You can continue reading this story in Arc 2: The Brightvale Arc, which starts with Book 4: RE:CONSTRUCT, in which Curtis gains, among other things, a fucking MECHA. Check it out now on Kindle, in Kindle Unlimited, or in paperback. The series then continues with Book 5: RE:THINK.
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Have you checked out my new novel-length steamy harem book, Unknowable Chaos: Halloween, yet? If you haven’t, then here is the first chapter as a preview – it’s available now on Amazon and included, as with all of my books, in Kindle Unlimited.
Chapter 1
Jack gazed vacantly into the darkened window of the closed shop, as he made his way home from the office on a dreary, nondescript evening in late October. Halloween decorations almost made it hard to tell what the store actually sold, unless it was cornering the market in shabby looking fake cobwebs and unconvincing, hard plastic spiders. It always amused him when he saw these kinds of pieces of plastic tat to think that somewhere in the world there was a machine that made these things, and a person whose job it was to design them. Someone had put some work in, somewhere along the line, to conceive of that plastic cockroach nestling in the bright orange crepe paper at the bottom of the display, the shape of its legs, the dingy brown color it would be. Who were they? What was their life like? Did they enjoy their job?
So, I guess it's Halloween, soon, he thought to himself, with only mild interest. Some people thought of Halloween as a proper holiday that one should decorate for and celebrate, but Jack was fairly sure that something should only count as a real holiday if he got the day off from work for it, and he most certainly didn't have the 31st of October off. He'd given this year's Halloween no thought whatsoever until he'd noticed the crappy decorations. Maybe he'd go out for a drink after work that night though. Maybe he'd be lucky and some of the girls from the office might decide to dress up as slutty nurses or cops. He was just trying to imagine Sarah from reception in a skimpy witch costume as he kept on walking, past the Palladium Cinema (which was of course, showing classic horror movies), when it hit him.
Quite literally.
The huge, nail-polish red letter D that had formed part of the Palladium's old timey sign (for it was one of those retro movie theaters for hipsters) had decided upon that exact moment to come loose and fall from on high, smashing into Jack's poor, unwitting skull, and killing him instantly.
***
The spotlight that shone down on Jack, the desk, and the woman across from him was almost painfully bright, but everything else around him was in total darkness. The scene would have been reminiscent of a surreal job interview, were it not for the fact that the woman, whoever she was, was wiping her eyes, and shuddering with fits of unsuppressed laughter as she looked at the contents of a faintly glowing folder. That, and the fact that the golden nameplate on the desk in front of her read, simply, 'Angel'.
Jack put his hand up awkwardly, trying to get her attention.
"Um, excuse me? I... I'm a bit... confused?"
She snorted, unbecomingly (though he could see that were she not all red and streaky from the fits, she would be an incredibly beautiful young woman), took a couple of deep breaths, and then tried to speak to him, though it was clear that she was really struggling to keep it together.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just, you're the best one I've seen in a while! Oh! I have so many good lines for this, I want to pick the best one to say to you, come on now, ask me how you died!"
"I died?" he said, uncertainly, but well, why else would he have blacked out for a moment and then suddenly found himself in a weird place with an immature angel? Had there been a drive-by shooting or something? He'd felt nothing.
"Yes! Oh, but it was such a good death! I promise, you'll get a fantastic afterlife for that one, it's made my week!"
"It was an... interesting thing that killed me then? Was I killed by a famous murderer or something?" he asked, not thinking too much about how bizarre the words he was saying were.
"Oh, don't ask it like that, it ruins the punchline! Ask just, like, 'how did I die?'"
"How did I die?"
She held her sides, looking like she was in pain for a moment, then squeaked out her line, holding her breath.
"You couldn't take the D!"
"I what, now?"
"The D! You couldn't take it smashing into you, it was too big, and hard!"
"I was killed by... a penis? That doesn't sound funny at all! That sounds like an appalling crime! Would you be laughing if I was a woman? You should be ashamed of yourself... there's no way you're a real angel!" Jack exclaimed, envisaging some horrible death as the result of a violent sexual conquest, that perhaps the shock had wiped from his memory.
"No! No! The D! The letter D! It fell down from a sign and hit you on the head, you died of head trauma. But it's funny because sometimes people call it 'the D', don't they, when they're talking about taking a cock!" she whispered the last word, a gleeful grin on her pretty face, her big, blue eyes still wet with tears of amusement.
"Oh... right... I suppose that is sort of funny..." he said, though dick jokes aside, he didn't really think it was. In fact it just seemed depressing, that something so mundane had been the end of the story of his life. It wasn't even like he felt that he'd properly started the first act, and he'd expected a bit more excitement, maybe some romance, maybe some achievements of some kind. But nope, a mediocre degree, a mediocre entry level job, and then an unceremonious bashing to death by a stupid hipster looking sign. That was his lot.
But wait, she'd said something about an afterlife, hadn't she? If this was an angel, then he must be in heaven. That was a good start, though he wasn't really sure he'd ever done anything especially good. He'd never done anything especially bad, either though, so maybe just being kind of meh was enough. Maybe heaven's standards weren't as high as the ladies his mom went to church with had made out when he was a teenager and they'd thought he and his friends were trying to perform a satanic ritual with their Magic: The Gathering cards.
I've never done good things. I've never done bad things. I never did anything out of the -- wait, this is a terrible time to get a song stuck in my head. Although, maybe David Bowie's in there somewhere, maybe he'll sing the rest of it for me, Jack thought, his internal monologue somewhat erratic. He would later learn that people who died from head injuries remained a bit concussed in spirit for a while, which made them much better at accepting the bewilderment of being dead, but much, much worse at making the choices Jack would soon be asked to make.
"So, since your death was such a good one - and really, it absolutely was, I was so bored before, it was all malaria and stuff for my whole shift until you came in - I'm going to make you one of my special cases for the year! I know, I know, you have no idea what that means - honestly, we really need to get to work on letting people down in your old world know about the new afterlife so they don't keep expecting normal reincarnation. But we haven't had a chance, what with all the changes in protocols and... oh, but you don't want to hear about our bureaucracy, do you?"
"Reincarnation? So, this isn't heaven?"
"Oh! Well, I suppose it is, and it isn't. But that doesn't matter, since only we angels stay here. Anyway, reincarnation has always been the thing - I know only some Earth religions figured that out, but what can you do? - but recently, at least, recently for us, we kind of... lost a bet. And now people from your world also get the option to be reincarnated into a different world, designed by the guy who won the bet. Most people choose that, now."
"Really? The future of our souls... a bet?"
"Yeah, well, our ruler was really bored that day, and this guy who came in after he'd been hit by a truck was adamant that he
could design a better world than the Earth, said he'd been designing simulations of worlds his whole life, and they were all much better than the real one. So, there was a whole new world created based on his designs - as I said, the boss was bored, in need of a project - and then there were some trials, blah blah blah, and, well, it came out that actually that guy could design a better world, so it got to stay. We thought about just destroying the Earth and migrating all the souls over to the new one to avoid too much faffing about, but we realized we couldn't process all those souls in one day, so we just keep them both running now and let people decide themselves where to get reborn."
"A guy who made simulations of different worlds... what was he, like, a video game designer?" Jack asked incredulously, trying to imagine the swagger on a guy who'd challenge an actual god and have an entire reality built based on his ideas.
"Oh! You know about his type of work, then? Well that will make it all much easier - usually for the special cases we have to explain quite a bit and the ones who know about video games grasp the ideas so much better."
Is she honestly saying that now, people get a choice to be reborn in the normal world, or inside a video game? Of course people choose the game!
"So... I'm going to go ahead and say I choose the new world, if that helps move things along. I don't care what it's like, game developers make things balanced and fair, and you get some control."
"Oh, you don't actually have to make that choice - I told you, I'm making you a special case. I get a few a year, all of us angels do. But the special cases all go in the new world - we can't offer the same on Earth because, well, the rule set of Earth kinda... well..." she trailed off.
She cleared her throat.
"So, anyway, you'll be going to the new world, but you see, normally we just make people choose what class they want to be, eventually, and then we reincarnate them as newborn babies. They forget everything, of course. They don't remember their old life on Earth, or coming here, or even choosing some parts of their own destiny, and they don't know any world but the one they grow up in. As their talents begin to show, they never realize that their past selves actually chose them - but of course, they are usually very happy with their lot. At first, we set it so time would move fast there, to us, here, so even though it has only been a few years here and on Earth since we created that world, there have been generations and generations of people there, some being reincarnated back loads of times - although, they have resurrection sometimes too if they work hard to get the right stuff, it saves us a job and lets them keep a life they are really enjoying. Now we've set time there to pass in sync with the Earth, since there's history and culture now. Real stuff too, not the stuff the guy who designed the place made up to give it - what was it he said? - flavor, but things the people there have created themselves. So yeah, most people there don't know any different. But then there are the special cases. We angels get to choose a few rare people a year who seem like they'll be interesting. Then, instead of reincarnating them as babies, we send them there as adults, with all of their knowledge and memories intact. It helps the place evolve, see, to have the odd person knocking around who has different knowledge and ideas. You still get to choose your class, abilities and so on, but you'll be moderately leveled up already."
He ran the idea through his foggy brain, looking for some kind of catch, but there didn't seem to be one.
"I mean, you can say no if you want - one or two people have before, said they'd rather forget, or they really wanted to have a childhood again or something - but most people see how much of an advantage being a special case can give you in life there. Most of the people who have lead their parties to legendary levels of glory were special cases. And it's practically a given that you'll have no problems when it comes to finding partners. In this world, ladies love a hero. So do gentlemen, actually, if you prefer --"
"Don't say it..."
"THE D!"
Keep reading now at Amazon!
If you're a fan of sexy fantasy and sci-fi, particularly featuring harems, you may also enjoy my various other series (link is to the full catalog). Check out some of the following titles!
Spike's Harem (finished series)
Jet's Dark Harem (finished series)
Magic & Melodrama (finished series)
Space Yakuza Hit Squad Harem (finished series)
An Impossible World (novel)
Monstergirl Trainer: The Caves (finished series)
Monstergirl Trainer: The Ruins (finished series)
Monstergirl Trainer: The Forest (current series)
Santa's Harem (2018 Christmas series)
The Devil Went Down on Georgia (standalone short story)
The Empress’ New Clothes (standalone short story)
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Truck That’s Also a Death God (current series - SFW)
Finally, look out for my novels Tiger, Tiger and Platinum Storm, published under my fantasy novel pen name NX Hunter. As with all of my Natalie Hunter books, they’re exclusively available on Amazon and included in Kindle Unlimited.
Android Alien Apocalypse Harem - Arc 1 Box Set Page 17