few seconds later, it rose again, empty.
Catching his look, Gaudemunda shrugged and gave a guilty smile. “First time it’s lined up that neatly… ha.”
“And he…?”
“No, I’m not telling you where that person went,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s time for you to go, Noah. And I’ve got another stroll through the dark caverns ahead. Go on—off you go!”
She practically nudged him through the glass doors. They sealed without a sound. Gaudemunda brushed a few unruly strands off her forehead, planted her hands on her hips, and winked.
“Drop by sometime—if you dare!”
Then she flared with that same eerie blue light and collapsed into a tiny point, hanging in the air. As the elevator started to move, the point streaked back toward the office.
They didn’t say goodbye.