Preview! Ten Thousand Steps

The members of the Seaside Library Discord, which can be found at https://discord.gg/K5ajBye8 , have been participating in a classic server game. Counting To Ten Thousand, cooperatively. The reward for finishing this is going to be a special 10,000-word story, to be put up there as soon as the counting is done and here on the next Friday afterwards. I use the current number as a mark to keep myself ahead of, so that the tale is paced out. They have reached a checkpoint, though, enough to cover the word count of the intro to the story.

So... consider this off-schedule update a combination of story preview and shameless server shill. I hope you all enjoy!

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Ten Thousand Steps

They say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Well, I’m pretty sure that whomever “they” are, it was meant to be more metaphorical and less literal than I found it to be.

In my case, the single step was at a train station. The single step led to a single slip, which in turn led to a single fall, which struck a single rail. Specifically, the center rail of an electric train track. It took a single second for my heart to give a single beat, then never beat again.

And to think, at the time I was single.

In the all-encompassing whiteness that followed, the stillness and sudden lack of pain told me more than anything that I was about to face Judgement. Entirely too soon for my tastes, to be honest. Twenty-five years on Earth wasn’t nearly enough to experience everything I’d wanted to. There were vague voices, out in that whiteness.

“... again? So soon? What…”

“... only about a thousand left, he’s wasting…”

“... have to try something different. Maybe on this side of…”

“Oh! It looks like he is awake! Mr. Richard Johnson, we need to have a bit of a talk.”

Guess that meant it was my turn. “Uh, all good things, I hope?”

The voice that came back was very vaguely feminine, her accent indeterminate. “I’m afraid not. You present us with quite a problem, Mr. Johnson. You see, we are the ones responsible for making sure that every soul accomplishes certain things, and you… well, you are rather stubbornly refusing. Fifteen times through the wringer. This time you didn’t even have the courtesy to stay down there for very long.”

The words were clear enough. Heck, they even kind of made sense. That didn’t remotely help me in my current situation. “Can… can you explain whatever it is that’s going on? I don’t think I can help you help me, or whatever you’re doing, without knowing it.”

“That is another part of the problem. You won’t remember it when you go back. Every soul is supposed to accomplish certain things over the course of their many times on Earth. Most have managed it by now. Yours? Yours is nearly dead last on its checklist among those who haven’t. Nobody does the entire list in one shot, but you have so much catching up to do we need to take drastic measures. You just can’t ever seem to stick with anything.”

Another vague voice, this one male. “Maybe we can set up a Trial here? Slice out a demesne and set him to it?”

“Oh, that could work. The consequences could be catastrophic for him, though, and it’ll set us back a decade either way.”

I felt obligated to speak up. “You still haven’t told me what’s going on! What kind of trial, and what kind of consequences. Don’t I get a choice in this?”

“No, you really don’t. Choice is for the souls who are on track. So, here’s what is about to happen. You are going to go to sleep. Then, when you wake up, your Trial will begin. You will be on a Task that will take you ten years of single-minded dedication. We are adjacent to Heaven, there will be no suffering imposed there. No hunger, no thirst, no disease. The Task will even be enjoyable. There will be ten thousand women in the town you wake up in. You need to have sex with all of them before time runs out. Succeed, and you should have ground out the annoying tendency in your soul to flake out of everything so we can send you back down for a couple of good cycles.”

“And if I fail?”

“Your soul will probably be consigned to oblivion. I’d wish you good luck, but that is not a thing here. Fare well, and I hope you are the equal of this.”