***

  BEGIN Part I of Vol. 1

  ***

  "Andy, don't walk there! Hey! WATCH OUT!"

  We begin with Andy Parsons, a lanky, pale, freshly unemployed 23-year-old who didn't hear his father because he had already put on his headphones over his mop of brown hair. The massive grand piano and the heavy metal platform on which it rested suddenly detached from the crane Andy was walking under. It fell, squashing him like a pancake.

  That old trope where your entire life replays in your brain in the last instant before your death, Andy quickly learned that it was true. In the millisecond before he was crushed, he took stock of things.

  The last moment of life, Andy found, extended almost indefinitely. He felt his body pushed into the pavement, the increasing pressure, the beginnings of bones snapping.

  His mind wandered through vivid scenes. He saw himself being birthed, nursing, learning to walk. He saw his father, fixing pianos in his shop, showing him how the different pieces were connected. He saw the library his mother had worked at on Saturdays. He wandered the aisles with wonder.

  He began to rerun a particular memory. He was in the library at the computer printer. He took a small stack of paper from the ream, about 20 sheets, and snatched a dull pencil from the grotesquely misshapen Goofy coffee mug that had always been there. He took his seat on the floor and began to draw endless, impossible worlds.

  Why was Andy, in the infinitely dilated moment of his death, replaying the mundane early childhood memory of drawing on the floor in the public library? It wasn't even a particularly good drawing.

  Then Andy remembered how it felt. When he did his drawings, proliferating creatures, making up stories about heroes and villains, gods with strange powers… forgetting himself in the act of pure creation, Andy realized that was the only time he had approached something like true, profound happiness.

  He then recalled a few years later in his childhood, working on pianos with his father. Well, being forced to do it. If he had his way, Andy would have been doing something else: drawing, gaming, daydreaming. Anything was better than working on pianos. Maybe it was just the contrarian in him.

  Andy recalled the disappointment he always detected running underneath his father's words. The subtle, accusatory inflections.

  He never needed help feeling guilty, he was naturally hard on himself. But his father's constant frustration with him, combined with his plain lack of interest in who Andy really was, caused Andy's superego to go into overdrive at an early age.

  The ambient guilt grew over the course of his childhood. At first, the guilt was only occasional, when he missed a chore or brought home a less-than-remarkable grade. But, as often happens with developing personalities, something little turned into something big.

  That occasional guilt became more steady and less pronounced until it formed the backdrop of who he was. Finally, it calcified into shame. He felt defective even though he didn't want to be. He was always catching up or falling behind, always out of place.

  He couldn't find genuine interest in anything but making art, imagining worlds. He would hyperfixate for hours, sketching in his notebook, writing the characters' descriptions and powers. It was his only escape from the laborious monotony of school, chores, and the piano shop; the endless humdrum that everyone else somehow seemed motivated to work on. He really only enjoyed one thing: creating. He gradually found less and less time to devote to his art, but he savored what time he did have. Everything else felt like swimming in concrete.

  His mom had been more supportive than his father. She would catch him drawing sometimes and smile.

  "You can do something with that you know," she always said. "You've got a talent."

  Andy remembered the warm, elevated feeling he got when she recognized him. He never felt like anyone really understood him, but his mom occasionally came close.

  The problem was that art wasn't any way to support yourself, at least according to his dad. In high school, Andy took as many art classes as he could, including the advanced placement course. He was in the middle of applying to art schools when his AP exam results came back. He hadn't passed. So plan B it was: piano sales.

  The year following Andy's graduation from high school wrecked his family. Andy's mom suddenly fell ill. The big C, late stage. It sucked. It was hard. But Andy hadn't really cried. He hadn't really, deeply felt much at all.

  He remembered staring at a particular crack in the ceiling tile for the entirety of his mother's funeral. He had gradually been numbing himself to reality. He had succeeded all too well. He had made himself a shell.

  He was able to work in the piano shop for four years that way. Life around him became an external stimulus that he could allow to pass over him. He retreated into himself, keeping company with podcasts, audiobooks, and music.

  But ever since his mother's death, he knew something had to change. Andy knew that, aside from the rare times he was able to lose himself in the creative act, he had never really been happy, and in order to be happy, things couldn't go on as they always had.

  Finally the tipping point came. It was during a piano installation. His dad had become irritated at Andy for inadequately fastening the piano to the platform they were using to lift it into their client's second-story living room. It became a screaming match that ended in a challenge to quit. A challenge that Andy accepted. He walked off the job. Well, he didn't make it all the way off the job.

  The piano continued to crush him. It was starting to hurt now. It really took death for him to see clearly: he hadn't been doing well at all.

  And that is how his earthly life came to a close. He died frustrated, numb, and unfulfilled.

  Oh well.

  ***

  When Andy came to consciousness, he found himself in a lobby, some kind of drab, windowless government building. Beige walls, navy-blue chairs that were just a bit too small… It was an aggressively uninteresting interior design.

  Amenities included an analogue clock, harsh fluorescent lights, and a number of faint stains in the drop-tile ceiling.

  There was a clerk behind a plexiglass window, and a few clusters of people seated in the chairs. A few people were sobbing. One guy was chuckling to himself and rocking back and forth.

  Where was he? Was this some kind of illusion? Was he still dying under that grand piano? Was this all a dream?

  He stood up slowly, taking care to make sure his body was stable. It was. In fact, it felt practically as good as ever. He wore a plain pair of jeans, sneakers, a black teeshirt, and an unbuttoned flannel, the same outfit he had put on earlier that day before he went to work.

  Am I… dead? Like… is this really it?

  He walked over to the clerk's window. Clerks were supposed to help, after all, so if anyone could answer his questions, it’d be the woman behind the glass.

  "And how can I help you?" the clerk said through the intercom. She wore a stiff-looking dress shirt and thick-rimmed glasses, and spoke in a nasally voice with a cheery midwestern accent.

  "I'm… here?" Andy said.

  "Yes, ok, well, first of all, welcome to the afterlife. Some people experience a bit of confusion or disorientation when they first arrive. How are you feeling?"

  Afterlife… Yep. Either I’m dead or this is the most bizarre, detailed, and realistic fever dream I’ve ever experienced.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  "I'm feeling fine, physically at least," Andy said, suppressing any emotional reaction he might have felt at the fact that he was now dead. Even in death, apparently, his instinct was to remain comfortably numb from his feelings

  But even though his mind was racing with anxiety and confusion, his body had never felt better.

  "Well that's so good to hear!" the clerk said. “Many people from earth keep a lifetime of tension in their bodies, especially in the last century or so, so when they arrive, they tend to feel a lot better!”

  The clerk continued talking, but Andy zoned out when a thought suddenly occurred to him. If he was truly dead, was his mother here?

  He peered at the desk behind the plexiglass. There seemed to be a desktop computer, a boxy one like something from the early 90s, and a keyboard.

  “Could I ask you a favor?” Andy said, cutting off the clerk mid-sentence.

  “Oh,” she said, blinking and frowning. “Sure, what can I do for you?”

  “Can you see if my mother is here? It’s Mary. Mary Parsons.”

  “Oh, dear,” the Clerk said, a hint of sadness in her voice. “I wish I could help you, but the network is down.”

  “What do you mean?” Andy asked.

  "Due to technical difficulties, I don’t have access to our database. And, unfortunately, this is one of many thousands of waiting room sites, so I don’t have an easy answer for you.”

  “Oh,” Andy said, trailing off. “Alright.”

  “And, probably worse news, we cannot process new arrivals at the moment. But you're welcome to have a seat in the waiting room and we'll get you processed as soon as IT resolves the issue." She gestured toward the chairs.

  "So what's the issue? Anything I could help with?"

  "Oh, aren't you sweet! It's for the IT department to handle, honey. But thank you."

  "They have IT departments in heaven?" Andy asked, trying to get more information out of her. Andy wasn't going to just sit in a waiting room for however long it took. He had become passive in his earthly life, and it had made him a shell of a person. Now, in the afterlife, he resolved to take a more active role.

  The clerk smiled politely. "I don't know about heaven, but we sure do have IT departments here," she said.

  Andy's stomach sank. He had really messed up his life so bad it sent him to hell.

  "Oh don't worry!" the clerk said as she saw the worry grow on Andy's face. "You are not in H.E. double-hockey-sticks. You're just in a waiting room facility. Doncha worry. We'll process you as soon as possible."

  Andy exhaled a bit and chuckled.

  "But after processing I'll go to… you know," he said as he pointed upwards.

  "After the IT issue is resolved, I can check for you," she smiled as if to indicate that she had nothing else to say.

  Another person, a large man in jeans and a tucked-in polo, materialized in a plastic chair near a dulled metal water fountain. He began to scream.

  "You're okay, darlin'," said the clerk through the intercom. Then she gestured to Andy. "If you want, you can have a look at our lounge just down the hall."

  Another person popped into existence as Andy headed toward the hallway. Another screamer, met by the clerk's soothing reassurance.

  As Andy walked down the hall, the reality of the situation sank in. His life on earth was over, and he hadn’t accomplished much of anything at all. Part of him felt a pang of grief… What had kept him from pursuing the life he wanted?

  Earth had been a frustrating place. No matter how hard he worked, he never seemed to get ahead, and every effort Andy made at happiness seemed to result only in frustration. He had dreams early on, but after so much failure and rejection, he had learned to put them out of mind.

  Why? Why had he given up so early? Perhaps it made him feel more in control to reject something he couldn’t have. Dreams always seemed to be for other people, not for him.

  Andy stepped into the lounge. It was a huge room, resembling something between a skating rink and a casino.The lighting was dim and cozy, the walls had a cheap wood paneling, and the seats and tabletops all had a washed out burgundy hue. The vibe was a Pizza Hut circa 1997.

  Andy took a brief scan. There were people sitting in booths lining the walls. There were a few television screens and some arcade games like Crazy Taxi and a claw machine.

  There was a large, cushioned bench by a group of pool tables. On the wall above the pool tables there was a large television screen playing daytime TV reruns.

  Andy took a seat to collect himself.

  "Yeah, there's only one channel," a man said from a few seats down, apparently eager to make conversation. "They're going through every episode of Jerry Springer right now."

  "There's only one channel… and it's nonstop Springer?"

  "Well it is right now. It's a marathon. They’re only in 1996 though, and it went until 2018 so we have a ways to go before something else comes on."

  The TV seemed to display a less-than-official VHS tape recording. Occasionally home video would flash through. Jerry Springer tried to keep two guests apart, but they managed to break past him and each grasped the other's throat. They were fighting about someone hooking up with someone else's mother. Andy didn't understand whether or how the two combatants were related. An image of two small children jumping over a water hose in a front yard flashed for a brief moment before giving way to the grappling contestants again. Andy stood up to go.

  "Riveting stuff, huh?"

  "Yeah… I don't think this is for me," Andy said.

  "That's too bad," said the man adjusting his baseball hat. "You could go shoot pool with my son if you're looking for something to do," he gestured across the room where a small boy, maybe five or six years old, stood on a stool, knocking billiard balls around with the stick like a baseball bat.

  "So we just, what, wait here? In this room?"

  "Yeah there's the main waiting room, the lounge, which we're in," he gestured broadly around the room, "and there's some kind of intense game room through the curtains over there. Really interesting stuff."

  The man pointed to a set of purplish blue drapes in a doorway that Andy hadn't yet noticed. Now that he saw it, he didn't know how he had missed it. There was a big neon sign that said THIS WAY TO THE INFINITE PLANE.

  "The infinite plane? What, like an arcade or something?"

  "Or something," the man said. "Everyone who walks in there doesn't walk out, so it must be a great game. I heard it described as 'Lawnmower Man plus D&D.'"

  Andy didn't know what "Lawnmower Man" meant, maybe it was a game from this man's time or something. But he did know a thing or two about D&D. In fact, the mention of it gave him a little jolt of excitement. The kind of excitement that he felt all those years ago in the library.

  He had never had a friend group big enough or interested enough to actually play, but he had used D&D books as a reference for drawing his heroes. He had been captured by the artistic depictions of fighters, mages, and monsters.

  "Why aren't you and your kid playing, then?" Andy asked. "If there's a great game in there, why is anyone out here at all?"

  "Well for me, my boy isn't ready for the game yet. We've only been here a couple of weeks, so we're taking our time."

  "Wait… weeks? Has the technical difficulty lasted that long?"

  "Oh," he looked surprised. "The whole system has been down for over a century, apparently. There are even some people who have been here since the late 1800s."

  Andy felt a pang of panic in his throat. People have been living over a century in the equivalent of a painfully understaffed department of motor vehicles?

  "How long is it going to take?"

  "Whaddaya mean?"

  "Until the system is back up and we can go… wherever we're going."

  "Oh, nobody knows," the man said. "Apparently there's a critical issue with an update and they need the admin password. But the only guy who has it isn't here."

  "Wait, the whole system is dependent on one guy?"

  "Yeah, I guess. Some IT guy named Frank."

  "Why would they build it that way? Have they not heard of redundancy before?"

  "I don't know what to tell you, man, I've mostly been watching TV."

  Andy paused, taking in the new information. The IT system had been down for over a century, which meant he wasn’t getting out of here any time soon. The only objective that had crossed his mind so far was finding his mom, but as the clerk had pointed out, it was unlikely to happen without help from a database.

  He had spent his life frustrated and unable to find happiness, and it seemed like the afterlife would be no different.

  At least he didn’t have to work a dead-end job and there was an intriguing video game. Hopefully it didn’t suck, but Andy didn’t want to get his hopes up.

  "I'm Glenn, by the way," he said, extending his hand.

  "Andy," said Andy, accepting Glenn's handshake. "And you haven't thought about jumping in the game?"

  "Well, no," said Glenn. "My son isn't ready. He said he's scared of it. But I'm sure once he gets more comfortable he'll be all for it and we'll give it a go. For now, we gotta stick together and I don't mind being a couch potato. Never had time to be lazy in my life before. We were lucky enough to have each other coming here together. If you're lucky enough to find yourself with people you love, you've got to stick together."

  Glenn watched with a look of gratitude and admiration as his son continued to whack the pool balls.

  The thought of waiting in the lobby for decades shook Andy. The clerk had mentioned that this wasn't hell, but it seemed pretty close.

  It seemed like there were more important things going on than a roleplaying game, but there wasn't much to do about it. Andy did know one thing, though: the waiting room promised only daytime TV runs and infinite boredom.

  "I think I'm going to scope out the game room," he said. "Cheers, Glenn."

  "Well, if we make it in there, maybe we'll seeya 'round in the game, Andy."