IM/DC Chapter 243

Roughly ten thousand years ago…

I was dying. A judge rigged my trial to include crimes I was already found not guilty of and not only was I dying but there was nothing I could do about it. I was on death row and before I would get the lethal injection I’d die of liver failure. I hated how my life turned out. Frustrated, I was completely frustrated with the mistakes I made…

A chance finally came. They were attempting to digitize the consciousness of people which would make them effectively immortal as long as the machines they were running on stayed on. It was a pretty even split on who was picked between the terminally ill and those on death row. The biggest problem was the almost one hundred percent insanity that would happen if they stayed and realized what really happened.

It was the Robocop effect. Deep in the subconscious, there was a part of you that needed to recognize itself as human. Any consciousness that would be uploaded and could functionally work would begin screaming the moment they realized they were just thoughts being run through a computer program and either the program would fail or the ‘consciousness’ would go insane.

So the test had worked in the sense that they could upload a consciousness onto a computer to store it for future use but that ‘person’ couldn’t interact with anything in the real world otherwise it risked going insane when it learned it was only a program and not a person anymore. The shot-in-the-dark idea was having all of the consciousness load into a fictional world and pilot fake bodies until they could figure out how to move us to either robots or function with reality without going insane.

I was put to sleep and I knew something had gone wrong in the process. There was always the chance that we were all forced into a Marvel/DC world but I doubted it. Something bigger and more powerful than technology hijacked our consciousness and sent us there. At least that was what I thought…

I still felt human… The constant pain or sickness I felt was gone but I could see. Fingers and nose but as I looked at my fingers they looked vague and moments after looking away I forgot what my fingers looked like. I knew they were my fingers but if you asked me how old I was or describe what I looked like I would fail the moment I looked away from the thing I was describing.

Looking around I see nothing but darkness, which normally wasn’t a good sign. Piering forward I finally notice the person with the same foggy haze hiding his appearance. As I looked at him I could tell he was smiling behind the haze. “Hello, I’m the god of rebirth. I go by many names. Adonis, Osiris, Janus but as you were an atheist, you can just call me Rebirth and now, you have a question to answer.”

I tried to speak but words didn’t come out. I still felt the question I was trying to ask was understood by Rebirth. “And what question is that?” His smile widened slightly as he answered. “This is the first time a hundred souls have all transitioned at the same moment, your fates are intertwined because of this. Normally, when a soul is ejected from its home plane we or the soul can decide where to arrive for the reason of realigning the universe onto the correct path.”

I could feel his happiness at the odd situation he found himself in. “For the first time in… Forever, we’re going to leave which universe your souls join by majority vote.” He began to laugh uncontrollably as the haze wavered and showed parts of his face. The parts I could see gave me a strong sense of dread, like viewing him in full could fundamentally change me or destroy me if my willpower wasn’t strong enough.

“It’s like one of your democracies. Everyone getting to vote… What an awful idea meant to make a decision more of a popularity contest rather than who is the right person for the job!” His laughter began to die down as he wiped a tear from his eye. “Well… Anyways… We have four worlds that have become misaligned with their world's fate.”

He put it into a perspective that I could understand. “I take things that have been misplaced and give them purpose elsewhere.” I thought about what that meant, did we have to accomplish something in the world we’ll be sent to but he answered my unasked question. “No, normally yes but not with the energy one hundred souls provide. As long as three of you die from something other than old age I can fix the misalignment of any universe I send you to. The chances of all of you surviving to old age are so insignificant it doesn’t warrant worrying about.”

I felt a screen appear in my mind. Once again I could see it but I don’t think my eyes really worked, they were just placeholders. I could instinctively see the screen though which appeared to be an old-school blue screen at first which swapped to an almost see-through one as I disliked the color. I hated having things shoved in my face and if I couldn’t see in front of me it gave me the feeling that I was about to be ambushed.

Selectable Universes

Game of Thrones

Mushoku Tensei

Marvel/DC

Skyrim

Out of all the choices… I knew that my vote wouldn’t matter. Marvel/DC would get selected because it was the most well-known choice. I could guess Game of Thrones would be next, then Skyrim with Mushoku Tensei getting barely any votes. I picked Marvel/DC because it was my choice anyway, it had the most beautiful women out of all the choices… Well, the most variety anyway and suited my preferences the most. I had to wait as the others made their choices.

Marvel/DC: 51

Game of Thrones: 27

Skyrim: 16

Mushoku Tensei: 6

Yep, that's exactly what I thought the numbers would be. Honestly, I was surprised Marvel/DC didn’t win by a bigger margin but we had to look at the people making the choice. Murderers, sexual assaulters, and criminals made up half of the people making the choice. They’d have a much easier time getting away with what they do in a world like Game of Thrones but… If those psychopaths get superpowers then it will be much worse over a short period of time until they’re killed off. 

Rebirth asks me. “Out of curiosity, what do you plan to do with your second chance?” That at least meant he wasn’t reading my mind constantly. “No, that wouldn’t be a very polite thing to do. Only scanning your surface thoughts.” Well… I thought about what I wanted to do and I couldn’t help but smirk even with this hazy body it probably came across as Rebirth’s smirk did. “The superheroines and villains… I guess I should kill the bad guys too if it isn’t too inconvenient.”

“Well. I’m very busy. I’ll leave you to your choices. I hope you accomplish all the goals you set for your life.” With that, he disappeared and another screen popped up with a list of superpowers to choose from… Which ones should I select?